To what Extent is Buying Homes Linked to Capitalist Oppression

[Ocean Seal]

I was just thinking about it. Almost 70% of Americans 'own' and by 'own' I mean are paying off a huge loan to the bank on their homes. Being that a home is an investment one cannot really put off payments to their home without fear of losing to the bank. Suppose you're half way there if you miss a payment you know that they will jack up the interest a ridiculous and unfair amount. With higher interest you can't pay the next monthly payment, and every month you can pay less and less. Within a couple months you can no longer pay and the bank sells you're house and you aren't reimbursed. Every cent you poured in is lost. On top of that you took out loans to pay for the subsequent months that you couldn't pay because of the increased interest.

Now you're in debt and homeless. You're screwed.

Lets add a dash of neo-liberalism into the mix. Stagnated wages have caused you to need credit for the things that you could buy with cold hard cash before. Banks will give credit to whoever wants it. You might have bought a house that you can't afford.

Whatever the case is, paying for a home is quite difficult. Now lets take this to the workplace. You are given a wage when you work but if you're on strike you don't earn a wage. Now the capitalist has a way to punish you outside of the workplace for striking. You effectively can't strike without being homeless and losing every cent that you've poured into your home.

Is there a way around this. To what extent does the 'American dream' perpetuate the struggle of the workers.

[RedMarxist]

In my opinion comrade, the 'American Dream' is a big fat lie. You know, the one that says it should be everyones' dream to own a plot of land, have a stable job, etc. Well, look what happens to that dream when the economy goes bust: Poof! its gone.

If WE really want to avoid this capitalist exploitation, we must as a movement unite all shades of socialism(ML, MLM, EVEN Stalinists, and of course the Trots and Anarchists, etc.) starting with this forum. To hell with sectarianism comrade(s)! It seems we get a ton of that on this forum every day.

I suggest(and its just a suggestion) that we either make a new sub genre topic in the forum index section so everyone can access it or a new group where every member of this forum pitches in(we could call it United Socialists or something along those lines) where sectarianism is not allowed(that goes for posts) and we all work together to formulate ideas to contribute to a brighter socialist future. Sounds crazy, but maybe we could get admins to encourage it or give special privileges if you join up.(custom stuff, idk)

I'd join, would you?

thats just my two cents

[Kotze]

High home-ownership levels are linked with high unemployment, see "The Housing Market and Europe's Unemployment: A Non-Technical Paper" by Andrew Oswald (1999, PDF) (http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/staff/academic/oswald/homesnt.pdf). I also believe owning a home leads to being less interested in changing the status quo, whatever that happens to be. As far as I know home-ownership levels are very high in Cuba.

A better policy would be encouraging to rent. Caveat: Those who own land have an income stream that to a large extent comes from that land being in the right spot, and being in the right spot can hardly be called a personal achievement. The way to deal with that is a taxation system that takes much for owning land at a good location while going easy on improvements. This type of tax falls on the owner of the land without being a disincentive when it comes to renting out.