I'm sure someone will figure out a way to blame this on capitalism.
(But seriously, this is the "tragedy of the commons" in action, where non-private schooling is a shared space and thus part of "the commons".)
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(But seriously, this is the "tragedy of the commons" in action, where non-private schooling is a shared space and thus part of "the commons".)
But I think the root causes here are more cultural. When I was coming up decades and decades ago we valued highly educated people, Americas rocket scientists and such. Over time, however, people started thinking education wasn't masculine, that it wasn't cool. Then social media hit the scenes and people started amplifying some of our worst instincts -- anti vaccine, anti intellectualism, pro conspiracy. What used to be your fringe neighbor became someone who could influence online.
Add the Vietnam, the gulf war, 9/11, Iraq and Afghanistan, and you've got generational trauma of sending generations of youth off to fight. That interrupts a lot of education and when those folks become parents they have different values towards education.
Plus, as you describe, schools are a commons. We systematically under pay and under value teachers, while over paying and over valuing admin.
And there is an anti collectivist culture in the US now. In labor and in community, there's much less "let me give up my time for the community" and much more "how can I get mine" mindset.
I think it's really complicated and a lot of different factors play a part. I don't think there's a single root cause, and it's going to take a while to unwind.
Well. We doubled the labour pool with women entering it full-time, but we didn't double the value created. We increased it further with blind-eyeing illegal immigration. Both of those lower wages and increase costs, which mean there's less time available (if only one of you works, then the other has a lot of free time to build community).
I'll avoid moron-baiting by stating the obvious that women entering the workforce isn't a bad thing, etc etc, but it does have a certain economic effect, and it doesn't stop at the women who want to work. It pulls everyone in, as house prices are up-bidded by double incomes.
For something like housing there are a lot of factors; construction supply chain, construction labor, permitting processes, zoning, private equity/speculation, tax rates, inter-state immigration, inter-country immigration, etc.
If you have people immigrating into a localized area faster than housing supply increases, it will increase the price of housing.
If you have vacant homes somewhere else in the country than the places people want to be (or where the immigrants are going) then it will have no downward pressure on pricing. There is nothing meaningful in a point that assumes the entire country is one market, as if supply/demand isn't tightly coupled specific locations.
When I installed French drains the guy that inspected and calculated the bid was American. The guy that dug the ditches and connected the house drains was Latino (I need to add that the Latino's English was better than mine. He used to be elementary teacher in Everett and switched to construction. He explained to me the term "lingua franca" :)).
In my neighbourdhood I also see a lot of Chinese laborers working in construction (the population of my neighbourdhood is probably 50% Chinese, and the rest either Korean or Japanese or South East Asian or Indian.)
I hardly ever see US born people working in construction around me.
However if immigration disproportionately adds to construction labor supply, and if construction labor supply is the primary bottlebeck for housing supply growth, then immigration would indeed lower the price of housing.
To be clear I'm not anti immigration, I'm not Republican and I'm not even American.
I just saw a question (which I realize in hindsight was politically charged) that seemed to ignore some basic economic principles, and for some reason today I felt compelled to respond.
It's also worth noting that the comment I replied to was edited after I replied to it.
Lots of them are holiday homes, not investments. But the fundamental economic driver that makes them investments is ever-increasing demand.