[nemothekid]

>Is the market acting like infinite growth is baked in,

It's this. America has decided that:

1. The most important retirement/wealth vehicle is your home.

2. Home prices must only go up or your wealth will be destroyed.

3. The government should use it's power to uphold (1) and (2), which results in NIMBYism, all the tax breaks you see around mortgages, and of course the 2008 bailouts.

w.r.t stocks I largely think that was a ZIRP phenomenon, but stocks are allowed to correct somewhat.

[bumby]

You forgot the part where people use their home equity as a revolving line of credit, which exacerbates #2.

[red-iron-pine]

aka we got a head start and are now able to leverage that head start even further

[bumby]

I was thinking of it differently, more in terms of how debt-laden Americans tend to be. This is just another mechanism of perpetuating that.

It would be one thing if people are leveraging that equity to buy appreciating assets, but too often they are leveraging that debt for depreciating assets.