Reaffirming my view that The Economist is a neoliberal dishrag, the word "housing" appears zero times. Because housing is the number one problem and it'll never get fixed because ever-increasing house prices have become an explicit policy goal and, more importantly, homeowners will never vote for decreasing house prices.

High house prices are simply stealing from the next generation and increasing house prices raise the prices of everything because housing is an input to the cost of everything.

In many Western countries, housing is the best performing asset class so it's reached the point of stealing investment dollars that might otherwise go to productive output. Housing is the black hole at the heart of the economy.

The only country that has attempted to correct this thus far has been China. Xi Jinping quietly popped the real estate bubble a decade ago and the real estate sector has been in recession ever since as prices correct. As Xi says, houses are for living in, not for speculation [1].

The only countries that have even partly avoided this are because they implemented systems long ago that have prevented land hoarding, such as Red Vienna [2]. Interestingly, the post-WW2 UK almost ended landlords but then along came Thatcher [3].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houses_are_for_living,_not_for...

[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jO52FWzJoyQ

[3]: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/mar/19/end-of-...