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Comment by evnc | Hacker News Reader

This makes sense in an economics-textbook kind of way; but systematically excluding low- and middle-income people from a given city would not turn out well in reality, I think.

All cities need janitors, teachers, baristas, grocery clerks, garbage collectors, etc. in order to function, and those people have to live somewhere at least within a reasonable commuting distance to the city. You can't have all the garbage collectors move out to Bakersfield and have San Francisco _just_ be a citadel of software engineers, unless the software engineers haul their own garbage, or the garbage collectors in SF also get paid $100k+ per year.

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Doesn't that dilemma also have an econ 101 answer though?

The teachers, janitors, baristas, etc will move to the location that gives them a better quality of life. If they decide that's not San Francisco, they can move to a better city. If SF wants them back, SF can sweeten the deal for them.

I guess it's kinda sad that not everyone who wants to live in SF gets to, but I'm not sure how "closing the door" is any more fair.

I think that "SF can sweeten the deal for them", while true in theory, does a lot of work in glossing over exactly how it could sweeten the deal for them. By offering higher pay? Or perhaps by somehow providing more affordable housing?

Which (as I understand it) is kind of the topic of this whole sub-discussion: it is not easy to find a solution which will sweeten the deal for them (aka: make it economically feasible and attractive for low/middle income people to live and work in a city with a housing shortage and high housing costs). Rent control is one such proposed solution. It has its benefits and drawbacks, of course, as evidenced by all the debate about it here.

I don't think they actually have a choice though. In person jobs are available in specific locations

I think that's an important issue. If there isn't a real choice about where to live, it's a much bigger problem. I guess I'm under the impression that the labor market is pretty tight across the country right now. I was under the impression that people had pretty good opportunities if they moved out of SF/Seattle/whatever, but I guess I haven't seen real data to back that up.

It's a self solving problem though. If businesses _need_ janitors and there are very few janitors around, those remaining ones can charge very high rates for their work.

Then you either pay very high rates for basic labor or you push the government to build cheaper housing. It all fixes it self.

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