Arthur,
I arrived in Toronto in April, 1954 with $84.
In October, 1955, I moved my family to Canada and into a new house in Oakville.
Could I do it today? I doubt it. Escalating land-values have all but put housing out of reach of most people. In Australia they have just carried out a national survey and found that land value is 65% of the cost of building.
American surveyors apparently figure that land cost is between 50% and 70% of housing costs. In the worst cases, this means that all the materials that go into a house, all the machines required to build it, all the effort applied by the workers - from laborers to architects, is paid for from 30% of the price you pay to go through the door.
Hooray! for "affordable housing". Let's cheer for the houses not constructed, the commercial buildings not built, the skyscrapers not erected, the factories that never occupy vacant land.
And as the developers leapfrog over speculatively priced land, looking for a place to build, we achieve the ultimate success of the modern city - a sprawl that can go 50 miles in every direction, which is about what the commuters drive every day.
Harry
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Arthur wrote:
My father in law could support a family of 2 kids and wife, afford a new house and car---all at a middle class salary level. This in the 1950's. Today, well you know. Two earners in the family and running faster and faster to keep up.
So what happened in the last 40 to 50 years or so. It is it just the entry to the labour force of women thereby driving up land values (over to you Harry, to spell out what we should have done with the land tax that didn't happen).....
Or was it something else. How did we go from relative ease in the late 50's to keen, lean and mean in the late 90's and early 2000's.? Why do we need two wage earner households to more or less accomplish what a one wage earner household accomplished in the 1950s and early 60s?
Arthur Cordell
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Harry Pollard
Henry George School of LA
Box 655
Tujunga CA 91042
Tel: (818) 352-4141
Fax: (818) 353-2242
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