I lived in a walkable coffee shop neighborhood in the Southeast. Price per square foot, RE in that neighborhood is now the same as RE in California. The days of housing arbitrage to a walkable neighborhood in a second or third tier city are largely gone.

It’s fun to play out what the world would be like if this trend took hold for 5 or 10 years. Like what does the S&P500 look like if people have more discretionary income to spend because rents are relatively cheaper.

Imagine the reaction if Bernie Sanders started taking shares in companies

Many of the current Seattle counsel ran on an urbanist aligned agenda, or at least urbanist neutral agenda. For example, many of the current counsel supported the most dense version of the proposed comp plan amendment when running. But once elected started pushing the least dense version.

The fatigue was lack of actual progress. People didn’t see enough actual improvement in their lives. That’s the challenge. Can’t let the process get in the way of progress.

This is a choice. We can move quicker.

Wild to see. Better worlds are possible.

I still meet lots of people who haven’t used them. Lots of growth potential still.

Honestly states need to step up to protect themselves. Need a West Coast Alliance on areas where fed stepping back. Vaccines, Climate, Disaster Readiness, Research. Ideally the fever breaks, but we should be building resilience now.

This is what was lost when the elite class internationalized.

Also, people when the sun is out

What unites the right is a belief that more of the surplus should flow to the capitalist class. Some for moral reasons, some for self interest, some believe in the stagnation thesis.

The New Deal politics formed in a time where material deprivation was real and the issues were how to bring further industrialization to places within the US (later global post WWII).

At a macro level, we have a massive economic surplus from industrialization. The ideological divide between left and right is largely what to do with the surplus.