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Comment by whinenot | Hacker News Reader

Because the US has systematically disenfranchised ethnic minorities over the course of its history. Any time there was a non-white person or community that was starting to become prosperous, the power of the state could be used to crush them. At times it was overtly murderous[0], but as that became unfashionable, it was relegated to more subtle methods. Some of the most blatant examples include:

- Want an interstate in your city? Run it through a black or brown neighborhood.[1]

- Want a stadium? Build it in a black or brown neighborhood.[2]

- Black folks got a nice property? Just take it from them.[3]

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_race_massacre [1]https://www.npr.org/2021/04/07/984784455/a-brief-history-of-... [2]https://americanhistory.si.edu/pleibol/game-changers/big-lea... [3]https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/oct/01/bruces-beach...

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> - Want an interstate in your city? Run it through a black or brown neighborhood.[1]

A lot these debates really come down to just how impressed one is by arguments like this. It so happens that an Interstate was built through the neighborhood my entire family occupied in St. Louis in the 1950s. Some of them were "displaced." I can't for the life of me figure out how this is supposed to be relevant to my life today. I'd wager that I'm the only one of my cousins to even know about it, since I'm interested in local history and bugged my grandparents about this stuff before they died.

It just doesn't amount to anything. My family members had a trillion decisions to make -- big and small -- both before and after that singular event and the sum of those decisions had a much bigger impact on familial wealth -- note: there was none -- than that one time in the 1950s they were forced to move.

The one thing I can think about is that it is much harder to maintain a strong and healthy community if your community is divided by an interstate.

Again, I would submit that nobody really believes this. Look at your own family. Do you all live in the same neighborhood with strong neighborhood-supported familial bonds? Probably not. Even when I lived back home my mom lived in one neighborhood, my brother another, my friends in different local munis. Today I live in another state to be near my wife's family, but the closest family member is a 20-minute drive from where we bought our house!

Modern people are spread out all over the regions they occupy.

It really seems like on this one topic people accept arguments on behalf of other people that they know with perfect clarity make zero sense when they try to apply them to their own lives.

I personally avoid living near interstates. The noise, the pollution & the walkability around them generally suck. YMMV.

Do you believe that people who can not afford a car can have the same long-distance family+friend support that you had? Do you think that your situation applies to everyone?

92% of American households own a car. So, plainly: yes, my experience was typical.

If that interstate was never routed through that neighborhood, would members of your family be financially better off today? A fully paid off house unlocks a lot of financial freedom for the current occupants and potentially generational wealth for future family members.

This is a new argument in the past few years and it doesn't make sense. You do not need a parent with a paid off house to go to college and be successful. I didn't have that and I don't know many people who did. My friends whose parents have paid off houses now did not have them back when the kids were going to college and how would that have helped anyway? Home equity loan instead of student loan? How often is that choice made? There are some rich families who manage to pass wealth on generation after generation but it's rare in my experience and not needed to succeed

The typical American's biggest monthly expense is housing. Owning a house drastically reduces your monthly expenses. If you're young, out of work or on a fixed income, minimizing that expense can have an enormous impact on your quality of life and the choices available to you.

The generational wealth kicks in when your heirs can assume your mortgage free lifestyle, generate monthly income from it, borrow against it, or sell an asset that has likely appreciated in value (sometimes greatly) since it was purchased ages ago.

No it doesn't historically and in most places even in the US. If you live in an unusual area, e.g coastal California, at an unusual time, e.g. the past 20 years then yes if you bought 20 years ago your cost would be much less than equivalent rent. OTOH if you mean own it outright then sure but with 30 year mortgages almost no one would own a house outright until pretty close to retirement. And sure if you inherit a house you can live rent free but for most people who inherit a house it would be 20-30 years before you yourself die, i.e. pretty close to retirement. So yes some people get a nice surprise late in life (but hardly most people- I won't for example). Difficult to see how it would make much difference in someones life course

The average age of inheritance is like 50 and the average sum inherited is like $40k (these numbers are from memory). I couldn't figure out what percentage of people ever receive an inheritance at all, but I don't think it's large.

Plainly, this is not generating "generational wealth" that's giving people an enormous head start.

These tropes are repeated uncritically because people want them to represent large effects.

No. Why would that have had any impact on their ability to later buy a home? It didn't change anything over the long term.

Then it should be explicitly a penalty to white people, no? This is the same country that passed a law called the "Chinese Exclusion Act".

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