Comment by littlestymaar
3 months ago
It's funny how you always escape data by cherry picking other data instead of addressing the data you loudly reclaimed.
> and not much higher than previously after the housing bubble
Except that you cannot discount the “bubbles” when they represent a significant fraction of the recent period. And as mentioned before, the relative housing cost decline during the 2010s is a US peculiarity that didn't happen elsewhere in the West.
> Median house is not affected by average issues you indicate, and it increases steadily over time including when price to income is falling or staying low.
That's a nice counterpoint to your original argument, thank you.
> Of course, housing prices, especially local, are mostly due to underbuilding, and underbuilding is to a large extent caused by zoning, and environmental/etc review
That's a comfortable myth. I wonder why housing cost hasn't fallen to zero in Detroit as the “law of supply and demand” say it should have.
> and too much democratic input
“Market gud, democracy bad and I am very smart”, I see …
(Also, if you scroll up a little, you'll see that my argument wasn't just about housing but more globally about basic necessities like housing and healthcare becoming less accessible, negating the apparent “standard of living” improvement. And while the US has been an exception in the 2010 with respect to housing costs, it unfortunately also has been an exception in terms of healthcare cost).
I was only talking about the US. I am not familiar with European problems, my outside view is if Europe were more like the US perhaps it wouldn't be poor compared to the US, but I don't know for sure.
In the US, you gave me a short term data and I just gave you a longer term view than gives a fuller picture, as you've tried to discount my taxes data before (even though that data included relevant tax reform years).
Moreover I gave you BLS consumption data. Spending on housing went from 29 to 32% from 1960 to 2000, with no obvious changes in trend. While the median house is 1.5-2x big and quality and safety regulations became more strict. Oh and household sizes decreased iirc. Housing may be becoming less accessible since covid, sure. Any 1980ies welfare state etc changes don't have much to do with that.
Then, Detroit in fact has a massive number of abandoned houses, so yes prices did effectively go to zero. Presumably if they could be sold to anyone they would be, but they are not worth owning https://detroitmi.gov/news/deputy-mayor-detroit-land-bank-au...
Thanks for providing me with this great argument for supply and demand, I will use it in future ;)
"Market gud, democracy bad and I am very smart”, I see"
Vibes, vibes. There's tons of data on this, from micro data to between city comparison. There's even more data on costs, delays and cancellations for larger projects due to reviews and lawsuits. There's a reason California is currently trying to preempt local zoning to encourage more housing, and municipalities are trying to find loopholes around it. That is not data but you can just go on nextdoor and find a bunch of people outraged that developers upzoning their neighbor lot dared to remove 2 trees without a public hearing. If I was choosing between this and Robert Moses with no compromise possible, the latter is definitely a lesser evil than democratic input, and I say it as someone who doesn't usually like the government.
On healthcare you can check this: https://randomcriticalanalysis.com/why-conventional-wisdom-o...
Which incidentally also dispelled my previous belief that it was doctor salaries, that is while closer to reality than blaming the insurance (that is a small fraction of the difference between the US and other countries, provider costs being the main issue and insurance being a sin eater), is still mostly wrong. Frankly at this point I'm half supportive of Medicare for all. It won't improve much but at least people will have stfu about evil corporations in this area.
Americans are just very rich. Hence as percentage spent on necessities decreases, percentage spent on other things must increase. Bigger houses too, a little bit; however labor intensive industries with infinite extra spending potential like healthcare, education are "the best positioned" to suck up the increased disposable incomes
> I was only talking about the US. I am not familiar with European problems,
You're not familiar with US realities either, but nonetheless my original comment was about the whole West (which has faced the same neoliberal switch, in roughly the same time frame, with roughly the same social consequences even though the details differ a bit).
> Then, Detroit in fact has a massive number of abandoned houses, so yes prices did effectively go to zero. Presumably if they could be sold to anyone they would be, but they are not worth owning https://detroitmi.gov/news/deputy-mayor-detroit-land-bank-au...
> Thanks for providing me with this great argument for supply and demand, I will use it in future ;)
This is a fascinating way of misconstruing the reality to fit in your ideological views.
People did not stop paying rents in Detroit during the period, the effective cost of housing never reached zero, in fact people were still spending 30% of their income in housing[1] despite the houses themselves being practically worthless. That's a great example of market failure, because the market price kept hovering way above the actual market value of the goods (which is what they ended up abandoned in the first place, they were never on sale for $100 each or even $10k, they were just kept empty until they got destroyed due to lack of maintenance).
Yet you still find a way to twist that evidence into a confirmation of your beliefs.
This is genuinely fascinating. The only comparable thing I've seen is this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrGgxAK9Z5A (though in fairness the guy seems to have quite a bit more self-awareness than you do).
[1] https://www.bls.gov/regions/midwest/news-release/2017/consum...
You can literally open the page I sent you and they are selling vacant lots to neighbors for 100 dollars. They have also done thousands of demolitions of the houses that nobody would have at any price. The reason they were not sold is not because of market failure, it is because there was no viable buyer. With property taxes and maintenance obligationss their market price was negative. The government had to issue bonds to tear them down. That means, procedural constraints aside, you could go and have the house for nothing. The market price of a marginal house in Detroit is/was recently below 0. Supply and demand. Of course, just like when your house price goes up you don't get charged extra money, when your house price goes down nobody undoes your mortgage, so people keep paying. But for a new buyer, your only cost after a nominal fee would be properly taxes and maintenance/utilities, those are hard to blame on neoliberal turn.
I think it is you who is suffering from ideological blindness, especially since you keep changing and confusing your timelines and definitions.
I sent you BLS data on housing as percentage of income for the entire 20th century. And census data on median house size. Spending on housing went up from 29 to 32 percent from 1960 to 2000, more than offset by other essentials in the same paper and for much more house. When was that mythical impact of the neoliberal turn? Last time we were talking about taxing the rich or whatever, I sent you the flat-ish 1% tax burden data since 1979, you didn't like it as it didn't have earlier data. Was the negative impact from the neoliberal turn before 1979, or after 2000? Is it in the room with us right now? ;)
EDIT as for US or not; I accidentally erased part of the comment when editing. Would you agree that US is more neoliberal than Europe when you talk about neoliberal turn? If so the impacts of neoliberal turn should be larger, and it should be sufficient to discuss the US. In other cases, since I dunno much about Europe other than high level, I cannot comment on their unique neoliberal negatives. Perhaps those are bad and they should do what US did instead.
4 replies →