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Comment by AussieWog93 | Hacker News Reader

>To provide further context, I had a staff member quit a couple weeks ago, because I do not pay a "livable wage", while this staff member only worked 2 days a week based on their availability. I am not sure how to address this kind of issue.

Possibly dumb question, but how much do you pay per hour and how much are the rents in your local area?

I only have one employee working around 15 hours a week at A$28/hr (minimum wage is around A$26/hr for "casual" employees with no set hours or paid leave), but that's enough to cover all living expenses in shared accomodation plus a bit extra.

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I am not at US$20(yours converted) probably closer to US$14-15 on average, but midgrade COL is 800-100 2bed/1200-1500 3bed/1500-2100 4bed in my area renting, and probably 20%-25% less buying. Staff is 98% under 23.

Key detail seems to be that shared accommodation is very undesirable for my staff, at least those few that live outside the family home.

Man, the rent really is too damn high (we see similar prices in Melbourne, AU, albeit with better conditions for workers).

I wonder how many issues of inequality and low living standards would simply disappear if we as a society simply decided to enact policies to drive the cost of housing down as low as possible, rather than inflating it and making it artificially scarce.

That problem not only exists with housing. It also exists with money.

I mean. People want their houses to be expensive. They also want their money to become expensive (deflation). It really doesn't make sense to me.

In theory expensive housing makes it easier to build more of it. That law of supply and demand doesn't really exist because it is not a free market. It's actually kind of funny. It's the subversion of the free market. As land and the house that sits on top of the land gets more expensive people want to reduce supply. They use politics to basically run what amounts to a housing cartel. You won't sell your house so that apartments can be built. Your neighbor isn't allowed to build them either.

The ship has sailed on that one.

You would have to somehow transform 50+ years of suburban sprawl into a higher-density, less car dependent living arrangement, that's also _cheaper_ than the current one, and affordable to e.g. restaurant and retail workers.

While you've described the ideal case, I don't think it's true that the ship has sailed on affordable housing.

At least in Australia, most of the increase in value comes from speculators and investors taking advantage of very generous tax concessions (negative gearing, capital gains tax reductions, reserve bank handing out low-interest loans to property investors).

Rental vacancy rates in Sydney and Melbourne have remained pretty much static over the past decade (excluding COVID), yet prices have soared by 60-70%.

In theory capital gains on land should be taxed 100%. The problem is that you still need people to do things like renovate the house. Valuing the land separately is difficult. It's much easier to just set a fixed rate based on what the land is zoned for which means straight up land value taxes are easier to administer.

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