re: Everyone who owns a house has benefited from idiotic rises in housing prices.

No, only people who have sold (and not re-bought, or re-bought, but in a cheaper geographical market than they sold) have benefitted. People that think they benefitted, by taking out equity to reno or do other things with, but have not sold, or have sold and "upgraded" will not have benefitted as a portion of their "equity" will disappear over the next couple of years with rate increases and probably will not return for a very long time (decade or so). Everybody else who just live in their homes and didn't borrow anything against them as they skyrocketed in value, how have they benefitted?