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Housing is at the root of many of the rich world’s problems (2020)

economist.com

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Re: Housing is at the root of many of the rich world’s problems (2020)

#111

Post by VonGuard »

nradov wrote: post #76
strikelaserclaw wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how do you think politicians make money? They usually own assets.

In the US some politicians make money by using their knowledge of upcoming legislation to trade stocks. https://nypost.com/2022/07/23/nancy-and-paul-pelosi-are-trad...

While I completely agree that Pelosi does this with insider knowledge, she and her husband also seem to be investing based on the hype they hear from people around them. Why else would the Pelosi's have taken such a bath on Roblox?! They had to have known shit is going bad over there, but they lost a LOT of money on that one...

So yeah, they do insider trading, but they are sometimes also the dupes in these deals. Look at their history. They make money, yes, but they lose a lot to stupid investments too, ones they obviously made because some Steve-Jobs-wannabe got a meeting with them and fired their reality distortion ray.

Re: Housing is at the root of many of the rich world’s problems (2020)

#112

Post by nopenopenopeno »

pochekailov wrote: post #26
kubb wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think there exists a political option that will give more rights to the renters? Do you think there's a correlation between having more leisure time (living from rent) and having more ability to do politics? Do you think blaming the renters for not voting is the most constructive way of going forward, or does it reinforce the status quo?

Q1: Yes, there is. Once a professional politician sees more activity from renters, they will include the renter's interests into their agenda Q2: Yes, obviously there is a positive correlation. This is exactly why renters need to fight: stakes are against them. Current status quo is in favor of homeowners; it will not be possible to change it while being passive. Renters and homeowners have conflict of interests, the…

You have an incredibly naive impression of representative democracy and capitalist political economy. US politicians serve the rich, not only because they are the rich but also because they need the donations to even be able to run. This isn’t a mere hiccup but rather the entire point of the design.

Re: Housing is at the root of many of the rich world’s problems (2020)

#113

Post by bushbaba »

29athrowaway wrote: post #99
pochekailov wrote: post #14

Nothing will change while the homeowners have more political power than the renters. Even in the cities where the renter population is bigger than the homeowners, such as in Seattle, half of the votes come from people of > 65 years old (all of whom are homeowners, likely more than one home). Young people simply won't vote at all. There is very little incentives for the young people to vote. Even if you cancel all the…

Then each renter will become a homeowner, they will feel very comfortable, have 4 kids, and now you will need 4x more units. Then their kids will have 4 kids, and you'll need 16x more units with respect to where you started. Few generations after you have a much deeper problem that the one you started with. Now you live in a country with a population of over 1 billion, where protests cannot be controlled anymore and…

Well the birth rate is less than replacement rate. Without illegal immigration the US would not be seeing a population growth.

Re: Housing is at the root of many of the rich world’s problems (2020)

#114

Post by rjbwork »

doliveira wrote: post #95
alistairSH wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure why you're being downvoted. Whether it's intentional or not, voting in the US is not always easy for several reasons... 1 - No national election day holiday, so wage-earners often have to forgo income to vote. 2 - Long lines, too few voting stations, exacerbate point 1 3 - Inconsistent voting laws as you cross municipal boundaries (mostly state to state). 3b - particularly WRT mail-in/absentee ballots. 4 - c…

Election day not being a holiday in the USA is weird

No it's not. From the start the US was intended to be oligarchical - hence the franchise originally only being extended to white landowning males. There has always been a strain of politics dedicated to keeping barriers up to enfranchisement.

Re: Housing is at the root of many of the rich world’s problems (2020)

#115

Post by QuarterReptile »

edmcnulty101 wrote: post #93

Housing is not the problem. Population is the problem. This is because the 'rich' people countries are having a population explosion despite the native 'rich' people havong a negative birth rate. You can do the math as to why. Housing has never been this much of a problem up until the past decade or two.

>Housing has never been this much of a problem up until the past decade or two.

This is certainly untrue. Possibly housing has never been this particular problem in this particular place. Housing affordability plagued Germany of the early 20th century. Low quality housing of the type not possible to obtain in the US was widespread in US cities before the last 50-70 years.

>Population is the problem.

Misanthropic nonsense. Show us your 'math', if you're so sure of yourself. And better yet, state your underlying assumptions for all to see.

>This is because the 'rich' people countries are having a population explosion despite the native 'rich' people havong a negative birth rate.

Can you list these rich countries with 'population explosion[s]'? Population growth rate in the US is at its lowest since 1960 (start of the readily available data.) Considering the shift of the population toward the elderly in the rich welfare states like the US, we actually have a reckoning coming from too few working age people.

Re: Housing is at the root of many of the rich world’s problems (2020)

#116

Post by stevenwoo »

black_13 wrote: post #29

The economist can always find time say something negative about Pickety

It's odd that they picked a single statement to critique but neglected the larger message (in my reading of Capital and Ideology which he changed his mind a bit from his earlier work as I understand it) about capital accumulation, which has little to do with income for the very wealthy or even location. It is a pattern which continued in every country even after changes from feudalism to capitalism or communism to capitalism or feudalism to state communism no matter how much democracy was involved - the constitution or founding documents put too much power in those with lots of capital and this cannot be changed without changing the constitutions and financial transparency of cross national dealings.

Re: Housing is at the root of many of the rich world’s problems (2020)

#117

Post by bushbaba »

anovikov wrote: post #83
pochekailov wrote: post #14

Nothing will change while the homeowners have more political power than the renters. Even in the cities where the renter population is bigger than the homeowners, such as in Seattle, half of the votes come from people of > 65 years old (all of whom are homeowners, likely more than one home). Young people simply won't vote at all. There is very little incentives for the young people to vote. Even if you cancel all the…

I think you are more than exaggerating. Thinking of someone who's 65 now and owns several homes, these people are utter fools. How much would money put into houses 40 years ago when they bought, and put into stocks at the same time, would make? You don't even need to google up to know the answer. SP500 would make 96x with dividends reinvested and 37x without. Median home price is not even 10x, and the median home has…

You forget that 1) you only have 20% down for a home. 2) homes can be sold without tax implications.

If housing had the same tax treatment as stocks it’d be a horrible investment.

Re: Housing is at the root of many of the rich world’s problems (2020)

#118

Post by draw_down »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #104
refurb wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think young generation needs to engage in the politics with the uncompromised goal to crush the housing price At least where I live, the “bank of mom and dad” either use their home equity to help their kids buy OR the kids are banking on getting the family home when they die. We’re in too deep now. We basically painted ourselves into a corner where the economic engine is so intertwined with rising home prices that…

If you think we're in too deep, you should check out China.

No post body was provided.

Re: Housing is at the root of many of the rich world’s problems (2020)

#119

Post by TuringNYC »

29athrowaway wrote: post #99
pochekailov wrote: post #14

Nothing will change while the homeowners have more political power than the renters. Even in the cities where the renter population is bigger than the homeowners, such as in Seattle, half of the votes come from people of > 65 years old (all of whom are homeowners, likely more than one home). Young people simply won't vote at all. There is very little incentives for the young people to vote. Even if you cancel all the…

Then each renter will become a homeowner, they will feel very comfortable, have 4 kids, and now you will need 4x more units. Then their kids will have 4 kids, and you'll need 16x more units with respect to where you started. Few generations after you have a much deeper problem that the one you started with. Now you live in a country with a population of over 1 billion, where protests cannot be controlled anymore and…

>> Then each renter will become a homeowner, they will feel very comfortable

Not sure about the entire comment, but the above line is the clutch item. Once a renter turns into a homeowners, things change drastically. In the US you are typically highly leveraged once you buy a home. That means a 20% drop in home value wipes out all your equity. So once you buy into the system (esp with leverage) you have a huge incentive now to perpetuate the system that once enslaved you. Now you become the prison guard. Sadly, even the prison guard is in the prison of debt for many years, thus has to maintain the jail.

Re: Housing is at the root of many of the rich world’s problems (2020)

#120

Post by Applejinx »

ip26 wrote: post #71
throwaway22032 wrote: post #27

Our economic system is set up such that you either hit a bar at which you accumulate capital forever unless you make a mistake, or you're loss-making forever. Once you hit that bar, your job becomes buying up housing like it's a Monopoly board. As an individual you can either choose to win or lose this game. We're not going to change it, at least not within our lifetimes.

Agreed; I figure the necessary missing piece is government dampening this effect. Some way or another, to balance it out you need to “leak” capital faster & faster as you accumulate it. The size of the leak would be tuned to allow you to continue to grow your wealth if you are still rapidly creating new wealth, but if you just sit on a kings ransom in safe investments, it would leak away & attenuate. Trouble being, t…

From what experimentation I've done it doesn't take much of a leak. I'm agreed too except that in the absence of us or somebody fixing it, the whole thing is going to blow up.

Dark ages are a thing. It's not at all guaranteed that you can preside over an injustice engine of this nature and have it persist at all: externalities will bite you.

I guess the follow-up is, 'given that this is going to blow up, how hard of a landing do you want? Do you want an apocalyptically ruined planet, or heads on pikes, or massive asset seizure, or all of the above in various combinations?'

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