> It's easy to have sympathy for the otherwise destitute grandma who has a little apartment she rents out and lives off of that rent. I'm not talking about sob

> It's easy to have sympathy for the otherwise destitute grandma who has a little apartment she rents out and lives off of that rent. I'm not talking about sob story grandmas. I'm talking about people in the tech industry who got educated, saved their money, and want to retire. If that's not you now, it could be you in a few years. It made a LOT of sense for them to buy expensive houses, and maybe to rent them out. > as a society we'd be better off if the default for investment was to find a relatively low-risk, dividen-focused index-fund/ETF. When Fed rates were at/near zero, which ETF was giving dividends above inflation? [!] Even now with Fed rates at 5% (and CD's returning similar), Vanguard's Dividend Appreciation fund (VIG) only gives 2%, and there's plenty of volatility/risk there. I don't have the historical record for VIG's dividend rate, but it wasn't must better, and I don't think you'll find any (relatively safe!) ETFs now with dividends above 3% So while I can agree that would be a better society, it's not the one we live in. Who should we blame? Investors? Politicians? Voters? I suspect you're going to say "Capitalism", and I'll bow out of that conversation [!] I'm sure you can find several one-off stocks that have/had high dividends, but that's not something most people would feel safe putting their entire retirement in.