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Re:The $3500 Shirt – A History Lesson in Economics by dagw on Saturday January 24, 2015 @05:59PM (#8941381)
housing has rocketed out of proportion around the Western world whilst other goods have become basically irrelevant.

Only if you want to live where everybody else wants to live. I mean if I really wanted to I could sell my small flat in town and buy a nice enough house for less than 20% of what I got for my flat. The only problem is that the house would be in the middle of nowhere and I don't want to live in the middle of nowhere.

Re:The $3500 Shirt – A History Lesson in Economics by hueving on Saturday January 24, 2015 @06:33PM (#8941477)
>Only if you want to live where everybody else wants to live.

There is no such place where everyone wants to live. SF is desirable to only a very small percentage of the population. Yet it has some of the highest housing costs in the world. All it takes is an imbalance of supply for the demand. If there are only two houses available in a location that 200 people are interested in, they are going to go for very high prices regardless of what the rest of the world thinks of them.

Re:The $3500 Shirt – A History Lesson in Economics by PeterisP on Saturday January 24, 2015 @08:03PM (#8941689)
There are places where you can't afford to live even if housing costs zero - if "noone wants to live there" then after a single generation, the place has no jobs, no nearby infrastructure (schools, social services, etc), and all the goods and services cost more (if available at all) than in the affluent regions simply due to lack of economies of scale.

This is a big problem in some areas, where urban regions have a lack of housing despite a construction boom, while rural regions have empty houses available for 20-30% of what it would cost to build a similar house.

If I moved to a place like that, the extra cost in time and fuel in driving myself and (especially) the kids between there and a reasonable city would be much greater than what I currently spend on housing.