5 ms·

Upvote! Private property ownership and intergenerational wealth transfer is the foundation of middle class, and bigger middle class leads to better education f

Upvote! Private property ownership and intergenerational wealth transfer is the foundation of middle class, and bigger middle class leads to better education for the masses, and a more democratic society!

garduque 5y ago
Like I tell my wife, we are working to pay off our house (and hopefully another soon) for our kids, not for us. Sure I could rent and maybe there are benefits to that in a short term view, but in a generational view there are huge benefits to my children if I am able to give each of them a house (to live in or sell and buy another, I don't care) and then they are able to make things better for their kids, etc. Add up all the money you have spent on rent and mortgage payments and pretend it just never happened. It's life changing to have that.
bradlys 5y ago
Why do people want intergenerational wealth transfer? Anytime we talk about billionaires passing down large sums of money to their children and creating dynasties out of it - it’s a bad thing. Yet, middle class to upper middle class does it and it’s a good thing? I see it as problematic. Keeps the ground unlevel.
- tallon 5y ago
  I guess it's something you don't understand if you don't want/have kids.
- Viliam1234 5y ago
  If you rent your house instead of buying it, it only means that someone else is passing their money to their kids. I mean, ultimately, someone owns the house, even if that person is not you, right? An interesting solution is to decouple the price of the house from the price of the land it stands on, and then the government could rent the land and use that income instead of other taxes. Better description of this idea is here: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-progress-and-poverty https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-progr...
- ckdarby 5y ago
  To allow the next generation the luxury of not being priced entirely out of the market. The difference as you go down the wealth classes hits a point of, being able to afford a home at all or never being able to purchase a home.
sn9 5y ago
That may have been historically true, but that's also because people have historically not relied on much better investment vehicles. Historically, housing has actually been a poor investment relative to investing in the stock market. Most people simply didn't know how or whether to invest, but nowadays investment vehicles like index funds and target date funds make that relatively straightforward. We should be discouraging housing as investment so affordable housing can be a thing that exists and the housing market can respond to demand by building out the supply at levels people can afford while also encouraging people to sock away at least 5-15% of every paycheck into passively managed investment vehicles that have way higher long term returns than housing ever did. The current situation is that we subsidize the middle and upper classes in terms of housing at the expense of the poor and those just starting out by artificially and unnecessarily pushing up the price of housing and constraining supply.
- jjav 5y ago
  > housing has actually been a poor investment relative to investing in the stock market Even if you wanted to think of housing as an investment, it should be compared not to the stock market but to the lifelong cost of renting, since it's one or the other (unless you plan to be homeless).

garduque 5y ago

Like I tell my wife, we are working to pay off our house (and hopefully another soon) for our kids, not for us. Sure I could rent and maybe there are benefits to that in a short term view, but in a generational view there are huge benefits to my children if I am able to give each of them a house (to live in or sell and buy another, I don't care) and then they are able to make things better for their kids, etc. Add up all the money you have spent on rent and mortgage payments and pretend it just never happened. It's life changing to have that.

bradlys 5y ago

Why do people want intergenerational wealth transfer? Anytime we talk about billionaires passing down large sums of money to their children and creating dynasties out of it - it’s a bad thing. Yet, middle class to upper middle class does it and it’s a good thing? I see it as problematic. Keeps the ground unlevel.

tallon 5y ago
I guess it's something you don't understand if you don't want/have kids.
Viliam1234 5y ago
If you rent your house instead of buying it, it only means that someone else is passing their money to their kids. I mean, ultimately, someone owns the house, even if that person is not you, right? An interesting solution is to decouple the price of the house from the price of the land it stands on, and then the government could rent the land and use that income instead of other taxes. Better description of this idea is here: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-progress-and-poverty https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-progr...
ckdarby 5y ago
To allow the next generation the luxury of not being priced entirely out of the market. The difference as you go down the wealth classes hits a point of, being able to afford a home at all or never being able to purchase a home.

sn9 5y ago

That may have been historically true, but that's also because people have historically not relied on much better investment vehicles. Historically, housing has actually been a poor investment relative to investing in the stock market. Most people simply didn't know how or whether to invest, but nowadays investment vehicles like index funds and target date funds make that relatively straightforward. We should be discouraging housing as investment so affordable housing can be a thing that exists and the housing market can respond to demand by building out the supply at levels people can afford while also encouraging people to sock away at least 5-15% of every paycheck into passively managed investment vehicles that have way higher long term returns than housing ever did. The current situation is that we subsidize the middle and upper classes in terms of housing at the expense of the poor and those just starting out by artificially and unnecessarily pushing up the price of housing and constraining supply.

jjav 5y ago
> housing has actually been a poor investment relative to investing in the stock market Even if you wanted to think of housing as an investment, it should be compared not to the stock market but to the lifelong cost of renting, since it's one or the other (unless you plan to be homeless).