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Comment by BurningFrog | Hacker News Reader

> You need to make, what 300k as a couple to buy a home in LA.

This is almost entirely about California not allowing enough housing construction. Which is decided by the mean California voter, not the billionaire class.

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I'd wager it is more decided by people that own a lot of real-estate or at least by people that already own homes. How often is there a democratic vote to zone populated areas that would allow building more homes? Rather than lobbying of local governments by real-estate owners to prevent it from going to a vote.

In most parts of the nation, homeowners outnumber renters. In LA it’s closer but I think it’s like 50-50 and renters vote less. The loss is the votes of “people who would live there”. So any narrow constituency voting will fail since one of the strongest principles of Americans is “I’ve got mine; fuck the other guy” stated generously as “This place is full! Let’s not ruin the community.”

This leaves out the fact that billionaires are acquiring media. All kinds, cf Sinclair vs. eg The Washington Post or Twitter. If we assume those billionaires are somewhat rational, then IMHO the simplest conclusion is that those billionaires think there is material value in influencing the mean voter's opinion.

Not really. Although it seems like building more will help, the primary reason is that all the extra money created since covid reserve requirements going to 0% has been parked in safe assets real estate, instead of devaluing the reserve currency. It is still inflation, just manifested elsewhere.

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