Comment on What is an average person living in the US supposed to do about corporations raising prices?
phillaholic@lemm.ee 11 months agoYou’re ignoring the hundred other people with 300k that will getting money and now bidding against me. It’s Supply and Demand.
chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 months ago
I am not, I intended the person with 300k in this example to represent the whole class of people with less. Your assumption seems to be that the accumulating mass of wealth held by the few is just not in competition for houses, but that begs the question, why wouldn’t it be? You can extract rent from housing to profit on it over time. It serves as a safe investment very likely to increase in value. You can convert it into other forms of real estate. You can have multiple homes for convenient travel.
An important feature of supply and demand is that the weight of demand doesn’t depend on a quantity of people, but a quantity of money. If no one ever had a reason to want more than one house for themselves, maybe it would have more to do with the quantity of individuals, but I think that’s just not the case, they do want more.
phillaholic@lemm.ee 11 months ago
I’m not following your point at all here. I’d you give just me extra money, I can probably buy a house. I’d you give everyone more money then I’m back to bidding against everyone else and the cost of housing just rises. We don’t have enough housing in many areas of the country.
chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 months ago
My point is that if you are currently bidding against wealthy financial interests as well as individuals just looking for a place to live, then giving everyone money will raise the buying power of those individuals relative to those interests.
phillaholic@lemm.ee 11 months ago
But it’s not going to increase supply, and somewhere around 70% of homes purchased last year were by individuals. Home prices will rise as individuals can bid higher than before.
The only solution is to build more housing.