Overnight, stupid John Hinderaker would tell us that it is solely liberals’ fault that young people can’t afford to buy homes in the United States or in the United Kingdom.
That’s hilarious. And it’s stupid.
He says that it is liberal taxation policies that drive homes to be unaffordable both in the US and the UK. Let’s put to the side that taxes are significantly higher in the UK than in the US.
And let us observe that the astonishing inflation in the price of an average home in the United States has benefited boomers almost exclusively. Meanwhile, employers no longer pay a living wage to the average younger worker. Thus younger workers cannot afford to buy the very high priced real estate that boomers trade among one another.
Once you’re in the game, you can keep playing, but without a 20% down payment which now typically runs more than $150,000, young people are locked out of this game.
Of course, both liberals and Conservative boomers own homes in the United States. So they are all participants in the game.
But John regularly tells us (mostly without competent empirical evidence) that Republicans own more businesses and create more jobs than their liberal counterparts.
If that is so, then per force, it is the fault of the GOP business leaders that these Republicans do not pay living wages to their workers. Said another way, they create “businesses” (long form scams, actually) that trap young people in dead end jobs, where they can never really get ahead.
The “profits” of these supposed businesses are thus made at the expense of longer-term survival for young people — at a societal level. Prior generations of business owners made sure that they paid their workers enough to be able to afford a basic, decent standard of living — and the American dream of owning a home after several years of hard work, and saving for a modest home.
Not so — these rapacious Republican / MAGA adherents.
[I am intentionally ignoring John’s comments about the UK housing markets, because they are driven by different factors and are thus not relevant in a United States political policy discussion.]
Here endeth the lesson.
