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I've endeavored to completely read your messages. I would appreciate if you returned the courtesy to avoid needless repetition when our messages are already som

I've endeavored to completely read your messages. I would appreciate if you returned the courtesy to avoid needless repetition when our messages are already somewhat lengthy owing to the large number of simultaneous topics. And also please cite your numbers - you're now pulling a bunch of numbers/facts out of nowhere that seem largely hallucinated. Citations would go a long way here and take like 3 seconds. So here are the apples to apples base data for the most recent branch of discussion: Percent of all housing units 'owned' by their occupants = 53% in 1950, 58% in 2025 [1]. Percent of 'owned' housing units without a mortgage = 56% in 1950, 39.4% in 2025. [2] Approximate (max) rate of 'real ownership' (multiplying the two values) = 29.7% in 1950, 22.9% in 2025. The first link also goes into detail on the demographic collapse I mentioned showing 'ownership' in people under 35 is at 36.8% and continuing to trend downwards. The local max is being driven by the elderly in non-urban low-income states, as already mentioned. I also have specifically focused on issues above and beyond inflation. Inflation is an effect, not a cause. The cause of these problems (of which inflation is but one) is money printing and the transition to becoming a debt driven society. I 100% agree that things were awful in 1930. It was the worst economic event in 150 years of deflationary systems in the US that also came on the tail end a number of catastrophes setting up a perfect storm. But focusing on this time is like me arguing that the past was better than 2008. Well yeah, I'd certainly hope so! But in that case it'd say a whole lot less about the past than it would about 2008. I do agree 1950 isn't ideal in a perfect world but it's probably about as good as we can get on balance of the difference in the systems + reliable/impartial data we can obtain and it being a fairly 'normal' era during a time of world war and catastrophic plagues. --- The latter part of your post turned into an unhinged and incoherent jumble of ad hominem and strawmen. That, I will admit, I am skimming over. If you want to phrase things like an adult, and argue against what I'm actually saying, then I'll happily read it again. [1] - https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/files/currenthvspress.pdf https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/files/currenthvspress.pdf [2] - https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2026/01/mortgage-free-homes.html https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2026/01/mortgage-free...

notahacker 4mo ago
> So here are the apples to apples base data for the most recent branch of discussion: These are explicitly not apples to apples comparisons because the 1951 percentage is extremely restrictive about the housing units considered (i.e. most apartments are excluded, as are farms) and there's no reason to believe the ownership percentages are equivalent. I could (equally unfairly) point out that the 9.5 million "free and clear" homes in your paper is less than a quarter of the total recorded nonfarm housing stock which is a lot less than the 34 million (39.4%) owned free and clear today. What is clear though is that no interpretation of the available data is compatible with your original statement that "In 1951 56% of people owned their home, free and clear", or your assertion that something your source claimed had grown massively recently was a "local low". Defending those basic misunderstandings with clumsy misuse of statistics two posts later whilst telling me not to get too vested in arguments is... pretty funny. Also, as I keep pointing out and you keep pretending isn't the case, the 1950s were a time where inflation rates averaged their current level (but with more volatility) not a time of deflation (and for that matter were also a time of the Fannie Mae mortgage backing you blame for everything, rather than the good old days when you had to save up 50% of the cost of your house as a deposit and pay it off within 10 years). So it is completely irrelevant to your argument for deflation. You have not addressed any of the other points in my last two posts. I am sorry, but if genuinely don't understand why nobody would invest for a 0.1% return [under a gold standard] even when the post you are responding to explicitly mentions things like interest rates and risk and the relationship between credit prices and money supply, it is not worth my time trying to educate you on what those very basic concepts entail. Especially given that you have made it extremely clear you have no interest in understanding. There is no point phrasing things like an adult to someone that flat-out refuses to acknowledge very basic adult concepts like interest rates and risk and supply and demand whilst resorting to babyish memes like "money printer go whirrr" and "funny money"
- somenameforme 4mo ago
  I've already mentioned that the contemporary data are also restrictive. The (of total) maximum possible free and clear owned housing stock is 30% [1] since it's only 45 million units out of a total housing stock of 147. And it'd be even lower because we're only considering owner occupied, and corporations own about 10% of houses in modern times - yet another 'yay' for funny money driven inflation evasion and speculation. So the max would be in the 20s at the absolute most, yet we get 39.4% of homes being owned free and clear. How? By removing a lot of the housing stock from consideration. In any case, much of the stock removed in the 1950s data works against me. For instance farm units had even more favorable ownership rates than general housing stock. There is no 'trick' in the data here. I've also already said I fully agree that the data we're using isn't ideal in terms of inflation. It was right after WW2 and so there was some serious localized inflation, as well as some early funny money stuff. But 1950 is pretty a pretty reasonable inflection point between 'the good ole days' and the inflation squeeze of modern times. If your argument is that inflation/money printing from the 40s was causing the positive outcomes, you end up with a logical contradiction because we engage in orders of magnitude greater inflation/money printing today, yet have worse outcomes by endless metrics. Furthermore, 1950 wasn't some local max. Most data there was significantly worse than the era prior to the wars, spanish flu, and so on. As for investment, expected value [2] is a term you do not seem familiar with. It is a risk adjusted value of expected return on something. In modern times any potential venture needs an expected value greater than inflation to break even. That immediately leads to the scenario where you need infinite exponential growth or this economic system collapses. That infinite exponential growth briefly looked possible. Now the digital explosion is plateauing, there's a fertility collapse (which again is very possibly caused, at least in part, by this system's failures) and more. If LLMs or space don't restart the game of kick the can, this system will die. The only question is whether it will go out with a boom or a whimper. [1] - https://data.census.gov/table/ACSDT1Y2023.B25081 https://data.census.gov/table/ACSDT1Y2023.B25081 [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expected_value https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expected_value

notahacker 4mo ago

> So here are the apples to apples base data for the most recent branch of discussion: These are explicitly not apples to apples comparisons because the 1951 percentage is extremely restrictive about the housing units considered (i.e. most apartments are excluded, as are farms) and there's no reason to believe the ownership percentages are equivalent. I could (equally unfairly) point out that the 9.5 million "free and clear" homes in your paper is less than a quarter of the total recorded nonfarm housing stock which is a lot less than the 34 million (39.4%) owned free and clear today. What is clear though is that no interpretation of the available data is compatible with your original statement that "In 1951 56% of people owned their home, free and clear", or your assertion that something your source claimed had grown massively recently was a "local low". Defending those basic misunderstandings with clumsy misuse of statistics two posts later whilst telling me not to get too vested in arguments is... pretty funny. Also, as I keep pointing out and you keep pretending isn't the case, the 1950s were a time where inflation rates averaged their current level (but with more volatility) not a time of deflation (and for that matter were also a time of the Fannie Mae mortgage backing you blame for everything, rather than the good old days when you had to save up 50% of the cost of your house as a deposit and pay it off within 10 years). So it is completely irrelevant to your argument for deflation. You have not addressed any of the other points in my last two posts. I am sorry, but if genuinely don't understand why nobody would invest for a 0.1% return [under a gold standard] even when the post you are responding to explicitly mentions things like interest rates and risk and the relationship between credit prices and money supply, it is not worth my time trying to educate you on what those very basic concepts entail. Especially given that you have made it extremely clear you have no interest in understanding. There is no point phrasing things like an adult to someone that flat-out refuses to acknowledge very basic adult concepts like interest rates and risk and supply and demand whilst resorting to babyish memes like "money printer go whirrr" and "funny money"

somenameforme 4mo ago
I've already mentioned that the contemporary data are also restrictive. The (of total) maximum possible free and clear owned housing stock is 30% [1] since it's only 45 million units out of a total housing stock of 147. And it'd be even lower because we're only considering owner occupied, and corporations own about 10% of houses in modern times - yet another 'yay' for funny money driven inflation evasion and speculation. So the max would be in the 20s at the absolute most, yet we get 39.4% of homes being owned free and clear. How? By removing a lot of the housing stock from consideration. In any case, much of the stock removed in the 1950s data works against me. For instance farm units had even more favorable ownership rates than general housing stock. There is no 'trick' in the data here. I've also already said I fully agree that the data we're using isn't ideal in terms of inflation. It was right after WW2 and so there was some serious localized inflation, as well as some early funny money stuff. But 1950 is pretty a pretty reasonable inflection point between 'the good ole days' and the inflation squeeze of modern times. If your argument is that inflation/money printing from the 40s was causing the positive outcomes, you end up with a logical contradiction because we engage in orders of magnitude greater inflation/money printing today, yet have worse outcomes by endless metrics. Furthermore, 1950 wasn't some local max. Most data there was significantly worse than the era prior to the wars, spanish flu, and so on. As for investment, expected value [2] is a term you do not seem familiar with. It is a risk adjusted value of expected return on something. In modern times any potential venture needs an expected value greater than inflation to break even. That immediately leads to the scenario where you need infinite exponential growth or this economic system collapses. That infinite exponential growth briefly looked possible. Now the digital explosion is plateauing, there's a fertility collapse (which again is very possibly caused, at least in part, by this system's failures) and more. If LLMs or space don't restart the game of kick the can, this system will die. The only question is whether it will go out with a boom or a whimper. [1] - https://data.census.gov/table/ACSDT1Y2023.B25081 https://data.census.gov/table/ACSDT1Y2023.B25081 [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expected_value https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expected_value