Middle Class Resentment, David French, and a Free Market Economy
Summary
Core Theme: The episode centers on Housing Affordability as the primary driver of middle-class resentment despite broadly positive macroeconomic data.
Market Context: The host argues absolute living standards have improved, but perceptions worsen due to housing costs outpacing incomes and overall inflation.
Supply Dynamics: He attributes the crisis to a Housing Supply deficit caused by post-GFC underbuilding, NIMBYism, zoning restrictions, and policy errors.
Consumer Burden: Housing’s share of disposable income has risen significantly (rent and ownership), with added drag from taxes, insurance, maintenance, and HOA fees.
Companies Mentioned: Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Warren Buffett are cited only as examples in inequality debates, with no tickers pitched.
Investment Implications: Easing land-use constraints and policy reform could unlock US Housing activity, improving consumer sentiment and reducing economic divides.
Risks: Persisting regulatory barriers and NIMBYism could sustain affordability pressures and social resentment, weighing on household formation.
Perspective: While defending free enterprise, the host highlights targeted housing policy fixes as the most impactful lever for broad-based economic well-being.
Transcript
Capital Record, where we defend free enterprise and capital markets because we believe in the dignity of the human person. Hello and welcome to David Bahnsen's Capital Record brought to you by National Review, where at least once if not twice a week, I want to come and talk to you about the conditions for human flourishing that I think are optimally made possible in a free and virtuous society. It's my way of saying that I want to defend a free a free enterprise system and I want to defend the capital markets that undergird it. And I want to challenge those competitors to a free enterprise system that I believe would undermine our freedom and virtue. Many will say they could undermine our freedom or virtue, but it's my contention that the free and virtuous society is a both and not an either or and that undermining one inevitably undermines the other. This is my worldview I'm devoting my adult life to and this is podcast is here to defend these things in various applications each and every week. Today I want to talk about an issue that might be at the top of a lot of people's list that have become either cynical or concerned about the notion of a free society, of a free enterprise system, of a market economy. And that is what they considered to be a shrinking middle class and um elements of some people losing, too many losing, too many being left out and then others that are winning and being left in and this uh resentment economy, this resentment system that forms when people believe that they're basically embedded in the structure of a market economy those that are winning and those that are losing. And many defenders of free enterprise would say that's exactly correct, but that it's meritocratic. That what you want to avoid is structural impediments to everyone having opportunity, but you don't want to say we have a system where everyone will win because not everyone will deserve to win. Others will not work hard, others will have failed ideas, others will have inadequate effort. Uh and that there will be others that will win as a result of competitive advantages, innovation, creativity, other things. So that the heart of a market economy is to reward good things, punish bad things and then allow corrections and adjustments and so forth. That would basically be my very view. And yet what we I think often have are people that will point to elements where one has succeeded and one has not and indict the system from it, which makes two mistakes. It it ignores what could be the nuances or particulars that best explain why one succeeded and one did not, but also, and this is a very important structural issue in terms of critique of any economic worldview, fails to ask the vital three words compared to what. What is it when you critique this thing of a person succeeding and another person not that would have been better in another system? What is the other system will do this better. This is my frequent criticism here on the Capital Record podcast of so many today on the new right that want to suggest, and this is kind of out of a either left-wing or dare I say right-wing populism, that there is some sort of structural issue in uh too much freedom that has resulted in a an unfair system that the state can remedy. And I want to always ask the question whether or not you're right that this thing you're identifying is actually unjust or is actually problematic, in what sense does the state or whatever the other solution you propose, it always ends up being the state by the way, um create something better. The the uh critique of a market economy for an outcome without addressing where competitive systems make that outcome worse not better is logically fallacious at best. One of the issues in this context of a shrinking middle class or concerns that the economy is creating too many that can't get ahead, the resentments that come with it, is bifurcating between macro data and perception. That there is all at once macro data that would suggest people are doing better than they've ever done, economic growth is the envy of the world, that we're dealing with decades upon decades of an elevated standard of living, and so therefore all the people complaining are wrong. And it is my belief that this just doesn't allow for us to close the book at the macro data, which by and large does show a a competitive advantage over the rest of the world, an absolute standard of living that is somewhat incomparable in human history. And yet that does not mean there is not some legitimacy to people who are concerned. My challenge as an economist and as a financial commentator is to accurately, not inaccurately, pinpoint what the source of these things may be. And leaving the diagnosis at what people say. Someone says, I have not been able to get ahead and this other rich guy got ahead and I blame him and therefore it is China's fault or Mexico's fault. Or by the way, even people will say it's the government's fault and I'm very critical of tax and regulatory policy, but I do not agree that every person who has not been able to get ahead has a government to blame. Uh my very first book I ever wrote is called Crisis of Responsibility, where I suggest that those who live their life from a and this is a micro comment, a bottom-up comment, not dealing with the macro trends that we find evidence for post hoc in data, but rather in individual people that live their life from a vantage point of scapegoatism and blameism and victimhood and resentment, that what you basically have dividing society is merely who they are blaming. So obviously the left has a class envy position, they want to blame certain systemic injustices or so they call them, they want to blame uh capitalistic forces, big business, uh Wall Street. And then many on the right have traditionally blamed the government and these days right-wing populism is willing to join in the fray of blaming Wall Street, too. I I did a a rather heated podcast a month or so back critiquing um Oren Cass's uh recent New York Times uh editorial suggesting that it is financial markets that have created the problems that we have. But what do you do with this dual reality that the macro data indicates a lot of positive things and yet there are uh increasing numbers of resentment. Am I right in talking about the crisis of responsibility as the sole blame here? Are there just a bunch of ungrateful people that want to smoke pot and play video games and then complain that they can't get ahead or is there more to it? And this is the problem when people want to end a conversation at macro data is that I believe each thing I'm about to say. That the macro standard of living has gotten higher and indisputably so in American economic life over the last 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80 years. And I believe that there are a lot of people who have not participated in the benefits of society that this this standard of living increase because of their own decisions that have often been very poor ones. Uh morally, culturally, socially, educationally, professionally, economically, that many people uh have created a sub-optimal outcome for themselves. But I also believe that there are people who are justifiably frustrated with certain elements of the current economic system despite what I just said about number one and number two, and yet maybe lack the specificity of what the source of that is. Now, when you get into this, okay David, you think some people are justifiably frustrated, but you and you think maybe they can't exactly psychologically or ideologically pinpoint what it may be. What is it then? We do know that there is the class warfare argument that would come in and say it's income inequality. People are frustrated that they're doing better, but that someone else is doing even better still. And the fact of the matter is that there's very little precedent in human history of this sort of resentment mentality taking hold when people are doing better and yet others are doing even more better. That what we have is a stagnation evidenced in particular social and cultural categories that feeds a resentment. And what I what I I by this is that one who feels they cannot afford a home has an easier time being mad at Mark Zuckerberg's wealth. Mark Zuckerberg's wealth has nothing to do with someone who can't afford a home. But if one is making $120,000 a year, they went to school, they got a degree, they worked hard, they made good decisions, they avoided everything from that prior category I talked about of really just creating a very suboptimal outcome for themselves, they are not by any means wealthy, but they have a good job and what would have for most of human history been considered a good paycheck, even adjusted for inflation and so forth, and yet they clearly do not have the comforts that one would previously have had with even much less income, again adjusted for inflation, then you can understand where that inflation comes from. You cannot say it's Elon Musk's fault or or Warren Buffett's fault or or big tech's fault or Wall Street's fault. But what is really going on here? David French wrote an article in the New York Times a couple of weeks ago now, and there's a lot in the article I really like. Now look, I want to just make a comment on David. David's been a friend of mine for a long time. I haven't spoken with him in a couple of years. We haven't had any kind of falling out. I find myself disagreeing with David a lot more these days than I ever did. I also have a tremendous heart for David because I believe that a lot of where he's gone ideologically is a byproduct of some very, very, very horrific, unfair treatment, but I also don't claim that David has stayed where he used to be. I I think he did for a while, but I recognize that in the course of all providing what is often extremely legitimate criticism of Donald Trump, which hopefully you know I do all the time on this podcast, I also believe that David himself is simply moved and and taken positions that he would have never taken prior to Donald Trump. And and so I I'm not aligned with David on that stuff, but but nor do I believe that he is some enemy. And what I know of David personally is him being a man of extraordinary character and a man devoted to his family. So like anybody these days, there's just going to be things you're going to like and not like with a public figure, and David's one of them. And and I put that precursor out there cuz I guess it's necessary these days. Probably shouldn't be. But what he does in the article is try to highlight how it can be true that some feel worse when a lot of the objective data is better and and provide explanation for a lot of it. And I mean it's mostly fair, but I also think that then when we look at the relative standard of living, Charlie Munger has a famous line that the world does not run on greed but on envy. And I did a podcast some time ago about would you rather be um the wealthiest person in 1950 or you know, a 100, 200, 300,000 a year person today, and and talked about the difference between absolute standards and relative standards, and the when you're comparing yourself only to the Joneses versus an absolute standard of living, there's something skewed there. And David identifies that happens in this, but he doesn't blame it all entirely on it. Although the keep up with Joneses and discontentment that greater wealth sometimes brings is highlighted fairly, I think, in his article. But what I think he doesn't do is get into some of the specifics. He doesn't um dispute what I'm saying. It just his article kind of ends, and I want to take it one step further. I want to suggest to you that Elon Musk making what he makes, the stock market going where it goes, manufacturing being done in either Ohio or China, you can go through all of those issues all you want, but that if housing inflation was somewhere within 200 to 300 basis points of the total inflation rate. In other words, I'm allowing housing to inflate, I'm allowing inflation to inflate, and I'm allowing housing to inflate at double the rate of inflation, two to 300 basis points more. And I'm doing all these things for no good reason whatsoever, and yet I'm saying that even in that environment, I think the vast majority of what passes for middle and upper middle class angst would be gone. That while there are still other issues that people could hold on to, the excessively regulatory environment affects people in the top 1% more than anyone else. Um there are certain professions that have been disproportionately hurt by a wide array of factors. There is more dynamism and mobility for people with certain educational achievement. I can't speak right now on this podcast what Charles Murray talked about in the Coming Apart book he wrote, which is a masterpiece, about where a lot of this is social and cultural in our divide, but just on a basic economic standpoint, with wage growth being what it is, with the opportunity society being what it is, and where the mobility in the data clearly shows that many people from one station in life continue to become minted in new stations of life over and over again. That the fact of the matter is, there is all this other stuff going on, but what I think is most inescapable as on the margin, the highest marginal impact to the way people perceive their economic position relative to these other things I'm speaking about, it's the cost of housing relative to their wallet, what they spend money on total. And the notion of feeling gainfully employed but not being able to afford in your own neighborhood, the high burden of down payment, the high burden of carrying costs, the high burden of insurance, maintenance, HOA, and ongoing property taxation, the high burden of sticker prices in housing is the elephant in the room. And I'm not suggesting that David's article goes away, that a world of envy goes away, that that income divide debates go away. I do suggest we have much more rational conversations about all of these things if it were not for the fact that the primary practical impact on people, not the video game pot-smoking class that is bitching about their lot in life because of their own irresponsibility, not those that have made bad social decisions, not those that have violated the family values and social values, the high divorce rate, the unwed parents, these things all represent massive factors that we've been talking about from Moynihan all the way to Charles Murray, in black communities and white communities, in the '60s and in the 2020s, all of those things are there, but the one element that I have the most sympathy for in creating a divide that is not in the category of crisis responsibility is housing prices. And we've talked on the podcast many times about some of the various solutions, both culturally and economically to that, but what I'm doing here is just merely suggesting that this supposed resentment I think is categorically different if housing prices were not taking out the cost of housing. And by the way, this includes rent as much as purchase, but a lot of it is intensified around people who feel they can't afford to purchase. If it were not for what has exacerbated what used to be 25% of one's disposable income now becoming 45% That has created a big divide, and then not only are the percentages so much worse, excuse me, the delta in these percentages so much more severe, meaning the percentage of what one has to spend on rent and housing, but then there are social and cultural ramifications that come with it. That the quality of life one has, the amenities they're exposed to, the dining, the schools, the recreation, that this creates a divide. And I believe it is a byproduct of very poor macro cultural decisions made, millennials choosing to get married a lot longer, very bad historical events, the financial crisis leading to a sustained period of poor investment into housing, but then primarily bad policy and policy errors combined with NIMBYism that have left us with a supply deficit. I want to address the ongoing issue of envy and the ongoing issue of middle class resentment. I want to address the ongoing validity of some problems, the total rank invalidity of others other diagnoses of this. But I just want to start with a suggestion that one person's phone bill being $100 and someone else's $50 isn't going to go very far at explaining what's happening. But housing is elephant in the room as a percentage of wallet and on an absolute basis, all with identifiable errors and causes that go into it, this more than even the people who have resentment might recognize is a source of tremendous resentment that allows us to go beyond blaming it on irresponsibility and beyond trying to correct what the data is. The data is mostly positive. There are irresponsible people. But I'll tell you, we change this conversation a great deal when we fix this housing situation that is entirely fixable. Thank you for listening to David Bonson's Capital Record. Much more to say on all these topics in the weeks to come.
Middle Class Resentment, David French, and a Free Market Economy
Summary
Transcript
Capital Record, where we defend free enterprise and capital markets because we believe in the dignity of the human person. Hello and welcome to David Bahnsen's Capital Record brought to you by National Review, where at least once if not twice a week, I want to come and talk to you about the conditions for human flourishing that I think are optimally made possible in a free and virtuous society. It's my way of saying that I want to defend a free a free enterprise system and I want to defend the capital markets that undergird it. And I want to challenge those competitors to a free enterprise system that I believe would undermine our freedom and virtue. Many will say they could undermine our freedom or virtue, but it's my contention that the free and virtuous society is a both and not an either or and that undermining one inevitably undermines the other. This is my worldview I'm devoting my adult life to and this is podcast is here to defend these things in various applications each and every week. Today I want to talk about an issue that might be at the top of a lot of people's list that have become either cynical or concerned about the notion of a free society, of a free enterprise system, of a market economy. And that is what they considered to be a shrinking middle class and um elements of some people losing, too many losing, too many being left out and then others that are winning and being left in and this uh resentment economy, this resentment system that forms when people believe that they're basically embedded in the structure of a market economy those that are winning and those that are losing. And many defenders of free enterprise would say that's exactly correct, but that it's meritocratic. That what you want to avoid is structural impediments to everyone having opportunity, but you don't want to say we have a system where everyone will win because not everyone will deserve to win. Others will not work hard, others will have failed ideas, others will have inadequate effort. Uh and that there will be others that will win as a result of competitive advantages, innovation, creativity, other things. So that the heart of a market economy is to reward good things, punish bad things and then allow corrections and adjustments and so forth. That would basically be my very view. And yet what we I think often have are people that will point to elements where one has succeeded and one has not and indict the system from it, which makes two mistakes. It it ignores what could be the nuances or particulars that best explain why one succeeded and one did not, but also, and this is a very important structural issue in terms of critique of any economic worldview, fails to ask the vital three words compared to what. What is it when you critique this thing of a person succeeding and another person not that would have been better in another system? What is the other system will do this better. This is my frequent criticism here on the Capital Record podcast of so many today on the new right that want to suggest, and this is kind of out of a either left-wing or dare I say right-wing populism, that there is some sort of structural issue in uh too much freedom that has resulted in a an unfair system that the state can remedy. And I want to always ask the question whether or not you're right that this thing you're identifying is actually unjust or is actually problematic, in what sense does the state or whatever the other solution you propose, it always ends up being the state by the way, um create something better. The the uh critique of a market economy for an outcome without addressing where competitive systems make that outcome worse not better is logically fallacious at best. One of the issues in this context of a shrinking middle class or concerns that the economy is creating too many that can't get ahead, the resentments that come with it, is bifurcating between macro data and perception. That there is all at once macro data that would suggest people are doing better than they've ever done, economic growth is the envy of the world, that we're dealing with decades upon decades of an elevated standard of living, and so therefore all the people complaining are wrong. And it is my belief that this just doesn't allow for us to close the book at the macro data, which by and large does show a a competitive advantage over the rest of the world, an absolute standard of living that is somewhat incomparable in human history. And yet that does not mean there is not some legitimacy to people who are concerned. My challenge as an economist and as a financial commentator is to accurately, not inaccurately, pinpoint what the source of these things may be. And leaving the diagnosis at what people say. Someone says, I have not been able to get ahead and this other rich guy got ahead and I blame him and therefore it is China's fault or Mexico's fault. Or by the way, even people will say it's the government's fault and I'm very critical of tax and regulatory policy, but I do not agree that every person who has not been able to get ahead has a government to blame. Uh my very first book I ever wrote is called Crisis of Responsibility, where I suggest that those who live their life from a and this is a micro comment, a bottom-up comment, not dealing with the macro trends that we find evidence for post hoc in data, but rather in individual people that live their life from a vantage point of scapegoatism and blameism and victimhood and resentment, that what you basically have dividing society is merely who they are blaming. So obviously the left has a class envy position, they want to blame certain systemic injustices or so they call them, they want to blame uh capitalistic forces, big business, uh Wall Street. And then many on the right have traditionally blamed the government and these days right-wing populism is willing to join in the fray of blaming Wall Street, too. I I did a a rather heated podcast a month or so back critiquing um Oren Cass's uh recent New York Times uh editorial suggesting that it is financial markets that have created the problems that we have. But what do you do with this dual reality that the macro data indicates a lot of positive things and yet there are uh increasing numbers of resentment. Am I right in talking about the crisis of responsibility as the sole blame here? Are there just a bunch of ungrateful people that want to smoke pot and play video games and then complain that they can't get ahead or is there more to it? And this is the problem when people want to end a conversation at macro data is that I believe each thing I'm about to say. That the macro standard of living has gotten higher and indisputably so in American economic life over the last 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80 years. And I believe that there are a lot of people who have not participated in the benefits of society that this this standard of living increase because of their own decisions that have often been very poor ones. Uh morally, culturally, socially, educationally, professionally, economically, that many people uh have created a sub-optimal outcome for themselves. But I also believe that there are people who are justifiably frustrated with certain elements of the current economic system despite what I just said about number one and number two, and yet maybe lack the specificity of what the source of that is. Now, when you get into this, okay David, you think some people are justifiably frustrated, but you and you think maybe they can't exactly psychologically or ideologically pinpoint what it may be. What is it then? We do know that there is the class warfare argument that would come in and say it's income inequality. People are frustrated that they're doing better, but that someone else is doing even better still. And the fact of the matter is that there's very little precedent in human history of this sort of resentment mentality taking hold when people are doing better and yet others are doing even more better. That what we have is a stagnation evidenced in particular social and cultural categories that feeds a resentment. And what I what I I by this is that one who feels they cannot afford a home has an easier time being mad at Mark Zuckerberg's wealth. Mark Zuckerberg's wealth has nothing to do with someone who can't afford a home. But if one is making $120,000 a year, they went to school, they got a degree, they worked hard, they made good decisions, they avoided everything from that prior category I talked about of really just creating a very suboptimal outcome for themselves, they are not by any means wealthy, but they have a good job and what would have for most of human history been considered a good paycheck, even adjusted for inflation and so forth, and yet they clearly do not have the comforts that one would previously have had with even much less income, again adjusted for inflation, then you can understand where that inflation comes from. You cannot say it's Elon Musk's fault or or Warren Buffett's fault or or big tech's fault or Wall Street's fault. But what is really going on here? David French wrote an article in the New York Times a couple of weeks ago now, and there's a lot in the article I really like. Now look, I want to just make a comment on David. David's been a friend of mine for a long time. I haven't spoken with him in a couple of years. We haven't had any kind of falling out. I find myself disagreeing with David a lot more these days than I ever did. I also have a tremendous heart for David because I believe that a lot of where he's gone ideologically is a byproduct of some very, very, very horrific, unfair treatment, but I also don't claim that David has stayed where he used to be. I I think he did for a while, but I recognize that in the course of all providing what is often extremely legitimate criticism of Donald Trump, which hopefully you know I do all the time on this podcast, I also believe that David himself is simply moved and and taken positions that he would have never taken prior to Donald Trump. And and so I I'm not aligned with David on that stuff, but but nor do I believe that he is some enemy. And what I know of David personally is him being a man of extraordinary character and a man devoted to his family. So like anybody these days, there's just going to be things you're going to like and not like with a public figure, and David's one of them. And and I put that precursor out there cuz I guess it's necessary these days. Probably shouldn't be. But what he does in the article is try to highlight how it can be true that some feel worse when a lot of the objective data is better and and provide explanation for a lot of it. And I mean it's mostly fair, but I also think that then when we look at the relative standard of living, Charlie Munger has a famous line that the world does not run on greed but on envy. And I did a podcast some time ago about would you rather be um the wealthiest person in 1950 or you know, a 100, 200, 300,000 a year person today, and and talked about the difference between absolute standards and relative standards, and the when you're comparing yourself only to the Joneses versus an absolute standard of living, there's something skewed there. And David identifies that happens in this, but he doesn't blame it all entirely on it. Although the keep up with Joneses and discontentment that greater wealth sometimes brings is highlighted fairly, I think, in his article. But what I think he doesn't do is get into some of the specifics. He doesn't um dispute what I'm saying. It just his article kind of ends, and I want to take it one step further. I want to suggest to you that Elon Musk making what he makes, the stock market going where it goes, manufacturing being done in either Ohio or China, you can go through all of those issues all you want, but that if housing inflation was somewhere within 200 to 300 basis points of the total inflation rate. In other words, I'm allowing housing to inflate, I'm allowing inflation to inflate, and I'm allowing housing to inflate at double the rate of inflation, two to 300 basis points more. And I'm doing all these things for no good reason whatsoever, and yet I'm saying that even in that environment, I think the vast majority of what passes for middle and upper middle class angst would be gone. That while there are still other issues that people could hold on to, the excessively regulatory environment affects people in the top 1% more than anyone else. Um there are certain professions that have been disproportionately hurt by a wide array of factors. There is more dynamism and mobility for people with certain educational achievement. I can't speak right now on this podcast what Charles Murray talked about in the Coming Apart book he wrote, which is a masterpiece, about where a lot of this is social and cultural in our divide, but just on a basic economic standpoint, with wage growth being what it is, with the opportunity society being what it is, and where the mobility in the data clearly shows that many people from one station in life continue to become minted in new stations of life over and over again. That the fact of the matter is, there is all this other stuff going on, but what I think is most inescapable as on the margin, the highest marginal impact to the way people perceive their economic position relative to these other things I'm speaking about, it's the cost of housing relative to their wallet, what they spend money on total. And the notion of feeling gainfully employed but not being able to afford in your own neighborhood, the high burden of down payment, the high burden of carrying costs, the high burden of insurance, maintenance, HOA, and ongoing property taxation, the high burden of sticker prices in housing is the elephant in the room. And I'm not suggesting that David's article goes away, that a world of envy goes away, that that income divide debates go away. I do suggest we have much more rational conversations about all of these things if it were not for the fact that the primary practical impact on people, not the video game pot-smoking class that is bitching about their lot in life because of their own irresponsibility, not those that have made bad social decisions, not those that have violated the family values and social values, the high divorce rate, the unwed parents, these things all represent massive factors that we've been talking about from Moynihan all the way to Charles Murray, in black communities and white communities, in the '60s and in the 2020s, all of those things are there, but the one element that I have the most sympathy for in creating a divide that is not in the category of crisis responsibility is housing prices. And we've talked on the podcast many times about some of the various solutions, both culturally and economically to that, but what I'm doing here is just merely suggesting that this supposed resentment I think is categorically different if housing prices were not taking out the cost of housing. And by the way, this includes rent as much as purchase, but a lot of it is intensified around people who feel they can't afford to purchase. If it were not for what has exacerbated what used to be 25% of one's disposable income now becoming 45% That has created a big divide, and then not only are the percentages so much worse, excuse me, the delta in these percentages so much more severe, meaning the percentage of what one has to spend on rent and housing, but then there are social and cultural ramifications that come with it. That the quality of life one has, the amenities they're exposed to, the dining, the schools, the recreation, that this creates a divide. And I believe it is a byproduct of very poor macro cultural decisions made, millennials choosing to get married a lot longer, very bad historical events, the financial crisis leading to a sustained period of poor investment into housing, but then primarily bad policy and policy errors combined with NIMBYism that have left us with a supply deficit. I want to address the ongoing issue of envy and the ongoing issue of middle class resentment. I want to address the ongoing validity of some problems, the total rank invalidity of others other diagnoses of this. But I just want to start with a suggestion that one person's phone bill being $100 and someone else's $50 isn't going to go very far at explaining what's happening. But housing is elephant in the room as a percentage of wallet and on an absolute basis, all with identifiable errors and causes that go into it, this more than even the people who have resentment might recognize is a source of tremendous resentment that allows us to go beyond blaming it on irresponsibility and beyond trying to correct what the data is. The data is mostly positive. There are irresponsible people. But I'll tell you, we change this conversation a great deal when we fix this housing situation that is entirely fixable. Thank you for listening to David Bonson's Capital Record. Much more to say on all these topics in the weeks to come.