Something amazing is happening in Berlin
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Highlights
- The American legend of class mobility had two paths: wage gains (largely the result of organized labor) and property appreciation (largely the result of public homebuying subsidies). Both paths had color bars, but of the two, housing was the most racially segregated path to prosperity. Redlining and other predatory practices meant that the American journey from renter to owner was primarily a white journey. White families accumulated wealth through their family homes, and Reagan convinced them to shut down the wage-gain path, with racist dogwhistles. Now, 40 years on, the joke’s on them - their kids are going to be renters because they have to liquidate the family home to pay for care, retirement and education - the systems that collapsed when organized labor was no longer there to defend them.
- Property speculation would never be a stable means to broad prosperity. As Elizabeth Magie taught us when she created The Landlord’s Game in 1902, property is a winner-take-all game that eventually gathers all the assets into a few extractive hands.
- They’re dangling a poor person’s version of what a rich person does, leaving out all the graft, self-dealing, financial secrecy, arm-breaking and debt-leveraging that the wealthy use to wring gains from our homes.
- Meanwhile, Berliners have a chance to turn the tide - to show speculators the door and reframe housing as a human necessity, not a poker-chip. It’s a momentous juncture for a planet where whole cities and even regions are in imminent danger of becoming uninhabitable.