>> "More than half say their rent is at least 10% higher than it was six months ago, and in seven say rents have increased at least 20%."
And it's not just businesses of course. we all know how high rents have gotten in residential.
but, what really gets me is that it does NOT have to be this way. I've been reading Henry david thoreau a writer from 200 years ago and I was stunned about how much higher their standard of living was for shelter.
Here are some figures from thoreau's book walden:
Unskilled labor was paid 1$ per day
Skilled labor 1.50$ to 2$ per day
Land was 8$ per acre
Average Houses cost 800 days of unskilled labor (800$)
Rent for a "Spacious apartment" with lots of bells and whistles was 50$/yr (25-100$/yr) so about 50 days of labor per year.
Now, look how far we've fallen in the last 200 years:
at 100$ a day for unskilled labor
The average house now costs 3000 days of unskilled labor plus another 2000 days for property taxes over 50 years. -> that's 5000 days almost 6 times more than 200 years ago.
Apartments: for 50 days of unskilled labor, thats 5000$ a year, you couldn't even rent a room for that much.
* The spacious apartment Henry described included the following: "Rumford fireplace, Venetian blinds, Copper pump and many more things"
Our standard of living for providing shelter has dropped so significantly, that now it takes 30 years to pay off a house whereas back then it took only 10 years, with higher interest rates too! thoreau felt even this was too long and too much of burden, so we went off into the woods and built himself a nice little cabin for just 28$ (cost of building material)
And yes, they didn't have electricity and some of the things we have today. so, there are some differences.
Did we simply get worse at building shelter? No, of course not. The problem is all regulation and zoning and land use policy. Are our regulations so precious that we would give up so much?
Shelter and housing whether its for business or residential doesn't need to be so scarce or hard to come by: it's a political choice people have made.
I agree it's those damn regulations like lousy "worker protections" and boring stupid taxes like SS and "unemployment" back in my day you'd show up to a group of men pick out the 5-10 strongest and give em 5 bucks at the end of the day if they survived. I don't understand why we can't go back to that, I mean I hear people complaining about lead all the time but I drank out of lead plumbing all my life and am fine.
I mean seriously this minimum wage crap to makes things so expensive, plus I lost half my workforce when I couldn't send 12 year olds down to the mines anymore.
Like I am sympathetic to your argument but to compare the standard of living between now and Therou using one variable and then blaming it on regulations is absurd.
Also you say no electricity very flippantly I don't know about you but the thought of not having to start a fire in the morning when it is 3 degrees outside in order to have warmth is appealing toe.
EDIT:
I think you're saying that the overall compensation for workers was lower then (due to fewer sick days, all the things you mentioned etc) than now due to lack of regulation. What the stats say, is that compensation was actually much higher back then than now. You got paid 1/800th of a house per day whereas today, you get paid 1/5000th of a house per day.
The regulations I'm talking about that account for the cost of housing are things that allow builders to provide more cost effective buildings. Afterall what other inputs are there: land, cost of labor, building materials and the cost of dealing with regs (non-labor related).
I mean if I could get a mid 1800s house for 800 days of unskilled labor (~80k) and hire someone to wire it for electricity (~20k) that would be an excellent deal compared to what's available.
don't forget, these days, that once you "pay for it", you'll pay another 50-100% of it's value in rent to the gov "property taxes" over the next 50 years.
> The problem is all regulation and zoning and land use policy
I don't think that's it. There is more than enough affordable housing and developable land in the US, but it's in places that nobody wants to live - because the local economy is crap. It's crap because jobs there are gone. They all moved to dense expensive cities.
The answer shouldn't have to be that we need to cram more people in those cities, and then require everyone there to get a masters in CS in order to live well.
Is it regulation though? Back then there were far fewer people and major social changes were happening - agriculture was rapidly transforming, industrialisation was was just starting, America was a frontier.
Now there are too many people trying to live close to available jobs, agriculture has mechanized meaning there are fewer jobs in rural locations, America industrialised then peaked and de-industrialised a bit, companies are automating processes. All these changes, I don't think you can confidently point to regulation as a single or primary issue.
Rather than look that far to the past, it would probably be better to identify policy that can help in the present and future. Sure, the past can provide lessons, but we can't idealize it or just transfer what worked when there were only 9 million people in the USA.
it's true, population growth is a huge burden to prosperity. but i think it could be mitigated by building more and smaller cities, say in the 10k to 50K range. all you need is to provide companies with incentives for the first 10 or 20 years. Once the jobs go out there, the population will follow.
but it's also alot more than just population growth. you'd think there would have been at least some technological advancements in the last 200 years that could drive down the cost a little bit and instead we're up x2 to x3 or more in some areas. Something has gone seriously wrong.
House size must also play a factor. I did a quick search and it appears to play a major factor and house sizes have gone up massively. Takes longer, more material, more people to build those McMansions with all the crazy gables.
Prefab houses can go up pretty quickly but they don't seem that popular. If they were more popular then maybe they'd gain a scale that would make them a much cheaper option.
You understand that the relatively low cost of living until the last 50 years or so was built on the systematic oppression of minorities and women, right?
That's an interesting theorey. If it's correct that could explain it.
But, I just checked the demographics in Massachusets in the 1800s and it shows that there were 0 slaves. And it looks like minorities were in very very small numbers:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1800_United_States_census
I don't think the labor supply of oppressed minorities was influential enough to drive down the cost of labor. Yes, for railroads sure but not for construction of buildings.
Oppression is not localized. A country or company that profits from plantations can reap the benefits from far away. As a simple example, think of sugar plantations in the Caribbean being exploited by men across the ocean.
Are you claiming there are no other sources of price changes between now and 200 years ago than the social changes for women and minorities? And that the changes from the last 50 years or so caused the 6x price increase in housing?
Maybe that would be an explanation for USA, except that the same phenomenon occurs in many other countries, all over the world, where the current generation is no longer able to buy houses as easily as their grandparents, even if in those countries it cannot be said that 50 years ago or 80 years ago there was any kind of systematic oppression of minorities and women, which could have affected in any way the ratio between house prices and salaries.
And it's not just businesses of course. we all know how high rents have gotten in residential.
but, what really gets me is that it does NOT have to be this way. I've been reading Henry david thoreau a writer from 200 years ago and I was stunned about how much higher their standard of living was for shelter.
Here are some figures from thoreau's book walden:
Unskilled labor was paid 1$ per day
Skilled labor 1.50$ to 2$ per day
Land was 8$ per acre
Average Houses cost 800 days of unskilled labor (800$)
Rent for a "Spacious apartment" with lots of bells and whistles was 50$/yr (25-100$/yr) so about 50 days of labor per year.
Now, look how far we've fallen in the last 200 years: at 100$ a day for unskilled labor The average house now costs 3000 days of unskilled labor plus another 2000 days for property taxes over 50 years. -> that's 5000 days almost 6 times more than 200 years ago.
Apartments: for 50 days of unskilled labor, thats 5000$ a year, you couldn't even rent a room for that much.
* The spacious apartment Henry described included the following: "Rumford fireplace, Venetian blinds, Copper pump and many more things"
Our standard of living for providing shelter has dropped so significantly, that now it takes 30 years to pay off a house whereas back then it took only 10 years, with higher interest rates too! thoreau felt even this was too long and too much of burden, so we went off into the woods and built himself a nice little cabin for just 28$ (cost of building material)
And yes, they didn't have electricity and some of the things we have today. so, there are some differences.
Did we simply get worse at building shelter? No, of course not. The problem is all regulation and zoning and land use policy. Are our regulations so precious that we would give up so much?
Shelter and housing whether its for business or residential doesn't need to be so scarce or hard to come by: it's a political choice people have made.