A weekend topic on this New York Times article by Conor Dougherty. "Suppose there were a way to pump up the economy, reduce inequality and put an end to destructive housing bubbles like the one that contributed to the Great Recession. The idea would be simple, but not easy, requiring a wholesale reframing of the United States economy and housing market. The solution: Americans, together and all at once, would have to stop thinking about their homes as an investment."

"The virtues of homeownership are so ingrained in the American psyche that we often forget that housing is also a source of economic stress. Rising milk prices are regarded as a household tragedy for some, and spiking gas prices stoke national outrage. But whenever home prices go up, it's 'a recovery,' even though that recovery also means millions of people can no longer afford to buy."

"So instead of looking at homes as investments, what if we regarded them like a TV or a car or any other consumer good? People might expect home prices to go down instead of up. Homebuilders would probably spend more time talking about technology and design than financing options. Politicians might start talking about their plans to lower home prices further, as they often do with fuel prices."

"There was a time, a few decades ago, when the cost of living did not vary all that much from city to city."

"Finally, if housing were plentiful and cheap, we would probably stop having big housing bubbles. One good way of describing a speculative bubble is a moment when society deludes itself into believing that something plentiful is scarce, or will soon be. Housing is particularly prone to bubbles because, in contrast with other products, we seem to want it more when it is expensive and less when it is cheap. And no matter how many times we look out an airplane window to see vast acres of emptiness, we somehow still believe that land is a great investment because nobody is making more of it."

"Homes would still hold a lot of value; they still might appreciate, if more slowly; and desirable neighborhoods would still seem relatively expensive. But there would probably be fewer manias in which people expect home prices to double in just a few years."

"Just as we don't expect to make a profit selling our cars, if we stopped thinking of our homes as big moneymakers, we would probably start focusing on building them faster and less expensively."