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What broke Sweden? Real estate bust exposes big divide

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Re: What broke Sweden? Real estate bust exposes big divide

#131

Post by robocat »

watrami wrote: post #103

It seems like it's the same story everywhere I look. Housing is the main driver of inequality and there is little change happening. We have the same problem here in Germany. I am currently living in Munich to finish my CS Master's at TUM and build a startup, and it is absolutely impossible to find anything remotely affordable. I am supported by two startup scholarships and make enough to get by, but no landlord even…

> We are already looking to move to other places

Moving doesn’t necessarily help much. That is because usually house prices are directly driven by how much people can loan on a mortgage, which is directly driven by earnings. Cheaper housing often means lower earnings potential. Conversely, saving in a high earning country can mean you have a deposit for a house in a cheaper country.

Edit: Counterintuitively, high interest rates can help middle class people that don’t have homes. House prices drop, so you need less deposit. And usually you can work harder for a few years to nail principal (I know people that bought in the 80s - one friend had an interest rate of 28%).

Some remote workers can earn in a wealthy country and live in a cheaper country.

Meanwhile, watch out for the most unaffordable cities: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/least-affordable-cities-to-... https://www.theguardian.com/cities/gallery/2017/jan/23/10-mo... Canada, New Zealand, and Australia have some batshit insane unaffordable real estate (stop whinging about SF - 9th place on Guardian list!). As a New Zealander I would struggle to recommend moving here without already having a nest egg - although if you are willing to move to rural areas you might find something cheap (but usually not find a job too - house prices are driven by median incomes in most places, sometimes driven by investors, wealthy immigration, or movement of people such as retirees) https://www.trademe.co.nz/a/property/residential/sale

Re: What broke Sweden? Real estate bust exposes big divide

#132

Post by tptacek »

im3w1l wrote: post #122
xist wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They can totally do it and there is nothing people can do about it, so they don't even have to hide that much. All the "theories" I've seen conveniently forget about China & India - the world's largest population by a long shot. How does these conspiracy of WEF impact them? Until I see something that doesn't have a "me" complex as the main reasoning I'm going to dismiss it.

It's quite simple. There are multiple conspiracies and they ally with each other but those bonds are fluid and shifting. To give two examples relating to China and India here was a thread very recently that mentioned how the Mexican cartels are making inroads in the US, succesfully corrupting some police union and that cartel was also in cahoots with the chinese as thats where they were sourcing their fentanyl from.…

Sounds pretty simple. Every abusive group in the world is coordinating with every other group.

Re: What broke Sweden? Real estate bust exposes big divide

#133

Post by xist »

im3w1l wrote: post #122
xist wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They can totally do it and there is nothing people can do about it, so they don't even have to hide that much. All the "theories" I've seen conveniently forget about China & India - the world's largest population by a long shot. How does these conspiracy of WEF impact them? Until I see something that doesn't have a "me" complex as the main reasoning I'm going to dismiss it.

It's quite simple. There are multiple conspiracies and they ally with each other but those bonds are fluid and shifting. To give two examples relating to China and India here was a thread very recently that mentioned how the Mexican cartels are making inroads in the US, succesfully corrupting some police union and that cartel was also in cahoots with the chinese as thats where they were sourcing their fentanyl from.…

In those 2 examples, they have nothing to do with WEF's goal as far as I can tell.

In fact, Indian Brahmin would seem to contradict with WEF's supposed goals.

wrt Mexican cartels, I'm not sure how that fits into the original narrative of WEF - do Mexican cartels work for the WEF? I've never heard this theory before.

I don't see why any of the groups mentioned would submit themselves to endgoals WEF is supposedly aiming for. I'm skeptical why they would.

Re: What broke Sweden? Real estate bust exposes big divide

#134

Post by airstrike »

amelius wrote: post #102
rhaway84773 wrote: post #45

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 rich get richer (...) and the poor get poorer It's always the same story. Can't we just make the economy more fair by saying that the wealth gap must at least be smaller than some value or else the rich will pay (taxes) to make it so?

No, because the rich will then flee to a more rich-friendly economy and you will be left with just the poor

Re: What broke Sweden? Real estate bust exposes big divide

#135

Post by amelius »

satvikpendem wrote: post #113
amelius wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it could be simple, but the most important reason that it is not simple is because the rich control the system.

It really isn't that simple, because again, no one really can say how it is so simple, merely that it is, somehow. Economists also talk about this point often, and they also can't agree, generally speaking, on how to, or even if to, reduce the inequality gap. The best solutions I've seen are land value taxes, inheritance and estate taxes, and taxes on loans backed by stock; and among the worst are unrealized capital…

Economists are part of the problem. When the rich are getting richer and the poor work their asses off and still get poorer, then just about any solution is better and the more decent thing to do than keeping disagreeing about what is the best solution.

Re: What broke Sweden? Real estate bust exposes big divide

#136

Post by xist »

LegitShady wrote: post #96
sumedh wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The government doesn't want to do anything Looks like the voters dont want to do anything either, if they keep re-electing the same party/politicians.

All 3 of the major parties are pro huge immigration. Any discussion to the contrary is labelled racist regardless of a housing and healthcare crisis. Businesses underpay and when they can't find people willing to impoverish themselves to work for them, they apply to the government to bring in "temporary foreign workers" - for things like fast food restaurant workers not essential business, keeping the wages down. Tem…

> Businesses underpay and when they can't find people willing to impoverish themselves to work for them, they apply to the government to bring in "temporary foreign workers" - for things like fast food restaurant workers not essential business, keeping the wages down.

> Temporary foreign workers and international students in canada are allowed to buy housing, so aside from renting the rich ones who make it here actually buy up properties for their family offshore.

If they're being paid so little, I don't see how they could possibly afford to buy any properties. I've only known a few, but they all send the majority of the money back home instead.

This feels very fear mongering on TFWs and not grounded in facts.

Re: What broke Sweden? Real estate bust exposes big divide

#137

Post by pcthrowaway »

throwawaybbq1 wrote: post #126
pcthrowaway wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how much of this issue is due to our (enormous) amount of immigration, given that fertility rate has been below the replacement rate since 1970 or so

I would have gladly had more kids if I could have afforded a place to put them. Do you know what a 3 bed condo costs in Toronto? It is financial suicide.

Less than in Vancouver. I have no kids and will never have any. I couldn't afford them if I wanted them

Re: What broke Sweden? Real estate bust exposes big divide

#138

Post by drunkenmagician »

robocat wrote: post #131
watrami wrote: post #103

It seems like it's the same story everywhere I look. Housing is the main driver of inequality and there is little change happening. We have the same problem here in Germany. I am currently living in Munich to finish my CS Master's at TUM and build a startup, and it is absolutely impossible to find anything remotely affordable. I am supported by two startup scholarships and make enough to get by, but no landlord even…

> We are already looking to move to other places Moving doesn’t necessarily help much. That is because usually house prices are directly driven by how much people can loan on a mortgage, which is directly driven by earnings. Cheaper housing often means lower earnings potential. Conversely, saving in a high earning country can mean you have a deposit for a house in a cheaper country. Edit: Counterintuitively, high int…

Wow… Singapore is not even on the list. As a Kiwi expat I can tell you Singapore is at Hong Kong levels of unaffordableness for non locals. The Singapore government housing scheme skews theses statistics significantly. If you are a local here, great. Everyone else is paying top dollar (2 bedroom condo units renting for 50% of the median household monthly salary)

Re: What broke Sweden? Real estate bust exposes big divide

#139

Post by jamesgill »

I don't think this is a housing/real estate story as much as it is a story of immigration impacts. Rinkeby has about 20k residents--and ~90% of them are immigrants (1st or second generation). Nearly all of those arrived in utter poverty, and arrived in a relatively short period of time.

Understandably, large amounts of immigration is coupled with extreme poverty and escalation of crime, rioting, etc. But there are additional implications of terrorist cell links, and more.

It's a complex story.

Re: What broke Sweden? Real estate bust exposes big divide

#140

Post by ZephyrBlu »

watrami wrote: post #103

It seems like it's the same story everywhere I look. Housing is the main driver of inequality and there is little change happening. We have the same problem here in Germany. I am currently living in Munich to finish my CS Master's at TUM and build a startup, and it is absolutely impossible to find anything remotely affordable. I am supported by two startup scholarships and make enough to get by, but no landlord even…

Your GF gets rejected on a financial basis while making 75k euros? How expensive are the places she's trying to rent?

> We are already looking to move to other places and created a university-wide google sheet where we compare different countries and cities around the world for those kinds of categories

It seems like if you want to live anywhere that's desirable you have to pay an arm and a leg for rent, no matter what country you're in.

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