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Comment by simonh | Hacker News Reader

The trap I find myself in is that (at least here in the UK) we are all in competition with each other for a fixed, limited resource. Housing. I earn a very good wage, as does my wife, but we still work tough jobs for long hours so that we can afford a nice house, in a good location, with a garden for our kids to grow up in. No matter how much people like me earn, we will just use it to bid up house prices even more. Everyone blames the government or the banks, etc for house prices and how hard we have to work to afford a nice place. The truth is we're doing it to ourselves and each other.

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That's a cultural construct, not an economic one. In a lot of other countries, it's perfectly acceptable to rent or live in flats, or around cities that are not the capital; but in England, these conditions carry a huge social stigma, which is compounded by deeply-entrenched classism. It's a perfect storm, really; but yeah, you're doing it to yourself. Move to Manchester ;)

Also in other places eg Florida it's considered ok to build inexpensive housing. England's covered with fields and woods but it's considered horrific to build on which helps the high prices. Also if you built in London like they do in Guangzhou you could pack about 5 times as many people but again people hate the idea.

> That's a cultural construct

The rental versus buying dichotomy is orthogonal to the issue of limited supply. If everyone rents there is still the same overall demand for accommodation, hence rents would be high (due to limited supply) and that would propagate through to push up property prices. End result is the same.

that was one example he gave, you've not diminished his point in any way by questioning only a part of his argument.

It's interesting to 'follow the money' in the UK situation. If we were building more houses then prices would be lower and money would be flowing into construction and therefore the working population as a whole.

With constrained supply the money flows to existing property owners which are generally older, more likely to be retired, etc. That older group probably spend a lot of that excess wealth on holidays and social care. If that excess wealth was reduced then the discretionary purchases would drop first (the holidays). Probably the economy would have a very different 'shape' if construction supply was increased to meet demand.

But if the future is uncertain and filled with automation , isn't the correct response - to work hard and earn a lot (or even bet on a startup) , live cheap, and save a lot ?

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