Wake up, America -- Change ain't a commin' because the problem is with you

Alas, it appears that our new president is going to be no different than that previous guy. Likewise, Democrats in Congress are acting no different than their spendthrift, Republican predecessors. Why? Because everyone is still operating on the same, idiotic premise that owning a home is a public good and a god-given right, along with that inane (or perhaps insane) political right enshrined in our Declaration of Independence that we be happy. Allow me a minute or two to explain to my fellow Americans why this is a problem.

First, anyone who's spent any significant time living outside the United States knows that few people enjoy the standard of living most Americans have. In fact, most people in urban areas of the world (and most of the world's population lives in urban areas) do not own a piece of land. Even if they do, the land probably has more food growing on it than cement. If more Americans were to spend time abroad, we might actually begin to realize just how crazy some of our expectations of acceptable living actually are. We might also begin to realize how the number of gargantuan homes in a society should be more a sign of global inequality than local prosperity, both in terms of land and energy consumption, but also in the ability of home-owning elites to bypass the political process altogether by walling themselves off from the political tradeoffs that people must necessarily make when living in close proximity to one another.

Second, there is the ever persistent argument that people should own homes because real property constitutes the primary source of savings for most people, and therefore, owning a home is essential for enabling people to save for retirement. Well, tell that to all those people who are currently trying to sell their homes at a loss so that they can move into a retirement community because their children are too busy trying to feed, clothe, and shelter their own children in a down economy. Obviously, we, Americans, seem to have forgotten a simple word called risk and the consequences of it. We need to constantly remind ourselves that prices don't always rise and that our expectations should never be that today's prices will be tomorrow's. Therefore, we should hedge against this risk by investing in other assets besides land and houses (or at least, invest in land and houses in more than one part of the country or in more than one country).

Third, anyone who understands the true nature of capitalism must know from firsthand experience that in order to remain employed, one must be willing to pick up and move to where there is demand for the goods or services that person is capable of producing. If you're the last person living in the middle of a cornfield, why should you expect to be employed by a Japanese car company or to have taxpayers pay you to grow surplus corn? You either chose to bear the risk of being the last person to live in a location, or you were smart and rented your land, leaving the risk to a landlord, which could feasibly be a fully capitalized corporation with diversified stockholders, as opposed to fobbing your losses off on every renter who pays federal tax.

So, let me get this straight. We supposedly believe in capitalism, but our government pursues policies of homeownership with abandon that thwart the very system of which we proclaim ourselves to be the true disciples? Every poor immigrant who has come to this country by foot, plane or ship, knows there is an incongruency between the human instinct to identify with a piece of land and the need to survive, so why exactly are the children of these immigrants (which we all are) immune from the tradeoffs that are forebearers had to make, albeit grudingly, in immigrating to this country in the first place?

Enough said. Time to pack my bags and head to the former Soviet Union where gypsies and squatters rule. Our politicians aren't going to wake up to the absurdity of their homeownership beliefs until most Americans finally do.