In my experience, a huge number of people spend the most they can on housing. So the local price level is set by the local income distribution. Their observation lines up perfectly with my experiences.
This also suggests two solutions that are bound to be unpopular:
* To make housing prices more reasonable, give everyone a pay cut.
* Trying to set a "living wage" is futile since boosting income will feed right through to the price of housing.
Why doesn't it feed through to the price of food? Of vehicles? Of energy?
It only feeds through to the price of certain classes of goods: housing, healthcare, education.
Those are also "markets" that are artificially supply-constrained, through zoning, the AMA, and accreditation.
To be clear, I'm not saying that we should get rid of zoning, the AMA, and accreditation—but we should be much more careful to avoid use of those tools to curb supply.
Kidding aside, most people looking for housing aren’t buying land, they’re buying housing — which absolutely does not have elastic supply by policy, not by natural law.
I agree that it doesn't matter to many people. If the image is great, then it's great art. End of story.
But when it comes to history, fake art can pollute our knowledge of the painter and the history. While many fakes use the same typical subjects, imagine that a faker created a canvas with a different story. If this story gets injected into the history, everyone's knowledge of the painter is corrupted.
What are the relative costs of producing methanol or ammonia from a kilowatt hour of electricity? I've always assumed methanol would be cheaper over all because it's less deadly.
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