this post was submitted on 21 Apr 2025
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This was a couple of years ago but I think the numbers are still the same: sending a shipping container from Hong Kong to Newark cost about $3000 while sending the same container in the opposite direction cost about $500. This is because we badly want the shit China makes while they don't want anything we make (the same situation that led Great Britain to force China to accept opium at gunpoint almost two hundred years ago). Sending a container to China is so cheap that for a stretch we were actually filling them with our garbage because it was less expensive to dispose of it there.
Anyone who think this represents economic weakness on China's part is batshit crazy.
Containers as cheap home starting points in US is also a function of this dynamic. No need to ship empty ones back to Asia.
The problem isn't the lack of ability to build new houses, it's the lack of land that's in a liveable area, zoned for new development and not already taken. The land doesn't exist.