The problem with this view is that places that a few decades ago would have counted as 'fancy metros' are now more accurately described as 'the only places where there are any jobs (the wages of which are still often insufficient to pay for housing)'.
Which leads to another actionable suggestion: we should stop tolerating failure to hire remote workers. (Yes, I know the excuses. We should also stop tolerating those excuses.)
There are thriving mid-size cities and towns across the U.S where rent doesn't eat your total paycheck. I live in one of them. The data above supports this. 41% of consumption on total housing category has only moved down slightly, from 42% in 1987.
Remote work should be more encouraged, I agree.
What are you suggesting?
I don’t think I agree with him, but that doesn’t make it “not a reason”.
Reason I disagree with him is that if workplaces rearrange themselves to not need physical presence, all the jobs suddenly get done by whichever genuinely third world nation can put high bandwidth internet connection into literal shantytown slums the fastest.
If this was a gradual and planned-for change, starting with boosting the salary expectations of the poorest in the world up to our level, that’s one thing. Doing it to solve housing cost differences between rural and urban areas in developed nations will just blow up in everyone’s faces with unhandled side-effects.
There are many natural reasons why being physically in an office is advantageous. I can have face-to-face meetings with multiple people without conference call issues, I'm available to go visit clients local to the office, interactions with colleagues are just easier due to proximity, I hear the office cross-talk that is unavailable when you're remote, I form closer personal relationships with my colleagues because of countless unplanned interactions, I can perform physical tasks like installing servers, etc.
Granted, there are disadvantages to working locally too - but the complex mix of advantages and disadvantages feed into the decisions that everyone makes in how they run their businesses, where they choose to be employed, etc.
Does it not concern you that you're advocating overriding all of that decision making with some one-size-fits-all government policy that would criminalize people simply working the way they wish to?
https://www.bls.gov/cpi/tables/relative-importance/2017.txt
https://www.bls.gov/cpi/tables/relative-importance/home.htm#...
notably, top-level breakdowns are: Food and beverages 14.359
Housing 41.772
Apparel 3.018
Recreation 5.737
Transportation 16.537
Medical care 8.673
Education and communication 6.707
Other goods and services 3.198
Interestingly, if you dig into the data, you can see some interesting patterns of consumer spending. For example, women's and girl's apparel spending is 66% larger than men's and boy's apparel! Also, motor vehicle maintenance and repair is only weighted as 1.123% of spending, which is a lot less than I would have guessed given people's horror stories.
Breaking down the housing category, the combined values of rent and owner's equivalent of rent make up more than 30% of the basket. This has risen by about 5% (of the whole basket) since 1987. I doubt that that category is being evaluated too low in a substantial way. Rent by itself is only 7.8% of the basket, which may mean that the basket is fairly insensitive to people being gouged by their landlords.
If you live in a fancy metro, your rent will be above average compared to the nation. This is to be expected.
I am surprised that medical is only 8-9%. This has risen from 5.8% in 1987. I expect that the reason it is so low is that the average person spends 80% of their life having tiny medical bills and 20% of their life having huge ones.
By looking at which categories have shrunk in their weightings over time, you can get a feel for what goods/services are cheaper now than in the past OR that people now choose substitute goods instead of. Certain categories have no substitute, i.e. medical. If you squint at the data real hard you can eke out where you personally are getting reamed more than past-you would have. Some actionable advice would be to consider which services have gotten more expensive due to Baumol's Cost Disease (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol%27s_cost_disease) and do your best to DIY them.