First, as always, I appreciate your well-though-out replies.
Sure everything degrades no question, but you are still having homes worth 100k easy that were bought at about 6k. And the people who sold and bought something a little further out have the same, but a little higher prices. So I am not sure why you wouldn't consider home ownership wealth.
Just because it's too simplified for my liking. Building wealth has an important element to it, which is frailty(inverse of strength). So when you have a downturn, people that are in frail positions(i.e. low equity), are wiped out. And people that were in stronger positions(i.e. high equity) and able to lick their wounds and move forward, so they're both in the same category of "homeownership", but on different economic planets. My perception is that people are far more willing to extend themselves today and, if true, that reflects "wealth" very inaccurately.
Seem though. That would mean you didn't maybe take into account that the population increased quite a bit too, and that those are all people getting into a home that otherwise did not. And that is growing the middle class.
Again we added about 92 million homes since the 70's. That is real wealth that the middle class have.
I definitely thought about it, which I thought my example covered the increase-but-maybe-not thing, so it still doesn't address "wealth", imo.
That does not mean though that the wealthiest didn't get a larger cut by lending them the money to buy goods/services for those homes from them. But still means that the middle class is growing.
You might just be picking up on the people buying homes now that were not given equity by the government (all those white guys coming back from the war getting those cheap loans) or generational wealth being handed down and them having to pay for everything themselves.
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Everything is out of whack right now though I am not questioning that.
I know that I actually am a household that owes more in student debt thanb my house mortgage. Which is crazy to think about.
Curious what the connection was to student debt and mortgage?
Something I was thinking about that could bring us through the backdoor, npi, is...do we agree that wealth is mostly zero sum? Obviously not completely, but mostly, or a significant portion? If yes, then I'd ask, in regard to the first chart showing the decline of total wealth from the 50th-90th percentiles, where do we think that loss comes from? Income? Real estate? Savings/retirement/investments?