Bryan Caplan on YIMBY in the NYT

 [[{“value”:”Here is one excerpt: What few appreciate is that the overregulation of housing has blocked a classic American path: moving to a higher-wage part of the country to secure a better life. A paper by the economists Peter Ganong and Daniel Shoag shows that housing costs now routinely outweigh wage gains: While janitors and waiters do indeed
The post Bryan Caplan on YIMBY in the NYT appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.”}]] 

Here is one excerpt:

What few appreciate is that the overregulation of housing has blocked a classic American path: moving to a higher-wage part of the country to secure a better life. A paper by the economists Peter Ganong and Daniel Shoag shows that housing costs now routinely outweigh wage gains: While janitors and waiters do indeed earn higher salaries in the Bay Area, they have to spend much more than their extra pay on rent. Programmers and lawyers who move to gold-rush regions still come out ahead, but the rest of the workforce is gradually getting out of Dodge. In a functional society, self-interest inspires workers to relocate to wherever they are most productive. In our society, strict housing regulation has decoupled movement and value, leading to the mass migration of lower-income residents away from geographic centers of technological progress and economic growth.

Here is the entire article, and don’t forget about Bryan’s new book on housing deregulation Build, Baby, Build: The Science and Ethics of Housing Regulation.

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