In reality, things have value because people believe they have value. That doesn't mean every company that doesn't pay dividends is a speculative tulip bubble.

Should S&P really adjust the rules for such a small portion of the index?

Bladerunner and HBO's Chernobyl are two of my favorites that fit this.

I think humans will eventually fall out of practice of driving when they use SDVs for most travel. And then every once in a while they'll take their ol' 2026 classic car from highschool out for a spin and find they have forgotten how to drive!

Great. So we agree it is cherry picked.

> Sure. It provides an even better illustration about how the runaway urbanism resulted in breaking the previous trend of increasing living area.

I don't follow the logic here. Why would 2015 be the tipping point? What's so special about that year? The US has been increasingly urbanizing since WW2.

https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/usa/uni...

> You might have cause and effect confused here.

Just to be clear, you're suggesting that people are having fewer kids (fertility had a recent peak in 2007) because new builds (which are just a small percentage of total housing stock!) have lost a few square feet? I find that to be laughable.

> Why is it strange? In the counter-factual world without the dense office core, the new transit would have been useless.

1. There are more than just offices in CBDs. There are also retail, restaurants, entertainment venues, residential, etc.

2. This ignores the benefit to the worker. And employer/employee relationship goes two-ways. You assign all the benefits to the employers (who gain access to a larger talent pool), while ignoring the fact that this benefits workers too by increasing the pool of jobs they can reliably and comfortably commute to.

3. Economic gains for employers are not purely extractive. A thriving and dynamic centeral business district helps provide income for residents, drive increased investment, and foster innovation.

> And none of them requires the amount of traffic that justifies $150k per household.

Sports venues. Concerts. Festivals. Parades. Any large gathering of people. Not to mention that it's still a good thing to have for general use to go anywhere, even at non-max-capacity times.

https://mynorthwest.com/kiro-opinion/sound-transit-3-34-5-bi...

Not seeing that $150k per household number anywhere in that article. Looks like $10k per person is the number they come up with. Expensive to be sure, but not quite the number you somehow arrived at.

It is clearly cherry picked because the graph begins in 2015, which (as you can see in the one I linked) is the exact peak of the new build house sizes. A more honest article would show a larger date range.

Additionally, I feel it makes sense that new builds are getting smaller. People are generally having fewer children these days, so there shouldn't be as much need for huge houses.

> Except that the increased salary does NOT compensate for the increased cost of living. And firms absolutely don't pay for their impact on infrastructure.

It may not entirely make up for the cost of living, but in most cases I would say it certainly makes a big dent. And the rest of the difference can just be explained by the fact that people want to live in cities. So shouldn't it make sense that the cost of living is higher in these areas given that there is more demand for them?

> My favorite example: Seattle. Each household will end up paying around $150k in additional taxes for the new transit that will benefit primarily dense office holders in the downtown.

I think it's strange to frame public transit as primarily benefiting dense office-holders. There are tons of other entities in cities besides just companies in offices. It's a public good, and transit generally benefits everyone. Citizens, companies, government, educational institutions, etc.

Also please link to where I can read more about the $150k number.

Regardless, I don't understand what your proposed solution to this supposed "jobs crisis" is.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/COMPSFLAM1FQ

Also, firm in a dense city can get better talent, but those negative externalities (and I would argue these externalities are not clearly caused by the mployer) are made up for through increased salaries the firm must pay compared to areas with lower living costs.