re: #130 Anymouse 🌹🏡😷

All the commentary on the video claims the creators’ premises are wrong (IT’S THE BILLIONAIRES AND POLITICIANS, who are they again?) or the trope “the younger generations are lazy,” or the trope “it’s the socialism they teach in schools LOLWUT.”

The main premise is the Baby Boomer generation (the largest voting cohort through the Seventies) voted for themselves all sorts of politicians delivering things like low-cost college education, strong union memberships to negotiate favourable contracts, &c. When they became older, the voting patterns shifted to politicians who would protect their wealth like Smaug protected his hoard in “The Hobbit.”

Not all Baby Boomers benefited from this scheme (raises hand). The Silent Generation which came before (such as my mother) lived through at least part of the Depression and WW2, and supported children in getting to college or accumulating wealth. They also supported the New Deal programmes which benefited their children.

He makes an interesting observation: Home ownership is often treated as an investment, but it is an investment which produces nothing for the economy (like Bitcoin without the scammers). Investing in a manufacturer (stocks or bonds) helps the manufacturer expand their markets or products, or improve their business. Investing in a house produces nothing. Moreover, when landlords own an additional house and make enough money, that money isn’t usually used to purchase things on the economy which improve manufacturing or services, it is usually used to buy another house (which also produces nothing).

Houses as “investments” was something plausible when, as the video points out, it was possible to pay off a mortgage in a reasonable measure of time. If you could pay off your first house with just your annual salary in 5 years or less, then it could be seen as an “investment” towards a larger house when you were more financially secure and had designs on raising a larger family or more room for (as St. Carlin would say) “more stuff.” But if you’re either far enough along in life that you’re never gonna pay off that mortgage or you’re making so little that you’re barely able to make the payments, then it’s not an “investment” it’s a prison sentence. Hence why newer generations rent more than own, because we simply cannot afford to “invest” in a mortgage that will take half our lives to pay off.

By the way, anything expensive these days is sold as an “investment” because the seller gets the immediate benefit of cash in hand and the “investor” gets the problem of profiting from their “investment.” You see everything from classic cars to gems being sold as “investments” because the people paying for them have excess cash and little understanding of what it would actually take to profit from their “investment.”