Hacker News Reader

Comment by a_bonobo | Hacker News Reader

Western countries (such as OP's, and mine) have been counter-acting lowering birth rates with higher immigration rates. It's become a political issue in Australia now with a housing and a cost of living-crisis, in times of record-level immigration [1]. It doesn't look like OP accounts much for that.

Yes, overall birth rates might be going down, but that doesn't mean that there will be fewer people where OP lives. Chances are the rest of the world wants to live where OP lives. I don't see Australian house prices going down any time soon, and I don't see these trends reverse in my lifetime. And I'm not even that old!

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/mar/21/migra...

View on HN

Exactly. In the EU, most hot cities have become prohibitively expensive in terms of rental and purchase prices, basically because that is where most jobs are. I don't see a reversal of this trend happening anytime soon, unless there is a massive shift towards remote work. If anything, I think things are becoming worse.

I wish I was wrong, as it is a nightmare. Before COVID, a nice rental in the Oxbridge area would cost 1/3 of an average salary. Fast forward to 2024, it is now 1/2. Lot's of people are struggling. I heard the buy-to-let era was over, and that the market was cooling down, but I don't see that turning into lower prices.

And even if the population decreases, still (almost) everybody has to live in one of the big cities or centers of tourism to get a job. The irony is that only wealthier people, who can work remotely, can afford to live in villages where living costs are low. Because there is (almost) no work and (almost) no young people live there (any more).

There are plenty of jobs for oil and gas workers in North Dakota. Plastics manufacturing is booming in rural Ohio.

Nobody wants to live in those places, we just complain that it is too expensive in San Francisco and Vancouver

Even if somebody would have been talking about the US, I would call neither "North Dakota" nor "Ohio" villages. Both are bigger than many european countries, and you certainly are going to find regions were the population increases and some where it decreases.

Well, North Dakota is pretty close. It is indeed very large but its population is only slightly larger than Luxembourg.

As rural jobs grow, so too do prices[1]. I don’t think this trend is still there, but that’s also because the job market is not as strong as it was during the fracking boom.

If there were meaningful numbers of well paying jobs in inexpensive rural places, they would cease to be either rural or inexpensive.

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2014/2/19/5425040/williston-north-d...

This is so wrong. US population growth rate, including immigrants, has been trending down for decades. Even the raw number has hovered around 2M per year. While building technologies, number of laborers, and financing has mostly grown over the same time too. We managed to build enough housing to hold the next 2M population generation before, we should absolutely be able to do it today.

Can, but wont

Reply on news.ycombinator.com