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Many people have problems related to income inequality. We went to college, got good jobs, and we still don't have enough money to maintain the lifestyle we were promised. We don't live in a socialist country, we live in a capitalist country.
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So 30% of people can't afford their own house and that doesn't seem like inequality to you?
Here's the wiki page on global income equality, to address your claim that Europe is worse than the US:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality
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some of those 30% choose to not own a house
[citation needed]
And even if true, what do you think is driving that decision? Decisions aren't made in a vacuum. I posit - it's the financial burden.
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there’s always a significant additional bureaucratic cost when selling a house and buying another one.
This really only affects landlords and estate agents. Most people looking for a home are looking for a place to stay for life, and any "bureaucratic cost", if you're purely talking about red tape, form-filling, phone calls etc, is more than worth it for a lifetime home. Again, citation needed. If you're talking about a literal monetary cost... whoa, look at that - capitalism!
renting has at least a single clear benefit beyond just being able to afford it: greater flexibility
"Flexibility" is a daft measure, only useful for people who plan to move often, which, again, is not common, except in the case of people needing to move often for work, which - hey, it's capitalism again!
Also, the financial risk is almost zero when you rent.
"Almost" is doing a lot of work in this sentence. The risk of being made homeless by your landlord for petty reasons is a pretty clear risk. Having your rent hiked is a financial risk. Having to bite the bullet and choose an expensive place to rent because it's the only one reasonably close to work is a financial risk. Being under someone's thumb to provide them income is itself an inherent financial risk.
And by the way - what do you think causes the financial risk of home ownership, since you're so intent on proving my point for me?
Now do the home ownership rate in socialist countries
(Hint, the "American dream" of owning a home is much easier under socialism)
It's also clear that people who deny the extent to which capitalism actually makes the world worse either a) don't know what capitalism is, or b) are rent seekers
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What history? What economics? Vague gesturing and feigning superiority without actually saying anything is peak.
Edit: turns out the economics was just Sowell all along, lol. Guess we have an AnCap over here.
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You weren't replying to the meme, you were replying to someone else in the origin of this fork of the comment chain. I'm implying that you in particular have no nuance.
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Fair enough, but again, you somehow had even less nuance and pulled the classic bit of feigning superiority.
Edit: oof, you unironically suggest Sowell in another comment as a good resource. Looks like I'm correct, the superiority was indeed completely unfounded.
Instead of berating him for not leaving a robust enough comment for your taste, why don't you ask for more information? Calling capitalists uninformed or rent seekers is way more unfair than alluding to historical or economic evidence to the contrary. The latter clearly leaves itself more open to good faith discourse, getting nothing out of it has simply been a failure on your part
The very first thing they said was "what history? What economics?" - so yeah, they've asked for information.
Or not. Adam Smith - the father of Capitalism recognised the problem of Rent Seeking behaviour.