The Democratic Party's Slide Into Irrelevance

I can't imagine that many people over 60 are buying their first homes, so I have to figure that they used to sell their houses after retirement and go back to renting. That's what one of my sets of grandparents did anyway.

So why were they doing that to begin with? They no longer need a large house after their children have left, but that should mostly still be true now. Are there so many "failures to launch" that they're not selling their houses because their over 30yo children are still living with them?

Maybe in the past they had trouble with the upkeep of the house, but now people of that age have not had the same health declines as in the past.

No matter what the reason for this decision, the decision of elders not to sell their houses seemingly must be the biggest cause of young people not being able to buy their own; it's not only because the price of real estate has increased so much.
The prices must have risen so much because no one wants to sell their house.

Gen Z isn't represented on this chart, except a bit in the very youngest line, which has always been so small that I wouldn't consider the slight drop to be very significant.

The groups going down are millennials.

Also, while it may happening, this chart doesn't show that more older people now own multiple homes; it shows that more now own the home they live in.

The obsession with homeownership is a relatively recent phenomenon, post WWII really, and a lot of it is policy driven.

If you have an outstanding mortgage, you lose insane amounts of money from selling and rebuying in terms of far worse financing terms currently existing. Basically any savvy mortgage holder refinanced at bottom rates (there were many times when that was possible including very recently during covid) , so they are paying around 3% something and would instead pay 6.5-7 on a new mortgage.

And according to many housing market analysts that's a very significant part of the reason why a lot of people are refusing to sell right now in the USA.

A policy solution would exist there, allowing mortgages to be automatically portable to new property, as long as the value of the new property is higher enough than the size of the outstanding loans, swapping the collateral should be allowed.

My kids are now all in college and I would very much like to move, but my house is locked in at 2.5%.

I'd probably even spend the money to build new, which frees my current house up for someone else, but a 4-5% rate hike is a huge pill to swallow on top of the bloated costs to build right now.

So instead of moving to the north woods, I'll continue dodging bullets in Milwaukee for now.

I understand that would be a reason for many people not to sell, but it would be less so as they age. Most people who bought houses when they were young would have little to no mortgage balance. And they would be more likely to be moving to a rental or to a less expensive purchase. I think that factor wouldn't be very significant in the over 60 groups shown in that chart.

The taking a mortgage to a new property idea would be a good thing though, and I've thought about that possibility myself. I wonder if it has ever been seriously considered by policy makers. It may be opposed strongly by the banking/mortgage industry.

Do you still owe a large balance on your mortgage? Wouldn't the place you want to move be less than you would get from selling your current one?

The thing is, is that a rate that is doubled costs is in the ballpark of 50% more on a mortgage payment. Its redic. Anyone who bought or refinanced during covid, which is alot, likely still owe a very large percentage of their mortgage. Unless youve got a strong reason to do so, moving in that scenario is very costly.

People in cali consistantely echo what inso said in that they are waiting for rates to drop so they can leave.

That didn't answer either of my questions.

That's understandable if you don't want to answer about you personally, but as I said earlier, I don't think those reasons would apply to many people over 60.

https://fortune.com/2025/07/08/investors-buying-25-us-homes-sold-most-5-years-traditional-buyers-struggle-afford/

Fortune

The housing market just returned to a pre-pandemic status quo that pushes out 'traditional' buyers

It's incredible how people deflect from addressing the point being made here.

The point is the breakdown in the social fabric of the country associated with feudal ownership of residential real estate. The article above speaks to that trend.

This thread is about the relevance, or lack thereof, of the Democratic Party in even speaking out against this kind of feudalism and identifying their chosen leader in Congress for several decades as a feudal lord.

The Democratic Party does not attempt to appeal to the interests of younger working class voters. They appointed a young person (David Hogg) as a DNC vice chair and immediately decided to unseat him as a result of his expressed desire for competitive Democratic Party primaries as opposed to fealty to incumbents.

They sell a false label of having a "big tent" ...... when the truth is the only people welcome in the tent are those that exhibit fealty to the feudal system.

Is the GOP any different ? No.

There is no real contrast as it pertains to both parties relationship to feudalism. That's why Democrats have become irrelevant.

I don't think that graph you posted has anything to do with the Democratic Party. I was discussing the graph. The side discussions are much more interesting than all the repetitive no content posts you make.

I think it's helpful to explore the root cause of the Democratic Party abandoning its populist and more left leaning success from 1932-1968.

The post-war Baby Boom added 76 million new citizens from 1946-1964 to a pre-existing population of 140 million. The gravitational force of that generation and their political interests have cast a big shadow over the electorate at large.

When they were children, marginal tax rates were as high as 90% and we had a richly funded public sector. Schools like UC Berkeley did not charge any tuition to in state residents.

When that generation graduated college and entered the work force, they didn't want to pay the high taxes they had so richly benefitted from as children. That's where the appeal of Ronald Reagan comes in. Tax reform such as Prop 13 in California as well. All catered to the political gravity of Boomers and their desire to accumulate wealth.

Reagan won 49 states in 1984. Democrats realized that they had to offer what Republicans were offering in order to compete so they became Republicans. Obama more or less admitted that in 2012.

There's no conspiracy. Boomers just acted in accordance with their self-interest.

But history teaches us that the pre-occupation with the self periodically becomes metastatic when a critical mass of people at the bottom end feel like they have their backs to the wall.

Our fates are all intertwined. When we reach a critical mass of losers, the system gets upended.

This feels mostly just chock full of jealousy and resentment, tbh.

Labeling out blame for literally everyone who was born between 1946-64 is some top tier mouth breathing idiocy. They "acted in self interest' is pretty strong even for a lefty.

I wish every lefty was like Microbet because the correct phrase today is pretty much...scratch a lefty and a shitlib bleeds because it's just another faction of the same **** as the republicans breaking off into the tea party fools from a time ago to start on a fresh account.

But to your post.

Do you honestly think the failures of the democrats today is pinned on this from 40 years ago? Like, read this to yourself three times. I'm suppose to give credence to this as the wisdom needed to save the world with your autocratic takes?

Also if the populus votes a dude in 49 out of the 50 states, the other team is isn't exactly sharing the same opinions as most others who hang their hat in the same country.

I am a Boomer.

The difference between myself and most of my Boomer colleagues is that I know that I was born on 3rd base. I didn't hit a triple.

Boomers didn't choose to be the most privileged generation in human history. They were born in the post WW2 economic boom in the one major industrialized country that wasn't devastated during the war. Their sheer numbers and unprecedented opportunity to accumulate capital led to their inevitable gravitational pull on American policy.

Look at our legacy. A bunch of old people populate the halls of Congress with a putrid approval rating. Our democracy is a joke. Bought and sold by the highest bidder. The air and water is full of plastic. We give large tax breaks to Young people despise us. Seething at the lack of economic opportunity and the mountain of student debt which our generation has no acquaintance with.

Whatever history books might survive into the future will speak of a generation whose legacy was nothing but ruin. A consumptive orgy and an era of wealth concentration. History will regard us as the villains.

In the cycle of Hard Times ==> Strong People ==> Good Times ==> Weak People..

Boomers are the weak people.

We were born into unprecedented wealth. The beneficiaries of the post WW2 order that we did nothing to create.

Our generation is going to hit the Hard Times portion of the cycle at the end of our life cycle.

In 10-15 years, the reins of government are going to be handed over to a new generation who are going to be presented with triage decisions. They will be entrusted with decisions about how to allocate increasingly scarce resources. Boomers have no acquaintance with a world which hasn't put their generation's interest first because they've always be the dominant political force even before they came of voting age. I think it's going to be a novel experience for many of us.

Is it so difficult for you to acknowledge that residential housing has become a financial commodity which investors are gobbling up ?

Ok boomer. You're boring us with your self-hatred. According to your chart, old folks like you still own their houses, more of them owning each year, so there are plenty that haven't been sold to investors.

Do you own a house? If so, give it to some nice millennial family and check yourself into memory care. Maybe that will make you feel better.

Please speak for yourself; I'm not bored.

And NutNut doesn't strike me as engaging in "self-hatred." He is sharing his analysis of how we got here economically and where we are going economically.

He saying his generation is the problem. All of these posts accomplish nothing. If he gave a young person a house, that would accomplish something. But of course he won't do anything like that, because people like him are all talk and no action.

Nixon won 49 states in 1972, it was clear back then that the country simply wasn't leftist anymore. And it wasn't about boomers, rather the people born before them, as boomers didn't count too much in 1972.

approx 2 households every 3 owns the house they live in.

Not that the investor model would be bad anyway, see Germany (wich you want to copy for a ton of policies).

Is it so difficult to understand that normal people can and do own houses?

Just because I know that I was born into a uniquely privileged era doesn't mean I hate myself. I'm lucky.

I don't have the resources myself to fix the problem. But I have a voice and I can speak to it. I'm not a savior. I'm a messenger.

This forum is a place where people can discuss and debate ideas or they can do what you do and call people names.

What do you think notsochillrob ? Should the government provide tax incentives which lead to feudal lords owning thousands of private homes while hundreds of thousands go homeless? Or is the social fabric better maintained by a more equal distribution of wealth ?

If you think the trend is going in a good direction, maybe in your eyes society will reach its pinnacle when one person owns everything ?

Yes, I am.

It's not like it's a conspiracy or something. It's just that our sheer numbers and the timing of our arrival simply warped American politics to put our generations desires above the needs of every other generation since the moment we arrived.

If you would like to have an objective discussion about the issue, feel free.

Not a single person is homeless because of house prices as long as a single location has cheap houses in the country. You know that, everyone knows that, it's all voluntary homelessness or mental health issues.

Not to mention the significant percentage of the total who are immigrants, that's quite the absurdity. You let in poor people without skills, then you claim it's a problem if they don't have housing and it's "boomers fault"? deport all of them (and yes being homeless should be cause for removal of permanent resident status as well)