Housing Crisis and economical growth

Lately I was looking upon a table provided by the UN and saw that about 30 years ago the world population stood at 4 Billion people. Today we stand at 8 Billion and the prognosis is that by 2050 we will reach the 10 Billion, mostly spurred by the African continent.

More people equals more consumers leading to economical growth: the magical mantra of all economical scientists. But at what cost? The worldwide tendency is that population growth is mainly happening among the poor and uneducated segments of the population. How will those fit into a future knowledge economy when automatization is right now eliminating blue and white collar jobs alike?

I was reading that in the coming years, the Canadian economists expect a trillion dollar wealth transfer from the baby boomers towards later generations. That wealth transfer would mainly consist of real estate property changing hands.

That seems impressive, but when you take a closer look, you will soon find out that the quantitative and qualitative growth of real estate market has not so much changed over the last 30 years or so. What has been increasing is the demand: hence people have to cough up more money to pay for a roof over their head. Money is a fiction, but real estate isn’t. So we could say that this “wealth transfer” is at least for 60 % pure economical fiction.