We are living during times of excess prosperity but somehow we can’t afford to provide needed services to the population… where is all the money going?
Asking for a friend.
Wealth has been concentrating at the top for the past few decades now in ways the modern world has never seen before.
This is US-centric, but Canada hasn’t been much better. https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/01/09/trends-in-income-and-wealth-inequality/
Canada is ripe for the picking, we let our telecoms walk all over us.
I wonder how much of our “economy doing great” is just businesses generating GDP from crap like this…
where is all the money going?
Up into space and down to the bottom of the ocean apparently.
That’s just the trickle down. Check the pockets and bank accounts, panama papers…
To clarify the homebuilding costs are increasing that much isn’t because of the population growth.
Additional demand on building materials might push up the prices slightly, but the higher building costs are a result of inflation, higher interest rates and unfilled jobs in the construction industry.
Don’t forget plain ol’ corporate greed
Average house size in 1960 was roughly 1000 sq ft. Average house size now is roughly two and a half times larger. We’ve also gone from a near universal 8ft ceiling height to trendy 10ft ceilings. We’re using far more material per unit, even as family sizes have never been smaller.
At some point people have to pay attention to consumption habits.
There’s still plenty of scope for corporate shenanigans on top of all that, but they’re not the whole story.
My impression is that developers like to build more premium housing because they can sell it for higher margins. This is probably a symptom of “houses for investment” vs. “houses for homes”. How much my house is worth is largely hypothetical if I’m living in it. I have to live somewhere after all, and if I sell it, I just have to live somewhere else.
