#Homeownership #WealthInequality #SocialMobility #Housing
Who gets to own a home – and why?
New study by @jascha_draeger @nrmllr and @klauspforr shows:
#Inheritances & family gifts – even just expected – strongly influence who buys property. They account for up to 54% of homeownership gaps between social classes. Without these transfers, children from working-class families are far less likely to buy a home.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssresearch.2025.103190

If you want to understand why extremely wealthy people in American society are lining up behind the Trump regime's fascist order, consider for a moment the idea that they know they've hoarded so much of the wealth that it's only a matter of time before the peasants show up at their castles with pitchforks, and one of their few options to prevent that is eliminating civil rights and building out a fascist police state.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/19-richest-us-families

Top 19 'Truly Superwealthy' US Families Grew $1 Trillion Richer Last Year: Analysis

"A new analysis by a leading chronicler of the United States' exploding inequality shows that the 19 richest American households added $1 trillion to their collective fortunes last year and saw their share of the nation's wealth jump at a record-shattering pace.

The analysis by Gabriel Zucman, a professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley, estimates that the 19 wealthiest U.S. families now control 1.8%—or $2.6 trillion—of the nation's total household wealth.

In 2024, those ultrarich households saw the largest single-year wealth increase on record."

I need people to understand that while this is certainly political, it isn't partisan. These numbers are from 2024 when Biden was president, but I think it's safe to say the figures under a Trump administration that is absolutely willing to burn your grandparents on the pyre of capitalist accumulation won't be significantly different. These guys stack wealth under neoliberal Democrat presidents, and build fortresses with public money during fascist Republican presidencies; when you're rich and powerful enough in a free market fundamentalist society, it's pretty easy to engineer the outcome you desire no matter what political factors do to the markets. Furthermore, given the propaganda about "crime" in our society, it's easy enough for wealthy donors to guarantee that either way, the police state grows stronger.

Perhaps most importantly, the material realities of our present global situation doesn't change when power shifts from neoliberal parties, to fascist ones or vice versa. The planet is still on fire, capital accumulation still depends on the fossil fuels that are killing us, and billions of lives still hang in the balance. The reality that capitalism goes, or a planet that can comfortably support eight billion human beings does, has not changed under either neoliberalism or its kissing cousin fascism. The ultra-wealthy know that its only a matter of time before the billions of people they intend to sacrifice to keep the line going up even during a climate apocalypse, realize what's going on and come for them; because they have no intention of surrendering the way of life that gives them so much luxury and power.

Understood through that lens then, the uber-rich's support for the fascist Trump regime makes perfect sense. They want your civil rights curtailed, they want it to be illegal to assemble in protest, they want a fascist police state that polices resistance ideology to keep the people they're commodifying and intend to sacrifice to the money god, afraid to act. They might object to Trump's most absurd economic policies, but they know he's going to harden borders, empower a fascist police state, and strip the civil rights of their class enemies- and they're counting on that strategy to get them through the literal end of the world.

And one last post about the 4/19 NYC #handsoff march: After being in the crowd for almost 2 hours, surrounded by signs about due process, deportations, felons and fraud, it was totally jarring to turn the corner on 57th St and be confronted by the Louis Vuitton building which looks like a giant piece of luggage! #wealthinequality #luxury #letthemeatcake #oligarchy #billionairesrow