Crantag wrote:The supply of land is not truly fixed.
Of course it is. The amount available is the same no matter its price.
Thank you for proving I was right: a graduate education in economics is a form of mild brain damage that makes its victims unable to know self-evident and indisputable facts of economics that any child of seven knows.
There are many different possible variations with respect to use, which can influence the supply of land.
No there aren't, as nothing people do can affect the area of the earth's solid surface. You are effectively claiming, falsely, absurdly, and dishonestly, that whether someone uses rice to make sushi, rice pudding, or risotto, or throws it at newlyweds, somehow affects the supply of rice. That claim is false and absurd.
There is also the artificial scarcity imposed by zoning ordinances.
They do not affect supply, only use. If there is a law that says rice can be used for sushi but not risotto, that does not affect the supply of rice. Your claims are false and absurd, like the claims of everyone else who has ever attempted to evade the facts about land, or ever will.
A drive through the Midwest or South Texas can illustrate.
Yes, such a drive will prove you objectively wrong, just as any other real-world experience will.
In many cases, cows roam in lieu of people.
Why are you falsely and absurdly claiming that an acre of land is a different size depending on whether there are cows or people on it?
Cattle farming is a very inefficient use of land,
No, it is merely a low-density use. It is typically the most efficient use where it is a predominant use.
Everything you say on this subject is reliably false, because you have a graduate degree in economics.
but its economical where land is available, though this too is largely a function of a demand which is dependent on no-economic cultural aspects relating to diet.
What a silly and irrelevant load of horse$#!+.
In cities, the construction of high rises increases the supply of land through more intensive use of land.
No, that is just another false and absurd fabrication from you, no doubt caused by your graduate education in economics. A high-rise ferroconcrete building does not increase the supply of land. It simply puts more built space on the same amount of land that was there since the dinosaurs roamed the earth.
In China, home ownership rates are very high.
Because all the land is publicly owned.
This is because of a decision by the government in the 1990s to sell homes to occupants, at a rate which was affordable.
No it isn't. It is because unlike in countries where land is privately owned, the Chinese homebuyer does not also have to pay for a ticket on the landowners' escalator.
People who cry wolf about China's construction of homes for which there is no one yet to occupy, miss this point, regarding the reality of home ownership in China. Homelessness is not a very considerable issue in China.
But landlessness is, because building all those empty high-rise apartment buildings uses up land that people had been using to make a living by farming. Somehow, the additional supply of land that the high-rise apartment buildings create (in what you are no doubt pleased to call your "mind") is not suitable for farming. Where is all the land the high-rises have created?
Such a mystery.
To you, that is.
And the building boom is in some ways the effects of economic policy with respect to employment and economic development. Keynes suggested paying guys to dig holes and fill them up again, in China though, they build, and build, and build.
And it is going to be a problem. Count on it.
So actually perhaps we need to look elsewhere for the source of high rents, and attendant homelessness.
Yes. We need to look at the Law of Rent, which implies that almost all the additional production made possible by advancing technology, increased investment in production goods, and higher education of workers will inevitably be taken by landowners in land rents. And we need to look at the Henry George Theorem, which shows why all government efforts to help the landless by providing more services and infrastructure only help landowners, and no one else.
I suspect it is more likely the case that converting houses to financial commodities, in the presence of a financial system which is centered on financial speculation, may reveal more fruitful analysis.
See? You cannot understand economics because in graduate school, you learned that there is no such thing as land speculation , only speculation in "houses" or "real estate." Somehow, those who possess graduate degrees in economics have made their brains impervious to the fact that a VACANT BUILDING LOT increasing in price from 100K to 500K while the price of houses increased from 300K to 700K is not actually an increase in the price of "houses" at all, and that what has been converted into a financial commodity and a focus of financial speculation is likewise not "houses" but LAND.
Too bad those who have gone through graduate school "education" in economics have been rendered unable to understand such facts.