Basically just live below your means.
But that is going to be hard for most people in tech to do because most people in tech were raised upper middle class and they simply don't know how to live below that and a lot of the rest are not from the US and they're mostly just going to do whatever makes them fit in.
And unless you can get everyone with money to live like they don't (which you can't) that's not actually going to solve anything. Telling everybody to just change their lifestyle is not a real solution to anything anyway.
Ultimately, there is nothing an individual can do to help housing affordability. That is a societal problem.
If you really want to help housing equality, buy ana apartment building, not a house, and add more units
And driving demand for luxury condos (or whatever) is better? Then you're giving an incentive for some developer to bulldoze the cheap "blighted" homes and apartments to make more luxury condos or overpriced new townhouses, or whatever.
There's no winning here.
No you're not. If you buy a luxury condo, you have reduced demand for luxury condos, since there's one less individual who both wants and can afford a luxury condo. If they build enough luxury condos as people who can afford them, then eventually it's no longer profitable to build luxury condos, and they'll have to concentrate elsewhere. However, the false restriction of the market enabled by policies such as 'neighborhood preservation' and lack of funding for rapid public transit means that development companies can basically make their entire year's profit only meeting the demand of the rich.
(Also, every new development is going to be branded as a 'luxury condo'. No one sells a 'boring old condo', ever).
> There's no winning here.
Yup. If you define 'winning' as 'I don't want my purchase of something to affect the price of similar things', then certainly, you cannot win.
This is true everywhere. Builders are not going to build cheap houses. My wife and I were looking for a house three years ago. At the time, it was only three of us - including my 15 year old step son. We were looking at buying in a county in the Atlanta burbs. We had two choices - old small houses being sold by the relatively few people who lived their or buy in one of the many neighborhoods where builders were building new houses. We purposefully chose the cheapest, smallest floor plan offered by the builder - and even that was over 3000 square feet, five bedroom. I’m not trying to humble brag. It was less than 330K all in and we only needed 5% down. Any software developer with 5-7 years of experience could easily afford it - especially a dual income couple.
You could just... decide not be in the market, despite being able to afford it. Market price is defined by what people are willing to pay for and sell for. If you are not willing to pay anything for a luxury condo, that reduces the price for everyone by making it less scarce.
You don't have to buy all the luxury condos in existence to eliminate the market. If people decide not to buy them, there is no demand, by definition.
Luxury condos lose their luster, and then become just regular condos. Regulars become cheap. It's effectively entropy. Also, people that can afford to live in a luxury home, don't want to live in a meh, or even crappy home. Yet, if they can't get a luxury home, they settle the meh one. Since they can pay luxury prices, the meh one becomes more expensive, and the less well off get frozen out, because they can't compete.
If you build at the high end, or more accurately "market rate", not only can developers recoup the cost of construction, but you're also taking pressure off the meh and crappy houses, because the people that can afford luxury prices, take the nice home. Also, those currently live in what was considered "nice", upgrade to the new luxury home, because they're now in downscale, thus freeing that house and and lower the prices.
https://ggwash.org/view/68496/why-are-developers-only-buildi...
Before jumping into the tech industry, I worked in the automotive industry and spent a lot of time around engineers. They were mostly all over 40 and they mostly all fit the stereotype of the frugal engineer. I don't see too many of those engineers in the Bay Area.
It solves the problem of contributing to it.
You can't, but there are things that can be done to compensate or mitigate:
- Anti-union regulations like "right to work" laws are an anti-market intrusion that weakens the power of labor. Vote against them.
- Support works councils (they've worked well in Germany) for more democratic governance, which right now I believe are illegal in the US (read this in a Bloomberg article earlier, though haven't verified).
- Support things that make bad jobs less bad. For example, there are benefits offered by 'better' companies, like good health insurance or paid parental leave, that could be provided by the state or mandated by the state.
- Support land use and transportation changes that would allow more people to participate in the economies of 'superstar' cities without ruinous housing costs.
Note that two of these things are even market-oriented, not all the positive changes have to be about more/bigger government.
How is forcing me to join a particular union pro-market?
Also, how am I supposed to vote on this or any of the other things you mentioned? I get one vote per legislative body every 2 || 6 years and that one vote has to cover dozens of issues like this that come up in the interim.
It should be obvious given that a person has one vote.
A contract stipulating joining a union for a job is no more anti-market than a contract specifying work hours or clothing requirements or how much vacation you get. If that's how the business has decided to run, the free market perspective is that they should be allowed to. It's market forces that can compel a company to agree to such a setup, after all.
However, a regulation saying that this type of contractual obligations is illegal is very obviously an intrusion on the market. Not that I think all intrusions are bad, but I don't see a compelling reason to support this one, given that corporations already tend to have the advantage over workers and this reduces workers' collective leverage.
Agreed that it's hard to vote narrowly on this topic. But no different from any other political subject, really.
But businesses cannot mandate union membership for employees in right to work states. That's what "right to work" means.
> However, it is actually anti free market to stipulate thar businesses must do this.
Not sure what 'this' you're referring to here, could you clarify please?
Yes they can.. That is what 'right to work' means. If a company mandates union membership and you do not want to join the union, or decide to leave the union, a company in a right to work state will fire you. This is like a union in a non-right-to-work state, where, if there is a union, and you refuse to join it, you can no longer work at the company. This is how it works for teachers unions too (in California at least) -- if you leave or refuse to pay dues, you are automatically let go.
> Not sure what 'this' you're referring to here, could you clarify please?
If you tell all businesses in your state that you must have a union (or accept a union if your employees vote for one), then that is mandating that the company mandate union membership from their employees by a mechanism other than the company's directors' own will. This is an infringement on their liberty (justified or not).
No, it does not.
> According to the Legal Defense Foundation, right-to-work laws prohibit union security agreements, or agreements between employers and labor unions, that govern the extent to which an established union can require employees' membership, payment of union dues, or fees as a condition of employment, either before or after hiring.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-to-work_law
> If you tell all businesses in your state that you must have a union (or accept a union if your employees vote for one)
Nobody was talking about this?
Umm, From your own wikipedia article:
> "right-to-work laws" refers to state laws that prohibit union security agreements between companies and labor unions
You cited one particular definition by one particular foundation that marginally fit your purposes better. I don't see why I shouldn't do the same.
Right to work usually means the company can fire you for any reason, and you can leave the company for any reason.
While true that a company cannot expect an agreement with a union to be legally enforced, they can certainly decide to mandate membership in a union of their own accord. For example, it is reasonable for a company to specify in its job description that it only wants to hire certified Realtors or members of the ACM or whatever other group the company deems necessary.
> Nobody was talking about this?
This is what 'unionization' means in the context of a 'union shop'.
Oh, so this is actually pretty common: you're confusing "right to work" with "at will employment". They're not the same thing.
> At-will employment is a term used in U.S. labor law for contractual relationships in which an employee can be dismissed by an employer for any reason (that is, without having to establish "just cause" for termination), and without warning,[1] as long as the reason is not illegal (e.g. firing because of the employee's race or religion). When an employee is acknowledged as being hired "at will," courts deny the employee any claim for loss resulting from the dismissal. The rule is justified by its proponents on the basis that an employee may be similarly entitled to leave his or her job without reason or warning.[2] The practice is seen as unjust by those who view the employment relationship as characterized by inequality of bargaining power.[3]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At-will_employment
> You cited one particular definition by one particular foundation that marginally fit your purposes better. I don't see why I shouldn't do the same.
I could cite endless definitions from various sources. Here we go, since apparently you want this:
> The Right To Work principle–the guiding concept of the National Right To Work Committee (NRTWC.org) and the National Right To Work Legal Defense Foundation (NRTW.org) –affirms the right of every American to work for a living without being compelled to belong to a union. Compulsory unionism in any form–“union shop,” “closed shop,” or “agency shop” –is a contradiction of the Right To Work principle and the fundamental human right of freedom that the principle represents.
> The National Right To Work Committee advocates that every individual must have the right, but must not be compelled, to join a labor union.
https://nrtwc.org/facts/right-work-mean/
> Specifically, the right-to-work means that employees are entitled to work in unionized workplaces without actually joining the union or paying regular union dues.
https://www.thebalancecareers.com/right-to-work-2071691
> There’s some confusion surrounding "right to work laws"—perhaps due to the somewhat misleading title. While the "right to work" logically sounds like the right to have a job, or to keep a job once you have it, the term is related to membership in a labor union. More than half of U.S. states have enacted so-called "right to work" laws that guarantee no person can be compelled to join a union or pay union dues, as a condition of employment.
https://employment.findlaw.com/wages-and-benefits/what-are-r...
> I’ve heard that my state has a ‘Right-to-Work’ law. What does that mean?
> In the public-sector union context, right-to-work laws mean that union members do not have to pay union dues to be members of the union.
> In states that have enacted right-to-work laws that apply to private employers, although they vary based on state law, most Right-to-Work laws prohibit labor unions and employers from entering into contracts that only employ unionized workers for the jobs in the contract.
https://www.workplacefairness.org/unions-right-to-work-laws
> This is what 'unionization' means in the context of a 'union shop'.
No, it doesn't. This
> Under this, the employer agrees to either only hire labor union members or to require that any new employees who are not already union members become members within a certain amount of time.
is not the same thing as
> If you tell all businesses in your state that you must have a union
The former is about a particular business decided to only hire people who will join a union, likely because of market pressure from the union/its members. The latter would be a a state mandating that union membership is required by law. Those are not the same thing. The former may happen because of market forces, the latter is obviously because of government force.
For a counter example, you can look at Tokyo as a place that's more of a free for all, and indeed while it's still fairly expensive, it's much less so than the bay area or NYC.
https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?cou...