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Comment by DantesKite | Hacker News Reader

It's strange how as technology has improved, the cost of housing hasn't really gotten cheaper.

TVs, computers, even cars have decreased in price and improved in quality, but college education and housing...not so much.

You'd think there'd be $30,000 small, but affordable houses by now.

There's some fuckery afoot.

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Absurd zoning processes. If I build a computer or eat a meal, even though there are some associated safety regulations, a bunch of people within half a block of me with blatant conflicts of interests generally can't take me to court to impede me. If I want to turn a single family house into a duplex, or someone wants to turn a long-abandoned parking lot into an apartment complex, well...

The SF Chronicle highlights the general restrictive zoning laws and how much the zoning tax adds to housing in major metros. https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/This-is-how-much-sing...

You can buy 30k affordable buildings, but you have to put it somewhere, almost everywhere and especially in these ballooning markets, it's the land that you pay for.

New land can't be produced. Well, until we start digging. Land and location are linked. People want to go there. They want to live close to there. Demand spikes and goes up. Yet other locations people don't want to go so demand goes down. At least thats the theory. But now, the prices are just going up. Seemingly everywhere.

Something is certainly going on. Its as if demand is increasing everywhere.

Construction cost is only a fraction of the housing cost. The majority of the cost is for the location, which is unique and limited. That location cost is something technology can hardly help reduce. There are not many places that offer safe neighborhood s, good career opportunities, diverse cuisine, and sunshine year round like the Bay Area for example. That's regardless of technology advances.

> Construction cost is only a fraction of the housing cost. The majority of the cost is for the location, which is unique and limited.

Then increase the construction budget and put multiple units on the location.

You can't make land. By the way this goes both ways. Forcibly lowering the price of land doesn't make it disappear so the usual supply and demand arguments don't apply to private land ownership. e.g. heavy land value taxes discourage the production of land or make land move overseas

| There's some fuckery afoot.

Not really. Inflation is one culprit. And housing is already about the cheapest thing you can buy by weight. Housing isn't more expensive. Wages are less. If the money printer would stop for a few years, the price of housing would stop dead at that moment too.

Putting up a house involves a ton of manual labor by people who have to be paid minimum wage as well and this hasn't really scaled up with technology the way things like software can. If you put the cost into person-hours to create the house, and consider the relative scarcity of desirable land, there's not so much mystery here. Sure, there are vast empty areas, but not many people are willing to live in places with no utility hookups.

Yes, there are prefab houses and whatnot, but that only enables so much scaling.

> "Putting up a house involves a ton of manual labor by people who have to be paid minimum wage as well" …

I don't think I've ever in my life been paid minimum wage at any manual labor job I've ever had. Everything I've ever done in that field of work (ranging from literally digging ditches with pick-axe and shovel to commercial interior/exterior remodeling) starting pay was generally 1.5-2× minimum wage and often higher.

When I think of minimum wage, I think motel janitorial, burger flipping, supermarket bagger, etc, though I suppose who pays minimum wage for what job also depends on location and employer.

> When I think of minimum wage, I think motel janitorial

I find this really funny having been a hotel janitor. It paid 1.5x minimum wage, but that was offset by them wanting not only a hardworking janitor, but also a skilled handyman who could also do plumbing, fix beds and railing, etc. I've witnessed this at several other jobs as well, where they hire someone for a low paying job, then expect them to use all the skills they have at the same pay rate as what they were hired for.

I worked janitorial once, but in my case it was for a place called "ServiceMaster" that did office buildings after normal business hours. Their starting pay was also typically 1.5-2× minimum wage, and included benefits, and our bosses treated us with proper basic human respect. All that was expected of us was that by morning the building was clean and certain areas disinfected properly (bathrooms and breakrooms mostly). How and when we got it done was left to us, as long as it got done before quitting time. (We usually just worked our butts off to get it all done hours earlier than expected and then just slacked off the rest of the shift.) It was actually one of the better jobs I've had over the years. I got the impression though that we were considered "higher end janitorial services" and that our level of pay reflected that. Where I live motel janitorial appears to be more on par with burger flipping (as far as pay, not level of work), though I could see hotel janitorial staff probably getting paid more. There is a bit of a difference between a typical motel vs even a low-end hotel though.

I should perhaps have said "at least" minimum wage there, but the point stands as this only makes it more expensive to build.

Housing is location-dependent. More jobs and higher wages generally equals more expensive housing.

It turns out when automation only serves business owners (and it serves the largest companies the most) it doesn't produce richer workers, only a worker surplus.

Could easily available federal loans be the reason college fee keep rising? disclaimer : not very familiar with US education system

easy money (federal loans), no consequences for bad education (bankruptcy laws), disproportionate emphasis on BA vs trade skills, etc.

When people say "money printing" they forget that the only way that money enters the economy is through borrowing.

So yes, those loans are the reason prices keep (emphasis on keep) rising. Private loans would probably stop at some "reasonable" ceiling.

"Fuckery" aka: government interference. Zoning restrictions, requirements to get everything inspected, rent controls, etc, etc, etc.

Look at other places government butts in? Schooling? Health care? Day care? etc... all more expensive and worse than ever.

TVs haven't really gotten all that much cheaper to my memory in years. I can recall spending about $7-800 on a big-screen cabinet for our family room in the mid-90's and then recently spending the same amount flat screen LED version recently.

Computers also aren't really all that much cheaper now either. I mean sure, OK, compared to the 80's sure but that was 40 years ago.

Cars have absolutely not gotten cheaper.

Education and housing though...yeah. The Federal Reserve has made sure that no one has been able to afford either for many years now. Housing has also been made even worse by flippers and foreign investors(invaders).

Rentals also consolidating into fewer and fewer hands which is just going to drive up rents for everyone.

Electronics are frankly only so important.

Housing(ownership especially) and education are actually things that underpin so many other societal problems that we as a country should have *never* allowed lax interest rate policy and Chinese investors / flippers to drive prices so far beyond any semblance of rationality.

> "Computers also aren't really all that much cheaper now either."

Depends on how you define "cheaper computers". Over the years, $1000 home computer is consistently far more powerful with far more storage, memory, and features than that same $1000 would have bought you the year before. We also now have nifty toys like the single board computer market (Raspberry Pi, etc) weighing in at the $5-50 USD price range on average, and smart-phones in a wide range of prices (which are basically just a "pocket computer") far more powerful than entire desktop systems of decades past.

> Electronics are frankly only so important.

> Housing(ownership especially) and education are actually things that underpin so many other societal problems that we as a country should have never allowed lax interest rate policy and Chinese investors / flippers to drive prices so far beyond any semblance of rationality.

Must agree with these points pretty much entirely though…

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