I liked this article. I appreciate that it didn't try to say it is or isn't AI.
To me, the entertainment industry suffers from a lot of the same problems in most other industries that chase "efficiency", in terms of resources used and profit made. Economies and industries and labor are interdependent and more "alive" than balance sheets and bank accounts.
For the film industry, when you start moving things away from LA to "save money", it has knock on effects that happen over long periods of time. Multiple Quarterly Earnings Reports long, if you will. Local businesses that depend on the film industry close due to less work, so then there is less expertise available. Less expertise means it can command high prices. Suddenly it's too expensive to film in LA altogether. So the rest of the jobs leave too.
This pattern seems super common, not just in the film industry.
It is a narrative that interweaves with AI, too. AI is supposedly an efficiency boom. In the macroeconomy, who is the "efficiency" we are chasing for, who benefits? Who is getting the money that was "saved"? Regular people do not have more more money or time. The "efficiency" is for people who are already very rich, to get richer. Is that worth the price we're paying? I know my answer. The article gets close to it by mentioning the consolidation in Hollywood, but I do not see how we fix this without enforcing our antitrust laws. It is embarrassing what we let rich people do in the name of stock price go up.
> when you start moving things away from LA to "save money"
Economic hubs work when there is more efficiency to be found in industrially-codependent resources being located close to each other, than there is in cheaper labor costs outside the hub. Hollywood's heyday was when there was enormous value to putting actors, agents, producers, cameras, sets, editors, VFX, writers all within close driving distance of each other, so that you could organize new movies and shows at the drop of a hat. In a day and age when teenagers are able to use cellphone cameras and pocketmoney to produce stories that are compelling enough to command attention and advertising dollars, the value of that geographic proximity has declined tremendously.
AI didn't build the coffin, but it's been putting nails in it.
I can’t speak to everyone, but grok bot is helping me gain so much efficiency in managing all of the things that I have going on in my life that I feel much more present now.
Before I’d always feel distracted by things weighing on me that I needed to get done. Now a huge load of those things are asked of grok bot quickly, then I close the laptop and go spend time where I should be.
It feels like it’s lifting a huge burden from my daily life.
This is research from a labor advocacy group, with the explicit aim of the organization to advocate for this sort of thing. This doesn't mean the research is is automatically invalid, but it is bias worth mentioning.
Looking at an article from the CATO institute, over the last 30 years wages have climbed 169 percent, while food prices 111 percent.
But an even better measure is PCE, or personal consumption index. Rather than CPI, or any other "household basics" measure, which subjectively categorize goods and then tracks those, PCE measures the total dollar amount spent by the entire U.S. consumer sector on goods and services. This is what is used by the FRED database referenced in the reply above.
I feel like people complain about “food” but it’s a stand-in and that the cumulative increase in rent, transportation and food probably rose faster than wages. So Cato reply “but food hasn’t grown as fast as wages” is a myopic retort (admittedly one they acknowledge) that tries to fight the narrow factual argument ignoring the broader one where the emotional narrative probably remains true.
The problem isn't so much that housing has gotten expensive. It's that many of the existing places have moved up-market compared to what they were 30-40 years ago. 75 years ago, Scarsdale NY or parts of Long Island were expensive. But Palo Alto was a drab middle class suburb. As the tech economy has boomed, that has driven prices up in Palo Alto for the same reason they were already high in Scarsdale. And now you have to move to Gilroy.
It's not very complicated; it's just that the solutions are deeply unpopular. Making housing affordable by definition means driving down prices. But existing homeowners don't like to see their home prices go down! And about 2/3 of the US public lives in a house owned by a resident.
I'm semi-convinced that the reason why we see so many bad ideas in housing is because the good ideas negatively affect too much of the voting public. Or, they perceive the ideas as negatively affecting them.
You're mistaken about the reasons why solutions are unpopular. Have you actually talked to the most active NIMBYs who oppose new housing development? Most of them are barely aware of affordability and home prices. They have lived in the same neighborhood for decades and intend so stay there until they die so prices don't impact them at all. Instead they are concerned about quality of life issues: traffic, parking, noise, petty crime.
> But existing homeowners don't like to see their home prices go down!
As a homeowner I don't want to see my home price go down relative to all other homes as that leaves me in a precious position if I need to move, but if all homes fall in price together then that actually makes the prospect of moving less risky as, if I have to move into a house that is a step-up from the one I have, the cost to do so is lower. That would be an improvement over the status quo. High housing prices are a problem even for those with significant equity in a home.
But who doesn't want to see their wage go down is those who build houses. This is the bottleneck. The vast majority of people cannot afford a new house, which means they're stuck in their used houses, which means there is no inventory opening up for those with no houses.
> it's just that the solutions are deeply unpopular.
Is it? The solution in motion is to use AI to push software developers out of software development so that they have to become construction workers, thereby increasing the supply of construction workers, pushing construction wages down. It doesn't seem that unpopular (at least not outside of HN, but even on HN many welcome it with open arms). Maybe it will become unpopular once the motions are complete? That's a tad bit late, though.
a friend showed me their budget recently, and about 45 hours of their wages go to rent each month (for a single room in a house with roommates). That seems very high to me, and their rent is considered "low" in their area (a small suburb)
Assuming they work full time, that is pretty average. The old "30%" rule is that you should spend no more than 30% of your pre-tax wages on rent. Your friend is spending just over a quarter post-taxes.
That’s another bad metric without more nuance. if I used to pay 30% and now pay 50% but the remaining 50% buys 2x what it used to then overall I’m still doing better
I’m not saying that’s the case. I’m only saying the metric “housing cost as percent of wages” isn’t enough to judge if people are doing worse or better
To take just one example: a 65inch tv costs just $700 compared to $4k just a few years ago
The government heavily interferes in the housing industry. Hence, the higher costs. It's the same for everything the government interferes with - such as education and health care.
For examples:
1. there are 57,000 unoccupied apartments in NYC because city regulations on rents make them unprofitable to rent out.
2. the glacial pace of issuing building permits for burned out homes in LA.
3. the sudden influx of many millions of immigrants pushes up the demand for housing, resulting in higher prices
I genuinely cannot understand how anyone with basic knowledge of economics could believe that government intervention is responsible for all unoccupied apartments in a market.
I genuinely can not understand how anyone with basic knowledge of economics could believe that government intervention is not responsible for the majority of rent price increases
The market, left to its own, will keep building because someone will see the prices people are willing to pay and think “I want in on that” but then the government comes in and blocks them from building. No building = supply lower than demand which always equals higher costs
Further, It would only have taken you one 5 second search to see the ways government regulations can cause unoccupied apartments
1. PCE tracks spending by and on behalf of households, including employer-paid health insurance and government-funded medical programs like Medicare. Arguably this does not reflect out-of-pocket costs or the immediate cash-flow reality experienced by a regular household.
2. Shelter accounts for roughly 34% of the CPI, whereas it makes up only about 16% to 17% of the PCE which underplays the pressures of housing people face. Housing arguably is one of the most basic necessity and people will spend on it. For majority of the people in the country housing as a % of income is the biggest expense, so weighing it at 16% sounds almost ridiculous.
3. PCE also famously isn’t based on household surveys like CPI which means it doesn’t accurately represent the actual inflation either.
4. PCE also doesn’t accurately represent lifestyle downgrades even though it tracks them. PCE will capture if you swap chicken for beef (like people are doing right now) but the conclusion you’ll come to is that people have the same amount of spending power as before.
Hey thanks for posting this perspective w/ the link. Fun rabbit hole to go down stuck in a hotel tonight. I wonder if you think something explanatory is missing in _all_ of these different indices, in the "where there's smoke, there's fire" sense of economic anxiety on display today
The sense of economic anxiety is due to increasing economic efficiency and sorting. It's not that the cost of living somewhere has gone up as much as people think. It's that the market is efficiently allocating housing in the place you grew up, near your parents, family, and friends, to Google and Facebook engineers. But you can still get a house twice as big as what your parents had at your age in a new subdivision in Tennessee.
I’m not necessarily disputing your point, but it’s very odd to downplay one source for potential bias, and then follow up with a study from the CATO Institute. Like, the CATO institute is openly a libertarian think tank founded by one of the Koch brothers.
I also think it’s unfair to look at just food prices. Housing and healthcare have bloomed massively.
Of course you’re right. Food isn’t the whole picture, and no think tank is perfect.
We should evaluate research by the research itself, rather than by the author’s subjectivity credibility alone. The is the point I was trying to make by providing alternative research and adding a little bit of nuance to the reply, but perhaps I should’ve been more forthright in addressing my own bias as well.
I first saw the claim everything is hunky dory because workers are working fewer hours from a economist probably ten years ago. The idea is workers are choosing to work fewer hours and instead enjoy more leisure.
So to point out how inanely out of touch economists are.
The problem with that is the worker economic base unit is a family not one person. Now compare 1960-70s where one person in the household works 40 hours a week. Compare with a modern family where both parents are working a combined 70-80 hours a week.
So yeah workers are working slightly less hours and families as a unit substantially more.
jparishy 4 hours ago
To me, the entertainment industry suffers from a lot of the same problems in most other industries that chase "efficiency", in terms of resources used and profit made. Economies and industries and labor are interdependent and more "alive" than balance sheets and bank accounts.
For the film industry, when you start moving things away from LA to "save money", it has knock on effects that happen over long periods of time. Multiple Quarterly Earnings Reports long, if you will. Local businesses that depend on the film industry close due to less work, so then there is less expertise available. Less expertise means it can command high prices. Suddenly it's too expensive to film in LA altogether. So the rest of the jobs leave too.
This pattern seems super common, not just in the film industry.
It is a narrative that interweaves with AI, too. AI is supposedly an efficiency boom. In the macroeconomy, who is the "efficiency" we are chasing for, who benefits? Who is getting the money that was "saved"? Regular people do not have more more money or time. The "efficiency" is for people who are already very rich, to get richer. Is that worth the price we're paying? I know my answer. The article gets close to it by mentioning the consolidation in Hollywood, but I do not see how we fix this without enforcing our antitrust laws. It is embarrassing what we let rich people do in the name of stock price go up.
solatic 24 minutes ago
Economic hubs work when there is more efficiency to be found in industrially-codependent resources being located close to each other, than there is in cheaper labor costs outside the hub. Hollywood's heyday was when there was enormous value to putting actors, agents, producers, cameras, sets, editors, VFX, writers all within close driving distance of each other, so that you could organize new movies and shows at the drop of a hat. In a day and age when teenagers are able to use cellphone cameras and pocketmoney to produce stories that are compelling enough to command attention and advertising dollars, the value of that geographic proximity has declined tremendously.
AI didn't build the coffin, but it's been putting nails in it.
cm2187 17 minutes ago
brightball 7 minutes ago
Before I’d always feel distracted by things weighing on me that I needed to get done. Now a huge load of those things are asked of grok bot quickly, then I close the laptop and go spend time where I should be.
It feels like it’s lifting a huge burden from my daily life.
derektank 4 hours ago
Of course they do. Median real weekly wages[1] have been rising for decades all while the average number of hours worked per worker have fallen[2].
[1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/les1252881600Q
[2] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/avhwpeusa065nrug
darth_avocado 4 hours ago
https://www.unitedforalice.org/essentials-index
manlymuppet 3 hours ago
Looking at an article from the CATO institute, over the last 30 years wages have climbed 169 percent, while food prices 111 percent.
But an even better measure is PCE, or personal consumption index. Rather than CPI, or any other "household basics" measure, which subjectively categorize goods and then tracks those, PCE measures the total dollar amount spent by the entire U.S. consumer sector on goods and services. This is what is used by the FRED database referenced in the reply above.
https://www.cato.org/commentary/why-dire-pronouncements-abou...
vlovich123 3 hours ago
pj_mukh 3 hours ago
It’s 30 to 50% of most peoples paycheck, it’s really the piece that matters and the one that is most complicated to solve.
rayiner 31 minutes ago
The problem isn't so much that housing has gotten expensive. It's that many of the existing places have moved up-market compared to what they were 30-40 years ago. 75 years ago, Scarsdale NY or parts of Long Island were expensive. But Palo Alto was a drab middle class suburb. As the tech economy has boomed, that has driven prices up in Palo Alto for the same reason they were already high in Scarsdale. And now you have to move to Gilroy.
SyzygyRhythm 1 hour ago
I'm semi-convinced that the reason why we see so many bad ideas in housing is because the good ideas negatively affect too much of the voting public. Or, they perceive the ideas as negatively affecting them.
nradov 1 hour ago
win311fwg 20 minutes ago
As a homeowner I don't want to see my home price go down relative to all other homes as that leaves me in a precious position if I need to move, but if all homes fall in price together then that actually makes the prospect of moving less risky as, if I have to move into a house that is a step-up from the one I have, the cost to do so is lower. That would be an improvement over the status quo. High housing prices are a problem even for those with significant equity in a home.
But who doesn't want to see their wage go down is those who build houses. This is the bottleneck. The vast majority of people cannot afford a new house, which means they're stuck in their used houses, which means there is no inventory opening up for those with no houses.
> it's just that the solutions are deeply unpopular.
Is it? The solution in motion is to use AI to push software developers out of software development so that they have to become construction workers, thereby increasing the supply of construction workers, pushing construction wages down. It doesn't seem that unpopular (at least not outside of HN, but even on HN many welcome it with open arms). Maybe it will become unpopular once the motions are complete? That's a tad bit late, though.
infinite_spin 2 hours ago
zdragnar 1 hour ago
socalgal2 1 hour ago
I’m not saying that’s the case. I’m only saying the metric “housing cost as percent of wages” isn’t enough to judge if people are doing worse or better
To take just one example: a 65inch tv costs just $700 compared to $4k just a few years ago
ethersteeds 10 minutes ago
WalterBright 2 hours ago
For examples:
1. there are 57,000 unoccupied apartments in NYC because city regulations on rents make them unprofitable to rent out.
2. the glacial pace of issuing building permits for burned out homes in LA.
3. the sudden influx of many millions of immigrants pushes up the demand for housing, resulting in higher prices
Timon3 1 hour ago
socalgal2 1 hour ago
The market, left to its own, will keep building because someone will see the prices people are willing to pay and think “I want in on that” but then the government comes in and blocks them from building. No building = supply lower than demand which always equals higher costs
Further, It would only have taken you one 5 second search to see the ways government regulations can cause unoccupied apartments
https://www.google.com/search?q=in+what+ways+can+government+...
WalterBright 1 hour ago
Please try again.
P.S. google "how many unoccupied apartments in nyc"
JumpCrisscross 1 hour ago
Which market are you thinking of?
Timon3 1 hour ago
JumpCrisscross 1 hour ago
Los Angeles? Where the homeowner vacancy rate is 0.7% and rental vacancy 4%?
If you literally weren't thinking of anywhere when your responded, where did you get the notion from?
[1] https://api.census.gov/data/missing_key.html +/- one percent
darth_avocado 2 hours ago
2. Shelter accounts for roughly 34% of the CPI, whereas it makes up only about 16% to 17% of the PCE which underplays the pressures of housing people face. Housing arguably is one of the most basic necessity and people will spend on it. For majority of the people in the country housing as a % of income is the biggest expense, so weighing it at 16% sounds almost ridiculous.
3. PCE also famously isn’t based on household surveys like CPI which means it doesn’t accurately represent the actual inflation either.
4. PCE also doesn’t accurately represent lifestyle downgrades even though it tracks them. PCE will capture if you swap chicken for beef (like people are doing right now) but the conclusion you’ll come to is that people have the same amount of spending power as before.
jparishy 3 hours ago
rayiner 17 minutes ago
openasocket 3 hours ago
I also think it’s unfair to look at just food prices. Housing and healthcare have bloomed massively.
manlymuppet 2 hours ago
We should evaluate research by the research itself, rather than by the author’s subjectivity credibility alone. The is the point I was trying to make by providing alternative research and adding a little bit of nuance to the reply, but perhaps I should’ve been more forthright in addressing my own bias as well.
intended 1 hour ago
rayiner 20 minutes ago
rpcope1 2 hours ago
> Links the fucking CATO institute
Pot, meet kettle
derektank 4 hours ago
smallmancontrov 3 hours ago
Avicebron 3 hours ago
chorsestudios 3 hours ago
Gibbon1 2 hours ago
So to point out how inanely out of touch economists are.
The problem with that is the worker economic base unit is a family not one person. Now compare 1960-70s where one person in the household works 40 hours a week. Compare with a modern family where both parents are working a combined 70-80 hours a week.
So yeah workers are working slightly less hours and families as a unit substantially more.