Wrong.
Housing is unaffordable because demand outstrips supply.
Economic illiterates who blame “greed” making public policy tend to make it even worse.
Housing is unaffordable because demand outstrips supply.
Economic illiterates who blame “greed” making public policy tend to make it even worse.
The real problem we have is exactly what you labeled “economic illiteracy”. This is a serious problem and issue with education systems worldwide.
In the future I hope one day humanity realizes that it’s equivalent in the past to failing to teach reading and writing or denying evolution.
A large portion of the supply is being held by investors like landlords which restricts the supply. Removing them from the equation would increase supply and decrease prices.
The free market used to work better before it got handcuffed by zoning laws everywhere. If you prohibit the free market from working, don't then mock the free market because it's not working.
> A large portion of the supply is being held by investors like landlords which restricts the supply. Removing them from the equation would increase supply and decrease prices.
True - if you mean landlords who hold but don't allow occupancy.
> A large portion of the supply is being held by investors like landlords which restricts the supply.
Because they expect the value tomorrow will be higher than the value today, because they expect demand to increase over time while the government continues to inhibit new construction. Stop inhibiting new construction and they'll want to sell now before the price comes down. (Which will make the price come down sooner.)
The incentive to not rent existing units is also a predictable consequence of things like rent control and laws that make it hard to evict non-paying tenants. Don't increase the risk of providing a thing and expect that to lower the price.
As a landlord I’d be interested to understand your proposed mechanism to “remove” me.
Could you also elaborate what happens to my capital and what I should be doing instead with the excess capital my productivity generates over my chosen needs and wants?
This attitude is so incredibly economical illiterate that it’s shocking we have HN commentators that don’t understand.
Who I am selling to? at what price? Do you support state confiscation of private capital?
Are factories that produce cereal next?
It’s an embarrassment to western education that educated people have such poor understanding of basic economics.