> The house gets repossessed or sold for taxes

Sold to whom? Isn’t the argument that no one will have money? There are approximately as many houses in the US as there are households. We are not going to see all the houses empty and all the households homeless. Maybe the people who are currently buying at a time when home values are historically high will be shafted. But those houses will not end up empty.

> Will we be "not worse" or will our standard of living "fall precipitously"? Those feel different.

Reading comprehension. These are the two relevant statements - speaking of the average:

> we in the west are likely to be not-worse, on average, than we are now.

and speaking of HN denizens:

> average HN denizen is much better off than average. I think there’s room for our standard of living to fall precipitously.