A record 30% of Americans have $0 in wealth outside of their homes

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Less people need liquid wealth when they have pension, social security, and other social benefit.

When they have section 8, they don’t even need wealth in a home.

When nobody needs wealth, comminism would become reality

Not a surprise at all… :rofl:

I think about this sometimes. In the news media we have many depictions of people being hit by some seemingly minor setbacks in life but they are knocked out solid and things just spiral downhill from there rather quickly. It seems like there are many people living on the edge all this time and any disruption can throw them off balance. Our society appears to have an unproportional amount of these vulnerable people who need various kinds of protections at the society level. It makes you wonder who are truly vulnerable and who simply chose to be vulnerable by spending everything they’ve earned and not saving a penny. The level of personal accountability is way lower in the US than other cultures.

It might be a politically incorrect thing to even ask this kind of question …

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America is so rich that we can bail every single person out of their irresponsible spending. That’s how we recovered from the Great Recession.

Fundamentally this is a problem for advanced economy. For rich countries, the aggregate supply is way over the aggregate demand for survival. When needed, USA is able to feed everyone. That’s the enabling reason why people are living paycheck to paycheck.

On the other hand, it’s also a result of liberal policies. Liberal policy encourages people to live from paycheck to paycheck, and believe that govement will rescue them when needed. It could make people less self sufficient and more depend on others. They can complain, whine until they get what they need. Basically a person can smoke weeds every day and still expect the government and others to provide them a good life. This is the typical liberal attitude.

A recent example is the UC student Maria who sues her university for not forbidding her to protest. Not only do liberals expect other people to feed them, they also expect other people to keep them safe from their own behavior.

When you have a government more focused on bailing out corporations, mind you that hey are solvent, rather than the American people, well, we have a problem.

See? We have 2 parties, one enjoys the achievements of the other, from civil liberties, freedom, equal protection under the law, specially women who now can say whatever, work, and vote. On the other side we have a party with a mantra of financial responsibility that doesn’t compute when you see what they do. Lots of present wars under their belly, lots of wasting money on jets, and who can’t discuss the present nut in the white house spending our hard earned dollars on golfing while people in the neck of the woods and schools are in need of heating. Yes! Schools are receiving donations back East because they can’t afford heating!

But golfing is mandated for the nut in the white house. At our expense, when he, allegedly is a billionaire. Not!

Did I read financial responsibility? Well, let’s start with everybody being equal under the law. If you want to go into real estate, go ahead, pay your taxes right away. No welfare aka 1031 exchange. No tax deductions for nothing, just pay your taxes ASAP, like everybody does, renters and home owners alike, like everybody does in any other country.

Now, we know who, and how many are protected and babysat by the government. Right?

Does a 1991 Honda CRX Si in decent shape count as wealth???

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How big is your stock portfolio? We don’t care about your cars since it will be worthless someday for sure :rofl:

America is so in debt from doing it over and over again.

You’re exactly right, and the fact you question if it’s correct to ask is a huge issue. It can’t even be a topic of conversation to find solutions without people being accused of being racist or wanting to see poor people dying in the streets. That sort of attack stops any intellectual conversation about solutions from even happening.

The savings rate was actually NEGATIVE before the great recession started. People were so optimistic about the future that they were spending more than their income. They were borrowing money to do it. That’s a major reason the great recession was so bad. People didn’t have the savings to fall back on that they did in prior recessions.

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Hey, come on…a car that takes you over 300 miles for 20 bucks or so is PRICELESS!!!

So is your health. Yourself is your most valuable wealth, more than your car

Oooooh, I don’t know… clean title :grinning:

[inserts mandatory net worth charts here]

that’s why bitcoin was born, mind you.

OK
:scream::smiley:

That is why home ownership is critical… without it maybe only 5% would have any accumulation of wealth. The forced savings of an amortized mortgage is the most effective wealth generator…

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What’s your thoughts on 1. interest deduction, 2. capital gains exclusions? Should the government subsidize it?

Yes…government has subsidized forever…It builds communities and wealth.

It only builds wealth for the older generations who bought years ago. For the younger generations, it’s made home prices unaffordable for many people. They are permanently priced out. Home ownership hasn’t increased despite all the programs that are supposed to help.