[RD] Daily Graphs and Charts

[luiz]

GDP per working-age resident in the US, Euro Area and Japan (1993 = 1)

So the main reason why growth in Japan seems so abysmal when we look at pure GDP or GDP per capita numbers is that their working age population has been declining since 1997. In terms of "wealth growth per worker" they're actually now ahead of the Euro Area and not that far behind the US.

 

[Hygro]

Nope, read the text. The validity remains even adjusting for cost of living, so it's not about desirability. It's also not about size, since some of the US's biggest cities are quite affordable (Houston, Dallas, Atlanta, etc).

It's actually about concrete policies that left-wing cities pass and screw the poor, like restrictive zoning and tough housing regulations. The result is keeping the supply of new housing low, forcing prices up, and thus either locking poor people up in decrepit ghettos or kicking them out of the city altogether by gentrification (and thus making them spend half their time and money commuting).

By contrast, Houston (which has no zoning laws) has abundant supply of new housing and poor people can live virtually anywhere in the city. In fact, all over Houston you see really rich neighborhoods side by side with poor ones. This means a poor person can find work anywhere, and live near work.

So this is actually about left-wing politics hurting the poor, and "free-market" ones helping them. No way around it.

This is hilariously selective reading. Atlanta was recently recognized as one of the worst cities for social mobility. Good cities for social mobility skew towards being more progressive, though that isn't the defining factor. The defining factor is the degree to which the wealthy and the impoverished are mixed into the same neighborhood. Houston is barely a city. It's urban sprawl and then some. Never been so if I'm wrong correct me. Like I said, it's a factor of density as well as population. Places like SF have intense density. Places like Houston do not. I'll read whatever links there are later.

I'm responding to your post damn near blacked out. Come on, man. You make this easy. I wish I had my phone. Dunno where it is. Met a cutie from Ecuador I'd rather be texting.. She was a fan of Brazil too.

SF is in the top 3rd for social mobility. I think mobility is a better metric than affordability. I'd be surprised if you disagree.

 

[Cutlass]

Who's saying everyone should be like Texas? What I'm saying is that Houston is more poor people-friendly than NY or San Francisco, and this is not because those cities are richer, but because they actually enact laws and regulations that screw poor people. Do you have anything to counter this or just want to let everyone know you don't like Texas?

Houston has a population density of 3,662/sq mi.
NYC 27,778.7/sq mi.
San Francisco 17,867/sq mi
Los Angeles 8,282/sq mi
Chicago 11,864.4/sq mi


The population density tells you a lot more about what is possible than any regulations. And, in fact, blaming those regulations on 'liberals' is pretty disingenuous, since most of the existing regulations and housing patterns come from conservative racist segregation policies.

 

[Whomp]

Income from Interest, Dividends, and Rent
52 Largest U.S. Metropolitan Areas
RankAreaPopulation 2012Share of Income from interest, dividends, & rent
United States (Metropolitan Portion)267,664,44018.2%
1Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach, FL5,762,717 26.5%
2Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, FL2,842,878 24.6%
3San Diego-Carlsbad, CA3,177,06321.9%
4Jacksonville, FL1,377,85021.5%
5Virginia Beach-Norfolk-Newport News, VA-NC1,699,925 21.3%
6San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward, CA4,455,560 20.7%
7San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA1,894,388 19.3%
8Richmond, VA1,231,98019.2%
9San Antonio-New Braunfels, TX2,234,00319.0%
10Las Vegas-Henderson-Paradise, NV2,000,759 19.0%
11Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA13,052,921 18.8%
12St. Louis, MO-IL2,795,79418.6%
13Sacramento--Roseville--Arden-Arcade, CA2,196,482 18.6%
14Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV 5,860,342 18.5%
15Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford, FL2,223,67418.5%
16Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH4,640,802 18.5%
17Hartford-West Hartford-East Hartford, CT1,214,400 18.4%
18Austin-Round Rock, TX1,834,30318.4%
19Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA3,552,15718.2%
20Rochester, NY1,082,28418.1%
21Denver-Aurora-Lakewood, CO2,645,20918.1%
22Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, OR-WA2,289,800 18.1%
23New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ-PA19,831,858 17.9%
24Baltimore-Columbia-Towson, MD2,753,14917.9%
25Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN-WI9,522,43417.4%
26New Orleans-Metairie, LA1,227,09617.4%
27Milwaukee-Waukesha-West Allis, WI1,566,981 17.3%
28Salt Lake City, UT1,123,71217.1%
29Buffalo-Cheektowaga-Niagara Falls, NY1,134,210 17.0%
30Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, MN-WI3,422,264 16.7%
31Providence-Warwick, RI-MA1,601,37416.7%
32Oklahoma City, OK1,296,56516.6%
33Kansas City, MO-KS2,038,72416.6%
34Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale, AZ4,329,53416.4%
35Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD 6,018,800 16.2%
36Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, CA4,350,096 16.2%
37Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell, GA5,457,831 16.2%
38Birmingham-Hoover, AL1,136,65016.2%
39Grand Rapids-Wyoming, MI1,005,64816.0%
40Cincinnati, OH-KY-IN2,128,60315.9%
41Pittsburgh, PA2,360,73315.8%
42Louisville/Jefferson County, KY-IN1,251,35115.7%
43Raleigh, NC1,188,56415.7%
44Cleveland-Elyria, OH2,063,53515.4%
45Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX6,700,99115.2%
46Detroit-Warren-Dearborn, MI4,292,06014.8%
47Charlotte-Concord-Gastonia, NC-SC2,296,569 14.4%
48Indianapolis-Carmel-Anderson, IN1,928,98214.3%
49Columbus, OH1,944,00213.3%
50Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land, TX6,177,035 13.3%
51Nashville-Davidson--Murfreesboro--Franklin, TN 1,726,693 12.8%
52Memphis, TN-MS-AR1,341,69012.7%
Source: Bureau of Economic Analysis





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[luiz]

This is hilariously selective reading. Atlanta was recently recognized as one of the worst cities for social mobility. Good cities for social mobility skew towards being more progressive, though that isn't the defining factor. The defining factor is the degree to which the wealthy and the impoverished are mixed into the same neighborhood. Houston is barely a city. It's urban sprawl and then some. Never been so if I'm wrong correct me. Like I said, it's a factor of density as well as population. Places like SF have intense density. Places like Houston do not. I'll read whatever links there are later.

I'm responding to your post damn near blacked out. Come on, man. You make this easy. I wish I had my phone. Dunno where it is. Met a cutie from Ecuador I'd rather be texting.. She was a fan of Brazil too.

SF is in the top 3rd for social mobility. I think mobility is a better metric than affordability. I'd be surprised if you disagree.

It's not selective reading. And I'm talking of income inequality, not just affordability. Left-leaning cities in the US tend to be more unequal, not just more expensive. And the extra inequality holds even after controlling for being more expensive.

As for Houston, while it does have a ridiculously huge suburban sprawl, it's quite unfair to say it's "barely a city". The areas inside the 610 Loop have a distinctive "big city feeling" (as opposed to the suburban feeling of say Sugar Land or The Woodlands). In fact Midtown Houston is surprisingly walkable, and there is a nice tram system connecting it to Downtown, the Museum District and Medical Center.

Finally, if we forget about comparing individual cities and look at root causes. Can't we agree that strict zoning laws and generally restricting the building of new housing (say by placing a cap at how tall a building may be, or how many apartments it may have, etc) will raise the price of buying and renting properties, thus screwing poor people and basically everyone who isn't a homeowner? This is fairly obvious.

The population density tells you a lot more about what is possible than any regulations. And, in fact, blaming those regulations on 'liberals' is pretty disingenuous, since most of the existing regulations and housing patterns come from conservative racist segregation policies.

So San Francisco, NYC, Chicago and co. are far more racist than Houston, Dallas, Atlanta and etc?

 

[Hygro]

Prologue:
When I write "I think mobility is a better metric than affordability. I'd be surprised if you disagree." and you respond with "I'm not talking about just affordability, I'm talking about inequality" it's as if this happened instead: me saying "I think miles per gallon is a better metric than the weight of the car" and you saying "I'm not talking about the weight, I'm talking about fuel efficiency". Chyeah, dawg, for sure. So am I. Why else would I be addressing inequality with my post and presenting a better metric for comparing cities (mobility vs affordability)?

It's not selective reading. And I'm talking of income inequality, not just affordability. Left-leaning cities in the US tend to be more unequal, not just more expensive. And the extra inequality holds even after controlling for being more expensive.

As for Houston, while it does have a ridiculously huge suburban sprawl, it's quite unfair to say it's "barely a city". The areas inside the 610 Loop have a distinctive "big city feeling" (as opposed to the suburban feeling of say Sugar Land or The Woodlands). In fact Midtown Houston is surprisingly walkable, and there is a nice tram system connecting it to Downtown, the Museum District and Medical Center.

Finally, if we forget about comparing individual cities and look at root causes. Can't we agree that strict zoning laws and generally restricting the building of new housing (say by placing a cap at how tall a building may be, or how many apartments it may have, etc) will raise the price of buying and renting properties, thus screwing poor people and basically everyone who isn't a homeowner? This is fairly obvious.



So San Francisco, NYC, Chicago and co. are far more racist than Houston, Dallas, Atlanta and etc?

"I'm not selectively reading, now let me dodge your main points"

Cities with the most social mobility:

Cities with the least social mobility

Here's the study that comes from: http://obs.rc.fas.harvard.edu/chetty/mobility_geo.pdf


Three of the cities you have at the bottom are in between these lists. Among the other three, two of your "bad cities" are among the best and the remaining one "good city" is near the bottom. Now, I took the time to dig through the study rather than just go by the Atlantic article I snagged the images from. In the middle, you have Houston doing alright at #16, Dallas medium at #27 and Chicago not so hot at #32. So it is a mix, but still weighs opposite your "gotcha, Cutlass".




Cities also have increasing returns to scale on nearly all things. If you increase the amount of high rises and therefore population, you increase the price of housing, not decrease it. You might enjoy a short term drop in house prices that will soon be gobbled up. You might enjoy decreased housing prices outside the city. But adding more high rise housing will increase housing costs. Folks like me are very much in favor of more high rise housing, but you are still decreasing affordability of that city by adding them. Observe that more unequal cities have a large preponderance of high rises already.

Now let's bring it back.

Large, dense cities have greater income inequality because increasing a city's population increases income inequality by design. It also increases the likelihood that people are liberal. It does not follow that liberal therefore income inequality. It makes more sense that peoples politics are informed by perceiving income inequality. Perhaps, then, for all we know, income inequality would be even worse if these cities encouraged conservatism.

So naturally there's a correlation between large cities and inequality. And there happens to also be a correlation between large cities and progressivism. So of course there's a correlation with progressivism and inequality. Progressivism couldn't exist without inequality in the first place, that wouldn't make any sense.

 

[luiz]

How does allowing more high rises increase housing prices? That doesn't make any sense, and in fact goes contrary some real estate markets that I know very well, where floor limits dramatically raised prices.

If you have "right-wing" rules that make it easy to build new housing projects with few limits on floors or number of apartments; if you make it easy to demolish old properties and build bigger stuff in is place; in short, if you have a more "free-market" approach to urbanism it is obvious that housing will be more plentiful and affordable. By contrast, if you take a desirable area and make it extremely hard to build anything new on it or to demolish or renovate what already exists, it will become very unaffordable. Again, this is quite obvious. If you limit supply, prices go up.

Social mobility in particular cities (not the country as whole, of course) seems far less a result of laws and regulations than other factors. The Silicon Valley and the plethora of high-paying opportunities it affords make SF and the Bay Area a high social mobility place. By contrast, Salt Lake City is even more socially mobile, and the two cities have very little in common politically or urbanistically. If you look at the least socially mobile cities, at least some are just a reflex of the good old poverty trap, like Detroit and NOLA.

 

[Hygro]

How does allowing more high rises increase housing prices? That doesn't make any sense, and in fact goes contrary some real estate markets that I know very well, where floor limits dramatically raised prices.

If you have "right-wing" rules that make it easy to build new housing projects with few limits on floors or number of apartments; if you make it easy to demolish old properties and build bigger stuff in is place; in short, if you have a more "free-market" approach to urbanism it is obvious that housing will be more plentiful and affordable. By contrast, if you take a desirable area and make it extremely hard to build anything new on it or to demolish or renovate what already exists, it will become very unaffordable. Again, this is quite obvious. If you limit supply, prices go up.

So this is where careful reading before dismissing something helps. Remember how I said and linked how cities have increasing returns for scale in nearly all things? Remember how I said new houses can lower prices in the short term? Cool.

If something has increasing returns to scale, introductory microecon theory of downward sloping demand and upward sloping supply curves are not going to apply. Your argument hinges on that level of theory.

When you add high rises to a city, you are adding population to the city in the long run. When you add population to the city, you increase the price of housing.

It's that simple.

Now, to reiterate, doing so might decrease the cost of housing outside that city. In terms of aggregate per-unit housing cost in the entire country, adding those high rises will probably lower prices, but not in that city.

Social mobility in particular cities (not the country as whole, of course) seems far less a result of laws and regulations than other factors. The Silicon Valley and the plethora of high-paying opportunities it affords make SF and the Bay Area a high social mobility place. By contrast, Salt Lake City is even more socially mobile, and the two cities have very little in common politically or urbanistically. If you look at the least socially mobile cities, at least some are just a reflex of the good old poverty trap, like Detroit and NOLA.

Here you stopped blaming progressive or conservative politics for inequality. Or at least when it wasn't in favor of your argument, but I'll take it. Salt Lake City, btw, does some radically progressive things like house their homeless on taxpayer dime, straight up.

 

[luiz]

So this is where careful reading before dismissing something helps. Remember how I said and linked how cities have increasing returns for scale in nearly all things? Remember how I said new houses can lower prices in the short term? Cool.

If something has increasing returns to scale, introductory microecon theory of downward sloping demand and upward sloping supply curves are not going to apply. Your argument hinges on that level of theory.

When you add high rises to a city, you are adding population to the city in the long run. When you add population to the city, you increase the price of housing.

It's that simple.

Now, to reiterate, doing so might decrease the cost of housing outside that city. In terms of aggregate per-unit housing cost in the entire country, adding those high rises will probably lower prices, but not in that city.

I think that's a very weak case. For starters, with the exception of NYC, even very big American cities like Chicago and LA really only have high rises in a relatively small downtown core, with the rest of the urban escape being dominated by low rises. So high rises only affect parts of a city, not the whole city. Also, when analyzing cities in the US you almost always have to look at the whole metro area, because cities here have weird borders.

I don't think that allowing or not allowing high-rises in a city will do much about the overall long term population of the metro area. People still want to move to SF despite all the restrictions, because it offers natural, economic and cultural opportunities. So restrictive housing won't keep SF "small and affordable", quite the opposite, it will just push poor people to even more undesirable locations (which may be outside SF proper borders, but how does that matter?) and make the desirable regions prohibitively expense.

And of course we should be concerned about affordable and good quality housing for everyone, not just those inside a weird city border.

Here you stopped blaming progressive or conservative politics for inequality. Or at least when it wasn't in favor of your argument, but I'll take it. Salt Lake City, btw, does some radically progressive things like house their homeless on taxpayer dime, straight up.

No, I still blame certain policies for inequality, just note the obvious that some cities have huge external factors that may make them highly socially mobile despite whatever policies they may adopt, and of course local city politics have a limited impact on the bigger picture. Also, inequality and social mobility are not the same thing. You can have a lot of social mobility and still be highly unequal (and you can be very egalitarian and have no social mobility). The original point I was making was only related to inequality, not mobility. The introduction of social mobility obfuscated it.

You have been kind of dancing around a simple admission that restrictive housing policies are bad for the poor. Can you admit that?

 

[Tahuti]

So this is where careful reading before dismissing something helps. Remember how I said and linked how cities have increasing returns for scale in nearly all things? Remember how I said new houses can lower prices in the short term? Cool.

If something has increasing returns to scale, introductory microecon theory of downward sloping demand and upward sloping supply curves are not going to apply. Your argument hinges on that level of theory.

When you add high rises to a city, you are adding population to the city in the long run. When you add population to the city, you increase the price of housing.

The problem is that you like to complicate things needlessy. Increasing returns to scale may play a factor, but the effect isn't necessarily strong enough anytime anywhere you make it to be. The most simple explanation is usually the best one, and should only be dropped in favour of something else in cases where it doesn't hold, and ONLY for these cases.

Salt Lake City, btw, does some radically progressive things like house their homeless on taxpayer dime, straight up.

I'm supportive of such, but why call it "radically progressive"? Being opposed to isn't necessarily conservative either. I can think up plenty conservative arguments why plenty of homeless people are a bad thing, and measures to help them make sense from that perspective.

 

[Hygro]

I think that's a very weak case. For starters, with the exception of NYC, even very big American cities like Chicago and LA really only have high rises in a relatively small downtown core, with the rest of the urban escape being dominated by low rises. So high rises only affect parts of a city, not the whole city. Also, when analyzing cities in the US you almost always have to look at the whole metro area, because cities here have weird borders.

I don't think that allowing or not allowing high-rises in a city will do much about the overall long term population of the metro area. People still want to move to SF despite all the restrictions, because it offers natural, economic and cultural opportunities. So restrictive housing won't keep SF "small and affordable", quite the opposite, it will just push poor people to even more undesirable locations (which may be outside SF proper borders, but how does that matter?) and make the desirable regions prohibitively expense.

And if you add more housing to SF, it will become even more of a desired destination, driving up prices.

And of course we should be concerned about affordable and good quality housing for everyone, not just those inside a weird city border.

When I'm talking about cities I am also talking about the metro area, as is Geoffrey West who we should both be citing. And, you'll remember, I'm all for adding housing in the metro area. It still contributes to inequality, though. That's just a function of cities.

No, I still blame certain policies for inequality, just note the obvious that some cities have huge external factors that may make them highly socially mobile despite whatever policies they may adopt, and of course local city politics have a limited impact on the bigger picture. Also, inequality and social mobility are not the same thing. You can have a lot of social mobility and still be highly unequal (and you can be very egalitarian and have no social mobility). The original point I was making was only related to inequality, not mobility. The introduction of social mobility obfuscated it.

You have been kind of dancing around a simple admission that restrictive housing policies are bad for the poor. Can you admit that?

Social mobility is a major part of inequality, so that's why I would bring it up. Affordability is also a part of inequality, which is why you brought that one up. I talked about mobility because if we're going to use one proxy for where policy and inequality meet policy, social mobility is a stronger example. Affordability is further out of the hands of policy and more of urban planning. So is mobility, (also highly) but less so than affordability.

I'm not dancing around anything. I'm addressing your thesis head on. Restrictive housing policies can mean a lot of different things and can positive and negative effects on the poor inside and outside the metro area. But as you brought up affordability of housing, it should be noted that more housing in the core of the metro area will increase housing costs. And more population will increase inequality.

It will also increase wages and innovation. I'm all for it.

The problem is that you like to complicate things needlessy. Increasing returns to scale may play a factor, but the effect isn't necessarily strong enough anytime anywhere you make it to be. The most simple explanation is usually the best one, and should only be dropped in favour of something else in cases where it doesn't hold, and ONLY for these cases.

How am I complicating things by deferring to the simplest model of cities possible, one discovered via empirical data?

I'm supportive of such, but why call it "radically progressive"? Being opposed to isn't necessarily conservative either. I can think up plenty conservative arguments why plenty of homeless people are a bad thing, and measures to help them make sense from that perspective.

Progressive vs laissez-faire, not vs conservative.

 

[Mise]

I can't comment on the US or the situation in general, but in London, new, modern high rise buildings really do push the price of surrounding properties up -- even in the short term. They tend to be more expensive than existing buildings (as they are brand new and generally have all mod cons/high specs), which actually makes the surrounding properties appear cheap by comparison. It's as if they set a new, higher floor price for the area, dragging other properties up to their level. I've been a huge beneficiary of this over the past three years...

Naively you would think more supply => lower prices but actually it doesn't work that way in practice.

 

[El_Machinae]

GDP per working-age resident in the US, Euro Area and Japan (1993 = 1)

So the main reason why growth in Japan seems so abysmal when we look at pure GDP or GDP per capita numbers is that their working age population has been declining since 1997. In terms of "wealth growth per worker" they're actually now ahead of the Euro Area and not that far behind the US.

Hmmm, I've not seen that metric before (GDP per working-age resident), but it seems to be a really neat, new (for me) way to look at it.

 

[Cutlass]

So San Francisco, NYC, Chicago and co. are far more racist than Houston, Dallas, Atlanta and etc?

No, they are a lot less racist.

 

[GinandTonic]

Unless there are high land values higher-rise buildings wont even be built. Excluding the cost of the land each additional flour will cost more and more, broadly speaking. Even in large cities some people will being living on the level of poverty set by the national gov as the lowest acceptable by min wage/ social benefit eligibility etc. Therefore if there are rich enough people to raise land value high enough to make high density housing economic there will generally be higher income inequality.

Add to this that when the municipality does intervene to address poverty it often does so via social housing of some kind, and this is generally very high density.

So, high density housing is not only the result of social inequality but attempts to curb the excesses of social inequality result in yet greater housing density.

 

[Cutlass]

http://www.voxeu.org/article/home-prices-1870

 

[CavLancer]

I sold my first house and the height of the bump in the 80s and my second at the height of the bump in the 90s. The next bit I don't get as home prices have been somewhat flat, yes? Of course every $ I got from the first house is worth slightly more than double today's dollar...maybe that accounts for it? The prices go up as shown but unseen the dollar drops...?

 

[Cutlass]

Inflation doesn't account for it. First of all, when they say "real prices", they mean that they have already adjusted for inflation. Second, the steepest rise was when there was next to no inflation, after the middle 90s. All of the time from WWII until the middle 80s had higher inflation than the period since the middle 80s. So the greatest housing price increases happened while there was the least inflation everywhere else in the economy.

 

[Arwon]

Meanwhile.

But we totes don't have a bubble, guys.

 

[Cutlass]

What's going on there that's leading to such a bubble?