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This is widely believed, but not true: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N.

There is a real issue that housing is unreasonably expensive in many areas, which we could fix via the innovative strategy of not making it illegal to build housing.

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Now plot that wage plot against productivity, or corporate profit, or any US stock index, or as you said: housing costs. Real wages are not keeping up with anything. It's not just housing.

That data exists.

Here is real wages with cost of living factored in for a bunch of locations in the US. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/release?rid=439

This data shows that real wages are rising even with cost of living factored in.

The price of food/groceries has doubled over the last few years. The price of new cars is also much higher than it has been. All money I used to allocate to eating out in restuarants now goes to groceries. My next car purchase will be a used car. So there are workarounds for now, but if the trend doesn't stop, soon there will be no more workarounds. Only so many people can get the high-wage jobs.

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