More here.
This is not to say: If you are in the U.S., you should be happy because it is worse elsewhere.
Two points:
- It could be worse. It could get much, much worse.
- Housing affordability is not an inditement of the United States or "late-stage capitalism."
Except for South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Oman, and North Korea, housing affordability is worse in every country. Communist, socialist, social democratic, dictatorships - every political system is worse than the U.S. everywhere.
Things are significantly better in the U.S. in terms of housing affordability than basically anywhere else.
There is no quick fix. There is no easy fix. People can't have everything.
Things get worse when we condemn everything if we can't have what we want where we want when we want.
Things get worse when we pursue fantasies. Things get worse when we judge our lives against everyone else. Thing get worse when we only believe memes and don't recognize reality (e.g., How to Make Life Better).
Life is trade-offs. Life is choosing between possible alternatives.
Bitterness is a choice.
1 comment:
This was really interesting, especially around China, and I wouldn't have predicted that NZ is less than the average. The US vs NZ is unsurprising to me from the outside, I was assuming we'd be about double, and similar to Northern European countries. I wonder how much massive wealth concentration in the US unbalances this picture, as well as the huge real estate deserts where you can buy up ultra-cheap property, but no one does because it's commercially worthless. These imbalances are features of late-stage capitalism, and might be leading to real un-affordability that is not evident when looking at averages.
One could put this down to a failure of redistribution, but also a failure of entrepreneurship outside of major centres. Reminds me of a great doco "Detropia" which followed various artists and small businesses holing up in abandoned areas of Detroit showing what can be done in a city that's lost its mojo.
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