Many people don't want to be itinerant, they want a settled home to make their own and enjoy for a long time if not life. 'Forever home' is a phrase and a positive one because that is a goal people have.
I want a million dollars a year income. No one owes me that. Move to where the jobs are. I moved from my hometown in south GA the week I graduated from college because there were no jobs.
Maybe rural America should stop voting for politicians who are opposed to affordable college education (or trade school) and student loan forgiveness.
> I want a million dollars a year income. No one owes me that.
Why is this always where this type of conversation goes? No one has spoken about any entitlement here, but frankly, while you aren't owed a million dollars a year, I'd say you're owed something. Assuming you're working full time, I'd say you're owed at least a living wage.
But everyone should be able to own a home? No.
People today are living all across the country and not be homeless and the people who live in the poorest states repeatedly vote for politicians that want to cut government services and cut the safety nets. Right now they are cheering DOGE. Why should I feel sorry for rural America? They are getting exactly what they voted for.
We are under no obligation as a country to make sure that people who want to live the rest of there life in the MiddleOfNowhere Oklahoma can stay there for the rest of their life who don’t want to move. Besides again, these people overwhelmingly voted for politicians who don’t want to help them.
They are also cheering for the dismantling of the Education department, defunding colleges, cutting Medicaid, inflationary tariff policies, etc.
Do you seriously want to turn this discussion into lower-class rental / apartment discussion? Okay, fine. Lets go there.
https://ipropertymanagement.com/research/average-rent-by-yea...
Average rent in 1980 was $243/month. Average rent in 2025 is $1397/month.
For those who cannot afford a home, life has gotten worse. For those who _can_ afford a home, their life has gotten worse. It doesn't matter where you plan to pivot this discussion, its all bad numbers for your discussion point.
But, rural America consistently votes for politicians and people who are trying to get rid of services they need the most. They are getting exactly what they are voting for and cheering right now.
They are actively opposed to programs that would make education more affordable and cheering cutting the department of education, the post office, internet for rural America etc.
Which is all I wanted to say in the root post. I'm not gonna get gish galloped off topic any further.
So they must be okay with it.
But that doesn't change the argument or the truth about what is, or isn't bad for people. I recognize the political disadvantage I'm at here, but lets just stick with the truth of the matter before we get into the politics.
As I said before, I'm happy if you could just agree with me that wealth gap is a problem worth tackling.
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I'm not one to tackle entire problems all at once. Lets focus on things one step at a time. Lets first agree what the problems are in America. And then once we all agree on that, then we can work on them.
Trump won the electoral and popular votes with 312 (58%) of the former and 77,303,568 (49.81%) of the latter, which supports saying "over half" compared to Harris' 226 (42%) of the former and 75,019,230 (48.34%) of the latter. However the population of the United States is 340.1 million of which 244.6 million are voting eligible. Some quick back-of-napkin math then will tell you that while Trump took both the popular and electoral votes enough to win, that victory represents at best the will of approximately 31% of the eligible voters. And, that's strictly the popular vote, which doesn't actually win the election. Democrats struggle in every election because of decades of meddling on the part of Republicans with regard to how electoral votes are awarded and calculated, gerrymandering in every state, anti-voter, anti-minority policies that disenfranchise people on an industrial scale from the right to vote they're entitled, etc. etc. etc.
And you can say "well the Democrats should be working harder to undo it!" and I totally agree, but between the raw numbers on the ground, the well-documented Southern Strategy that has turned formerly pro-labor and progressive swathes of America into hard right strongholds via churches, and the various culture wars that have utterly melted American's brains to a great degree spearheaded by rest-in-piss Rush Limbaugh and the rest of the reactionary media sphere he helped weld into being, it is not remotely a fair statement to say that "over half of America voted for this knowing what would happen." Some did, for sure. Not half, not even fucking close.
dare i say, gangster moves back are REQUIRED.
to whoever downvoted this, you want to take the high road? when our citizens’ voting rights have been marginalized?
or are you just turned off by the word gangster?
anyway, i propose making the gerrymandering an anti—american thing. which it is.
make it the center of everything. there should be zero other issues until the ability to vote on the issues for all our people has been corrected.
i would call out every single politician that was responsible for this gerrymandering. repeatedly, over and over again until they were harassed into a retirement recluse. that is my gangster counter move proposal.
focus on the individual politicians reponsible for this and launch an all out aggressive offensive to eradicate their whole memory from America.
Cosigned all above.
> But everyone should be able to own a home? No.
I think insofar as property is treated as an investment vehicle, everyone should be able to own something. Like, the difference between a mortgage and a rental contract in terms of personal economics couldn't be further from one another. One creates wealth, one transfers wealth and concentrates it.
"Can you afford to buy a home" as an economic metric doesn't mean necessarily that you should buy a home and you are a poor if you haven't or simply choose not to. That's fine. However, owning a home is a significant economic data point because it's a large investment to make that requires access to okay credit, and that once done, benefits the homeowner financially decades into the future. When I got a mortgage, an insured one with no money down even, my credit immediately went down to account for having a loan, but then right afterwards jumped almost 20% in a 3 month period, even though I did nothing differently apart from paying into a mortgage instead of paying rent.
Alternatively, reform the housing market so it functions as... well, a market. A house shouldn't necessarily appreciate in value over time, and the fact that it's expected to is... strange. One could argue that if nothing has appreciably changed in your neighborhood since you bought your house, it should sell for ballpark about the same price as what you paid for it, unless you did some substantial renovations or something. And even then... if you're just making it more suited to your tastes, probably not?
In other words make houses... well, houses. Not investment vehicles.
> People today are living all across the country and not be homeless and the people who live in the poorest states repeatedly vote for politicians that want to cut government services and cut the safety nets. Right now they are cheering DOGE. Why should I feel sorry for rural America? They are getting exactly what they voted for.
Well, a lot of them are poorly educated for starters, and insanely propagandized. They've been the singular target for Republican messaging for decades now, and as you state, they've voted for those people too who have in turn damaged their schools and pillaged their industries. And that's not even going into things like offshoring and cheap international goods that have obliterated small town America, or corporations like Walmart, which have done a fantastic job of pillaging middle America's markets out of existence.
And yes it's tremendously frustrating to talk to these people since they're seemingly ready to blame anything and everyone who isn't them, their ideology, and their own choices for the fact that their home is dying, but it's still their home, and it's still dying. And like, even if their children all do what you're telling them to do, that means millions upon millions of people about to immigrate to cities from these rural areas. So like, you gotta deal with them one way or another. They're not just going to Thanos-snap out of existence.
You would be surprised at how low the credit rating you have to have to get an FHA mortgage. It only needs to be 580 to qualify for 3.5% down.
> However, owning a home is a significant economic data point because it's a large investment
And then later you said
> A house shouldn't necessarily appreciate in value over time, and the fact that it's expected to is... strange.
So exactly how do you keep a property from appreciating in an area that people want to be in? My parent bought their home in 1978 in South GA for $50K. According to Zillow it’s now worth $180K. Inflation adjusted it should be worth $245K (https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/).
> And that's not even going into things like offshoring and cheap international goods that have obliterated small town America, or corporations like Walmart, which have done a fantastic job of pillaging middle America's markets out of existence.
So you support Trump’s inflationary policies about tariffs that will make goods more expensive in an effort to bring jobs back to the US (which won’t happen).
The world where every other country was demolished by wars and allowing the US not to have to compete with other developed nations is gone. Manufacturing jobs aren’t coming back to the US. Would you be in favor of taxing those in the 90th percentile in wealthy (which you only have to make around $160K to be in) enough to support all of the other people so they can buy houses?
I think a lot of people here have absolutely no idea how “rich” they are compared to the average American and aren’t willing to give up enough of their income for “equality”.
> So like, you gotta deal with them one way or another. They're not just going to Thanos-snap out of existence.
Let them suffer. They would rather vote for politicians who hate the same people they hate - non Christians (except for Jews for some reason), minorities, immigrants, non-straight people, college educated, etc. They aren’t voting against their own interest because they are “uneducated”.
They see the country eventually becoming more diverse and minority/majority and are doing everything they can to fight the inevitable.
They themselves would rather not have universal healthcare because it might help the “illegals”.
Of course other cohorts are the middle class evangelicals who think they are going to burn in hell if gay people have equal rights and Jesus won’t have any place to come back to if Israel isn’t protected. I’m not exaggerating at all to make a point.
Then you have people with money who like the status quo and don’t care about inequality.
> But that doesn’t mean that the other 60% are homeless and starving.
No one said starving. I'm saying that the average person is in worse straights than the average person from the 1980s.
If your message is 'Maybe not everyone needs a house' then it kinda sounds like you agree with me?
https://www.census.gov/library/publications/1991/demo/sb91-0...
In fact home ownership rate has consistently been in the mid 60s since 1960
https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/home-ownership-ra...
In which way is the average person worse? Worse health? Worse life expectancy? More homeless people?
People who own a home in 2025 have to pay $350,000ish on a wage of only $66k.
Home prices have gone up dramatically more than wages.
> In which way is the average person worse?
The amount of debt needed to own a home. Which is related to income vs cost-of-home. This ignores the fact that to reach $66k+/year salaries to begin with, you needed tens-of-thousands in student loan debt as well (which the average person in 1980 didn't need).
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1. Costs of education have gone up. It costs more money to be able to get a comfortable salary to begin with in today's world.
2. Younger folk are entering a very high-priced housing market, despite being already saddled with student loan debt (and thus starting off with no savings).
3. The bulk of "starting a new life" costs are car, house, and education. While yes computers and food have gotten cheaper, I would argue that car/house/education costs are the primary gatekeeper into income and/or class mobility.
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For the 40%ish who cannot afford a house, it gets even worse. Rental prices in 1980 were $243/month. Do you want me to run the numbers on how screwed they've gotten? Or do you have the gist yet?
Also remember: 1980 was a recession year with high unemployment and incredible inflation. We're comparing ourselves to the WORST time of stagflation and some of the worst geopolitical crisis of that era.
Even still, somehow, some way, the homeownership rate is the same, people aren’t going homeless and people’s needs are being met. How is that? If people are worse off meeting their Maslow hierarchy of needs?
Gotcha. I'm glad that I've forced you to ignore my argument rather than addressing the elephant in the room.
The average student loan debt in 1980 was zero because the vast majority of people could get by on free and public high school education btw. Especially if we assume that we're talking about the median income household.
To achieve this equivalent to 1980s lifestyle, we're talking what? $200k extra debt burdens on every average / median person? $40k in student debt and $150k++ in extra housing debt? Plus 4 years lost in education (as 1980s folk could work those 4 years instead). How is this a better or even equivalent life?
all knowledge is on the internet. we do not need college at all. that will come to be more evident. but colleges got lots o’ money from donors to prolong their livelihoods.
> Home Ownership Rate refers to the percentage of homes that are occupied by the owner
So this rate is not that of people that own a home, but homes that are owned by someone that resides there.
Consider people in shared housing, young adults staying with parents, etc.
Male crime rates correlate with economic opportunity too, so even if you don't care about the 1930s and the economic reset of WW2 and its rebuilding (and WW1, but to a lesser extent), you should care about the possibility of crimes rates continuing to regress. Serious crimes don't get solved at a much higher rate than in the past, even if they have decreased since the 90s.
Home ownership is a lagging indicator and doesn't show the whole picture: If people used to buy a home at 25 and move into it, but today they wait and live in their parents house until 30 before moving into a home, the stats might appear the same. The quality of life won't be. Home ownership rate needs context too, in some countries rent is low and house prices are high(er than the US), where many people rent through retirement, and where the implication of rising house prices is not as bad unless rent also raises.
As I asked before, what do you propose? Rent control? Affordable higher education? I agree with that. But half of America as seen by the support of DOGE and the lack of support for student loan forgiveness of any kind don’t. America is getting exactly what they voted for - especially in the poorest, least educated states that vote Republican.
This is a sign of low class status and lack of success. Rich people change the world to fit their needs. Poor people change themselves to fit the world. Leaving your entire family and social network behind for work is extremely middle class behaviour
That being said, the home ownership rate in the US is 65% and almost anyone who wants to go to college can via loans and scholarships.
Only around 40% of people in the US have a college education. But that doesn’t mean that the other 60% are homeless and starving.
Then cultural, as we see now, there is very much an anti-intellectual anti college bias by a major user of people in the country.