If AI reduces the need for human labor I suspect that there won't be much need for economic migration. You can build a data center anywhere even places without much domestic talent and if AI is that economically important there will be plenty of cash to build more chip fabs.
That's a world where suddenly the head start western countries have starts to look a lot less important -- especially with robotics. At that point it might be better to be somewhere with lots of natural resources than somewhere with a highly educated population.
Regarding housing I'm glad you are addressing the point that advocates so often pretend doesn't exist: building more housing locally during a housing crisis is likely to attract enough people to the area to make any effect on prices minimal.
I think the best way to frame it is to acknowledge this point and sell it as doing your part for the country as a whole. People understand that when they vote their ballot isn't likely to decide the issue but they are doing their part. They can understand this.
Linking it to prices and other effects seems harder to justify and I worry about backlash if people vote for more housing and then don't see promises materialize. The concerns about prices and jobs are also country wide and harder to trace to a single cause. This isn't quantum mechanics, I think we should be able to convince people that you need to build more houses in the country for people to be able to afford them.
Here’s a plausible counterfactual story for how Smith wins: Hoover gets hit with a massive scandal six weeks before the election, putting Smith over the top.
Smith unexpectedly finds himself president. What happens?
I think there's a column in this but actually if AI structurally breaks down labor demand it revives Malthusian economics for the first time since Malthus. The Yglesian observation is that Malthus was completely right about an economic reality that ended exactly as he was writing: people went from drains on resources to being productive resources in their own right. But if AI is doing all the production and humans are living in UBI, each marginal human is another slice of the pie and critically does nothing to grow the pie. Malthus is back, baby.
Humans living under UBI would still be able to contribute and grow the pie, they just wouldn't be as good at it as AI. I expect many humans would still get jobs to supplement their UBI income. Even if AI is better and cheaper in every way, humans could still find work because their jobs would not need to provide them with enough money to live, the UBI would take care of that. Humans would still be a positive, the costs of providing them UBI would be an opportunity cost, not an absolute one.
Imagine if, when automobiles were invented, the government had given UBIs to horses. People would probably find all kinds of useful things for the horses to do, since they wouldn't need to worry about paying for the horses' food and upkeep.
Malthusian dynamics require high fertility, which we don’t have.
If humans are living on UBI, that probably removes the economic opportunity cost of having children (depending on how the UBI is structured) but doesn’t remove the hedonic opportunity cost (it’s more fun to play video games than change diapers and kids are exhausting even if you love them and are dedicated to perpetuating your family).
I’m not sure what the net effect on fertility would be from AI-driven End of All Jobs scenarios, but it’s not at all guaranteed to be above replacement rate.
Sure, Malthus's trap is driven by surplus-fueled fertility, while population growth in the AI disempowered future is more likely to be due to immigrant claimants on the redistributed surplus of automation, but the end result is the same. We'll be a giant UAE instead. Children of Men instead of Malthus.
What I'm taking away from this is, as a homeowner, I specifically want expensive new housing built near ME to increase my home value due to its proximity and niceness. What I really don't want is a bunch of shiny new housing built across town, making my neighborhood and house look dumpy.
Scott Wiener has taken active steps toward the goal that California should allow violent rapists to be housed in women’s prisons. Does Matt think this is OK?
I hate to be pedantic here (wait, you're a transphobe, no I don't) but unless your position is that literally no biological female has ever committed a violent rape, then even housing prisoners strictly by biological sex would result in some number of violent rapists being housed in women's prisons.
I think the poll The Argument put out the other day is directionally correct, but frankly, to be able to write up a good story (which is fine), they did't make clear what will likely happen - the people who are very upset at Trump, but are upset Democrats aren't talking about life sentences for shoplifting or whatever, will likely just not vote.
I also think along w/ things being less polarized, in 2006, we were also a few years as opposed to a few months into an unpopular war. If Trump had started the war a year ago and we were still involved, we might be at 2006 GCB numbers.
Polarization also just makes things much, much stickier and persuasion effects much less powerful. Tons of Biden-disapprovers voted Dem in 2022 because they are, in fact, Democrats and want to elect Democrats.
That's not fully right on the response to Social Security. The way the plan actually worked was to hand a bunch of cash to money managers, so everyone would have ended up, on average, worse off on a risk-adjusted basis, but money managers would've ended up with substantially more in management fees. A program that actually limited those investments to extremely low-cost index funds (or was just managed by the government itself) was a non-starter for Republicans, primarily because the goal was not to give people more money, but to give money managers more money.
That's an example of where the precise details make a ton of difference. E.g. that specific scenario probably means Smith is elected without a legislative majority, which means Depression response is negotiated on the spot rather than following the broad contours of the party platforms. At that point the question is almost certainly unanswerable. On the other hand, if it's some broader party-wide scandal-- Teapot Dome 2.0 takes out half the Republican Congress or some shit-- then you'd have a very different situation.
I was unsatisfied with the social security answer and want to know if Matt thinks some sort of privatized model, maybe Singapore or Australia, would be good, actually. Yes I get there’s a “you can’t get there from here” problem. But it seems like we are leaving gazillions of dollars of money on the table by only investing in treasuries. Change my mind!
There's only gazillions of dollars to be made if companies are starved for capital and can put an infusion to good use. Especially given the scale we're talking about (David R. put it at ~40% of the existing global equities market), I'm doubtful.
The question about Israel assumes that a "good ally" of the United States is one who will bend to American will, rather than a country that partners with the US for mutual benefit. It's strange here that the apparently "anti-colonial" left has such a colonial view of US allies, and wants American allies to be client states rather than partners.
The Democrats seemed completely baffled that Biden couldn't convince Israel not to launch strikes against Hezbollah. However, they refused to try understand Israel's domestic politics, which Israel's leaders actually serve. At the time, Hezbollah, Iran’s proxy, had been firing rockets at Israeli cities. Around 80,000 people were displaced from the north as their towns were being pummeled. Israel had avoided a large campaign against Hezbollah for a year at American request, but attacks kept worsening. The Israeli public demanded action, not just on the right but also on the left. What was baffling to me was that Democrats seemed unable to grasp why Israel felt it had to act.
Furthermore, Biden had not taken the Iranian threat seriously. It had unfrozen Iranian assets (which Iran could use for funding its terrorist proxies that are committed to attacking and killing Israelis), not for the large goal of curbing Iran's nuclear program, but for 5 prisoners. Is this America being a "good ally"? Israeli leaders knew they could not take the US seriously for help defending itself against Iran and its allies, so Israel needed to show strength and resolve.
Contrast that with the current situation. The US acted in partnership with Israel to strike Iran after repeated failed negotiations, showing commitment to Israel’s security. It supported action against Hezbollah. This time there was no feigned bewilderment about Israel’s actions, and Israel made real gains in degrading Hezbollah terror infrastructure. Now there is even talk in Lebanon about peace and normalization with Israel, which would be in Israel's interests. This creates political space for Israel to halt operations when it aligns with its partner’s interests.
Analysts in the US need to understand Israeli politics. Those calling to block military aid should recognize that some strands on the Israeli right also support that idea, believing US aid constrains Israel from winning wars. Without US support, Israel may feel more pressure to strike its enemies and less willingness to absorb attacks.
Israel and the United States share a lot of common interests: intelligence sharing, counterterrorism, regional stability, high tech collaborations, democratic values, security.
I agree when the purported American interest is "Israel accepts massive rocket attacks on its population centers from its neighbors who seek to eliminate it", the interests do indeed diverge.
You say, "there is no reason whatsoever in hell that the United States should give a flying fuck about Israeli perception of its own interests, because there is no benefit to the US national interest in doing so." Is this the attitude of a "good ally"?
What I am saying is that the Israel-US relationship should be a partnership based on mutual interests, benefit and security, not a superpower seeking to make smaller countries bend to its will.
We shouldn't be allies with *any* of the Arabs in the region, no matter what funny hats they wear. We don't need that sectarian violence and ethnic tension harshing the West's mellow.
Lumping all housing supply critics together is annoying as it ignores major criticisms that they actually have. Kudos on acknowledging that it is complicated.
Yes, scarcity economics clearly shows that increasing supply of something reduces its value on the market. Most of the criticisms are not based on that, though. Rather, they are based on the facts that you flat out can't build enough stock to drive the prices down in the hot markets and in markets you could succeed, you would be destroying a major source of wealth for locals. There are also some concerns on infrastructure support for new housing in some places.
I'm sympathetic to the idea that homes should not have been a major source of wealth for people. That ship sailed, sadly. I'm also heavily on board with the abundance crowd in thinking we can spend the money to get more infrastructure.
But when people keep using hot markets as their examples, it is rather frustrating. It comes across as sour grapes that you can't get a house in a hot location. Or worse, it gets silly when people think they could drop "affordable" housing in the middle of a city that lower pay just can't afford to live in. If you want teachers/police/etc. to be able to afford to live in a city, pay them enough to be able to afford to live there!
It was very hot for a few years there, and would be obscenely expensive today if they hadn’t met the demand with new supply.
Bringing prices down with new supply only seems impossible to people who don’t understand real estate. Builders will build if they are legally allowed to do it, especially in a hot market where a good return on investment is almost guaranteed.
It was projected to be very hot. The projected demand basically evaporated when a lot of the tech jobs that were going to move there decided not to.
I'm glad they built up a lot. I hope that they land on a good economy and that things work out. I just think it is too soon to call that a success. Too many extra details.
If you say it’s impossible to build enough in hot markets to enable prices to come down so teachers and police would be able to afford to live there, then why do you think it’s possible to pay teachers and police enough to be able to afford to live in the hot market without reducing prices? The issue is that housing is limited, so any house that goes to a teacher or police has to come from someone else. Increasing their pay just makes them outbid each other, making the pay needed get even higher.
Largely, I think we would behoove ourselves to do this in other markets. Which is, honestly, a large part of my complaint against the entire movement.
If we really cared about just affordable housing, the focus would include places like Alabama. And the major employer in many of those places is the local school district. Along with regional hospitals. Two things we are actively hurting with a lot of current policies.
It is not easier to build in smaller markets and there are plenty of movements to do so. The left NIMBYs in Bloomington Indiana are just as fierce as those in New York City. Faced with opposition to build everywhere, a few have attempted to build new cities. Oh boy nothing has received more criticism than those efforts.
Since there's an inability to build anywhere, it kind of makes sense to redouble efforts on the hottest markets where it unlocks the most value.
I would be interested in seeing the criticism for places trying to make new cities. Any good pointers? That feels like something the abundance crowd, specifically, should love?
NIMBY is a thing, to be sure. And largely agreed on doubling down on where you already have presence. At large, you would expect discussion to be around where people live anyway, they are the ones talking.
Do you have any examples that aren't in California? People do seem to complain about anything that happens there. Which, fair that people complain everywhere. All media channels love amplifying California criticism, though.
I would also expect that building in "cheaper" areas should include other states. Particularly ones that are not having resource shortages. Or having wildfires pretty periodically.
Edit: I should say thanks for providing any pointer! :D It is what I asked for.
That is a remarkably ambiguous sentence. I can't tell whether you mean forever criticism of the state of California, criticism of the idea of "California forever," forever criticism that is located within the state of California, California-located criticism of foreverness... I'm not even sure that's all the permutations.
That “etc” is doing a lot of work. Teachers and police are largely paid by the public sector, so their salaries can be adjusted by policy. Most working-class people, though, earn market wages. If housing supply is constrained, raising public sector salaries doesn’t solve the problem. It just increases demand for limited housing and pushes rents higher. Without increasing supply, higher pay alone won’t make a city more affordable. It just reshuffles who can afford to live there.
I mean, you aren't wrong. But the hot markets are dominated by people that make a ton of money. Indeed, for most of them, that is why the costs are so high.
This is a good example of a counter argument folks don't like. If housing is too expensive, why can't we just insist on a minimum wage that is equal to the "living wage" in many places?
Teachers and police don't earn "minimum wage". Here in CA the median teacher pay is ~100k/year and the median police salary is also ~100k/year, while minimum wage for a full time work is ~35k/year ($16.90 per hour).
That isn't what I said, though; which is that nobody proposes raising minimum wage to the living wage as a solution. My intent is that I agree that would be a bad suggestion. Even though it is attacking the same problem using the same general mechanisms.
My assertion is largely that "its complicated" is the answer. And any single minded focus on an elementary limiting factor is almost certainly over simplified to the point of not useful.
Which is why I think, "just build more" is silly as a sole focus. It is the field of dreams approach to getting affordable housing. Largely pushed by people that would refuse to live in a trailer park.
I mean, Austin is a hot market. And housing prices during COVID soared as demand skyrocketted. And then they built a ton of housing, and rents have normalized.
As MY points out, increasing housing supply in one neighborhood, even if it doesn't immediately lead to a drop in housing in that neighborhood, will alleviate costs for somebody somewhere. And overall it will lead to more jobs and economic growth.
Austin was bubbling up to be a hot market around 2020. It fizzled out after many high paying tech jobs canceled.
To put that in perspective, imagine if those jobs had shown up. And continued to show up for another decade. Do we really think that prices would not have continued that upward trend?
Just going to ask a stupid question here and hope someone educates me..
I think the classic YIMBY argument that I encounter on social media or substacks like Matt's is that building new housing, all else equal, results in lower housing costs for classic supply-demand reasons. Now, the all else equal in the previous sentence is doing a lot of work, and in reality not all things are equal. So the YIMBY skeptic points out that actually, building more housing ends up inducing demand for all sorts of other nice things - restaurants, shopping, whatever, all of which ends up driving housing costs up for everyone as more people want to move to the area, or whatever.
So now it becomes a basically empirical question - which of the above happens more often? And from what I've seen here and other similar minded outlets, it is the former, not the latter, even in places like Manhattan where you might expect the latter dynamic to dominate. But now Matt's post suggests to me that, actually, the latter is quite likely, and the supply / demand dynamics I described above may only apply at extremely high levels of generality - i.e. the country level, not the neighborhoods where we are actually building the housing. Which, if true, is a big concession to the NIMBYs! I know the rest of Matt's answer tries to defuse this, but I am not so sure that part is going to be nearly as relevant to anyone already predisposed to NIMBYism...
So I guess the question I have is - what am I missing??
More people in an area can be seen as a nuisance by the existing population. The argument is specifically that the cost of housing in the general area will be lower when new housing is built. The other costs you mentioned are not housing costs, so conflating them doesn't make any sense.
If you want to say that increasing housing density raises prices for everything, what you're essentially saying is that more people in an area create so much more demand it essentially becomes an economic singularity, where the value being created must be skyrocketing in order to be paying for these higher and higher prices. Matt wrote about this here: https://www.slowboring.com/p/what-follows-from-the-idea-that-new
I think the framing is what matters. It's sort of like inflation vs high nominal prices. The problem is that supply really needs to outstrip demand to actually lower prices rather than keep them stable or growing slower vs the current status quo. The reason Austin housing prices have actually dropped so quickly is because they did do a massive build out(and didn't have the type of shortage like LA or NYC) and the layoffs have meant that actually there is a higher supply than meets demand(which is good for a lot of people). The problem is if the entire thing is affordability(not just better jobs, higher gdp and growth) supply actually has to outstrip demand vs just meeting it, particularly when you have such an acute shortage like in LA or NYC, if you don't build out housing quickly past the level of demand but just meet pure demand on the housing side without building out adjacent levels of infrastructure(streets, restaurants, other commerce) the housing prices will stay level, grow slowly or sometimes drop slowly(but not like in the space of couple years like Austin) but you will get some level of higher demand for other services which may increase prices in those other areas. You have to be able to tie affordability with jobs and other types of growth vs affordability coming at the expense of growth vs vice versa. Unfortunately, the actual problem is that there is such a supply shortage and people still want to live in NYC, LA and other big cities that prices are going up without any growth. Austin is the best model but it requires a massive build out at a rapid pace and a different constituency than exist in places like Manhattan or LA.
Nope - I am not missing it. I am probably on your side. But the NIMBYs in my city who are worried about quality of life improvements pricing them out of their homes are not going to be persuaded by this point!
Another reason Al Smith, who was a very weak candidate considering the politics of the time, ended up the nominee was the bitter divisions of the 1924 Dem convention in NYC which was a total trainwreck that went on for more than two weeks: https://www.amazon.com/103rd-Ballot-Robert-Keith-Murray/dp/0062656333
Which is a good reminder why parties don't like the idea of having a Thunderdome Convention (even if the chattering classes spend their careers dreaming of covering one, hence the rage from some media types directed at the the Dems for not having one in 2024).
In MY’s answer he brings up Obama’s desired settlement freeze. What MY left out is Obama got his freeze. Israel issued a moratorium and froze settlements construction between 2009 and 2010.
Never claimed they did. But MY left out the part of the story (critical to the story he was telling) that Israel did freeze settlement construction under Obama.
If AI reduces the need for human labor I suspect that there won't be much need for economic migration. You can build a data center anywhere even places without much domestic talent and if AI is that economically important there will be plenty of cash to build more chip fabs.
That's a world where suddenly the head start western countries have starts to look a lot less important -- especially with robotics. At that point it might be better to be somewhere with lots of natural resources than somewhere with a highly educated population.
Regarding housing I'm glad you are addressing the point that advocates so often pretend doesn't exist: building more housing locally during a housing crisis is likely to attract enough people to the area to make any effect on prices minimal.
I think the best way to frame it is to acknowledge this point and sell it as doing your part for the country as a whole. People understand that when they vote their ballot isn't likely to decide the issue but they are doing their part. They can understand this.
Linking it to prices and other effects seems harder to justify and I worry about backlash if people vote for more housing and then don't see promises materialize. The concerns about prices and jobs are also country wide and harder to trace to a single cause. This isn't quantum mechanics, I think we should be able to convince people that you need to build more houses in the country for people to be able to afford them.
Here’s a plausible counterfactual story for how Smith wins: Hoover gets hit with a massive scandal six weeks before the election, putting Smith over the top.
Smith unexpectedly finds himself president. What happens?
I think there's a column in this but actually if AI structurally breaks down labor demand it revives Malthusian economics for the first time since Malthus. The Yglesian observation is that Malthus was completely right about an economic reality that ended exactly as he was writing: people went from drains on resources to being productive resources in their own right. But if AI is doing all the production and humans are living in UBI, each marginal human is another slice of the pie and critically does nothing to grow the pie. Malthus is back, baby.
Humans living under UBI would still be able to contribute and grow the pie, they just wouldn't be as good at it as AI. I expect many humans would still get jobs to supplement their UBI income. Even if AI is better and cheaper in every way, humans could still find work because their jobs would not need to provide them with enough money to live, the UBI would take care of that. Humans would still be a positive, the costs of providing them UBI would be an opportunity cost, not an absolute one.
Imagine if, when automobiles were invented, the government had given UBIs to horses. People would probably find all kinds of useful things for the horses to do, since they wouldn't need to worry about paying for the horses' food and upkeep.
Malthusian dynamics require high fertility, which we don’t have.
If humans are living on UBI, that probably removes the economic opportunity cost of having children (depending on how the UBI is structured) but doesn’t remove the hedonic opportunity cost (it’s more fun to play video games than change diapers and kids are exhausting even if you love them and are dedicated to perpetuating your family).
I’m not sure what the net effect on fertility would be from AI-driven End of All Jobs scenarios, but it’s not at all guaranteed to be above replacement rate.
Sure, Malthus's trap is driven by surplus-fueled fertility, while population growth in the AI disempowered future is more likely to be due to immigrant claimants on the redistributed surplus of automation, but the end result is the same. We'll be a giant UAE instead. Children of Men instead of Malthus.
What I'm taking away from this is, as a homeowner, I specifically want expensive new housing built near ME to increase my home value due to its proximity and niceness. What I really don't want is a bunch of shiny new housing built across town, making my neighborhood and house look dumpy.
LIMBY - Luxury In My Back Yard!
Scott Wiener has taken active steps toward the goal that California should allow violent rapists to be housed in women’s prisons. Does Matt think this is OK?
I hate to be pedantic here (wait, you're a transphobe, no I don't) but unless your position is that literally no biological female has ever committed a violent rape, then even housing prisoners strictly by biological sex would result in some number of violent rapists being housed in women's prisons.
The genderwang crowd typically makes bad arguments, but this comment is really scraping the bottom of the barrel. wow.
I'll take that as a concession that you have no answer.
I don't need any answer other than that "trans" isn't real.
And I don't need any other ludicrously false claims to know that a block is in order.
On the generic ballot, this is nothing new.
I think the poll The Argument put out the other day is directionally correct, but frankly, to be able to write up a good story (which is fine), they did't make clear what will likely happen - the people who are very upset at Trump, but are upset Democrats aren't talking about life sentences for shoplifting or whatever, will likely just not vote.
I also think along w/ things being less polarized, in 2006, we were also a few years as opposed to a few months into an unpopular war. If Trump had started the war a year ago and we were still involved, we might be at 2006 GCB numbers.
Polarization also just makes things much, much stickier and persuasion effects much less powerful. Tons of Biden-disapprovers voted Dem in 2022 because they are, in fact, Democrats and want to elect Democrats.
That's not fully right on the response to Social Security. The way the plan actually worked was to hand a bunch of cash to money managers, so everyone would have ended up, on average, worse off on a risk-adjusted basis, but money managers would've ended up with substantially more in management fees. A program that actually limited those investments to extremely low-cost index funds (or was just managed by the government itself) was a non-starter for Republicans, primarily because the goal was not to give people more money, but to give money managers more money.
I feel like you dodged the Al Smith question. Let's just say that Al Smith wins due to a last-minute scandal that makes Hoover completely unelectable.
That's an example of where the precise details make a ton of difference. E.g. that specific scenario probably means Smith is elected without a legislative majority, which means Depression response is negotiated on the spot rather than following the broad contours of the party platforms. At that point the question is almost certainly unanswerable. On the other hand, if it's some broader party-wide scandal-- Teapot Dome 2.0 takes out half the Republican Congress or some shit-- then you'd have a very different situation.
I was unsatisfied with the social security answer and want to know if Matt thinks some sort of privatized model, maybe Singapore or Australia, would be good, actually. Yes I get there’s a “you can’t get there from here” problem. But it seems like we are leaving gazillions of dollars of money on the table by only investing in treasuries. Change my mind!
There's only gazillions of dollars to be made if companies are starved for capital and can put an infusion to good use. Especially given the scale we're talking about (David R. put it at ~40% of the existing global equities market), I'm doubtful.
Superannuation as a alternative is like single payer in health care - if we're starting from scratch, probably. But we're not starting from scratch.
It would be good to hear Matt answer that, but in fairness the question was specifically about Bush's plan.
Food for thought, here are some elections that were close that are worth thinking about:
-1796: what if Thomas Jefferson succeeds Washington? (how does Jefferson handle the early French-British conflict?)
-1824: what if John Quincy Adams is never President? (I don't see a good one here)
-1844: what if Henry Clay beats James K Polk (Mexican-American War)
-1876: what if Tilden beats Hayes? (does this meaningfully change the post-Reconstruction Era?)
-1880: what if Hancock wins and Garfield isn't assassinated?
1888: what if Cleveland gets his second term early? (Matt has already discussed this)
1912: what if Teddy gets a 3rd term? (this has been discussed ad nauseam)
1916: what if Wilson is a 1 term POTUS? (mostly on how we handle WWI and its aftermath)
1960: what if Nixon is POTUS early? (mostly on Cold War, and Cuba)
1968: what if the center holds? (Vietnam)
1976: what if Ford wins? (I think this mostly would be about who gets credit on deregulation, this could impact whether Reagan is ever President)
2000: what if Al Gore wins? (9/11)
2016: what if Trump loses? (also discussed by Matt)
Too soon to discuss 2024 IMO
The world if Trump lost in 2016 would've been like 2-3 orders of magnitude better than it is today
Agreed
The question about Israel assumes that a "good ally" of the United States is one who will bend to American will, rather than a country that partners with the US for mutual benefit. It's strange here that the apparently "anti-colonial" left has such a colonial view of US allies, and wants American allies to be client states rather than partners.
The Democrats seemed completely baffled that Biden couldn't convince Israel not to launch strikes against Hezbollah. However, they refused to try understand Israel's domestic politics, which Israel's leaders actually serve. At the time, Hezbollah, Iran’s proxy, had been firing rockets at Israeli cities. Around 80,000 people were displaced from the north as their towns were being pummeled. Israel had avoided a large campaign against Hezbollah for a year at American request, but attacks kept worsening. The Israeli public demanded action, not just on the right but also on the left. What was baffling to me was that Democrats seemed unable to grasp why Israel felt it had to act.
Furthermore, Biden had not taken the Iranian threat seriously. It had unfrozen Iranian assets (which Iran could use for funding its terrorist proxies that are committed to attacking and killing Israelis), not for the large goal of curbing Iran's nuclear program, but for 5 prisoners. Is this America being a "good ally"? Israeli leaders knew they could not take the US seriously for help defending itself against Iran and its allies, so Israel needed to show strength and resolve.
Contrast that with the current situation. The US acted in partnership with Israel to strike Iran after repeated failed negotiations, showing commitment to Israel’s security. It supported action against Hezbollah. This time there was no feigned bewilderment about Israel’s actions, and Israel made real gains in degrading Hezbollah terror infrastructure. Now there is even talk in Lebanon about peace and normalization with Israel, which would be in Israel's interests. This creates political space for Israel to halt operations when it aligns with its partner’s interests.
Analysts in the US need to understand Israeli politics. Those calling to block military aid should recognize that some strands on the Israeli right also support that idea, believing US aid constrains Israel from winning wars. Without US support, Israel may feel more pressure to strike its enemies and less willingness to absorb attacks.
Hezbollah is a good example, but there are others where Israel bent to US demands, including many operations in Gaza.
This common notion that Israel is the tail wagging the dog is simply not true.
100%
Israel and the United States share a lot of common interests: intelligence sharing, counterterrorism, regional stability, high tech collaborations, democratic values, security.
I agree when the purported American interest is "Israel accepts massive rocket attacks on its population centers from its neighbors who seek to eliminate it", the interests do indeed diverge.
You say, "there is no reason whatsoever in hell that the United States should give a flying fuck about Israeli perception of its own interests, because there is no benefit to the US national interest in doing so." Is this the attitude of a "good ally"?
What I am saying is that the Israel-US relationship should be a partnership based on mutual interests, benefit and security, not a superpower seeking to make smaller countries bend to its will.
We shouldn't be allies with *any* of the Arabs in the region, no matter what funny hats they wear. We don't need that sectarian violence and ethnic tension harshing the West's mellow.
Lumping all housing supply critics together is annoying as it ignores major criticisms that they actually have. Kudos on acknowledging that it is complicated.
Yes, scarcity economics clearly shows that increasing supply of something reduces its value on the market. Most of the criticisms are not based on that, though. Rather, they are based on the facts that you flat out can't build enough stock to drive the prices down in the hot markets and in markets you could succeed, you would be destroying a major source of wealth for locals. There are also some concerns on infrastructure support for new housing in some places.
I'm sympathetic to the idea that homes should not have been a major source of wealth for people. That ship sailed, sadly. I'm also heavily on board with the abundance crowd in thinking we can spend the money to get more infrastructure.
But when people keep using hot markets as their examples, it is rather frustrating. It comes across as sour grapes that you can't get a house in a hot location. Or worse, it gets silly when people think they could drop "affordable" housing in the middle of a city that lower pay just can't afford to live in. If you want teachers/police/etc. to be able to afford to live in a city, pay them enough to be able to afford to live there!
Actually you *can* build enough stock to bring down prices in hot markets. Austin did it.
Austin is not a hot market, though?
It was very hot for a few years there, and would be obscenely expensive today if they hadn’t met the demand with new supply.
Bringing prices down with new supply only seems impossible to people who don’t understand real estate. Builders will build if they are legally allowed to do it, especially in a hot market where a good return on investment is almost guaranteed.
It was projected to be very hot. The projected demand basically evaporated when a lot of the tech jobs that were going to move there decided not to.
I'm glad they built up a lot. I hope that they land on a good economy and that things work out. I just think it is too soon to call that a success. Too many extra details.
If you say it’s impossible to build enough in hot markets to enable prices to come down so teachers and police would be able to afford to live there, then why do you think it’s possible to pay teachers and police enough to be able to afford to live in the hot market without reducing prices? The issue is that housing is limited, so any house that goes to a teacher or police has to come from someone else. Increasing their pay just makes them outbid each other, making the pay needed get even higher.
Largely, I think we would behoove ourselves to do this in other markets. Which is, honestly, a large part of my complaint against the entire movement.
If we really cared about just affordable housing, the focus would include places like Alabama. And the major employer in many of those places is the local school district. Along with regional hospitals. Two things we are actively hurting with a lot of current policies.
It is not easier to build in smaller markets and there are plenty of movements to do so. The left NIMBYs in Bloomington Indiana are just as fierce as those in New York City. Faced with opposition to build everywhere, a few have attempted to build new cities. Oh boy nothing has received more criticism than those efforts.
Since there's an inability to build anywhere, it kind of makes sense to redouble efforts on the hottest markets where it unlocks the most value.
I would be interested in seeing the criticism for places trying to make new cities. Any good pointers? That feels like something the abundance crowd, specifically, should love?
NIMBY is a thing, to be sure. And largely agreed on doubling down on where you already have presence. At large, you would expect discussion to be around where people live anyway, they are the ones talking.
Google California forever criticism
Do you have any examples that aren't in California? People do seem to complain about anything that happens there. Which, fair that people complain everywhere. All media channels love amplifying California criticism, though.
I would also expect that building in "cheaper" areas should include other states. Particularly ones that are not having resource shortages. Or having wildfires pretty periodically.
Edit: I should say thanks for providing any pointer! :D It is what I asked for.
That is a remarkably ambiguous sentence. I can't tell whether you mean forever criticism of the state of California, criticism of the idea of "California forever," forever criticism that is located within the state of California, California-located criticism of foreverness... I'm not even sure that's all the permutations.
That “etc” is doing a lot of work. Teachers and police are largely paid by the public sector, so their salaries can be adjusted by policy. Most working-class people, though, earn market wages. If housing supply is constrained, raising public sector salaries doesn’t solve the problem. It just increases demand for limited housing and pushes rents higher. Without increasing supply, higher pay alone won’t make a city more affordable. It just reshuffles who can afford to live there.
I mean, you aren't wrong. But the hot markets are dominated by people that make a ton of money. Indeed, for most of them, that is why the costs are so high.
This is a good example of a counter argument folks don't like. If housing is too expensive, why can't we just insist on a minimum wage that is equal to the "living wage" in many places?
Teachers and police don't earn "minimum wage". Here in CA the median teacher pay is ~100k/year and the median police salary is also ~100k/year, while minimum wage for a full time work is ~35k/year ($16.90 per hour).
That isn't what I said, though; which is that nobody proposes raising minimum wage to the living wage as a solution. My intent is that I agree that would be a bad suggestion. Even though it is attacking the same problem using the same general mechanisms.
My assertion is largely that "its complicated" is the answer. And any single minded focus on an elementary limiting factor is almost certainly over simplified to the point of not useful.
Which is why I think, "just build more" is silly as a sole focus. It is the field of dreams approach to getting affordable housing. Largely pushed by people that would refuse to live in a trailer park.
Gotcha.
I mean, Austin is a hot market. And housing prices during COVID soared as demand skyrocketted. And then they built a ton of housing, and rents have normalized.
As MY points out, increasing housing supply in one neighborhood, even if it doesn't immediately lead to a drop in housing in that neighborhood, will alleviate costs for somebody somewhere. And overall it will lead to more jobs and economic growth.
Austin was bubbling up to be a hot market around 2020. It fizzled out after many high paying tech jobs canceled.
To put that in perspective, imagine if those jobs had shown up. And continued to show up for another decade. Do we really think that prices would not have continued that upward trend?
Just going to ask a stupid question here and hope someone educates me..
I think the classic YIMBY argument that I encounter on social media or substacks like Matt's is that building new housing, all else equal, results in lower housing costs for classic supply-demand reasons. Now, the all else equal in the previous sentence is doing a lot of work, and in reality not all things are equal. So the YIMBY skeptic points out that actually, building more housing ends up inducing demand for all sorts of other nice things - restaurants, shopping, whatever, all of which ends up driving housing costs up for everyone as more people want to move to the area, or whatever.
So now it becomes a basically empirical question - which of the above happens more often? And from what I've seen here and other similar minded outlets, it is the former, not the latter, even in places like Manhattan where you might expect the latter dynamic to dominate. But now Matt's post suggests to me that, actually, the latter is quite likely, and the supply / demand dynamics I described above may only apply at extremely high levels of generality - i.e. the country level, not the neighborhoods where we are actually building the housing. Which, if true, is a big concession to the NIMBYs! I know the rest of Matt's answer tries to defuse this, but I am not so sure that part is going to be nearly as relevant to anyone already predisposed to NIMBYism...
So I guess the question I have is - what am I missing??
More people in an area can be seen as a nuisance by the existing population. The argument is specifically that the cost of housing in the general area will be lower when new housing is built. The other costs you mentioned are not housing costs, so conflating them doesn't make any sense.
If you want to say that increasing housing density raises prices for everything, what you're essentially saying is that more people in an area create so much more demand it essentially becomes an economic singularity, where the value being created must be skyrocketing in order to be paying for these higher and higher prices. Matt wrote about this here: https://www.slowboring.com/p/what-follows-from-the-idea-that-new
I think the framing is what matters. It's sort of like inflation vs high nominal prices. The problem is that supply really needs to outstrip demand to actually lower prices rather than keep them stable or growing slower vs the current status quo. The reason Austin housing prices have actually dropped so quickly is because they did do a massive build out(and didn't have the type of shortage like LA or NYC) and the layoffs have meant that actually there is a higher supply than meets demand(which is good for a lot of people). The problem is if the entire thing is affordability(not just better jobs, higher gdp and growth) supply actually has to outstrip demand vs just meeting it, particularly when you have such an acute shortage like in LA or NYC, if you don't build out housing quickly past the level of demand but just meet pure demand on the housing side without building out adjacent levels of infrastructure(streets, restaurants, other commerce) the housing prices will stay level, grow slowly or sometimes drop slowly(but not like in the space of couple years like Austin) but you will get some level of higher demand for other services which may increase prices in those other areas. You have to be able to tie affordability with jobs and other types of growth vs affordability coming at the expense of growth vs vice versa. Unfortunately, the actual problem is that there is such a supply shortage and people still want to live in NYC, LA and other big cities that prices are going up without any growth. Austin is the best model but it requires a massive build out at a rapid pace and a different constituency than exist in places like Manhattan or LA.
One thing you're missing is that new shops and restaurants are good.
Nope - I am not missing it. I am probably on your side. But the NIMBYs in my city who are worried about quality of life improvements pricing them out of their homes are not going to be persuaded by this point!
Another reason Al Smith, who was a very weak candidate considering the politics of the time, ended up the nominee was the bitter divisions of the 1924 Dem convention in NYC which was a total trainwreck that went on for more than two weeks: https://www.amazon.com/103rd-Ballot-Robert-Keith-Murray/dp/0062656333
Which is a good reminder why parties don't like the idea of having a Thunderdome Convention (even if the chattering classes spend their careers dreaming of covering one, hence the rage from some media types directed at the the Dems for not having one in 2024).
In MY’s answer he brings up Obama’s desired settlement freeze. What MY left out is Obama got his freeze. Israel issued a moratorium and froze settlements construction between 2009 and 2010.
Surely they continued the moratorium after 2010, right??
Never claimed they did. But MY left out the part of the story (critical to the story he was telling) that Israel did freeze settlement construction under Obama.