Complaining isn’t about an absolute scale. You complain when you observe that something should change to make things better.
If you have a wonderful life and your kid leaves some trash on the floor you shouldn’t say, well that’s fine because we’re a loving family. You should complain and say, pick up your trash.
So here in California yes life is good but I will still complain because some of our policies are obviously making things worse and people should simply adopt my preferred policies.
Question to Bryan and to the audience, and apologies if it comes off as nitpicking, I am just genuinely curious.
Is it really possible that so many indicators of how attractive a place is can be boiled down to “if real estate prices are good (exceptional even), there cannot be a good reason to complain?”. For the reverse case, taking the example of South Africa, my impression as a local is that low costs of housing for internationals comes mostly from a mismatch in cost of living (low relative minimum wage in SA), a weak local currency against the dollar/euro, and greatly lower service costs (e.g. for labour) than the USA has. I think many locals would indeed see that price as very high indeed, more like how many Americans would see the prices in LA as very high.
I do generally agree that people should turn off their news more, the tendency towards overwhelming negativity is pretty high, but I do wonder if many Angelenos are also just comfortable where they are and then complain as their base-level of happiness returns once they’ve settled in and initial excitement has worn off.
One aside: As an SA local, people being kidnapped for ransom, especially from their homes, is vanishingly rare from what I’ve seen/heard, especially depending on what area you are in. The crime rate is a lot higher than the US, but a large share falls on the poorer population, and I reckon your friend has a much bigger chance of “minor crime” such as burglary and mugging rather than something like a kidnapping. Just thought it was an interesting aside in an otherwise excellent article, probably just a throwaway line anyway.
Please correct me if I'm wrong here, but I've gathered from pertinent reports that California -- largely due to generous benefits on offer from state and municipal governments and, I assume, also due to its mild climate -- is, and has been, a magnet and haven for uninvited migrants from Central and South America, to a greater extent than any other US state. While it may not erode property values in the near term, I daresay that massive, unrestricted in-migration of needy people from countries where median population IQ is more than a standard deviation below that of a "host" polity where, due to deeply entrenched norms, childbearing and intelligence are inversely correlated and only those women who fail to graduate from high school are reproducing at more than replacement level will eventually have a negative impact on the quality of life of long-time residents. Cutting out subsidies for immigrants, enacting more restrictive immigration laws, and re-establishing effective border control will be of little avail in the long run, however, if dysgenic fertility continues unabated. Something will eventually beat nothing.
That's an outdated picture. In the most recent full-year data available (2022 compared to 2021), "Florida received the most migrants, according to available data, followed by Georgia, Texas, Maryland and North Carolina....Florida saw the largest one-year increase with 208,000 new immigrants, a 5% jump. That included an increase of 65,000 from Venezuela, a 30,000 increase from Haiti, and about 18,000 more from Peru.....Immigrant population dropped in California and Hawaii (down 24,000 in each) and Colorado (down 13,000)...."
I didn't say California gets the most immigrants. Rather, I said it was my understanding that it gets the most from Central America. Perhaps I was mistaken, but if so that's not clear from what you've just told me.
I'm not finding data on current new immigration from Central America in particular by US state.
I do find Census Bureau data that:
-- More new immigrants to California have arrived from Asia than from any other part of the world during every year since 2007. From 2007 through 2017 Asians were absolute majorities every year of new immigrants into California.
-- during 2022, the most recent year available, immigrants to California sorted out as follows: Asia 46%, Latin America (combining Mexico/Central America/South America) 38%, Europe 10%, all else 6%.
-- the article I linked above said that during 2022 Florida had by far the largest net gain in foreign-born population (208,000) of any state, while California had a net drop of 24,000.
-- from 2010 to 2022 Florida and Texas each had by far the largest net increases in foreign-born population of any states: 1.16 million and 1.03 million respectively. California during the same period had a net increase of 278,000.
-- California's total foreign-born population declined by about 200,000 from 2016 to 2021.
-- from 2010 to 2021 the total number of US residents who were born in Central American nations increased by 767,000.
(All of the above figures include legal and illegal immigrants.)
Since California's foreign-born population is now declining, and Asia is the largest source of new foreign-born immigrants to California, and Florida and Texas are the states gaining by far the most new foreign-born residents, at the same time that the number of Central American people in the US has been rising....it does not seem arithmetically possible that California could currently be receiving a lot of immigrants from Central America.
Though I may have been mistaken in supposing that California has a higher inflow of Central American migrants than any other state that has no bearing on the validity of my main contentions:
1) massive, unrestricted in-migration of needy people from countries where median population IQ is more than a standard deviation below that of a "host" polity -- e.g., California or the USA as a whole -- where, due to deeply entrenched norms, childbearing and intelligence are inversely correlated and only those women who fail to graduate from high school are reproducing at more than replacement level will eventually have a negative impact on the quality of life of long-time residents;
2) restricting immigration will be of little avail in the long run, however, if dysgenic fertility continues unabated.
Heh, that's a lot of words for "white people are better and we shouldn't let in brown ones". But anyway don't worry about the pesky statistics, no doubt you'll find a fresh set to assume with.
An ad hominem accusation of racism is your polemical trump card, eh?
Nothing I've said implies that white people are better than everyone else. My concern is median intelligence, not skin color. The median IQ of US residents of Northeast Asian ancestry is higher than that of those of European ancestry, and that of Ashkenazi Jews -- who though light-skinned are a historically oppressed minority -- is higher still, and we should be glad to have them amongst us. Too bad they aren't more prolific.
Though I think it would serve our interest and that of our descendants to screen out impoverished migrants whose tested level of intelligence is considerably below the median of current US residents, I think we'd benefit from admitting people who score above that median, whether their complexion is black, brown, white, red, or any other color.
I'm confused. You just wrote a book on housing regulation and how it decreases supply and increases housing prices. If your house is only expensive because housing supply is artificially limited, can it be used as evidence of demand? If regulations disappeared tomorrow and the price of housing in LA halved, would that mean you suddenly liked living in LA much less than the day before?
The argument as I understand it is that if you keep staying while having the option to relocate ~anywhere else and receive extra money on top (since most other places are much less expensive), that's strong evidence that you like it where you are.
(For the most part I agree with him.
However, I think this implicitly underestimates how much of the value of a place for most people is provided by familiarity and proximity to other people they care about or have invested significant time cultivating relationships with.
And on a less important note, it might also underestimate how psychologically costly it is for many people to deal with such big decisions and the whole process of moving someplace else)
That's an interesting post. I wonder how well most LA folks would say it has held up over the past 17 years. One notable difference is that CA's population has decreased quite a bit in that time. It makes me wonder how much of the price of real estate is due to the transaction costs and other frictions of moving from the city/state and how much is desire for people to move in.
I totally agree that the high prices indicate people want to live there, I just wonder whether the market is smooth enough that residents are very knowledgeable about outside options for comparison, for example. I have been struck in the past by how little many people know about areas outside their hometown regions, and are surprised at how different they can be.
The population of CA hasn't declined over the last 15 years. It has slightly declined since 2020 but is pretty flat. Estimates are that it will increase slightly in 2024.
The last point is pretty interesting to me. Having moved internationally once or twice in my life, I’ve found it challenging that after doing a decent amount of research, I’m still often surprised both by how different the new place I move to is, and also how quickly I can adjust to it. It makes me wonder if I haven’t discarded options in the past that probably would have actually been fine if I had done them
That’s interesting. Can you elaborate a bit on what kind of places you have moved to?
I think that research point is a good one. Combine with the geographic capital people develop, knowledge of where to eat, what shops are good, all the “lived here all my life” type stuff that is lost when moving, I imagine it is a pretty high bar to really move when you don’t know what other places can be like.
Although I will fully admit, being from very rural areas I am constantly amazed at how much crime and other urban nonsense people are willing to put up with just to live in cities. There are probably many appealing features that are lost on me, despite having lived in and near many large cities.
Sure! I have moved from my hometown of Pretoria to the Netherlands and recently to Paris, and am planning to move back to South Africa in the near future.
I think especially with the move to the Netherlands, I was surprised at how easy it was to find a job (I’m a student, so think minimum wage work), the quality of life that could be had on a minimum wage, part time salary, (pretty great actually), and how efficient government departments are (at least compared to SA). On the negative end, I found it generally not the friendliest (more reserved, more individualistic, not a strong service culture), high in service costs (haircuts, trains, and going out is so expensive here as compared to SA) and also not having great weather (which was harder to adjust to than I thought.
But also you adjust quick. I pared down my service expenditures quickly, adjusted to the palaver of biking in the rain, and even became way more punctual than I was at home. A lot of things that it week one seemed like a big deal are very normal now - even when I go home I sometimes even get frustrated that things aren’t running in the way I’m now used to. That was the core of my point.
Not sure about cities - I grew up in a big one, and I think the benefits are mostly that there’s a lot to do, you can meet a lot of people from different perspectives, and that job opportunities are a little better. But where I stay now is medium sized and I like that I can interact with so many people I know just by walking around doing shopping or something
Thank you for that! Interesting that the weather was the harder than you expected; I imagine for Californians that is a big hurdle.
If you are ever in a situation where you can live in a small town or rural area for a few years it would be interesting to see how it compares and the adjustment time. Living even in suburbs drives me nuts, in part because neighbors have annoying amounts of leverage over what I can do on my property, and likewise can inflict problems on me. (Landscaping companies parking their trucks on the narrow roads blocking whole lanes of traffic while they mow is really aggravating.) Being from a place where neighbors have to work really hard to bother me, and vice versa, makes the close proximity awkward for me, never mind the nosy buggers who actively desire to get up in your business and find something to be upset about.
by this same logic, shouldn't you say also that homeless people in California should stop complaining? They are clearly not moving elsewhere, and given they own zero real-estate the friction from not being able to sell it is zero as well. Yeah they might not be able to afford a plane ticket, but trust me if Gavin Newsome could get rid of homeless people just by buying them a ride he'd do that in a heartbeat and pay first class too.
Why don't more homeowners living in LA sell it and move somewhere like the Midwest--Minneapolis, or Chicago; Cincinnati for smaller; or Ann Arbor or Madison if you want even smaller.
Heck they could even go halfway and trade their 1m+ house for a nice 500k one in Salt Lake City where I write this. Even a mere 300k differential as profit post-tax/etc, if you're older and withdraw 6% of that a year, that's 1500/mo for groceries and everything else
I think you're not right from a purely economic perspective. A certain place can be hell on earth, and still, housing prices can be high because the market prices in the future and expects change. If immigration completely destroys Los Angeles, but investors believe that Trump will win the elections and expel all the immigrants, then it would still make sense for housing prices to be high, even if it's scary to even walk the streets. I think this really explains why housing prices in San Francisco remain high, even though the quality of life there isn't so great anymore. It is because one can be optimistic that progressivism will be defeated in the future, after losing all credibility.
There's something you misunderstand here: most people in LA are renters, not homeowners. Paying high rents is not the same as having a very sellable house, especially when moving away would make people too far from their job.
I don't even need to be an Angeleno or an American to respond with "prices are off, vibes are right". Housing prices are sticky, they do not adapt quickly, especially in the land of NEPA/NIMBY/whatever's your favorite name for "don't build more houses" tendencies (i.e. it is not a normal market in terms of supply!). And there is also a big status premium on them: it can be _prestigious_ to live in a hellhole. (Moskovsky and Nevsky avenues in Saint-Petersburg both have very expensive houses, but normal person wouldn't want to live in that area and prefer cheaper suburbs-like districts.)
There is a huge consumer surplus in some places, but it's getting arbitraged away by housing prices. In fact in some cases consumer surplus may be negative (outmigration is an indication of this) but the costs of moving to Texas or what have you are so large that they put up with negative consumer surplus.
Also, most of these people may have moved to CA when it was Reagan country not Newsome country.
Complaining isn’t about an absolute scale. You complain when you observe that something should change to make things better.
If you have a wonderful life and your kid leaves some trash on the floor you shouldn’t say, well that’s fine because we’re a loving family. You should complain and say, pick up your trash.
So here in California yes life is good but I will still complain because some of our policies are obviously making things worse and people should simply adopt my preferred policies.
Question to Bryan and to the audience, and apologies if it comes off as nitpicking, I am just genuinely curious.
Is it really possible that so many indicators of how attractive a place is can be boiled down to “if real estate prices are good (exceptional even), there cannot be a good reason to complain?”. For the reverse case, taking the example of South Africa, my impression as a local is that low costs of housing for internationals comes mostly from a mismatch in cost of living (low relative minimum wage in SA), a weak local currency against the dollar/euro, and greatly lower service costs (e.g. for labour) than the USA has. I think many locals would indeed see that price as very high indeed, more like how many Americans would see the prices in LA as very high.
I do generally agree that people should turn off their news more, the tendency towards overwhelming negativity is pretty high, but I do wonder if many Angelenos are also just comfortable where they are and then complain as their base-level of happiness returns once they’ve settled in and initial excitement has worn off.
One aside: As an SA local, people being kidnapped for ransom, especially from their homes, is vanishingly rare from what I’ve seen/heard, especially depending on what area you are in. The crime rate is a lot higher than the US, but a large share falls on the poorer population, and I reckon your friend has a much bigger chance of “minor crime” such as burglary and mugging rather than something like a kidnapping. Just thought it was an interesting aside in an otherwise excellent article, probably just a throwaway line anyway.
All the best!
Please correct me if I'm wrong here, but I've gathered from pertinent reports that California -- largely due to generous benefits on offer from state and municipal governments and, I assume, also due to its mild climate -- is, and has been, a magnet and haven for uninvited migrants from Central and South America, to a greater extent than any other US state. While it may not erode property values in the near term, I daresay that massive, unrestricted in-migration of needy people from countries where median population IQ is more than a standard deviation below that of a "host" polity where, due to deeply entrenched norms, childbearing and intelligence are inversely correlated and only those women who fail to graduate from high school are reproducing at more than replacement level will eventually have a negative impact on the quality of life of long-time residents. Cutting out subsidies for immigrants, enacting more restrictive immigration laws, and re-establishing effective border control will be of little avail in the long run, however, if dysgenic fertility continues unabated. Something will eventually beat nothing.
That's an outdated picture. In the most recent full-year data available (2022 compared to 2021), "Florida received the most migrants, according to available data, followed by Georgia, Texas, Maryland and North Carolina....Florida saw the largest one-year increase with 208,000 new immigrants, a 5% jump. That included an increase of 65,000 from Venezuela, a 30,000 increase from Haiti, and about 18,000 more from Peru.....Immigrant population dropped in California and Hawaii (down 24,000 in each) and Colorado (down 13,000)...."
https://lailluminator.com/2023/09/16/states-migrants/
I didn't say California gets the most immigrants. Rather, I said it was my understanding that it gets the most from Central America. Perhaps I was mistaken, but if so that's not clear from what you've just told me.
I'm not finding data on current new immigration from Central America in particular by US state.
I do find Census Bureau data that:
-- More new immigrants to California have arrived from Asia than from any other part of the world during every year since 2007. From 2007 through 2017 Asians were absolute majorities every year of new immigrants into California.
-- during 2022, the most recent year available, immigrants to California sorted out as follows: Asia 46%, Latin America (combining Mexico/Central America/South America) 38%, Europe 10%, all else 6%.
-- the article I linked above said that during 2022 Florida had by far the largest net gain in foreign-born population (208,000) of any state, while California had a net drop of 24,000.
-- from 2010 to 2022 Florida and Texas each had by far the largest net increases in foreign-born population of any states: 1.16 million and 1.03 million respectively. California during the same period had a net increase of 278,000.
-- California's total foreign-born population declined by about 200,000 from 2016 to 2021.
-- from 2010 to 2021 the total number of US residents who were born in Central American nations increased by 767,000.
(All of the above figures include legal and illegal immigrants.)
Since California's foreign-born population is now declining, and Asia is the largest source of new foreign-born immigrants to California, and Florida and Texas are the states gaining by far the most new foreign-born residents, at the same time that the number of Central American people in the US has been rising....it does not seem arithmetically possible that California could currently be receiving a lot of immigrants from Central America.
Though I may have been mistaken in supposing that California has a higher inflow of Central American migrants than any other state that has no bearing on the validity of my main contentions:
1) massive, unrestricted in-migration of needy people from countries where median population IQ is more than a standard deviation below that of a "host" polity -- e.g., California or the USA as a whole -- where, due to deeply entrenched norms, childbearing and intelligence are inversely correlated and only those women who fail to graduate from high school are reproducing at more than replacement level will eventually have a negative impact on the quality of life of long-time residents;
2) restricting immigration will be of little avail in the long run, however, if dysgenic fertility continues unabated.
Heh, that's a lot of words for "white people are better and we shouldn't let in brown ones". But anyway don't worry about the pesky statistics, no doubt you'll find a fresh set to assume with.
An ad hominem accusation of racism is your polemical trump card, eh?
Nothing I've said implies that white people are better than everyone else. My concern is median intelligence, not skin color. The median IQ of US residents of Northeast Asian ancestry is higher than that of those of European ancestry, and that of Ashkenazi Jews -- who though light-skinned are a historically oppressed minority -- is higher still, and we should be glad to have them amongst us. Too bad they aren't more prolific.
Though I think it would serve our interest and that of our descendants to screen out impoverished migrants whose tested level of intelligence is considerably below the median of current US residents, I think we'd benefit from admitting people who score above that median, whether their complexion is black, brown, white, red, or any other color.
I'm confused. You just wrote a book on housing regulation and how it decreases supply and increases housing prices. If your house is only expensive because housing supply is artificially limited, can it be used as evidence of demand? If regulations disappeared tomorrow and the price of housing in LA halved, would that mean you suddenly liked living in LA much less than the day before?
The argument as I understand it is that if you keep staying while having the option to relocate ~anywhere else and receive extra money on top (since most other places are much less expensive), that's strong evidence that you like it where you are.
(For the most part I agree with him.
However, I think this implicitly underestimates how much of the value of a place for most people is provided by familiarity and proximity to other people they care about or have invested significant time cultivating relationships with.
And on a less important note, it might also underestimate how psychologically costly it is for many people to deal with such big decisions and the whole process of moving someplace else)
That's an interesting post. I wonder how well most LA folks would say it has held up over the past 17 years. One notable difference is that CA's population has decreased quite a bit in that time. It makes me wonder how much of the price of real estate is due to the transaction costs and other frictions of moving from the city/state and how much is desire for people to move in.
I totally agree that the high prices indicate people want to live there, I just wonder whether the market is smooth enough that residents are very knowledgeable about outside options for comparison, for example. I have been struck in the past by how little many people know about areas outside their hometown regions, and are surprised at how different they can be.
The population of CA hasn't declined over the last 15 years. It has slightly declined since 2020 but is pretty flat. Estimates are that it will increase slightly in 2024.
The last point is pretty interesting to me. Having moved internationally once or twice in my life, I’ve found it challenging that after doing a decent amount of research, I’m still often surprised both by how different the new place I move to is, and also how quickly I can adjust to it. It makes me wonder if I haven’t discarded options in the past that probably would have actually been fine if I had done them
That’s interesting. Can you elaborate a bit on what kind of places you have moved to?
I think that research point is a good one. Combine with the geographic capital people develop, knowledge of where to eat, what shops are good, all the “lived here all my life” type stuff that is lost when moving, I imagine it is a pretty high bar to really move when you don’t know what other places can be like.
Although I will fully admit, being from very rural areas I am constantly amazed at how much crime and other urban nonsense people are willing to put up with just to live in cities. There are probably many appealing features that are lost on me, despite having lived in and near many large cities.
Sure! I have moved from my hometown of Pretoria to the Netherlands and recently to Paris, and am planning to move back to South Africa in the near future.
I think especially with the move to the Netherlands, I was surprised at how easy it was to find a job (I’m a student, so think minimum wage work), the quality of life that could be had on a minimum wage, part time salary, (pretty great actually), and how efficient government departments are (at least compared to SA). On the negative end, I found it generally not the friendliest (more reserved, more individualistic, not a strong service culture), high in service costs (haircuts, trains, and going out is so expensive here as compared to SA) and also not having great weather (which was harder to adjust to than I thought.
But also you adjust quick. I pared down my service expenditures quickly, adjusted to the palaver of biking in the rain, and even became way more punctual than I was at home. A lot of things that it week one seemed like a big deal are very normal now - even when I go home I sometimes even get frustrated that things aren’t running in the way I’m now used to. That was the core of my point.
Not sure about cities - I grew up in a big one, and I think the benefits are mostly that there’s a lot to do, you can meet a lot of people from different perspectives, and that job opportunities are a little better. But where I stay now is medium sized and I like that I can interact with so many people I know just by walking around doing shopping or something
Thank you for that! Interesting that the weather was the harder than you expected; I imagine for Californians that is a big hurdle.
If you are ever in a situation where you can live in a small town or rural area for a few years it would be interesting to see how it compares and the adjustment time. Living even in suburbs drives me nuts, in part because neighbors have annoying amounts of leverage over what I can do on my property, and likewise can inflict problems on me. (Landscaping companies parking their trucks on the narrow roads blocking whole lanes of traffic while they mow is really aggravating.) Being from a place where neighbors have to work really hard to bother me, and vice versa, makes the close proximity awkward for me, never mind the nosy buggers who actively desire to get up in your business and find something to be upset about.
Anecdotal evidence and poor reasoning.
by this same logic, shouldn't you say also that homeless people in California should stop complaining? They are clearly not moving elsewhere, and given they own zero real-estate the friction from not being able to sell it is zero as well. Yeah they might not be able to afford a plane ticket, but trust me if Gavin Newsome could get rid of homeless people just by buying them a ride he'd do that in a heartbeat and pay first class too.
Why don't more homeowners living in LA sell it and move somewhere like the Midwest--Minneapolis, or Chicago; Cincinnati for smaller; or Ann Arbor or Madison if you want even smaller.
Heck they could even go halfway and trade their 1m+ house for a nice 500k one in Salt Lake City where I write this. Even a mere 300k differential as profit post-tax/etc, if you're older and withdraw 6% of that a year, that's 1500/mo for groceries and everything else
I think you're not right from a purely economic perspective. A certain place can be hell on earth, and still, housing prices can be high because the market prices in the future and expects change. If immigration completely destroys Los Angeles, but investors believe that Trump will win the elections and expel all the immigrants, then it would still make sense for housing prices to be high, even if it's scary to even walk the streets. I think this really explains why housing prices in San Francisco remain high, even though the quality of life there isn't so great anymore. It is because one can be optimistic that progressivism will be defeated in the future, after losing all credibility.
"There’s got to be something horribly wrong with a place where mansions go for $80,000."
there's got to be something even more wrong with a place where single family houses go for $1,000,000; guess it's true, money can't buy happiness!
There's something you misunderstand here: most people in LA are renters, not homeowners. Paying high rents is not the same as having a very sellable house, especially when moving away would make people too far from their job.
I don't even need to be an Angeleno or an American to respond with "prices are off, vibes are right". Housing prices are sticky, they do not adapt quickly, especially in the land of NEPA/NIMBY/whatever's your favorite name for "don't build more houses" tendencies (i.e. it is not a normal market in terms of supply!). And there is also a big status premium on them: it can be _prestigious_ to live in a hellhole. (Moskovsky and Nevsky avenues in Saint-Petersburg both have very expensive houses, but normal person wouldn't want to live in that area and prefer cheaper suburbs-like districts.)
Consumer Surplus = Value - Price
There is a huge consumer surplus in some places, but it's getting arbitraged away by housing prices. In fact in some cases consumer surplus may be negative (outmigration is an indication of this) but the costs of moving to Texas or what have you are so large that they put up with negative consumer surplus.
Also, most of these people may have moved to CA when it was Reagan country not Newsome country.