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Comment by foobarian | Hacker News Reader

I wonder if the "American dream" has managed to spread to the rest of the world and now young people have unrealistic expectations that they can buy a house like young people used to be able to in the States while it was still filling up. This was not a thing in most other places, with multigenerational living being the default.

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The 'American Dream' is very similar in a lot of the OECD nations.

NZ'er checking in. Late 40's - a good portion/most of my peer group bought houses in their mid 20's to 30's. Now the same age range can't unless they've got mega inehitances or very, very, good jobs.

Ditto UK/Australia/Canada etc.

All countries to a greater or lesser degree have the same cost of living crisis (arguably NZ is one of the worst at the moment).

America did not have 200 million naturally-occurring houses that needed to be "filled up". 20th century Americans had to build them all. This is still the obvious and best way to relieve housing costs.

This county owns land which it is going to develop for housing. Their goal? $450k houses because that will bring in more tax revenue than the same number of affordable homes.

Clown world indeed.

Would kill for a $450k house. Here a 1970s condo needing complete renovation goes for 750k.

While this is true of course, it is easy for knowledge workers to say this when we aren't the ones pounding in nails all day.

We speak as if the houses just build themselves and we just have to press these buttons in the right combination like software.

Everyone involved basically has better options than to build more housing so it should be no surprise we have a shortage.

Sure but it's a matter of turning some policy knobs, and we know where they are and how much to turn them. The policies that prevent us from building are favorable tax treatment of existing properties and financial penalties for building new ones, favorable treatment of professional labor and penalization of productive labor. The "better options" of which you speak are policy outcomes and we can change the rules.

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