The explosion in house prices has meant that most
younger middle or upper-working-class people stand no chance of living out the
middle-aged peak of their powers in properties remotely resembling the ones in
which they grew up.
"Bricks and mortar" do not, at least ordinarily,
constitute an "investment". They constitute a place to live.
Very true. The fact that the media often celebrates housing price increases reveals how finance and related sectors dominate society.
ReplyDeleteAlso, the fact that working people were using their inflated home values as sources of money for consumption reveals how bad wage stagnation has been.
Increased consumption should have come from increasing wages given how much more productive workers have become.
But neoliberal policies such as union busting and easy immigration have resulted in stagnant or declining wages for most workers.