Quote from: Aunt Lydia on Today at 02:02:42 PM

Apparently from what I hear, few people in the USA can afford a house these days also.
Plus you're forgetting China: they are not poor anymore.

Most Chinese are not rich in the sense of wealthy or even well off.
Even though US and Canadian Citizens have it harder to buy a house they still can due to their banks.
Banking in the 3rd World is still around 1800. They use correspondence banks, meaning the open an account in Citybank and receive the oder there.
It takes much more time, it cost much more.

Where do you live?
I lived in several countries and in the developed world it was easy to open a bank account. A day and the account was mine (?).
In the developing world its cumbersome to be able to open the 1st account. It takes about 3 to 18 weeks to open one account.

Tradewise it is a world of difference:

The US, Germany and the UK trade about 200 billion vs 45 Billion from BRICS.
Even if China's citizens buy more the production of China needs more consumers as they don not have enough.