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It's got little to do with the ultra-wealthy, who have their wealth in equity. The problem is the upper middle class who have their wealth in land. They are 30%

It's got little to do with the ultra-wealthy, who have their wealth in equity. The problem is the upper middle class who have their wealth in land. They are 30% of the population and command election outcomes against anyone who tries to change the status quo. To them, the housing crisis is a housing bonanza and they plan on keeping it that way. I also take issue with buzzword "neoliberal", as if leftists would be any better with their rent control, NIMBY tendencies, and ideological hostility to supply-side policy (see Dean Preston in US, Zohran Mamdani in US, Adrian Ramsay in UK, Chandler-Mather in AU). In my estimation, they would be worse than any "abundance neoliberal", who at least have Austin, Texas as a successful case study they can point to, and who have ideas that make logical sense. The problem is not their policy ideas but the political reality they exist in where they're constrained in what they can do by a politically active plurality (landowners) that wish to persist the status quo.

bjornsing 1y ago
There’s some truth to that, but I think it’s even broader. Here in Sweden there’s a widely understood term (”bostadskarriär”) that roughly translates to ”housing career” and refers to building wealth through home ownership. It’s often more important to your financial success than your actual career, even for the working class. All this is due to regulations of course. In Sweden its a combination of tax rules, laws around borrowing, zoning regulations and construction standards that has kept the gravy train rolling. It’s a bit hard to see how it could continue though. Feels like it could come crashing down at any point. On the other hand: I’ve had that feeling for 15 years. EDIT: Monetary policy is the big one actually.
xkcd1963 1y ago
I'm sorry but rent control is what we need lest you want more occupied housing.
Workaccount2 1y ago
Thank you So tired of people talking about the housing crisis as if megacorp is the one buying all the houses to drive up prices. Yes, commenter, they do buy homes, but by far the single biggest player is regular people. They both are getting rich of the system and voting to keep it in place. Even worse though...houses are still being sold at these insane prices. There are still fresh dual income high earning non immigrant non billionairs childs non megacorp investor regular people still coming up with the money. I don't know whats worse, never being able to afford a house or seeing people you know (or thought you knew) somehow getting into one. And then voting down any build out initiative that would weaken their investment.
- wordofx 1y ago
  NZ did too little too late. There’s a bunch of Chinese who bought a lot… a LOT of houses in NZ. It’s one way of transferring money out of China is to use it for business. And they don’t need to leave China to do it. That was stopped but too late when they own 100s of houses.
jmyeet 1y ago
First, the very idea of the "middle class" is capitalist propaganda. It's meant to divide the working class. It serves no other purpose. It serves to be aspirational for people to participate in a system they won't benefit from while allowing the slightly well off to blame the less well off for their own circumstances. Second, the voters are absolutely complicit in this sytem because they think they're benefitting. But they're not. The ultra-wealthy are reaping the rewards. Example: you buy a house for $200k. Because of house horading and constrained supply and policy changes you vote for that house is worth $800k after 15 years. You think you've made money so you support everything that's going on. But you haven't. Why? Because you still own exactly one housing unit's worth of wealth. You have to live somewhere and every house costs $800k now. So then you think "maybe I need to own multiple properties" but you're barely better off. As for the rest, you're confusing a whole bunch of different things. "Abundance neoliberalism" (as per Ezra Klein) is just repackaged Reagen-era trickle down economics, designed to make status quo Democrats somehow feel good about being indistinguishable from Republicans. Not sure why you're associating NIMBYism with leftism. They're diametrically opposed. For one, trust leftists would abolish private property (as distinct from personal property). You get to own your house. You just don't get to hoard land. I do partially agree about Texas though. Texas's property tax system, at least up until recent years, is significantly better than California's (as one example). In Texas, seniors can defer property tax increases until their death (when they'll be collected from the estate) giving people a choice to downsize or not. In California, you can inherit preferential property tax rates because the voters voted in Prop 13 that allows Disney to pay property tax rates set in the 1960s on the backs of seniors not getting kicked out of their homes. I'm not sure what your objection to the "neoliberal" is. If you support the hoarding of private property and are pro-capitalist then, by definition, you're a neoliberal. That's definitional, not a perjorative.
- energy123 1y ago
  > Example: you buy a house for $200k. Because of house horading and constrained supply and policy changes you vote for that house is worth $800k after 15 years. You think you've made money so you support everything that's going on. But you haven't. Why? Because you still own exactly one housing unit's worth of wealth. You have to live somewhere and every house costs $800k now. I agree with you on this. > Not sure why you're associating NIMBYism with leftism. They're diametrically opposed. That may be your interpretation of the underlying philosophy, but in practice, leftist politicians turn out to be more NIMBY than center-left liberal politicians. I'm not so interested in No True Scotsman type appeals on this point. > "Abundance neoliberalism" (as per Ezra Klein) is just repackaged Reagen-era trickle down economics It's laughable to equate "social democracy and targeted industrial policy but with less red tape when you try to build something" with Reaganite policies. > I'm not sure what your objection to the "neoliberal" is. The deployment of the word "neoliberal" is almost always a slur and a misunderstanding. People use it as a catch-all category to mean "status quo thing I don't like", wrongly bundling up heterogeneous things that are vastly different. It's the left's version of "uniparty". A thought-terminating rhetorical device, not to be used in any serious analysis.
8note 1y ago
> and ideological hostility to supply-side policy I'd think public, union, and coop built housing are all still popular with leftists, and those are all supply side policies.

bjornsing 1y ago

There’s some truth to that, but I think it’s even broader. Here in Sweden there’s a widely understood term (”bostadskarriär”) that roughly translates to ”housing career” and refers to building wealth through home ownership. It’s often more important to your financial success than your actual career, even for the working class. All this is due to regulations of course. In Sweden its a combination of tax rules, laws around borrowing, zoning regulations and construction standards that has kept the gravy train rolling. It’s a bit hard to see how it could continue though. Feels like it could come crashing down at any point. On the other hand: I’ve had that feeling for 15 years. EDIT: Monetary policy is the big one actually.

xkcd1963 1y ago

I'm sorry but rent control is what we need lest you want more occupied housing.

Workaccount2 1y ago

Thank you So tired of people talking about the housing crisis as if megacorp is the one buying all the houses to drive up prices. Yes, commenter, they do buy homes, but by far the single biggest player is regular people. They both are getting rich of the system and voting to keep it in place. Even worse though...houses are still being sold at these insane prices. There are still fresh dual income high earning non immigrant non billionairs childs non megacorp investor regular people still coming up with the money. I don't know whats worse, never being able to afford a house or seeing people you know (or thought you knew) somehow getting into one. And then voting down any build out initiative that would weaken their investment.

wordofx 1y ago
NZ did too little too late. There’s a bunch of Chinese who bought a lot… a LOT of houses in NZ. It’s one way of transferring money out of China is to use it for business. And they don’t need to leave China to do it. That was stopped but too late when they own 100s of houses.

jmyeet 1y ago

First, the very idea of the "middle class" is capitalist propaganda. It's meant to divide the working class. It serves no other purpose. It serves to be aspirational for people to participate in a system they won't benefit from while allowing the slightly well off to blame the less well off for their own circumstances. Second, the voters are absolutely complicit in this sytem because they think they're benefitting. But they're not. The ultra-wealthy are reaping the rewards. Example: you buy a house for $200k. Because of house horading and constrained supply and policy changes you vote for that house is worth $800k after 15 years. You think you've made money so you support everything that's going on. But you haven't. Why? Because you still own exactly one housing unit's worth of wealth. You have to live somewhere and every house costs $800k now. So then you think "maybe I need to own multiple properties" but you're barely better off. As for the rest, you're confusing a whole bunch of different things. "Abundance neoliberalism" (as per Ezra Klein) is just repackaged Reagen-era trickle down economics, designed to make status quo Democrats somehow feel good about being indistinguishable from Republicans. Not sure why you're associating NIMBYism with leftism. They're diametrically opposed. For one, trust leftists would abolish private property (as distinct from personal property). You get to own your house. You just don't get to hoard land. I do partially agree about Texas though. Texas's property tax system, at least up until recent years, is significantly better than California's (as one example). In Texas, seniors can defer property tax increases until their death (when they'll be collected from the estate) giving people a choice to downsize or not. In California, you can inherit preferential property tax rates because the voters voted in Prop 13 that allows Disney to pay property tax rates set in the 1960s on the backs of seniors not getting kicked out of their homes. I'm not sure what your objection to the "neoliberal" is. If you support the hoarding of private property and are pro-capitalist then, by definition, you're a neoliberal. That's definitional, not a perjorative.

energy123 1y ago
> Example: you buy a house for $200k. Because of house horading and constrained supply and policy changes you vote for that house is worth $800k after 15 years. You think you've made money so you support everything that's going on. But you haven't. Why? Because you still own exactly one housing unit's worth of wealth. You have to live somewhere and every house costs $800k now. I agree with you on this. > Not sure why you're associating NIMBYism with leftism. They're diametrically opposed. That may be your interpretation of the underlying philosophy, but in practice, leftist politicians turn out to be more NIMBY than center-left liberal politicians. I'm not so interested in No True Scotsman type appeals on this point. > "Abundance neoliberalism" (as per Ezra Klein) is just repackaged Reagen-era trickle down economics It's laughable to equate "social democracy and targeted industrial policy but with less red tape when you try to build something" with Reaganite policies. > I'm not sure what your objection to the "neoliberal" is. The deployment of the word "neoliberal" is almost always a slur and a misunderstanding. People use it as a catch-all category to mean "status quo thing I don't like", wrongly bundling up heterogeneous things that are vastly different. It's the left's version of "uniparty". A thought-terminating rhetorical device, not to be used in any serious analysis.

8note 1y ago

> and ideological hostility to supply-side policy I'd think public, union, and coop built housing are all still popular with leftists, and those are all supply side policies.