Having lived all over the country, it is not what people earn that is a problem, it is what things cost. With a huge country and most of it not very densely populated, the issue is not that we have some very wealthy individuals, but that businesses and people are all gravitating to urban areas driving up the cost of living.
In the not to distant past, America’s economy was built on agriculture and manufacturing. Both of these activities are best conducted away from major urban centers. This gave rise to many small cities and towns across America. The cost of living in these small cities and towns was far cheaper than in the large urban areas and remains so today. Modern farming techniques and the exporting of manufacturing jobs overseas have eliminated many of the underlying jobs that supported these small cities and towns.
Today our economy is transitioning to a service and intellectual property economy. These services can be produced anywhere as they require very little “real estate and are very clean”. And since far to many people prefer living in big cities (even if as this article claims their standard of living suffers) for all of the diversions living in big cities offer, employers have responded by building their operations there. Why are both Amazon and Google expanding in the NYC area instead of Fort Wayne, IN. Simple people want to live in NYC and not Fort Wayne, IN.
Perhaps the single easiest solution is for the government to limit jobs related to the production of goods and services intended to be sold outside of the city limits, so that companies that produce those goods and service would need to relocate back to small towns and cities and the cost of living especially housing would drop dramatically and people’s measurable standard of living would rise. The impact on a cost of living basis could be as much as 30%.
We would be “richer” economically. But many of us would no longer be living in the population dense areas of the east and west coast, that we prefer. Instead we would be living in the flyover states.
Today, we make the choice to sacrifice the measurable standard of living losses we suffer living in high population density areas for the soft benefits of living there. But perhaps if we had a liberal progressive government, they could decide what best for each person and assign them a place to live and a job to perform. This way everyone would enjoy a comfortable standard of living somewhere in the middle of where they would rather not live.
The rich have nothing to do with the described issue… if they all moved overseas, the problem would still exist.
Personally, I blame the weather and the ocean, there is no way I would suffer the high cost of living in southern California if I could find a far cheaper place to live with a view of the ocean and perfect weather. But do we really want government trying to address this issue? I don’t…
