600%, 800%, that was just an order-of-magnitude guess based on glancing at the numbers, which I believe were already inflation-adjusted.

When I go pursuing a single thread like the effect of real estate inflation on competitiveness, it's not usually because I think that it's the explanation, but a part of the tapestry. I wouldn't succeed if I were out to explain our current disadvantage as solely due to the high cost of real estate.

But it's not useful to just say that American workers are "too expensive" without examining why we can't instantly drop our rates to respond to changing market conditions. People aren't dumb and since we all live by the marketplace, Americans have a pretty good grasp of how to respond to price-cutting competition...if we could, but apparently we can't.

Long-term commitments to mortgages are an excellent candidate for one factor that prevents Americans from responding as necessary to keep their jobs. If the problem isn't the cost of housing, then it has to be something that we can't adjust as simply as taking a less-expensive vacation or cutting back on eating out. Where's the friction keeping us on the trailing edge of the adjustment curve?

I also have a suspicion that the real cost of other necessities are not proportionately as low in locations competing for American jobs. In other words, while housing may be 1000% cheaper in, say, Mumbai, food and energy may be only a few hundred percent cheaper. I note that gasoline, for example, has a price that worldwide falls within a fairly narrow band of $3 (as of this week) up to five or six other places, only a ~100% variation. It's also suggestive that the percentage of income that Americans devote to paying for housing has risen from the 25% our parents took as the proper amount to today's ~50% or more for a lot of people.

But I don't have the energy or time right now to track down a myriad of statistics on cost of living worldwide, and that seems to be a necessary ingredient in this that's missing so far. Not that it's going far out on a limb to assert that Bay Area real estate is disproportionately high priced by world standards, but that "i" probably needs crossing.