[questinthrow]

Wasn't this always the plan? If you combine scarce housing (by law or otherwise) and unrestricted immigration then you can get people to fight for scraps whilst taking 30-60% of their paycheck on average just through renting and also maybe through software subscriptions in the near future. In this way you can extract maximum productivity out of them because each month they're just a few steps away from homelessness. You also depress wages by a lot due to immigration which is doubly beneficial for the owning class AND you force the workers to be more productive because otherwise they'll be replaced by desperate immigrants. Its quite literally perfect from a capitalist point of view. The only thing that can put a stop to this are violent revolts. But if you have automated policing via drones and ubiquitous surveillance it should be easy to subdue the unruly masses.

[pjc50]

The US has extremely limited immigration by green card lottery.

[bombcar]

The US has extreme amounts of undocumented immigration that nobody really cares much about.

[Rinzler89]

Undocumented immigration probably doesn't have much money to compete for big city rents and raise prices for everyone.

[nostrebored]

Really untrue. You’re treating the pools of each as if they’re infinite.

Everyone in a declining population country will implement this strategy to keep asset prices afloat. The pool of people you want to immigrate to your country is not large enough to support that strategy.

Soon the government will have to provide huge incentives have children or immigrate. Then the cost to maintain that asset price is larger and more direct.

[questinthrow]

"The pool of people you want to immigrate to your country is not large enough to support that strategy."

Is this true though? In Vancouver apartment prices have increased by 600% between 2000 and 2024. And Canada is still taking in between 500k to 1 million immigrants yearly. https://topqualitycanada.ca/2023/05/15/shift-of-two-decades-...

[nostrebored]

This is because asset pricing in Canada is entirely dependent on increasing populations. Immigration requirements have been relaxing and will continue to relax. Which means that you should expect a higher “miss” rate on immigrants over time.

The problem with immigration this way is that there’s a careful balance of cost vs production. The question is already becoming “is this net positive” and will soon become “what deficit are we okay with running to prop up the asset market”