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It wouldn't bother me if the richest had tens of trillions. The issue is no normal people can buy homes now. You need to make, what 300k as a couple to buy a h

It wouldn't bother me if the richest had tens of trillions. The issue is no normal people can buy homes now. You need to make, what 300k as a couple to buy a home in LA. You can't buy a home you can't hedge against rising rent. You can't leave your family a dime. If you can keep housing and food affordable, Zuckerberg can declare himself Czar and most people would be just fine with it.

BurningFrog 2y ago
> 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.
- porridgeraisin 2y ago
  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.
- izzydata 2y ago
  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.
  - renewiltord 2y ago
    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.”
- downut 2y ago
  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.
renewiltord 2y ago
Amusingly, many of the tech rich are very pro building homes. Some of those are liars, like Marc Andreessen, but many of them would rather have the rules prohibiting building removed. It’s normal people who resent new things and oppose more homes being built, and consequently act to make prices higher.
bluecheese452 2y ago
The two issues are directly related. You can’t have extreme wealth and affordable housing.
- thaumasiotes 2y ago
  Why not? Why can you have extreme wealth at the same time that everything other than housing remains affordable?
  - the-grump 2y ago
    Wealth is stored in assets.
    - sir0010010 2y ago
      And you can devalue any asset if you can sufficiently increase its supply. Used cars are also an asset and you don't see billionaires gobling them up (with the exception of rare collectibles).
      - the-grump 2y ago
        No (actual) investor sees used cars as assets. An asset is something that produces income such as a bond, a piece of real estate that you rent out, or a company engaging in the market.
        sir0010010 2y ago
        Used cars can generate income if you lease them out. And there are firms that will do this including dealerships and rental car companies. What you don't see though (unlike real estate) is random general investors (who are not car leasing specialists) buying up large chunks of the used car supply in order to lease them out. And the reason they don't do this is because new cars get manufactured fast enough such that older cars just keep getting devalued making it a relatively low margin business. The suggestion being made by YIMBYs (of course) to continuously allow constructing high density housing such that there will always be lots of brand new units on the market in order to help devalue the older units. I would suspect at that point that general investors would likely leave the apartment leasing business, selling them either to individuals that will choose to live in them, or to firms whose specialty is home leasing - the only type of business likely to be able to profitably lease used housing at low margins at that point.

BurningFrog 2y ago

> 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.

porridgeraisin 2y ago
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.
izzydata 2y ago
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.
- renewiltord 2y ago
  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.”
downut 2y ago
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.

renewiltord 2y ago

Amusingly, many of the tech rich are very pro building homes. Some of those are liars, like Marc Andreessen, but many of them would rather have the rules prohibiting building removed. It’s normal people who resent new things and oppose more homes being built, and consequently act to make prices higher.

bluecheese452 2y ago

The two issues are directly related. You can’t have extreme wealth and affordable housing.

thaumasiotes 2y ago
Why not? Why can you have extreme wealth at the same time that everything other than housing remains affordable?
- the-grump 2y ago
  Wealth is stored in assets.
  - sir0010010 2y ago
    And you can devalue any asset if you can sufficiently increase its supply. Used cars are also an asset and you don't see billionaires gobling them up (with the exception of rare collectibles).
    - the-grump 2y ago
      No (actual) investor sees used cars as assets. An asset is something that produces income such as a bond, a piece of real estate that you rent out, or a company engaging in the market.
      - sir0010010 2y ago
        Used cars can generate income if you lease them out. And there are firms that will do this including dealerships and rental car companies. What you don't see though (unlike real estate) is random general investors (who are not car leasing specialists) buying up large chunks of the used car supply in order to lease them out. And the reason they don't do this is because new cars get manufactured fast enough such that older cars just keep getting devalued making it a relatively low margin business. The suggestion being made by YIMBYs (of course) to continuously allow constructing high density housing such that there will always be lots of brand new units on the market in order to help devalue the older units. I would suspect at that point that general investors would likely leave the apartment leasing business, selling them either to individuals that will choose to live in them, or to firms whose specialty is home leasing - the only type of business likely to be able to profitably lease used housing at low margins at that point.