(Bloomberg) The U.S. homeownership rate has fallen below 60 percent when delinquent borrowers are excluded, a sign of the country’s move toward a “rentership society,” Morgan Stanley said in a report today.

One wonders why we should consider homeowners anything other than renters when most of them are just borrowing from the bank and paying their rent via mortgage interest.

Our current predicament reminds one of Thoreau, who in Walden, described the community of Concord much in the same way without using the term ‘rentership’:

On applying to the assessors, I am surprised to learn that they cannot at once name a dozen in the town who own their farms free and clear. If you would know the history of these homesteads, inquire at the bank where they are mortgaged. The man who has actually paid for his farm with labor on it is so rare that every neighbor can point to him. I doubt if there are three such men in Concord.