But because they have so much money they can hoard resources. And they do to earn more like so: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/27/opinion/goldman-sachss-alu... They also hoard food: http://www.dw.de/germanys-dz-bank-ends-food-speculation-trad... They also can hoard companies. Buy them and harm them. This happens to most acquired startups.
The problem is not that they have a lot of money. The problem is what they do with the money. Of course it's not all bad. There are things that rich people made that benefited everybody, but I'm guessing most such things were created on the way to getting rich.
The problem is just that people want to live in the cities, and there just isn't a lot of space in the cities.
If you spread population of the world to occupy all the land evenly it would be only 300 feet from each person to its closes neighbors. So it's not that much free space.
> The problem is just that people want to live in the cities, and there just isn't a lot of space in the cities.
And this makes the problem of price elevation from hoarding real estate even more pronounced.
People will live where they can find jobs, and the very concentration of people brings in even more jobs to cities. As much as some cite the amenities of large cities to stay, a very large portion of the retiring population move away as soon as they don't need to work anymore.
And that reduced demand doesn't come from people needing less real estate to live. Just from the fact that real estate reached prices that most people can't afford even if they pay with slaving their whole life for mortgage.
Reasonable price for apartment would be what most people could save up during the time they still live with their parents. But since real estate backed credit is legal that's not gonna happen. Such credit allows people to sell their future work in a manner almost perfectly safe for the bank. Thanks to this since you need place to live to have a life it can cost huge part of what you earn in life.