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OK, the dollar's doing poorly against bitcoin, shares, real estate and commodities (via inflation). It's roughly even on silver and doing badly against gold.
The only thing the dollar compares well against is other currencies (which are fundamentally the same kind of thing). So a dollar v anything chart would not prove that the dollar was strong, as your argument suggests. Unless by anything you just mean currencies.
I do mean currencies, since that is what everyone uses. When was the last time you bought something with bitcoin or gold or the deed to your house?
Do you want deflationary money so that it pays to hoard it and do nothing? There is a reason we have target inflation numbers instead of target deflation numbers. What you're talking about isn't the dollar "doing poorly" it is inflation, it is a feature not a bug.
Yes, I want deflationary money. Right now it pays to leave money in the bank, not very much but it does. If everyone did that, the economy would implode. The economy works on the principle that people want more than measly 1-2% returns, they want lots more money so they invest it and lend it out, accepting some risk. Furthermore, the economy is inherently supposed to be deflationary, that's what technology does. Prices are supposed to fall.
People don't go 'oh I need a dishwasher, I will wait 6 months for them to become 1% cheaper', that's not real human behaviour. People want things now so they buy them now, often without even needing them.
Inflationary money pumps up huge asset bubbles, immiserating those of us who need homes (all but a few). Inflationary money is exploited by governments and central banks for political advantage. It funds stupid and unnecessary wars without obviously raising taxes or taking on real debt from real lenders. It is a huge boon to special interests and a cost on the general public.
Most people own a home, so isn't inflation good for more people than it hurts on the housing side? There were plenty of wars before MMT and target inflation numbers, more I would venture to say. What is a "real lender" if not the American people who voted in the reps and president who are wasting money on stupid wars of adventure and choice? Perhaps you're right and deflationary money doesn't cause recessions and depressions, but it tends to correlate with them pretty well. The reasons for that are complex and often it is demand destruction or market failure, not the deflationary nature of the currency causing the issue.
Home ownership is currently at 65% So 2 out of 3 people live in a home they "own". Mostly with a mortgage that is always getting cheaper to pay. It was at almost 70% before home prices deflated in 2009 and really caught a lot of people with their pants down.
Imagine if homes cost what they cost in the 1950s or 1960s when the US dollar and thus all currencies was tied to gold, before the moneyprinting extravaganza! https://www.longtermtrends.net/home-price-median-annual-income-ratio/
You could marry easily, casually buy a home as a low-skilled worker and pay it off quickly.
Across the West we had house prices falling compared to household incomes up until the early 1970s, then they treaded water before rising continually. That was the exact time the gold standard was buried. At the same time, household incomes were rising as women entered the workforce. Houses have been getting more expensive since we left gold. At the same time, houses have gotten a bit larger and a bit better but not that much better (and they should have been getting cheaper due to technology as well). Houses turned from a mass-manufactured good into investments, fertility rates have nose-dived and there's huge wealth transfer from young to old. The old were lucky enough to buy before the full effects of moneyprinting kicked in.
Not if central bankers get caught with their pants down and jack up interest rates from 3% to about 7% when they realize they printed too much. The US is getting dangerously close to fiscal dominance where accumulated debt becomes too expensive to allow high interest rates, ending in persistently high inflation.
Someone who's not a central bank. The US has been issuing more bonds than there is demand for, so the Fed bought back the bonds with printed money, increasing inflation.
I have built houses. The amount of labor and material that goes into a house built today vs a house built in 1950 is astounding. If you want a custom home today you're looking at 300 dollars a square foot to start in my area, so if you want even a modest 1500 sq ft home you're out $450k before you buy the land. Buying some land and having someone else build you a house costs a shit ton of money. That is why housing costs are through the roof, not because we got off the gold standard.
Also, houses haven't become just a "bit bigger" They have doubled or tripled in size depending on what starting year you want to use. We have 800sq ft starter homes from that size left over from the 50's in a lot of area towns they kinda suck. Cheap materials, often partially home built. If you're willing to buy the largest Home depot shed and renovate it yourself using coffee cans as shingle underlayment and a toilet you get for free off craigslist, you too can replicate the quality of these builds, and probably the cost as well.
If you want a 1950's house and to pay 1950's prices you can, you would have about 100k to work with. You can do it yourself, with a small amount of hired help and buy cheap land and materials, and get a cheap but livable home. If you want a home 3 times that size and with better workmanship and modern insulation, code standard electrical, plumbing and HVAC, 2 bathrooms, modern fixtures, you're going to pay 3 times as much, you want someone to do it for you and a master bath with rain shower, a second bathroom, a guest powder room, a 3 car garage, gas fireplace, heatpumps, solar panels, a pool and 2 acres, well then you're not even buying the same product.
Your posts are starting to sound like that "what happened in 1971" website that gold bugs like to bang on about. I'm not sure if you're a US citizen but almost all mortgages issued in the USA are 30 year fixed. Which means we're all locked in forever unless we sell, it doesn't matter what the fed rate does, you pay whatever you agreed upon at the time of the loan. So the loans always get cheaper over time because you're paying a low interest rate loan back with money that has had 20 years to inflate by the time you're 20 years into your loan.
You could do all that stuff on one salary because the world had just been wiped out and the USA was the last high tech manufacturing and industrial powerhouse standing. Not because we were on the gold standard. Which we were also on during some very very bad economic times in our history, if you'll recall. The type of money we use doesn't really matter, it is just fake points we use to keep track of and divvy up resources.
Nobody says this for anything else. Nobody says "oh cars in the old days were terrible, fuel-inefficient, slow and unreliable plus you were likely to be mangled if you crashed, there was no GPS or aircon and that's why their price has soared enormously relative to household income." Cars got better and cheaper, electronics got better and cheaper, air travel got better and cheaper, textiles got better and cheaper, everything should get better and cheaper simultaneously. Car prices in the US have risen considerably in the last few years because Americans like buying big trucks but that's a national quirk, not a global trend. We see rapidly rising house prices in nearly all developed countries.
Housing is the anomaly and I blame financialization of housing stock, limiting supply to increase prices. Houses shouldn't be appreciating in value, they shouldn't be used as a store of value or an investment. There have been technological advances like prefabrication that brings production prices down. But prices stay high, in part due to regulations that sustain their use as a store-of-value by constricting supply.
That's it in a nutshell. Control the money supply and you control the resources. Print money, pass it on to banks and then to those favoured by banks, bail out banks if things go wrong, tax via inflation and it's all obfuscated through the complexity of the money printing system.
Suppose Europe and Asia are intensively bombed and hundreds of millions are killed tomorrow, would this be good for the US economy? Or Canada and Australia? No! Prosperity is not derived from the destruction of others, there's not much point trading with desperate and impoverished people. US postwar prosperity stemmed from technological advancement, good regulatory conditions and rapidly increasing capital stock, including housing. Britain and France did well postwar. Japan did well postwar too. Germany did well. All but Japan had baby booms.
People actually do say that about cars...
The countries you mention did well after 10 years of reconstruction and tons of American money and support and governance. Britons were still on rations into 1954, they lost their empire, so did most of the European Powers. You know what was driving a lot of that post war boom?! American exports in all things.
Don't forget these rules of acquisition.
War is good for business
Peace is good for business
Prefab has mostly been a bust for housing because you still need to transport and assemble the thing on site and do all the trade work involved. Mass production simply doesn't work for the kind of housing that people want. Every home is basically a custom job hand assembled by 20 different kinds of trades and independent contractors all trying to semi-coordinate, even the planned burbs built by companies like Lenar. Every house lot and location has its own quirks, every warped wall stud needs to be held straight enough to nail gun into place. It is hugly labor and capital intensive.
Regulation is never about "keeping home prices high" Property values won't go down if you build more, the demand is essentially unlimited. This is a common refrain you hear on reddit that people are being selfish and "protecting their property values", what people are really "protecting" is their current vision of the city/town and they just don't want more people, or certain types of people, or cars. Most of them don't think stopping growth is protecting their investment, and it also doesn't. The more dense a place is usually the more expensive it is. Manhattan vs North Dakota.
If there were really such radical ways to make lots of housing and sell it cheaply, someone would be doing it and making billions. You're welcome to be the first. It isn't a conspiracy.
Until we have a much cheaper way to make quality housing we are always going to be in a "housing crisis". That being said, 75% of the people in my state own their own homes, I think the "housing crisis" is overblown. Shit is just expensive now, there are too many people, and they all want to live in the same places. If people want cheaper homes encourage your kids to become carpenters/plumbers/electricians willing to work for low wages. Getting a door replaced is like 3k these days. Everyone wants a freestanding home next to mountains, the ocean, lakes and a major metro with good weather, they can't all live there.
Again. It costs more to build new than to buy a used house. So it isn't using houses as an investment that is driving up costs, they do go down in value compared to a new build. the price you see is literally the cost to make the product. Land appreciates if population goes up and if everyone wants to live in the same place, that has nothing to do with building costs, except that developers may build higher end models of homes on expensive land since the home will be out of reach for people looking for starter homes because of the cost of acquiring the building lot.
If you can do it cheaper. You'll be a billionaire in a few years.
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