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Robert J. Schiller on Why Cities Become Unaffordable
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2017 Jul 22, 2:59pm 10,861 views 69 comments
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PeopleUnited
2017 Jul 26, 6:57pm
Christianity enables Islam by providing an environment in which irrationality can flourish.
Not exactly.
In fact, Christianity is the anti-Islam. You will see that some day, even if you can't see it now.
Your argument can be easily corrected...
Earth enables humans by providing an environment in which irrationality can flourish.
There, fixed it for you. And you 8267 while clearly an intelligent person, are also a prime example of how even intelligence does not help people avoid irrationality.
PeopleUnited
2017 Jul 26, 7:03pm
Liberal policies result in catastrophe
Trying to control people through force (as conservatives like Dan advocate) rather than motivating them by truth and love is what results in catastrophe.
PeopleUnited
2017 Jul 26, 7:41pm
Perhaps not in the literal sense. But he has so much in common with them and their tactics and willingness to use force to achieve their goals.
Dan isn't conservative2192 says
Liberal policies result in catastrophe
Trying to control people through force (as conservatives like Dan advocate) rather than motivating them by truth and love is what results in catastrophe.
FortWayne
2017 Jul 26, 8:46pm
Perhaps not in the literal sense. But he has so much in common with them and their tactics and willingness to use force to achieve their goals.
That's not a "conservative" value. That's just human on both sides. Dan is unique mixture of leftism and communism.
PeopleUnited
2017 Jul 26, 9:54pm
Perhaps not in the literal sense. But he has so much in common with them and their tactics and willingness to use force to achieve their goals.
That's not a "conservative" value. That's just human on both sides. Dan is unique mixture of leftism and communism.
Your viewpoint is colored by your indoctrination that "conservative" = good and "liberal" = bad. That is a false dichotomy perpetuated by the masters of manipulation who seek to divide the people in order to better control us all.
The fact of the matter is that you, me and Dan (who some might describe as conservative, libertarian and liberal respectively) have more in common than not. Not the least of which is the belief that we are right and everyone else is wrong or at least a half a bubble off. But aside from that personal pride and arrogance, we also all believe in many of the same basic values. We might differ on how to achieve those results but by and large we do all desire the same results. Our debates are by and large based on semantics (even now you want to argue the definition of "conservative") and the methods for achieving the same goals.
But again the reason I call Dan a conservative is that he has proposed numerous times, the use of force to achieve his goals. That is what conservatism means to me. Now I know that is not the traditional view of conservatism, but it is actually in practice what conservatives do when they are in power. They actively prevent change, by force if necessary. Liberals do the same thing to achieve change, by force if necessary. They are both tyrants.
Now let me explain more why the liberal/conservative is a false dichotomy in case you still don't see it. I am anti-abortion, a conservative value. I don't think any woman should choose abortion and I don't think any other human being should help to kill a baby once it is implanted in a woman's uterus. The killing of a baby in the womb is a loss, it is a loss of life for the unborn child, it is also a loss for the community and the people who should have had the opportunity to live and work together with the child that was murdered. But that being said, I don't want to live in a surveillance state where the government dictates what my doctor can and can't do, where the government doesn't allow people the right to privacy, a liberal philosophy. And for that reason I don't think we want to live in a world where the government is looking inside uteruses and sending people to prison. That is tyranny. Abortion is murder, but a government that can look inside a uterus is a tyrannical government. It is nobody's business what you do with your own body, and it is nobody's business if you are pregnant or not. See how it is a false dichotomy? In my opinion we need to value the right to privacy above the desire to prevent a murder. I stand in opposition to murder, but I am even more so standing in opposition of a tyrannical government.
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http://www.atimes.com/article/why-do-cities-become-unaffordable/
But the barriers may also be political. A huge dose of moderate-income housing construction would have a major impact on affordability. But the existing owners of high-priced homes have little incentive to support such construction, which would diminish the value of their own investment. Indeed, their resistance may be as intractable as a lake’s edge. As a result, municipal governments may be unwilling to grant permits to expand supply.
The new Luddites
Insufficient options for construction can be the driving force behind a rising price-to-income ratio, with home prices increasing over the long term even if the city has acquired no new industry, cachet, or talent. Once the city has run out of available building sites, its continued growth must be accommodated by the departure of lower-income people.
The rise in housing prices relative to income is unlikely to be sudden, not least because speculators, anticipating the change, may bid up prices in advance. They may even overshoot, temporarily pushing the ratios even higher than necessary, creating a bubble and causing unnecessary angst among residents.
But this tendency can be mitigated, if civil society recognizes the importance of preserving lower-income housing. Many of the calls to resist further construction, residents must understand, are being made by special interests; indeed, they amount to a kind of rent seeking by homeowners seeking to boost their own homes’ resale value.
In his recent book The New Urban Crisis, the University of Toronto’s Richard Florida decries this phenomenon, comparing opponents of housing construction to the early-19th-century Luddites who smashed the mechanical looms that were taking their weaving jobs.
In some cases, a city may be on its way to becoming a “great cityâ€, and market forces should be allowed to drive out lower-income people who can’t participate fully in this greatness to make way for those who can. But more often, a city with a high housing-price-to-income ratio is less a “great city†than a supply-constrained one lacking in empathy, humanitarian impulse, and, increasingly, diversity. And that creates fertile ground for dangerous animosities.
#housing