"Boomers don't like immigrants/workers, therefore life is getting really expensive" mischaracterises my argument. In hindsight I should have left out superfluous phrases.
The fully elaborated argument is long and somewhat nuanced. If you want a soundbite, how's this: "Boomers own all the stuff (to a first approximation). Two other things: first, due to their wealth they can outbid Zoomers for real estate as it comes onto the market. (Having someone live in the proprty is entirely optional.) Second, boomers are adept at protecting their wealth by keeping real estate scarce and taxes on real estate negligible, as they have always been."
Or: people are not competing for houses, piles of money are. The bigger piles are winning.
Edit to add: Demographics comes into it because the Boomers are the first generation in history to be so economically significant in their old age.
Before the boomers, life expectancy was about the same as retirement age, or younger. Houses passed on to the next generation much sooner in their life cycle, often as they were just starting to have children of their own. Now, children can themselves be retired before parents die and leave them the house. Often, perhaps usually, are, these days.
The market weakness of new-household-forming adults (the 18-49 age group) is one consequence.
We are in uncharted territory, demographically, this century.
Isn't it weird that we allow home/land ownership to a family/individual in perpetuity and then complain about high prices and scarcity for newcomers?
Just think about it for a second, we in the west allow people to buy a piece of the Planet Earth, and hold on to it forever, virtually tax free(in Western Europe at least).
How is this nothing else but blatant feudalism? And how is it still allowed? Royal families and landlords were beheaded in the past by angry mobs over abusing this system for their personal gain.
Why don't we have taxes or a system in place to prevent this accumulation of land by those who got in the game early? Why can't we just lease land instead of allowing land ownership in perpetuity? Like, "this land is leased to you/your family for the next 100 years, after that it goes on to the market again where your offspring will have the chance to lease it again if they wish at the future market rate". Something like that, as our current system is basically a zero sum game which just encourages land hoarding through inheritance.
Those who's families go cheap land for peanuts ~100 years ago, are now leveraged to acquire even more of it while those born now without family wealth have no leverage to buy anything. Insane!
Imagine you have to start paying Monopoly from square one, while others get to continue where their parents left off. How is this fair? Why don't we have a system that resets this real-estate monopoly board every generation or so?
With our current ways, instead of creating a system that rewards individuals through hard work and innovation that contribute to society and human-kind, we're creating a system that encourages asset hoarding and rent-seeking that contribute nothing to humanity, rapidly going back to feudalism, where a few landlords, both corporate and private, will own all of the available land, and most of the people will be serfs for life, without the chance of ever owning anything, no matter how hard they work.
So, again, why do we allow people to own pieces of Planet Earth in perpetuity, virtually tax free?
>How is this nothing else but blatant feudalism? And how is it still allowed
Because the moment anyone mentions this, they get bombarded with "think of the poor old people who sit on a big house! They worked hard for it!"
We as a society have a tendency to prefer leaving lucky people as is while the remainder fights for the scraps. Why this is, no clue. Beyond voting being in favor of those already owning homes (too fractured to oppose grandfathering politically), I come across this attitude among the young way too often. It doesn't take a genius to realize sharing less with more will cause people to go hungry eventually.
Those same young people are all pro-grandfathering until they realize the bottleneck bites their life goals at age 30 and beyond. By then its too late, many of them stop caring as they become part of homeowners, and the cycle continues.
> we in the west allow people to buy a piece of the Planet Earth, and hold on to it forever, virtually tax free(in Western Europe at least)
What do you mean tax free? There are inheritance taxes for that, which often go up to 50-60% of the value for higher values. That's why the majority of castles in the UK are in trusts and open to the public, paying 50% of the value of the castle and land every generation was too much.
50% inheritance taxes are very rare in Europe, for normal homeowners it's mostly negligible, and there are workarounds like donating your property to your kids before you die to avoid the inheritance process and taxes.
And the property taxes are mostly grandfathered to the price the property was last purchased at, rather than at the current market prices.
I don't know for which parts of Europe you base your knowledge on, but in France both are wrong
> like donating your property to your kids before you die to avoid the inheritance process and taxes.
Donation to family members (above a certain sum, but any property would qualify) is taxed just like any other income.
> And the property taxes are mostly grandfathered to the price the property was last purchased at, rather than at the current market prices.
Property taxes are set at the current market prices (and if the gov thinks the value is set too low, they will come back and ask for more, retroactively).
The fully elaborated argument is long and somewhat nuanced. If you want a soundbite, how's this: "Boomers own all the stuff (to a first approximation). Two other things: first, due to their wealth they can outbid Zoomers for real estate as it comes onto the market. (Having someone live in the proprty is entirely optional.) Second, boomers are adept at protecting their wealth by keeping real estate scarce and taxes on real estate negligible, as they have always been."
Or: people are not competing for houses, piles of money are. The bigger piles are winning.
Edit to add: Demographics comes into it because the Boomers are the first generation in history to be so economically significant in their old age.
Before the boomers, life expectancy was about the same as retirement age, or younger. Houses passed on to the next generation much sooner in their life cycle, often as they were just starting to have children of their own. Now, children can themselves be retired before parents die and leave them the house. Often, perhaps usually, are, these days.
The market weakness of new-household-forming adults (the 18-49 age group) is one consequence.
We are in uncharted territory, demographically, this century.