America is Regressing into a Developing Nation for Most People | Hacker News Reader

America is Regressing into a Developing Nation for Most People

evonomics.com

66 pointsrbanffy15 comments

The solutions to this problem, to a significant degree, were embodied in the 'Land of Opportunity' and the 'American Dream', very popular identities for the country. The idea was that 'only in America' did poor immigrants and natives have the opportunity to accomplish great things, and was a poor person seen as just as important and deserving as a wealthy one (an outgrowth of the rejection of aristocracy and the foundation of universal human rights - 'all men are created equal', 'liberty and justice for all').

Now it's popular (though not universal) to say immigrants are unwelcome; to cut education, health care, and other programs necessary for opportunity; and more and more power is concentrated in the hands of the wealthy. Rather than encouraged and supported in the ambition of the 'American Dream', you now hear non-wealthy people encouraged to stay within their class - don't go to college; don't dream big; learn to be a plumber.

When is the last time you heard the 'Land of Opportunity' or 'American Dream' mentioned?

I think "American Dream" is a micro-aggression now

In my view, at the present time, housing costs are the greatest burden for that 80%. The problem here is predation. The solution is small, sturdy, low-cost homes (common after WW2, don't mean trailers) with no-interest payments limited to 25-30% of net income. For a $20K income that's $5000 a year. For a $30,000 home, six years.

$30B would buy a million of these. Build a few less jets.

The problem is that "investors" would swoop in and buy said houses for the 30k, and rent it out for $700 a month. The first round wouldn't be so bad, but every-time anything came up for sale it would get bid up until the rent is astronomical in relation to the base materials cost.

In order for this to work you have to build enough oversupply that anyone at any time who wanted a 30k house could get one (and wouldn't have to drive two hours out of town). To do this you probably need to build huge condo blocks like you find in Hong Kong, or similar cities and those buildings aren't inexpensive. Possible, but I don't see it being something that happens without strong government involvement. Which itself tends to be a problem unless you happen to luck out with the proverbial benevolent dictator.

The reason we don't have mass high rise construction everywhere in high cost of living cities is due to goverment regulations. In Seattle you cannot build above four stories for much of the city. San Francisco has similarly restrictive measures. The problem is usually incumbent property owners want to preserve the "character" of their neighborhood and protect their investment.

Barking up the wrong tree. Nothing to do with regulations except as a side proxy tool of powerful NIMFOBY homeowners’ interests whom want their scenic views and low inventory to keep their property values high.

Regulations aren’t automatically good or bad, consider each as a possible multi-edged sword. Banning leaded gas in cars was mostly good.

Let’s not kid ourselves about what kind of houses they’d be: million tiny houses would be arranged like refugee camps. The cheapest shit possible that can be called a “livable shelter,” except it will be like a favela. The market of that wouldn’t be much.

The cheapest shit a homeless person might prefer to living in a car or a tent is probably more like $5000-10000. Could build a million of those for $10B. Plumbed.

Ever seen a cottage? The people living next to my parents lived in one, no more than 500 sq.ft. Happily raised two kids in it; happily lived in it until their deaths. On a nice lot on a nice street, far from cheap shit. Maybe the favela ( been reading Sterling?) is in your head.

We don't need high-rises to achieve a high supply of housing. We just need to allow six story buildings anywhere that someone wants to build one. These buildings are much cheaper per housing unit than high rises, but allow for much greater population density than the two to three stories that we allow in some of our most sought after locations.

Well (ha ha) obviously this program would only be for eligible low-income individuals. And one of the conditions of sale (renting not allowed) would be: only to eligible individuals, on the same terms. Take it or leave it.

You know, I wonder why we can't solve this problem more creatively. And by creatively, I mean with some common sense.

We have no shortage of problems here. Some of these problems include crumbling infrastructure and a lack of affordable housing.

It's often suggested in Hacker News that 1. college education is too expensive and 2. college education isn't worth it. But we also forget that college education isn't just for the individual, but for society's benefit.

-Bill Clinton- JFK introduced the peace corps. Why don't we have a round two of that? In exchange for working in the corp, you can get a government-funded college education, in a state school if you do okay on some tests, and with an additional stipend to get into whatever you get into if you do better. We could let college admissions do some part of that lifting.

I don't know. Is this too obvious? Instead of people fighting pointless wars overseas, we can instead have them (re-)build their own country, literally. In California alone we supposedly have 130bn in infrastructure updates.

edit: thanks dragonwriter for the correction.

> Bill Clinton introduced the peace corps.

No, that was JFK. Bill Clinton introduced AmeriCorps, which is a completely different thing.

We should solve this problem by importing more people from developing nations. They can help teach the natives how to thrive in this kind of environment.

I would certainly say that we are seeing similar trends in the UK regarding the description of the two worlds. It's almost going back to feudalism.

The drawbridge is being drawn up and those not already within the castle over the next few years might never enter again. Very concerning.

The book this article describes: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/vanishing-middle-class

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