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That's not the academic consensus. It's a non-peer-reviewed working paper that contradicts the academic consensus.

The authors are clear about this:

"The standard view of housing markets holds that differences in the flexibility of local housing supply - shaped by factors like geography and regulation - explain differences in how house price and quantity growth respond to rising demand across U.S. cities... Our conclusions challenge the prevailing view of local housing and labor markets"

https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w33576/w335...

edit: I do think it's a good paper!


Relevant metric is "New housing units per 1k existing" which is quite low in Manhattan.

For some examples, go https://constructioncoverage.com/research/cities-investing-m... , look at metros that authorized many new units in 2023, and then look at inflation-adjusted home price change from 2023-2025.

Like magic, you will find that post-inflation home value growth was low in the metros that built the most: Austin , Raleigh-Cary, Nashville, Jacksonville, Houston.


No, this is a false belief known as supply skepticism: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=supp...

Weird title for a paper that argues that "Government intervention is critical to ensure that supply is added at prices affordable to a range of incomes". I would personally classify that position as "supply skepticism".

> What were we reacting to with Iraq

"The primary rationale for the invasion centered around false claims that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) and that Saddam Hussein was supporting al-Qaeda. The 9/11 Commission concluded in 2004 that there was no credible evidence linking Saddam to al-Qaeda, and no WMD stockpiles were found in Iraq."


That's not what we were reacting to, that was the political rationale we used which is not the same thing.

The best comparison is probably "overall tax burden": https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/state/tax-burden-by-state...

When you include all taxes (eg property tax), there's surprisingly little variation between states: For example, TX is 6th-lowest at 8.6% of income, while CA is 46th-lowest at 13.5% of income. Hawaii is 48th-lowest at 14.1%


Several of the studies described changes in hormones before the child was born.

Extra time commitment, and therefor missing some sleep, can start before the baby is born.

Reminds me of when I would stay up late ironing my wife's maternity BDUs.

With or without starch? Please tell me you were taking care of boots as well!

I don't recall using starch on the BDUs, I might have polished the boots once or twice, but that was just over twenty years ago, so who knows.

If you cosleep with your 8 month pregnant wife she might not be sleeping well and by proximity you may not be sleeping well.

> Several of the studies described changes in hormones before the child was born.

For me, sleep dropped off right after I got the "I'm pregnant" phone call. I'd only known this girl for [time it takes a baby to be detected] days.


Given this is "BBC Future" let me guess, barely above significance and n=16?

I'm unfamiliar with the subject. What's the problem with BBC Future?

They did not "flip cause and effect on its head" - There is strong evidence for positive causal returns to education: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S073805932...

> Under simplifying assumptions, including competitive labor markets, no direct schooling costs, and constant proportional returns, this specification yields an interpretable estimate of the average percentage increase in earnings associated with an additional year of schooling.

So, an individual student will be expected to have higher earnings with more schooling. But as a matter of public policy that involves taxpayer funding of higher education, I cannot accurately base those decisions on a methodology that assumes a cost of zero ("no direct schooling costs").

Your source also identifies that higher marginal returns are found in lower-income, lower-educated countries, which makes sense. How much marginal return (for the taxpayer dollar) can we expect in a high-income country with a service-based economy and a third of the population already having a bachelor's degree?


> I cannot accurately base those decisions on a methodology that assumes a cost of zero ("no direct schooling costs").

The study measures benefit of education. If you wish to determine whether cost>benefit, join it with research on the cost of education.



It's really not as straightforward as they make it to be:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00472...

Higher taxes cause gross pay to raise.

There's evidence that increasing cost of operation of corporations through taxation is not fully born by workers. It falls in large part on the owners and landlords (who were omited in earlier works on income tax incidence).

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=8997844...


> We find strong evidence of partial shifting of the burden of income tax from worker to employer. Although income tax is incident on equilibrium wages, the tax burden is not fully shifted

Debunking your claim:

> While in practice employers know exactly for how little money (in hand) you are willing to work and in absence of income taxes would just pay this much less so that your money in hand is the same.


Yeah. Things are never simple, and rarely binary.

I exaggerated my claim to draw attention to the fact that it's not like many people believe, that income tax burden lands fully on the worker.

While my claim sound proposterous the opposite claim that is also false (maybe even equally so) rarely ever raises an eyebrow, which I think is very telling.


No, that's not what the evidence shows, eg: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00472...

> Gruber is able to identify incidence on gross earnings as well as on employment by exploiting variation in payroll tax changes between firms. The benefit of the payroll tax cut is found to have been fully shifted to workers through higher earnings, with no significant employment effects. With similar objectives, Anderson and Meyer, 1997, Anderson and Meyer, 1998 use US firm-level micro data to measure the effects of changes in an experience rated Unemployment Insurance system. Payment variation between firms, due to the number of workers laid off subsequently claiming UI benefits, allows identification of the incidence of the tax on earnings. At the four-digit industry level, Anderson and Meyer find full shifting of the burden of higher payroll tax from employers to workers in the form of lower earnings. They report insignificant employment effects. We find strong evidence of partial shifting of the burden of income tax from worker to employer. Although income tax is incident on equilibrium wages, the tax burden is not fully shifted.


From the same paper:

"Higher marginal tax rates are associated with increases in gross wages and earnings."

The part that you cited is where they cite the old papers by other authors. They also say why conclusions of those papers might have been wrong:

"Moreover, we show that ignoring the potential labour supply response to a tax change, following the methodology of Gruber (1997) or Anderson and Meyer (1998), as well as ignoring the endogeneity of the marginal tax rate, may lead to the erroneous conclusion that the tax is fully incident on equilibrium earnings."


Right, the tax is partially borne by employers (who raise gross wages), and partially by workers (who receive lower net wages).

Debunking your claim:

> While in practice employers know exactly for how little money (in hand) you are willing to work and in absence of income taxes would just pay this much less so that your money in hand is the same.


> What's the ev for going to college once you factor in graduation rates?

Very positive (IRR ~9%). It's been studied extensively: https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/server/api/core/bitstrea...


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