Business Insider (and other capitalist trash media) are making specious arguments about the housing market as baby boomers finally start to die. They’re trying to justify keeping the inflated housing market inflated and ownership in the hands of the wealthy rather than deal with reality and solve problems.
First lie: “younger people won’t want these homes”. Seriously? The Tiny House movement is primarily driven by capitalist greed pushing wages down and making home ownership impossible, not because younger people are obsessed with tiny things. Young people are environmentally aware, unlike boomers, and know that the most environmentally friendly house is one that’s already built.
Second, so what if these homes are in retirement communities? They are not isolated and in the middle of nowhere, they are suburbs. Create affordable public transit to cities, and people can travel to work and shop. Plus, you can always build businesses where people live.
Third, what is this “debt” they speak of? Baby boomers OWE women, Black people, People of Colour and all post-boomer generations who have been ripped off and cheated for decades. Boomers owe society for their decades of racism, redlining, unfair and underpaid wages.
When it comes to dying baby boomers and the hundreds of thousands of unoccupied homes and apartments, the best solution is redistribution. Confiscate all those empty houses and apartments and give them away. Allow people apply to win debt-free homes and give them away by random draws.
Giving millions of “boomer” houses to Black people, mortgage free will help (though not fully) pay reparations for 70 / 400 years of racism, gentrification, redlining and unfair business practices. Give the millions of empty apartments to Millennials, GenYs and GenXers who want a small place to live.
The boomers can’t take their wealth with them when they die. Give it to people who need it and can make better use of it.
Damn ugly post.
The current trend (coincidentally) is to reduce inheritance taxes. As I’ve proposed elsewhere, it should be closer to 100%/ [stderr]
One interesting premise I’ve encountered from arguing with the boomers is: 1) we don’t want to just give stuff to undeserving people who didn’t work for it 2) I need to provide for my kids. That’s odd because: what did your kids to to work for it, boomer? Putting all of the dying boomers’ assets back into the economy would be a “rising tide that floats all boats” which is something I hear is near and dear to the boomer. I think they’re just lying.
Some of us boomers are Mexican Americans.
Karen generally seems pretty young to me.
Im a boomer. I bought my first home in 2001. It was 51 years old and had a cost of 123,000. I pay 12k a year in payments on a 30 year term. At the end of that term I will have paid nearly 3 times the original cost of the home and it will be 81 years old when it is paid for. I was forced out of my last job at the age of 52 because I had to have spinal surgery and was unable to secure employment for the next ten years. Not counting what my wife made, I was able to bring 130 dollars a month on my VA disability. At 62 I was able to claim social security benefits to the tune of 922 dollars a month at this point. You want my 81 year old house when its paid off you can have it. I live on just over 1k a month. You think that I have somehow screwed over the following generations because of all that? Damn, I wish I lived in your reality. Oh yeah, I am not an old white boomer. I too am a person of color. I may not have suffered like those in the generations before me, but my life was no picnic. I worked for 40 years to get what little I have. I too have to pay through the nose for what I have, but that doesnt mean I think I should be given anything. You want something, get out there and work for it. I dont owe anyone but the bank and no one owes me anything either.
Well, they dropped the “sacrificing the slaves as helpers in the afterlife” bit lately. What more do you want to indulge on your poor poor pharaos/emperors/CEOs/overlords?
/Sacrasm