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jandrewrogerstoday at 2:52 AM1 replyview on HN

Vienna massively depopulated in the mid-20th century, so it had a large excess of underused real estate. Vienna is only now starting to come back to its former population. It is like making the observation that housing is cheap in Detroit.

We need to make cheap housing work in places that have not experienced large-scale depopulation.


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toomuchtodotoday at 3:05 AM

> We need to make cheap housing work in places that have not experienced large-scale depopulation.

This will require incredible subsidies both to build and maintain, which I fully support, but I think is politically untenable due to everyone’s unwillingness for taxes to go up while the developed world already carries enormous sovereign debt loads (>100% GDP).

We ate the seed corn, broadly speaking, to maximize the gains for some at the expense of the young and the future. Hopefully I’m wrong, and both taxes go up and the bond market will support more borrowing in the near term for spending that actually delivers value.

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