[Doubleslash]

German citizen here. I travel to the US quite often - I find that the quality of the Grocery stores is on average one level up. The quality of the goods sold there is another story. But mid-and southern Europe likes it cheap when it comes to these things. There is a reason why we call them "discounters".

I really do hear you on the housing quality - it's ridiculous what people are willing to put up with over there. We have friends living in the southern bay area who pay 3.5k for a 2.5 bedroom apartment in an apartment complex - the whole thing calls itself "Luxury Residencies". Ain't no luxury there. Like you describe everything is built extra cheap: from the walls, to the kitchen appliances and the plumbing. There is a massive top-loader in their supply closet that sounds like it runs on it's own ICE, built in the 50s. In Europe this would be considered a very basic apartment but it's already considered 1-2 levels higher than average and not even 3 years old.

I do think there is something to your Galapagos syndrome theory.

[refurb]

Please don’t use the Bay Area as a proxy for US housing. It’s an extreme outlier.

Million dollars houses would be regarded as unliveable in other parts of the US.

[jccalhoun]

From my experience of living in a college town where there seems to be a new "luxury apartment" building being built every week, "luxury apartment" is code for overpriced crap aimed at young people who are spending mom and dad's money

[Ill_ban_myself]

The effect on housing you see is a unique artifact of unconstrained unregulated capitalism: Property investment firms and private, "house flippers" have been buying up old houses at market value in many US cities for over a decade. They paint them grey, put new cabinets in, a new shiny refrigerator, and put it back on the market for double the price.

The first time one of these places sells (with black mold still in the basement, asbestos in the walls, and lead paint the children's room) the value of the nearby houses goes up and everyone starts looking to sell THEIR old beat up black mold and asbestos special. It starts a boom and suddenly a whole neighborhood of 300k$ houses become 1million$ grey monstrosities.

This all drives up the cost of new construction as well (which is always a little more pricey than buying an older home) and so you get overpriced mansions that you describe as well, but the root cause is the removal of the entire "bottom" of the market. It is now almost impossible to find what Americans call a "fixer-upper" in some cities.

[DuskStar]

It certainly takes something to look at a housing market where regulations enforce artificial scarcity and say that everything wrong with it is the result of capitalism...

[Gibbon1]

Capitalism is the reason that regulations exist. Apartments cost less than single family homes. Makes total sense for developers to get regulations passed that prevent that sort of competition.

[DuskStar]

I mean, I suppose you could call regulatory capture 'capitalism'... But seeing as most people's response to 'capitalism failing' is to call for more regulation, I don't think that that's really fair.

[Gibbon1]

I think you're under a delusion that 'government' and 'capitalism' are separate things.

[DuskStar]

Well, there exist countries that have government without capitalism, so yes I do believe they are.