House?

November 1st, 2025| Topic: RaMbLeS | 0

Someone once said that the Japanese eat very little fat and suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans. And the French eat a lot of fat and also suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans. Also the Japanese drink very little red wine and suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans. Then there are those Italians who drink excessive amounts of red wine and also suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans. And the conclusion of this set of astute and sage observations?

Eat and drink what you like. Speaking English is apparently what kills you.”

Tongue-in-cheek, of course. But there may be something there …

Reported the Financial Times a couple months ago:

One of the most striking but under-discussed insights from this year’s World Happiness Report was that the marked worsening in young adult mental health over the past decade is primarily, if not exclusively, an Anglosphere phenomenon.”

The number of young adults under stress has risen sharply in the last decade in the USA, Canada, UK, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand (the Anglosphere), though largely stable elsewhere in the west. And that seems to be also true for young people’s confidence that hard work will be rewarded with security, stability, and status. Outside the English-speaking world, confidence in this fundamental tenet of social fairness has held steady across the age spectrum. But in the Anglosphere it is dropping fast among the young (though high in us old-timers).

No one knows what’s going on, but the Financial Times speculates:

While dozens of countries are dealing with deteriorating housing affordability, the issue is especially acute in the Anglosphere. In Germany and Spain real house prices have climbed 32 and 44 per cent respectively since 1995. In the USA, the equivalent figure is 85 per cent, while the UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and Canada all come in north of 200 per cent.”

There goes that particularly Anglophone dream of owning your home (or castle).

Rates of ownership among people aged 25-34 in English-speaking countries have slumped by between 20 and 50 percentage points over the same 30-year period.”

This affordability crunch in the Anglosphere has been all the more damaging because it is precisely the same societies that place a high value on home ownership.

The Financial Times again:

Viewed in this light, the increasingly palpable sense of insecurity, stress and even anger among many Anglo under-forties cannot easily be written off as irrational catastrophising or mental health speak. It reflects a generation’s direct experience of reality. The Anglosphere has cut a generation adrift. It’s time to reach out a helping hand.”

Good idea! Yes, we should!

But the best house to live in?

Yahweh, I love the habitation of Your house and the place where abides Your glory.
Psalm 26:8

Because, there, …

Surely goodness and lovingkindness will pursue me all the days of my life,
and I will dwell in the house of Yahweh for long days.
Psalm 23:6

So much so …

One thing I have asked from Yahweh—that I shall seek:
for me to dwell in the house of Yahweh all the days of my life,
Psalm 27:4

And …

The righteous like a palm tree will flourish, like a cedar in Lebanon he will grow high.
Planted in the house of Yahweh—in the courts of our God they will flourish.
Psalm 92:12–13

After all, …

If Yahweh himself does not build a house,
in worthlessness the ones building labor on it.
Psalm 127:1

SOURCE: Financial Times; Mirror