To be fair, I am going to concede your points here. However, the Heritage Foundation and the Rand Corporation both found enough merit to the EPI arguments to form rebuttals/supporting evidence based upon same. So for the purposes of this thread, I’ll probably just continue using them, citing Rand/Heritage as an argument of authority. 
And time served. And amount I would get paid to reword all this.
But, seriously: point taken and I will keep those cites handy. Thank you!
Yeah, I’m looking at relocating to Idaho Falls, and most of the advice I’m getting currently (from my employers and co-workers living there) is… wait, and continue working remotely as long as it is feasible; every house on the market becomes a bidding war, and there just isn’t enough to satisfy the needs of everybody moving in. Heck, that’s why I got a new job there in the first place; I’ve been creating subdivision plat after subdivision plat for the area for six months, with no signs of stopping…
I was fooling around on Fred today and remembered your question. There’s not a lot of Student Aid data, but this chart suggests a policy change made in 2009/2010 which exploded the dollar amount of student loans the US Government owned/backed.
I don’t know if there was a policy change involved in that, but rather, a recession where lots of people found themselves out of a job.
It was a time when quite a number of people went back to school to learn a new skill in order to be able to reenter the workforce.
It’s when I went back to school, and I had quite a number of other non-traditional students in my classes.
That’s the same here. What used to be called the Rathdrum Prairie is becoming the Rathdrum Sprawl of very expensive houses with no parks or other planned infrastructure like roads, water, or sewer because…Idaho. We don’t need no stinking community and housing planning!
All those people moving in to Idaho must be moving away from somewhere. Seems like there must be an oversupply of houses wherever that is, and prices would be coming down.
Yeah, no. Can’t speak much for Portland, but Seattle is continuing to grow like crazy. And we’re not being badly run. Our problems almost entirely stem from our success - property values have been skyrocketing like crazy - I mean, my house is up probably 60, 70% since I bought it in 2016 - and as a result, it’s an expensive place to live, and homelessness has become much more visible. I know this doesn’t fit your ideological model of how the world works, but when facts and your ideology collide, you have a decision to make, don’t you?
It’s odd. According to this article, Seattle proper lost households, mainly to the communities right around Seattle. You’d think this would lower house costs but they indeed skyrocketed.
I have friends that moved from Shoreline to Tacoma for a bigger, better house. One of them commutes to Seattle. No thank you very much!
Guys, Wall Street now owns one of every 7 houses in America. That’s why prices don’t go down - because the financialization of America has finally devolved from capitalists giving regulated loans to capitalists giving unregulated loans to capitalists just buying the houses themselves and turning us all into renters.
Great system you’re arguing for here, Sam.
This is why my personal advocation is for a national property tax.
The Postal Service data never seems to be particularly high quality, but it’s generally available first. The Census data shows an in-city population increase between April 1, 2020 and April 1, 2021, despite a number of people moving out due to COVID (a trend that seems to be reversing, even with Delta putting a damper on things.
I would never car commute that. But there’s a train (Sounder) that sounds potentially pleasant!
Thanks for the newer article! People around these parts still complain loudly about Californians and Seattleites driving up the housing costs spit!
They are also scooping them up to rent on Airbnb. Here is one company willing to spend $1.5B to buy them. I’m sure they are not the only ones doing this. The rich are buying more and more land and houses and keeping them out of the reach of more and more. God bless greedy capitalism!
Who’s buying the houses? Investors amassing thousands of Airbnb rentals – Orange County Register.
Capitalism and feudalism, two great tastes that go great together!
Capitalism segues into feudalism? I think you are onto something!
Not necessarily. It’s probably analogous to the old saying: if the dumbest Californian moves to Texas, the average IQ of both states goes up.
I’d take the guy’s politics with a grain of salt. It’s largely pandering to the locals.
Basic logistics dictates that keeping costs low in a rocket development program means keeping it in the continental US. Orbital mechanics dictates that if you’re going to non-polar orbits, there is the east coast and Texas. The east coast is too expensive and built up. So that means Texas.
Texans are pretty gullible, so a little anti-Californian pandering goes a long way. Never mind that the engineering centers are still in CA.
Been seeing this flash in and out for a few minutes… guys, I think he’s gonna let us have it!
The financial institutions have been sitting on piles of cash, and inevitably they decided that it was time to buy up property. No surprise there, and given that we’re now addicted to interest free expansion of the balance sheet and unwilling to make the plutocrats repay any of the debt, it’s probably a fair bet that the next financial crisis is being born.
Article is paywalled but I’m guessing it has to do with Pacaso (not to be confused with the late great painter).
20 minutes now! The Google algo must be sweating it from all the research Sam is doing.