Re:Across the rich world, an extraordinary jobs boom is unde...
by debatem1 on Thursday May 30, 2019 @07:47PM
(#20057053)
Just to clarify: that isn't 7% per year. That's 7% per decade.
To make it clearer what I'm saying, my parents bought their house in South Carolina in June of 2009 for about $130,000. Last month it went at just north of $195,000. If you had done exactly the same thing in Seattle and were subject to the median growth in housing prices that home would have sold last month for $205,000.
It's not chump change, but it isn't a night-and-day difference either. What I think it underscores is the difference between the actual problem we face (homes here are expensive) and the symptom we expect to see from theory (demand has skyrocketed -> home prices are skyrocketing). Because we don't see the symptom predicted by theory, I have to question whether the remedy the theory calls for is appropriate.
To make it clearer what I'm saying, my parents bought their house in South Carolina in June of 2009 for about $130,000. Last month it went at just north of $195,000. If you had done exactly the same thing in Seattle and were subject to the median growth in housing prices that home would have sold last month for $205,000.
It's not chump change, but it isn't a night-and-day difference either. What I think it underscores is the difference between the actual problem we face (homes here are expensive) and the symptom we expect to see from theory (demand has skyrocketed -> home prices are skyrocketing). Because we don't see the symptom predicted by theory, I have to question whether the remedy the theory calls for is appropriate.