Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/09/27/eviction-epidemic-2.html
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the monopoly rents that hedge funds extract from tenants are used to fund incredibly high-priced, intensive lobbying campaigns to restore tenants’ rights
I think you mean the opposite?
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Q: Load sixteen tons and what d’you get?
A: Another day older and deeper in debt.
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Is it valid to compare Mean income to Median home price?
Wouldn’t one want to show both? Mean income to Mean home price, Median income to Median home price?
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It’s the worse case. Because of wealth distribution the mean income in this country will be far, far higher than the median because Jeff Bezos makes $3B/week or whatever he makes. The median house is still just the median, so it’s unaffected by the existence of hovels in the woods or hypermansions.
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This. Median income to median home price would be an even bleaker picture.
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Does it mean I’m a bad person that this makes me a feel slightly better about myself, as if I’m a bit less of a failure for not owning a house at my age?
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No. If americans had class consciousness, they’d simply take all the fucking empty housing and put it to use.
Treating housing like a commodity to be traded and wealth extracted from instead of a human right is immoral.
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I had thought that this problem was one associated mainly with large, desirable cities with more employment opportunities, which is bad enough. But one way or another, it looks like the system is rigged to ensure that in 3/4s of the country the median income will never be enough to purchase a home. So much for the “American Dream” (George Carlin saw it coming more than a decade ago).
These days, it looks like you have to be very lucky to have the chance to get deeper in debt, what with the downpayment and the borrowing requirements.
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You see, if the average worker could afford the average home that wouldn’t leave a lot of room for homelessness on the lower end. And then how would the workers be viscerally reminded of what was going to happen to them if they didn’t comply?
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Can’t you see?! Wealth inequality is vital!
/s
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I thought that was clear from my 100% mathematically accurate, thoroughly researched graph.
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More than that, it goes against the “physical” limits of the economy. Housing prices, over the long run, are fairly constant and attempts to commodify them fail.
The problem is those bumps (1980, 1990, late 2000) represent a lot of wealth being transferred, usually from the poorer to the wealthier, so we are probably going to keep seeing them until there is some form of regulation. Which isn’t likely because they also represent a lot of hypothetical (but temporary) wealth gain for the home owner.
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I think as long as the riches can stave off the guillotine, they’ll keep pulling this shit.
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Housing is treated as an investment, and investments only work if they keep getting more expensive.
Housing as a commodity would be an improvement.
Commodity housing would be produced until there was enough for everybody, the price would constantly decline, the surplus would have to be thrown away, and it would have no investment value, like old televisions.
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Exactly. The haves are utterly uninterested in a “fair fight” with the have-nots. The American cultural mantra of “you can become whatever you want in this country” comes with the horrible Shadow-side assertion that “if you’re poor, you must have deserved it”. And when has any culture throughout all of human history turned away from a chance to kick “losers” when they’re down?
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A system that assigns primacy to investment valuation for housing is inherently corrupting. Holders of property are then incentivized to lobby against measures that would lessen the rate of increase of rate of return, like added housing stock. (see also HOA’s). Combine that with things like Prop 13 here in California, (making long held properties far more valuable as rental operations) - and you have a scenario geared toward locking in a stratified system. The economic engine seizes at some point.
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There are plenty of examples of so called “less developed” cultures that didn’t. We’re living in a time when the bullies with guns are winning, but that wasn’t always the case. Some cultures measured worth by how much you could give to your community, not how much you took away. I think seeing our current predicament as evidence of an inherent human flaw is fatalistic. We can do better, we have before.
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Carlin’s was a voice we could use right about now. Cut through all the shitstorm. Don’t piss down my leg and tell me it’s raining.
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