The REAL reason behind the housing crisis
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN commenters share it as a counterargument to the YIMBY build-more-housing view, linking wealth concentration to asset prices.
What it is
Gary's Economics argues that the UK housing crisis stems from wealth inequality, treating housing as an asset like shares that rich people bid up. He contends that simply building more housing won't fix affordability.
Recommended by 3 HN commenters across 3 different months, 2025 to 2025.
What Hacker News said
Recommends sovietswag · 2025-08 · on “Nobody’s buying homes, nobody’s switching jobs, America’s mobility is stalling”
I wonder what you'd think about this video from Gary's Economics about the housing crisis: [this video] It feels to me like a good faith counterargument to the YIMBY build more housing line of thought, so might be an interesting perspective
Recommends __turbobrew__ · 2025-09 · on “World emissions hit record high, but the EU leads trend reversal”
This situation has played out in every developed nation, do you really think NL is unique? Look at any country in Europe, USA, Canada, Australia, Hong Kong, China, … and they all have a huge issue with inflated asset prices (housing, stocks, gold) because wealth is becoming more concentrated and rich people need to park their wealth somewhere, and that somewhere is gold, stocks, real estate, bonds, and mortgages. Also notice that asset prices started increasing across the world way before we had green energy policies. I live in a place where they canceled a bunch of green energy policies (mainly carbon taxes) and guess what happened to asset prices? Nothing. Also note that the top 10% of wea
Recommends AnonymousPlanet · 2025-12 · on “Baumol's Cost Disease”
> Now suppose construction is cheap and zoning doesn't prohibit this. For 10% of the cost of the land, we could build a condo tower on that same piece of land. Ten stories, 100 housing units. The cost of a unit just went by down by a factor of ~100. The price of the land doubling is dwarfed by the increase in the number of permissible units per plot of land. That's a brilliant plan! Let me buy the piece of land where that high rise stands with money you can't afford. Oh, you mean you have split ownership between all the owners of the units so you now can afford it? I'll buy half of the units then and rent them out. And when things are not looking good for people, I buy some more when they ca
Cites moneycantbuy · 2025-08 · on “The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong”
Gary's Economics claims wealth inequality is at the root of housing unaffordability. Basically as wealth concentration grows, the ultra-rich bid up the assets. See the price of gold doubling in the past few years. Government stimulus is also captured by the richest. It's also a global phenomenon, i.e., every major city is now unaffordable for most people. [this video]