Housing is the crux of this problem and is an issue so intractable, I genuinely don't see a solution. The way the housing market across much of the western worl

Housing is the crux of this problem and is an issue so intractable, I genuinely don't see a solution. The way the housing market across much of the western world is the way that now is, is because rich people made it that way, and they have all the influence, power and control now, so nothing us small folk can do will likely change things in any meaningful way. Housing has become a commodity, an investment, and so the rich, with their sloshing, frothing waves of cash, are buying it up at an ever accelerating pace. Not buying it up so they can live in these homes mind you, but buying it up so they can extract rent, extract PROFIT from homes that are meant for people and families to live in. So now, rather than serving as a place for people to live, housing is serving as investment for the rich to get ever richer from. The real problem is that when it comes to housing, the marginal buyer is now some hyper-leveraged corporation with near limitless access to cheap capital, or some billionaire investor, who'll happily bid 50% over asking as they're planning on renting the house out for the maximum amount possible and bundling their "Assets" into a REIT, and so they'll gladly pay over asking as its just a cost of doing business. So now you've got the rich through their companies and trusts buying up entire neighborhoods, out-bidding regular folks for homes, raising rents to increase profits, and turning homes that people could once have lived in, into vacation properties and short-term rentals or worst of all letting them sit empty just so they can sell them when the value goes up. Increasing wages is one absolutely necessary step towards fixing the economy, but real wages would have to rise 100%, 500%, a even f*king 1000% in a lot of places for regular folks to actually be able to afford the kinds of homes that a family could once have afforded on a single middle class income. So literally the only thing that can fix things is to make housing worth a lot less. But that will never happen because that would cause some already fantastically wealthy people to be a little less wealthy, and the rich would rather people die and go homeless than ever be less rich.