Column 8 · The Rub
Your house went up. That is not the same as getting richer.
People say "house prices are up again" with the quiet satisfaction usually reserved for a decent harvest. I should like to fuss about the vocabulary. A higher sticker on a house you still need to sleep in is a mood, not a dividend. If you do not own the thing, it is a locked door.
A dwelling is not a share. You cannot spend a capital gain while you continue to occupy the asset. The stock is dear because we built too few of them and lent too much against the ones we have. That is not a productivity miracle. That is a queue with interest attached.
The popular take calls this wealth. The receipt calls it a transfer from the young and the renting to whoever arrived first.
Which, if we are being precise, is the rub.