Please share a time or society where this was not the case, and how they were better off.

the homestead act which ended in 1907 was pretty close

If that's the best you can do, I'm ok with that. Was wondering if I was actually missing anything of substance.

Weren't you going to bed? :)

The Homestead Acts were about undeveloped land or land meant for farming. How does that apply in this convo and how could that ever apply again in real life?

verms

"So the people that can't afford homes, aren't they all paying rent to the wealthy property owners?"


just thought I would jump back into this debate :)

actually, in medival times in norway, 60% or so, payed rent to wealthy property owners, this all changed in the 15th and 16th century, it all changed because the rich wanted to sell their land in order to invest in other buisnesses. At that time, it meant shipping and mines.



I do not believe it is a "right" to own the place you live. it is a financial choise, that every person should make for him/her self. I am strongly against programs that are designed to help people buy houses, because all they usually do is to drive the market up, and the people coming in 10 years later will have an even tougher time. I am actually right wing, when it comes to housing :).

I (as opposed to veta) see no problems in borrowing money to buy a house, it used to be that you didn't get married in norway until you were 30-35, because it took 10 -15 years to save up enough money to buy a house, the only people that could afford to get married at 20 were the rich. the main problem i have with housing is the irresponsible lending (and loaning) practices, were the banks are backed up by the state. moral hazard should have made goldman sachs into a goverment owned bank, were all the CEOs were fired. that is what they did in sweden and norway back in the early 90s.





sigh, I am drifting here.

matt damon has a fair point;
the tests tests how well trained the students are, not how much higher order thinking they are capable of doing, and to me teaching higher order thinking and ability to not get fooled by politicians is the most important task of the schoolsystem. you need schools for the democratic form to work. if the people is too stupid, then a dictatorship is probably better.(YES, I know that is what they said in soviet russia, and ofc I would rather educate than dictate)

Dictatorships/monarchies are awesome if the person/family in power is just, fair, and intelligent. This would be/was so very rarely the case though...

mr K, I'm against programs too. However, that's different than saying the entire financial institution is unscrupulous and no one should buy their home unless they could outright.

I'm all for making critical thinking the main goal in education, but the only problem with that is people need to know that progress is being made, and there's no real, concrete, across-the-board type of examination that can happen right now. But the more we gather data, the more scientists will come up with ways to gauge the success of students.

So Veta, is the homestead act the only thing you have here? I actually expected more...