New US homeownership measure puts people first • Hacker News Board

Re: New US homeownership measure puts people first

#371

Post by carlosjobim » Wed, Jul 22, 2026, 12:38 PM UTC

bluGill wrote: post #340

carlosjobim wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've been told that life was a constant struggle, you weren't there. Many would say that life today is a constant struggle. But we have abundant evidence in art, architecture, inventions, and every fruit of human creativity, showing that people weren't in a constant struggle. Especially, we have evidence in literature from the past, giving a more nuanced picture than that of constant struggle for everyone everywher…

Literature only happened in agricultural societies and mostly by the elites. While it gives us a picture historians have to work really hard to read between the lines to figure out what life was really like for most people. If you were the elite in any time your life is much better than typical. Many would say life is a constant struggle. However few have any clue what others experience is like. Even the filthy rich…

> Literature only happened in agricultural societies and mostly by the elites.

How far are you going back now? I'm not for groping in the mists of pre-history, when we can read literary descriptions from the last 500 years. That is a more relatable past than the little we can know from ancient days.

> If you were the elite in any time your life is much better than typical.

Yes, and that is just as true today.

Re: New US homeownership measure puts people first

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Post by applfanboysbgon » Wed, Jul 22, 2026, 1:30 PM UTC

pibaker wrote: post #347

applfanboysbgon wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Singapore is surveyed as either the happiest or second-happiest country in Asia (IIRC), with at one point a >95% homeownership rate due to government policy (although I believe that's now closer to 90%, in part due to foreign immigration?). It seems self-evident that having a home is somewhere on the order of 1000000x more important than being able to buy lots of cheap junk that barely matters.

Singapore is also a city state and has a land and housing policy that can't be easily replicated elsewhere. Tell Americans they will be shoved into government built high rises with racial quota and see what happens.

This is a misrepresentation of Singapore's policy. Nobody is being "shoved" anywhere, it is voluntary. And it is possible to replicate elsewhere. Taiwan reached 88% at one point; the Soviet Union was also known to have virtually eliminated homelessness, although in that case your description would have been accurate. Still, a home is better than no home. Government policy absolutely should be making a baseline of cheap housing available for everyone, even if it's not a 5 bedroom McMansion on an acre of land.

Re: New US homeownership measure puts people first

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Post by win311fwg » Wed, Jul 22, 2026, 2:22 PM UTC

inigyou wrote: post #357

win311fwg wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you build a small new home when you can buy a large used home for the same price?

If homes were expensive we'd buy less of them.

Which is why we do buy less of them nowadays. We're buying slightly more of them than we did during the Great Depression, but we are on the low side as compared to the historical norm. If we bought more of them we wouldn't be talking about it in the first place.

Re: New US homeownership measure puts people first

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Post by BeetleB » Wed, Jul 22, 2026, 3:01 PM UTC

em-bee wrote: post #360

BeetleB wrote: post #217

Looking at this, seeing that 50% are homeowners is actually astoundingly good. In a lot of countries 50% cannot afford to be homeowners. This is an international community here on HN, would love to hear takes from other countries.

that number does not feel right. global statistics show only very few countries with a homeownership of less than 50%, two of which are germany and switzerland. and there it's not because they can't afford it but because the cities where people want to live do not even offer enough properties for sale because the majority of housing is owned by large rental businesses. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankin…

Keep in mind the differing ways they calculate home ownership percentage. The ones you are looking at likely are calculated using the "older" method, which is 80% in the US.

Re: New US homeownership measure puts people first

#375

Post by em-bee » Wed, Jul 22, 2026, 3:19 PM UTC

BeetleB wrote: post #374

em-bee wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that number does not feel right. global statistics show only very few countries with a homeownership of less than 50%, two of which are germany and switzerland. and there it's not because they can't afford it but because the cities where people want to live do not even offer enough properties for sale because the majority of housing is owned by large rental businesses. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankin…

Keep in mind the differing ways they calculate home ownership percentage. The ones you are looking at likely are calculated using the "older" method, which is 80% in the US.

can you elaborate please? how do the methods differ? do you have some links to explain that?

Re: New US homeownership measure puts people first

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Post by Xirdus » Wed, Jul 22, 2026, 3:21 PM UTC

inigyou wrote: post #355

Xirdus wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You misunderstand. Keep your job. Move away. Drive to work 3 hours one way everyday. Have no life except work, commute, sleep and family. And yes, it will drive your QoL to the ground, I'm fully aware of that. I'm just saying it's neither impossible nor infeasible nor unheard of. It's "merely" undesirable. Extremely undesirable. But possible.

If your solution makes your life so bad that suicide is better, it isn't a solution.

I'm worried about your unusually low threshold for suicide.

Re: New US homeownership measure puts people first

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Post by cpburns2009 » Wed, Jul 22, 2026, 3:23 PM UTC

curious_curios wrote: post #370

cpburns2009 wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No body is forced to have a $700 car payment. That's a luxury financing $30k+ on a brand new or nearly new car.

Though with gas, maintenance, insurance on top of the car payment, that $700 is probably the floor of car ownership.

Those will vary vastly depending on where you live. Gas and insurance are high where I live, and even though the environment is harsh on cars (winters with salt), maintenance has never been much.

Re: New US homeownership measure puts people first

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Post by jimberlage » Wed, Jul 22, 2026, 3:36 PM UTC

cpburns2009 wrote: post #326

jimberlage wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the problem with getting this done in the US is the lack of public transit and the dysfunction in public schools. If you could avoid a $700 car payment and still get to school/job/grocery store on time, a lot of Americans would. But if you can't, and you are paying $700 anyways, why not at least use the fact that you're paying $700/month to travel anywhere and get a bigger parcel of land all to yourself? Ther…

No body is forced to have a $700 car payment. That's a luxury financing $30k+ on a brand new or nearly new car.

True (I certainly don't!) but I chose it because I had to do some research a while back and that was close to the average for Americans.

[1]: https://qz.com/average-car-payment-by-state#average-car-paym... [2]: https://www.lendingtree.com/auto/debt-statistics/

Re: New US homeownership measure puts people first

#379

Post by ch4s3 » Wed, Jul 22, 2026, 3:56 PM UTC

applfanboysbgon wrote: post #368

ch4s3 wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, my point is that you can't boil happiness down to a single causal factor and if you could the evidence doesn't support home ownership being that factor.

> my point is that you can't boil happiness down to a single causal factor This is not a claim I ever made. The claim I made was that homeownership was of significantly higher importance than affordability of cheap consumer goods. Obviously there are other factors.

Well your alleged correlation doesn’t support that claim, and I showed a number of counter examples.

Re: New US homeownership measure puts people first

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Post by ch4s3 » Wed, Jul 22, 2026, 3:59 PM UTC

jltsiren wrote: post #333

ch4s3 wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think there’s a good basis for your claim. The earliest agricultural cultures all practiced flood retreat agriculture in alluvial plains. If you look at the Americas you also only see intensive agriculture in coercive top down city states or small empires. Outside of that you see opportunistic plantings and forest agronomy mixed with foraging and hunting. Or in coastal regions you see marginal planting supple…

> Why would anyone choose subsistence grain agriculture when literally anything else was available. There was nothing else available. If you were born in an agricultural settlement, that was probably the only lifestyle you knew. Even if you knew other ways to sustain yourself, all land was already taken. Settled regions were too densely populated, and the lands beyond them were claimed by indigenous peoples. If you w…

> If you were born in an agricultural settlement, that was probably the only lifestyle you knew

All of these societies would have had headers and hunting/foraging people on their periphery who they traded with. People regularly fucked off to go join those groups. This is well attested to in written records.