In order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a re-read to refresh your memory! The vast majority of you are contributing in a healthy way, keep it up!
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On March 21 2014 00:40 JonnyBNoHo wrote: You don't need growth to have a positive ROI because growth isn't the only variable in the math. If a particular asset won't experience growth (or negative growth), just pay less for it (for example) and you'll still have a positive ROI.
I don't understand how you can just "pay less for something." I understand that there are other variables in the growth scheme. But you seem to be saying you can get an ROI on something if the inputs drop in price, even if there is no growth. That implies that there is contraction somewhere else in the economy, does it not? I am not disputing that it's possible to get a return on a particular investment in a negative growth economy, but as a whole, most investors would not be getting a return.
Give me an example of a variable that can change so that you can still have ROI without growth, wherein the changing variable is totally independent from the health of the macroeconomy. The only thing I can think of right now that makes your example from above appear plausible is a discovery like finding massive oil wells spurting out of the ground. In that case you have new value that's been discovered sitting in the ground and can be easily extracted, making ROI on the minor capital required to pull up that value high. But if you have negative growth everywhere else, the vast majority of the investment would be in this new oil discovery. And if you want to argue that the oil discovery will prompt new growth elsewhere, then we are back in a situation where growth is happening.
You talking macro, micro, both?
Europe hasn't been growing, is ROI zero throughout the economy? If I buy a house to rent out I can pay less for it if rent will not increase and still receive a nice ROI.
What are these arbitrary walls you are erecting? I am talking about the global economy. It seems like you are playing games by changing the boundary conditions. It's not like European capital is restricted to investment opportunities in Europe is it? Global growth is a requirement for the perpetuation of capitalism.
I wasn't trying to change the boundaries. I was looking for clarification on what you meant and offering some examples of where growth isn't required.
So where in the math is growth required?
You continue to talk about overaccumulation as it if were an American-only phenomenon. Stop putting up arbitrary walls and maybe your conclusions would be more valid. Why wouldn't American capital satisfy American demand? Maybe because it was investing in China to satisfy the demand through imports?
China was investing more in us than we in them. You know what outsourcing is?
Edit: What's with "American-only phenomenon'? My last post compared accumulation in US to France and cited international capital flows.
The math is: MCM'. M' must be greater than M. What is your math? You keep hiding behind these stupid one-liners and pointing to totally irrelevant data. So Europe is not growing. And this somehow proves that capitalism can continue without growth? That Europe has reached a stable zero-growth form of capitalism? That's absurd. You yourself have said before that the European economy is in serious trouble, and here you are pulling it out as a defense that growth is not required for the perpetuation of capitalism. Can you be a little more forthright in your responses? I am trying to give you the benefit of the doubt here because it seems like you at least think you know what you are talking about.
So correct me if I'm wrong but your argument is: America was running a huge trade deficit, therefore there must have been a place for capital to go, because it could use that capital to meet its own internal demand. I don't see how that makes any sense at all. All that matters for global capital is that the demand is met. If it's cheaper to import than to set up production internally to meet demand then that is what will happen. Capital can go anywhere. Looking at trade balances doesn't speak to capital overaccumulation on a global scale.
Your last posts on this page with WhiteDog have been comparing international capital flows and then making a comparison between French and American capital accumulation. Have I misunderstood you here? Neither WhiteDog (afaik) nor myself have been arguing that capital overaccumulation is a particularly American phenomenon.
I believe that the excess capital flooding to the US before the crisis was tied to the housing boom. It would make sense that capital was flowing in to a housing bubble and flowing out when the bubble burst. The American housing market has supplied a lot of the extra demand required by developing countries that run on a trade surplus.
MCM'? How does that fit into growth? M' > M doesn't seem to imply growth, though I don't know Marxist math well. Is it meaningful beyond a piece of paper?
My math? Open up a finance or accounting book and build a financial model. You don't need growth to have a positive ROI.
Europe's economy isn't good, true. But there's a difference between "capitalism requires growth" and "currently capitalist economies are geared to grow, and if they don't, they suffer, though that doesn't always have to be the case". I'm not sure which you are trying to say and I've been taking you literally - that growth is required now and forever or shit falls apart.
My argument about the trade deficit was focused on America. We aren't accumulating much capital on our own - a lot comes in from overseas. If your argument is that there's over accumulation globally - that seems absurd. Globally we need waaaaay more capital accumulation in order for developing countries to have decent incomes.
I am trying to say that any capitalist economy that doesn't experience growth for more than a short period of time will require significant structural changes. The end result would be a system with only a passing resemblance to our current capitalist economic system.
Capital accumulation does not help provide "decent incomes." Capitalism's modus operandi is to gut the middle class.
So what if it requires structural changes? Capitalism in 2014 only bears a passing resemblance to capitalism in the 19th century. Yet you guys keep hanging on to Marx as if he's somehow still relevant.
How do you think developing countries are going to grow other than deepening their capital use?
See this is where your obfuscatory language catches up with you. You think capitalism can continue basically as is with zero or negative growth. When I said that changes will be required I mean serious changes to the economic structure, not just more social security and a higher tax rate.
On March 21 2014 13:10 IgnE wrote: See this is where your obfuscatory language catches up with you. You think capitalism can continue basically as is with zero or negative growth. When I said that changes will be required I mean serious changes to the economic structure, not just more social security and a higher tax rate.
The issue with low or zero growth is that the economy isn't stagnant. For example, you can have productivity increasing which means people will be losing jobs. Growth fills that vacancy. Or your population is expanding and you want the economy to grow to make room for them.
That's not a demand of capitalism, like ROI is demanding it, it's an economic reality that goes beyond the economic system employed. It's something communist countries were constantly grappling with as well.
Now if you're talking about in the future, when the economic landscape is a lot different (higher incomes, higher desire for leisure, or just a big change in people's preferences) you could have something other than growth be used. Maybe we shorten the workweek - who knows? The point here being that I don't see anything about capitalism that would be expressly blocking other solutions.
i don't think you need to go to the extremes of declaring inevitable collapse of capitalism on some unspecified level of abstraction of a capitalist economy to make the point that income distribution will pose problems for capitalism itself.
at the end of the day widening inequality is an empirical observation, and whatever models you use, be it DSGE or else, should take it into account.
whoever greenlit this in the GOP needs to be fired. (a) either because he doesnt understand what he is doing or (b) he tricked some wealthy donor with this campaign into thinking the GOP is actually trying to expand its base to the 'youth'
Capital accumulation does not help provide "decent incomes."
Of course it doesn't, capital accumulation invested into production eventually and inevitably does. From the only examples we have in history it seems to take about two generations.
Guess what people with loads of money who are inclined to invest are less inclined if they're concerned that central bank policies and government attitude towards them makes investing very risky. Maybe a little less you didn't build that and you need to pay your fair share and a little more spend your money on trying to make a profit and we won't take so much of it that it makes you wanna puke or talk shit on you either? Not every rich bastard in the top 10% is putting all their money into games with JP Morgan. A lot of them spend their money on businesses that you know employ people.
Capital accumulation covers a lot of ground, if I have a business and I want to accumulate a bunch of capital one way to do it is grow the business, hire more people, sell more shit. The guy working for minimum wage is engaging in capital accumulation too. Going to school to accumulate more capital later.
People wanting to accumulate capital is what gives the next guy just starting out the job and the schooling. Capital accumulators the rich ones most of them need customers with capital to spare to buy what they're selling. It's hard for most people to be rich if no one can afford what they have to sell.
Capitalism's modus operandi is to gut the middle class.
This is why the precursors of capitalism and the precursors of the middle class appeared at almost exactly the same time and the only societies in history where the middle class was or is a large proportion of the population are capitalist ones.
See this is where your obfuscatory language catches up with you. You think capitalism can continue basically as is with zero or negative growth. When I said that changes will be required I mean serious changes to the economic structure, not just more social security and a higher tax rate.
There are really only two ways to seriously change the economic structure of society, one failed miserably and the other would be even more horrific. Have those wielding the power of the state set supply and demand by fiat, or ignore demand and significantly decrease production until enough people are dead that the economic system returns to almost purely only what is needed for survival of the local community, as it was in the Dark Ages. You don't want to do that, you're not going to do much to destroy capitalism's entrenchments. Capitalism is to varying degrees the economic structure of every country on earth except North Korea. Every country but one or three wants to be like the capitalist West.
whoever greenlit this in the GOP needs to be fired. (a) either because he doesnt understand what he is doing or (b) he tricked some wealthy donor with this campaign into thinking the GOP is actually trying to expand its base to the 'youth'
Rand Paul just got a standing ovation at Berkeley speechifying against the gubbmint spying all up on everybody. Eventually all the doughy guys in the GOP will follow him in seriously trying to court young voters. This ad is not an example of that lol. Did you get your brosurance yet? There's no way that ad is worse than the crap they've put out advertising for the ACA. Equally as bad maybe.
On March 21 2014 16:48 Sub40APM wrote: whoever greenlit this in the GOP needs to be fired. (a) either because he doesnt understand what he is doing or (b) he tricked some wealthy donor with this campaign into thinking the GOP is actually trying to expand its base to the 'youth' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PulUKsICY9o
Over half of renters, and one third of homeowners in New York live in unaffordable housing, as defined by the federal government. Unaffordable housing is housing that costs more than 30% of household income. More than a quarter of renters paid over half of their household income.
The report found that rising housing costs and stagnant or declining real income were to blame for the trend. The increase in unaffordable housing is a social crisis, and there is no reason to expect that New York state is any better or worse than the rest of the country.
Capital accumulation does not help provide "decent incomes."
Of course it doesn't, capital accumulation invested into production eventually and inevitably does. From the only examples we have in history it seems to take about two generations.
Guess what people with loads of money who are inclined to invest are less inclined if they're concerned that central bank policies and government attitude towards them makes investing very risky. Maybe a little less you didn't build that and you need to pay your fair share and a little more spend your money on trying to make a profit and we won't take so much of it that it makes you wanna puke or talk shit on you either? Not every rich bastard in the top 10% is putting all their money into games with JP Morgan. A lot of them spend their money on businesses that you know employ people.
Capital accumulation covers a lot of ground, if I have a business and I want to accumulate a bunch of capital one way to do it is grow the business, hire more people, sell more shit. The guy working for minimum wage is engaging in capital accumulation too. Going to school to accumulate more capital later.
People wanting to accumulate capital is what gives the next guy just starting out the job and the schooling. Capital accumulators the rich ones most of them need customers with capital to spare to buy what they're selling. It's hard for most people to be rich if no one can afford what they have to sell.
Capitalism's modus operandi is to gut the middle class.
This is why the precursors of capitalism and the precursors of the middle class appeared at almost exactly the same time and the only societies in history where the middle class was or is a large proportion of the population are capitalist ones.
The mythical age of the grand middle class existed for the baby boomer generation and was built off of an economic structure in which the top marginal tax rates approached 100%, FDR employed 15 million people in public sector jobs, and unions were strong. Ever since the 70s when the unions were gutted, tax rates were dropped to pathetic levels, and corporations became unfettered to accumulate capital, the middle class has been shrinking. The evidence is in, and the middle class is a product of post-war hegemony and good old-fashioned wealth redistribution, not capitalism.
On March 21 2014 04:16 WhiteDog wrote: [quote] You know, you don't need to act like a dick everytime you are arguing on something that you don't entirely understand.
They believed it was a "law" because it makes the entire economic system sustainable in the long run (by itself). If the accumulation of capital is higher than growth, it means that capital in the long run will accumulate wealth at a higher rate than the production, and thus that a crisis of overproduction is possible. If there is no law, it means that the remuneration of the factor of production does not follow a law by itself, and thus that wealth distribution is political and thus needs political intervention.
Entirely speculative, unless you're making the 'hold constant and extrapolate' mistake.
You know what possible means ? Edit : Yeah let's stop thinking, it could end badly.
Possible? If WhiteDog and IgnE are just speculating about what could be I have no problem with that. But they seem to be arguing that we're really in a crisis of over accumulation.
You know I'm not speculating entirely. It's just that it is a complex matter. As I said, there are no law in this matter : so we can only use historical evolution and "speculate" from it. Now, we are arguing that we are in a crisis, because the situation is comparable to the situation prior to the first world war (in terms of capital to income ratio for exemple) : and yes, it was a deep crisis of the economical system back there (1929 remember ? and the new deal fixed it, through a high marginal taxation, in the US, while the two world war fixed it in Europe, through the destruction of capital).
There have been more than two crisis (great depression and today). Why are you linking these two? Moreover, why are you supposing that capital accumulation is the cause? Why not look to a bank run / credit crisis as the cause?
Well the bubble in 2000 have ressemblance but not at the same scale. I am not the one that made clear that there are big ressemblance between 2007 and 1929 - there are a tremendous number of paper and work on the subject. I'm not saying that the crisis was created by the accumulation per say (we already had this discussion), I am merely showing a direct correlation between the two (through the various graph). The analysis of the impact of inequalities and capital accumulation on crisis is very complex and quite new, and I already gave my point of view on various occasion on that previously, so I will not enter in that area (the IMF, the OECD, and various economists such as Krugman are discussing this since some times now).
So you want to link accumulation with crisis? Then why add in inequality? The Marxian view doesn't stand up well in the US. We save little and import a vast amount of capital from overseas. Or just look at the graphs you posted - more inequality in the US yet Europe has more accumulation.
And what about how the latest crisis played out. Too much capital wasn't the issue, it was how the capital was structured and used that was the main issue. Look at your graphs again - there was a lot of capital accumulated in the UK / France for quite a while before the depression and the accumulation fluctuations in the US aren't very big (relatively).
How the capital was used and structured is linked to the accumulation. If inequalities and/or accumulation is too important (the two are obviously linked) then demand is lacking, and it is better to use capital income in sustaining demand - through credit (for the state or for individuals, just like during the "roaring twenties" or "la belle époque") - than to use it directly for production.
It is something I've stated countless time and you force me to restate it over and over. Everytime you refuse to acknowledge the deep macroeconomic background that participated in the 2007 crisis, and force us to talk everytime about financial innovations, risk management and whatever.
The US had a huge trade deficit nearing 6% of GDP at its worst. We weren't able to produce enough to meet our own demand by a long shot. Capital had no where to go? How about satisfying existing demand? Capital was ~450% of GDP in US but ~650% of GDP in France but we were over accumulating?
We were absorbing a huge amount of capital from other countries:
we were over accumulating yet excess capital from all over the world flooded to the US?
And what happened during the crisis? Capital flowed out of the US!
You don't seems to understand. The huge trade deficit was only possible because of credits. The US basically sustained the world economy through debt - an artificial demand. I never said the US were specifically over accumulating capital, I said there is a global tendency of accumulation that is not sustainable in the long run : this touch both the US (at 500% of income) and France. The US trade deficit is merely a result of the overall over accumulation of capital in the entire world : the US is not an island that we could just discuss after putting aside all other countries. I'm going to stop responding to your endless questions, I don't think I will be able to correct your incapacity to understand the big picture.
Jonny, I agree on most of your points, but it's true that "positive returns on new investments = economic growth, therefore you can't have positive ROI without economic growth", it's more or less a simple matter of national accounting. For new physical capital to have positive ROI (beyond the physical capital destined to replace depreciations), either gross national profit needs to grow (which happens only with economic growth or with a growing capital share of GDP) or the profit level for some (or all) industries must fall to accomodate the new investment. + Show Spoiler +
Suppose a very simple economy with 200 units of capital, 200 units of labor that produces 400 units of GDP (distributed evenly into profits and wages). If capital deprereciation is 5% and the private saving rate is 10%, there are (400*10% - 200*5% = 30) new units of capital in the following period, raising the capital stock to 230 units. Maintaining GDP fixed, it should be clear that either 1. the return on new investments is zero so that older investments maintain their return levels of (200/200 = 1 unit of GDP per unit of capital), 2. the return of all capital (aka profit level) falls (200/230 = 0,87 unit of GDP per unit of capital) or the capital share of GDP changes (for example, to maintain constant the profit level of 1 unit of GDP per unit of capital, the division between wages and profit changes to 170/230).
On March 21 2014 16:48 Sub40APM wrote: whoever greenlit this in the GOP needs to be fired. (a) either because he doesnt understand what he is doing or (b) he tricked some wealthy donor with this campaign into thinking the GOP is actually trying to expand its base to the 'youth' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PulUKsICY9o
My god, it's like rolling all the things I hate dislike into one: hipsters, ignorance, and a disguised Hitler mustache.
As a clarifying question, when we talk about "accumulation of capital," are we talking about savings or what? I don't want to pick anything apart based on semantics, so I want to get on the same page.
On March 21 2014 18:07 DeepElemBlues wrote: Of course it doesn't, capital accumulation invested into production eventually and inevitably does. From the only examples we have in history it seems to take about two generations.
But if no one has the money to buy the produced stuff companies are not going to invest into production and instead will chose to make more money from the financial markets instead.(which often again put the money into other financial products and so on and so forth)
There's really not that much to theorize. If too much capital is in the hand of only a few people they'll do stupid stuff with it because demand of real goods is too low. If companies don't have enough money they can't invest and make new cool stuff. It's basically just an empirical question to find the distribution that guarantees that both is happening. But the financial crisis and the fact that the financial markets today are tens of times bigger than the real economy strongly indicate that we're well past this point.
On March 21 2014 16:48 Sub40APM wrote: whoever greenlit this in the GOP needs to be fired. (a) either because he doesnt understand what he is doing or (b) he tricked some wealthy donor with this campaign into thinking the GOP is actually trying to expand its base to the 'youth' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PulUKsICY9o
My god, it's like rolling all the things I hate dislike into one: hipsters, ignorance, and a disguised Hitler mustache.
He's driving a VW/Audi too... The people's car... it must be a national socialist conspiracy!
On March 21 2014 04:22 JonnyBNoHo wrote: [quote] Entirely speculative, unless you're making the 'hold constant and extrapolate' mistake.
You know what possible means ? Edit : Yeah let's stop thinking, it could end badly.
Possible? If WhiteDog and IgnE are just speculating about what could be I have no problem with that. But they seem to be arguing that we're really in a crisis of over accumulation.
You know I'm not speculating entirely. It's just that it is a complex matter. As I said, there are no law in this matter : so we can only use historical evolution and "speculate" from it. Now, we are arguing that we are in a crisis, because the situation is comparable to the situation prior to the first world war (in terms of capital to income ratio for exemple) : and yes, it was a deep crisis of the economical system back there (1929 remember ? and the new deal fixed it, through a high marginal taxation, in the US, while the two world war fixed it in Europe, through the destruction of capital).
There have been more than two crisis (great depression and today). Why are you linking these two? Moreover, why are you supposing that capital accumulation is the cause? Why not look to a bank run / credit crisis as the cause?
Well the bubble in 2000 have ressemblance but not at the same scale. I am not the one that made clear that there are big ressemblance between 2007 and 1929 - there are a tremendous number of paper and work on the subject. I'm not saying that the crisis was created by the accumulation per say (we already had this discussion), I am merely showing a direct correlation between the two (through the various graph). The analysis of the impact of inequalities and capital accumulation on crisis is very complex and quite new, and I already gave my point of view on various occasion on that previously, so I will not enter in that area (the IMF, the OECD, and various economists such as Krugman are discussing this since some times now).
So you want to link accumulation with crisis? Then why add in inequality? The Marxian view doesn't stand up well in the US. We save little and import a vast amount of capital from overseas. Or just look at the graphs you posted - more inequality in the US yet Europe has more accumulation.
And what about how the latest crisis played out. Too much capital wasn't the issue, it was how the capital was structured and used that was the main issue. Look at your graphs again - there was a lot of capital accumulated in the UK / France for quite a while before the depression and the accumulation fluctuations in the US aren't very big (relatively).
How the capital was used and structured is linked to the accumulation. If inequalities and/or accumulation is too important (the two are obviously linked) then demand is lacking, and it is better to use capital income in sustaining demand - through credit (for the state or for individuals, just like during the "roaring twenties" or "la belle époque") - than to use it directly for production.
It is something I've stated countless time and you force me to restate it over and over. Everytime you refuse to acknowledge the deep macroeconomic background that participated in the 2007 crisis, and force us to talk everytime about financial innovations, risk management and whatever.
The US had a huge trade deficit nearing 6% of GDP at its worst. We weren't able to produce enough to meet our own demand by a long shot. Capital had no where to go? How about satisfying existing demand? Capital was ~450% of GDP in US but ~650% of GDP in France but we were over accumulating?
We were absorbing a huge amount of capital from other countries:
we were over accumulating yet excess capital from all over the world flooded to the US?
And what happened during the crisis? Capital flowed out of the US!
You don't seems to understand. The huge trade deficit was only possible because of credits. The US basically sustained the world economy through debt - an artificial demand. I never said the US were specifically over accumulating capital, I said there is a global tendency of accumulation that is not sustainable in the long run : this touch both the US (at 500% of income) and France. The US trade deficit is merely a result of the overall over accumulation of capital in the entire world : the US is not an island that we could just discuss after putting aside all other countries. I'm going to stop responding to your endless questions, I don't think I will be able to correct your incapacity to understand the big picture.
Like I already told IgnE, focusing on global over accumulation makes even less sense. Billions have far less capital stock to work with than the developed world and they're poorer for it. Capital flowing to the US to fund consumption is more of a mis allocation of capital rather than an over accumulation of capital. Developing countries need more factories and more power plants, which requires investment.
If you want to run with the global savings glut story you can, but it's different from the Marxist over accumulation story. That situation was driven by a lot of low income savers having their savings channeled into their economy's export sector and holding of foreign reserves via government policy. It wasn't a situation of capitalists saving too much and desperately trying to find a home for their capital. Their capital could have been used to finance domestic activity, but they chose to finance exports instead.
On March 21 2014 18:07 DeepElemBlues wrote: Of course it doesn't, capital accumulation invested into production eventually and inevitably does. From the only examples we have in history it seems to take about two generations.
But if no one has the money to buy the produced stuff companies are not going to invest into production and instead will chose to make more money from the financial markets instead.(which often again put the money into other financial products and so on and so forth)
There's really not that much to theorize. If too much capital is in the hand of only a few people they'll do stupid stuff with it because demand of real goods is too low. If companies don't have enough money they can't invest and make new cool stuff. It's basically just an empirical question to find the distribution that guarantees that both is happening. But the financial crisis and the fact that the financial markets today are tens of times bigger than the real economy strongly indicate that we're well past this point.
That really isn't what is happening though. There's plenty of investment in production right now. However, almost all of that investment is about increasing efficiency instead of increasing output. This is why we're seeing soaring profit margins of businesses and not soaring employment.
Now, that's not to say the financial sector doesn't seem extremely large in some places, but I fail to see how that is, in and of itself, a problem for everybody. If risk isn't properly mitigated, it poses a problem for economies that rely too heavily on it, but that's true of any sector.
On March 21 2014 18:52 Sbrubbles wrote: Jonny, I agree on most of your points, but it's true that "positive returns on new investments = economic growth, therefore you can't have positive ROI without economic growth", it's more or less a simple matter of national accounting. For new physical capital to have positive ROI (beyond the physical capital destined to replace depreciations), either gross national profit needs to grow (which happens only with economic growth or with a growing capital share of GDP) or the profit level for some (or all) industries must fall to accomodate the new investment. + Show Spoiler +
Suppose a very simple economy with 200 units of capital, 200 units of labor that produces 400 units of GDP (distributed evenly into profits and wages). If capital deprereciation is 5% and the private saving rate is 10%, there are (400*10% - 200*5% = 30) new units of capital in the following period, raising the capital stock to 230 units. Maintaining GDP fixed, it should be clear that either 1. the return on new investments is zero so that older investments maintain their return levels of (200/200 = 1 unit of GDP per unit of capital), 2. the return of all capital (aka profit level) falls (200/230 = 0,87 unit of GDP per unit of capital) or the capital share of GDP changes (for example, to maintain constant the profit level of 1 unit of GDP per unit of capital, the division between wages and profit changes to 170/230).
So don't have new physical capital (beyond replacement). If we're talking zero growth, that should be the case.
Alternatively, shrink wages, which isn't a bad thing if we're talking about a future economy where robots do the work for us
On March 21 2014 16:48 Sub40APM wrote: whoever greenlit this in the GOP needs to be fired. (a) either because he doesnt understand what he is doing or (b) he tricked some wealthy donor with this campaign into thinking the GOP is actually trying to expand its base to the 'youth' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PulUKsICY9o
Over half of renters, and one third of homeowners in New York live in unaffordable housing, as defined by the federal government. Unaffordable housing is housing that costs more than 30% of household income. More than a quarter of renters paid over half of their household income.
The report found that rising housing costs and stagnant or declining real income were to blame for the trend. The increase in unaffordable housing is a social crisis, and there is no reason to expect that New York state is any better or worse than the rest of the country.
The report fails to mention regulatory burdens. I've been doing a lot of work on affordable housing in my local area; and a fair bit of the problem stems from NIMBYism and local zoning laws which make it very hard to build more housing at affordable prices. Such is common not just in my town, but in a lot of towns in the area.
There's a lot of variation in housing costs in different parts of the country, though I haven't overlaid that with maps of income by area.
EPT
![[image loading]](http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-XpJg_dCzB8Y/UOi5d9rtl8I/AAAAAAAACkI/Sp_C7wqRaBM/s640/import+capital+2005.jpg)
