Reply #17: The poster reminds me of my very RW very "Christian" boss who

[truedelphi]

Allowed other workers to get more work than me - and when I finally was able to improve a little bit financially would make "sympathetic" comments like, "Now that you are making more money, you'll be buying a house soon, right?" (I live in Califonia and to buy a house, you basically need a rich relative to die or else to win the lottery.)

Without home ownership, a person loses the housing mortgage interest deduction. And accordingly, you get taxed on 100% of your income. This of itself insures that you are on financially shakier ground.

Economists and social scientists have long said that home ownership is one of the requirements for a healthy democracy.

That ability to buy a home is being lost for various factors - one being the high cost of housing in many Real Estate markets, and also the ability to have a decent paying job. There are no more
$ 27 an hour jobs at the local steel mills, or any other division of manufacturing in the USA.

Even our research jobs in chemistry, biology and microbiology, etc are going overseas so the notion that "a decent education" will spare you has become a myth.