Op-Ed: Stay Expensive, New York—It Helps the Rest of the U.S.

Conor Sen has written what is sure to be a controversial argument looking for a bright side to skyrocketing housing prices in cities like New York and San Francisco. That bright side is just located in places other than New York and San Francisco.

Sen sets the premise by claiming that "pro-development pundits tend to live in expensive and hemmed-in cities like New York and San Francisco," but he lives in Atlanta, and as such, he sees "many benefits of density limits in highly desirable communities."

According to Sen, other cities benefit when people are priced or locked out of New York and San Francisco. So, for example, when many people choose to leave New York for Atlanta, people in Atlanta benefit. "This is a wealth transfer from the most desirable communities to the upwardly mobile ones. The tens of thousands of people who leave New York and California every year act as sources of new demand in the places to which they move, like Florida, Texas and Colorado," writes Sen.

Sen also credits some of that job migration and economic interdependence with increased civil rights in the South. Click through to the full article to decide if you agree.