TIME: 'Rethinking Homeownership'

Here's another disturbing TIME magazine cover:



The cover story: "Rethinking Homeownership: Why owning a home may no longer make economic sense."

TIME makes the case against homeownership.

Homeownership has let us down. For generations, Americans believed that owning a home was an axiomatic good. Our political leaders hammered home the point. Franklin Roosevelt held that a country of homeowners was "unconquerable." Homeownership could even, in the words of George H.W. Bush's Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Jack Kemp, "save babies, save children, save families and save America." A house with a front lawn and a picket fence wasn't just a nice place to live or a risk-free investment; it was a way to transform a nation. No wonder leaders of all political stripes wanted to spend more than $100 billion a year on subsidies and tax breaks to encourage people to buy.

But the dark side of homeownership is now all too apparent: foreclosures and walkaways, neighborhoods plagued by abandoned properties and plummeting home values, a nation in which families have $6 trillion less in housing wealth than they did just three years ago. Indeed, easy lending stimulated by the cult of homeownership may have triggered the financial crisis and led directly to its biggest bailout, that of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Housing remains a drag on the economy. Existing-home sales in July dropped 27% from the prior month, exacerbating fears of a double-dip. And all that is just the obvious tale of a housing bubble and what happened when it popped. The real story is deeper and darker still.

For the better part of a century, politics, industry and culture aligned to create a fetish of the idea of buying a house. Homeownership has done plenty of good over the decades; it has provided stability to tens of millions of families and anchored a labor-intensive sector of the economy. Yet by idealizing the act of buying a home, we have ignored the downsides. In the bubble years, lending standards slipped dramatically, allowing many Americans to put far too much of their income into paying for their housing. And we ignored longer-term phenomena too. Homeownership contributed to the hollowing out of cities and kept renters out of the best neighborhoods. It fed America's overuse of energy and oil. It made it more difficult for those who had lost a job to find another. Perhaps worst of all, it helped us become casually self-deceiving: by telling ourselves that homeownership was a pathway to wealth and stable communities and better test scores, we avoided dealing with these formidable issues head-on.

In sum, TIME is suggesting that we kiss the American Dream as we know it goodbye.

From a Leftist standpoint, good riddance.

Owning a home and the rugged individualist don't fit their vision for America.

Homeownership is the enemy of enormous government bent on "spreading the wealth around" and creating a dependent class.

There's no question that giving loans to people unable to afford to pay them back was irresponsible and setting up a disaster. That's a different issue. But arguing against the very notion of owning a home and private property? What the hell?

Homeownership isn't the problem.

Individual irresponsibility is the problem. Government handouts are the problem. Runaway government spending is the problem.

Instead of "rethinking homeownership," I think some Americans need to "rethink" their acceptance of the direction that Obama and the Leftists want to take the country. They need to understand what the Left's vision entails. They need to take a close look at liberalism and its many pitfalls.

If homeownership no longer makes economic sense, our way of life is in for a radical transformation.

Rejecting homeownership as a desirable goal is economic suicide. Great idea, TIME. Destroy more jobs. Take out entire industries.

In addition to economic suicide, it would mean the death of the American character.