Canada

I don't even blame (most of) our politicians (much). They were never in a position to dictate the world order, yet were subject to the rise of globalism and the advent of nations having to compete (sacrifice both monetarily and ecologically) for corporate participation. It was that or follow the various hard-left states that become impoverished pariahs if not outright overthrown. A major upside to potential U.S. collapse now is the possibility that the rest of the western world can collectively agree to stop doing that. It could then instead make capitalism pay-to-play with public cartels (collaborating nations) setting progressive prices that keep wealth distributed and fund kickstarting every new generation.

What I blame is laissez faire capitalism for rewarding and thus encouraging speculation and hoarding, neoliberalism for rebranding learned collective helplessness as a virtue, and most especially the economists and capitalists whose motivated reasoning laid this system's foundation. We (as a nation) should have forcibly maintained a balanced housing supply indefinitely, and should never have promoted homes as an investment vehicle. Middle class wealth should have been as much as possible invested into our own productivity and continued influence as shareholders. Those are maybe our own national-scale unforced errors.

I really don't know how it became the prevailing wisdom that we should all pour our wealth into the only physical asset that magically appreciates as it deteriorates -- like that was a perfectly reasonable thing to expect.

When I hear Carney praise the power of markets, it makes me sweat even as I know he's still clearly the best option. It is a tremendous relief seeing this housing initiative because it rewards my hope that he'll actually deign to put his hand on the tiller. I'm still worried this could go poorly in terms of positive effect vs reduction of public resources and future recourse, but I was/am way more worried about the consequences of not even trying.

Even if it delivers fantastically, it won't be enough. The natural forces that make power (of every kind, but most especially wealth) converge into few hands can only be slowed without the active management that's impossible when neoliberalism is the world order. But who know? Maybe we can at least add a layer of financialization and abstraction that shifts the next looming collapse away from people's homes.

Props for finding some actually pretty good long-term data on Stats Canada, BTW. It is kind of nuts seeing all the numbers stay around roughly the same ballpark, all the way back to when we had half today's population. Despite no major fluctuations or spikes, literally fewer housing starts in 2010 than 1970.