A life spent yearning to be poor no longer is not necessarily an opportunity wasted. It keeps prodding one to understand how that happened to you and to look for keys in the workings of the national life we all share together - broadly, unchallenged social constructs - that keep America stuck in a self-destructive state, obstructing it from moving towards a condition where the difference between what wealthiest class has, versus the poorest, is far less extreme.
I have long sought that magic bullet - a short pithy argument - that would streak straight into the dark heart of the Frankenstinian complex of our most damaging shared misconceptions. Today, it came to me.
America will only get sicker until it learns to face the truth that no great nation can ever endure as long as those earning below the median permanently forfeit more of what they earn to the challenge of housing themselves than those above that line. The key to fully comprehending this grotesque reality lies in understanding the role that home ownership plays in preserving and expanding individual and family held equity (roughly, the total potential value of the things one owns that can be sold for money plus the cash one has).
The average American will spend about 65 years having to pay for a safe roof over his or her head. That translates into 780 months. Currently, in any one of the top fifty cities to live in in America (one per state, average), the average monthly rent paid by the individual for housing is around $800. Rents don't fluctuate to the same degree over time that house prices do, so that figure is a pretty reliable extrapolative tool. Census records show that a little more than half the people in the US live in rented housing. Of those, around 8 in 10 rent or are compelled to rent because the action of coming up with the down payment needed to initiate buying a home (as opposed to just making payments, after having concluded a purchase) is not within their financial reach. The approximate number of Americans who fall into this broad category is 130 million. Each, reaching the end of his/her life as a permanent renter - often penniless and on state assistance - will, on average, have shelled out an amount equivalent in today's money of $624,000 or $1,248,000 per couple, with nothing in held equity to show for that huge outlay that can be exchanged for cash, and nothing to leave as assistance to their heirs.
Rich Americans, in total contrast, play a much more sophisticated and financially rewarding game with their need for housing. Leaving aside the ridiculously rich who don't need to care if they lose a few million on some ill-chosen piece of real estate, most of the simply rich use the houses they buy to live in to get significantly richer, often ending their lives doing a reverse mortgage on some insanely expensive piece of real estate which they either get to live in as the cash-out winds toward its end point, or deed to their surviving heirs.
Nothing puts the lie to the vaunted boast of American class mobility like this dichotomy.
The stark contrast between these two outcomes tends to transfer an equally stark contrast in wealth outcomes for the survivors of these two radically different classes of home occupants. That dichotomy in outcomes for survivors inevitably rolls over into the larger nationwide dichotomy between the wealthy and the poor. In fact, if there is any greater contributing factor to that lamentable outcome, I'd sure like some genius to fill me in on the details of what it is. Most often, the simplest explanation is the best one.
If government would like to see the wealth dichotomy reduced, (it professes to), it might get up off its generally lazy intellectual rump and look somewhat harder for ways to mitigate those factors of our social system that lead Americans to exploit the need for housing in trying to make the kind of money that most cannot hope to earn in ordinary employment. Across the board leveling actions need to be added to the general mix of how our society works, with great care taken to ensure that it does not adversely affect net employment created by private enterprise. This is not some socialist, pie-in-the-sky wish. The whole point of it would be to free up money held by the average person and redirect it away from the rapacious housing sector towards the consumer products-and-services sector. The overall effect of such actions would help free enterprise by increasing the money supply on the demand side of the economy (outside of housing), particularly among younger adults. There would be a shift in the general shape of the economy, with a greater variety and number of jobs created for each million dollars diverted out of the housing sector toward other forms of enterprise.
It's just that simple.
The day the average poorer person parts with less for a lifetime of being housed than the average richer person will be the day the New American Economy begins.
So why is it proving so hard to get the ball rolling? Because, whether they're rich or poor, the great majority of Americans cherish the daydream of making it big someday, the easy way and, unless you're close to brain-dead, you know that real estate is the most accessible way to get rich at other people's expense, either by selling a property at the right time to some sucker who believes the right time is still a few years ahead, when the last buyer will be left holding the baby during a downturn - sort of like in a pyramid scheme - or by renting to suckers who are always a dollar short and a day late of being able to buy a house and who simply can't face moving one more time.
We're little better than a nation of hucksters. It's in the blood. The less risk-enthralled remained behind in the countries that waves of immigrants came from.
But time is running out. The game of appropriating the luck of dupes in an entirely legal way is headed at speed toward a crown fire of social rage. This new generation of young adults, fleeced at every turn, is well aware that the rules are stacked against them having any chance at becoming as comfortable as as their parents were at the same age. They're about ready to burn the place to the ground, politically speaking. They see capitalism as the enemy, even as they try to use it to make a living (if you can call it that). To increasing numbers of them, unbridled socialism is the answer. The subtle truth that capitalism depends upon a socialistically-maintained material/legal infrastructure which depends upon capitalistic success for the tax revenue that is its lifeblood, making the two systems interdependent, lacks visceral appeal. Kicking somebody's ass, on the other hand, has great visceral appeal. You can see it all coming like a sucker punch in a slow motion snippet.
Before it's too late for reasonable minds to prevail, those currently in the winner's seat had better make this thing called America work better for all or sit down and start planning living compounds like the rich have in places Americans are too scared to visit.
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