What would be the point? The residential demand is only there because that's where the offices are.
But the support has no reason to exist without the offices. The offices are the cause, and everything else is the effect.
No, that's wrong. Cities develop for painfully obvious reasons. There are two:
1. The government needs an administrative or military hub and constructs a city to be that hub. This is only moderately sensitive to location, but it involves offices being designated to exist in a particular location and a city growing to support them. Note that there are many, many historical examples of this in which the city came into existence by government decree; it was not necessary for anyone to be living there beforehand. Offices were necessary, and sufficient.
2. Work needs to be done in a particular location. Sea trade happens at a port (and San Francisco is just such a city, though the port is now dead); river trade happens along a river; mining happens at a mineral deposit. This case also involves offices coming into existence and a city growing to support them. But unlike the first case, it's pretty sensitive to location; the hub that supports a port needs to be coastal.
Without the offices, there is no reason for a city to exist at all. Some industries may die and be replaced by other industries that take advantage of the local concentration of people in an existing city. But if every industry dies, which is what eliminating the offices means, the city will die too.
The people at the mineral deposits do not need offices either … they are working in the mines or operating equipment.
The vast majority of people that need offices for work can work almost anywhere.
(Offices are of course required at a mine too, but a comparatively tiny number of them.)
- a lot of space that was empty was still under long term commercial leases
- there was less demand to live in some of the cities that had a glut of office space, and especially those neighborhoods
- would a lot of office buildings even make good residential buildings? I don't think this could be a fast or cheap conversion in most cases
This means that it is almost always better to have an empty space than an occupied one that you lowered the rent on--I've seen quite a bit of commercial real estate unoccupied for going on 5+ years now.
This merry-go-round will continue until everything crashes simultaneously.
Small people screwed about it the most. Most literallu gain nothing in this wealth redistribution scheme.
There are other factors too.
The noticeable thing in the US, relative to the rest of the world, is the level of fiscal and monetary stimulus. This wasn't only Biden, it was thrown into the economy at a time of significant supply shortages and when people were suddenly accumulating large cash balances. It is a crazy situation. Obviously, prices will rise and soak up all that excess demand but: inflation near 10%, interest rates 1%...wow, it is impossible to look at that and conclude anything other than politics has totally debauched monetary policy.
It is also entertaining to go back and read the views of some people (the usual candidates) who were loudly insisting that inflation wasn't going to rise, then that is would be temporary, then that is was due to Putin...this should impress upon the public that economists don't know better, they have no credibility (extraordinary given that the economic logic has dictated policy for close to three decades, they were regarded as omnipotent by politicians).
With regards to President Biden, he will have to be held responsible for applying all out sanctions which have not been able to achieve their objectives. If the goal of the sanctions was to stop the war, that has not happened in last 45 days. We don't know how difficult life has been for the average Joe in Russia from those sanction bites due to the censorship in media in both west and Russia. It certainly has however affected the life of the average Joe here and not for good. But, we are told this is at the expense of our moral victory.
Biden administration has cornered themselves as well into an unnecessary conflict with little chance of an exit ramp. Dangerous stuff.
“These episodes of substantive Russia-NATO cooperation undermine the argument that NATO expansion has always and continuously been the driver of Russia’s confrontation with the West over the last thirty years.”
The article you linked is all over the place with its reasoning. How does it reconcile the two above points? There is a great deal of hand waving with a sole focus on democratic models of government…sounds straight out of the CIA playbook that attempted to justify the US tangled up in so many conflicts for the sake of democracy.
Also, who said NATO expansion has always been the driver of confrontation?
And finally, Ukraine is and has been a far cry from an independent democracy. It is a fractious country that has clear divisions of tribal and ethnic conflict. Their elections and politics have been heavily influenced by Russia and the United States. Biden has been at the center of heavy US influence in a huge country that has been the source of many wars against Russia for centuries. Ignoring the perspective of Russia and only focusing on democracy is critically short-sighted.
"Putin Price hike" is just alliteration, its not scapegoating everything on Putin, its reducing the expected constriction of energy on the market to the geopolitical catalyst in response to Putin's actions. This constriction is not nearly as heavy as it could be, with mostly just a few large US/EU private sector companies choosing not to trade Russian oil and gas right now. The oil and gas is not sanctioned right now. Even this explanation is the beginning of a dissertation that will be irrelevant in a few weeks, so it might make more sense why a reductive 3 word phrase is chosen.
Of course they're going to get away with this. It is politically unfavorable to say "our actions rose gas prices". If the media is operating in your favor just go for it.
If you wanted an indication that some actual humans understood the doublespeak, well now you know that I do, and largely don't care. I follow the macroeconomic environment pretty closely, politicians are a lever too.
Where I'm currently at is that Biden/the US taking action to try to flood the market with their oil reserves and bring down prices is going to be mostly show, as the oil reserves will just need to be topped up again and very quickly. So this means supply and demand for oil has not changed at all, not even in the near term. The market via oil prices is still digesting what the price should be in light of Russian's actions and has not finished even doing that, with an initial overreaction (margin call) and just settling in the $93/barrel range for now. I don't think US oil reserves, for example, is having any effect on that. Just a small tangent to show how I think, in light of political speak which I consider benign and not relevant enough to be as passionate about as you are.
Now, inflation was up before that, definitely, in a way that it hadn't been since 2008. But it got a bit spur from Putin's non-war war.
* Trump tax cuts contribute to deficit and demand
* COVID stimulus contribute to deficit and demand
* COVID causes supply shortages, with same demand, so therefore higher prices (see markups on cars).
* Putin has to go and make it worse with an invasion, pushing up energy costs, which are part of the cost of everything.
On vacation unfortunately. Even HNrs appear married to their political parties.