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Comment by ip26 | Hacker News Reader

More so than real estate? You might pay $50k for your education, but in hot markets with no construction you might pay literally a million dollars more than for the same house elsewhere. Huge allocation of resources there on the zero-sum competition with other buyers in the market.

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That’s not misallocation. House prices are not meant to be uniform. It’s based on supply and demand.

The allocation is the huge portion of your salary going towards your mortgage.

The (arguable) "mis-" part is that while it's normal for some property to be worth more than others, and the housing market is functioning as it should given the parameters, we have chosen to make the supply highly inelastic in desirable places with predictable outcome.

Why are people choosing to accept salaries that are too low?

(Proven) collusion between employers to keep wages down would be one reason.

Proven?

Given companies have a legal responsibility to make a profit for shareholders...

Nobody has to work for them if they aren’t paying enough

Alright, technically it was only settled, but I'm referring to:

Four Silicon Valley companies -- including Apple and Google -- have agreed to pay $415 million to settle an antitrust lawsuit that accused the companies of conspiring not to hire away each other's employees.

Ok, but that isn’t going on now.

Your choice is a salary that's too low or no salary. Which do you choose?

You reallocate a million dollars from cash to property, it’s not spent.

From the perspective of one worker, until such a time as they sell & move away it is indeed spent. The old adage, house rich cash poor.

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