But is it a bad equilibrium?

If someone is willing to trade the time and cost of a long commute, can’t we trust that they decided it’s worth it?

I keep hearing how we need to make the Bay Area affordable, but I’m also thinking “price is a signal” and people deciding to live elsewhere is exactly what we want.

I spent time in a developing country and the government is struggling to creating new economic centers but failing miserably (mostly due to poor people willing to sacrifice for higher wages). If they had their way they’d love to not have a metro area of 15M but two metro areas of 7.5M.

Not sure we should be accommodating everyone in the Bay Area (or wherever), people deciding to move to Austin is a good thing.

Idk, we do live in a bit of a climate emergency so using government policy (not the free market) to discourage density seems like a bad way to achieve that. Also I guess I left out the worst bit of the high cost of living equilibrium. Homelessness has been connected pretty cleanly to high housing costs. It isn't even that surprising, people find moving difficult and even more so when you're at the bottom of the economy just scraping by and then you actually run out of money. There's also a common feeling that forcing people to move is a bad thing. That seems at least reasonable to me.

But it makes no sense to solve for one dense urban area when you could have people go elsewhere and create a different sense urban area.

And it doubly doesn’t make sense when it’s more costly.

I think it doesn't really seem like that's the equilibrium. Instead it seems like it causes long commutes. In the bay area huge numbers of people commute into sf from huge distances. It does seem like the situation being different would be better.

Yes, often it is a bad equilibrium. When prices rise, taxes rise, and often people who were able to live somewhere no longer can. They're forced to move, eventhough they'd rather stay. This also happened in the bay area, where people were involuntarily forced out of their homes.

See for an example: https://blockclubchicago.org/2021/03/23/after-decades-in-wic...

These stories don't really make sense to me though, why are single elderly people living in the home that housed their whole family with children, now that the children have moved out? Shouldn't a family home be used for a family? And shouldn't prime location housing in the middle of big cities be used for the people that contribute most and are most needed there?

I think it's perfectly normal for a single senior citizen to "move over" and let another family take over their family home, while they downsize to an apartment, or relocate to a different location, since they are not required by work to live there.

I don't understand where this sentiment comes from, that a person should live in the same home their whole life, and once you have moved into a home it becomes someone else's problem to make sure you stay there the rest of your life, regardless of money and income? That is really unrealistic and obviously an incredibly inefficient use of resources.

I'm getting really tired of the fact that the boomers are the richest group of people in society, by far, and still the ones who are the most entitled and complaining. They already get hugely compensated for "having to move" by cashing out on the old houses, so what's the problem?

Edit: That's the whole purpose of the real estate tax, to avoid people hoarding big houses that they don't need. It's just working as intended.

Wait till you’re old and live in a house filled with memories. And especially when you’re older, you should be able to rely on your friends and family around you, and not be forced to move to a new area where you know nobody, and cannot ask anyone for help.

I actually like the idea that you buy a house, pay it off and keep it in the family for next generations. I bought it, it’s mine, I paid for it, and now some else determines I have to move away to make room for someone else?

If you like that idea, that's fine, and sure it's "nice" from some point of view. But it's also obviously inefficient and therefor it will cost extra, and it makes sense for the country to have those incentives.

If you are promoting the traditional way of the family home for generations, then your kids and grandkids would live in the same house for that to make sense, not having an empty huge house for 1 single divorced boomer

Taxes don’t rise in CA due to Prop 13.

Perhaps a bad example of a free market in action, what with the rigid zoning laws and regressive tax incentives.

Yes the solution is to make minimum wage 100 grand a Year

The elites love when shortage increases their asset values, but increase wages? What are we, communists?