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- Hacker News
- Many of the issues that are currency related. The same labor being priced in different currency having different value is the most major issue. When a currency dives, then labor gets discounted due to inflation.by silverFork
- Lots of vibes in the comments and not enough citations.
- The majority of the affordability crisis stems from car dependency and excessive need for infrastructure due to bad zoning policy.by oatmeal1
- The article is light on concrete policy suggestions.
One possibility is "adjust the minimum wage for inflation," but they seem to be against this: https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=the+eco...
by verteu - by Avicebron
- A group of people unaffected by a problem will rarely correctly handle the problem. And the further they are away from it, the further from 'correctly handle' will be their handling.
Most of the people responsible for Government decisions are fairly well insulated from most crises, hence the crises will continue and grow.
by BLKNSLVR - This misses the primary cause. There's an affordability crisis because most of the capital continues to concentrate in the hands of a small set of people who maximally extract rents. As one small example, private equity buys up businesses of all kinds and extracts a rent; both the consumer and the worker suffer.
If you said during the feudal era "there is an affordability crisis: the peasants don't have money to buy castles," perhaps you were right. But the solution was to revolt against the king.
by jsrozner - > They should lift incomes, not suppress prices
I think this misses the psychology of inflation.
If wages go up 20%, and prices go up 15%, everyone is better off and got a 5% raise, right?
Go poll people that experienced that and they won't tell you they're celebrating being 5% richer, they'll tell you they're outraged about the 15% inflation.
Psychologically they'll believe they earned that 20% raise through hard work. Putting in extra hours to get that promotion. But then the inflation robbed them of their 20% raise, and turned it into a measly 5% raise. They'll be outraged.
Politicians get this. No one will credit politicians for raising average wages, people will believe they earned their raise themselves. But there's lots of votes available for lowering prices.
by taylortbb