61–70 of 687 posts
What's the point? What is the point of trying to be a high performer if wealth can't be acquired by income? Why would I want to work for anyone in this country? Only way out is equity and that game is even harder to play in Sweden than in the US.
A key problem in Sweden -- besides the weird interaction of privatization and legacy over-regulation -- is that the current inflation and rising interest rates break the social contract: a relatively even salary distribution allowed many people to have a solid middle-class life style, recently albeit with never-ending mortgages. Now, the interest rates are too high for these mortgages to be even superficially sustain…
Real estate can either be a lucrative investment or it can be affordable. Why are people continuously acting shocked when they realize it can't be both? And why are elected politicians everywhere continuously shrugging their shoulders as if the housing market is somethin completely outside of their control.
Best solution is deregulation. Housing is a primary need of humans, and we have been building our houses for cheap for most of history except the past 2-3 decades
Real estate can either be a lucrative investment or it can be affordable. Why are people continuously acting shocked when they realize it can't be both? And why are elected politicians everywhere continuously shrugging their shoulders as if the housing market is somethin completely outside of their control.
We somehow have this belief that the "market" is some immutable law of nature like say, gravity. The "market" is based on behaviour, albeit behaviour that is heavily manipulated and controlled (somewhat invisibly - complicity or otherwise - to, seemingly, most people). We acquiesce and, when life is good for us, ignore the fact that we have to the power to change our behaviour and our beliefs and values and, thus, th…
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Young people are upset they can't live centrally in the capital for cheap. Same story as everywhere else. Now go forth with the ritual flogging, er, downvoting. (I live and work in the countryside of Sweden. I recommend it.)
Sure, but try dating and building social circles while living in rural areas as a single 20-30 something year old. Of course young people want to live in dense walkable areas where it's easy to find other like minded people. Isn't Swedish population also statistically one of the biggest sufferers of loneliness in the world and also one of the largest consumers of antidepressants? Or was that Finland? I'm not sure.
I have most of my extended family there and there was no problem dating, marrying and having long term relations. There is a small town 15 km away with cinema, a few restaurants, hospital, the school is in the every village and a high school is 6 km away (one in the town as well), so "country side" does not mean secluded. These days I am working from home partly from there in the summer, Gigabit Internet over Fiber is dirt cheap and reliable and even Amazon Germany delivers there, it takes a week but it works.
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Suppose a large, publicly listed real estate investment trust (REIT) owned a diversified portfolio of housing across the country and operated it all as rental housing. Tenants could buy shares in the REIT and thereby invest not only in their own house, but all the others as well. Less risk and more flexible than home ownership. The downside for tenants is not being able to renovate. The upside is not being responsibl…
Imagine the state did this instead using taxes and eminent domain. Congrats, you’ve invented Vienna, one of the most beautiful cities in the entire world.
Paywall :-|
It should not be a major surprise that the gap between the haves and the have-nots will widen if you have a large compareable influx of have-nots, or to speak more precisely, an influx of new citizens with low social-economic status compared to those who already were ctiziens. In a very dispassionate perspective, it is just plain math. It is going to take time to return back to the same levels as before.
Swedish immigration has been decreasing for the last 14 years. https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/SWE/sweden/net-migrati... . Oddly enough, profitability of Swedish banks has been increasing for the last 14 years: https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/SWE/sweden/net-migrati... . Maybe you can come up with an argument actually grounded in reality, rather than the same old BS "oh it's the poor".
I'm in the highest percentiles of income in Sweden (public data is available) and it doesn't matter. It's basically impossible for me to afford a house / apartment for my family in the best neighborhoods. What's the point? What is the point of trying to be a high performer if wealth can't be acquired by income? Why would I want to work for anyone in this country? Only way out is equity and that game is even harder to…
But hey, at least the cops won't arrest me for openly smoking crack on the sidewalk, so that'll help me deal with the stress of trying to be a high performer.
The Sweden story sounds so much like the SF story. Area doesn’t building housing, leading to a massive increase in house prices and a destruction of class mobility as the rich get richer (as their houses get more valuable) and the poor get poorer (as they pay more to rent the same living space). The growing wealth inequality leads to all sorts of other dysfunction including increased crime, worsening services, etc. a…
> The growing wealth inequality leads to all sorts of other dysfunction including increased crime, worsening services, etc. as the govt cannot raise enough taxes. Hold up. I don’t think the people of San Francisco grew weary of increasing rents and decided to turn to a life of crime. Most of the “trouble makers” in the Bay Area are recent arrivals to the area and come because of poor policing and the government is ge…