Incomes have been either erased or diminished, and will not be recouped in entirety for several agrarian and industrial sectors around the world for at least 5 to 6 years. — Aryamoy Mitra

Yep, there still is this absurd idea of an economic rebound once the pandemic is over. It will be only a statistical one, not a real economic upturn. On a global level the service sector is such a huge provider of employment that the impact that pandemic has had is quite dramatic to overall aggregate demand. Same thing goes for tourism etc. The impact will be measured in years.

In the midst of all of this, having exploited the nature of sheer capitalistic brilliance, the world's billionaires have generated over half a trillion additional dollars to their name. — Aryamoy Mitra

Have they? Likely that is counted from their wealth and not from income and from the rebounce from the initial covid scare and stock market plunge until today seen from the graph below:



This rebound to similar highs as before is utterly confusing. Yet it happens because the monetary policy that causes asset inflation and the basically the idiotic index investing that is pushing stock prices to hilarious levels. You already have stocks with P/E ratios of 1000 meaning that in orders to get back your money in earnings, you would have to wait 1000 years. Yet if you take the largest five tech companies out of the indexes, the reality would be quite different.

But if nobody has bought a house in your neighborhood for a while, but then one is sold for twice the price as the last time, congratulations neighborhood home owner! Your house is suddenly worth twice of that in yesterday and you are so rich. And that's basically the asset bubble we have today...

I'll guess people will again then ask where did the trillions of dollars go when the market crashes.

If you've ever housed dormant misanthropic proclivities, now would be a fitting time for them to manifest. — Aryamoy Mitra

Unfortunately there are too many that feel this way.

That doesn't have any bearing on the point I'm making. There are key components of a healthcare system which cannot be bought in a short timescale no matter how much money you throw at them. — Isaac

That's your first false idea, as if I'm promoting a short timescale answer. Or that just throwing money to everything is an answer. Believe me, the US is a prime example of how that goes and that with higher costs you don't always get better health care. The fact is that better health care systems do have positive outcomes, but if a pandemic breaks out, likely the best system and the best policy actions just minimize the deaths.

It's all been steadily going downhill since Reagan. Nothing in our present field of view remotely indicates the slightest desire to alter direction. I see nothing short of radical violent revolution as a viable means for actual reform in the government. Unfortunately, judging from the current attitude of the youth in America, it is likely such a thing would propel the US into a Soviet-esque nightmare. Shit is bad, and ain't nothing Biden or Trump can do. — Merkwurdichliebe

That's nice to hear positive things about the Reagan era. Unfortunately you might get that violent revolution (or something like it), which just makes things worse.

I think it was even better when Republicans had a President like Eisenhower.

Agreed. Joe won't make things better. I'm confident, though, the Biden administration won't deliberately make things worse or work against them (all-too-gradually) improving. — 180 Proof

Well, that gives a short timetable for the protests against the Biden administration to begin. The "Well, at least he isn't Trump" attitude will wear off quite quickly. I think that will happen in the fall of 2021. If we still have the corona virus then as we have now, it's a sure thing.

Tell it to Oppenheimer? — Hippyhead

Ooh, those evil diabolical physicists! I mentioned them earlier already. Still, we use the term "technology" rather than "science" when talking about nuclear weapons.

But seriously,

Where your problem arises is in a science which has a normative agenda and obviously does want to engineer reality and build a better World: medicine. Medicine, the establishing of a diagnosis, a prognosis, a treatment, and the prevention of disease is viewed as a science, not a technology. To prevent people from dying to diseases is obviously such an universal morally correct objective that here science does have an agenda. And the "Death Trap", if one dares one to call it, is of course that our understanding is limited and our actions might be counterproductive and even lethal, even if the agenda we have is to save lives.

A small anecdote how easily this can happen. When in the 1950's American doctors and researchers came to Papua New Guinea, they noticed that the indigenous tribes didn't wash themselves much and hence had the great idea of introducing soap and bathing to them. The tribal people began to use soap with the consequence that some of them died. The simple reason was that the layer of filth on the skin protected from the various critters and protozoans etc. that are found in the jungle. This actually didn't harm the relations much, as the people assumed that the foreign doctors had made the people as a ritual offering as other medicine did cure them. (This story was told to my father, a professor of virology, by a redeemed medical researcher that had been there in the 1950's and 1960's.)

We naturally have a multitude of examples starting from Medieval medicine how our ignorance and limited knowledge has put us on the wrong path and in my view modern psychiatry is still hopelessly lost as we don't understand the brain and sentience and what we term a "mental disease" is quite arbitrary and defined by societal norms.

Then they aren't actually making science. No really, science and implementation of a technology should be two separate things. Science and technology aren't synonyms, even if we do us quite loosely the term "scientific".

Anyway, I very much doubt that any philosophical thought will be built out of this forum. — Gus Lamarch

At least this forum has helped me understand mathematics better. Doesn't that count in our age of hedonism?

2) Knowledge often delivers power to edit our environment, which is typically why we seek it. — Hippyhead

Another possible angle....

The problem is not knowledge, or even power, but rather the gap between power and our maturity, or rather relative lack thereof. If science could close this gap by somehow accelerating our maturity to match the demands that will increasingly be placed upon it, in theory that could be a solution. — Hippyhead

First of all, science tells how the World is, not how it should be. It doesn't tell us which things are right and which things are wrong. Science isn't normative. We tell that to ourselves. Those normative questions are truly important, yet totally separate from using the scientific method to picture the World around us.

Unfortunately too many people think that "Science" or the "scientific" way of thought will tell us what is good and what is bad. It doesn't go so. Or then anti-scientism portrays science and the scientific community as a perpetrator of bad things: that because physicists created nuclear weapons, science is nearly evil. Again, science and use of technology are two different things.

Really? What nation did you have in mind whose health service is run primarily with the health of the nation in mind, without demands of greater efficiency being laid on it to either increase profits or reduce government expenditure, whose health industry is not suffuse with influence from multi-national pharmaceutical companies? I may well like to move there. — Isaac

Likely the countries that score the highest points in various studies with the public health sector.

Japan for example has a quite well performing health care sector and it has scored in many investigation top places with it's health care sector compared to others. And it's doing just fine with the pandemic: see How Japan’s Universal Health Care System Led to COVID-19 Success

Needless to say, in such rankings the US ranks quite low.

I think your answer points out fairly well just what happens.

And if the virus infection rates have been low (as here in Finland), then there is the factor of a single event turning the stats up. One example of this happened in a small city called Vaasa located in Northern Finland. The city has a small university and of course, as usual, it was a large student party that was the reason for the spreader event. Some time later the city turned red with all indicators with over 600 new infections in a region with typically well below 100 cases since the start of the pandemic. The city went to lock-down and forbid any meetings over 10 people.

Yet I think the ordinary flu season has caused people to be alarmed as anybody showing signs of flu will typically take a corona test. My son in school said he had a sore throat and off he went home and to take a virus test. Schools are easily shut down if there is a covid-positive case. A lot of people have been off from work to be getting a test, hence I assume these usually negative tests will keep people on guard.

It's not about the simple act of spending money on a problem, it's about where the money's spent. — Isaac

Again here notice that it isn't just one or two governments doing this, this is a global effort. And in that global effort there might be also players that are indeed effective, even if many are inefficient.

If you talk about US health care, that's obviously stupendously ineffective and costly when it comes to the money actually spent and results that are dismal, but this isn't just an US effort. The argument of " healthcare services have been stripped to the bone and the scraps sold to the highest bidder" might hold true in one national example, but to argue that ALL NATIONS have gone this route is false.

Europe looks bad compared to other continents:

It's lunacy to invest this amount of money in a medicine which might not even work when there's absolutely proven interventions which we know will save tens of thousands of lives not only now but in the next one, and the next one... — Isaac

I wouldn't call it lunacy especially as the investment does also go into treatment, not only in a vaccine.

The HIV pandemic that has killed roughly 32 million, killed at it's height in 2005-2006 nearly two million people annually. Now with treatment and spread of information the deaths have been reduced by some 50% and in many African countries the majority of HIV patients are receiving antiretroviral therapy. To put the investment into scope, between 2000 and 2016 about half trillion dollars was spent in HIV research globally, btw.

There isn't really a basis for this belief. — boethius

... where else would you here such an expression outside of this narrative? — Isaac

First ask yourselves, how much investment and focus is put into vaccine research generally? Compare that with what is now happening with Covid-19. You think those billions now poured into various vaccine programs by major countries won't have an effect? That the 100 or so vaccine development programs currently underway won't matter? They are just scams of big pharma ripping off governments and totally useless or something?

Usually vaccine development is something like the following decade long process:


Accuse me of being a naive optimist, but I do think that the Covid-19 vaccine will take far less than 10 years to come out.

And anyway, how many hospitals are declaring now that they have shortages with masks and other equipment? At least here no hospitals or authorities are declaring similar worries as they did during the spring. And no one is shaking hands and usually people have changed their habits, so things aren't the same as they were in the spring.

Let's stay negative! Errrrr... — Benkei

You are always so positive, Benkei. :grin:

And then the reality of Alaska:

Let us hope for a negative result, Tiff!

Would 'Student Birth' be better? Professors have students.

Born Student?

Interesting, even if the doctor went a bit off the topic when looking at population age pyramids of various countries.

Yet it's very interesting to compare the death rates that given here and compare them to what and wrote on the first page of this thread 8 months ago. While the overall mortality rate especially with below 70 year olds is far lower than then anticipated, the death rate among people over 80 infected with covid-19 seems to be accurate even then (if I remember correctly the numbers from the video).

But it was seen coming.

There were lot of plans already in existence. In the US both the Bush and Obama administrations had done extensive plans how to tackle a pandemic.

Yes, Trump is one big reason, but not the only reason. Even with an administration headed by President Hillary Clinton, the US response wouldn't have been exemplar.

The main reason is simply that health officials don't make plans like the Armed Forces do with their OPPLANs (Operational Plan). The Military makes these plans to be able to immediately react to a situation, if North Korea attacks South Korea or if China invades Taiwan etc. and systematically and rigorously trains for these events. Yet other government institutions don't plan and exercise in truly similar fashion. Other departments of the government are designed to be efficient in normal times, they usually have no excess personnel or resources to handle a large scale crisis happening out of the blue, they will get their act up only basically in 6 months or so.

Which is pretty amazing. Part of the reason shortages were a problem was that supply lines stopped during the lockdown. IOW, our ability to respond to it depends on limiting lockdown. — frank

And also to get orders in, have a normal competition and inspection. This simply doesn't happen in few weeks or in a month. But in several months, then the capitalist machine gets it's act together.

Also the speed that we will get a vaccine will likely be impressive.

Yet notice that the number of deaths hasn't gone up in similar fashion. For the health sector covid-19 starts to be an old "known friend".

Notice that there aren't many news articles reporting shortages in critical equipment starting with masks. The industry has been able to respond in half a year.

Ok. Quoting what I wrote two years ago. Well, not much has changed. :smile:

Sasha Baron Cohen has a habit of fooling Republicans into hotel rooms. Remember Cohen as Bruno with Ron Paul.

A continuation to the tape of Donald Trump sexually harassing Rudy Giuliani in drag?

So now we believe the FBI. But not before. :smirk:

To understand modern science one ought to look first at philosophers from the Age of Enlightenment, empiricists like John Locke, David Hume and George Berkeley. Empiricism is a crucial part to understand the scientific method. When you have them understood, then modern philosophers like Popper and Feyerabend are handy and for the social aspects of making science, Thomas Kuhn.

Then of course, a short introduction to the history to the various branches of science should be informative.

Another example. Why are dogs so incredibly popular? Because they are great friends, whom we can control. When they become inconvenient we don't have to listen to their boring stories, we can just put them in the backyard. We can leave them in the backyard all day while we're at work so that they're bored out of their minds and desperate for companionship. And so when we arrive home we are greeted by a very enthusiastic friend. We can do what we want. We can get what we want. We are in control.

It's hard for real life human beings to compete with that, because engaging with real life humans involves all kinds of compromises. — Hippyhead

Commitment to a relationship is seen as a burden and our consumer society upholds individualism alongside materialism. There are long term changes behind these developments, starting for example on the number of people being single.



And this isn't just because people can opt to live together without being married. This is a global trend we are seeing:


Nor is it just an issue of there being more elder people. The picture below from a Japanese study "A Community of Connections: Looking Forward to the Solo Society" shows well what is happening even if the cultural background of Japan is quite different:

The way we converse on the web is totally different from the way we do in person. What I can't tell for sure is that, whether this rude talk on the web is going to consequently reflect in our offline interactions. — Konkai

I fear that the online behavior will have an effect on our "offline" interactions. And the reasoning behind that might be that "having manners" and "being polite" is seen to be hypocritical and just a facade while the "online" way of talking is more "honest". Some people can have this attitude towards others, but I don't agree with them. Having good manners is a serious issue in any society and this isn't realized in the "online" community, where flaming, trolling or being redflagged isn't a big issue.

For serious defamation one can be put for two years into jail here even if the criminal punishments are lax in this country (as involuntary manslaughter has the similar jail term of two years).

Yes again. This is one of the big drawbacks of the forum/social media publishing model which prioritizes inclusiveness over quality. Those we might most wish to talk to are bored by the discussions and have largely left the medium long ago. Back in the nineties when all of this was new some of the most interesting people engaged, until they realized what the signal to noise ratio was going to be. Many or most users today don't even realize what has been lost. — Hippyhead

Inclusiveness indeed lowers the quality and creates that noise. I do miss many members here that truly upheld some topics in the Forum with an educative approach and gave fruitful responses yet had the persistence to answer those who obviously didn't know much more than the basics.

Gatekeepers are needed. The problem is that then the higher quality discussions retreat to those "Ivory Towers", you get a divide between the public discourse and the professional discourse. If the topic is philosophy, this is just unfortunate as many here would enjoy and learn from top of the line philosophers commenting each other. But when it is the political sphere, for a democracy it is most unfortunate. When the public discourse doesn't at all reflect the actual reality, this creates huge problems.

That seems to be a pattern which transcends the Net. My Dad (1925-2000) used to talk about this even before the Net took off. People really did used to be more polite in general (assuming we ignore blatant racism, sexism, homophobia etc), but that came in part from a more confining and controlling social environment where people were trained to worry about things like "what will the neighbors think?" Nobody gives much of a #%^ what the neighbors think these days, a form of social liberation, which comes at a price. — Hippyhead

I think this is a perfect example how the society is breaking up or changing. Earlier society gave us far more rules to adhere to and we kept far more in touch with our neighbors and family. People did visit extensively their family members and friends, while now something like Facebook makes everything so easy. The real issue is that we substitute actual socializing with net & social media use, and those are not the same thing.

If social media moves more from text to video, perhaps that will restore some of the social clues we need to stop acting like animals? — Hippyhead

I don't think this would help much. It could perhaps make things even worse. During this pandemic teleconferencing, using Zoom or Microsoft Teams etc. has become very typical. Yet if you have met a person only through the net in these situations even with the camera on, that person is still quite remote to those that you have actually met.

Let's take this site as an example: if we wouldn't be anonymous and wouldn't use avatars, but our actual names and photos of ourselves and share even our addresses, not everybody would change their behavior. And that is all that is needed. You can already see it with social media. If you are an American, then likely there is the Atlantic ocean between us, which is an obvious physical barrier. Yet if every PF would suddenly move to the same city, it is very likely that someone would have the idea of having a physical meeting, go for a beer or so. That would change the social behavior radically. Now it's extremely easy just stop coming to the site and as someone already said, nobody would care if a member drops out. No forum member will come ring your doorbell and say: "Hey Hippyhead, we haven't seen you for a while in the philosophy forum, everything all right?"

I have yet to find a genuine critique and criticism of Peterson that is mature and coherent - I think he would welcome it himself. — yebiga

Good luck finding that mature and coherent criticism of anybody today.

It's true that net and social media interaction alters our way of discuss issues as many things are left out from net conversations that would happen in ordinary interaction.

It's not only facial expressions or postures as mentioned, very important things like age, sex and status of the people we meet aren't apparent in the net. The situation is different if you meet face to face in the physical philosophy club that mentioned 19 year old freshmen students or if the club members are made of 50- to 70-year old professors of philosophy and other academic people. In an anonymous site it is hard to make the difference who is talking. If somebody in PF is shown that his ideas in math are simply wrong, the typical response is that the member (usually a new one) simply insists that he or she is right. I don't know how many would react in the same way in front of a mathematics lecture in the university and continue insisting that the lecturer is totally wrong and they are right.

Unfortunately with social media our behavior is changing as there obviously are many people who don't care how or to whom they are talking or basically talk in a totally differently in the net as they would do in real life.

One anecdote of this comes to mind what happened few years ago in this site. I was referring to book about science and author came on line and joined the discussion. As I had read the book and knew that the author was a science reporter (and one not so well known), I understood that the journalist likely had googled his book and then joined the discussion. Unfortunately there was another very annoying PF member that simply could not fathom the idea that the genuine authors could participate a discussion about their book in this forum, so this guy went on with a nasty flaming tirade accusing the author being a troll and worse. The author saw that it was meaningless to continue discussion. A similar response in real life would mean that the other PF member would have severe mental problems.

I feel that the we are moving into a time where behavior from the net and social media will start have an effect how we will interact also in normal physical life. Hence people will be more impolite, rude and judging and just fixated on themselves. And if people behave this way, it's likely that loneliness becomes more common and we look for contacts of our liking in the net.

The excessive military presence around the world.
A burgeoning police-state. The corporate corruption of the political process. The gradual erosion of constitutional rights. — Merkwurdichliebe

I would add upholding a fraudulent bubble economy, which doesn't create much else than asset inflation that deepens the divide between the rich and others. And benefits the financial sector.

I'm not concerned with racism, xenophobia, self-righteousness, pettiness, and intolerance. Those are mere symptoms based in the frustration over the seeming futility of enacting true change. — Merkwurdichliebe

But those are great issues to focus on during an exceptionally bad economic downturn that people somehow still think will go away once the pandemic is gone.

I think of our predicament like an animal trapped in a cage trying to break free, doing whatever it can to break free. But it cannot find the bars of the cage, so it creates an imaginary cage with imaginary bars that can be readily found, thus it can have something to potentially break free of. — Merkwurdichliebe

Does the animal want to find the bars of the cage or really think how the cage is built?

If the basic problem is a corrupt two-party system, it simply will not go away by voting the two-party system once again into office. How intelligent people do not understand that the way to control people is to divide them is beyond me. So go off and hate each other. Just look at this forum on how the media narrative has an effect on what people here talk about. As if it's Nazi time / Commie time if you don't go and vote your side of the duopoly.

The worst end result is that people then don't believe in democracy or the values that the country was built upon.

I can say that Sweden, my home country had a development like that from say 1920 up til 2010 after which globalization issues with a very large immigration and unstable job market has caused a very unstable poltical landscape and a lot of frictions. — Ansiktsburk

So... nothing dramatic happened until 2010???

Even if off the topic, I'd argue that a lot has happened in Sweden before that. Perhaps starting from the huge influx of Finns, half a million, coming over in the late 60's and early 70's to your country. Half a million is still a large number. We tend to overemphasize the changes of the present.

Moving to Sweden for jobs and better wages!


In the US context it should also be noted that the country has seen turmoil also... and well after it's civil war.

Have to agree with , as this is way off.

Just putting things into context, how many people in the US are actually starting to be non-believers or agnostics? Wouldn't that be the real change?

Pew Research Center telephone surveys conducted in 2018 and 2019 show that 4% of American adults say they are atheists when asked about their religious identity, up from 2% in 2009. An additional 5% of Americans call themselves agnostics, up from 3% a decade ago.

Now a little bit more than 1% of Americans are muslim and by 2050 the U.S. Muslim population is projected to reach 8.1 million, or 2.1% of the nation’s total population. That's hardly a huge change.

I noticed the similar narrative here too with the utterly crazy idea that Europe is turning muslim. How this was even tried to be argued was that one simply extrapolated from the migrant crisis of 2015-2016 continuing totally unabated perpetually without any stop. With a simple understanding of statistics, of course you could see dramatic transformation if you start extrapolating from the year 2015 or better yet, assume an increase up to 2015 continuing. With the real data, this all is simply ludicrous.



What, of course, is totally forgotten is that the migrant crisis as it was then ended and today the EU does control it's borders more (not only because of covid-19). Last time Turkey's Erdogan tried to blackmail the EU to give concessions and opened it's borders for migrants to push into Greece, the EU stood totally with Greece and a new huge influx of migrants didn't happen as Greece kept it's borders shut.

Of course this latter developments don't fit the anti-immigration narrative, so it's forgotten.

Interesting to see that now Sweden isn't taking a hit anymore as before.




In fact, the numbers of new infections in Sweden is quite the same as other Nordic countries and Estonia without any huge spikes upward:


Not only has the lethality of the pandemic obviously decreased, but now interestingly countries are on different path.

The reason that Sweden opted for a more lax policy is of course Anders Tegnell, who recommendations the leftist administration has followed. Yet even now herd immunity as an policy option is refuted even by Tegnell himself: "people getting infected on purpose is of course not [in] accordance with any public health policy. We tried to slow down the spread of the virus as much as anybody else in any other country. And we managed to slow it down just as much as most other countries. It took slightly longer than other countries. On the other hand, we don't have the resurgence of the disease that those countries have. - In the end, we will see how much difference it will make to have a strategy that's more sustainable that you can keep in place for a long time instead of the strategy that means that you lockdown, open and lockdown over and over again."

I have no idea how American net corporations make their own regulations, obviously using an army of hilariously overpaid woke lawyers teamed with woke pr-managers alongside other managers and executives creating the most hypocrite and virtue signaling mess of inconsistent guidelines which then can be interpreted whatever way some woke employee of the corporation wants...or by myriad algorithms.

Here in Finland they have already cut back the times restaurants and pubs are open and the administration is thinking of tougher measures, but not going into lock-down again (at this time). Public gatherings beyond 20 people are not advised.

Third Parties like the Green Party are notorious among activists going back decades for wasting all their mental energy and funds every 4 years on the Presidential campaign when it's statistically guaranteed to failure by the nature of the winner-take-all electoral system. To the extent some of the members try to take power in local politics, they have been incompetent failures with a few exceptions, perhaps because all the competent people stay away from third parties because they don't want to waste their time. — Saphsin

This is true. Ah, to get a presidential candidate to "get people to notice the party". It's psychology: people see everywhere just how fed up with the two ruling parties, want change in an instant and think it could be possible. How about getting people to notice the party at first on the local level at city and municipal level? Likely best way would to many sister parties starting at the state level, as the US is made of quite different places.

Consumers are about as dumb as it comes, hard to believe they can be dumbed down even further.
I would say Apple has mastered that strategy better than any other corporation. — Merkwurdichliebe

Even if this is going a bit off topic, I agree.

Although they still have buttons and ports, to make it difficult... uh, call that back:

Apple is said to be planning a major change in the top-end 2021 iPhone model. If predictions made by noted Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo are to be believed the Cupertino, California-based company is planning to kill the Lightning port in the highest-end 2021 iPhone model. By ditching the Lightning port, Apple will make the iPhone completely free of ports as it is only port present in the iPhone models right now after the company stopped including the 3.5mm audio jack after iPhone 6S.

For instance, Rome and to a greater extent Greece have to be condemned for their ethno-supremacism, for instance, though it must be said that Rome appears to have been far less ethno-supremacist than Greece, see e.g.: — Tristan L

Yet is this different from the view of the Egyptians, the Chinese or the Aztecs? What I gather, large empires are typically quite ethno-supremacist and quite full of themselves.

If that is so, then I believe it shouldn’t be. — Tristan L

I agree. But usually we assume that people are making a statement of today when referring to history. Yet history in itself deserves focus, even some times it hasn't got much in common with our present.

That may be the etymology of the word but you know that’s not its meaning in this context. In this context it means the capital-owners, in contrast to the laborers. — Pfhorrest

The Bourgeoisie would be close to upper-middle class. Those people who indeed do have actually capital, at least once in older age they have paid their debts to the bank.

. I think Marx unfairly ignores the true middle class that he ought to be championing — Pfhorrest

I think the counterargument would be that in the time of Marx there wasn't a true middle class.

Blame it on the media?

An NBC News affiliate, KUSA-TV, said on its website that the man taken arrested for the shooting was a security guard hired by the television station to provide protection to its crew.

“It has been the practice of (KUSA) for a number of months to hire private security to accompany staff at protests,” the station said.

Likely the way America's new "civil war" will transpire.

The asset inflation is a big deal in the UK at the moment, as I pointed out in the Brexit thread. It is done through property in the UK. The housing stock has not kept up with demand for over 40 years, resulting in house price inflation. This results in the middle classes and the rich reaping the rewards. Many areas have seen over 1000% increase in value over the period. — Punshhh

As you noticed, in the UK there is more physical demand for houses as your population has rapidly grown, as the following graph shows:



Yet housing not keeping up with this isn't the cause for asset inflation. Housing prices going up because of excess demand is the natural response how the market mechanism works. It provides an incentive to build more houses.

However, with asset inflation there is another phenomenon present. Asset inflation happens when the financial sector can give longer loans on lower interest with less own collateral needed, which makes then the prices spike up. People. with the same income as earlier, can now afford buying a more expensive house.

Imagine if people had to pay 60% of the price of a house in cash from their own savings immediately. Few could do it and the housing prices would collapse.

Unfortunately we are now in the predicament that this is a bubble just as we are descending into a depression caused by Covid and Brexit. — Punshhh

The elites didn't let the bubble burst during the financial crisis and they are desperately trying to let it correct even now. That is the actual policy. We have to remember, that the interest rates are at an all time low in written history now.

Bank of England base rate, now 0,1%:


This is the real policy problem: the bursting of this bubble would mean deflation, and that has been taught to be as the worst possible thing to happen. Well, it's the worst possible thing to happen if you have debt. And those who really have debt are the very rich.