Morgan Housel

There's no cities in America anywhere near the size of Tokyo.

And it has relatively cheap housing because they build and build and build and build and build.

I think part of it, just from the psychology of politics, it's much more appealing to people.

If you say you've been screwed by that guy

and I have a fix that can help you tomorrow.

That guy screwed you and I can lower interest rates tomorrow.

That's appealing.

I have a villain and I have an easy, quick, short-term solution that you can implement right now.

It's much harder if you say the villain here

are millions and millions of people across the country who are, by and large, well-meaning, probably just didn't understand the consequences of their action.

And the solution is, even if we start tomorrow, it's gonna take years.

It's gonna take years and years to build homes.

You're not gonna win any elections with that argument, even if that's what it is.

Now, a good precedent for what we're dealing with here was the end of World War II, when during the war, we, by and large, didn't build a single house in America, because we were building tanks and airplanes and guns and whatnot.

And so we didn't build any homes.

And then the late 1940s, 16 million GIs come home from Europe and Japan.

16 million, huge.

And by and large, they were 20 to 30 years old.

They wanted more than anything, stability.

They had just been in war for several years.