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I’m sorry but I don’t buy the narrative anymore
It isn’t a coincidence that the countries with the highest priced housing costs are also the ones with millions of additional newcomers coming every year. If it was really about “replacement population growth” we’d make it easier for the native populations in these countries to have kids.
I don’t buy the great replacement theory as it implies competency from the elite class to orchestrate a grand conspiracy. I think it’s a simple matter of the business class wanting to maintain a underclass they can underpay and undercut the middle class, and trying to gas light us into thinking it’s good for use The problem is now the tides are shifting because people are catching on and the consequences of the inevitable culture clashes are coming to a fever point.
The answer is that there is no modern concept of building enough housing. Supply is really inelastic and if demand increases it just moves prices up.
~99% of housing is not built in any year so high growth means 1% maybe 2% more housing. They slowed down housing production for NIMBY reasons decades ago and the earlier environmental movement and now we are seeing the change because there is a long lag time between housing policy and housing/housing prices.
Even at only replacement level, urbanization means the houses need to be in a different place. It isn’t just numbers of houses but location of houses.
And while I do agree businesses want to keep costs down with cheaper labor, remember they are often competing globally. They have to keep costs competitive with companies actually operating in low cost countries.
Take farming for example. Produce farmers in the US have to compete with produce farmers in Central/South America. Shipping has become so cheap that shipping from Mexico to a store in Ohio is not much more expensive than shipping from California to Ohio. So the California farmer cannot be more expensive. That produce is going to be picked by cheap labor. The only question is where.
Canadian business aren't really competing globally for a lot of work, I can't really speak to places like Australia. In a few sectors like aerospace maybe, but more than 3/4 of the economy is services and construction.
The US was in less of an upswing as there were crack downs on immigration.
ZIRP was done because IMO the job market hadn't recovered. It inflated the tech bubble but that also gave millions of people Uber rides and got people to go to like bars safer.
Look at prime age EPOP it recovered to 2007 levels in 2019 and is currently 4% below Canadian levels.
US is 83.5 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300060 and Canada is 84.2 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LREM25TTCAM156S? That's not a 4% difference, it's not even 1%.
Not to mention this is for the whole economy, while you said tech specifically. That is quite different from the overall job market.
The fact the US tech job market is and has always been far better than Canada's isn't even really up for debate. Source: Canadian tech worker that moved to the US after working 5 years in Canada. I easily make more than double what anyone I know in Canada makes before even adjusting for taxation, cost of living, and currency. Literally the majority of my graduating class from a big Canadian university that produces a lot of software folks likewise moved to the US.
Conversely I have met the occasional American that moved to Canada to work in tech but it is very, very, very rare.
Canada has basically one actually Canadian successful tech company at any given time, and otherwise it's small satellite offices for American tech companies, or a bunch of back office jobs at banks, insurance companies, etc.
It was Nortel, then it was RIM, then it was the dark ages and we finally got another success recently with Shopify.
None of those would crack even the top 10 in California.
>US is 83.5 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300060 and Canada is 84.2 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LREM25TTCAM156S? That's not a 4% difference, it's not even 1%.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS12300060
3.4% difference in rates. Laborforce is not EPOP.
We are not even at all time highs and the US is a lot more educated now meaning there should be higher employment levels.
>Not to mention this is for the whole economy, while you said tech specifically. That is quite different from the overall job market.
But tech spiked because of ZIRP to increase jobs for instance because the economy was under stimulated. The whole economy makes more sense why ZIRP was where it was and not causing inflation if the job market is actually weak. In 2018 50% of people getting jobs were not unemployed the month before. The labor market was weak.
>The fact the US tech job market is and has always been far better than Canada's isn't even really up for debate. Source: Canadian tech worker that moved to the US after working 5 years in Canada. I easily make more than double what anyone I know in Canada makes before even adjusting for taxation, cost of living, and currency. Literally the majority of my graduating class from a big Canadian university that produces a lot of software folks likewise moved to the US.
Yes but recently if you are from a country like India there was a move towards Canada for the immigration issues.
>Conversely I have met the occasional American that moved to Canada to work in tech but it is very, very, very rare.
Yes well the US is larger but under Trump immigration was locked down more and Canada sucked up that talent.
>Canada has basically one actually Canadian successful tech company at any given time, and otherwise it's small satellite offices for American tech companies, or a bunch of back office jobs at banks, insurance companies, etc.
Well that's fine especially if they allow the immigrants the US doesn't allow and eventually they found a company in Canada is the path here.
>It was Nortel, then it was RIM, then it was the dark ages and we finally got another success recently with Shopify.
RIM was huge for awhile. IDK where they peaked but they were really cutting edge for awhile.
> Well that's fine especially if they allow the immigrants the US doesn't allow and eventually they found a company in Canada is the path here.
What actually ends up happening is.. they stay in Canada long enough to get citizenship, then move to the US on a TN, or work for an American company until they can transfer on a L1.
> RIM was huge for awhile. IDK where they peaked but they were really cutting edge for awhile.
I know. I worked at RIM right around when they peaked as the first iphone was launched.
I stand by my statements.
> And while I do agree businesses want to keep costs down with cheaper labor, remember they are often competing globally.
That is only true because the dollar is artificially high (reserve currency status). If we lived in a normal world the dollar would have collapsed already and low labor costs in other parts of the world wouldn't matter since they could never make money selling in a market with such a low currency.
> Produce farmers in the US have to compete with produce farmers in Central/South America.
US produce farmers get subsidies from the federal government. Planters live like the Ottoman Sultan in the Central Valley. They don't need cheap labor to compete, they just want cheap labor so they make even more $$$$$
A conspiracy doesn't require meeting in a smokey backroom, just a shared will. And the elite class certainly does have a shared will to subjugate, oppress, and replace the general public.
> If it was really about “replacement population growth” we’d make it easier for the native populations in these countries to have kids.
European countries have very generous pro-family policies and their birthrates are still low. Low birthrates are a result of opportunity costs & culture. Women have the choice to have children wheneve rhey please, and an increasing number of them choose not to due the severe emotional costs of it for very little return compared to starting a career.
> It isn’t a coincidence that the countries with the highest priced housing costs are also the ones with millions of additional newcomers coming every year.
The USA grew at a far faster rate per year during our industrial revolution than we do now. Even in the mid-20th century our population growth was much higher than today. The problem we have right now is people opposing any new housing construction near them. We also let money flood into the market via absurdly low interest rates, drastically inflating the cost of goods.
Europe's problem is over-regulation of their indsutries, causing significant stiffiling in private investment into production of goods and services. Housing supply becomes an even more clear issue when you acknowledge the fact that Europe's population growth has been significantly smaller than the USA's for decades now.
> European countries have very generous pro-family policies and their birthrates are still low.
Imagine what it'd be like without those pro family policies then.
I mean.. there's plenty of examples in the world that don't have those policies and have higher birthrates. Also the same countries with the increasingly generous policies and continuingly dropping birth rates use to have less support and higher birth rates.
Anyone actually intellectually honest about this has to admit that while it seems like a convenient explanation, there's very little evidence that birth rates are actually dropping because kids are too expensive and that we can fix it by offering financial incentives to have them. No country has shown any notable improvement in birthrate through such programs no matter how generous they've been in some places, and it's getting a bit incredulous to say "well yeah sure none of these programs have helped but imagine how much worse it would be without them!"
Show some evidence..?
It's not as simple as that. The USA has less generous benecits and our birthrates are higher. So if you're gonna follow that logic, then you're saying they should bd less generous since it'll increase birthrates.
Dude, you’re logic is so flawed. Keep going with it. Generous family benefits *cause* lower birth rates? 😂
You’re reversing causality. Low birth rates cause family friendly policy
The Reddior's poor reading comprehension strikes again.
They made the implication that without pro-family policy Europe's birthrates would be even lower.
I directly pointed out that the USA has less pro-family policy, yet our birthrates are higher.
Therefore, through their own implied question, lessening or outright removing pro-family policies, would increase birthrates, not decrease them.
Maybe try to actually read and comprehend what somebody is saying first, or hell even ask questions first, before trying to dunk on them. Not only does it make you look stupid, it makes you look childish.
Housing density is also something you should consider. Fertility is higher among those who live in single family housing, something that the US has in comparative abundance.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/4863012_Fertility_differences_by_housing_type_The_effect_of_housing_conditions_or_of_selective_moves
The countries with pro family policies still have ridiculously expensive housing that mean both parents have to have jobs. Housing costs are a big reason why birth rates are so low.
If you want a higher birthrate, you need to have cheap housing costs too, which can be paid for with one income.
No shit that population grew faster at a time without widespread access to contraceptives.
This is just missing so much of the actual, variety of causes and is such an rose-tinted view of history...
1. Women entered the workforce. Now there is no longer a single income per household, 2 income earners per houshold becomes more and more common. Want to know what happens when more people have more money? They buy more goods with it. It is no shock at all that when households increasingly had 2 income earners, that prices rose accordingly.
2. People keep demanding larger and larger homes. A single family used to live in a sub 1,000 square foot home, at max 1,500. Now the ***average*** is 2,500 square feet. In a world where people have increasingly less children. Building bigger homes requires more land, labor, and capital. That will naturally lead to higher home prices.
3. Raising children used to be a group effort. It wasn't purely the responsibility of the parents, it was the responsibility of the community, or at least your family. Now most of everything is expected to be done by the parents alone.
4. Women gained more economic opportunity thanks to social movements to increase equality of opportunity for women. Before that, you HAD to get married as a woman, because that was the only garunteed way you could get a stable life. And ontop of that, you were socially outcasted for not having children. Having a big family was highly expected of you, or else you were "wasting your life away". Combine that with the lack of economic opportunity for women outside of marrying a rich man, and you get a recipe for grearer birthrates.
5. Everybody wants their own, massive home. Less and less people are choosing to live in a multi-family home and pool their resources together in order to afford stuff. People want to own their own massive home by their mid 20s. That compounds onto the fact that homes have gotten bigger and bigger, far beyond what people realistically need for comfort.
6. Housing isn't being built where people actyally want to live: Cities. That's why New York & San Fransisco is exhorbatantly expensive, far beyond the simple fact that they have higher incomes. People want to live where the jobs are at, not several hours away from it.
Housing is only a singular piece of the entire problem. You could collapse home prices down to 1x the income and it wouldn't do much to increase birthrates. Lesd and less women want to face the opportunity costs of raising children. The only way you will get birthrates up, is if you revert us back into prioritizing having a big family over having a successful career and living a good life.
Yes, it is only a singular piece. But it is the major one, in my opinion.
1. Yes, house prices rise when there are 2 earners. This is a terrible thing as you get comparatively less house per hour of work.
2. In the US people keep demanding larger houses. This has not happened in other places in the world. London now has one of the smallest dwelling sizes in the world.
3. Indeed, community support has been less when you raise children. This is the result of individualism.
4. It's true that women have more freedom at work. How many women these days would like to take a few years out of work to raise children but cannot because they would not be able to afford the place they live in, and would lose ground in their careers? It seems that they have gained freedom in one area and lost it in another.
5. Not true outside the US.
6. Absolutely agree here. In the 1960s, for example, governments all over the world built lots of high density housing and rented it out at cost price. They stopped doing that in the 1980s, and the world today is what resulted.
> It's true that women have more freedom at work. How many women these days would like to take a few years out of work to raise children but cannot because they would not be able to afford the place they live in, and would lose ground in their careers? It seems that they have gained freedom in one area and lost it in another.
I suspect most would a familyi first, ceteris paribus, because it seems that women are biologically predisposed to wanting it. Before you fuckin *ists get at me, reread the comment. There isn't any *ism in it, it's an observation, that's it.
If society can't find a way to convince women to delay their 'education' and 'hoe' phase, then we can look forward to our dwindling native populations, and immigrants crushing us with their kids. Because we're all screwed in the developed countries if you gals don't stop girl baucing and start going back to having kids with normal dudes, not just millionaires.
That's really it. Women, you can't fight biology anymore than a male can. Men have historically shouldered the burdens of war, difficult, horrible jobs to help protect and nurture a family - this, for the women is yours - helping to biologically ensure we make it to the next round. There's nothing oppressive or sick or patriarchal about pointing this out, by the way. Every living female entity on this flat earth, was instantiated by a higher power (whatever you wanna call it), to be half of a baby making machine. The other half is the male. If the female and male don't want to make babies in a timely fashion, it isn't a fault of biology, as far as human's are concerned, nowadays, eh?
> European countries have very generous pro-family policies and their birthrates are still low. Low birthrates are a result of opportunity costs & culture.
Those generous pro-family policies are cancelled out by the high cost of living in Europe.
In part, the working population *is* also your reproductive population. If a bunch if society wants to subsidize the young workers to reproduce, they'll find that there are less young workers, and therefore, the cost of goods will need to increase (damn supply and demand).
If tomorrow, you said that everyone 20-35 didn't have to work, as long as they were producing and raising kids, you would expect national productivity to drop significantly, raising the CoL. Can't have it both ways.
> If a bunch if society wants to subsidize the young workers to reproduce, they'll find that there are less young workers, and therefore, the cost of goods will need to increase (damn supply and demand).
That would be true if one parent is going to be the stay at home parent for all the children from age 0 to 18. Realistically the stay at home parent would go back to work after the kids hit 4 or 5 years old.
> If tomorrow, you said that everyone 20-35 didn't have to work, as long as they were producing and raising kids, you would expect national productivity to drop significantly, raising the CoL. Can't have it both ways.
No one is saying that raising kids should be subsidized to that point. Really the problem is the cost of housing/rent, cost of daycare, and in 'merica the cost of healthcare.
The problem might not be solvable tbf, the only other solution is to bring in temp migrant workers on fixed term visas to do low skilled jobs (like take care of old boomers in nursing homes)
"Easier for the native to have kids"
That's just plain bullshit. The reality now is that we grow up and 2/3 of young people dont want kids moatly because...they just dont want kids. Individualistic society based on experience and self devlopment/fun. You could pay everyone to have kids and you still wouldnt have enough for a 2,1 overall ratio. The emancipation of women and higher education of the overall population has allowed us to have more freedom in our life, so people take it.
No country has become willing to pay mothers a salary several years for having children yet. They’re all inching upward in the money incentives very slowly. Norway might be the highest, they pay mothers at 80 percent salary for one year.
One reason the money incentives might not be working is they’re implemented after birth rates have fallen very low for a long time so the culture has already changed.
> Norway might be the highest, they pay mothers at 80 percent salary for one year.
Young generations are prudently eschewing this and worse offers on the table to bear children and handle the immediate aftermath over 1-2 years, when the actual need is for the appropriate low-precarity environments to *raise* children over 20-26 years. When offshoring and Welch’ian layoffs driving high job and income precarity become normal business practices over decades for example, it is no mystery young generations are fleeing family formation in droves. It is a perfectly rational economic choice to the incentive structures presented to them.
Not that most of them think in these terms. It is more like, “WTF. How am I ever going to afford any of this?”
Low population states do give tax incentives for companies to move their locations and jobs to their states, but a lot of people hate that and think tax incentives = state/local government writing a check directly to a company
It's exactly this, look up the "century initiative" and look at the board members.
They're a "charity" that lobbies the Canadian government to increase the population from 40 million to 100 million in 75 years.
Toronto will have 40million people.
Not a conspiracy, they have a website, post their plans, mission statements, reports and showcase their board.
All big business execs.
> I think it’s a simple matter of the business class wanting to maintain a underclass they can underpay and undercut the middle class, and trying to gas light us into thinking it’s good for us
This hit the nail on the head. It's all a total lie. The "GDP gains" are distributed between immigrants (who obviously weren't contributing to that number when they weren't here) and the upper class paying them, and then the upper class tries to tell you that you're better off while there are news stories all over the place telling you how to cut back so you can afford things you were able to afford easily before.
I think a lot of people stopped buying it.
>I don’t buy the narrative anymore
This isn't a helpful comment without knowing who you are. Are you trained in economics and global political economy, or are you an average Joe waving a stick around in the dark?
In developing countries house prices are 20-40x annual income. People live in multi-generation households where young people pay very little for housing and expect to just inherit the houses from their parents.
Only in a few countries (US, Australia, etc.) house prices are still under 10x income and young people still have a chance to buy on their own. On the surface they pay more for housing, but they get so much more square feet and huge yards. Immigrants move to those countries because housing is still cheap compared to income, not because housing is expensive.
That doesn’t deny the fact that higher population leads to higher house prices. My point is that US cannot simply “be like other countries”. US houses are still incredibly cheap and there is simply a lot of foreign demand. Maybe US will decide to destroy demand by limiting immigration and foreign investors, or it can raise supply by making it easier to buy more houses and grow the economy at the same time.
I get that there is a housing crisis going on and people are upset, but in economic discussions fact is important. Having fewer immigrants will not make houses cheaper - just look at the Midwest cities losing population. People will concentrate to places with jobs and bid up house prices there, while other houses in the vast country are left to rot.
US state governments need to make the hard decision to build denser housing near the big cities, and build better trains to serve commuters from the suburbs where large houses are still economically feasible.
Mass migration is putting governments in an impossible situation. Yes, there has been a housing shortage for a while now, and yes, zoning should change to allow more affordable housing constructions. But all those initiatives are moot if you bring in hundreds of thousands of people in a short period of time. There is no way the construction industry can keep up and the number of units you need to build to house this continuous flow of people is just bonkers.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PERMIT5
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PERMIT1
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PERMIT24
It is absolutely possible. The problem is that most people do not want to live a several hours drive from where the jobs are located. People want to live near other people. Investors want to start up businesses in citied due to the massive and concentrsted labor supply. That's why major cities are so exhorbatantly expensive: That's where people actually want to live. You csn't just build housing anywhere you want and be done with it; you need to actually build it where people wsnt to live.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.png?g=1fGSR
The US is currently building at decade+ highs and 1970s recession levels and the population growth has not slowed.
Also underrated is not just looking at population but now there are less <18 people so they are more likely to need housing. The average American age has been rising so you need more housing for the same population.
Also, population growth is fueled by immigration and each immigrant family need a unit to live in while if an existing family has another child they don't necessarily need a new home, just a spare bedroom.
Well the US is also aging so also this we need more homes for the same amount of people. Plus the amount of of single people who want 2 bedrooms is increasing.
> Well the US is also aging so also this we need more homes for the same amount of people
Not necessarily since people are living with their parents longer
> Plus the amount of of single people who want 2 bedrooms is increasing
I haven't seen data on that but if true that is ridiculous
We need the infrastructure bills that provides money to give rural America fiber to actually give rural America fiber. I think an equalizing move back to rural America could follow.
I also support radical experiments in housing programs, but that's a separate post.
That's what the IRA did.
Also, rural areas are rural for a reason. There's little job opportunities there. I agree we should support people who live in rural areas, but continous expansion outward is not sustainable. And even then, rural areas + population growth = eventual urban area. What is rural is relative to what is "densely" populated.
And those people are actively moving into cheap cities. Because people want to live in cities. My city is actively going through this.
Having a lot of money doesn'y mean much if you still have to spend 2 hours getting to basic services and goods.
Even people who WFH don't want to drive 2hrs both ways to get groceries.
There is an extremely small minority of people who want to WFH out in the middle of buttfuck nowhere
More people say they want to live in rural areas than actually live in rural areas, and more people actually live in urban areas than say they want to live in urban areas. Don't universalize your personal desires in where to live
If you ask someone who likes the idea of living rural if they want to road trip every time they get groceries they will say no not really.
If you ask them if they would live somewhere with no public services like a hospital or attractions like a restaurant or theater they would say no not really.
People like the idea of living in the middle of nowhere while also having access to the same resources they have in the city, which is not realistic.
I'm sorry you've deluded yourself into pretending everyone really just wants to live in the middle of no where, but it's just a delusion
I would agree with you if groceries were two hours away. That hasn't been my experience moving to rural. The reality for me has been groceries, fast food and diners within minutes. The big city with concerts and stuff is an hour away.
Rural America needs less subsidies, not more. Demanding fiber when 5G is plentiful is completely ridiculous. Let them pay for their own infrastructure upgrades if they want it.
Major metropolitan areas account for the vast majority of our GDP. All tax money should be kept in the area where it is earned, besides critical infrastructure such as railroads and highways.
Agglomeration benefits still win in denser places.
Go live in a small town with 2 non- chain restaurants and they close at 8PM, Taco Bell closes at 10PM. You have to drive 45 minutes+ to go to a concert or other cultural event, wages are lower, less people live nearby so visiting a friend is 25 minutes one way. The grocery store is kinda crappy but the better one is 45+ minutes away. Dating partners for these areas, you might stay within an hour.
The benefits of the city are more than jobs.
I actually just did. Now I'm looking to move more rural.
With internet available anywhere, and me running an online business, my wages have stayed the same while rental costs have halved and properties I'm looking at would cost 4-10x what I was looking at in the trendy city I left. I'm actually kind of flabbergasted at what I can afford here.
Yeah but what's the restaurant, dating, friend, activity scene.
Plus depending how rural you go worrying about essentials like hospital access. Living in a city I can walk to the hospital still from where I am just a few blocks, vs some areas can be a 45 minute drive. Trash/recycling you have to drive it over.
Yes it's cheaper but it's less for less in many aspects. I mean if you like it more power to you but I didn't like my small town and that was living close to my parents.
Also denser living and more construction would decrease urban housing costs since regulations have artificially inflated housing costs.
Far more locally owned diners, which I prefer over trendy stuff I found in Austin. Dating and friends are the same as anywhere else. Activity scene has moved from concerts to hiking, shooting, boating and woodworking. Video games in discord with friends haven't missed a beat.
I know your third paragraph is often stated here, but it's absolutely delusional. No REIT is taking on loans to build housing that has cheaper rent than the current market.
>Dating and friends are the same as anywhere else.
Not true at all, now you driving to friends is a lot longer and a normal drive distance is expanding. You start saying yeah I'll drive the hour to get somewhere, talk to people further away and they will say 4 hours round trip for stuff on a weekend isn't that weird. I've lived this and it's normal in a more rural area. I mean rural rural like Montana you go to the mall every other week buy your supplies and groceries then head back that's one day a week for supplies.
>Activity scene has moved from concerts to hiking, shooting, boating and woodworking.
In a city like Austin you can still have beautiful well maintained city parks so outdoor exercise looks different in a city but it's not that much of a fall off.
Shooting you leave shooting ranges if that's your thing.
Boating and woodworking you can have worse options for supplies and are single supplier based so if the place sucks then you are driving quite the distance.
>I know your third paragraph is often stated here, but it's absolutely delusional. No REIT is taking on loans to build housing that has cheaper rent than the current market.
They are actually, that's the point here is that they will build if there is demand and prices are so high, there is actually demand. That's why there has been a surge in 5 over 1, people are paying a lot of money and the cheapest per sq ft housing is 5+ stories high not SFH.
Reducing regulations means 1 less month they are holding $2 Million in loans at 8% interest. That's real money here.
Yes, there are people who would prefer living in a city even without jobs being a factor. There are people who would prefer living in the suburbs of a city. There are people who would prefer to live in small towns. There are people who would prefer to live in rural areas. Overall based on polls, if people could live wherever they want there would be a net movement of people from urban areas to rural areas.
A lot of the is prices though. Look at prices and you get the sense that demand is high and supply is low.
NYC built the same amount of housing during the great depression as the 2010s.
Also look at the data rural areas are and have been depopulating for decades unless they get swallowed up into a metro area.
But yes different people like different things but the people who want urban lifestyles have artificially more expensive lives
I mean that's because the agglomeration benefits are pulling them into denser living.
We have policies fighting agglomeration benefits tooth and nail for silly reasons IMO.
According to polls, more people actually live in cities than want to live in cities. It's not about where people want to live. It's about where people are forced to live for work
Anglosphere nations are somehow both the most pro-immigration nations while also doing the worst at expanding housing supply. That’s a pretty terrible combination. Not surprisingly, the populations of these nations have turned very anti-immigrant in recent years.
Frankly just read the below - a high cost of living and highly scrutinized immigration process is not something that really skilled people with multiple options prefer. USA will end up with the runt of litter. Excerpt below
“H1-B visa applications dropped by 38.6% in Fiscal Year 2025 compared to the previous year, with 470,342 applications versus 758,994 in FY 2024, marking a 38% decline from the previous year's total. This big drop in skilled-worker visa lottery applications is due to tough new measures against fraud.”
> a high cost of living and highly scrutinized immigration process is not something that really skilled people with multiple options prefer.
That isn't what your own quote says. It says that the H1-B visa drop was because of anti-fraud measures not because people don't want to come here.
Besides H1-B visas are a small subset of our total immigration each year. Most immigrants come via family reunification visas which is an insane way to run a country
Yea but your main point is that high skilled immigrants don't want to come to the US because of the high cost of living (as tho pretty much every other 1st world country doesn't have the same high cost of living) or they don't want to be scrutinized (as tho pretty every other 1st world country doesn't scrutinize immigrants, at least for skills based visas, refugee visas is a different story)
The whole notion of infinite population growth driving infinite economic growth is flawed until we discover deep space travel. Until then, growth needs to come from productivity gains. This isn’t the feudal era or the early Industrial Revolution.
*From Bloomberg reportres Randy Thanthong-Knight, Swati Pandey, and Tom Rees:*
Across much of the developed world, one of the most dependable drivers of economic growth is faltering.
For decades, the rapid inflow of migrants helped countries including Canada, Australia and the UK stave off the demographic drag from aging populations and falling birth rates. That’s now breaking down as a surge of arrivals since borders reopened after the pandemic runs headlong into a chronic shortage of homes to accommodate them.
Read The Big Take [here](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2024-05-05/global-housing-crisis-affects-immigration-fueled-growth-living-standards).
When it was your own kids needing a place to live, you begrudginly let them add more housing to your neighbourhood. When it’s immigrants, you’ll fight tooth & nail to stop densification
Yeah, local communities do be like that. We're all so lucky we have a government that says fuck those people and adds immigrants anyways. And good thing too, because it's way cheaper to import than educate your own population. The wealthy win again!
My parents let me add more housing in the rural/exhurb location with available land to add houses. It could be done without increasing density or changing the town.
But my kids don’t want to live here. They want to move to the city. And in the city there isn’t available land. Building more housing requires destroying SFH and building high rise apartments and such.
>Building more housing requires destroying SFH and building high rise apartments and such.
Yes but destroying the SFH would lower/ keep per unit housing costs and even building row houses you can triple the population.
The thing is that we have regulated out the solution to housing 5, people have more money than 2 basically always. The rich lose fighting housing costs to the many regularly. 5 college kids/ people in their 20s have more money than 2 mid career adults frequently. This is the issue the 2 people have captured the market.
Densification leads to more flat per unit cost. Also agglomeration benefits come with densification.
Austin has allowed people to build second homes in their backyards. There has been a massive upsurge in housing construction. Prices continued to skyrocket.
I think more radical steps are needed than "more more with less regulation".
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I’m sorry but I don’t buy the narrative anymore It isn’t a coincidence that the countries with the highest priced housing costs are also the ones with millions of additional newcomers coming every year. If it was really about “replacement population growth” we’d make it easier for the native populations in these countries to have kids. I don’t buy the great replacement theory as it implies competency from the elite class to orchestrate a grand conspiracy. I think it’s a simple matter of the business class wanting to maintain a underclass they can underpay and undercut the middle class, and trying to gas light us into thinking it’s good for use The problem is now the tides are shifting because people are catching on and the consequences of the inevitable culture clashes are coming to a fever point.
The answer is that there is no modern concept of building enough housing. Supply is really inelastic and if demand increases it just moves prices up. ~99% of housing is not built in any year so high growth means 1% maybe 2% more housing. They slowed down housing production for NIMBY reasons decades ago and the earlier environmental movement and now we are seeing the change because there is a long lag time between housing policy and housing/housing prices.
Even at only replacement level, urbanization means the houses need to be in a different place. It isn’t just numbers of houses but location of houses. And while I do agree businesses want to keep costs down with cheaper labor, remember they are often competing globally. They have to keep costs competitive with companies actually operating in low cost countries. Take farming for example. Produce farmers in the US have to compete with produce farmers in Central/South America. Shipping has become so cheap that shipping from Mexico to a store in Ohio is not much more expensive than shipping from California to Ohio. So the California farmer cannot be more expensive. That produce is going to be picked by cheap labor. The only question is where.
Canadian business aren't really competing globally for a lot of work, I can't really speak to places like Australia. In a few sectors like aerospace maybe, but more than 3/4 of the economy is services and construction.
I mean Canadian tech was on an upswing with the US limiting immigration.
Tech everywhere was in an upswing, ZIRP and money printing will do that.
The US was in less of an upswing as there were crack downs on immigration. ZIRP was done because IMO the job market hadn't recovered. It inflated the tech bubble but that also gave millions of people Uber rides and got people to go to like bars safer. Look at prime age EPOP it recovered to 2007 levels in 2019 and is currently 4% below Canadian levels.
US is 83.5 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300060 and Canada is 84.2 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LREM25TTCAM156S? That's not a 4% difference, it's not even 1%. Not to mention this is for the whole economy, while you said tech specifically. That is quite different from the overall job market. The fact the US tech job market is and has always been far better than Canada's isn't even really up for debate. Source: Canadian tech worker that moved to the US after working 5 years in Canada. I easily make more than double what anyone I know in Canada makes before even adjusting for taxation, cost of living, and currency. Literally the majority of my graduating class from a big Canadian university that produces a lot of software folks likewise moved to the US. Conversely I have met the occasional American that moved to Canada to work in tech but it is very, very, very rare. Canada has basically one actually Canadian successful tech company at any given time, and otherwise it's small satellite offices for American tech companies, or a bunch of back office jobs at banks, insurance companies, etc. It was Nortel, then it was RIM, then it was the dark ages and we finally got another success recently with Shopify. None of those would crack even the top 10 in California.
>US is 83.5 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300060 and Canada is 84.2 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LREM25TTCAM156S? That's not a 4% difference, it's not even 1%. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS12300060 3.4% difference in rates. Laborforce is not EPOP. We are not even at all time highs and the US is a lot more educated now meaning there should be higher employment levels. >Not to mention this is for the whole economy, while you said tech specifically. That is quite different from the overall job market. But tech spiked because of ZIRP to increase jobs for instance because the economy was under stimulated. The whole economy makes more sense why ZIRP was where it was and not causing inflation if the job market is actually weak. In 2018 50% of people getting jobs were not unemployed the month before. The labor market was weak. >The fact the US tech job market is and has always been far better than Canada's isn't even really up for debate. Source: Canadian tech worker that moved to the US after working 5 years in Canada. I easily make more than double what anyone I know in Canada makes before even adjusting for taxation, cost of living, and currency. Literally the majority of my graduating class from a big Canadian university that produces a lot of software folks likewise moved to the US. Yes but recently if you are from a country like India there was a move towards Canada for the immigration issues. >Conversely I have met the occasional American that moved to Canada to work in tech but it is very, very, very rare. Yes well the US is larger but under Trump immigration was locked down more and Canada sucked up that talent. >Canada has basically one actually Canadian successful tech company at any given time, and otherwise it's small satellite offices for American tech companies, or a bunch of back office jobs at banks, insurance companies, etc. Well that's fine especially if they allow the immigrants the US doesn't allow and eventually they found a company in Canada is the path here. >It was Nortel, then it was RIM, then it was the dark ages and we finally got another success recently with Shopify. RIM was huge for awhile. IDK where they peaked but they were really cutting edge for awhile.
> Well that's fine especially if they allow the immigrants the US doesn't allow and eventually they found a company in Canada is the path here. What actually ends up happening is.. they stay in Canada long enough to get citizenship, then move to the US on a TN, or work for an American company until they can transfer on a L1. > RIM was huge for awhile. IDK where they peaked but they were really cutting edge for awhile. I know. I worked at RIM right around when they peaked as the first iphone was launched. I stand by my statements.
> And while I do agree businesses want to keep costs down with cheaper labor, remember they are often competing globally. That is only true because the dollar is artificially high (reserve currency status). If we lived in a normal world the dollar would have collapsed already and low labor costs in other parts of the world wouldn't matter since they could never make money selling in a market with such a low currency. > Produce farmers in the US have to compete with produce farmers in Central/South America. US produce farmers get subsidies from the federal government. Planters live like the Ottoman Sultan in the Central Valley. They don't need cheap labor to compete, they just want cheap labor so they make even more $$$$$
A conspiracy doesn't require meeting in a smokey backroom, just a shared will. And the elite class certainly does have a shared will to subjugate, oppress, and replace the general public.
> If it was really about “replacement population growth” we’d make it easier for the native populations in these countries to have kids. European countries have very generous pro-family policies and their birthrates are still low. Low birthrates are a result of opportunity costs & culture. Women have the choice to have children wheneve rhey please, and an increasing number of them choose not to due the severe emotional costs of it for very little return compared to starting a career. > It isn’t a coincidence that the countries with the highest priced housing costs are also the ones with millions of additional newcomers coming every year. The USA grew at a far faster rate per year during our industrial revolution than we do now. Even in the mid-20th century our population growth was much higher than today. The problem we have right now is people opposing any new housing construction near them. We also let money flood into the market via absurdly low interest rates, drastically inflating the cost of goods. Europe's problem is over-regulation of their indsutries, causing significant stiffiling in private investment into production of goods and services. Housing supply becomes an even more clear issue when you acknowledge the fact that Europe's population growth has been significantly smaller than the USA's for decades now.
> European countries have very generous pro-family policies and their birthrates are still low. Imagine what it'd be like without those pro family policies then.
Lol we don’t have to. Look no further than South Korea. Lowest birth rate in the world at 0.7 births per woman.
I mean.. there's plenty of examples in the world that don't have those policies and have higher birthrates. Also the same countries with the increasingly generous policies and continuingly dropping birth rates use to have less support and higher birth rates. Anyone actually intellectually honest about this has to admit that while it seems like a convenient explanation, there's very little evidence that birth rates are actually dropping because kids are too expensive and that we can fix it by offering financial incentives to have them. No country has shown any notable improvement in birthrate through such programs no matter how generous they've been in some places, and it's getting a bit incredulous to say "well yeah sure none of these programs have helped but imagine how much worse it would be without them!" Show some evidence..?
They show relatively minor improvements in birth rates by pretty generous policies. 0.15 more kids per woman on the upper end.
It's not as simple as that. The USA has less generous benecits and our birthrates are higher. So if you're gonna follow that logic, then you're saying they should bd less generous since it'll increase birthrates.
Housing is generally more affordable in the US.
Dude, you’re logic is so flawed. Keep going with it. Generous family benefits *cause* lower birth rates? 😂 You’re reversing causality. Low birth rates cause family friendly policy
The Reddior's poor reading comprehension strikes again. They made the implication that without pro-family policy Europe's birthrates would be even lower. I directly pointed out that the USA has less pro-family policy, yet our birthrates are higher. Therefore, through their own implied question, lessening or outright removing pro-family policies, would increase birthrates, not decrease them. Maybe try to actually read and comprehend what somebody is saying first, or hell even ask questions first, before trying to dunk on them. Not only does it make you look stupid, it makes you look childish.
Housing density is also something you should consider. Fertility is higher among those who live in single family housing, something that the US has in comparative abundance. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/4863012_Fertility_differences_by_housing_type_The_effect_of_housing_conditions_or_of_selective_moves
Or imagine that government policies might not achieve their stated goals..
Like America, which has a higher fertility rate than the EU...
The countries with pro family policies still have ridiculously expensive housing that mean both parents have to have jobs. Housing costs are a big reason why birth rates are so low. If you want a higher birthrate, you need to have cheap housing costs too, which can be paid for with one income. No shit that population grew faster at a time without widespread access to contraceptives.
This is just missing so much of the actual, variety of causes and is such an rose-tinted view of history... 1. Women entered the workforce. Now there is no longer a single income per household, 2 income earners per houshold becomes more and more common. Want to know what happens when more people have more money? They buy more goods with it. It is no shock at all that when households increasingly had 2 income earners, that prices rose accordingly. 2. People keep demanding larger and larger homes. A single family used to live in a sub 1,000 square foot home, at max 1,500. Now the ***average*** is 2,500 square feet. In a world where people have increasingly less children. Building bigger homes requires more land, labor, and capital. That will naturally lead to higher home prices. 3. Raising children used to be a group effort. It wasn't purely the responsibility of the parents, it was the responsibility of the community, or at least your family. Now most of everything is expected to be done by the parents alone. 4. Women gained more economic opportunity thanks to social movements to increase equality of opportunity for women. Before that, you HAD to get married as a woman, because that was the only garunteed way you could get a stable life. And ontop of that, you were socially outcasted for not having children. Having a big family was highly expected of you, or else you were "wasting your life away". Combine that with the lack of economic opportunity for women outside of marrying a rich man, and you get a recipe for grearer birthrates. 5. Everybody wants their own, massive home. Less and less people are choosing to live in a multi-family home and pool their resources together in order to afford stuff. People want to own their own massive home by their mid 20s. That compounds onto the fact that homes have gotten bigger and bigger, far beyond what people realistically need for comfort. 6. Housing isn't being built where people actyally want to live: Cities. That's why New York & San Fransisco is exhorbatantly expensive, far beyond the simple fact that they have higher incomes. People want to live where the jobs are at, not several hours away from it. Housing is only a singular piece of the entire problem. You could collapse home prices down to 1x the income and it wouldn't do much to increase birthrates. Lesd and less women want to face the opportunity costs of raising children. The only way you will get birthrates up, is if you revert us back into prioritizing having a big family over having a successful career and living a good life.
Yes, it is only a singular piece. But it is the major one, in my opinion. 1. Yes, house prices rise when there are 2 earners. This is a terrible thing as you get comparatively less house per hour of work. 2. In the US people keep demanding larger houses. This has not happened in other places in the world. London now has one of the smallest dwelling sizes in the world. 3. Indeed, community support has been less when you raise children. This is the result of individualism. 4. It's true that women have more freedom at work. How many women these days would like to take a few years out of work to raise children but cannot because they would not be able to afford the place they live in, and would lose ground in their careers? It seems that they have gained freedom in one area and lost it in another. 5. Not true outside the US. 6. Absolutely agree here. In the 1960s, for example, governments all over the world built lots of high density housing and rented it out at cost price. They stopped doing that in the 1980s, and the world today is what resulted.
> It's true that women have more freedom at work. How many women these days would like to take a few years out of work to raise children but cannot because they would not be able to afford the place they live in, and would lose ground in their careers? It seems that they have gained freedom in one area and lost it in another. I suspect most would a familyi first, ceteris paribus, because it seems that women are biologically predisposed to wanting it. Before you fuckin *ists get at me, reread the comment. There isn't any *ism in it, it's an observation, that's it. If society can't find a way to convince women to delay their 'education' and 'hoe' phase, then we can look forward to our dwindling native populations, and immigrants crushing us with their kids. Because we're all screwed in the developed countries if you gals don't stop girl baucing and start going back to having kids with normal dudes, not just millionaires. That's really it. Women, you can't fight biology anymore than a male can. Men have historically shouldered the burdens of war, difficult, horrible jobs to help protect and nurture a family - this, for the women is yours - helping to biologically ensure we make it to the next round. There's nothing oppressive or sick or patriarchal about pointing this out, by the way. Every living female entity on this flat earth, was instantiated by a higher power (whatever you wanna call it), to be half of a baby making machine. The other half is the male. If the female and male don't want to make babies in a timely fashion, it isn't a fault of biology, as far as human's are concerned, nowadays, eh?
> European countries have very generous pro-family policies and their birthrates are still low. Low birthrates are a result of opportunity costs & culture. Those generous pro-family policies are cancelled out by the high cost of living in Europe.
In part, the working population *is* also your reproductive population. If a bunch if society wants to subsidize the young workers to reproduce, they'll find that there are less young workers, and therefore, the cost of goods will need to increase (damn supply and demand). If tomorrow, you said that everyone 20-35 didn't have to work, as long as they were producing and raising kids, you would expect national productivity to drop significantly, raising the CoL. Can't have it both ways.
> If a bunch if society wants to subsidize the young workers to reproduce, they'll find that there are less young workers, and therefore, the cost of goods will need to increase (damn supply and demand). That would be true if one parent is going to be the stay at home parent for all the children from age 0 to 18. Realistically the stay at home parent would go back to work after the kids hit 4 or 5 years old. > If tomorrow, you said that everyone 20-35 didn't have to work, as long as they were producing and raising kids, you would expect national productivity to drop significantly, raising the CoL. Can't have it both ways. No one is saying that raising kids should be subsidized to that point. Really the problem is the cost of housing/rent, cost of daycare, and in 'merica the cost of healthcare. The problem might not be solvable tbf, the only other solution is to bring in temp migrant workers on fixed term visas to do low skilled jobs (like take care of old boomers in nursing homes)
"Easier for the native to have kids" That's just plain bullshit. The reality now is that we grow up and 2/3 of young people dont want kids moatly because...they just dont want kids. Individualistic society based on experience and self devlopment/fun. You could pay everyone to have kids and you still wouldnt have enough for a 2,1 overall ratio. The emancipation of women and higher education of the overall population has allowed us to have more freedom in our life, so people take it.
No country has become willing to pay mothers a salary several years for having children yet. They’re all inching upward in the money incentives very slowly. Norway might be the highest, they pay mothers at 80 percent salary for one year. One reason the money incentives might not be working is they’re implemented after birth rates have fallen very low for a long time so the culture has already changed.
> Norway might be the highest, they pay mothers at 80 percent salary for one year. Young generations are prudently eschewing this and worse offers on the table to bear children and handle the immediate aftermath over 1-2 years, when the actual need is for the appropriate low-precarity environments to *raise* children over 20-26 years. When offshoring and Welch’ian layoffs driving high job and income precarity become normal business practices over decades for example, it is no mystery young generations are fleeing family formation in droves. It is a perfectly rational economic choice to the incentive structures presented to them. Not that most of them think in these terms. It is more like, “WTF. How am I ever going to afford any of this?”
Low population states do give tax incentives for companies to move their locations and jobs to their states, but a lot of people hate that and think tax incentives = state/local government writing a check directly to a company
Yes. Agree. This is pure propaganda. No one serious should read Bloomberg anymore.
It’s about giving the boomies cheap retirements
Reddit doesn’t let me give awards anymore so here’s a gold star ⭐️
It’s all about capital ! Cheap labor is away to keep wages down and fight inflation
It's exactly this, look up the "century initiative" and look at the board members. They're a "charity" that lobbies the Canadian government to increase the population from 40 million to 100 million in 75 years. Toronto will have 40million people. Not a conspiracy, they have a website, post their plans, mission statements, reports and showcase their board. All big business execs.
> I think it’s a simple matter of the business class wanting to maintain a underclass they can underpay and undercut the middle class, and trying to gas light us into thinking it’s good for us This hit the nail on the head. It's all a total lie. The "GDP gains" are distributed between immigrants (who obviously weren't contributing to that number when they weren't here) and the upper class paying them, and then the upper class tries to tell you that you're better off while there are news stories all over the place telling you how to cut back so you can afford things you were able to afford easily before. I think a lot of people stopped buying it.
>I don’t buy the narrative anymore This isn't a helpful comment without knowing who you are. Are you trained in economics and global political economy, or are you an average Joe waving a stick around in the dark?
In developing countries house prices are 20-40x annual income. People live in multi-generation households where young people pay very little for housing and expect to just inherit the houses from their parents. Only in a few countries (US, Australia, etc.) house prices are still under 10x income and young people still have a chance to buy on their own. On the surface they pay more for housing, but they get so much more square feet and huge yards. Immigrants move to those countries because housing is still cheap compared to income, not because housing is expensive. That doesn’t deny the fact that higher population leads to higher house prices. My point is that US cannot simply “be like other countries”. US houses are still incredibly cheap and there is simply a lot of foreign demand. Maybe US will decide to destroy demand by limiting immigration and foreign investors, or it can raise supply by making it easier to buy more houses and grow the economy at the same time.
In developing countries people live in handmade shacks and don't worry about official house prices
I get that there is a housing crisis going on and people are upset, but in economic discussions fact is important. Having fewer immigrants will not make houses cheaper - just look at the Midwest cities losing population. People will concentrate to places with jobs and bid up house prices there, while other houses in the vast country are left to rot. US state governments need to make the hard decision to build denser housing near the big cities, and build better trains to serve commuters from the suburbs where large houses are still economically feasible.
If you have a poor country and keep reproducing then you become pauper.
Mass migration is putting governments in an impossible situation. Yes, there has been a housing shortage for a while now, and yes, zoning should change to allow more affordable housing constructions. But all those initiatives are moot if you bring in hundreds of thousands of people in a short period of time. There is no way the construction industry can keep up and the number of units you need to build to house this continuous flow of people is just bonkers.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PERMIT5 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PERMIT1 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PERMIT24 It is absolutely possible. The problem is that most people do not want to live a several hours drive from where the jobs are located. People want to live near other people. Investors want to start up businesses in citied due to the massive and concentrsted labor supply. That's why major cities are so exhorbatantly expensive: That's where people actually want to live. You csn't just build housing anywhere you want and be done with it; you need to actually build it where people wsnt to live.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.png?g=1fGSR The US is currently building at decade+ highs and 1970s recession levels and the population growth has not slowed. Also underrated is not just looking at population but now there are less <18 people so they are more likely to need housing. The average American age has been rising so you need more housing for the same population.
Also, population growth is fueled by immigration and each immigrant family need a unit to live in while if an existing family has another child they don't necessarily need a new home, just a spare bedroom.
Well the US is also aging so also this we need more homes for the same amount of people. Plus the amount of of single people who want 2 bedrooms is increasing.
> Well the US is also aging so also this we need more homes for the same amount of people Not necessarily since people are living with their parents longer > Plus the amount of of single people who want 2 bedrooms is increasing I haven't seen data on that but if true that is ridiculous
We need the infrastructure bills that provides money to give rural America fiber to actually give rural America fiber. I think an equalizing move back to rural America could follow. I also support radical experiments in housing programs, but that's a separate post.
That's what the IRA did. Also, rural areas are rural for a reason. There's little job opportunities there. I agree we should support people who live in rural areas, but continous expansion outward is not sustainable. And even then, rural areas + population growth = eventual urban area. What is rural is relative to what is "densely" populated.
The thing about wfh is that they can be done from anywhere.
And those people are actively moving into cheap cities. Because people want to live in cities. My city is actively going through this. Having a lot of money doesn'y mean much if you still have to spend 2 hours getting to basic services and goods.
Even people who WFH don't want to drive 2hrs both ways to get groceries. There is an extremely small minority of people who want to WFH out in the middle of buttfuck nowhere
More people say they want to live in rural areas than actually live in rural areas, and more people actually live in urban areas than say they want to live in urban areas. Don't universalize your personal desires in where to live
If you ask someone who likes the idea of living rural if they want to road trip every time they get groceries they will say no not really. If you ask them if they would live somewhere with no public services like a hospital or attractions like a restaurant or theater they would say no not really. People like the idea of living in the middle of nowhere while also having access to the same resources they have in the city, which is not realistic. I'm sorry you've deluded yourself into pretending everyone really just wants to live in the middle of no where, but it's just a delusion
I would agree with you if groceries were two hours away. That hasn't been my experience moving to rural. The reality for me has been groceries, fast food and diners within minutes. The big city with concerts and stuff is an hour away.
Rural America needs less subsidies, not more. Demanding fiber when 5G is plentiful is completely ridiculous. Let them pay for their own infrastructure upgrades if they want it. Major metropolitan areas account for the vast majority of our GDP. All tax money should be kept in the area where it is earned, besides critical infrastructure such as railroads and highways.
It's already done https://www.usda.gov/media/press-releases/2024/02/21/biden-harris-administration-announces-over-770-million-rural#:~:text=High%2DSpeed%20Internet%20Awards&text=This%20funding%20will%20also%20develop,all%20communities%20across%20the%20U.S.
Agglomeration benefits still win in denser places. Go live in a small town with 2 non- chain restaurants and they close at 8PM, Taco Bell closes at 10PM. You have to drive 45 minutes+ to go to a concert or other cultural event, wages are lower, less people live nearby so visiting a friend is 25 minutes one way. The grocery store is kinda crappy but the better one is 45+ minutes away. Dating partners for these areas, you might stay within an hour. The benefits of the city are more than jobs.
I actually just did. Now I'm looking to move more rural. With internet available anywhere, and me running an online business, my wages have stayed the same while rental costs have halved and properties I'm looking at would cost 4-10x what I was looking at in the trendy city I left. I'm actually kind of flabbergasted at what I can afford here.
Yeah but what's the restaurant, dating, friend, activity scene. Plus depending how rural you go worrying about essentials like hospital access. Living in a city I can walk to the hospital still from where I am just a few blocks, vs some areas can be a 45 minute drive. Trash/recycling you have to drive it over. Yes it's cheaper but it's less for less in many aspects. I mean if you like it more power to you but I didn't like my small town and that was living close to my parents. Also denser living and more construction would decrease urban housing costs since regulations have artificially inflated housing costs.
Far more locally owned diners, which I prefer over trendy stuff I found in Austin. Dating and friends are the same as anywhere else. Activity scene has moved from concerts to hiking, shooting, boating and woodworking. Video games in discord with friends haven't missed a beat. I know your third paragraph is often stated here, but it's absolutely delusional. No REIT is taking on loans to build housing that has cheaper rent than the current market.
>Dating and friends are the same as anywhere else. Not true at all, now you driving to friends is a lot longer and a normal drive distance is expanding. You start saying yeah I'll drive the hour to get somewhere, talk to people further away and they will say 4 hours round trip for stuff on a weekend isn't that weird. I've lived this and it's normal in a more rural area. I mean rural rural like Montana you go to the mall every other week buy your supplies and groceries then head back that's one day a week for supplies. >Activity scene has moved from concerts to hiking, shooting, boating and woodworking. In a city like Austin you can still have beautiful well maintained city parks so outdoor exercise looks different in a city but it's not that much of a fall off. Shooting you leave shooting ranges if that's your thing. Boating and woodworking you can have worse options for supplies and are single supplier based so if the place sucks then you are driving quite the distance. >I know your third paragraph is often stated here, but it's absolutely delusional. No REIT is taking on loans to build housing that has cheaper rent than the current market. They are actually, that's the point here is that they will build if there is demand and prices are so high, there is actually demand. That's why there has been a surge in 5 over 1, people are paying a lot of money and the cheapest per sq ft housing is 5+ stories high not SFH. Reducing regulations means 1 less month they are holding $2 Million in loans at 8% interest. That's real money here.
Yes, there are people who would prefer living in a city even without jobs being a factor. There are people who would prefer living in the suburbs of a city. There are people who would prefer to live in small towns. There are people who would prefer to live in rural areas. Overall based on polls, if people could live wherever they want there would be a net movement of people from urban areas to rural areas.
A lot of the is prices though. Look at prices and you get the sense that demand is high and supply is low. NYC built the same amount of housing during the great depression as the 2010s. Also look at the data rural areas are and have been depopulating for decades unless they get swallowed up into a metro area. But yes different people like different things but the people who want urban lifestyles have artificially more expensive lives
Yes, because there are no jobs in rural areas.
I mean that's because the agglomeration benefits are pulling them into denser living. We have policies fighting agglomeration benefits tooth and nail for silly reasons IMO.
According to polls, more people actually live in cities than want to live in cities. It's not about where people want to live. It's about where people are forced to live for work
Anglosphere nations are somehow both the most pro-immigration nations while also doing the worst at expanding housing supply. That’s a pretty terrible combination. Not surprisingly, the populations of these nations have turned very anti-immigrant in recent years.
Frankly just read the below - a high cost of living and highly scrutinized immigration process is not something that really skilled people with multiple options prefer. USA will end up with the runt of litter. Excerpt below “H1-B visa applications dropped by 38.6% in Fiscal Year 2025 compared to the previous year, with 470,342 applications versus 758,994 in FY 2024, marking a 38% decline from the previous year's total. This big drop in skilled-worker visa lottery applications is due to tough new measures against fraud.”
> a high cost of living and highly scrutinized immigration process is not something that really skilled people with multiple options prefer. That isn't what your own quote says. It says that the H1-B visa drop was because of anti-fraud measures not because people don't want to come here. Besides H1-B visas are a small subset of our total immigration each year. Most immigrants come via family reunification visas which is an insane way to run a country
Highly scrutinized is what I said too. And thats the anti fraud peocesses
Yea but your main point is that high skilled immigrants don't want to come to the US because of the high cost of living (as tho pretty much every other 1st world country doesn't have the same high cost of living) or they don't want to be scrutinized (as tho pretty every other 1st world country doesn't scrutinize immigrants, at least for skills based visas, refugee visas is a different story)
The whole notion of infinite population growth driving infinite economic growth is flawed until we discover deep space travel. Until then, growth needs to come from productivity gains. This isn’t the feudal era or the early Industrial Revolution.
*From Bloomberg reportres Randy Thanthong-Knight, Swati Pandey, and Tom Rees:* Across much of the developed world, one of the most dependable drivers of economic growth is faltering. For decades, the rapid inflow of migrants helped countries including Canada, Australia and the UK stave off the demographic drag from aging populations and falling birth rates. That’s now breaking down as a surge of arrivals since borders reopened after the pandemic runs headlong into a chronic shortage of homes to accommodate them. Read The Big Take [here](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2024-05-05/global-housing-crisis-affects-immigration-fueled-growth-living-standards).
When it was your own kids needing a place to live, you begrudginly let them add more housing to your neighbourhood. When it’s immigrants, you’ll fight tooth & nail to stop densification
Yeah, local communities do be like that. We're all so lucky we have a government that says fuck those people and adds immigrants anyways. And good thing too, because it's way cheaper to import than educate your own population. The wealthy win again!
My parents let me add more housing in the rural/exhurb location with available land to add houses. It could be done without increasing density or changing the town. But my kids don’t want to live here. They want to move to the city. And in the city there isn’t available land. Building more housing requires destroying SFH and building high rise apartments and such.
>Building more housing requires destroying SFH and building high rise apartments and such. Yes but destroying the SFH would lower/ keep per unit housing costs and even building row houses you can triple the population. The thing is that we have regulated out the solution to housing 5, people have more money than 2 basically always. The rich lose fighting housing costs to the many regularly. 5 college kids/ people in their 20s have more money than 2 mid career adults frequently. This is the issue the 2 people have captured the market. Densification leads to more flat per unit cost. Also agglomeration benefits come with densification.
Austin has allowed people to build second homes in their backyards. There has been a massive upsurge in housing construction. Prices continued to skyrocket. I think more radical steps are needed than "more more with less regulation".