Chapter 627
American Crisis
Chapter 627 American Crisis
Time flies, and 1920 soon came to an end.
In the past six months, the construction of radio broadcasting base stations in Spain has been largely completed, and it is now possible to ensure that at least two-thirds of the population is within the coverage area of radio wave signals.
This work was done quite quickly, but it was also closely related to Spain's basic national conditions.
As one of the most developed countries in Europe today, Spain has a very high urbanization rate. In fact, Spain's population growth over the years reveals a problem: its population is over-concentrated in a few areas.
Most of Spain’s population lives around the coast and in the central region around Madrid, while most of the inland mountainous areas are sparsely populated.
Among these inhabited areas, cities house the majority of Spain's population. Cities like Madrid and Barcelona are currently the main sources of Spain's population.
It is no exaggeration to say that more than half of Spain's population lives in cities.
As the two largest cities, Madrid and Barcelona have populations of 312 million and 407 million respectively, both ranking among the world's top ten cities.
Seville has a population of over one million, while cities like Bilbao, Valencia, Lisbon, and Porto also have populations of hundreds of thousands.
The price of these cities' high population density is that large parts of Spain are sparsely populated or even deserted.
However, this cannot be considered a drawback, since the urbanization rate is an important factor for a country to measure its industrial and economic development level and degree of development.
If Spanish cities didn't have such a large population, their industry naturally wouldn't have been able to develop.
In fact, modern Madrid and Barcelona do resemble cities from later times.
Skyscrapers are everywhere, and the streets at night are adorned with twinkling lights. The only difference is the absence of electronic devices; it's more like a modern metropolis from the early 21st century without them.
Carlos is quite satisfied with Spain's current achievements. While it remains to be seen whether Spain can contend for global dominance, its position as a regional power in Europe is firmly established.
If Spain can maintain control over Europe, its core territory, it will have the leverage to intervene in global affairs. Even if it cannot control Europe, it can still protect itself in the future world order based on its current territory.
Even if a world war breaks out in the future, as long as the world war does not escape Carlo's control, Spain's overall strength will not be affected.
Thanks to the rapid population growth in Spanish cities, housing prices in these cities have also seen a significant increase.
In fact, it was Carlo who started the housing market speculation. Of course, Carlo didn't speculate on housing prices in Spain; instead, he chose the UK and the US as his targets.
Looking at current house prices in the UK and the US reveals the true impact of property speculation on these two countries.
Before Carlos began massively speculating on house prices in the UK and the US, although house prices in London were somewhat high, a villa in the city center would not cost more than £500.
Following the massive speculation in housing prices, the price of villas in central London has risen rapidly to nearly a thousand pounds, almost doubling.
And that's not all; house prices in central London continue to rise. Based on current trends, the price of a house in central London can easily exceed £1500, which has a significant impact on Londoners.
For ordinary Londoners, after working hard for several years, they can still afford a house in the city center.
But after housing prices have increased several times over, it now takes more than ten years of saving to buy a house in the city center.
The problem is that house prices continue to rise. By the time Londoners have saved enough money, house prices will be much higher than they are now.
Compared to the UK, housing price increases in the US haven't been as dramatic. Aside from some major cities, housing prices in ordinary US cities remain within an acceptable range.
The reason is simple: the United States was severely affected by the flu, the domestic situation was quite chaotic, and the economy was in a very bad state.
In major cities like New York, the rate of increase in housing prices is particularly dramatic. Especially in downtown New York City, prices have multiplied several times over compared to a few years ago, and continue to rise at an astonishing pace.
The crucial point is that this rise in housing prices offers no benefit to the public. While rising prices may increase the value of people's homes, this money won't simply be handed to them for free.
To sell a house when prices are high, you have to pay all sorts of hefty taxes to the government. So what if house prices increase several times over?
After paying all taxes, the money left after selling the house was less than what would have been earned if the house hadn't increased in price.
What's worse, once people choose to sell their homes when prices are high, buying them back becomes much more difficult. This applies not only to newly built homes, but also to previously occupied properties, which maintain high prices.
Add to that the speculators who follow the trend, and New York's housing prices have been driven to an outrageous level, to the point that most New Yorkers can no longer afford to buy a house.
Of course, this is also related to the poor political environment in the United States.
Although the flu season is over, the chaos in the United States is far from over. Large numbers of workers participated in protests, severely disrupting factory production.
Many factories went bankrupt amid the unrest, causing even more workers to lose their jobs and join the protests.
In this vicious cycle, American industry and economy suffered a huge blow in a short period of time, and the unemployment rate continued to soar, adding fuel to the fire of chaos in the United States.
It's no exaggeration to say that the United States is in complete chaos right now. Many New York City residents have lost their jobs, been forced to sell their homes for food, and ended up destitute and homeless.
This situation is not unique to New York; it is prevalent in almost all major cities across the United States.
A wave of unemployment swept across the United States, resulting in the loss of a large number of workers and severely disrupting the American job market.
How extreme is the job market in the United States right now? There are so many people vying for jobs that barely pay enough to make ends meet.
The streets and alleys were filled with unemployed people. Some had sold their houses to survive and had been forced to become homeless.
The presence of these homeless people has severely damaged the appearance of cities across the United States. In order to deal with these homeless people, cities, led by New York, have enacted various policies to prevent the gathering of homeless people.
Homeless people like to sleep on park benches and street benches, right?
The New York City government has directly divided park and street benches into individual seats, adding many differently shaped protrusions to ensure that it is extremely uncomfortable for people to lie on them.
While this may have disrupted residents' rest, it has indeed been effective in managing the homeless population.
Many homeless people have no choice but to sleep on the streets. In the cold winter, their blankets may just be thin newspapers, which looks quite pitiful.
When Carlo learned about the situation in the United States, he was also shocked by the chaos that had taken place there.
Indeed, the rate of population growth in the United States is simply too outrageous. For the current US government, it is difficult to take care of hundreds of millions of people; some will inevitably have to be abandoned.
Don't be fooled by the pitiful lives of these homeless people on the streets; there are actually people who are even more pitiful than them.
These homeless people are still recognized citizens in the United States, and some government and private relief centers provide them with food and other necessities free of charge.
For people of color, especially Black and Asian workers, their treatment is far more dire.
The US government has no time to care about these people and will not provide them with any living supplies or food relief.
Various acts of violence occur at any time in the shadows of the city. The sewers of American cities have become gathering places for many disaster victims, and have even evolved into large-scale refugee settlements.
Doesn't the US government know about the dire situation at home?
They certainly understand this. The problem is that the current US government is simply powerless to control non-American populations.
With the U.S. federal government having lost credibility, state governments are even showing a tendency to sideline the federal government.
The states on the East Coast of the United States are in a better position because they are relatively close to Washington, D.C., and therefore have to obey the federal government's orders to some extent.
However, the states on the US West Coast were not so obedient to the federal government's orders. Most of the East Coast states evolved from the original thirteen colonies, while the West Coast states were mostly inhabited by colonists and Asian gold miners during the westward expansion. In addition, there was a large influx of Latino people from Mexico, which made the West Coast states more chaotic, and the situation gradually slipped out of the control of the US government.
In the states along the East Coast of the United States, whites have always been the majority. No matter how fiercely these Black people protest, they are still a minority group, and no one respects their political opinions.
However, in the West Coast states, the white population has gradually lost its advantage. If this problem is not handled properly, it could very well escalate into a civil war between the East and West coasts of the United States.
It's no exaggeration to say that the United States is now on the verge of civil war. The only reason a civil war hasn't broken out yet is that European countries are too busy to bother with anything else and don't have the energy to cause trouble for the Americans.
While Carlo hoped for the American Civil War to break out, he was not prepared to let Spain participate alone. Perhaps the best time for the American Civil War to erupt would be when European countries had recovered from the flu pandemic.
(End of this chapter)