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Comment by jackcosgrove | Hacker News Reader

I find discussions of economic desert rarely get anywhere since everyone has a different idea of what is deserved.

I like to talk about incentives. We have a massive under supply of housing across the developed world, in part because so much labor is training for desk jobs rather than construction jobs.

If you want to solve the housing problem, you need to change the incentives for young people to shun construction jobs. That means more money and eventually status for manual laborers and less money and eventually status for desk jockeys.

That's just one example.

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I was a project manager in the construction industry for 7 years, then another 4 in real estate investment. This wouldn't work, I'm too tired to go into it and it would take a few thousand words to even start explain why it wouldn't. In theory it could work if new construction was subsidized and price fixed on a per square foot/meter basis but free markets are the "enemy" here and there's hundreds of different inputs to consider and balance.

Simply paying people more (and just fyi, we already do this. Get a quote for a kitchen remodel in any major metro and you'll realize real quick that there's carpenters making more than mid level SWEs) isn't going to motivate young people to break their bodies, work all day in the sun and shorten the length of their careers by 10-15 years compared to a desk job. There's a ton of reasons why young people don't want to dedicate their life to manual labor (and for good reason), neither money or nor status are the sole drivers here. Its simply not a great existence and is less rewarding all around, no matter how much you make. This is sort of why I don't see the argument against looser immigration policies, as the incentives you're mentioning actually exist in those communities, but that is a whole other can of worms I'm not going to get into.

I find it hard to believe the lack of housing is caused by a labor shortage in construction.

The lack of housing is due to incentives. Investors aren't going to increase supply and in return decrease their margins, they'll just make their money work somewhere else. Free markets work against us here, this sort of thing has to be addressed via price-fixing/subsidies.

The incentives are aligned for builders (who want to build housing for money) and buyers (who want to pay money for housing). What's getting in the way is overly restricted zoning, including single-family-unit only, and minimum parking requirements.

The free market is the solution here, what's holding it back is zoning.

As I said, it's one factor. You can search for "construction industry labor shortage" and find lots of articles. This one has an overview from an econ perspective https://www.econlib.org/archives/2017/04/how_can_there_b.htm...

Manual laborers (distinct from skilled labor like plumbers or electricians) will never have high status because the job is, relatively speaking, easy to attain. The pay will certainly fix the staffing problem but it will never be a high status career unless the pay gets you to a cushy retirement 15 years earlier than a desk job.

It does get you retirement 15 years earlier than a desk job, but usually due to your body falling apart at 50 and you're then poor and in pain the rest of your life. I used to see it all the time.

Housing problem is more about politics + zoning and minimum parking requirements. To build more housing you need space and demand and usually zoning+pk mins are the opposite. Also, in other areas like EU housing is a problem for another reasons like bureaucracy, few authorisations from city council, the lobby of home owners to keep supply low, the lobby from car companies (no parking and more density means cars less needed)

The construction jobs even if in demand, usually can be filled with ppl from poorer countries, so it's not such a big problem

Housing crisis is more of a political issue than supply/demand i feel like

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