Most of the time, real wealth is generated when something new is created that did not exist before.
The little by little approach also works but takes discipline and commitment to the future that’s hard to keep when you are poor and don’t know where the next piece of bread is coming from. When I first started making (by my then measure) good money, pretty much all of them were flushed down the drain one way or the other. It took me years to snap out of that.
The examples are pretty weak, but substitute index funds and REITs and you are in a better place. Does it fluctuate? Sure does. Does it also accumulate? Yup it does that too and that’s the key.
The home ownership rate in the US is currently on par with where it was in 1995-1996, higher than it was throughout nearly all of the 1980s, and higher than it was throughout all of the 1950s, 1960s and almost all of the 1970s.
If you chop off the particularly artificial five to six years of the housing bubble, the US is presently only about 1 to 1.5 points off from all-time highs on home ownership.
Now, having pointed this fact out, the obvious next response is to claim that today's home ownership is somehow a lesser form. Houses are quite larger today than they were in the 1950s-1970s however, and superior in most every possible way. And home owners have been building equity pretty consistently since the great recession, with US household balance sheets in good condition overall, including with debt service costs at historically low levels (which includes mortgage payments).
Realistically the primary people suffering versus the past re home ownership, are in select few locations like San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York City, Seattle and similar.
A much more interesting metric would be the number of shared households, that appears to be rising (although I couldn't easily google up a concrete graph).
>Realistically the primary people suffering versus the past re home ownership, are in select few locations like San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York City, Seattle and similar.
Well, that's where the jobs are. Sure you can afford a home in Salty Creek with a median Seattle salary, but that's not what most people would want to do. These days, unless you are in STEM (big cities) or trades (rural areas), you are pretty outpriced.
This is why free transactions in a market economy make everyone wealthier.
PS: Please spare me a lecture about externalities. Formally, an externality exists when Bob's preferences are decreasing in Alice's consumption. Since economics does not place any restrictions on preferences other than being complete, non-satiated, and convex, they are a possibility. But, a society in which everyone is able to veto anyone's consumption on the basis of some externality is a nightmare (e.g., can't allow other people to eat meat, can't allow other people to have children, can't allow other people to enjoy the sunshine etc).
I'm not against your point of wealth creation, but externalities are real and do need to factor in. Individual veto isn't in play, but some sort of societally mandated rules-of-the-game are.
There is no "pure" water or "pure" air. The "right" amount depends on costs and benefits ... None of that can be looked up anywhere and people end up bargaining over them indirectly.
Particularly, they discovered an underserved market niche and found a way to satisfy people's desires in a cost efficient way.
They originally saved money by using a cardboard tray not a box, that had a paper sleeve over it to keep the pizza sanitary. They could get two pies in there for what it cost the bigger chains to deliver one.
The fact that one person doesn't see value in a good or have a willingness to pay the asking price doesn't mean nothing is created. There exceptions however, but by and large people are free to pay whatever price for whatever good. Canned fresh air, little caesar's, art etc.