>So anyone seriously concerned with the plight of working people should start
>with that point - that the working people are already stuck with the most
>costly and inefficient arrangement possible that sucks them dry while
>fattening the pockets of middlemen, speculators, developers oil and car
>producers, etc.
David Roediger has some good stuff in his latest, Working Towards Whiteness, about how "home" ownership was an important way for Eastern and Southern European immigrants in the early 20th century to become white. They often made themselves far worse off in material terms for the psychological payoff of racial promotion - and at the same time, cities became identified as dark and inferior.
Doug