Inflation makes rich richer

But when we use specific price inflation, such as house price inflation,

16% of people who earned 3.1$ in 1980 had better income to house price ratio than 20% of people earning less than 15$ today. While 15$ is 5 times higher than 3$, house costs at least 7 to 8 times more than it did in 1980.

A simpler explanation.

Housing in America has become increasingly unaffordable due to a combination of severe supply shortages, high mortgage rates, and surging home prices that have far outpaced wage growth

. The U.S. is facing a deficit of 3.8 million to 4.7 million homes, largely due to a decade of underbuilding following the 2008 financial crisis. 

Here are the primary factors making houses unaffordable today:

1. Severe Housing Shortage and Supply Constraints 

1. Decade-Long Underbuilding: Construction has not kept up with demand since the Great Recession, resulting in a shortage of 3.8 to 4.7 million homes.
2. "Lock-In" Effect: Homeowners with 2%–3% mortgage rates from the pandemic era are reluctant to sell and take on new, higher-rate mortgages, which has severely restricted inventory.
3. Zoning Restrictions: Local regulations and "NIMBYism" (Not In My Backyard) limit the construction of denser, multi-family housing, which could otherwise alleviate the shortage. 

2. Rising Costs and Interest Rates

1. Mortgage Rates: Rates have more than doubled since 2022 to fight inflation, significantly increasing monthly payments. A typical new mortgage payment has tripled since 2012.
2. High Building Costs: Inflationary pressures have increased construction costs by 51% since early 2020, making it difficult to build affordable starter homes.
3. Land and Insurance Costs: The price of land has become prohibitively expensive, and property insurance costs have risen by double digits nationwide. 

3. Demographic Demand

1. Millennials Entering Prime Buying Age: A massive cohort of millennials (roughly 72 million people) has entered their prime home-buying years simultaneously, driving intense competition.
2. Pandemic-Driven Demand: Remote work trends fueled demand for more space, causing a rapid surge in home prices (over 40% increase between 2020 and 2022). 

4. Increased Investor Activity 

1. Institutional Buyers: Corporate investors purchased 18%–29.8% of homes in recent years, reducing the inventory available for individual buyers and driving up prices.
2. Institutional Forecasts: Projections suggest that corporations and private equity firms could own up to 40% of all single-family rentals by 2030. 

5. Stagnant Wage Growth 

1. Income vs. Price Gap: Incomes for low- and moderate-income workers have largely stagnated while housing costs have surged.
2. High Income Requirement: A household would need to earn roughly $113,000 annually to afford a median-priced home of $435,000, which is far above the median household income of around $80,000.
3. Time to Save: It now takes the average worker 21 years to save for a 10% down payment on a median-priced home, compared to just 3 years in 1970. 

These factors have resulted in the median age of a first-time homebuyer rising to an all-time high of 35–40 years old. 

Such is society.

A good high casualty war would perhaps bring down the high demand age range to a more manageable level.

Thereby reducing demand and lowering current over inflated prices and antisocial profiteering.

Over here we have what is known as social housing...It's where they put all the rubber dinghy folk. and social benefit claimers...LOL.

All funded by the good ole cash strapped hard working British tax payer.

Fixing America's housing problem requires a multi-pronged approach focused on significantly increasing housing supply through relaxed zoning and faster building, coupled with demand-side solutions like subsidies for buyers and renters, plus targeted support for the unhoused, as incomes struggle to keep pace with escalating housing costs. Key strategies include zoning reform, incentivizing developers for affordable units, supporting first-time buyers with financial tools, preserving existing affordable housing, and implementing "Housing First" for homelessness. 

Hey Debs, what about a caring society that sees homelessness and profiteering for personal gain, as social ills.

LOL.

That is the difference between Socialism and Capitalism. America is a for profit capitalist country.

At the end of the day, hierarchical societies are an inevitable consequence of the human beast.

And history tells us that the enforcement of so called socialism was often more brutal than a capitalist system of natural inequality.

Don't subsidies indirectly cause inflation when they print a ton of money and then just stuff it in people's pockets for doing nothing?

Subsidies don't work by printing new money, tax money plus price cap laws/policies achieve it.

It's still a reward for producing nothing, though, even if you didn't just print the money.

The subsidy then becomes a patch to fix the production shortages caused by the price cap, a self-licking ice cream cone where the government middlemen take a massive cut while also rewarding producers for...not producing...

and what reward does the offspring of wealthy parents earn?

The money "earned" by the subsidies, of course.

Oh so you're anti inheritance also?

Oh so you're anti inheritance also?

I'd be far more upset with a subsidy taken from my pocket or a money printer and rewarding someone else for doing NOTHING.

If a person wants to spoil their own kid, at least I don't have to pay for it, nor will it cause massive inflation. In fact, that spoiled kid is likely to reward producers when he blows it all like most trust fund babies. That's far and away more beneficial than anything the government does to reward producers.

and what if they got that money from chain inheritance via either literal slave labour or severe exploitation previously by an ancestor?

That's simple. Enforce laws against slavery and illegal labor. Problem solved. Pretty sure that was done over 100 years ago. People who had money and capital invested with slaves back then went bankrupt pretty fast, both the owners and the banks underwriting them lost near everything.

Lol. Do you know what conditions workers worked in during ww1 which is the era yoy refer to?

The cost of living erases wealth fast over time, and much faster if you wanna live wealthy. People in a dusty history book lost their money long ago. History isn’t a moral balance sheet where ancient suffering guarantees the existence of a modern Disney villain heir. In fact, as recently as this year, people are filing bankruptcy because ICE won't let them staff their sweat houses anymore in "sanctuary cities." Wealth tied to exploitation isn’t durable at all. It doesn’t need generations or even decades to evaporate. The moment the exploitative input is removed, the “wealth” often collapses immediately.

Oh but it is a fairytale, very much so.

If justice worked how it should... Let just say blood money woukd be taken.

What you concede is the non religious right wing are evil economically. Greedy pigs in general.

This type of right wing have no deep morals, no meaning in life etc. they cry ohh nooo the state took my hard earned money that daddy paid me!!! Waaa waaa 😭😭😭😭😭 i worked 400x as hard as that janitor thats why I earn more than 400x as much

No reason not to take the janitor's money as well with the self-licking icecream machine of subsidies and price caps. That's reality vs morality.

You aren't actually replying to what I wrote, you're ridiculing a side-analogy.

The self-licking ice cream machine doesn't take sides or care. It just consumes,

have you ever been genuinely broke or close to it, since you were an adult?

His life can be summed up in one word….”puck”.