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Comment by klooney | Hacker News Reader

Housing inflation also really cuts down on everyone's ability to not be mercenary

Oh, I am so here for "housing theory of everything" comments! That is, in my other comment on this post, precisely my "interest in local politics".

Working on fixing our housing shortage has felt extremely meaningful to me.

I'd like to find some of that idealism in software again.

There are current efforts along these lines! For example, permitting is a huge bottleneck - software could be part of the solution (carefully and thoughtfully integrated, of course).

Disclosure: I work at govstream.ai - we work in this space [we're hiring!]

Sent you an email. Not sure you got it...

This is the root of it all. 8-10 years of experience with an above average pay rate means you can just start to afford a starter home in any of the tech hubs.

That sounds dystopian. If you are a chicken with 5 years of experience laying eggs, you can just start to afford your own cage on the farm.

It is super bleak: yeah, as a software person, you can think about what it would take to afford a home.

As a teacher or many other professions? Forget about it. You need to either marry someone with a more lucrative career, or move somewhere more affordable.

Yes exactly. There is a huge amount of people going into software development so they can have the basic security of owning their own dwelling. Prices have gone up even in non tech hubs. Home pricing vs what people earn is the reason for so much destitution in this country, and so many people are locked in its a complete non-issue for them, or a benefit.

Rent a shoebox in a tech hub, save enough for a house in flyover country, then become a plumber there or something if remote is dead.

The single biggest determinant of people's cost of living, and the single biggest driver of backsliding living standards in many of the most productive cities in the US.

It's not just housing. Imagine you want to start a business. There is not much commercial property available and if there is something, it is too expensive and wildly taxed.

I was once told a story by an Argentinian.

They have a business tax rate above 106% of profit[]. That is it is illegal for a business to make a profit.

Yet there is apparently a video out there of a black market cart seller selling wares right in front of the Argentine tax office, totally unbothered.

It made me wonder if this was just an allegory of what's in store for us.

[] https://archive.doingbusiness.org/content/dam/doingBusiness/...

That number is not tax as a percent of profit like corporation Tax, but includes all contributions. For example 23.5 from that number is just social security paid by the company. In other developed countries like the UK we also have those sort of taxes (at 15% of pay in the UK). It is misleading of the report to give this number as a % of profit since then if a company makes no profit, it technically has an infinite tax rate, despite the fact the tax owed does not depend on the profit.

When math starts falling from the sky, generated by AI of course and proved with theorem provers, then everything will start falling from the sky. There will be a way to have more houses than anyone would ever need, for every person on the planet.

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