I don’t think people realize how damaging having so much of our economy tied up in housing is causing:
It sucks up consumer demand. Can’t buy goods if all your money goes to rent or a mortgage
It eats startup capital. Can’t invest or run a business if you have no free income.
It incentivizes bad investment behaviour. This one gets me, the right-wing think tanks are always whinging about “productivity” but the biggest reason we’re not productive is that our investment class is dumping money into real estate because it provides a quick return, instead of investing it in technology or people
The income from it is not available for taxation, starving government revenues and resulting in programs getting cut
And that’s before you get to the social costs (people stuck in miserable marriages, stress, commuting requirements, loss of security, etc).
And here we are, throwing gasoline on the fire because our governments and their donors can’t bear to make less money. Quite the opposite, really, to keep the Ponzi scheme going they’re moving to strip-mining south Asian immigrants like they’re the human equivalent of an open-pit quarry.
When the collapses, it’ll be horrific. At best, I hope the recovery is more New Deal than Third Reich.