In 1960, 60% of young Americans one year into their first marriage owned their home. By 2023, that had fallen to 42%. Walter Russell Mead (@wrmead) has a theory for why homeownership feels out of reach, and how we can fix it: "The single family home in the suburbs replaced the single family farm. Think about not only building the freeways and the highways, but subsidies through the tax code so that municipal bonds are tax-free, which means towns can build the infrastructure that attracts developers and homeowners, who then raise the value of the property, so you can repay the bonds out of the higher property values the infrastructure has created. Tis kind of wealth-creating machine. Right now we seem to be reaching the limits of that wealth-creating machine, because it's just too expensive for the average person to buy a house and land close enough to where you work so the commute isn't killing you. Homeownership is one of the real big problems for why young people are unhappy with the economy. Between remote work and hybrid work and self-driving cars, if you only have to go into work once or twice a week, you can work farther out. If you expand the commuting radius from 40 miles to 75 miles, the amount of land that is developable for housing goes up with the square of the radius. It's geometric. Information technology appropriately deployed can open up for another two generations this wealth-creating machine."