Comment 40838

By A Smith (anonymous) | Posted May 18, 2010 at 20:47:15

>> Canada is increasingly a separate and unequal society. Over the past 40 years, my hometown of Hamilton, Ontario has become an economically segregated community, divided by income and geography.

A great way to help poor people would be to reduce the cost of housing. How do you do that? Get government out of the way. In the following article, left leaning Paul Krugman says this about the recent US housing bubble..."In other words, the Zoned Zone is prone to housing bubbles."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/08/opinion/08krugman.html?_r=2

Jason >> The quality of life is so great compared to most US cities that people move there even without a job....the jobs can't keep up with the migration.

According to wikipedia, Portland's population grew 5.4% from 2000-08, while sprawling Atlanta grew by 29%. Even though Atlanta attracted far more people, it still has a lower unemployment rate...

http://www.bls.gov/web/metro/laummtrk.htm

Here are the median income numbers, notice that Atlanta is higher than Portland...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highest-income_metropolitan_statistical_areas_in_the_United_States

Here is a comparison of housing costs between Atlanta and Portland...

http://www.trulia.com/home_prices/Oregon/Portland-heat_map/

http://www.trulia.com/home_prices/Georgia/Atlanta-heat_map/

Notice that the cost of housing in Portland is about double that of Atlanta. You can confirm this by going to realtor.com and looking around both cities.

So, in Portland, where land use is tightly controlled by the government, there is more unemployment, lower wages and higher housing costs. How does that help poor people?

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