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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 29, 2024

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I'm skeptical that it's even possible to measure this. Many things, including housing, have gotten more expensive, but also improved substantially in quality, a factor not really reflected in the inflation-adjusted numbers.

Stockholm has I'm sure grown and become more urbanized as well, meaning that apartments which would previously have been in residential areas are now basically in the city center. So you can probably get by (and access comparable jobs to what was available 30 years ago) living much further from the center of the city than you could before.

Nowadays rural and remote jobs are better too, so in one sense it's easier to live entirely outside the city than ever.

You might think that but you would be wrong.

What has happened is very limited construction, large population growth and a massive credit expansion, leading to a price spiral. Cost increases in housing almost all exclusively comes from increases in land prices. Building is relatively cheap.

The vast majority are living in housing that was built before the 35 year price rally, not a single subway station has been added during that entire period.

Some people, like my family, have won big and are now (dollar)multimillionaires, due to no effort of our own. Others, like people from out of town or their children are just fucked.