You may have seen this video of housing costs graphed as a 3D roller coaster ride. As someone who can't afford to own property (didn't we used to call them peasants?), the steep incline in the past decades is frightening.
In America it is especially true that owning one's home confers rights on an individual that they do no otherwise have. A man's home is his castle, as they say, and if you are on your own property it is difficult for the government to screw with you. Owning one's home also give the advantage of being less at the mercy of markets and employers. This all suggests to me that a society is more free and stable when more people own instead of rent their homes (not to mention more happy).
Can the rapid inflation of home prices be explained by traditional supply and demand models? Or is it the result of a fundamental shift in the demographics of the housing market? I suspect the problem is that home ownership is also a capitol investment, and the owning class can buy properties not to live in but to rent for profit. This arrangement funnels money from the renters to the owning class, perpetuating a system out of balance.
In this case, the cycle would look like this: The influx of investment money into the housing market inflates values, making it harder for working class people to own property. This raises the demand for rentals, the rental prices rise, and the cycle spirals upward. Which is what you see in this video of housing prices from 1890 to the present as represented by a 3D roller coaster ride.
monochrom is an art-technology-philosophy group having its seat in Vienna and Zeta Draconis. monochrom is an unpeculiar mixture of proto-aesthetic fringe work, pop attitude, subcultural science, context hacking and political activism. Our mission is conducted everywhere, but first and foremost in culture-archeological digs into the seats (and pockets) of ideology and entertainment. monochrom has existed in this (and almost every other) form since 1993. [more]
