> What exactly does society even with a strong safety net (which I support) owe anyone? Universal healthcare? Yes. A method to enable people to have safe shelter? Yes. Even public transportation to get to jobs - Yes. I’m even in favor of affordable public college education.

Cosigned all above.

> But everyone should be able to own a home? No.

I think insofar as property is treated as an investment vehicle, everyone should be able to own something. Like, the difference between a mortgage and a rental contract in terms of personal economics couldn't be further from one another. One creates wealth, one transfers wealth and concentrates it.

"Can you afford to buy a home" as an economic metric doesn't mean necessarily that you should buy a home and you are a poor if you haven't or simply choose not to. That's fine. However, owning a home is a significant economic data point because it's a large investment to make that requires access to okay credit, and that once done, benefits the homeowner financially decades into the future. When I got a mortgage, an insured one with no money down even, my credit immediately went down to account for having a loan, but then right afterwards jumped almost 20% in a 3 month period, even though I did nothing differently apart from paying into a mortgage instead of paying rent.

Alternatively, reform the housing market so it functions as... well, a market. A house shouldn't necessarily appreciate in value over time, and the fact that it's expected to is... strange. One could argue that if nothing has appreciably changed in your neighborhood since you bought your house, it should sell for ballpark about the same price as what you paid for it, unless you did some substantial renovations or something. And even then... if you're just making it more suited to your tastes, probably not?

In other words make houses... well, houses. Not investment vehicles.

> People today are living all across the country and not be homeless and the people who live in the poorest states repeatedly vote for politicians that want to cut government services and cut the safety nets. Right now they are cheering DOGE. Why should I feel sorry for rural America? They are getting exactly what they voted for.

Well, a lot of them are poorly educated for starters, and insanely propagandized. They've been the singular target for Republican messaging for decades now, and as you state, they've voted for those people too who have in turn damaged their schools and pillaged their industries. And that's not even going into things like offshoring and cheap international goods that have obliterated small town America, or corporations like Walmart, which have done a fantastic job of pillaging middle America's markets out of existence.

And yes it's tremendously frustrating to talk to these people since they're seemingly ready to blame anything and everyone who isn't them, their ideology, and their own choices for the fact that their home is dying, but it's still their home, and it's still dying. And like, even if their children all do what you're telling them to do, that means millions upon millions of people about to immigrate to cities from these rural areas. So like, you gotta deal with them one way or another. They're not just going to Thanos-snap out of existence.