Conversation

Dec 1, 2020

What’s wrong with it being just what it is? Presumably, it is acceptable for some place to be an aging, silver retirement community. Why not Palo Alto? Being “more” would be something different, which sounds like it’s at odds with the retirement community vibe residents enjoy.

Kim-Mai Cutler

@kimmaicutler

East Of Palo Alto’s Eden: Race And The Formation Of Silicon Valley

there are costs to everyone else:

techcrunch.com

What if Silicon Valley had emerged from a racially integrated community? Would the technology industry be different? Would we? And what can the technology industry do now to avoid repeating the...

Kim-Mai Cutler

@kimmaicutler

The Urban Housing Crunch Costs the U.S. Economy About $1.6 Trillion a Year

there are costs to the entire economy, on the order of trillions of dollars a year

bloomberg.com

For the first time, economists have put a price tag on restrictive urban land use policies.

Kim-Mai Cutler

@kimmaicutler

Income Segregation and Intergenerational Mobility Across Colleges in the United States | Opportun...

it also reduces economic dynamism and socioeconomic mobility for the entire labor force. it means the meritocracy doesn't exist at all; in fact, the inverse. a heritocracy.

opportunityinsights.org

Maybe but it could be that those things aren't desirable in PA. Improving scores in those areas might reduce the cost of labor but it might also be worth it to them to just pay the higher cost to maintain low scores there. Can't blame them for trading in their own interest.

Zach Lipton

@zachlipton

I don’t blame them for acting in their interest, but shouldn’t a functioning democracy stop those acting in their own interest while hurting others? If it suits PA’s interests to tell property owners they can’t build apartments doesn’t it suit the state’s interests to say no?

I think the bar for "hurting" in this thread is pretty low. We're talking about voluntary transactions. The state should be careful to avoid the pitfalls of populism and socialism. The state should be concerned about driving out its wealthy employers.

Zach Lipton

@zachlipton

1:07 AM · Dec 3, 2020Twitter Web App

Scroll up a couple of tweets where it says "there are costs to the entire economy, on the order of trillions of dollars a year” and perform a bit of arithmetic. “Living like this costs every person in the country on the order of $5K/year” is “hurting,” yes.

Replying to

and

Unless you tell me that Palo Alto is poisoning the oceans, I'm going to have a hard time believing "trillions of dollars a year". Can someone break out that figure in a Google Sheet? Reading it on Twitter doesn't make it true. The value of PA hosting the wealthy is worth 100 tril

Replying to

and

That number is for the whole US not just PA, as per linked article. Here’s the paper aeaweb.org/articles?id=10 But if you're opposed to socialism here, if you don’t want neighbors, you should have to buy up the whole block instead of telling your neighbors what they can't build