I think that there are many more factors than this at play. For example, People with diverse educations tend to be more creative and make more money and can afford to live in million dollar houses more. I'm not sure what that says about being liberal or not.
I was raised a Conservative Republican and most of my friends after college tended to be Moderates to Liberals after college because most Republicans just weren't any fun to be around. This was my point of view. So, creative people who aren't all constipated in trying to live ideas that are traditional but not ones they deeply hold in their hearts but just traditional tend to be Republicans and Conservative Republicans. However, some of these same ideas cause Economic systems to work too. So, I see Republicans having an important place in the world, Liberals having an important place in the world in causing progress of various kinds to be made through creativity.
In fact, I prefer a Republican President and then Democratic president alternately. Because the things both do right and wrong are the opposites. But now the voting demographic of the country is moving towards the left or left of the old moderate, we might be in danger as a nation because Fiscal responsibility might be lost in the fact that a Republican Presideent can likely never be elected ever again because of voting demographics because Republicans are dying off faster than they can be replaced and Democrats are being born 2 or three times as fast or they are moving into the country from other countries.
So, I would say we are more in danger now of becoming a Banana Republic than ever before here in the U.S. In other words this shift to the left is causing the U.S. to move in a third world direction which really isn't good for the U.S., the people who live here or the world in general.
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Wed, Oct 29, 2014, 1:30pm EDT - US Markets close in 2 hrs and 30 mins
Why Americans Can't Afford to Live in Liberal Cities
By Derek Thompson
5 hours ago
If not the year's most
persuasive act of dissent, it was certainly one of the most memorable
demonstrations in the Bay Area, where residents have marched, blockaded,
and retched in protest of San Francisco's economic inequality and
unaffordable housing. The city's gaps—between rich and poor, between
housing need and housing supply—have been duly catalogued. Even among American tech hubs, San Francisco stands alone with both the most expensive real estate and the fewest new construction permits per unit since 1990.
But San Francisco's problem is bigger than San Francisco. Across the
country, rich dense cities are struggling with affordable housing, to
the considerable anguish of their middle class families.Among the 100 largest U.S. metros, 63 percent of homes are "within reach" for a middle-class family, according to Trulia. But among the 20 richest U.S. metros, just 47 percent of homes are affordable, including a national low of 14 percent in San Francisco. The firm defined "within reach" as a for-sale home with a total monthly payment (including mortgage and taxes) less than 31 percent of the metro's median household income.
If you line up the country's 100 richest metros from 1 to 100, household affordability falls as household income rises, even after you consider that middle class families in richer cities have more income. [The graph below considers only the 25 richest US metros to keep city names moderately legible within the computer screen.]
Rich Households = Unaffordable Houses?
The line isn't smooth—and there are exceptions—but the relationship is clear: In general, richer cities have less affordable housing.
But there's a second reason why San Francisco's problem is emblematic of a national story. Liberal cities seem to have the worst affordability crises, according to Trulia chief economist Jed Kolko.
In a recent article,
Kolko divided the largest cities into 32 “red" metros where Romney got
more votes than Obama in 2012 (e.g. Houston), 40 “light-blue” markets
where Obama won by fewer than 20 points (e.g. Austin), and 28
“dark-blue” metros where Obama won by more than 20 points (e.g. LA, SF,
NYC). Although all three housing groups faced similar declines in the
recession and similar bounce-backs in the recovery, affordability
remains a bigger problem in the bluest cities.
Super-Liberal Cities, Super-Unaffordable Houses
"Even after adjusting for differences of income, liberal markets tend to have higher income inequality and worse affordability,” Kolko said.
Kolko's theory isn't an outlier. There is a deep literature trying liberal residents to illiberal housing policies that create affordability crunches for the middle class. In 2010, UCLA economist Matthew Kahn published a study of California cities, which found that liberal metros issued fewer new housing permits. The correlation held over time: As California cities became more liberal, he said, they built fewer homes.
"All homeowners have an incentive to stop new housing," Kahn told me, "because if developers build too many homes, prices fall, and housing is many families' main asset. But in cities with many Democrats and Green Party members, environmental concerns might also be a factor. The movement might be too eager to preserve the past."
The deeper you look, the more
complex the relationship between blue cities and unaffordable housing
becomes. In 2008, economist Albert Saiz used satellite-generated maps to
show that the most regulated housing markets tend to have geographical
constraints—that is, they are built along sloping mountains, in narrow
peninsulas, and against nature's least developable real estate: the
ocean. (By comparison, many conservative cities, particularly in Texas,
are surrounded by flatter land.) "Democratic, high-tax metropolitan
areas ... tend to constrain new development more," Saiz concluded, and
"historic areas seem to be more regulated." He also found that cities
with high home values tend to have more restrictive development
policies.
One could attempt tying this together into a pat story — Rich
liberals prefer to cluster near historic coastal communities with high
home values, where they support high taxes, rent control, and a maze of
housing regulations to protect both their investment and the region's
"character", altogether discouraging new housing development that’s
already naturally constrained by geography... — but even that interpretation elides the colorful local history that often shapes housing politics.
I
asked Kahn if he had a pet theory for why liberals, who tend to be
vocal about income inequality, would be more averse to new housing
development, which would help lower-income families. He suggested that
that it could be the result of good intentions good bad.
"Developers
pursue their own self-interest," Kahn said. "If a developer has an
acre, and he thinks it should be a shopping mall, he won't think about
neighborhood charm, or historic continuity. Liberals
might say that the developer acting in his own self-interest ignores
certain externalities, and they'll apply restrictions. But these
restrictions [e.g. historic preservation, environmental preservation,
and height ceilings] add up, across a city, even if they’re
well-intentioned. The affordability issue will rear its head."
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