Rancid wrote:One really good example of why this can be bad is my hometown of Miami. A lot of the housing is bought up by wealthy people (mainly from Russia & Latin America). A lot of it is bought with dirty money actually (See the Panama papers). Rents have gone up like crazy due to this. At the same time, these wealthy foreigners aren't living in Miami. They aren't spending money in Miami. They aren't starting businesses (i.e. investing) in Miami. This means that the only thing all the money pouring into Miami is doing, is raising the cost of living. It's not creating high quality jobs, it's not helping the unemployment rate, etc. etc. This is bad for the working class.
Generally speaking, rich people drive the cost of housing up. Making it harder for the poor to live. This problem is happening in cities all around the world. There's a version of this playing out in my current city of Austin. There's a tech job boom here in Austin (Austin is considered one of the big tech hubs of the US). Lots of high income earners are moving into this city which is driving rent and property values up. THis makes it harder for the working class to continue living here. There's lots of gentrification going around.
Basically, spending in real estate isn't always good for the local population.
I am familiar with what you are saying. I have also lived in Miami and I am familiar with Doral which has been welcoming a lot of Venezuelan immigration (from other countries as well but Venezuelan in particular) and although, yes a significant percentage of those properties are empty most of them are not, furthermore this has also driven a large number of businesses to open and the area is currently thriving at the moment.
Let's set aside whether these people obtained their money illegally vs legally for a second because I 100% agree that criminals should be prosecuted and if they are immigrant criminals deported or prosecuted within the US (or whatever country they immigrated to) depending on the situation and crimes committed and where those crimes were committed.
I certainly prefer that that a large portion of these people make the investment in our countries. It is a bit selfish and all but the fact is, this benefit me and I cannot pretend that I prefer someone to spend 3 billions in a skyscraper in Shangai than one in Chicago.
Keep in mind, the vast majorities of these properties are 100% brand new, they were built from scrath. This is not driving prices of existing property, but rather CREATING new ones which happen to be more exensive and perhaps contributing to drive prices of already existing. This is actually not bad at all, if you are a property owener and your $200K home suddently now is worth $400K you just doubled your investment.... If all you wanted was a quiet place to live... you can simply sell off your $400k home, go to the middle of Texas or Alabama or Ohio and buy a nice $200k house in the middle of nowhere and you have an extra $200k to live your retirement in peace.
Let's stop pretending that the anger is because prices are going up and you are getting affected. In most cases the effect is neutral if not slightly positive (because of the increase in business revenues) but what drives most people mad is the idea that someone other than themselves are being successful and making way more money than you are. There is a solution for that, GO TO SCHOOL, LEARN SOMETHING THAT IS WORTH $$$, AND WORK HARD MAKING $$$. It is funny how people love capitalism so much when they think they are on top and hate is so much when they realize they are quite at the bottom.
You fail to recognize that the reason prices go up, is because the desirability of living in those places go up. For instance, in the Miami area like you mentioned, Doral was kind of shitty really in the 1990's but its population has since skyrocketed with a booming business. Rent and house prices have gone up, but this is a reflection of an increase in popularity of the area BECAUSE of the new businesses, employment opportunity, recreational and city-life options that the zone now provides which it did not do so 2 decades ago when it was relatively cheaper. You can go to the middle of Montana, Alabama or North-Dakota and find places that are very cheap to live in if that is what you want.
It seems that the US has become obsessed with not putting effort into improving ourselves but growing increasingly angry when the population in other countries work far harder than we do and succeed more than we do. As a population, we get angry that our top paying jobs are going to Asian, Latin Americans, and Indians but this is a reflection on us and not them. Go to any tech company and you'd be surprized that it is likely that at least 20% are foreign-born people and close to 50% are the first generation from foreign-born immigrants, same deal with universities and research. I have first hand experience in the medical field, about 30% of the new doctors in 2017 for the US were not trained in the US, and 20% of them were actually born outside. Why is it that our country is not training enough people BORN HERE to fullfill our own needs.
I think this is a reflection of the blissful ignorance that the latest waves of "conservative" politicians are stirring up. We have an unprecedented number of people that not only think that education is not important but that they are proud of being uneducated and ignorant. Don't get me wrong, I have no problem with people that are uneducated. I have a problem with people that are uneducated and are proud of it. Not everyone needs to be an engineer, a teacher, a lawyer or a doctor but if you have a large portion of your youth basically being proud of being ignorant, of never reading a book or even trusting those that did study the subject, we have a problem.