Any influx of residents puts pressure on local and regional housing markets. Extra pressure on even low income rentals has an appreciating effect on the rest of the housing chain, because on the short term housing supply is inelastic, and space in desirable areas is relatively finite.
There is of course, some effect but it's relatively minor for the middle class. Someone who's making a good income is not going to settle for the same conditions an illegal immigrant does, they're not competing in the same market. Your analysis leaves out a bunch of realities, for example: Most illegal immigrants share housing, reducing pressure compared to the normal. They also tend to stick to immigrant neighborhoods due to language barrier and need for cash transactions, this reduces their impact outside these areas. There is such a thing as homelessness more population on the lower income scale doesn't always mean that property values go up due to resources being taken since some will end up homeless. People tend to get the best they can afford, if illegal immigrants are taking the lower end of the market the legal people aren't just going to start buying "better" places.
Illegal immigrants have a negligible effect on the property values of the type of property people putting up walls and fences around their homes own. And lastly I highly doubt anyone who's against the border wall is realistically thinking "this will keep my property values up!"
>There is of course, some effect but it's relatively minor for the middle class
This was my only point, because low and middle class markets and income are continuous spectra, and displacement at the base puts pressure on the rest of the continuum. People don't typically end up homeless because of a couple percent increase in rent, they find a way to pay it. Now, the exact quantitative effect on pricing throughout the market is something that neither of us can likely provide.
>Your analysis leaves out a bunch of realities...outside these areas.
And what happens when these areas fill up and start to influence surrounding neighborhoods? What about the increased strain on infrastructure, including roads, schools, police, fire, etc, especially by those who do not pay taxes?
What about the effect on markets cause by middle income flight post spillover, when these growing low income neighborhoods bring with them crime and other undesirable activity?
No amount of arguing over left out "realities" changes the simple fact that more people create increased local demand in housing starved locales, which puts upward pressure on all markets, although of course the derivative of income pressure vs population decreases with increasing housing prices.
>People tend to get the best they can afford
"Best" is highly subjective and dependent entirely on market rates. People will pay more for less if the whole market is inflated by pressure from below.
To be clear, I am not interested in blaming immigrants, legal or otherwise, for any of societies problems. I am simply arguing that more people>increased demand>higher price.
It's about supply and demand and fuel efficency. A small airport between Albany and NYC won't have enough people to fill a plane capable of flying to LAX efficiently from a fuel perspective, so they'll take a flight to NYC first then the LAX on a bigger plane that can spend less per person per mile to get there. Larger planes tend to be more fuel efficient (assuming all seats filled) than smaller ones which is why hub and spoke model makes a lot of sense. The 787 is actually abnormally fuel efficient for its size and it's opening up many direct routes that were previously not economical since it's a smaller plane that costs the same per mile per person as much larger planes.
Larger planes aren't significantly more fuel efficient. Look at the A380 vs. the 787.
The reason airlines thought hub and spoke was more profitable was because they could basically guarantee that every flight would be full. If a flight is only half full, you're lugging an entire airplane around for no reason which is very costly.
Hub and spoke is worse than airlines thought, though — newer planes like the 787 are far more efficient, so that cost of lugging the airplane around is reduced.
The 787 and A380 are both immense planes compared to 90% of the domestic fleet. You can count the number of domestic routes that can support widebody aircraft (787/777/A33/A350/A380) on one hand. And they are significantly more fuel efficient per passenger mile than a 737/A320 which are in turn quite a bit more fuel efficient per passenger mile than a regional jet (United Express/American Eagle, etc.)
They can lessen competition by not building a big hub in an airport that that's already a hub for a competing airline. If they avoid stepping on each others toes with hubs there are less airlines to compete on price with. If Minneapolis is a hub for Delta, then they have a virtual monopoly for all the smaller airports in the area that need to first fly to Minneapolis before the final destination.
Right, OK so the industry collectively defends their pricing power by tacitly accepting these rules. That makes sense.
That being said when you look at the locations of some of these hubs they are in pretty undesirable places in terms of incurring flight delays due to weather - Chicago? San Francisco? Minneapolis, Denver, New York?
A hub will always be in a fairly large city: a hub city has a lot of non-stop flights to all over. Not only does the hub capture the small cities nearby, it also captures most of the traffic to other small cities far away from the large city.
Chicago [same for New York] is large enough that it will be a hub: enough people want to get from Chicago to every other city that if you don't offer the direct flight someone else will. From there people will figure out you can get from Chicago to anywhere they will will make it a hub despite your wishes.
The other part is historical. Minneapolis was a hub for Northwest Orient Airlines because it started in Minneapolis and thus made that their home hub. Delta eventually bought Northwest and got the hub with the deal. They decided to keep Minneapolis as a hub.
I don't know what the situation is with San Francisco. I suspect historically planes needed to stop there for fuel before crossing the ocean. That is just a guess though.
Sure, hubs are a window into air travel history in the U.S. And with consolidation comes these hubs that have a historical reason for being there. And while I certainly understand that the New Yorks and Chicagos will always need to be hubs I have trouble with airlines exposing travelers in New York or Chicago to the vagaries of weather in Denver or Minneapolis. It seems these airlines could move some of these "historical hubs" into places with more favorable weather conditions.
I am not trying to slight Denver or Minneapolis in any why I'm just using them as an example. It just seem that a strategic rebalancing of hub locations might make help with delays and rescheduling. The situation now seems to be the airline inherited the hub through consolidation and that's where it will stay because they're too cheap to move it.
it isn't just cheapness. Minneapolis has built a large airport. If delta threatens to move out Minneapolis will sell those extra gates Delta is no longer using to someone else who wants to start a hub. In the mean time where ever Delta relocates too needs to builds a lot of gates and probably runways - even though the city ultimately wants to be a hub I'm not sure the city is willing to pay for all that.
No and I completely understand agree with you. If you look at the amount of fees and insane amount taxes US citizen pay on airfares though it seems quite reasonable that the Federal government might might use some of that for improving air travel by building smarter hubs in more strategic places.
I just remembered another consideration: The geographical center of North America is in North Dakota. Minneapolis is the closest large airport. As such it on average uses the least fuel to use Minneapolis as a hub.
Though why Fargo isn't a hub by this logic I don't know. Also a population weighted geographic center is probably a better consideration than just pure geographic.
Yes and no. Sometimes a flight going out of one of those tiny airports and continuing from the hub is paradoxically cheaper than taking the same flight from the hub. A friend of mine will occasionally drive from Atlanta to South Carolina to save a few hundred dollars on a flight leaving Atlanta.
It's more that airports are only so big. It's expensive to build a new terminal, so if one airline takes over most of an airport, the others can't turn it into a hub. If you don't mind a layover, that's not a big deal. If you want nonstop from your nearest airport, the airline that made it a hub will be able to charge you more. But that's only fair, because they invested the capital in making that airport a hub. If they over-invested, that's a lot of capital lost.
It can be hard to get nonstop flights out of Newark if United doesn't want to bother providing the service. The rest of the airlines there all want you to go through their hubs first. Not exactly a small potatoes airport.
