Liberal Hypocrisy Is Fueling American Inequality. Here’s How. – NYT Opinion

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNDgcjVGHIw

by LopRabbit • 5 years ago

38 24 5 years ago

The only areas in California where housing is cheap are the Republican strongholds in the Central Valley...but lest you think that this implies it is because those Republican counties and districts are better at managing housing, I would remind you that almost no one wants to move to the hot, dry, San Joaquin Valley, they live there because they a) were born there, b) can afford to live there, c) etc. I say this as a native of those counties. This lack of demand, and the wide open spaces, keeps land and housing prices low without much effort. edit: This is why I am really hopeful about remote work. So that people don't HAVE to live in high density housing.

LogonType104• 5 years ago

Why are those areas Republican dominated? I thought the poor are supposed to be Democrats.

epistasis3• 5 years ago

It's the rural-metropolitan divide. Often the poor in rural areas are also Democrats. But all those farmers (huge land wealth), car dealership owners, plumbing empire magnates, or trucking magnates, are incredibly Republican.

But rural areas have far less opportunity than urban areas, and the wealthy often pass their empires down to their children, further hoarding opportunity. So even though there is a ton of wealth for a few at the top, there's extremely little opportunity. Urban metropolitans often offer much more opportunity, as well as greater amenities in the form of culture etc.

barbacoa• 5 years ago

Democrats have become a coalition party of the cultural and economic elites as well as the subsidized poor. Republicans tend to be the party of the working class.

linguae3• 5 years ago

And even then, home prices in the peripheral areas of the Central Valley that are within a 2-3 hour drive of the Bay Area have skyrocketed in price during the pandemic. For example, when the pandemic started I remember seeing large signs off Highway 152 through Los Baños for brand new single-family houses in the high $200,000s. Fast forward to today, and new development in Los Baños now starts in the mid-$400,000s, a dramatic leap in price. Tracy and Mountain House have also risen in price substantially, and I've seen places go from the mid-$400K range to the mid-$500K range in Lathrop and Manteca.

There's also been considerable price increases in the Fresno area, too (though it's still possible to purchase brand new homes there under $400K), which is outside the normal Bay Area commute orbit, though now with WFH, an occasional trip from Fresno to Silicon Valley or San Jose isn't that bad. The only places I haven't seen dramatic appreciation in house prices are smaller, more isolated metro areas that haven't attracted those leaving the Bay Area or Los Angeles, such as Hanford and Visalia.

Coming from a guy who grew up in Sacramento, yes the Central Valley is hot, but the best part about the Central Valley is its relative affordability and its proximity to many interesting places. Portions are close enough to the Bay Area to commute (though I wouldn't do it every day), and while it's farther away from the beach than the Bay Area, it's closer to the Sierra Nevada mountains, and SoCal is still within weekend-trip range. Living in the Central Valley allows people to take advantage of California amenities without having to get on a plane or take a very long road trip (though, admittedly, Reno and Las Vegas are also close enough to many of these same California amenities, sometimes even closer depending on your destination).

EDIT: There are some other cheap parts of California. Many of the desert areas of the state are affordable. Lake County, north of Napa, is quite cheap.

LogonType104• 5 years ago

Off topic, but I couldn't help but ask after checking out your site: do you have any advice for someone wanting to learn more about explainable graph artificial intelligence?

SubiculumCode2• 5 years ago

I'd like to mention that most people in the San Joaquin valley don't really consider Sacramento to be in the valley, and certainly the weather is different. More rain in sac, and no matter how hot it is in Sacramento, you can look forward to the evening's Delta Breeze.

and yeah, I was specifically talking about Visalia, Hanford, Fresno,

jdkee• 5 years ago

Why would wealthy people seek to increase the numbers of poor or middle income people in their neighborhoods?

LogonType104• 5 years ago

Because your Chai tea latte with oat milk ain't gonna make itself.

epistasis3• 5 years ago

It's one thing to "seek tk increase" and it's entirety another to "expend excessive amounts of effort to deny."

Doing neither of these things would result in a more equitable and satisfactory outcome for all.

carabiner• 5 years ago

Most YIMBYs are actually NIMBYs who concern-troll every development project into oblivion. Even Robert Reich [0]. What the video (very good IMO) lacks is an examination that this is a liberal bastion. I think NIMBYism is bipartisan, and I doubt affluent right-wing Texans are exactly open to high-density development in their neighborhoods too.

[0] https://freebeacon.com/satire/robert-reich-nimby/

epistasis3• 5 years ago

This is an excellent point, but I would add that it's not just liberals. There are some older leftists, ans even some younger leftists, that have embraced housing austerity as a way to spite developers. Which unfortunately enriches landlords and homeowners far more than it's hurts developers. And whose money is doing the enriching? A lot of it comes from those who are barely scraping by, and those who can't scrape by are displaced from the state.

foogazi3• 5 years ago

I’ve lived in apartments before but prefer SFH - don’t know what is wrong with that

I dislike living in SF so I didn’t get a job there

I can’t afford SFH in Palo Alto so I don’t live there - don’t know what is wrong with that either

is it a human right to live in Palo Alto ?

People have choices and if something is too expensive or inconvenient they can pick a better option

linguae3• 5 years ago

There is no human right to live in Palo Alto, but something is amiss when housing in a metro area is so expensive that people making middle class salaries (we're talking around $60K-$100K) find themselves "driving until they qualify" 60+ miles away to places like Tracy, Manteca, and Los Baños to find an affordable place to life. For various reasons, Bay Area governments have decided not to densify to the degree necessary to accommodate all the people who work there, which means that development has sprawled out to the closest far-flung places that are willing to build homes. Sprawl is politically expedient compared to density, even if this sprawl means more traffic on our roads, more money needed to be spent on serving an ever-sprawling metro area, and more money individuals have to spend on transportation. (Admittedly, with more people working from home, the downsides of this sprawl could be mitigated, but not everybody can work from home.)

I reiterate that there's no human right to live in Palo Alto, but companies based in Palo Alto and other Silicon Valley locations who demand that their workers work on-site may increasingly find it difficult to hire people if their housing options are limited to situations that require multiple roommates to bring the cost down to affordable levels, or commuting from far-away areas. If enough people refuse to work in Silicon Valley, then this decreases Silicon Valley's desirability as a place to work, which in turn may decrease the property values there since there will be less demand to live there. The Bay Area has to be very careful not to kill the goose that has been providing it golden eggs.

foogazi3• 5 years ago

but something is amiss when housing in a metro area is so expensive that people making middle class salaries (we're talking around $60K-$100K) find themselves "driving until they qualify" 60+ miles away to places like Tracy, Manteca, and Los Baños to find an affordable place to life.

Why is it Ok to live in Palo Alto, but it’s wrong to live in Manteca ?

People are making a choice that best fits their needs, and they choose affordable housing over commute distance

California is expensive because everyone wants to live there - you can’t make that affordable.

How many condos do you have to build in the bay area to make it cheaper than Tracy ?

js8• 5 years ago

This is mostly an artifact of the two party system (or the left/right divide, which changed throughout history), in fact there are 3 independent ideologies: Conservative (concerned with values of authority and cultural preservation), liberal (concerned with values of individual freedom) and progressive/socialist (concerned with values of equality/inclusion and democracy).

These ideologies are not opposites, they have different concerns, but they might contradict in practice. Sometimes they are also compatible, they accept same tools for different reasons. (For example, property ownership is a policy tool acccepted by liberals for reason of personal freedom, and by conservatives for reason of preserving value. Or basic income is accepted by progressives as means of including everybody in the society, and by liberals as way to promote personal freedom.)

There's lot more to this but that's the gist of political philosophy, I think.

beej71• 5 years ago

Is this really a Democrat/Republican/liberal/conservative issue? Because it sure seems to transcend that.

Liberal Hypocrisy Is Fueling American Inequality. Here’s How. – NYT Opinion

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