Because the financialization of homes, plus the interests and insecurities of tens of millions of homeowners, create hellishly powerful incentives to restrict the supply of homes.
Everything else is just piddly details on exactly where & how & how much water is inevitably flowing downhill.
People don't need incentives to try and block projects; they do that on their own. NIMBYism only requires that someone not like change and that desire often prevails despite financial benefits of change.
Perhaps. But if you look into the history of that idea, you may notice that it's almost always applied to the young and the lower classes. Perhaps the Baron, Bishop, and Business Magnates are too godly to be at risk?
> (Honest disclaimer: I am talking here solely about my white collar bubble, no idea about blue collar to be honest. Not much contact with people from that field unfortunately)
Even ignoring your "BUT! Is this a survival strategy? While [...]" point - try talking to the farmers and blue collar workers upon whom your day-to-day life is critically dependent.
Become an electrician or power systems electrical engineer. Because in a gold rush it's a crap shoot which prospectors will win & lose. But being in the Picks & Shovels business is a (relative) sure thing.
I'd say the point is "An Ordinary Guy did X". Vs. an engineering genius, or somebody with deep pockets, or a Hollywood special effects model builder, or 3D printer junkie, or whatever.
"Engineering genius" not being an "ordinary guy" is a kind of classism. The whole tenor of the "truck driver did something interesting" is essentially classist thinking.
Jesus christ this is pedantic. You do understand that not all statements can be universally distilled to true or false right? That there's nuance and opinion here right?
The kind of issue that's better decided by an ecologist than by a judge, true.
My curiosity is about how the legal system got it wrong - simplistic or outdated laws, or clueless or corrupt judges, or some combination, or something else?
Seems like pretty much all US citizens should rushing to amend city charters, county charters, state constitutions, etc. - to remove their so-called elected representative's legal power to approve many sorts of things...
For Germany's national interests, the ideal probably would have been repatriation back in early 2010. A decade after Poland had joined NATO, half a decade after the Baltic States had - the threat of Russia somehow seizing the gold was at a nadir. The 2007-9 fiscal crisis was safely past, the Euro crisis not yet too dire, Obama was in the White House, and the winds were otherwise favorable for quietly sailing Germany's gold back home.
Second best might have been for Germany to get its gold back in mid-2021 - Biden in the White House, but events of 6 Jan '21 making it really obvious that the US wasn't nearly so stable as in the good old days.
Vs. raising the subject now*, with a very temperamental administration in Washington, feels ill-advised. Though I'm probably marking myself as a senile idealist, to even think of a national gov't, or leading media outlet, intelligently working for its nation's long-term interests.
From another angle, I could see leaving it in NYC as a symptom of advanced calcification of Germany's politics and gov't bureaucracy. Moving the gold home would require major decisions, real organizing, and competent execution. Vs. the relative do-nothing of inaction, forever turning the crank of old routines, is so much easier.
Germany already repatriated about half of its gold reserves between 2013 and 2017 from paris and new york to frankfurt.
There has been a recent (as in "18th of march" recent) petition to the Bundestag to repatriate the gold.
The reason not to repatriate the remaining gold back then is because Germany has substantial trade with the US, which is why Germany held gold in new york to begin with: It's the easiest way to resolve USD-Euro currency exchange at the central bank level (this is also why germany got rid of the paris gold reserves: with the euro you don't need currency exchange anymore).
Also, as you mentioned, the idea of "officially" repatriating gold with the current administration is quite dicey. It is very possible that the correct way of resolving this is to just stop buying gold in new york and let the currency exchange flux deal with the slow unwinding of the reserves without explicit repatriation.
Effectively none. The US has a huge trade deficit with Germany/Europe so there is practically never a case where the US receives gold from Germany: It's always more then offset by the deficit.
The equivalent for the US would be the consumption goods that are already flowing into the US. I.e. US gets goods but doesn't sell enough to Germany, so the difference to maintain the total exchange rate is the Gold.
That's also why it was trivial for france to repatriate its gold compared to germany: Germany holds about 10x the amount of gold in the US compared to France (France was ~120 tons, Germany is roughly 1200 tons: France earned its gold through different trade).
That's also why it is such a complex thing to repatriate German reserves: France took almost 1 year to repatriate its gold. For Germany, the efforts would be decade spanning (though maybe with recent changes there is a little more urgency).
Everything else is just piddly details on exactly where & how & how much water is inevitably flowing downhill.
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