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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   36356 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 10, 2023

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Maybe we should start with building more housing.

You can’t build enough housing when you import a million or so illegal immigrants every few years not counting foreign visa holders. Every country that has this “replacement” level immigration naturally runs out of housing

Why is every anti-immigration argument like this? Just put 'immigration' next to a superficially related BAD THING and declare immigration is THE cause of the bad thing. If a few million immigrants every few years overwhelms the natural supply of housing, how on earth did the world population 10x in a few hundred years without mass homelessness? Population growth in the US is slowing, not increasing, despite immigration. And the answer is just ... they built more houses and cities and towns, farmed more food and paved more roads. Which we, physically, and economically, could easily do.

This is complete nonsense. US population growth has been slowing for decades even with immigration, and the barriers to building more housing are all completely artificial.

You can’t build enough housing when you import a million or so illegal immigrants every few years not counting foreign visa holders. Every country that has this “replacement” level immigration naturally runs out of housing

The US is very empty and rarely builds up. It has depopulating towns and cities. There is nothing natural about its lack of housing.

The homeless problem in US cities is not a result of a lack of housing, and framing it that way is just an effort to push policies that have little to do with homelessness.

Maybe, but I wasn't talking about homelessness.

You can’t

That's quitter talk, you absolutely can build enough housing, it's just a question of if the will to do so exists and what we consider to be adequate housing.

Sure, we can build giant Krushchevskies but that just drives up the price of single family homes not located nearby while not actually addressing America's housing problems because American housing problems are mostly not due to shortage, they're due to non-optimal distribution.

The market has historically relied on supply and demand, not will. Are you saying you want the Gov to make commie blocks for everyone? Why not just stop the replacement migration?

The housing market is artificially constrained on the supply side. Reduce the power of local governments to block development and you’ll get more housing supply.

I'm not saying I want anything, I'm saying that it's not a question of "can't" but "won't".

There are a few different ways to approach the problem of "insufficient houses to meet demand", ranging from building commie blocks/pods all the way to just dropping regulations and allowing shanty towns to spring up.

I really hate when someone says they can't do something when they actually mean they won't do something.

I am pretty sure that @Mer simply wants to remove existing impediments to building housing. Then, the market will take care of the problem, as it has in places like Houston.

Or, of course, government can subsidize the building of housing, thereby shifting the supply curve. No "commie blocs" needed!

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