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Transnational Thursdays 23

This is a weekly thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or IR history. I usually start off with coverage of some current events from a mix of countries I follow personally and countries I think the forum might be interested in. I’m increasingly doing more coverage of countries we’re likely to have a userbase living in, or just that I think our userbase would be more interested in. This does mean going a little outside of my comfort zone and I’ll probably make mistakes, so chime in where you see any. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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Good post, but I've been waiting for the housing crash for 20 years and have become convinced that it will never happen without massively cutting immigration rates. Enjoy the slightly decreased prices for a season and then hold on for the next run up...

Yeah the only way housing is coming down is if building housing becomes immensely faster/easier/cheaper (which will never happen because homeowners won't allow it) or if the population goes into decline (which will never happen because the powers that be will never allow our Ponzi scheme of an economy to collapse.)

I kind of doubt it's going to happen even then because of internal migration. What I think will happen is that the marginal places might see a crash (or just continual decline) but where you'd actually want to live (IE where there are jobs and services) will at best see a mild decline or stagnate.

This is absolutely true, and if for no other reasons it's because the major cities are so unbelievably undersupplied in housing. This estimate puts it at a need for over 4 million more housing units in San Francisco alone being needed: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/11/us-housing-gap-cost-affordability-big-cities/672184/

Yeah the housing bubble was supposed to be popping in Vancouver back in ye olde 1980s when interest rates pushed a nice place down to like $100K -- for a few years, then a steady climb until the mid naughties, now that place is a couple of million.