What we're seeing in housing, stock markets, etc. is the consequence of a massively distorted economy. Assets are appreciating in marge part because our money is losing far more value than CPI statistics suggest. Those with money want assets. Those of us with neither money nor assets suffer.
Housing in particular has been an industry that was already being massively leveraged and manipulated for a good 30 years or so here in the US. Interest rate policy was to keep rates low specifically to prop up home prices and encourage borrowing to keep money flowing in a neo-Keynesian model of circulation as the statistic for productivity. It discouraged real saving and long-term investment, meaning the real wealth to sustain those low rates was eroding away. But it's gone on for so long that the current system is perceived as the status quo.
I disagree with the statement that investing into housing is "morally wrong." In a healthy market economy, people invest to build up what consumers demand. The root problem here is mcmansions, money supply inflation inflation, tax policies, zoning laws, and a lack of real investment opportunities in productive ventures. We're in a silent stagflation no government economist is willing to acknowledge, and "market failure" is the only excuse they have to offer.
Distorted in so many ways.
And the "status quo" doesn't take as long to settle into anymore. It is like people get used to the "new normal" in a matter of weeks, and the new normal is progressively getting worse.
I get it. I see it morally wrong from the perspective of a healthy society. But, society is driven by the economy now, so that is what it is. From the perspective of what we have, it is the smart play, and morals don't come into it.
I see this as the key failing of the economy. What gets invested into is what makes money, and what makes money is generally not productive for humanity. It isn't even trying to be productive for humanity.
Funny isn't it? The market never fails - it just tracks demand and supply. We don't demand for wellbeing, we demand for instant gratification. The companies that provide even the most transitory pleasure, are the ones that make the most money. And that money has to go somewhere, so it goes into investments that generate more money. It doesn't matter what mechanism, but people are looking for the highest return, given their risk tolerance.
The market is not about morality. It is a out supply and demand. But politics distorts both sides of the equation, and people who claim to have certain moral positions on things like health and housing are acting in ways contrary to their proclaimed intentions.
Inflation distorts our time preference and removes the reward normally offered by low time preference savers and investors. Stock market and real estate bubbles are among the direct consequences. People respond to incentives and signals, but everything governments have been doing to "guide" the market has created perverse incentives and bad signals.
in response to these bad outcomes, those who benefit and suffer both seek political protection, resulting in even more of the central planning and centralized power which creates the destabilization in the first place, and freedom is the scapegoat.
Think about it in terms of a tribe or community. It is still about supply and demand, isn't it? The problem is, we have created a society where many needs go unmet, while the desires of some are overfilled.
And many people have replaced real tribe/community connections with things like nationalism and partisanship. Instead of seeking consent, they demand power to coerce and control. Compulsion is not cooperation, but political language and the mythology of democracy muddy the waters.