Interesting Links for 12-12-2016

[andrewducker]

Confirmation of the topology of the Wendelstein 7-X Stellerator magnetic field to better than 1:100,000 (tags: fusion Technology ) Cats: Helping you read since 8,000 BC (tags: cats books cute ) 11 Habits of Highly Creative People (tags: creativity comic funny ) Revamped Bubble Wrap Loses Its Pop (Could 2016 get any worse?) (tags: packaging )

Comments

[danieldwilliam]

It's one of the mysteries of economics why housing restrictions and housing costs don't shift production and therefore employment and therefore demand for housing more than appears to be the case.

Or at least as quickly as one might expect.

[andrewducker]

You mean "Why don't people move to where the housing is cheap?"

I assume the answer is a mixture of "That's not where the jobs are" and "Moving to a new place when you don't have either cash or a support network waiting for you is really hard".

[danieldwilliam]

There's some of that.

And I think there is something in the reason that there are spare / cheap houses in the first place. One of my economic learning points of the last five years is that re-building regional economies after large industries move out or fail is much, much, much harder than economists thought (and I started on the "it's going to be hard and it will need government intervention" end of the spectrum to being with.)

But it seems really difficult to even talk to people about e.g. moving out of London to places like Birmingham or Edinburgh where property prices are not insane.

Perhaps the answer is that Schumpterian creative destruction just takes longer and the way depressed areas recover is that their relative cheapness eventually makes it easier for new industries and new technologies to flourish there. See Aberdeen for a counter example.

[nojay]

Property prices are high in places with good amenities -- London, for example has excellent public transport and is getting billions of pounds of investment in further developments such as Crossrail 2 and the expected expansion of links to Heathrow for the third runway if it is built. These amenities attract more people to come to live there, pushing up the ticket price of homes and property. The result of that population increase is more pressure to improve the infrastructure including new public transport options (like Crossrail 3, 4, n). Step and repeat.

A village on the moors in Yorkshire has cheap housing but only two buses a day on the single-track road to the local town where the shops, pubs etc. are so no-one wants to go and live there or invest in the area. Step and repeat.

[steer]

I believe the UK does have an unusually immobile work force compared with many European countries.

In the case of London for a good number of people the benefits outweigh the property prices. I live somewhere where all year round if I want to go to the theatre or see comedy I can choose between dozens of shows on any week night. I don't think anywhere else in the country offers that. Compared with that I'm not going to go "ooh, bigger house, great" (why do I even want a bigger house?)

[skington]

I suspect there's also a direct correlation between "confident, assertive etc. enough to uproot yourself from where you currently live to move somewhere else with lower housing costs" and "has the sort of skills that are well-rewarded by the job market".

So, chances are, if you're the sort of person who could up sticks and move, you either have moved already or can afford to live where you are; if you're being priced out of the housing market, you're not the sort of person who would move.

Also, public policy shouldn't just assume that e.g. everyone wants to be an entrepreneur and will be good at it. If your family has been cockneys for generations, it's perfectly understandable to say "a great deal of my identity is living in London", and not take kindly to someone saying "there's loads of house and jobs in Leeds; why not move there?"

[octopoid_horror]

Agreed.

The people who need affordable homes aren't those who can afford the commuting costs of living somewhere in the commuter belts around major cities where you can be spending thousands a year just to get to a job that already doesn't pay you enough to buy a home.

People often rent in cities because buying outside the city where living is more affordable makes the travel into the city less affordable. It doesn't matter if "it's cheaper in the long term" because they need to be able to afford it short term before they can get to the long term.