1607

Ya, but you’re saying that they can “afford to live here if they have jobs”, but the implication is that those jobs are just automatically paying far higher wages, solely for the purpose to just pay higher housing prices. Those folks are making higher wages, but aren’t actually living more comfortable lives. They’re just paying all that money to the landlords or banks who hold their mortgages.

Having the public at large supplement that seems… dumb. It’s dumb, right?

Like, in a situation like what we’ve got now, the “solution” would be to pay those people much higher amounts of money… but that money is just gonna get funneled into the landlords and banks. Why would we want to do that?

The unemployment we’re talking about here for covid is not the standard unemployement though. Normally, unemployment payments are based on your earned income, rather than being fixed amounts.

1608

I feel like you’re two posts away from saying we need to go back to the gold standard and audit the Fed. You are not that guy, so I’m not sure why you’re pretending to be dumb about cost of living in the US.

1609

Ok, clearly, you guys don’t wanna talk about this, I’m not really that interested in being attacked by the entirety of the board.

1610

LOL ok, but you’re sitting here arguing that you don’t understand why everyone in the US doesn’t have the same exact living situation you do. It’s pretty ludicrous.

1611

I don’t think that’s fair, I don’t believe Timex doesn’t care about these people. What’s being described is just out of step with what he’s experienced and familiar with, as it seems like he’s got a pretty good setup with a good job in a low cost of living area. A lot of people are not nearly so lucky on either or both counts.

1612

Careful guys - you’re going to turn him into a Republican.

1613

Okay that’s fair. @Timex I apologize for that comment. I got a little triggered because the “Why can’t people live on X and just pull themselves up by their own bootstraps” is the same crap I constantly hear from my right wing family (all of them except my siblings) who are completely blind to the privilege that got them their opportunities and comfortable lives. So I’m really not interested in re-hashing that argument for the jillionth time.

1614

But of course I understand that… but I’m also questioning whether we want to keep sustaining what seems to me to be a pretty messed up system.

And I said at the time, I understand that this isn’t the ideal point in time to address it, but it seems like it should be addressed at some point.

Honestly dude, I’m just trying to figure out what the “right” amount of money here is, and the only way to do that is to try and get an idea of what you’d actually need to spend to survive.

And really, survival is what we’re talking about here, right? We aren’t talking about a long term solution.

But there are a lot of obvious misconceptions that folks have already expressed thus far in this discussion, about a bunch of this stuff, so it seems like not everyone is effectively running the numbers.

Now, for my own part, I gotta say that the average rent being $1400 a month is surprising to me. The median is a bit lower. But still, it’s high.

1615

I understand the point you’re getting at, but expecting people to just move when they live somewhere too expensive is a bit simplistic. Moving costs money. Kids lives can be turned upside down by a change of school and a loss of friends. Most people have a network of local relationships that they can rely on for help, contacts for finding new work and so on, which they immediately lose if they decide to move. Unemployment benefits that are only livable if you move to the cheaper half of the country are going to further damage the lives of people who are already struggling.

If America was a poorer country a bit of triage would be understandable; the government would have limited resources and want to prioritize keeping people alive and fed above, say, allowing their kids to keep their school friends. But America is rich and really ought to be aiming higher.

1616

This is why Yglesias keeps saying the solution is actually to build more houses and increase density in these desirable areas–which since housing prices are astronomical compared to construction costs–you’d think would happen, except that zoning and nimbyism get in the way. Which is why it’s sort of true, though reductive, to say that the most important public policy really is done by local zoning boards and planning commissions.

1617

As someone working in the industry, yeah, it’s messed up.

1618

And because Ohio caps their unemployment withholdings I had about a $1200 swing while working through my taxes and now owe both the state and feds. I get that I never should have been given the money in the first place, but that doesn’t make me feel better watching my running total go from a refund to owing.

1619

Yes, this is definitely a think that contributes to the insane housing costs in certain places… that folks literally will not allow more housing to be built, which naturally drives up the cost. And honestly, the folks who currently own the property are most of the main opponents of doing this.

On the actual payments again, I did some more digging just to make sure I was remembering right.

So last year, we were getting $600 in unemployment from the government, PLUS whatever you were getting from your normal state unemployment (which varied from state to state). If that’s the case moving forward, but with the federal chunk reduced to $400, that’s still likely not a super low amount. Especially given that it’d be per worker in the household.

And since that payment is not subject to social security or medicare taxes, I do not believe that would be beneath the poverty line at all… I don’t think it’d be close to the poverty line.

1620

In the middle of a pandemic doesn’t seem like the best time to change the fundamentals of the system. We should be helping people keep food on the table, keep health insurance and keep their living accomodations.

That said, even setting aside the pandemic, isn’t the high vs. low cost of living just the free market working as intended? From your POV as a (comparatively) hands-off conservative guy on economic matters, why would you want to intervene there?

1621

Ironically, I think the pandemic could create the long-term effects with telework that change things.

My theory:

  1. With telework, folks are going to move to lower-cost areas because let’s face it, the highest cost areas are unaffordable. Even if employers offer a bit less, the employees should capture some of the arbitrage from this.

  2. This is going to force the most expensive cities to try and solve their problems, and the folks moving are going to bring more sane politics to less sane areas, perhaps hopefully reducing the urban/rural divide

  3. Long term that might fix America’s demographic issues in most states ,though not the pure shitholes like WV/AL.

I’m not relying on any of this, because that’s a lot of moving parts, and it would easy for one of those parts to fail but the theory has some logic behind it. It’s kinda what turned VA blue, and NC/GA from blood red to light red.

I’m in a similar boat to Timex in terms of cost of living area- I figure to live decently, assuming I had a mortgage and had to pay full ACA price (my insurance is non-ACA due to a rare exception) , I’d need around $1900-$2200/mo. I do save some money over most in that situation because poverty is expensive, and my lack of poverty allows me to save some money here and there through more long-term choices that are viable.

1622

I literally said that in the next sentence.

Well, Matt pointed out a major cause of it, which is that various housing regulations prevent the housing market from actually functioning in many cities, as developers are prohibited from building new housing.

If a developer wants to build housing, they should be allowed to. That will reduce housing prices, and lower the cost of living.

1623

Looking at the poverty line doesn’t work when talking about unemployment. Most families cannot go from a family income of 50k-100k/year to 20k/year at the drop of a hat. Can some people live on 20k/yr? Sure. Can a family make that adjustment instantly? No.

1624

In this region, the cost of building is high enough that without tax breaks/subsidies, all the new multifamily housing you get will be aimed at upper incomes because it’s not going to be profitable otherwise.

1625

They do want to build housing. But not affordable housing. The profits are better with luxury units.

1626

And not only is practically all new construction luxury, older properties that used to have low-income rents are being bought up, given superficial renovations, and turned into not-quite-but-almost luxury units at double the rent.

So not only are we not getting new affordable housing, we’re rapidly losing the existing supply.