China can meet the demand for housing

China is… huge… There will still be places with housing shortages alongside places where tons of buildings will sit empty. Still a very different scope and problem there vs here.

Either way though in the US there doesn’t seem to be any sign of an oversupply problem coming in my lifetime (another 40 years if i’m lucky.)

That was an intended effect, as they were all facing enormous deficits in the wake of the '08 housing/car-note crash. Cash-for-Clunkers was supposed to be a back door bailout of dealerships in exchange for moving high emissions vehicles off the market.

Hot take: the dealership system is just a useless middleman system that should have been dismantled long ago as the “only way” to buy a car.

In theory, we live in a large and competitive housing market, such that people with excess cash can change landlords in pursuit of lower prices.

Boston will never have enough supply to meet demand. This is the one example I know very well, there are countless others. A thousand bucks a month in podunk land is enough to rent something entirely and that will 100% be exploited by landlords, after all it’s free money for doing nothing.

Popular opinion is that if you give people free money they will use it on what enriches their lives.

Economists would probably just point out the fact that whenever you subsidize something the thing you’re trying to make easier is suddenly even more expensive to the point where there’s hardly a discount if one even exists.

Look at the cash for clunkers program. At the end of that car dealerships were raking in huge profits.

In this case if you give someone a thousand bucks a month, odds are landlords will pocket the majority of that, because housing is the biggest cost for everybody who is not already an owner. If everyone has 1000/mo more, they can suddenly afford 1000/more on housing. This may make minimal impact in areas with extremely high COL, but all the associated suburbs, rough parts of town, college areas… yeah those rents are gonna go way up.

example: 4BR apartment? Oh… I guess that’s another +$3500/mo… after all all four of you are getting that money for free. New price: $7000/mo. It’s only 1750/mo, or 750 per person per month because the government (our tax dollars) is paying that poor, poor landlord. How ever would they survive elsewise?