I'm not sure if I wish they'd go away.
If housing were more affordable, we could easily have 10B people on the planet right now. Most people truly want to have families. They want homes to raise those families. People can't go own reproducing forever. Could we have had 2% population increase over the last 30 years in the US instead of 1%?
Yes, but we'd already be over 10B people. In another 30 years, we'd be at close to 20B. It's not sustainable.
And even if it was, it's not necessarily a better situation. Who's to say that education, health care, food and other basic necessities wouldn't be more scarce and cause the overall cost of living to be even higher? Inequality would almost certainly be much worse.
The Malthusian trap plagued the world since the beginning of mankind. Until the industrial revolution, life for the average person was getting substantially worse over time. Then suddenly, productivity growth outpaced population growth, and we went through -- objectively the best time in human history. This is a time that includes monstrosities like the world wars and the threat of nuclear winter, and it it's BY FAR the best time humanity has ever seen.
Productivity growth is starting to decline. Do I think that making housing more affordable and jump-starting population growth to keep GDP numbers increasing at a steady clip is a good trade off? No.
Cheap housing sounds great. But I don't think it's a miracle pill. There are unintended consequences to everything. I wish we lived in a fantasy Utopia where everyone could be hold hands and be happy all day, but we don't.
