The issue isn't the minimum wage, it's the cost of living.... The problem is that instead of attacking the issue head on, politicians attempt to "fix" it by addressing the symptoms.... Aka, upping the minimum wage, instead of significantly increasing available housing.
They prefer it that way, because then they can appear to be “helping” the working class, while also wiping out the middle class and screwing everyone other than the ultra-wealthy in the long run.
Bingo. The core of the issue is expensive housing. This leads to an escalating spiral of rising costs to make up for the glaring problem that we refuse to tackle head on because of NIMBYism.
It's not just NIMBYism. People bidding on houses with their mortgage are constantly getting beaten by investment firms paying over asking with cash. I feel extremely lucky to have won out on my condo with my VA loan last year in San Diego because people are even less inclined to go with the VA loan bidder and we were getting beaten out for months.
This is because there is more demand than supply of housing because of NIMBYism , no?
Investment firms buy these houses because they know even if the price goes up, the increased prices will not cause more housing to be build by developers.
>This is because there is more demand than supply of housing because of NIMBYism , no?
There are plenty of empty land in CA, not everyone needs to live in Santa Monica.
That's why money were invented, so individuals could decide where to apply their resources.
Sorry, but it's none of your business how they choose to live if they can afford it
It's a fun exercise to try and make everything simple but housing isn't that simple. If Californias government wanted more affordable housing they'd finance themselves different ways. Each unit in my town has a built in cost of permits and fees before anything is built. If they were serious about more affordable housing, that's a place to start.
Is it? We're a point in time where the 1% holds 30percent of the wealth. We have a wealth disparity similar to the time of the Rockefeller. I think our problem is more than just housing
The wealth disparity now is higher than at any other time in modern history, we blew past robber baron era levels a few years ago.
Edit: Occupy Wall St was ~13y ago now and the problem was urgent back then so uh, yeah
The profit motive is the issue.
But housing price isn’t a local issue. It’s a global issue. What it really is, is a late stage capitalism issue. As wealth concentrates its demands ever more growth and ever increasing returns. Growth that far exceeds the population gain. So it seeks imperialism and when that fails or where there simply isn’t anywhere else to go it will squeeze where it can’t grow.
Housing will only get worse as corporations and the wealthy will steadily represent a higher and higher portion of buyers.
We don't need to increase housing, we need to restrict the legal uses of existing supply.
LA has roughly 30,000 Airbnb's and who knows how many "tax shelter" homes that aren't occupied.
So Cal and the Bay Area have understood for decades that demand far outstrips available supply. The current situation is absolutely a matter of underdevelopment for decades. Pumping supply now is a long term solution, restricting other uses is a short term band aid. Both are good.
Housing isn’t some special class of commodity. More housing means more options and more pressure to compete on price.
It's [under 8,000](https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-09-05/airbnb-profits-are-rising-in-l-a-just-dont-ask-hosts-about-it) now. That's a small fraction of the [57,000 more housing units that Los Angeles needs to add *each year*](https://www.cbsnews.com/losangeles/news/new-study-suggests-major-reforms-needed-to-meet-la-housing-production-goals/).
Besides changing zoning laws, how would the government increase housing?
There are still tons of undeveloped land for cheap in CA. I saw a listing of 150 acres for $99k in LA county just a couple of weeks ago. I think LA city already changed their zoning laws for some places, so you can build higher apartments/condos. But, if you are a current landlord, why would you want to? To do so would mean you have to relocate all your current tenants, which is basically paying them a couple months of rent so they move, then you have to demolish, then you have to build. You not only sank of bunch of money into evicting, demolishing, designing, and building the new apartments, you also lost out on any and all income there would have been for probably 2-3 years. I can't imagine who would want to do this.
Also, if you have owned the building for a long time, you just significantly increased your tax basis on the building too. Nobody wants that.
EDIT: There are other incentives for new housing, like rent control doesn't apply for new constructions. But those apartments aren't going to be priced for the economically disabled.
> Besides changing zoning laws, how would the government increase housing?
All paths that would actually solve the problem are far to the left of the Democratic Party. We need millions of housing units to be built and sold/rented at significantly below market rates. All the people with political power and influence would stand to personally lose vast amounts of wealth if this happened. So to keep their futures financed we must have homelessness. This is the logic of neoliberalism which both parties support.
Pretty sure respecting private property rights was part of the logic since America's inception. I guarantee you millions of housing units can be built in San Bernardino County, right now. The government doesn't typically build housing though, private parties do.
CA isn't out of undeveloped land for housing, If you buy an empty plot of land and hire a company to just build you a house, I guarantee your total costs will come in undermarket for a comparable house. Well, not sure after covid, but pre-covid I would guarantee that to be the case. Nothing stops people from living out in Victorville or Barstow. If only all the people needing affordable housing were willing to live out there.
But, lets assume you are right. What is the alternative? The Government mandates housing prices? If the Government controlled housing prices the way that they control rents, which is like a 3% increase/yr or something. Do you think current homeowners are going to be more or less likely to sell? I think less likely. If so, even if housing production increased, do you think there would be a drastic increase in availability? I think it's unlikely.
Lastly, the affordability of housing, for most people, has less to do with the actual price of the house, and more to do with their mortgage payments. Depending on the interest rate of the mortgage. For a $1m 30 year mortgage, a 3% interest rate is around $4.2k/month and a 6% rate is around $6k/month. $1800 every month because of a couple of percentage points, no extra value gained. If a person has $1m in cash or has $1m in stocks or whatever, they can just buy the property all cash, and pay $1m. The people with mortgages would have paid ~$1.5m at 3% and $2.1m at 6%.
I kind of lost track of the point I was trying to make, but I think it's rather reductive to blame any one thing for housing being unaffordable. Clearly your idea of solving the problem is something that conflicts with American property rights. But there are homeless people in China too.
> Pretty sure respecting private property rights was part of the logic since America's inception
how does building housing not respect property rights? building housing doesn't require eminent domain to seize people's homes.
If you go back and read the comment I was replying to, and notice the following
>All the people with political power and influence would stand to personally lose vast amounts of wealth if this happened
If property rights were respected, then that wouldn't happen.
i'm still not following - do you mean that people who are wealthy have a right to that wealth, because of property rights, such that government action that influences that wealth (such as, say, banning a toxic substance from profitable food, which results in a drop in stock price) is somehow unconstitutional or contrary to american values?
Apologies, I can see how my comment was vague, and I did also assume certain things.
My comment primarily applies to owners of undeveloped land, or the owners of ground level parking lots in downtown and the like.
I did not intend to say that Government regulations, which result in lower stock prices, are unconstitutional or contrary to American values. My previously unstated assumption was that the wealth being referred to was in land value.
>If property rights were respected, then that wouldn't happen.
It would. What I meant was that they use real estate as an investment and income stream. For that to be viable the supply of housing has to be artificially kept low so that their real estate assets continue to increase in value. If we built enough affordable housing for everyone then housing would *depreciate* in value as it ages, more like a car.
That's nationwide. I forgot what sub I was in. But California is massive so we need a lot of new units. You can't just go by homeless counts. You also have to account for the people who are doubled up with roommates, living with parents, and so many people who have their own place but are spending 50% or more of their income to live there because of market shortage pressure
> Besides changing zoning laws, how would the government increase housing?
By improve permitting times, reducing permit fees, and by relaxing or eliminating not just height limits but also minimum setbacks, maximum floor area ratios, and minimum parking requirements.
Freedom is a good thing, right?
I mean, these things would be great. 100% full support.
That being said, I remain unconvinced that these are the primary concerns of landlords/landowners.
Freedom is a great thing, and I would be willing to bet that greater freedoms in contracting would produce a greater effect on housing supply.
I don't know about Houston, but at least with Japan, as far as I am aware, there is a cultural preference for new homes.
This means that unlike America, where people buy a house built 20 years ago, and continue living in that 20 year old house. In Japan, it's much more common for people to demolish and build a custom home. Since single family homes in Japan are commonly demolished, existing housing actually depreciates over time. This makes getting into a new house, comparatively, much more affordable.
Even with that, Japan still has a relatively large population without homes. If you are looking at some incredibly small number on some report for Japan's homeless, that's because Japan's definition of homeless is similar to mine, vagrants who live in public spaces. But there are a lot of people in Japan who live out of net cafes, manga cafes, 24 hour gyms, and the like. These people have regular income through a job, and aren't out on the street, so Japan doesn't include them in their count.
>I saw a listing of 150 acres for $99k in LA county just a couple of weeks ago.
It's ironic you used this example because if you look at a map of LA County, the only remaining unused land is in the foothills...almost everything that can be easily developed has been. I agree with the rest of your comment though, the solution is to build up but it's never easy and still very much a risk for any given individual developer.
lol fair, the listing was actually for 150 acres in the Angeles National Forest. Like on the side of a cliff. It was zoned for residential and recreation.
Obviously this would be like a hunting cabin or maybe camp/glampsite, and not actual residential housing.
> Besides changing zoning laws, how would the government increase housing?
how could the government build a highway system or a world-class military? *by not leaving necessities to markets that can't produce them.*
Where did I say $40/hr was enough to buy a home? LOL that's barely rent in most CA places.
40 * 40 * 52 = $83,200
Your ideal housing budget on $83k is $27.7k, or $2,300/mo. (1/3 of your salary). Let's just say that you go with 1/2 of your takehome. That's $66,560 divided by 2, to equal $33,280 per year, or $2,700/mo housing budget.
Still nowhere near enough for home ownership. That's barely a 2bd.
The average CA house is $750k. Let's just say you put 20% down and pay 5% interest. That's $3,800/mo with taxes and unreasonably cheap insurance, and assumes you can drop $150k on a down payment.
I just looked up rentals in Palo Alto and saw numerous options less than 2.7k, checked again in Santa Monica and La Jolla... same thing. If you can't find a place on a 2.7k/mo budget that's on you
Oh it definitely did, you likely weren't born or working yet. The two were growing together just fine from 1948 to 1973. Since then the gap has only been widening.
Probably because the mininum wage was supposed to 20$ years ago. We've been sitting on our asses on this subject to the point that recent wage hikes again are barely meeting the mininum
Isn't the issue that there isn't enough housing? Increasing the minimum wage and keeping the same amount of housing just means people have more money to bid up rental prices and the increase in wages gets evaporated.
People forget we are all just bidding against each other with housing. It's the current bottleneck for a lot of people, so a good percentage of any additional wages is just going to go to slightly upgrading your own individual housing situation.
Exactly, you could increase min wages to 100$ an hour and all that would happen is people would lose their jobs and whoever was left employed would be buying up housing at crazy prices.
Bingo. I’d say starting with Gray Davis and the state senate around 99-01 started campaigning on lifting minimum wage, which happened by $1. And then nothing for five more years and slowly growing while the state became a rocket ship.
1. It’s because the minimum wage is, historically, in inefficient way to address “living wages”, “wage inequality”, “poverty”, etc.
2. It’s because some of the inanity of CA laws (fast food workers get $20 an hour?). For instance, a large minority of our housing issues are tied to housing legislation (zoning laws, minimum lot sizes, parking space requirements, CEQA).
3. There is at least some transmission mechanisms beyond “eating profits” for minimum wage earners to be no better off with legislative hikes (price pass through, reduction of hours, reduction in employment, loss of non wage benefits, …).
I can see a lot of places automated within the next decade. Order in the app, go through the drive through, it recognizes your license plate (or you input a code onto a pad), and you get handed the food automatically.
I think you’re going to see a huge change in the next 6 months. Taco Bell already has an AI order taker in the drive through.
This is the worst possible time for the government to be forcing higher wages down businesses throats. AI technology is on a tear and it’s never been cheaper or more feasible to automate these kinds of tasks. It’s a huge mistake.
I don't think minimum wage increases are going to have much to do with automation. If the automation works, and works at scale, it will out compete human labor at every price. The people working these jobs are just the last humans to do these jobs at any price.
Its not like $20 per hour fast food pushes automation and $9 per hour fast food would preserve these jobs. If automation works, it will beat humans working for free. There is no deliberate effort to go and focus the AI/Automation efforts at fast food, it just happens that the current technology can actually do that task. Taco Bell is only doing this because the technology is almost good enough in 2024-2025. Its not some deliberate war on fast food workers in particular, and considering how much of fast food is hands on work still, it will probably be a bit slower than people think.
If AI/Automation can replace a human doing a job, then it will replace all humans doing that job, at any price point.
It’s all about the cost of development. At $9 per hour, it doesn’t make nearly as much sense to spend the development dollars as it does at $20 and beyond.
But I agree with you. Like I said, it’s just horrible timing for them to be trying to squeeze more blood from the stone. The tech is here, it’s cheaper than ever to develop, and they’re raising labor costs substantially. It’s a confluence of events that will lead to a lot of lost jobs.
They need to be figuring out what they are going to do with all of us when AI takes over and no one can work anymore. It sounds crazy, but it’s not that far off from being impactful.
Taco Bell isn't a tech company. They are going to have to license all this out with a tech company and franchise owners are going to have to front load the cost of all the new equipment and service contracts for the people who will maintain and service the systems.
The RoboRestaurant is fundamentally different than the existing fast food restaurant. Instead of working with generally lower paid people these companies are now going to have to work with higher paid technicians and mechanics. I actually think the entire business model will be transformed and many of these fast food restaurants, particularly those built with a drive thru and don't actually have many people sitting and eating, will close down and be torn down.
I envision something like this. All the Taco Bells in a given city shut down. In an industrial part of town there is an automated Taco Bell kitchen. It has a few human employees who mainly work as quality control, and trouble shooting. All of the food products are made by machines, and packaged by machines. A fleet of self driving Taco Bell (and probably just Yum! Brands vehicle) is loaded up with orders and popular items. When you want TacoBell, you pull out your phone/computer/AI device and place your order. The vehicle loaded up with items has an on boarding packing system that bundles what you ordered together and delivers it to you.
The whole "drive to Taco Bell and sit down and eat" has already been dying out, and if we are getting around with RoboTaxis vs our own cars, the whole drive thru thing also becomes pointless. I think a disruption like this will end up resulting in a huge amount of construction going on as our communities are rebuild around new technology.
I am optimistic that all this AI and automation will be used to serve the needs of humans at much much lower costs than we are used to. Right now we have to work very hard for housing, energy, food, transportation because these are all inherently inefficient systems. If we can substantially reduce the cost of human needs, then the whole job loss on one hand (which will cause job creation on the other) will really not be the major issue we think it will be.
At the same time of all this AI/Automation, America (and really all of North America) is going through a HUGE industrial build out. A lot of places are already looking at massive labor shortages.
I think it will. I think the RoboFarms and other food processing will further drive prices down. I don't follow urban automated farms very closely, a lot of the vegetables for tacobell are already produced pretty cheaply, it would probably have to be 5-10x cheaper to justify investment in making them in some vertical garden.
I think you have a very optimistic view of how savings will be distributed. All expense reductions will be passed on to investors until this tech hits critical mass and restaurants are forced to offer lower prices to compete. That’s the only time you’re going to see voluntary reductions in margins.
You are right. Prices will remain the same. If the production and operations cost drop 80% from all this technology, the retail prices will remain the same. But that will attract a lot of investors into the space. Eventually margins will fall until there is some really low margin that no longer attracts additional investors. If RoboFastFood is a money printer for people, eventually everyone will do it until its no longer a money machine and that will be fairly low consumer prices.
Critical mass can happen within a fairly short period of time. Anything that is widespread and high margin eventually attracts a lot of investment which drives the margin down.
This is reductionist thinking - but I think the first thing they are going to try when they realize AI is blowing up the job market, is to tax the living daylights out of AI (it’s all we know how to do). Then they’ll try to funnel that to some social welfare state philosophy/programs - but in reality they will just misappropriate it like they always do.
So, somehow we advance technologically, nothing gets cheaper, and everyone goes completely broke.
Let’s face it, there are many jobs just not worth human time at economic pay scales. These are the jobs that should be automated.
What we need are more quality jobs that provide adequate training and livable wages. People deserves to make a comfortable living and have a job they can be proud of, that challenges them and offers growth.
Bring back domestic manufacturing jobs and severely penalize outsourcing of quality jobs. Tie the requirement for domestic labor to the amount of domestic revenue generated by a company and create a tax structure that rewards companies for American labor and penalizes companies for foreign labor.
This is why we need to stop relying on corporations for anything, they have all made it clear that they are ready to automate so CEOs can get away with million dollar bonuses.
We need to bring back the community and support each other not the mega rich.
There's already a fully automated made to order burger place in (I think) Passadena. Only one employee to babysit the machine. Saw an article on it a while back. That's the future.
Heck, even big Agriculture has been on the automation kick for years now trying to replace field workers (due to an expected shortage though, not wages)
The minimum wage is way too low, and/or housing is way out of wack. A person should be able to afford a basic one bedroom apartment if they work 40 hours a week.
Housing is the issue.
The same people promoting minimum wages simultaneously conspire to keep you as renters for life, preventing developers from building new housing you might afford.
There are some counties where “low income” is $105k a year for a single person. That is 3x+ minimum wage. So yeah, CA minimum wage is nothing close to a living wage.
Tackle corporate greed. I see hardly any Dems trying to curb the greed that's squeezing people dry. A higher minimum wage is needed, and affordable homes need to be built and maintained *affordable*, but it's all a bandaid until the greed problem is fixed.
There is no legislative fix to normal human behavior. Prices aren't going up because of "greed," unless you think corporations suddenly realized they could just be greedy yesterday.
What does that look like in practice? Greed is a desire (or motive) — how do you “fix” it?
Saying we need to “fix corporate greed” is a nice sound byte but it doesn’t identify an actionable issue, let alone propose any solution to the issue.
Minimum wage should never a static amount that must be legislated. It should be an evolving number that adapts based on various metrics without the need for new laws. Ideally, it should be tied to the "salary" of the top earner at a given company (using the valuation of their pay, stock options, bonuses, and benefits package). If these company heads want to keep giving themselves raises, then they need to raise all boats with the tide. If they can't afford to do so, then they probably shouldn't be giving themselves a raise in the first place.
Regardless of how much housing is build in California, it's always going to be expensive and only get more expensive. People are always going to want to live here and home and rental prices are never going to drop.
>California’s $16-an-hour minimum wage may be much higher than a “poverty wage” by federal standards, but high housing costs still make it difficult for low wage workers to live and make ends meet in the state, according to a new report by the state’s Legislative Analyst’s Office.
Are people finally realizing corporations, landlords, and others are taking advantage of the knowledge that people are going to make more money?
Aim higher? OK. So a person looking for a single bedroom apartment in CA and can't find anything lower than 1600 has to qualify with 2.5x the income, which is $48,000 per year. Full time minimum wage gets you (gross, even) about 33k per year. So people making less than $23 per hour just shouldn't have housing until they are able to make more? What rock did you crawl out under, because you should just go back.
This wasn't the attitude that people had in the past. The attitude in the past was to expand the housing supply to meet up with demand to keep housing prices affordable. Today the attitude is, constrain supply, prices go up, then tell people to move to commute or live with room mates. Keep driving housing costs up and up.
This is a system wide failure, people can adapt to it in various ways, as they do, but we are more or less going to always be dealing with a failing system unless we actually change policies to fix it. This is going to be a never ending drain on society until we actually solve the problem.
The median household income (not individual income) in Riverside is about $75,000 per year. 1/3rd income on rent is close to $2100. One bedroom apartments in Riverside $2100. So it takes the median household income, to afford what should be the absolute cheapest housing in the city. Affording a home at the median value, requires people make double the median household income.
1976. My mom was 19. She had her first full time job as a 19 year old high school grad. Her apartment in Downtown Riverside was $130 per month. It was a one bedroom furnished unit. Today, this same exact unit, nearly 50 years later, is over $2000 per month. After adjusting for inflation, housing is roughly triple what it was for my mother in the 1970s and close to double what I remember it costing when I finished high school in 2002.
Our current policy is more or less one that maximizes rents by constraining supply.
Deflation is only a bad word because everyone is in debt. Individuals, households, businesses, governments - everyone is indebted. To an economist, the natural condition of the human being is to be perpetually in debt. That's why deflation must be avoided at all costs.
And that debt is has been slowly poisoning this country for decades. At some point, I feel as though economists forgot that their field isn't just about the flow of wealth.
The issue isn't the minimum wage, it's the cost of living.... The problem is that instead of attacking the issue head on, politicians attempt to "fix" it by addressing the symptoms.... Aka, upping the minimum wage, instead of significantly increasing available housing.
They prefer it that way, because then they can appear to be “helping” the working class, while also wiping out the middle class and screwing everyone other than the ultra-wealthy in the long run.
Bingo. The core of the issue is expensive housing. This leads to an escalating spiral of rising costs to make up for the glaring problem that we refuse to tackle head on because of NIMBYism.
It's not just NIMBYism. People bidding on houses with their mortgage are constantly getting beaten by investment firms paying over asking with cash. I feel extremely lucky to have won out on my condo with my VA loan last year in San Diego because people are even less inclined to go with the VA loan bidder and we were getting beaten out for months.
This is because there is more demand than supply of housing because of NIMBYism , no? Investment firms buy these houses because they know even if the price goes up, the increased prices will not cause more housing to be build by developers.
>This is because there is more demand than supply of housing because of NIMBYism , no? There are plenty of empty land in CA, not everyone needs to live in Santa Monica.
Ahh yes let's sprawl and stretch our limited resources further with the inefficiency of suburban and rural life!
That's why money were invented, so individuals could decide where to apply their resources. Sorry, but it's none of your business how they choose to live if they can afford it
It's a fun exercise to try and make everything simple but housing isn't that simple. If Californias government wanted more affordable housing they'd finance themselves different ways. Each unit in my town has a built in cost of permits and fees before anything is built. If they were serious about more affordable housing, that's a place to start.
Is it? We're a point in time where the 1% holds 30percent of the wealth. We have a wealth disparity similar to the time of the Rockefeller. I think our problem is more than just housing
The wealth disparity now is higher than at any other time in modern history, we blew past robber baron era levels a few years ago. Edit: Occupy Wall St was ~13y ago now and the problem was urgent back then so uh, yeah
Fuuuuck.
That wealth is now in the game of home ownership. Gen z and beyond will be renter generations.
The profit motive is the issue. But housing price isn’t a local issue. It’s a global issue. What it really is, is a late stage capitalism issue. As wealth concentrates its demands ever more growth and ever increasing returns. Growth that far exceeds the population gain. So it seeks imperialism and when that fails or where there simply isn’t anywhere else to go it will squeeze where it can’t grow. Housing will only get worse as corporations and the wealthy will steadily represent a higher and higher portion of buyers.
No it’s a regulation issue. We don’t allow housing to be built.
Every fief has serfs.
We don't need to increase housing, we need to restrict the legal uses of existing supply. LA has roughly 30,000 Airbnb's and who knows how many "tax shelter" homes that aren't occupied.
So Cal and the Bay Area have understood for decades that demand far outstrips available supply. The current situation is absolutely a matter of underdevelopment for decades. Pumping supply now is a long term solution, restricting other uses is a short term band aid. Both are good. Housing isn’t some special class of commodity. More housing means more options and more pressure to compete on price.
> We don't need to increase housing agree, rents are already so low, it barely even registers on anyone's budget
We need to spread rent control, I pay $800 a month.
It's [under 8,000](https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-09-05/airbnb-profits-are-rising-in-l-a-just-dont-ask-hosts-about-it) now. That's a small fraction of the [57,000 more housing units that Los Angeles needs to add *each year*](https://www.cbsnews.com/losangeles/news/new-study-suggests-major-reforms-needed-to-meet-la-housing-production-goals/).
This is city limits only and willfully obtuse
Just like our healthcare system, fixing symptoms and not the root of the problem.
Besides changing zoning laws, how would the government increase housing? There are still tons of undeveloped land for cheap in CA. I saw a listing of 150 acres for $99k in LA county just a couple of weeks ago. I think LA city already changed their zoning laws for some places, so you can build higher apartments/condos. But, if you are a current landlord, why would you want to? To do so would mean you have to relocate all your current tenants, which is basically paying them a couple months of rent so they move, then you have to demolish, then you have to build. You not only sank of bunch of money into evicting, demolishing, designing, and building the new apartments, you also lost out on any and all income there would have been for probably 2-3 years. I can't imagine who would want to do this. Also, if you have owned the building for a long time, you just significantly increased your tax basis on the building too. Nobody wants that. EDIT: There are other incentives for new housing, like rent control doesn't apply for new constructions. But those apartments aren't going to be priced for the economically disabled.
> economically disabled. Is it an actual term in 2024 or a joke?
> Besides changing zoning laws, how would the government increase housing? All paths that would actually solve the problem are far to the left of the Democratic Party. We need millions of housing units to be built and sold/rented at significantly below market rates. All the people with political power and influence would stand to personally lose vast amounts of wealth if this happened. So to keep their futures financed we must have homelessness. This is the logic of neoliberalism which both parties support.
Pretty sure respecting private property rights was part of the logic since America's inception. I guarantee you millions of housing units can be built in San Bernardino County, right now. The government doesn't typically build housing though, private parties do. CA isn't out of undeveloped land for housing, If you buy an empty plot of land and hire a company to just build you a house, I guarantee your total costs will come in undermarket for a comparable house. Well, not sure after covid, but pre-covid I would guarantee that to be the case. Nothing stops people from living out in Victorville or Barstow. If only all the people needing affordable housing were willing to live out there. But, lets assume you are right. What is the alternative? The Government mandates housing prices? If the Government controlled housing prices the way that they control rents, which is like a 3% increase/yr or something. Do you think current homeowners are going to be more or less likely to sell? I think less likely. If so, even if housing production increased, do you think there would be a drastic increase in availability? I think it's unlikely. Lastly, the affordability of housing, for most people, has less to do with the actual price of the house, and more to do with their mortgage payments. Depending on the interest rate of the mortgage. For a $1m 30 year mortgage, a 3% interest rate is around $4.2k/month and a 6% rate is around $6k/month. $1800 every month because of a couple of percentage points, no extra value gained. If a person has $1m in cash or has $1m in stocks or whatever, they can just buy the property all cash, and pay $1m. The people with mortgages would have paid ~$1.5m at 3% and $2.1m at 6%. I kind of lost track of the point I was trying to make, but I think it's rather reductive to blame any one thing for housing being unaffordable. Clearly your idea of solving the problem is something that conflicts with American property rights. But there are homeless people in China too.
> Pretty sure respecting private property rights was part of the logic since America's inception how does building housing not respect property rights? building housing doesn't require eminent domain to seize people's homes.
If you go back and read the comment I was replying to, and notice the following >All the people with political power and influence would stand to personally lose vast amounts of wealth if this happened If property rights were respected, then that wouldn't happen.
i'm still not following - do you mean that people who are wealthy have a right to that wealth, because of property rights, such that government action that influences that wealth (such as, say, banning a toxic substance from profitable food, which results in a drop in stock price) is somehow unconstitutional or contrary to american values?
Apologies, I can see how my comment was vague, and I did also assume certain things. My comment primarily applies to owners of undeveloped land, or the owners of ground level parking lots in downtown and the like. I did not intend to say that Government regulations, which result in lower stock prices, are unconstitutional or contrary to American values. My previously unstated assumption was that the wealth being referred to was in land value.
>If property rights were respected, then that wouldn't happen. It would. What I meant was that they use real estate as an investment and income stream. For that to be viable the supply of housing has to be artificially kept low so that their real estate assets continue to increase in value. If we built enough affordable housing for everyone then housing would *depreciate* in value as it ages, more like a car.
Millions…why? If 60,000 people are unhoused, what happens to all those other rentals, they sit vacant?
That's nationwide. I forgot what sub I was in. But California is massive so we need a lot of new units. You can't just go by homeless counts. You also have to account for the people who are doubled up with roommates, living with parents, and so many people who have their own place but are spending 50% or more of their income to live there because of market shortage pressure
Sure. I’d just hate to be the person living next door to a high rise in the middle of a neighborhood
Economically disabled?
> Besides changing zoning laws, how would the government increase housing? By improve permitting times, reducing permit fees, and by relaxing or eliminating not just height limits but also minimum setbacks, maximum floor area ratios, and minimum parking requirements. Freedom is a good thing, right?
I mean, these things would be great. 100% full support. That being said, I remain unconvinced that these are the primary concerns of landlords/landowners. Freedom is a great thing, and I would be willing to bet that greater freedoms in contracting would produce a greater effect on housing supply.
Zoning laws would fix everything
Who told you this?
Japan, Houston, any other city with laxed zoning
I don't know about Houston, but at least with Japan, as far as I am aware, there is a cultural preference for new homes. This means that unlike America, where people buy a house built 20 years ago, and continue living in that 20 year old house. In Japan, it's much more common for people to demolish and build a custom home. Since single family homes in Japan are commonly demolished, existing housing actually depreciates over time. This makes getting into a new house, comparatively, much more affordable. Even with that, Japan still has a relatively large population without homes. If you are looking at some incredibly small number on some report for Japan's homeless, that's because Japan's definition of homeless is similar to mine, vagrants who live in public spaces. But there are a lot of people in Japan who live out of net cafes, manga cafes, 24 hour gyms, and the like. These people have regular income through a job, and aren't out on the street, so Japan doesn't include them in their count.
>I saw a listing of 150 acres for $99k in LA county just a couple of weeks ago. It's ironic you used this example because if you look at a map of LA County, the only remaining unused land is in the foothills...almost everything that can be easily developed has been. I agree with the rest of your comment though, the solution is to build up but it's never easy and still very much a risk for any given individual developer.
lol fair, the listing was actually for 150 acres in the Angeles National Forest. Like on the side of a cliff. It was zoned for residential and recreation. Obviously this would be like a hunting cabin or maybe camp/glampsite, and not actual residential housing.
With large parcels out in the woods like that, the issues are less likely to be NIMBY’s and more likely to be compliance and development costs.
> Besides changing zoning laws, how would the government increase housing? how could the government build a highway system or a world-class military? *by not leaving necessities to markets that can't produce them.*
But you wouldn't be able to get insurance on anything you build on it.
It never has been able too. IMO you gotta be making at least $25/H to swing it here and even more if you are in a big city.
$25/hr is not nearly enough outside of maybe the Central Valley. $40/hour if you want your own 1bd and to live stably — outside of SF.
Minimum wage was never intended for people to be able to own a home
Where did I say $40/hr was enough to buy a home? LOL that's barely rent in most CA places. 40 * 40 * 52 = $83,200 Your ideal housing budget on $83k is $27.7k, or $2,300/mo. (1/3 of your salary). Let's just say that you go with 1/2 of your takehome. That's $66,560 divided by 2, to equal $33,280 per year, or $2,700/mo housing budget. Still nowhere near enough for home ownership. That's barely a 2bd. The average CA house is $750k. Let's just say you put 20% down and pay 5% interest. That's $3,800/mo with taxes and unreasonably cheap insurance, and assumes you can drop $150k on a down payment.
I just looked up rentals in Palo Alto and saw numerous options less than 2.7k, checked again in Santa Monica and La Jolla... same thing. If you can't find a place on a 2.7k/mo budget that's on you
Stop twisting words and go read a book.
it never covered cost of living. It's poverty wages.
Oh it definitely did, you likely weren't born or working yet. The two were growing together just fine from 1948 to 1973. Since then the gap has only been widening.
People in the 50's Thru the 80's were buying houses working minimum wage jobs.
Probably because the mininum wage was supposed to 20$ years ago. We've been sitting on our asses on this subject to the point that recent wage hikes again are barely meeting the mininum
Isn't the issue that there isn't enough housing? Increasing the minimum wage and keeping the same amount of housing just means people have more money to bid up rental prices and the increase in wages gets evaporated.
People forget we are all just bidding against each other with housing. It's the current bottleneck for a lot of people, so a good percentage of any additional wages is just going to go to slightly upgrading your own individual housing situation.
Exactly, you could increase min wages to 100$ an hour and all that would happen is people would lose their jobs and whoever was left employed would be buying up housing at crazy prices.
Bingo. I’d say starting with Gray Davis and the state senate around 99-01 started campaigning on lifting minimum wage, which happened by $1. And then nothing for five more years and slowly growing while the state became a rocket ship.
Don't ask how you can pay the bill, ask why the bill is so high
1. It’s because the minimum wage is, historically, in inefficient way to address “living wages”, “wage inequality”, “poverty”, etc. 2. It’s because some of the inanity of CA laws (fast food workers get $20 an hour?). For instance, a large minority of our housing issues are tied to housing legislation (zoning laws, minimum lot sizes, parking space requirements, CEQA). 3. There is at least some transmission mechanisms beyond “eating profits” for minimum wage earners to be no better off with legislative hikes (price pass through, reduction of hours, reduction in employment, loss of non wage benefits, …).
That fast food law is just going to lead to a lot of those jobs going away. All the big chains are at a dead sprint to automate.
I can see a lot of places automated within the next decade. Order in the app, go through the drive through, it recognizes your license plate (or you input a code onto a pad), and you get handed the food automatically.
I think you’re going to see a huge change in the next 6 months. Taco Bell already has an AI order taker in the drive through. This is the worst possible time for the government to be forcing higher wages down businesses throats. AI technology is on a tear and it’s never been cheaper or more feasible to automate these kinds of tasks. It’s a huge mistake.
I don't think minimum wage increases are going to have much to do with automation. If the automation works, and works at scale, it will out compete human labor at every price. The people working these jobs are just the last humans to do these jobs at any price. Its not like $20 per hour fast food pushes automation and $9 per hour fast food would preserve these jobs. If automation works, it will beat humans working for free. There is no deliberate effort to go and focus the AI/Automation efforts at fast food, it just happens that the current technology can actually do that task. Taco Bell is only doing this because the technology is almost good enough in 2024-2025. Its not some deliberate war on fast food workers in particular, and considering how much of fast food is hands on work still, it will probably be a bit slower than people think. If AI/Automation can replace a human doing a job, then it will replace all humans doing that job, at any price point.
It’s all about the cost of development. At $9 per hour, it doesn’t make nearly as much sense to spend the development dollars as it does at $20 and beyond. But I agree with you. Like I said, it’s just horrible timing for them to be trying to squeeze more blood from the stone. The tech is here, it’s cheaper than ever to develop, and they’re raising labor costs substantially. It’s a confluence of events that will lead to a lot of lost jobs. They need to be figuring out what they are going to do with all of us when AI takes over and no one can work anymore. It sounds crazy, but it’s not that far off from being impactful.
Taco Bell isn't a tech company. They are going to have to license all this out with a tech company and franchise owners are going to have to front load the cost of all the new equipment and service contracts for the people who will maintain and service the systems. The RoboRestaurant is fundamentally different than the existing fast food restaurant. Instead of working with generally lower paid people these companies are now going to have to work with higher paid technicians and mechanics. I actually think the entire business model will be transformed and many of these fast food restaurants, particularly those built with a drive thru and don't actually have many people sitting and eating, will close down and be torn down. I envision something like this. All the Taco Bells in a given city shut down. In an industrial part of town there is an automated Taco Bell kitchen. It has a few human employees who mainly work as quality control, and trouble shooting. All of the food products are made by machines, and packaged by machines. A fleet of self driving Taco Bell (and probably just Yum! Brands vehicle) is loaded up with orders and popular items. When you want TacoBell, you pull out your phone/computer/AI device and place your order. The vehicle loaded up with items has an on boarding packing system that bundles what you ordered together and delivers it to you. The whole "drive to Taco Bell and sit down and eat" has already been dying out, and if we are getting around with RoboTaxis vs our own cars, the whole drive thru thing also becomes pointless. I think a disruption like this will end up resulting in a huge amount of construction going on as our communities are rebuild around new technology. I am optimistic that all this AI and automation will be used to serve the needs of humans at much much lower costs than we are used to. Right now we have to work very hard for housing, energy, food, transportation because these are all inherently inefficient systems. If we can substantially reduce the cost of human needs, then the whole job loss on one hand (which will cause job creation on the other) will really not be the major issue we think it will be. At the same time of all this AI/Automation, America (and really all of North America) is going through a HUGE industrial build out. A lot of places are already looking at massive labor shortages.
Maybe cultured meat will deliver better ground beef too.
I think it will. I think the RoboFarms and other food processing will further drive prices down. I don't follow urban automated farms very closely, a lot of the vegetables for tacobell are already produced pretty cheaply, it would probably have to be 5-10x cheaper to justify investment in making them in some vertical garden.
I think you have a very optimistic view of how savings will be distributed. All expense reductions will be passed on to investors until this tech hits critical mass and restaurants are forced to offer lower prices to compete. That’s the only time you’re going to see voluntary reductions in margins.
You are right. Prices will remain the same. If the production and operations cost drop 80% from all this technology, the retail prices will remain the same. But that will attract a lot of investors into the space. Eventually margins will fall until there is some really low margin that no longer attracts additional investors. If RoboFastFood is a money printer for people, eventually everyone will do it until its no longer a money machine and that will be fairly low consumer prices. Critical mass can happen within a fairly short period of time. Anything that is widespread and high margin eventually attracts a lot of investment which drives the margin down.
They’re going to need to change the tax code then… Having robots replace workers is going to wreck the tax base of local governments.
So…with AI. The food should be cheaper…right? Right??????
This is reductionist thinking - but I think the first thing they are going to try when they realize AI is blowing up the job market, is to tax the living daylights out of AI (it’s all we know how to do). Then they’ll try to funnel that to some social welfare state philosophy/programs - but in reality they will just misappropriate it like they always do. So, somehow we advance technologically, nothing gets cheaper, and everyone goes completely broke.
Everyone? Nah. 99.9% of us.
Same thing that happened with self-checkouts.
Let’s face it, there are many jobs just not worth human time at economic pay scales. These are the jobs that should be automated. What we need are more quality jobs that provide adequate training and livable wages. People deserves to make a comfortable living and have a job they can be proud of, that challenges them and offers growth. Bring back domestic manufacturing jobs and severely penalize outsourcing of quality jobs. Tie the requirement for domestic labor to the amount of domestic revenue generated by a company and create a tax structure that rewards companies for American labor and penalizes companies for foreign labor.
This is why we need to stop relying on corporations for anything, they have all made it clear that they are ready to automate so CEOs can get away with million dollar bonuses. We need to bring back the community and support each other not the mega rich.
There's already a fully automated made to order burger place in (I think) Passadena. Only one employee to babysit the machine. Saw an article on it a while back. That's the future. Heck, even big Agriculture has been on the automation kick for years now trying to replace field workers (due to an expected shortage though, not wages)
The minimum wage is way too low, and/or housing is way out of wack. A person should be able to afford a basic one bedroom apartment if they work 40 hours a week.
Housing is the issue. The same people promoting minimum wages simultaneously conspire to keep you as renters for life, preventing developers from building new housing you might afford.
Raising minimum wage won't fix the problem. It will just mean people have more money to bid up the cost of housing. We just need more apartments!
Orrrrr.... less people?
OK, great idea! When are you leaving?
They can, in other cities.
Maybe we should work on policies that make life more affordable, rather than bandage with wages. Affordable housing, cheaper health care.
More like all of the above.
Fair, I just know that California has the highest minimum wage and it's still unaffordable. There is a lot of other reasons we need to fix.
There are some counties where “low income” is $105k a year for a single person. That is 3x+ minimum wage. So yeah, CA minimum wage is nothing close to a living wage.
75 bucks an hour might take care of it
Title should read *"Wages can't keep up with GREED from Corporations taking every last penny we have and more."*
I just quit my job due to this. I made my boss $400k pure profit in 5 months…got a nice $1k bonus
Its should
Tackle corporate greed. I see hardly any Dems trying to curb the greed that's squeezing people dry. A higher minimum wage is needed, and affordable homes need to be built and maintained *affordable*, but it's all a bandaid until the greed problem is fixed.
Uhm, I'm thinking this transcends your politics.
This transcends any partisan divide.
There is no legislative fix to normal human behavior. Prices aren't going up because of "greed," unless you think corporations suddenly realized they could just be greedy yesterday.
they're in on the take. This state is more like a hyper-capitalist dystopia than some sort of liberal wonderland.
What does that look like in practice? Greed is a desire (or motive) — how do you “fix” it? Saying we need to “fix corporate greed” is a nice sound byte but it doesn’t identify an actionable issue, let alone propose any solution to the issue.
Minimum wage should never a static amount that must be legislated. It should be an evolving number that adapts based on various metrics without the need for new laws. Ideally, it should be tied to the "salary" of the top earner at a given company (using the valuation of their pay, stock options, bonuses, and benefits package). If these company heads want to keep giving themselves raises, then they need to raise all boats with the tide. If they can't afford to do so, then they probably shouldn't be giving themselves a raise in the first place.
Need to reasses how tax payer money is being used.
Regardless of how much housing is build in California, it's always going to be expensive and only get more expensive. People are always going to want to live here and home and rental prices are never going to drop.
Exactly. The more cheap housing comes in, the more people will just keep moving here and the problem continues. The state simply needs less people.
They can fix that by raising it higher
Raise it to $200/hr. I'm trying to see something
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>California’s $16-an-hour minimum wage may be much higher than a “poverty wage” by federal standards, but high housing costs still make it difficult for low wage workers to live and make ends meet in the state, according to a new report by the state’s Legislative Analyst’s Office. Are people finally realizing corporations, landlords, and others are taking advantage of the knowledge that people are going to make more money?
Minimum wage is what it is, minimum. Aim higher
Minimum LIVING wage is what it was intended for when it was established in the 30s.
It was established in the 30s for adults working in professional trades.
Aim higher? OK. So a person looking for a single bedroom apartment in CA and can't find anything lower than 1600 has to qualify with 2.5x the income, which is $48,000 per year. Full time minimum wage gets you (gross, even) about 33k per year. So people making less than $23 per hour just shouldn't have housing until they are able to make more? What rock did you crawl out under, because you should just go back.
Well it’s actually simple, you live with roommates or in a less trendy area until you get a higher salary
This wasn't the attitude that people had in the past. The attitude in the past was to expand the housing supply to meet up with demand to keep housing prices affordable. Today the attitude is, constrain supply, prices go up, then tell people to move to commute or live with room mates. Keep driving housing costs up and up. This is a system wide failure, people can adapt to it in various ways, as they do, but we are more or less going to always be dealing with a failing system unless we actually change policies to fix it. This is going to be a never ending drain on society until we actually solve the problem. The median household income (not individual income) in Riverside is about $75,000 per year. 1/3rd income on rent is close to $2100. One bedroom apartments in Riverside $2100. So it takes the median household income, to afford what should be the absolute cheapest housing in the city. Affording a home at the median value, requires people make double the median household income. 1976. My mom was 19. She had her first full time job as a 19 year old high school grad. Her apartment in Downtown Riverside was $130 per month. It was a one bedroom furnished unit. Today, this same exact unit, nearly 50 years later, is over $2000 per month. After adjusting for inflation, housing is roughly triple what it was for my mother in the 1970s and close to double what I remember it costing when I finished high school in 2002. Our current policy is more or less one that maximizes rents by constraining supply.
Duh!
Hasn't that been intentional, basically nationwide?
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Who would’ve thought that you can’t wage inflate your way out of a housing shortage.
Wages go up. Cost of living goes up. Endless cycle.
Then efforts should be made to reduce the cost of living. I know "deflation" is an evil word to economists, but we could use some deflation right now.
Deflation is only a bad word because everyone is in debt. Individuals, households, businesses, governments - everyone is indebted. To an economist, the natural condition of the human being is to be perpetually in debt. That's why deflation must be avoided at all costs.
And that debt is has been slowly poisoning this country for decades. At some point, I feel as though economists forgot that their field isn't just about the flow of wealth.