Algemeen·NRC·10 okt

Governments are mishandling the affordability crisis

Strikes, Bread riots and „socialistic agitation”: these worldwide expressions of discontent had a common cause, argued Irving Fisher, an economist at Yale University, in 1912. That shared grievance was the rising „cost of living”. The problem was felt in places as far apart as Canada and India, France and Japan. To expect any single locality to tackle the forces at work was almost as absurd as expecting „villagers on the Bay of Fundy to attempt to prevent the rise of the tides”.