Home ownership is the West’s biggest economic-policy mistake
I don&#x27;t think this article makes a logical argument at all. It says house ownership is bad because it gives people a vested interest in constraining the supply of housing. That&#x27;s true but that&#x27;s not a problem. If people didn&#x27;t own houses then <i>someone</i> would, and that someone is still incentivized to constrain the supply.<p>I&#x27;m also not sure that reducing home ownership is a good idea - &quot;let&#x27;s make everyone poorer&quot; doesn&#x27;t sound like great policy to me, especially at a time where asset prices are inflating like mad. What&#x27;s the actual alternative to people owning their own homes. Would we be better off all holding shares in housing companies?<p>I also take issue with this idea that we should all be living in skyscrapers. If you go off and build skyscrapers. Maybe some people want to live in skyscrapers but if the result of this policy is that the middle class who used to be able to live in a nice semi&#x2F;detatched house are now living in flats in a skyscraper that is a massive detriment to their quality of life. It&#x27;s like the problem we have with Houses of Multiple Occupancy in the UK. It&#x27;s a fine concept to break up a 4 bed house into 3 flats and sell each individually but you need to understand you&#x27;re making it economically unviable for anyone to ever afford a 4 bed house anymore in that area.<p>There are serious issues with housing, and the massive disincentive for people to downsize is definitely one of them, but a lot of these policy solutions are just trash.