Andrew Atkin:
Housing and Population control:
It's a bit strange how banks nowadays are happy to lend young people huge amounts of money for a home, when in times past they would not have.
What's the difference?
I can speculate with a fair bit of confidence that it's because they know your expenses are a lot lower today. They know that if you have children at all, it will most likely be just 1 or 2 (especially if you're Caucasian) and you won't have them until you're in your 30's or later, for if you wish to afford them at all.
Hence the banks know that you can and will live to pay off that mortgage. Hence they can and will lend you a fortune.
One problem. In a housing supply-constricted market, the amount of money the banks lend out will heavily dictate what houses finally cost. Because access-to-credit inflates prices via the non-stop bidding war on land, due to the *inflexible* supply-response to financial inputs.
The result?
Housing becomes so expensive by default, that you can't have 3 or 4 children when you're young, not even if you want to. The banks and the previous property owners have effectively run away with the family-funding for themselves.
Hence the trend gets locked down into an inevitability. The banks go from predicting your childlessness to functionally creating it, as they fuel the housing market higher with their ever more "generous" lending practices.
Rural Urban Boundaries are, intentionally or not, population control policy. And powerful policy at that.
More: Operation Population Control
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