There’s a housing crisis in the United States. Even though it’s been almost 10 years since the housing meltdown that happened in 2008,, there is still massive distortion in the market as a consequence of that crisis. Economics at its core is about causes and effects. Millions of people lost their homes and now rent because their credit was destroyed and can no longer qualify for a mortgage loan. Hedge funds bought up 100’s of thousands of houses and now rent out those houses at a nice profit to the very same people that lost their homes. The misery is concentrated most in the people that are the least protected.
There are people who will read that last paragraph and want to discount the message it sends. To eliminate the influence it might have so that they can alleviate their guilt and responsibility over that outcome. No one wants to take the blame for the benefits they receive by the system. Everyone thinks they have earned their wealth and position and that there is no guilt allowed in a capitalist system. Sure, in a real capitalist situation I would agree with them. But the mortgage market hasn’t been operating under true principles of capitalism for a very long time.
There are so many distortions in the housing market that it is unlikely to operate as a real capitalist system ever in the United States. But it isn’t capitalism that is the problem. It isn’t the borrowers that don’t pay their mortgages on time either. It’s the laziness and lack of talent of the leaders in the markets today. They want sure things while taking no risks. They don’t want to think of ways to make risks manageable because it’s easier to game the system for short term profits and to blackmail like-minded government officials into playing along.
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