Billionaire entrepreneur Peter Thiel says President-elect Trump and Vice President-elect J.D. Vance were not wrong when they pointed to immigration as a driver of high housing costs on the campaign trail, suggesting the concept is basic economics.
During a recent interview on Bari Weiss’s “Honestly” podcast, Thiel noted that he is an immigrant to the U.S., himself, but said that “at the same time, I think one should somehow be able to talk about all the ways that it creates these incredible economic skews and distortions.”
The Paypal co-founder pointed to the theories of late 19th-century economist Henry George, whom he said warned that when there are runaway real estate prices, the people who own real estate will make all the gains in a society.
“There’s something extremely inelastic about real estate,” Thiel explained. “Especially if you have strict zoning laws or things like this. The dynamic ends up being: you add 10% to the population in a city, and maybe …