this post was submitted on 07 Jun 2026
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NZ Politics

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Now, if you live in the United States, Canada, or the United Kingdom, you might be wondering why you should care about the real estate market on an island in the South Pacific. The answer is that New Zealand is basically a laboratory for what happens when an entire national economy is built on the assumption that house prices will just go up forever. It turns out that trading the same increasingly expensive boarded up bungalows back and forth with your neighbours does not actually generate any real wealth. You might ask how an economy gets into this position. The answer, as is so often the case, involves politicians. (~02:00)

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[–] Dave@lemmy.nz 2 points 3 hours ago

I haven't heard of this guy before, and a top result when searching for his name is how he plagiarised the NYT... (not this video, a different one)

Interesting part in the middle of the video where it's mentioned that globalisation caused everything to decrease in price, so central banks could just keep cutting interest rates without having to worry about inflation. Now that goods can't really get any cheaper, it no longer works, and now inflation is rising and there's no clear path to solving it other than increase interest rates and cause house prices to fall - which is political suicide.

The whole concept that rising house prices are bad for almost everyone is so easy to demonstrate, but virtually everyone is happy when their house value goes up for some reason.