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Comment by chrisco255 | Hacker News Reader

Their lives aren't getting worse. Income grew last year.

A couple of things need serious addressing: cost of housing (almost entirely due to protectionist zoning laws), cost of education (starting to think boot camps and trade schools aren't such a bad idea after all) and cost of healthcare.

I think there's solutions for those three.

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Income growth doesn’t mean equity. It is still getting harder for poor people and easier for rich people.

Housing isn’t just, or even primarily, protectionist zoning laws. Many places really are space constrained, and even going for density doesn’t always reduce costs (many of the densest cities are the most expensive).

As for education and healthcare, these are problems that other developed countries have solved and so are uniquely American.

> many of the densest cities are the most expensive

I don't think the causation runs from dense to expensive. It's desirability that is causing both density and expensiveness.

What do you think has a larger influence on housing prices than protectionist zoning and other regulations that severly restrict supply?

For sake of argument: Might NIMBY sentiment actually be due to insufficient regulations? I'd be a lot more comfortable with someone building near me if I was confident that they weren't going to build some soulless concrete eyesore.

Isn’t this definitionally NIMBY? Might not match modern usage of “all the housing all the time”, but seems in lines with the words as written.

I guess you could get rid of the sentiment by increasing the amount of regulations. But that's not going drive housing prices down.

Adding data to consider: The Gini coefficient is one measure of inequality.

World Bank shows 1980=34.6 and 2016=41.5 for United States.

Maybe this is just perception, but it seems like even if income is going up, quality is going down. Most people cannot own a home with a decent commute in a major city anymore and most of the things we own are mass produced, throw away crap.

That's weird but I think that the quality of the products we own has gone way up in part due to online reviews.

It varies. There is certainly a lot of single-use throwaway stuff. A lot of things that used to be made out of wood or metal are now plastic, and are so inexpensive that it is cheaper to throw away and buy new than to repair stuff. Most furniture now is composites, because they are way cheaper than real wood. You aren't going to hand any of this stuff down to your grandkids.

Other things are much better, though. Automobiles and Electronics are much better than they were 20 years ago.

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