Housing Crisis
Today, I came across a New York Times article called Home Prices Plunge in October, and I felt obliged to read it and see how the economic and housing crisis was progressing, based on the title, not well. Living here at the University of Richmond, we are in a bubble. Even if it is not the ‘Richmond bubble’ that people talk about, we are definitely in a college bubble. The biggest concern college students have, including me, is getting through their classes, finishing their work that is due tomorrow, and then trying to get as much sleep as they can with the little amount of time available. Once you add working out, research, extracurricular activities, and socializing there is very little time for worrying about the real world beyond this college campus.
So, I took time from all that to read this article about the housing crisis, which is unfortunately linked in a cycle with the economic crisis. As the housing crisis worsens, it hurts the economy, and as the economy fails, the housing crisis worsens. The article believes that the housing crisis will improve when housing prices hit bottom and then the buyers will start buying again, which will benefit the economy and pick everything back up. However, until then we have to wait for everything to get worse. This just seems wrong.
Why do we have to let the economy do as it pleases? Is it wrong to want regulation of the economy? To have financial and local stability? We discussed some similar questions in sociology recently, and the conclusions my fellow classmates and I came to involved increased government regulation of businesses. If the government played a larger role in the economy and businesses, then it could regulate the economy and hopefully prevent these recessions and depressions from occurring. Recessions and depressions are always going to happen for as long as we have a free economy. However, I am not saying that we should allow the government to have complete control because that would potentially lead to conflict of interest. If elite government officials owned all businesses then they would enact laws and regulations for their benefits. Although, if the government owned a small portion of every business, like one-fourth, then they would be capable of keeping businesses alive and regulating the economy, but they would not have a large enough conflict of interest to be corrupted (hopefully).
As I continue reading articles about the housing crisis, I cannot help but wonder how many more homeless people there will be over the next year. With the majority of houses that are being sold on the housing market due to foreclosures, one must wonder where the people that were foreclosed upon go. Fortunately, there are a lot of great programs and shelters in Richmond that can help the homeless, but hopefully they have enough resources for the amount of people that will need help over the coming months, especially through the holiday season.
I hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving and remembers how lucky we are to go to a great school like the University of Richmond. Don’t ever take good health and happiness for granted 