Reply #7: It's all about the cost of the homes.

[phantom power]

Here in Phoenix, $150K will buy you a nice house (or apt) out in the exurbs. Close in to the city, it will buy you a plot of land and a cardboard box.

As you say, it would have been far more effective 30 years ago. Ounce of prevention, pound of cure, etc. In retrospect, America made a fateful choice in 1980, when we elected Reagan. Consciously or unconsciously, we chose happy-talk delusion over Carter's "feel-bad" realism.