| Housing is a very different matter, one primarily defined by zoning. Zoning rules in major metros prevented supply from meeting demand by preventing new construction. Zoning rules outside major metros made the average new home 2X bigger. [1] Combined these make houses dramatically more expensive even though the cost per square foot on average, adjusted for inflation, is exactly the same as it has been since the 1970s. Japan for instance has seen their M2 money supply 3X from 1990 to 2022, while the affordability of a house there hasn't decreased since 1995. [2] This is due to their federal zoning rules which permit housing construction practically everywhere. [3] The increase in price of housing is what's driving inflation, not vv imo. And for what it's worth, I think Glass-Steagall (brought in as part of the post-Great Depression reforms) did a very good job of preventing retail banks from investing in toxic garbage and its repeal in 1999 was IMO a major contributing factor to the crisis in the first place. [4] [1] https://fee.org/articles/new-homes-today-have-twice-the-squa... [2] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/JPNCPIHOUAINMEI [3] https://marketurbanism.com/2019/03/19/why-is-japanese-zoning... [4] https://www.federalreservehistory.org/essays/glass-steagall-... |
That's like saying "price increases lead to inflation". Which is true but illuminating.
Limitations on housing construction certainly made homes especially valuable as an investment in places like California. But the vast amount of money-created-out-of-thin-air was what sought this reliable investments. The situation you mention is just related to what I describe, it doesn't refute what I describe.
The main thing is that this inflating of money has a number of noxious qualities, the inflation of housing costs just being one of them. Prices are signals for how resources should be allocated and distorted prices result in distorted allocations of resources. For small example, there's a daft and dangerous plane to restart a fricken gold mine in the little tourist next to my town - with all attendant potential for multiple types of pollution and with gold only getting kind of play because it's a fixed asset with a price driven sky-high by the present money creation process.