STUCK IN THE PLACE WHERE YOU ARE BORN


                The notion that people should be able to choose their own communities - instead

of being stuck wherever they happen to be born - is America's most profound contribution to 

the world. Many of our country's most glaring injustices result from the ways in which this 

freedom has been denied to those who need it most. America is a nation of migrants. At the 

end of 19th century roughly 1/3 of all Americans changed addresses each year. On average 

migrants have always grown more prosperous than those who have stayed in one place. 

Mobility has been the great engine of American prosperity. But for the last 50 years, the 

engine of American opportunity has been grinding to a halt. In the 1940sand 1950s about a 

fifth of Americans moved. By 2021 only 1/12th of the Americans moved.


               New zoning laws are one suspect factor. Also, rapidly escalating cost of housing is 

another causal factor. Democratic voters are now tightly concentrated in the densest 

communities. one solution to this being 'stuck' in one place, is building of a lot of affordable 

housing in different parts of USA.


                                [ Based on the book "stuck" by Yoni Applebaum (2024)]


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