Comment by jmyeet
5 days ago
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I'm going to call out housing as a huge factor here for four reasons:
1. Every third space represents an ever-larger opportunity cost of being turned into housing. If you can close a pub and turn it into million dollar condos, that commercial rent is going up;
2. More expensive rents are an input into everything done at a business or third space;
3. This decreases spending ability in real terms. 20 years ago, you could get a pint in London for 2-3 pounds. Now it's 6-7. Have wages doubled? No. And pubs were (and are) part of the UK social fabric; and
4. People need to work more to pay for their ever-larger mortgages and other debt. This gives people less time.
Expensive housing is literally destroying society.
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Immigration doesn't cause expensive housing. Making it hard and/or expensive to build more causes expensive housing.
Immigration clearly does too. Land in desirable areas is limited, especially for single family homes, which is the kind of housing people usually want and aspire to. Building more is an option sometimes, but it takes time and does not address the root issue of available land, saturation of roads and public transit, etc.