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pixel_of_moral_decay t1_je291yl wrote

Reply to comment by Nuplex in Rents high. What is your alternative to increasing housing supply? by paul-e-walnts

Japans housing is cheap because labor is almost free there, so a house is only worth the building material.

People forget China’s biggest export to the rest of Asia is migrant workers to Japan, who work for almost nothing (and there’s a whole lot of race relations issues with China/Japan only made more complicated by that). And it’s only slightly better than how UAE treats its migrant workers.

It’s also why Japan is always quiet when China escalates tensions in the region. Poking that bear would harm their economy more than it would give them opportunities. Japan would be crushed if it lost all that labor.

The US doesn’t have a cheap source of labor like that.

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vams19 t1_je2hpsa wrote

Lol no , labor has nothing to do with it .. have you seen housing price appreciation in China in India. In even mid tier cities in India house prices have 10x in past 10 - 15 years and India has ample labor. Labor has nothing to do with this.

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pixel_of_moral_decay t1_je2s7dg wrote

China and India are government backed property investment schemes. It’s just a grift to get foreign dollars in and domestic money to stay there.

Here’s one of thousands of videos of people exploring China’s construction bubble and the cardboard (literally) towers: https://youtu.be/XopSDJq6w8E

You can find tons of videos of urban explorers going through these. Just be warned you’ll subsequently be bombarded with ads about foreign real estate after watching one or two.

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henry_sqared t1_je321m1 wrote

>The US doesn’t have a cheap source of labor like that

Mexico would like a word.

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pixel_of_moral_decay t1_je3283i wrote

Not even close.

Labor laws and employment laws still apply, and especially in blue states are reasonably well enforced.

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