The article doesn’t address the home equity of my contemporaries but it slams them for not investing in the gambling pits of the 80s stock markets?
A lot of people don't have home equity, and the home equity market over the last decade has been a bigger gambling pit for most Americans than the stock market.
No money down, 30-year mortgages only build equity if housing is undergoing artificial inflation. Prior to the changes to the Community Reinvestment Act in the late 1990s, housing appreciated at a rate lower than inflation. Sure, equity is wealth, but the historical rate of return is on par with certificates of deposit. And how many people with artificially inflated equity traded it for bad debt with cash out refinancing? That is not like the 80's stock market, that is like borrowing from your bookie.
As for the stock market, one dollar invested in the S&P 500 Index in January of 1980 would be worth about ten dollars today, 20 years later. That equates to about an 11.5% annual rate of return. That includes the 1987 crash, the dot-com bust, the 9/11 aftermath, and the current financial collapse.