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Funny how everyone complains about US investors sitting on property makes housing unaffordable and also complains that surplus housing in China makes housing a bad investment.
Everyone hates everything.
Are you trying to imply that everywhere is the same? Different places, different problems, different causes.
Surplus housing was built in China because the population needed a safe investment for their savings. The stock market is too volatile, and investing overseas is tightly controlled, so housing has been the choice because it lasts.
In the US, there's a conflux of factors that's led to a housing shortage, then the pandemic exacerbated that situation, and now spiking interest rates are making it unaffordable to move for the few who did manage to buy a home with their meagre resources. Then, of course, there's institutional investment buying up single-family homes and driving up prices even more.
The point is that China is not some perfect übermensch, even compared to the US, and anyone claiming otherwise needs to be corrected.
I didn't claim they were.
Whatever the cause, the surplus of housing in China can't be seen as a negative for the same reason a lack of housing is a negative in the US.
You can't have it both ways.
The trains ran on time under Mussolini. Just because a dictatorship does bad things doesn't mean absolutely everything must be bad. Just because a democracy does good things doesn't mean everything is perfect.
The person I originally responded to was, and you replied to me defending their point, so yeah, you're taking it up. If you didn't mean to, fine. The rest of my post stands. To wit:
What the hell are you talking about? Too much of anything is bad, just like too little is bad. Americans don't have their entire life savings sunk into investment properties nobody wants. The Chinese population does. If nobody wants those properties they own, nobody buys them, and the value tanks. If the construction of those properties had been funded by the government you might have a point, but when it's funded by the life savings of 900 million people or more, that's a major fucking problem, and it's not related in any way shape or form to the American housing market.
No I didn't. I specifically ended with, "Everyone hates everything."
Just like too little of anything is also bad.
If the value tanks, homes are affordable.
You can't have it both ways.
So when I said "just like too little is bad", which you even actually quoted, you just decided to ignore that and the rest of my words to restate your prior, addressed, and wrong point.
Affordable housing does not depend on bankrupting your entire populace, as in China, nor is it possible in a system like that in the US that refuses to build more housing to sate the demand of the existing populace (let alone population expansion).
They. Are. Different. Problems. They. Have. Different. Causes. And. Solutions.
I was highlighting that you see the problem without acknowledging the hypocrisy.
One is oversupply causing lower prices. This helps new families at the expense of investors. The other is under supply. This hurts new families and helps investors. When housing crashed in 2008, new home buyers were happy while the media lamented the home owner investors who lost value. You can't have lower prices without oversupply.
It doesn't matter if we don't like China's government. The math of supply and demand is the same.
If this was 1935, you'd be posting that trains on time in Italy is bad but late trains in the US is different because "reasons".
Hypocrisy? Your point so far has been
As though one is bad and one isn't. It's the most braindead take I've ever heard, like you don't understand that supply and demand can intersect without bankrupting the populace or putting them on the street. Like you don't understand that the government in China has created this problem by stopping people from sending their money overseas and failing to regulate stability into their stock market.
I'll tell you what. If the above quote doesn't describe your position, why don't you quote yourself and explain in more detail for the class.
That China created the oversupply doesn't change that it keeps housing cheap.
You argue as if the reason for the oversupply supply is only thing that's important. "Your honor, I murdered the victim using my democratic free market philosophy so the death is actually good. But that other murderer was a communist dictator so they should get the death penalty."
An oversupply keeps housing cheap. The US directly regulates the price of food by subsidizing farmers to maintain an oversupply that keeps food cheap. This hurts investors in futures markets but benefits all Americans. The Fed regulates interest rates to control inflation. This hurt stock market investors but benefits American consumers.
Do you mock all regulation or only when it's not the US?
So you simply will not explain your prior argument that if an oversupply is bad then an undersupply must be good, otherwise I am somehow a hypocrite.
My argument is that to say China is doing something better than America with regard to the well-being of it's citizenry is patently false. My examples included Evergrande, which is bankrupt, and the extreme overexposure of the Chinese citizenry to one type of asset which has every reason to tank into the ground because there are fewer and fewer new families being created to buy those properties at the original prices or higher. There is not now and will never be enough demand to keep those properties from depreciating massively.
Undersupply of housing in America is causing problems for new families, BUT:
the US government does not limit the financial freedoms of it's populace to the same degree, not even close, so
overbuilding in the US would not be done with the money of retail investors, but likely with a combination of federal incentives/grants/tax write-offs and private investment funds
therefore, a sudden oversupply of housing in the US would not pose the same problems as it does in China right now
Go ahead and strawman my arguments some more, you're only telling on yourself at this point.
My first statement was "everyone hates everything"
That is people criticize oversupply and undersupply. But it's one of the other. Markets aren't stable. It's why the US subsidizes food to keep the market at oversupply.
You criticized China's oversupply and ignored US's undersupply. Even after you mentioned US's undersupply in a reply, you still only criticized China's oversupply.
The 2008 real estate crash was not planned by the US government. The overbuilding was done with the money of retail investors.
Low income housing projects are subsidized by the government all the time.
My personal hot take is that oversupply is good for workers at the expense of investors. Investors are excess capital looking to make money without producing anything. Workers actually produce. Shifting excess capital from investors to workers is a good thing in the long term.
This is the post I was responding to when you decided to jump in with your spicy bullshit take:
I'm not ignoring American undersupply, it's not relevant in this thread, but I have explicitly mentioned it being bad, and you even quoted me that it's bad. You are now being blocked, if not for being a troll then for being so irredeemably stupid there's no point interacting further. Good fucking day.
I didn't defend that op. I criticized one part of your reply. But you are so angry at China, that they could cure cancer and you'd say it's horrible and America should not do it because all the Pharma investors would lose their money.