I think the true cause of the unaffordable housing is the insanely low interest rates. The people at the helm are attempting growth at all costs.

Edit: it is really interesting to contrast Toronto with SF. Both are really nice places to live without cost of living concerns. Both have insane home prices. Rents are relatively cheap in Toronto because of basic demand and supply. SF has great paying jobs, Toronto does not. Will be interesting to see how things pan out over the next decade in both cities.

Between 2001 and 2011, the number dwellings in Toronto increased 11%, while areas 30km from the downtown core grew about 35%. You can clearly see the effects of the 10m restriction on urban sprawl at p. 11 of the city's census backgrounder:

http://www1.toronto.ca/city_of_toronto/social_development_fi...

Detached homes and town-homes use twice as much energy as apartments, and people commuting 30km to the city generally drive. There has been an uptick in apartment construction recently, but these units are generally too small for families because developers find it more profitable to sell mini-suites to young bachelors.

I don't think very tall buildings are the answer. More and better communal services and smaller more efficient properties. I think that would go a fair way.

Back in the day, America, and even in Britain, housed their servant class.

Today, sure the servant class is "free" to the degree they're not literally called servants, but I think we're doing things worse when it comes to housing. This servant class is priced out of the employer's neighborhood market to be sure, but often all surrounding neighborhoods, and increasingly even the town, that their employer resides in. They're effectively exported at the end of their service day, and imported when needed again the next. I think it's disgusting.

Seems history is repeating itself, judging from the wording of your post.

You think billionaires just buy treasuries or CDs and wait for their wealth to evaporate through inflation? That money is invested, including into the VC funds that make the SV startup lifestyle possible.

(Did you think that your savings account at the bank is just held as treasuries? The bank invests it.)

It's actually a bit more complicated than that:

http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/Documents/quarte...

You say that as though it's a good thing

Everyone loves to rail against wealth inequality (talk about populism...) but nobody ever explains why wealth inequality is so bad. So the 1% has a large concentration of the wealth. If we took all their money and distributed it evenly among all citizens it would barely move the needle in terms of living standards. Someone having 1000 times more money than you doesn't really affect you. In fact, that money is likely floating around the economic system anyways in the form of investments.

Asking that the government liberate that money – which in terms of total tax revenue is a rounding error – does not seem like a good policy given how incompetent the government has proven itself to be when spending the money it already collects. I'd rather there be a few fat-cats sitting on yachts doing nothing (which is better than bombing brown people or spying on me) and have a Bill Gates and Elan Musk actually tackling important problems than have no fat-cats at all and a slightly larger government making all the same mistakes they make today with no visionary capitalists to speak of. Call me crazy.

This is observably not true. Prices increase for everyone when average incomes (demand) go up. So if people around me suddenly start making more and I don't, suddenly, I'm paying more for things, and am worse off. If you want a concrete example look at Bay Area housing prices.

And besides, you're not addressing my point. You're trying to explain supply and demand for some reason and ignoring the fact that I said "1000 times more money" which means the ultra rich, which is the group that progressives like to scapegoat.

Explain to me how anyone from the 1% "observably" negatively affects your daily life in significant way.

So don't ask the government to liberate the existing holdings of the 1%, ask them to change policy to cutoff the supply.

The tax code is so overwhelmingly in favour of the investing class that, if it were re-balanced, you wouldn't have to take anyone's money to achieve a similar outcome in a decade.

Except this 1% are exactly the sort that have the resources to just leave Canada if it ceases to be financially favourable. It's unfortunately not so cut and dry.

Further, while it is true that "federal income tax" does not include FICA, FICA is a tax on income and the poorest sod pays FICA tax from the very first dollar of income. So it's kinda misleading to say the bottom 45% won't pay any income (related) tax whatsoever.

You can have a case where those 45% are paying 7.65% of their pittance of income on FICA, with no additional income related tax, where someone wealthy enough who has no earned income is paying 0% federal income tax or capital gains tax or FICA on their unearned investment income. And that's just a small example.

I hate how people constantly move the goalposts when it come to claiming that a certain minority of people aren't "paying their fair share". You know who else doesn't pay taxes on unearned income? The 99%. That's about as fair as it can get.

FICA goes to benefits that overwhelmingly favor the poor compared to the rich, so I don't find that argument compelling either.

Your original claim was that the tax code heavily favored the 1% but so far all you've managed to back that up with is a tax rate on their unearned income being the exact same as it is for the 99%'s unearned income. Hardly convincing.

You have to make enough money for starters in order to have income sources that are unearned, so yes this is favored at people who make money. The very wealthy, the 1%, aren't making this money from earned income, they make it from unearned income.