Well that’s just false. About ~40% of U.S. homes are mortgage-free.[1] And it is my understanding that outside of select states, properties are generally fairly cheap compared to income, so even if someone’s paying a 30-year mortgage chances are good it’s not a “large proportion of income”.
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-07-17/close-to-...
Currently ~67% of the population owns or lives with someone that owns their home, and 30% of those homes are mortgage free. So, ~80% of the population has a mortgage or pays rent, which IMO fit’s almost all just fine.
PS: Many people are paying rent or have a mortgage while owning a home, but that’s less of a problem.
That said, the stats are likely inflated due to the fact that people aren't able to buy a house post-education like with the previous generation. They're stuck paying high rent prices with dead-end jobs.
Me: That’s just false.
If you earn 10x while having to pay 20% of that as rent or mortgage, you do still end up with 8x. Not to mention non-home owners are also prevalent in most of the developing world.
Again, I agree the author shouldn't have said "almost all" Americans, but it's still a silly nitpick in context to the rest of the article. Rent/Mortgage is just a slice of the pie of costs that one may have to pay in decentralized America.
Where does that "assuredly" come from? If you just immigrated (non-investment), probably not. If you're like my immigrant relatives who immigrated 20 years ago -- just run-of-mill Silicon Valley electrical engineers, they have been mortgage-free for a long time, and they live right next to 1 Infinite Loop where cost of living is pretty damn high.
This article is overall fairly objective but the hardships described in the housing section seem quite exaggerated, from "Armenians are sometimes under the impression that lots of Americans own houses, too. This is a misapprehension; ..." onward. (For one thing, unless I'm terribly mistaken, those who do own houses generally own better houses than Armenian apartments; same for those who financed houses.)
To be fair, I can understand the exaggeration, as this article targets those who are "righteously indignant about stingy relatives in the US". (Which btw I don't understand -- why are rich relatives obligated to help the poor? I guess it's a cultural thing.)
Is this sarcasm, or do you genuinely not see how exceptional that is?
Yes, but not ex-USSR states. For them, three quarters of households having to pay for their housing is an extremely high proportion. You could argue that “most” would be a better description than “almost all”, but it doesn’t make the article grossly misleading.
"Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say."
Not cool to make these judgments about people. You're not her physician and don't have access to her medical records.
Also, you should not be revealing such private information about your tennant, given that your HN account is linked to your real identity.
I think the real issue here is some find the fact inconvenient that someone with asthma can be on full, never-working-again disability in the USA. This is a truth, and I haven't passed any judgement on whether it's good or bad. It simply is a fact that people such as this exist and live off society's tax dollars. You can pass your own judgement, I have no comment on whether it's positive or negative.
This depends on the severity of the asthma and other factors. As I said, you don't know this person's medical history or the details of all the conditions they may have. I think it's tasteless to suggest that someone who most likely has quite a serious medical condition has "lucked out".
>I haven't passed any judgement on whether it's good or bad.
Ha!