Comment by sandworm101
8 hours ago
Real estate. The US economy floats on the perpetually-increasing cost of land. Thats where your mortgage money goes, to a series of finacial instruments to allow others to benifit from the eternally rising value of "your" property.
Well, it is much worse elsewhere.
You should look at other countries where pay is much less and real estate is at similar levels of cost: from Europe, Canada, China, Australia and India.
Condos in Mumbai are priced similar to those in the major cities in the US.
https://www.reddit.com/r/mumbai/comments/zxsl8l/mumbai_real_...
And Mumbai is one of the more affordable cities globally.
Much worse the case in Canada & Australia unfortunately
It amuses me what's been true in the rest of the world (Vancouver, Sydney, Aukland and London come to mind but I'm sure it's not just the Anglosphere) for decades arrived in the US a couple of years ago and is suddenly a shocking new thing
Why is that amusing to you?
Maybe this is our "resource curse"? We just happened to get rid of all the other resources first to get to stuck with this remaining?
Part of it is a hidden tax on the young and workers, by making currency less valuable (what young people and workers have, the ability to earn cash) and transferring that wealth to old people and asset owners (to pay for pensions and healthcare).
That is why mortgages are (future) taxpayer subsidized. Without the subsidies from the future, the real estate prices would not be able to rise so much.
There is also economic agglomeration to exacerbate the issue.