Housing should not be a speculative asset in the first place. Houses are for living in- and before you tell me about how they are a valuable store of wealth, you shouldn’t need to do that either to get by. Your net worth and therefore your class standing should not be a factor in whether you can have access to the basics of life. That’s why it’s called capital-ism, because everything revolves around capital. It’s designed to self-perpetuate by exploiting the inequalities it produces. There are other ways of life, and they aren’t as pie-in-the-sky as they would seem. You just have to get out of the capitalist frame of mind to understand how they work and what exactly is holding us back from achieving them.
I agree with everything you wrote up to the point of claiming all the US housing problems are inherent to capitalism. Japan is a capitalist country, but Japanese houses are for living in, and Japanese houses depreciate like cars - which is way more sustainable than the US train wreck. There are other ways of housing even without leaving capitalism.
Japanese houses depreciate like cars - which is way more sustainable than the US train wreck
This is almost entirely not due to policies but almost entirely to Japanese economy being stagnant for the last 20 years whereas the US economy has grown almost every year for the last 20 years.
I also live in a stagnant country, and it’s not great that you have to sell the house you bought 10 years ago with the same price or cheaper to get it off your hands. And also it’s not great that the general wealth in the society is not growing.
When people from where I live visit USA, even when they go to not so rich states, they notice that everything and everyone is more wealthy.
Housing should not be a speculative asset in the first place. Houses are for living in- and before you tell me about how they are a valuable store of wealth, you shouldn’t need to do that either to get by. Your net worth and therefore your class standing should not be a factor in whether you can have access to the basics of life. That’s why it’s called capital-ism, because everything revolves around capital. It’s designed to self-perpetuate by exploiting the inequalities it produces. There are other ways of life, and they aren’t as pie-in-the-sky as they would seem. You just have to get out of the capitalist frame of mind to understand how they work and what exactly is holding us back from achieving them.
I agree with everything you wrote up to the point of claiming all the US housing problems are inherent to capitalism. Japan is a capitalist country, but Japanese houses are for living in, and Japanese houses depreciate like cars - which is way more sustainable than the US train wreck. There are other ways of housing even without leaving capitalism.
This is almost entirely not due to policies but almost entirely to Japanese economy being stagnant for the last 20 years whereas the US economy has grown almost every year for the last 20 years.
I also live in a stagnant country, and it’s not great that you have to sell the house you bought 10 years ago with the same price or cheaper to get it off your hands. And also it’s not great that the general wealth in the society is not growing.
When people from where I live visit USA, even when they go to not so rich states, they notice that everything and everyone is more wealthy.