Owning houses makes us rich, says SMH.
"Treasury's Economic Roundup, to be issued today, will show runaway housing prices drove up net private wealth by 12.6 per cent last financial year. Real wealth grew by 10 per cent per Australian, after allowing for inflation and population growth... Proportionately, more money is tied up in bricks and mortar in Australia than any other OECD country - which reduces Australia's exposure to falling share prices. Almost two-thirds of Australian private wealth is in housing, compared with one third in the US."

This is a continuation of the standard lie. Bricks and mortar depreciate over time, like all real capital. It is the value of land which is making people "rich". And land value is not wealth at all, but merely spurious capital or anti-capital, the capitalisation of an unearned income. A boom in land value should not be a matter of joy but of concern as to the inevitable bust and recession, as well as the growing inequality of the haves and havenots.

Owning houses makes us rich, says SMH.
"Treasury's Economic Roundup, to be issued today, will show runaway housing prices drove up net private wealth by 12.6 per cent last financial year. Real wealth grew by 10 per cent per Australian, after allowing for inflation and population growth... Proportionately, more money is tied up in bricks and mortar in Australia than any other OECD country - which reduces Australia's exposure to falling share prices. Almost two-thirds of Australian private wealth is in housing, compared with one third in the US."

This is a continuation of the standard lie. Bricks and mortar depreciate over time, like all real capital. It is the value of land which is making people "rich". And land value is not wealth at all, but merely spurious capital or anti-capital, the capitalisation of an unearned income. A boom in land value should not be a matter of joy but of concern as to the inevitable bust and recession, as well as the growing inequality of the haves and havenots.