Covid-19 May Fuel Migration from High-Cost Cities, Analyst Says
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
Politically, I believe a major factor in our divisiveness has been a lack of cross-pollination with people who are different from us. People in the city stay in the city, and people in the country stay in the country. It's much easier to empathize with people in your "out-groups" when you know and interact with some of them personally.
Economically, while urban centers have been exploding, rural America has been rotting. There's no economic export bringing money to many areas. And without that, entire towns sink into economic decay. Rural America was built on manufacturing, because all it required was cheap land, and that's largely gone now. Imagine a world where cheap land is once again the deciding factor that draws economic activity, because high-income remote-workers are drawn to it and have no other constraints. And then those people spend lots of money in all those little economies.
Another aspect that's had a big impact on economic inequality is the growing cost-of-living gap. It's really hard to move to the city and seek a way upward in the world when you can't even hope to afford rent. Spreading out the white-collar jobs geographically could spread out the opportunity economically.
People left rural America for a reason, and a slight deviation from the coastal clustering is not going to change sufficiently to reverse the inevitable hollowing-out of rural counties.
There's a huge demand for 'culture' (a way to get away from home). Yes, a lot of small/old venues/clubs are (and will no doubt continue) folding. Pretty sure the cultural vacuum will quickly fill somehow (maybe in evacuated warehouses?) with 'new normal' artistes. Clever restauranteurs will re-jigger their tactics. Etc.
Not everyone can be remote, but my job seems to be doing okay with it, and I'm inclined to include a 100%-remote requirement for future job hunts. And to move to a lower-density area next time that comes up.
(1) You used to have a much larger share of the talent in your smaller pool.
(2) You will now be the same sized fish in a much larger pond (potentially the whole world). Expect your salary offers to drop and your job search to last much longer unless you are a unique talent.
Also, my comp is currently quite low, rather close to my "I'll just retire" line. Yeah, the offers could drop, but not far without market failure.
Finally, I'm well over 50. Turns out that that matters more than anything else we're talking about here.
Then the evidence for the claim: "As evidence, he pointed to data from real estate companies that showed less interest in California, New York and New Jersey as well as slowing searches for homes in larger cities."
No time frame. No numbers. No comparison to other markets Are many people shopping for new homes at the start of a recession?
But, on the topic of whether this is going to reinforce a "great migration" out of large cities, my wife phrased it best: after the pandemic scare is done, people will want to go back to "normal life." It'll be just as easy to not consider a pandemic in choosing where to live, even on the other side of a pandemic.
This isn’t good evidence for the argument. People who live in cities primarily rent.
As an aside, I do think that a move to smaller cities will help strengthen the American economy overall, similar to the distributed small-cities economy that you see in Germany, where no one city has the primacy and pull of NYC.
This seems really silly. My wife and I are considering leaving the city we love but tax rates have nothing to do with it. The reasons we want to live in the city (public transit, activities, social lives) have evaporated overnight. With no schools, no parks, and no office to commute into, there's an obvious appeal to buying a bigger house with a big yard. But for a family that's fortunate enough to be able to choose, the choice is about what kind of lifestyle we want, not the delta in tax rates.