In housing matters, the media regularly publish messages or replies between developers, academia (very divided, by the way), social movements, and a succession of governments that are too erratic regarding investment in affordable housing. These are very confrontational positions that constantly make us doubt the capacity of democratic governments to guarantee and expand the welfare state. Everyone agrees that the goal of 50,000 social housing units in Catalonia is a good initiative, but the results achieved so far give rise to all sorts of contradictory messages. What is preventing the promised volume of production from being achieved? Amidst these tensions, the narrative of the harsh reality of today's cities emerges, which authors such as Llucia Ramis, Javier Gil, Paulina Flores, Jordi Amat, and Marta Jiménez Serrano describe with cunning and, at the same time, sadness.Of the many readings that can be made of Thomas Piketty's work, there is one that has to do with the deconcentration of power and property, the power relations that confront tenants and landlords, and their respective narratives. A good contribution from Piketty is that he emphasizes the inequalities generated not only by the concentration of ownership of the means of production (the focus of classical Marxism), but also by housing ownership. The unequal life prospects that tenants may have compared to the options of owners (who, for the most part, are such by inheritance) call into question the deconcentration of power and property that had been achieved since the French Revolution. The poorest 50% of the population has a tenth of the average wealth of the total population and remains too exposed to the dynamics of the market housing price. Piketty refers to feminist authors who have for years argued that the household economy is a very important part of urban family economies and that, added together, they affect the functioning of national economies. It makes me think that the way cities solve the housing issue will have very important macroeconomic implications in the coming years.Spain is one of the wealthy countries that leave half the population without access to affordable housing out in the cold. It is a rich state in the sense that it has companies that accumulate many properties, but with the paradox that it has a dwindling public heritage. And in housing matters, only 2% of homes are public property.

1. Social democracy must be resurrected. It is a slogan of the moment, in full struggle with a rising neo-fascism, which emanates from the melancholy of the distant times of Europe's rebirth after the Second World War, the so-called "Trente Glorieuses" (1945-1973), which encompass the apotheosis of the sixties, when everything seemed possible. But how should we read it? In the positive version, recognition of citizens' rights, more social spending, dignification of work, and housing for all as shared goals. However, the repetition, as if it were a litany, becomes suspicious at a time when a large part of the citizenry feels stuck or out of play under the weight of constant acceleration, which with its destructive effects actually hinders any sketch of hope. A time when oppression is transferred to machines at the expense of labor, considerably increasing the concentration of power in the hands that manage them. In fact, it is the nostalgia for a time that was actually shorter and more precarious than we have believed, around the United States, Great Britain, France, and liberated Germany, which dressed up the ephemeral myth of a more or less controlled capitalism, with somewhat idealized levels of equity. Frustration and melancholy are now chained together as, with the transition from industrial to digital and financial capitalism, everything seems upside down in the hands of economic and media powers with enormous polluting capacity.

His book Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2013) catapulted him to global fame. But even then, the French economist Thomas Piketty had been one of the most respected names in economic theory for over a decade, as co-founder of the Paris School of Economics and co-creator of the World Inequality Database. A specialist in the study of inequalities and wealth distribution, Piketty now presents the Global Justice Report, an ambitious economic roadmap that outlines how global inequality can be eliminated and the climate crisis curbed before 2100.

"The poor have understood many things", the Pope said in the Canary Islands on the same day that Space X went public and Elon Musk became the richest man in history. What we don't know is what the South African has learned humanly. Only the speed and vertigo of the changes we are going through explain that the confusion we are experiencing does not explode. In Spain, political confusion turns a pope into a moral reference in a Congress of Deputies poisoned by polarization, which applauds him unanimously for seven minutes. Each one ready to use him in their own way. It is the same confusion that turns Musk, a textbook unbalanced person with zero humanist capacity, into another reference of our times.

"I can do whatever I want with my money; it's mine." Well, that's not exactly true. It's yours, yes. But you can't do whatever you want. The more you have, the clearer it becomes that you've accumulated it thanks to the collective work of many other people, thanks to the existence of infrastructure and public services, thanks to a legal system that ensures the proper functioning of the economy. Therefore, you have to pay taxes; you have an obligation to contribute to maintaining all of this. You can't just go about your business, without taking into account the environment that has favored you. Economist Thomas Piketty states: "You are not alone in the world, and you can't simply say, 'This money is mine.'"

The blackout has brought us face to face with the fragility of everything we have and take for granted. The standard of living achieved in the West (the East is getting its act together) is, in historical terms, spectacular. Of course, this doesn't negate the evidence of the inequalities and vulnerability of so many people, nor the fact that this wealth has been the fruit of brutal processes of colonization or exploitation. That said, and lest I be misunderstood, a poor person today in a democratic Western country is not the same as a poor person a century ago. Just look at general life expectancy or public health, education, and social welfare services, even if they remain limited.