Morgan Housel

Probably understands it more than anyone and can articulate it very well.

The book Stuck is very good and the history of zoning.

And zoning started really as a way to keep Chinese immigrants out of white people's neighborhoods.

And it started with that and just expanded and expanded and expanded.

And so it has like very strict racial beginnings that came into something that almost every city in America now practices.

And when you frame it again as the first part of the equation, like if the value of your house doubles, you didn't gain anything because the house that you have to buy.

So frame it as this.

We are stifling young people's ability to buy a house so that old people can raise the value of their house.

When they're not actually gaining anything at all to begin with.

And so here's the other thing that's so crazy about this.

To Trump's comment, if we build more houses, the value of homes would fall and that would hurt people.

It wouldn't actually hurt them.

If your house is currently worth a million dollars and then we build tons of houses and now it's worth 500, you didn't lose anything.

And so much of this is the vast majority of it is local rules and laws.

And if you think national politics is dysfunctional, local is much more so.

I have two views on this.

One is it's just as broken and detrimental.

to have a mentality of I can't spend this money to the person who can't spend it fast enough and runs himself over a cliff.

It's just as much of a mental illness in that situation.

And if you talk to a lot of financial advisors, they will tell you the number one psychological ailment of their clients are baby boomers who have saved several million dollars