Right, and now you just raised inflation, raising prices for everyone and punishing most the poor and elderly on fixed income, since they rely disproportionately on commodity goods and services.
If you want a successful economy, you have to plan for it: find where resources are going to be utilized, and build from there.
You've increased prices for SOME goods, but you've massively massively reduced prices for all others.
Urban sprawl is extremely expensive, and the high costs on infrastructure effects the poor the most.
If housing and infrastructure were cheaper, because we've built more stuff in cities, then the poor beneift the most due to the lower housing costs (which makes up most of their expenses).
So, do people not understand that all jobs, and demand for people, aren't going to be located in a single point in space?
Why have two cities of New York and San Francisco? Why not just one city of New York?
Increasing commodity prices raises the price of all good, not just some goods, because that's how economics works. Every cost is transferred somewhere else.
So, not sure why you want to raise the price of all goods...
But the status quo of what we are currently in is way way to far on the wrong end of thing.
So once San Francisco and new york rent prices aren't literally 5 time larger than rent prices in the countryside THEN we can worry about the issues you bring up.
But as long as rent prices ARE 5 times larger in the city, I will not worry a single ounce about the issues you brought up.
You are engaging in the extremism fallacy. It would be like if a bunch of people were in the desert, and everyone was dieing due to dehydration, and then you came along and said "Well, you know, if you drink too much water, then you can die of water poisoning! Why aren't you worried about water poisoning!?!?!?".
Yes, water poising can kill people if you drink 10 gallons of water every day. But we are in a freaking desert and people are dying due to dehydration, so why the hell are you talking about something so ridiculously as water poisoning!?!
Yah but you're raising prices on everything anyways by making everyone live in the city where they are unneeded instead of more efficiently where the jobs are.
But the problem right now is the opposite. The problem is that we MAKING them live in the countryside instead of allowing those that want to to live in the city.
Let's very much make it so living in the city is just as cheap as living in the countryside. That way everyone can decide for themselves which life is better, instead of being forced to live in the countryside, because the city is unaffordable.
Most of the jobs are in the cities already, even without the hypothetical scenario. Most developed nations are mostly service sector, and demand for services is mostly where the people are, despite remote working being possible in some cases.
(Does anyone call for new primary industry jobs these days, or is that basically robots first now, with the jobs being mostly service and some manufacturing?)
If wages don't rise for those jobs, then they weren't needed.