Say, dear reader: do you already live in one of the big cities?

You do? Congratulations: because if not, you’re now officially priced out of ’em. And this raises an interesting new question: do non-wealthy Australians have any right to live in their own cities?

It’s a fun question to ask because right now the answer would appear to be no, and this has implications for the future.

Specifically, because it appears more and more likely that unless something is done about fixing Australia’s currently terrible housing situation, the low-paid workers of the immediate future will need to operate on a fly-in-fly-out model. You know, the way that remote Australia does it with miners, and Abu Dhabi does with migrant ‘slaves’.

The problem is coming from all sides. For a start, rental affordability in the cities – especially Sydney – is at a record low. Couples on an average income are being pushed further away from the areas with jobs, which has implications for productivity and, y’know, human happiness. But they have it better than single people on average incomes, who have even fewer options. And people on low incomes now effectively can’t afford to live in Sydney at all.

And with rental apps set to hit the market, forcing prospective tenants to engage in gladiatorial outbidding of one another as though ongoing shelter is a vintage Star Wars figure on eBay, it’s going to become even harder.

And the government’s pithy “let’s increase supply, so everyone can get a house!” solution won’t actually work. The way we know that is that significant development is currently happening, and it’s making absolutely no dent in affordability.

In Sydney there’s loads of construction going on, but the problem is that the units being built aren’t affordable housing in affordable areas, according to a new study by the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute and the Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre.

And it makes sense: if you’re a developer you’re going to want to sell expensive places in desirable locales, not waste valuable plasterboard on cheap housing with low profit margins.

You’re running a business, not attempting to address a population housing crisis affecting the marginalised. That’s ostensibly the government’s job – which makes Treasurer Scott Morrison’s regular cries of “increase supply!” somewhat worrying.

In other words, if you can’t afford higher house prices and higher rents, then you’re not going to be able to afford to live in Sydney at all before too long. And if you can only just manage that at the moment, then the fact that rents and house prices are increasing at the same time that wages are actually going down should have you downright terrified.

So the answer, clearly, is to move to Tamworth. After all, no less an authority than our august Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce suggested as much in January, since that’s where property is cheap – around a third of the price of a Sydney home.

Of course, Barn neglected to mention that unemployment in the biggest town in his electorate at the time was 7.46 per cent, above Greater Sydney (3.82 per cent) and the nation as a whole (5.7 per cent), because that might have somewhat undermined his argument.

In other words the places where the property is cheapest is where the jobs are most scarce, and the places where unemployment is lowest are also where housing is least affordable. We’re getting to the point where people can either have shelter or a career, but not in the same place.

So what does that mean for our nurses, our teachers, our cops, our retail workers and our rakishly charming newspaper columnists?

Well, we’re either going to have to marry well, inherit big, or move beyond what is currently (and insanely) considered commutable and look at crashing somewhere near our jobs from Monday to Friday and maybe just going home for weekends.

Alternatively, we could do with some big thinking from the government and regulators – encourage investment in affordable housing, for one thing (such long-term low-risk investment wouldn’t excite speculators, but would be very attractive to superannuation funds, for example).

And, of course, change the tax advantages that skew property to investors over owners, start some federal-state conversations about what it would take to shift industries and departments to other capitals and regional centres to better balance property pressures and employment opportunities – you know, act as though Malcolm Turnbull’s decision to take ownership of housing affordability was about finding long-term solutions rather than getting some cheap political capital.

Or we could just decide it’s all too much of a hassle, leave things be and see if a bursting property bubble doesn’t abruptly make our decisions for us.