Reply to The government has always been here. So why was the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80, 90s COL here so affordable?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Rising income inequality means that some areas have become extremely expensive while others have stagnated.

In the 50s and 60s economic growth was more broad-based. Now many second-tier cities like Pittsburgh, Cleveland, even St. Louis have done pretty badly, HQs have moved to places like NYC. Wealth is concentrated in the tech sector, in lawyers, lobbyists and financiers. The places where people like that live have become very expensive as a result.[/quote]

The economies of the 50s and 60s were also drastically different from today. We had a huge and well-paying industrial base that was huge and well-paying because most of the developed world competition (Europe) had their economies destroyed by WWII and were no competition for the American industrial might, and China slipped into communism and closed off from the world and self-destructed for the next 30 years, and Russia wasn't an economic competitor. That's why American companies could charge high prices for goods, and in turn pay high wages for their workers.

Nowadays everyone, including angry liberals, would prefer to buy cheap schlock made by quasi slave labor in third world country and China than higher prices for American made goods ....

I wouldn't say second tier cities are doing badly, outside a few examples like Cleveland. Even Pittsburgh is seeing a rebound. It's really heavily industrial smaller cities like Youngstown that suffered badly. Most corporate HQs are not in New York, there's more HQs among Dallas and Houston and Atlanta and the other midtier cities (combined) than in New York, and proportionally more per capita in many midsize cities, and even in New York you often find it's a small head office of a few hundred to a few thousand employees while the rest of the tens of thousands are in back offices in the provincial cities.

There has been a distortion of wealth resulting from QE flocking primarily to the top 1% via booming stock markets and tech investment, I suppose. In DC, however, the explosion of contracting spending post 9-11 is what really changed the DC market. [/quote]

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