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crdoconnor

>In the modern economy skills, training, and education are the surest means to success.

Nope. Still land:

http://mattbruenig.com/2013/06/13/whats-more-important-a-col...

actually it was never just land either. It used to be about owning land, debts, gold and slaves

Now it's about owning land, debts (bonds), gold and shares.

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I can't find numbers on how many Americans own homes, but 67% of homes are occupied by their owner. That's quite a large aristocracy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeownership_in_the_United_St...

52% own stocks.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/162353/stock-ownership-stays-reco...

I'm too lazy to google bonds and gold (both easily available to anyone with a brokerage account).

The means to success seem pretty accessible based on these numbers.

Perhaps share of land / stocks / debts owned may be a better metric. Also, home ownership should be replaced with home equity ownership.

I think he meant that money-convertible assets, like land, bonds and shares are more important for the future increase in those assets than brains or education. Anyway, the bank usually own your house, not you. You're not a free man until you own your home and workplace debt-free.

Thee is a meaningless difference between renting and owning 50+% the value of your home.

Looks for the % of Americans that own 95% of their home and try again.

PS: Out of 300 million There are under ~21 million households that own their home actually own their home.

link for figures please :-)

Google: "home ownership without mortgage"

There was a few pages with similar numbers. EX:"More than 20 million American homeowners own their homes outright. No mortgage." http://www.cnbc.com/id/100370046#.

I used under 21 because there seems to be diffirent definitions of home owner. IE if you get a reverse mortgage are you still a home owner, how about a small home equity line of credit, own 2 houses and have more than 1 house of equity etc.

Actually, there is a very substantial difference. The world recognizes and honors that 50%. Particularly the credit markets do and in a liquidity event, you walk with the 50% in cash.

Now if you were to just up and stop paying your debts, you can lose it.

Assuming the market does not tank. Plenty of homes have lost more than 50% of their value.

Even when you "own" your home you don't really --try not paying those property taxes and see what happens.

>I can't find numbers on how many Americans own homes, but 67% of homes are occupied by their owner

...who has usually taken out a huge loan for the privilege, providing a stream of rents to the, uh, real aristocracy.

>52% own stocks.

Probably less than 1% could actually live off what they own, however, and rely primarily upon their labor for their income.

>The means to success seem pretty accessible based on these numbers.

Yes, well you intentionally made these numbers misleading didn't you? You didn't count the number of Americans whose incomes are derived wholly or nearly wholly from rents. You counted the proportion of Americans who owned at least one share.

As for owning one's home... were medieval peasants who owned a sliver of land aristocracy? According to you it sounds like it.

were medieval peasants who owned a sliver of land aristocracy? According to you it sounds like it.

I find the whole concept of "aristocracy" as applied to the US nonsensical.

Aristocracy is a form of government (rule by "the best"), and we simply don't have it. The fact that your mortgage payments go to a servicer who funnels it to a CDO who funnels it to Calpers doesn't mean that members of Calpers are aristocratic rulers of the US.

And let me remind you that the mortgage holders don't necessarily own any land.

>I find the whole concept of "aristocracy" as applied to the US nonsensical.

Of course you do.

>Aristocracy is a form of government (rule by "the best"), and we simply don't have it. The fact that your mortgage payments go to a servicer who funnels it to a CDO who funnels it to Calpers doesn't mean that members of Calpers are aristocratic rulers of the US.

Nope, the fact that the 1% own vastly more than Calpers or any other pension fund does mean that, though.

I think they call that "taking rents" in general.

Slaves are still there, it's just that they are exploited through interest.

Paying mortgage isn't exactly slavery. Inappropes.

I think there are plenty of people in the world living in conditions close to slavery.

Yes, like, for example, victims of human trafficking. It's not the same as paying off a student loan though.

It's not exactly freedom either.

That's not the point. Any kind of contractual obligation isn't exactly freedom.

The point is, that the comparison is still bad.

Sorry, the definition of enslavement is coercion through direct and actual threat of physical violence and does not include other forms of exploitation.

i.e. "Slaves can be held from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation. " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery

If you have a mortgage you can still refuse to work and just become homeless. Company men will not drag you kicking and screaming to your cubicle and force you back to you home in the evening to watch X-Factor until you vomit and pass out.

It's not that I want to understate the gravity of slavery, but to set the bar lower to what can be seen as slavery (which makes the common definition of slavery an even worse crime). You can get people to work without compensation in more deceitful ways than brute force.

middle class degree educated white males on HN complaining about a mortgage being slavery...

Interest leaves people impoverished and destroys families. But I'm sure you can see that from your mountain of moral superiority.

Usurious interest can leave people impoverished and destroys families, sure. But we're talking about mortgages, here, and in the general case interest leaves the price of homeownership about the same price as renting, provides additional stability and helps build families.

The real thing that leaves families impoverished and destroys them is when they have borrow half a million for a house to live in, only to find out that's only really worth about a quarter million a few years later during the economic crash, thus precluding them from actually selling it and moving somewhere that has an economy where they can work. That's principal, not interest.

I think the difference is that you get to choose whether to enter into the loan agreement, you're provided all the terms up front, and you have access to legal counseling prior to accepting the agreement.

If you have to make a mental association between your mortgage and institutionalized human suffering, maybe indentured servitude would be a better (but still ridiculous) fit.

Then it's a good thing 30 year mortgage interest APRs are lower than average YoY returns for mutual funds, so you can make more money investing your cash than you can save by paying off your mortgage.

Please take your racism somewhere else.

They are though.

Let's instead say 2x a person's annual income in credit card debt at 20% annual interest, a debt which was brought on by a number of short-term necessary but bad decisions, then left to grow for a couple of years due to unfortunate circumstances. That's the modern form of debt slavery, with no easy way of refinancing the debt or increasing the income. Such a scenario usually comes along with some other serious challenges, such as major health issues.

In the US, personal bankruptcy is an option. But not all Western countries have this luxury. In Norway, for instance, personal bankruptcy basically amounts to entering a 5-year contract of indentured servitude (you by law have to earn as much as you can, and get to use only the smallest possible amount of it to feed and clothe yourself - the debtors take the rest).

So, what should we call common slavery? Super-slavery?

"You can get people to work without compensation in more deceitful ways than brute force."

I think the term exploitation would cover this?

Even if there is some form of semi-institutionalized gouging, it's still not slavery.

So your definition doesn't include people who are effectively held hostage in a foreign country by having their passport taken away and forced to work in order to pay ridiculous fees to get it back?

Oh, that sort of interest. There is interest owed to established financial institutions and the there is interest "owed" to shady con men. The financial obligations might be a form of coercion in this instance?

Yes, shady con men, albeit ones operating with a great deal of organization and structure. There is a ton of this going on in places like the UAE[0] and Qatar[1].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_the_United_Ara...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Qatar#Immigran...

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