Homeowners Refuse to Accept the Awkward Truth: They’re Rich - Owners of the multi-million-dollar properties still see themselves as middle class, a warped self-image that has a big impact on renters

We need to roll back to 1955 tax rates:

Eisenhower individual income above $200,000 was taxed at 90%, above $300,000 at 91%, and above $400,000 at 92%. That’d trim Musk Bezos etc. down to size, fund education, fund social security etc.

Corporate taxes topped out at 52% - the tax rate was 30% for the first $25,000 in profits that a company made, and 52% for anything over that amount.

Of course, adjust these floors with with inflation taken into account - $300,000 in 1950 = $3,772,843.22 in 2023 - so multimillionaires and up.

Yeah; I agree with that point, but not how they couched it — those people are still middle class.

The real kicker is that all the people who currently don’t own a home and don’t have the cash… are lower class. Despite thinking of themselves as middle class.

What's the statscan definition of homeowner? Aren't myself and my partner considered owners because we live with my parents in their house, so there are 4 "homeowners" living in the house.

I could be wrong but I remember reading what they consider a homeowner does not match what common sense says it is. Please point me in the direction of something if I'm wrong, I've tried looking but can't find anything.

It kinda sorta does, but even the article body flip flops between “homeowner” and “owner of $3.2mil property” and likewise between “landlord” and “airbnb magnate”. The headline implies that landowners don’t understand the plight of the renter, and asserts that the landowner isn’t middle class anymore.

While there are good points in there, the headline misses the point that the “wealthy” don’t need to work, and can be independently wealthy purely through extracting rent from use of what they own.

Most property-rich householders aren’t there; their equity isn’t enough to sustain them.

There’s no denying the gap between renters and landholders. Renters are way worse off. But those renting out a carriage house or basement suite to be able to make the mortgage payments aren’t in the same class as the likes of Dorset Realty and those who own them.

As soon as your accumulated capital becomes large enough that you earn your income only as a result of your capital, then you are no longer working class, and that’s when your interests diverge from the average worker and average homebuyer or renter.

Interestingly, almost everyone in government is a member of the capitalist class, largely because people that sell their labour can't afford the time, let alone the money, to run for office.

In case you wondered why the interests of labour are grossly underrepresented in government, despite that vast, vast majority of both citizens and voters being of the working class, this is why.

1/5th of owners have an investment property, they could sell it and still live in the current place and have a ton of cash

That's fair, and the article goes through a few key points that I agree with. The article title is just clickbait, but annoying because it's alienating. I don't think it makes sense to write a headline based on 1/5th of that group being land speculators.

:-) the middle class is the subset of the working class that has no food insecurity but has a lot of social & image insecurity

But like the rest of the working class, the middle class is one or two tragedies away from becoming homeless and marginalized, despite the lack of awareness regarding so

There never has been. You either sell your body and labour, or own enough capital for it to self sustain, or at least be sustained by the labour class.

Of course there is no middle class!

What if you have already “borrowed against it” and the thing you bought is the house itself? You know, a mortgage. How is a regular family with a mortgage not middle class?

Any age considerations here? 50+ year olds with no pension whose entire net worth is tied up in their home are not middle class?

A retired couple that have a reverse mortgage on their home to supplement their insufficient income are not middle class?

Honestly, even a regular person that busted their ass to pay off their house and who eventually bought a run-down property that they poured all their free time for years to fix up and rent out is not suddenly a member of the 1%.

You know what, I “own” the house my 4 kids call home. I owe pretty close to what it is worth and I can barely afford anything else with mortgage rates where they are ( certainly more than rent would be ). It needs some repairs that are going to force me to borrow from somewhere. I work two jobs ( decent ones ) trying to keep it all going. If I lose the house, I will end up with a net worth lower than a homeless person. And I have dipshits on the Internet lashing out at my wealth and privilege. For the love of God, who are you people?

We're using different definitions of the word "rich". In my definition, the one I personally see as more useful because it aligns with class struggle and shared policy interests, having a bunch of wealth parked in a passive asset is not enough to tip you over to the group of people who benefit from inequality.

On the "sell it like any other asset", you still have to live somewhere, those places cost money. On the "borrow against it", now you've got debt (that costs money to have), I guess your saying anyone with that much money should be able to make more money off it via leverage than they use?

When i think rich, i think doesn't have to work, but maybe that's independently wealthy.

So in that case the middle class were always "rich" by your definition

Ontario got rid of theirs for any newly built/designated residences. Now you also have to look at what year the damn unit was first rented in. If you aren't careful with that, your landlord could legally hike up your rent by $10,000 or however much they want to, for absolutely no reason. November 15, 2018 is the date to watch out for, specifically. Anything after that is taking on a big risk, imo.

This is all so fucked. Here's an example of what I was talking about.

https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/this-is-egregious-sisters-shocked-when-toronto-landlord-raises-rent-to-9-500-a-month-1.6548845

Increasing taxes at a higher rate than inflation on a homeowner who is given raises at the same rate as inflation (if that) is effectively forcing them to move out over time.

If the goal is to make everyone a homeowner, then

outsized power to prevent new development at the cost of renters, young people, and the poor.

is the only truly catastrophic problem mentioned so far. Everything else you listed at least incentivizes homeownership. Sure, car-centric urban design is silly and all that, but I kind of doubt most people would prefer the space reserved for parking spaces be occupied by more housing. Green spaces, bike lanes, and larger walkable areas would probably win that vote. Vertical and mixed-use housing are tried-and-true solutions to the density problem.

I would argue that the only other “catastrophic problem” is one we haven’t mentioned yet: institutional investment. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if they paid for this article. They’d love to see people turn on individual homeowners, and raise property taxes to the point that only institutions can afford to pay it.

We're not talking about Musk here. Most home owners can't leverage their equity to buy some bread.

That's my point. Owning a home doesn't make anyone rich. Owning multiple homes which generate income is a different thing, but people here assume is that if you bough a house in London 20 years ago for pennies, then today you are a fucking Bezos swimming in money. That's not the case.

Maybe you can't, I bought a bar. It came with an owners suite.

If you leverage your equity to buy bread, you'll be homeless very soon.

What does an article about the top 0.1% have to do with home ownership? Are you for real?

EDIT: I misunderstood this post. I thought it was somebody calling out the homeowner as rich ( I had just come off another comment and was reeling ). I realized after I posted that the poster was responding to himself.