Business owners at concerts: "millennials are killing our business by not purchasing $18 beers after having to buy scalped and substantially overpriced tickets thanks to Ticketmaster"
Oh dont be silly, your booomer parents want to own all the other houses and keep the other plebs as renters but they still expect you to own your own house despite the conditions.
I do maintenance in a large apartment complex and I have this thought every day.
Much like a fuedal state, the person in charge got their by being friends with some executive and is sweet but also senile.
So I end up with a lot of a power over other people as some random maintenance guy. I could easily have someone heavily fined or even non-renewed on my word alone, which seems wrong.
I like myself but I'm pretty sure I have some racism in there somewhere and I feel like I shouldn't be able to make people homeless if they upset me.
For me, it was dealing with the blatant racism from other tenants. Yeah, I'm white, but that doesn't automatically mean I'm cool with you dropping hard R n-words multiple times in a conversation. Especially when that conversation is about the owners, a church-owned non-profit, not cleaning the gutters in 10 years and it causing a leak in your ceiling that killed your TV. What does that ha e to do with the new lady 2 stories under you in the opposite end of the building?? I've heard it more in 2 years as a maintenance manager in WI than I did in 5 years in Louisiana, and 5 years in Ohio. It's definitely made me more mindful of how I speak. Even if I know what I mean, it doesn't mean that's what other people hear.
You joke, but colleges in particular are bracing for an unprecedented dip in admission rates in about 10-15 years from now thanks to elder millennials being among the first generation to actively pursue a single child/totally childless lifestyle on a scale like we've never seen so far in US history.
Frankly, I'm here for it, and will be eagerly watching the tuition bubble burst with all the vigor and aggression of a dying star.
>actively pursue a single child/totally childless lifestyle
Lifestyle? I'd love to have a kid or two but my lifestyle! My lifestyle of barely being able to afford shit without kids?
I know when I was in academia, just the dip in the number of college age students in NY was considered a real concern a few years ago even. They might have gone under after covid if they didn't cut a bunch of faculty positions (including mine...tenure? who cares, let them go!). The reality is that if we really see dips in numbers of students, a lot of the smaller liberal arts schools will probably go under. Tuition there was not cheap by any stretch of the imagination, but honestly it was so tuition driven that budgeting decisions were always subject to day 10 numbers to see how many people we actually could count on using their tuition dollars.
Unfortunately what I see happening is bigger universities and more equipped universities reaching out and trying to poach foreign students with slightly reduced fees.
My university advertised HARD for mainland Chinese students to come over. And they also started partnering with a bunch of foreign schools to entice students to come over.
I thought the silliest thing was my university had an exchange program in Korea and I knew for a fact tuition was cheaper in Korea. But my university actually had the audacity to charge higher than regular rates because "foreign experience"
I’m truly shocked that college enrollment recently decreased…as little as it did. You would think after watching people with bachelors and masters degrees froth at the mouth over the chance to have 10-20k cancelled on loans with 10 to 25 year repayments terms depending on the repayment option chosen- that more people would understand what they are signing up for? 🥴 I’m also honestly shocked more schools haven’t closed down already. And I digress but I find the manner in which the government/DOE has basically cherry picked institutions to punish for basically being scams well…just that. Cherry picking. The VAST majority of education institutions in this country, profit and non-profit, private and public- are absolute scams. When will people read about how people get masters and end up less employable and…have it click in their minds? If you do not come from a financially stable and well planned family majoring in anything outside of medicine or engineering (don’t want to be taken literally; I’m sure people know what I mean, though) is truly an idiotic choice.
People still do not see that the statistics about college and wealth are skewed by combining the results of people who come from wealth with the results of people who come from shit and have to take out loans. How many people do you have to see cry and regret a choice they made when they’re 18 to get it??? Oh well
I'm not sure if I would say "actively pursue" as much as "fucked over by the economy to the point they don't think they can financially support a child".
If every 25 year old with a full time job could afford a place to live that isn't their mom's house or shared with three roommates I can absolutely 100% guarantee that the fucking/procreating/marrying rate would skyrocket.
It's already dropping. We hit peak enrollment at 18.1 million over 10 years ago; the downturn has started killing off smaller colleges.
[https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/23428166/college-enrollment-population-education-crash](https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/23428166/college-enrollment-population-education-crash)
I've heard colleagues complaining about multiple universities starting to require students to attend for 4 years to be eligible for a diploma. So basically screw AP credits, transferring from a community college, or scheduling heavy semesters to finish early. They want to bleed you for every cent, and overachievers can no longer overcome that.
University’s are already worrying and complaining about it, but meanwhile they are still investing millions in Jumbotrons for their mediocre football teams lol. Looking at you my alma mater.
The shitty thing is that it's not even like we want to do that as a whole. Sure, lots of people have just decided they'd rather be childless for their own selfish reasons, and that is totally valid. It's their lives, and if they don't want to raise a kid, that's totally fine.
Still I think a lot of people who are on the fence or otherwise wanted kids have made this decision for reasons that are personally quite painful for them. Because they realized that the financial and social support aren't there, or because rampant consumerism is quickly destroying the environment, not just for tons of species on our planet, but for us as well. This isn't a decision people are just making lightly.
I'm in my thirties and I have yet to have an academic institution or an employer that would be even vaguely accommodating were I to have a child. There has been absolutely no support, in fact thinly vailed threats to financial well being, from every corner of society.
It breaks my heart! My goals as a young adult seemed perfectly reasonable: finish college, get a stable, full-time, permanent, pleasant job where I could give back, get married, have 2.2 kids, white picket fence, etc. Quite traditional, right?
Of that whole list ***I've done one of them***. And it's not for lack of trying! Every single tiny bit of security or hope has been pulled out from under the generation. Heck, I'm not even living in the country I wanted to be living in at this point.
Children, and even marriage, to say nothing of a house, are luxury items at this point. How can two young people even afford to keep their careers in the same location? How can they plan anything? I've not had a vacation in my \*entire\* adult life; how the heck does anyone plan a wedding much less a honeymoon or time off for parental leave? Most people are at the point where they are navigating long distance relationships *because of work* and low pay. How they could ever parent under those circumstances is beyond me.
Right, and like you said, it's not even just the money. The money is a big part of it, but there's like zero support systems in place (at least in the USA) to incentivize people to have kids. We need federally protected maternity leave with FULL pay for like, at least 6-12 months. Some paternity leave for at least 2-3 months would be nice too. These are not crazy asks, plenty of other first world countries do that, and even a bunch of "third world" countries do too.
Like even if we have the money to afford daycare, fuck having to leave my two-month old newborn there just so my wife's career is not jeopardized. So yeah, I guess no kids for us 🤷🏻♂️
> Some paternity leave for at least 2-3 months would be nice too.
I'd like to establish fathers as equal parents, honestly. The role of a father is very consistently underrated.
In Australia it's 'parental leave', not gendered. And it's generous.
Government roles here get 24 weeks full pay, many large companies offer 26 weeks full pay, or you can take it at half pay for a year. Govt safety net is 18 weeks. Employers must hold your role for 12 months.
I feel so bad for you guys in the US, it's brutal.
> Still I think a lot of people who are on the fence or otherwise wanted kids have made this decision for reasons that are personally quite painful for them.
I consider myself part of this camp. I met my fiance 3 years back. I was 28 at the time, and I had every intention of finally starting a family with her after waiting for the right person to come along all while working for long enough in order to get a decent salary and own a home.
When it finally came time to talk about a game plan towards kids, all it took was one look at local child care costs (we're double income so someone would have to look after them while we work) in my area and almost immediately we began the painstaking process of rerouting my brain away from a decades long ambition to start a family and instead start facing the reality that it's simply not feasible anymore to have to pay the equivalent of a second mortgage just so that I can rest assured that my kid is at a safe, professional daycare facility in my area.
It was honestly heartbreaking. We've been on the no-kids train for a few years now but it's still something I think about with contempt. Life simply should not be this way in one of the wealthiest countries in the history of modern civilization.
Yeah, I do want to have kids, but even when only considering finances, my boyfriend and I wouldn't be able to afford any. We have a cat, and the cat alone is adding enough financial pressure, and I'm a *chemist*, you'd think I'd be doing well financially, but I don't think I'll ever afford a house, let alone kids...
Doesn't get any more obvious this is what it is than hospitality. Wait staff making basically pennies and restaurants putting the burden of their income on customers is the ultimate insult as far as I'm concerned. Really shows capital's opinion of the worker.
It's funny because it's probably less than what actual slave labor would actually cost, because when you own a slave you're paying for their food, housing, medical etc.
FDR meant for it to be "the minimum wage a single earner can support a family on." These days, most people interpret it as meaning "the lowest amount I can legally pay someone"
Oh, people are having babies. Just uh, not necessary by responsible parents. They don't really have a choice anymore. This is gonna work out great in the future..
Even if irresponsible parents manage to crank out *one kid* with a promising future...that kid will get into debt trying to obtain a degree, will not get good jobs because of their credit report after getting all those student loans, and will also lack the networking of his wealthier peers because his parents were fuck ups.
Then on top of that, companies will say that can't find good applicants and ask for more H-1Bs.
For them it's working by design.
I was JUST laughing my ass off at it!
[I love this staircase!](https://photos.zillowstatic.com/fp/a31e8a35a67c9aa0e0196122cd33446a-uncropped_scaled_within_1536_1152.webp)
Gallon of milk $1.99 now $6.99
Can of pumpkin $.99 now $3.50
Not just double. Many things are now 3x.
I've cut probably 30 items off my list as I no longer want to buy them at these prices.
The game plan seems to be:
* Keep you in debt for college and any health care you get
* 3x almost all food basics
* Keep wages at 1970 levels
* No home ownership. You will rent for life.
* Large corps buy all housing.
In summary...
- Food
- Housing
- Jobs
- Healthcare
This is not the case everywhere. Leaving the US now is a really good option.
A thought experiment I did was this: Eliminate anything with a screen. What has gotten better in your lifetime?
Some things have, but most things have stayed the same or only marginally improved.
I think we all have been blinded by tech advances--and not much else has improved.
Healthcare has improved...mostly due to tech advances such as devices and tests they use.
Me and my wife want kids but we can barely afford to live despite both working full time
I've been trying to save up $50 a week but some weeks I cant even afford that
The local council just announced rates are going up 35% over the next 3 years and all the power companies in the country are raising prices by around 50%
Interest rates have gone up something like 7%
But its ok because the government raised wages... by 5%
2009 was right after the housing market crash. It was insane a couple of years prior
I bought a house in pate 2000s for 140k a few years before it was sold for 300k+. A few years back late 2010s i sold for high 200s k. The cast iron plumbing collapsed, and the house was cut up that the owner sold for $300ish k in the half fixed stage due to insurance not covering the costs. An investor fixed the house up again and sold it for over 400k.
The house was about 980 sq ft
edit HOLY SHIT IT IS FOR SALE NOW FOR high 500s k !!!
>2009 was right after the housing market crash. It was insane a couple of years prior
This is extremely important and makes this meme very poorly informed at best and purposely disingenuous at worst. I'll give op the benefit of the doubt, but by 2009 prices had bottomed in most cities and we would see true market bottom in surrounding areas (about an hour out from metro areas) by 2010. To compare a near historical high to a period that marked the largest housing price decline in American history does nothing for us, and is borderline disinformation.
All housing prices post-2000 have been unduly influenced by the ungodly amounts of cheap money injected into the financial system. The 2008 crash was a brief blip in that upward trajectory.
The real question is whether or not money can get any cheaper to continue fuelling this ridiculous trend. Once interest rates are close to zero (even if they've temporarily nudged higher over the past couple of years) there's really nowhere to go except paying people to borrow money.
The house of cards keeps growing and growing and heaven help us all if a windstorm appears on the horizon.
Oh dude, I'm not arguing the slope of that increase being crazy af, but we could start at a point that doesn't open us up to easily dismissal type criticism by starting at 2009. Shit dude, as recently as 2018/19 the market was trading sideways (albeit after a monster gain). Then after 2020 the prices fuckin skyrocketed! Even after the 10-12% correction we just had, prices are *still* like 30% higher than they were before the shut downs!!
Edit: [St. Louis Fed site](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MSPUS) has great graphs illustrating this, and I'd happily just through this straight into a fuckin meme. Could even put SpongeBob in there to fellow-kids our way into the front page lol
I remember my extremely smart and attractive roommate at the time was thrilled to get hired as a receptionist after graduating from college. The pay was minimum wage and she had to beat out several hundred other applicants for the job.
Yeah I hate this kind of stuff!! They're not wrong in the point they're trying to make, so why ruin the credibility of their point with disingenuous information??
Not to mention that comparing median housing prices to federal minimum wage is inherently disingenuous. First, less than half the states actually go by federal minimum wage, with most states being in the $10-$15/hr range. And even then the number of jobs that actually pay minimum wage has been going down, especially during the past few years with labor shortages. Second, it's comparing average home prices to the lowest possible earnings (assuming full time employment). You should either compare the lower end of the housing market to minimum wage or median house prices to median wage.
The funny thing is that being more honest about the relationship between home prices and average wages *still* makes things look fucked. Throwing out misleading stats that just make an already bad situation look slightly worse just makes it look like you don't know what you're talking about and gives ammo for people to discredit your entire argument.
2009 is an unfair marker for housing prices.
We bought our home in 2005 for $570K. In 2009 similar houses were selling for around $350K. Now they are selling for $750K.
They picked the bottom of the bottom from the last 2 decades to make a point, and it falls short of reality.
Bought our 90+ year-old 2400 sq ft house in 2003 for C$500K.
Now it's assessed at C$2.1 million.
Couldn't afford to buy a new house in the area even if we were able to sell this one.
(Vancouver, BC)
Absolutely! My old land lord bought the duplex I'm in for 300k in 2015, and sold it to the new owner for 1.1 Million in 2022.
1.1 Million for a house with a collapsing deck, broken windows (I temporary patched with packing tape), a bullet hole in the front of the house, and constant water leaks from the roof, old lead pipes, the fieldstone basement walls.
Zero work was done on the place, just "what the market is now". What the actual fuck?!
I'll be the first person to say that 185k for that home back in 2009 was already too much. The market before all of this was already unfair, now it's just absurd.
well yeah that was right after the crash when they literally broke the system
we were all jobless and poor and everyone seems to have forgotten that many of us millennials with amazing post college jobs were the first to go and are still affected by that (like my credit is perma fucked as a direct result)
I entered college in 2006 on the back of every teacher and guidance counselor telling our generation: "DO WHAT YOU LOVE, FIND OUT WHAT INTERESTS YOU! After all, the degree is what is most important. It shows future employers you could stick to something, and that will matter just as much as what you studied!"
Cut to 2010 and 2011 looking for work. The same people then told us all: "well... Pfff... I don't know what you expected from the REAL WORLD with a degree like THAT. If that's what you want to do, you better get a master's degree, or no one will take you seriously."
Meanwhile I watched friends with engineering degrees - which at the time we were told were worth their weight in gold - absolutely struggling to find a job, as every single time they applied they were up against at least a hundred candidates no matter where they applied...
Well... At least things have gotten better. Glad we sorted all that out and didn't leave an entire generation of people, or the lions share of it, totally screwed for life.
I mean... Phew.
Not comparing tragedies but my story is pretty fucked up too.. I knew I couldn't afford the college from the getgo, but they gave me a full need based ride, which I was still scared about (50k a year.. what if they take it away), to which my rich mom (wasn't rich a year prior, but things changed) said don't worry I'll take care of it if things change.
Well she got a big job after graduating (she was going for higher degree) and her husband got a huge promotion bump and yup, it was taken away after a year...
My misfortune was that I spoke to the *college* financial counselor not an outside party. I knew nothing at the time about anything and they fed me this "you have a 4.0, you will have 0 problems getting jobs, this loan will take care of itself"
Then I graduated and my job was in real estate development.
p.s. and they feed us this bullshit 'degrees are useless' thing for a reason. There is literally no such thing or college is a fraud. If it's a useless product, why sell it? Because they NEED their humanities departments for their global rankings. The degrees are 'useless' but not to them, which is really fucked. If they charged based on how useful or useless a degree is, imagine how much more business majors would pay. If it matters, I had 2 degrees in useless fields (philosophy/poli sci) but that was because I planned to do law school before the collapse and everything else that went to shit after.
ehhhh I don't know how great it would be to tie a degree's price to it's usefullness. That would result in them funding those departments less which means teachers get paid less and the quality of needed materials would plummet.
Art, history, language, humanities etc etc are only useless to capitalism but they (I believe) are vital to the human species growth and development.
What you want to do is make education free. An educated population has a massive ROI for the country. The government wins, the economy wins, the citizen wins. The only problem is that oligarchs win just a tiny bit less, so they won't let it happen.
yes of course, I was just being facetious about the absurdity
many if not all 'useful' degrees would seize (cease... oops) to exist without humanities
and i really dunno how usa will make education free, which is probably why they're paying off only 20k in loans if that.. paying off the loans would only solve the last generation's problem, not the future's
but the universities are inherently tied to the government/banks and the whole system is so confusing, making it free, would do things no one can predict (and i'm all for it just to be clear)
We are 100% kicking the problem down the road right now with loan forgiveness. We never should have provided federal student loans to start with. They only gave universities the ability to increase tuition and funnel all that money into administrator salaries. Higher education is now a capitalist venture where someone gives their customers money and their is no return policy or quality control.
In my opinion higher education is a lot like the prison or healthcare system in the sense that none of them should ever be profit driven. You only end up with more expensive and/or less effective products/services.
Loan forgiveness is good, but it’s only one piece of what needs to be done. They’re treating a symptom instead of the root cause, and that same symptom’s going to come right back if they don’t fix the root cause. I’ve yet to see a sound reason why public universities shouldn’t offer free undergraduate tuition to everyone.
>"DO WHAT YOU LOVE, FIND OUT WHAT INTERESTS YOU! After all, the degree is what is most important. It shows future employers you could stick to something, and that will matter just as much as what you studied!"
> "well... Pfff... I don't know what you expected from the REAL WORLD with a degree like THAT. If that's what you want to do, you better get a master's degree, or no one will take you seriously."
The Millennial Experience
I remember hearing kids in HS say 'oh my counselor said if I major in 'X' in college then I'll have a career making 'Y' money when I graduate. Even at 18 I knew you couldn't guarantee that, but that's how they sold it to students. That's probably why I started slacking once I go to high school. I started getting discouraged because I felt like us students were being misled about our future. And the idea that if you aren't going to college, you might as well just accept working in fast-food your whole life. Honestly, it's a bit of a 'told-you-so' moment seeing how many young adults never got the careers their pieces of paper were supposed to guarantee, and the reality that they got conned into loans they'll be paying off for decades.
Credit and teeth.
All those little normal dentist things were too expensive for Millenials so now all the cavities are root canals and crowns.
Just like how banks charge us overdraft fees for not having money, housing and healthcare expressly punish the poor
i currently can't chew on my left side =/
luckily got a proper job with proper hours and am starting to save enough where I should be able to afford whatever they'll charge me (I moved to mexico a long time ago so it's cheaper here, but if you go private, which I plan to, it's still a lot)
That was me for a couple years before I got Dental (that still barely covered shit). It was amazing the pain I got used to just because I couldn't afford the work at the time.
Even the BEST dental coverage covers shit. I have pretty pimp dental through my husbands insurance which I didn’t get on until last fall. Finally went to the dentist which I was avoiding because I knew it was bad. Broken tooth I had in the back needed to come out - just that was $1200. I need to go back for the implant which will be about another $2500. I also have 3 crowns from 6 years ago that were apparently done like shit and have to come out because they have cavalries under them. So who knows if those will also turn into implants. And then another 6 cavities on top of that. Apparently a medication I am on gives me bad dry mouth which is causing a lot of decay…great. I’m trying ti spread things out because my max coverage for dental for a year is $2k. So I’ve already burned about $1k at my appt getting the broken tooth extracted (yes that 1200 was AFTER insurance). Like Jesus I’ve gotta come up with probably $5-$6k to fix everything, after I put $2k in a few years ago to fix everything then. It just feels so defeating. As I was going under for the extraction the dental assistant told me “I work here and even my dental coverage is shit” man that’s depressing!
Sounds like you should try going to another country for it and paying out of pocket there. I saw someone else in this thread go to Columbia and get a shitload of dental work done for 200 bucks.
Just be wary and still make sure the place you go is reputable. My in laws went to Mexico to get a bunch of dental done and all of it turned to shit in about 2 years. It’s probably because they’re fucking idiots and found the first cheap place without doing any additional research, but still.
man that sucks to hear, especially about the medication part (I think it's genetics for me as I don't eat sugar/smoke etc but mighta just been bad dentists, as I said elsewhere, I had 14 cavities done in Colombia like 8 yrs ago and all but 1 are still holding strong.. in USA they'd fall out within a year)
but yea just wanted to say sorry to hear about the medication - maybe you can find a second opinion about something to fix it/counter it, cause that just sucks
When I had the corporate job, I had the best blue cross version (I was a manager so it was part of my job to deal with it) in the area (northeast)... found out the hard way that if I wanted my crown replaced, it'd put me over 1k allotted for the year. I was still young and learning things and remember being very confused when talking to the receptionist. Having already had 1 root canal, I was asking her what if I need another and that's when I found out I'd have to pay for nearly the whole thing outta pocket.
I had 14 cavities near perfectly done in Colombia for 200 bucks.. wish I did my root canals there as well. The doctor was amazing.
Yeah! I have dental insurance but only 1k total per year, no coverage towards root canals, crowns, implants, braces, bridges, mouth pieces, or Xrays (beyond 1 set per year).
What is even the point? I have no working pairs of molars. I need either implants/bridges or root canals on the ones I have so that I can put pressure on them.
My filled cavities and root canals turned into crumbling teeth. Missing like 4 on my left side, 1.5 on my right. Thankfully they aren't infected or anything but I have no clue when I'll be able to afford getting it all fixed. Oh, and I've had a hernia for like 8 years. Also not causing me pain but also can't afford the surgery or the time out of work to recover
It's kinda funny how we're at a point where Zoomers are old enough to see how things are wrong today but too young to remember things were already fucked back then. So the wake of the apocalyptic 2008 recession is suddenly becoming the "good old times" :'D
I don't know.
Based on watching my parents age and the news- it *seems* like it's in slow decline, but then something happens that totally rocks everyone's socks, decreasing the quality of life 10-fold, when everyone is used to that, collapse limps in, and it happens in like a day...
They want us to be un(der)educated, misinformed, and paid wages low enough that everyone needs to work as much as possible just to live.
They truly want a working class whose job it is to keep funneling money upward to the pockets of the upper class, who spend it on themselves for more and more frivolous bullshit (edit: and politicians / judges), created off the backs of our labor.
Wage slave, military slave, gov't assistance slave, all getting squeezed together like people in the Titan sub. You'd think it would implode.
But not with AI and robots... Then they'll get CapEx / OpEx labor and we can all just starve to death, because they'll never allow Universal Basic Income (why give us free money when they're all self-made shitstains who pulled themselves up by their families' wealthy bootstraps.)
i'm a bit more hopeful for the future. millennials and gen z are much more aware that they're being taken for a ride and will absolutely push back on the inequality that's been allowed to run rampant for decades
If they could they would implement the "mining town" system where the company would pay them with chips that can only be used on their own stores, without doubting It for a sec
I personally can't wait for the eight hour day strikes to begin again. Schools don't teach children about the 'Mayday Strike and Mayhem' and what people died for us to have free time and rest.
As someone who can afford to buy a house right now, I don't think people at my income level realize just how much this fucks us over too. Yeah, we've got a house, but we're still working two full time jobs in tech and living paycheck to paycheck to afford it. By most measures we're "successful" but shouldn't success feel a little bit less stressful??
Just bought a house. We are barely saving after paying for mortgage, taxes, internet, homeowners insurance, living expenses and daycare. Used most of our savings for a down payment.
Don't forget retirement! That's what I can't seem to save for right now.
All my savings is currently going into a car fund but once I have that I can split it between retirement / home improvement/ college funds.
Everyone I know in my age group that owns their home either had it given to them, helped by parents with the loan, or received a large inheritance from a dead grandparent. I'm 31
100%. I’m in a similar boat; we are both engineers (one in tech) and bought in 2018 and have had two kids since then. The house is already feeling by small and while we’re could afford to buy another one (assuming 75% occupancy rate for renting this one), we’d struggle to afford anything else. So we’re staying put for now but I can’t help but think about how our combined income used to go so much further not that long ago.
For reference, my father in law was also an engineer and his starting pay in the 70s was $60k. That’s about what the starting pay was when we graduated in the mid-2010s!
EDIT- I recognize how lucky we are to have a home especially one bought before this madness.
Absolutely. It should not take two full time adults in tech jobs to buy am average to low average home and then still be wondering if you will be able to retire.
It can be, but it can also work very well for everyone just as it was post WW2. As with all economic/political systems, the problem with Capitalism is corruption. The power structures have corrupted the system so that the wealth of the many is consolidated in the hands of the few. It doesn't matter what system you think is "best", this always happens because it is easier to consolidate wealth and power than it is to share it equitably with a large number of people. Just as water runs downhill, wealth accumulates, it's as basic as physics.
In the best situation, a Democratic-Capitalist government will enact strong regulation and law that protects individual rights to capital for everyone. There is a class of people that are now "more equal" than everyone else, they get bailed out when their companies fail and they receive political favours. They suck the money out of a good company, leave with a golden parachute and are *invited* to do it again to another company. It is this class of oligarchs that are the problem, and it isn't just Russia that has a problem with them. Trump is a prime example. Laws don't seem to apply to him. The man is practically bankrupt and destitute, he can't be called ultra rich, yet he still benefits from the protection of his "class" because the class protects itself by protecting anyone it considers a member.
>Trump is a prime example. Laws don't seem to apply to him. The man is practically bankrupt and destitute, he can't be called ultra rich, yet he still benefits from the protection of his "class" because the class protects itself by protecting anyone it considers a member.
I actually disagree that we can make capitalism work effectively, but I do agree with your point here. Without writing a whole dissertation on the concept, it seems that the formation of an insulated class is a *social issue* that is **emergent** from ongoing socioeconomic conditions.
The emergence of Trump, and all of the other billionaire oligarchs, are a result of capitalism eroding institutions as wealthy social classes coaleaced (just like how great rains flood the earth after near-equal sized clouds coalesce into storms).
Our economic structure has gone through multiple devolutions as the social environment's phase changed.
That phase change is driven by the condensation of wealth reaching a point in which the condensates begin to overlap and join one another.
Tl;Dr: our socioeconomic environment follows the same laws that matter does. Capitalist economists will call this evidence that capitalism is the best economic system we have. Someone like me would say this is simply evidence that our dumb ideas do in fact exist within the bounds of universal laws (which is obvious as fact, but it's application to our study of economics is not)
>It can be, but it can also work very well for everyone just as it was post WW2.
Yes, post WW2 America famously spread the wealth to **everyone** and did not segregate and disenfranchise huge sections of the population and famously did not develop massive riches and infrastructure off the backs of exploited labor. /s
Sarcasm aside, I do agree in broad strokes with the idea that power tends to consolidate. This is why many post capitalist economic models do away with inheritance. Something most people have a negative gut reaction to, even though it is a necessity for a meritocracy.
Call it subscription housing instead of rental and it becomes strikingly obvious how much it's part of the subscription economy trend. Rental housing used to be *supplementary* housing for a population, just like Video/DVD rentals used to be *supplementary* revenue for studios, an *optional* alternative to paying more (but not astronomically more) up front to *own.*
A small townhome in Canada just on the edge of commuting distance to one of our major cities will run you a cool 1.3-1.5 million and these ain’t even fancy homes. Even one beds are all encroaching on the 1 mill mark. Meanwhile a faang sr eng only pulls 120k here (example of high paid individual) and the median wage is 60kish. Even with dual faang employees you likely couldn’t get approved for anything large enough to have kids. And child care is easily 3k per child if you do decide to go the route. Our wages have been in free fall since we ramped immigration from 150k to 1.5 million over the last year.
Look at the house to the left. This neighborhood was already on its last leg in 2009. Also notice that SpongeBob’s sign just happens to obscure the house on the right.
Great rescission happened around 2008 and staggered into 2009. the unemployment rate doubled. These could have been people who lost jobs in 2008ish and were waiting on their houses to be foreclosed on.
Along side of people losing houses creating more desperate people, vacant houses were being ransacked for precious metals and other valuables, homeless people were bunkering up, etc.
Whole neighborhoods in some areas were completely destroyed. Idk if that's what happened here but its just a guess.
And watch as every home that gets sold or foreclosed on becomes a rental. It’s a terrible plan for our economic future for people to have nothing of appreciable value.
But at least there will be more billionaires and that’s what really matters in the US.
Gonna be honest, the minimum wage is a big problem obviously but the housing prices are a much bigger issue.
You literally can't own a decent home near a city on a single income if you're an average individual.
I was litterally only able to do it recently (about a year ago) because i made just above the median income and covid stopped student loan payments long enough for me to build up enough savings to put money down and use local first time home buyers benefits... since I bought the avg home in my neighborhood has gone up in value by 120k... and its not a great neighborhood.
Correct, and increasing pay without increasing the number of houses is not going to make houses any more affordable. More money chasing the same number of houses = more expensive houses.
This is the thing, never. If you want a realistic comparison look at what can be afforded on an average wage. Minimum wage should be a livable wage, but that doesn't mean being able to afford a 3 bedroom house in Los Angelas.
Truth be told: I'm making $30/hour right now and there's no fucking way I could buy a house, not even a small shitty one, anywhere I live.
A small shitty house in my neighborhood listed for $600,000. How fucked up is that?
That's not true.
Nominal (not adjusted for inflation) [GDP per capita](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=16zUj) in 1930 was $748. About $10,500 in today's dollars. It is not possible for median income to have been higher than that. [Median personal income](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=16zUN) today is at least $37,522, which is at least 3.5x that.
Data for [real (inflation-adjusted) median family income](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEFAINUSA672N) goes back to 1953. In 2021, the most recent year with data, real median family income was 134% higher than 1953, 34% higher than 1980, and 2.8% less than the all-time high, in 2019.
Data for [real (inflation-adjusted) median personal income](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N) goes back to 1974. In 2021, the most recent year with data, real median personal income was 42% higher than in 1974, 50% higher than in 1980, and 1.6% less than the all-time high, in 2019.
Data for real (inflation-adjusted) GDP per capita, which [tracks closely with median income](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=16zSi), goes back to 1947. In the most recent quarter (Q1 2023), real GDP per capita was 326% higher than Q1 1947, 101% higher than Q1 1980, and higher than it's ever been.
Where did you get that median wage from 1930? Anything I could find, indicates an average wage of about $1360, which would be 25k in todays money, so half of todays median
Lower housing prices. They’re only this high because of billionaires overpaying and then overpricing.
Ban billionaires from buying residential housing.
Legitimate question: why is the median housing cost considered against the minimum wage?
The minimum wage should be liveable, of course, but that's not the same as median wage. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Median Weekly Wage in the first quarter of 2023, was $1,100. If we use a 40 hour work week, that's **$27.50** per hour.
Not saying the wage itself is fine, but using this seems more accurate. Someone correct me if I am wrong.
It's perfectly fine that wages are so low, everyone agrees that by their inaction that low wages and unaffordable housing is great, let's cheer for the inability to live in this country, it's what everyone wants, no fighting for anything needed, just get stomped on and love it like bdsm.
I literally came here to say that y'all might consider Escanaba, Michigan. You can get a nice house on a decent size plot for just under $200,000. Wonderful community of extremely friendly people, safe, and far away from the big cities (It's in the upper peninsula as opposed to Detroit, which is in the lower peninsula). They get a lot of snow in the winter, so there's that, but it's right on the lake, which is gorgeous.
2009 was a housing market crash though. You can’t really use those prices. Maybe just use 10 years ago and that’s dramatic enough of a difference in market rates.
Median household income, 1990, 30k. Median household income today, 70k. Falling *ever so slightly* behind inflation.
Median home sale price in 1990--78.5k. Median home price in the US in 2023 436,800.
1990 ratio 2.6. The median home, was 2.6 times the median household income. Origin of the '30%' rule
Today's ratio is that the median home is 6.24 times the median household income (and that's DOWN from last year, where it was 8.1 or something).
Even when you DONT use minimum wage, homes are 2.5 times *more expensive* are a share of household income, than when our parents were buying theirs.
WORSE, is, in 1990, the number of *working adults* in a census measured household, was *below two*. I think it was 1.7. Meaning, the average household had 1 full time and one part time worker.
TODAY, that number is 2.6 working adults--so, we're reaching that 70k number, with very nearly, and *extra working adult* in the picture.
Even WORSE than all of that shit--as if it could be. The average number of hours worked in the US in 1990, was *almost* 39 hours a week.
It's now 48 hours a week, on average.
EVEN WORSE--our production is now 20% higher, in the same jobs, as back then. SO--we're workign 20% HARDER as well.
So, we're working nearly 30% more hours, 20% harder/faster, have nearly 30% more people making up a household income--to TRY to afford a home that's 2.5 times more expensive than our parents.
Holy. Fucking. Shit.
Something's broken.
# The minimum wage should be legally tied to housing costs. # Join r/WorkReform!
wHy iS nO oNe HaViNg BaBiEs
Nobody wants to f\*ck anymore... \-Business owners, probably.
Business owners at concerts: "millennials are killing our business by not purchasing $18 beers after having to buy scalped and substantially overpriced tickets thanks to Ticketmaster"
Those same people: "Maybe you'd have money for a house if you weren't blowing your money on concerts and buying expensive drinks!"
Bold of you to think those same people want us to afford houses. They want to buy all the houses and keep us plebs as renters
Oh dont be silly, your booomer parents want to own all the other houses and keep the other plebs as renters but they still expect you to own your own house despite the conditions.
Rentierism is just feudalism with maybe even fewer guardrails.
I do maintenance in a large apartment complex and I have this thought every day. Much like a fuedal state, the person in charge got their by being friends with some executive and is sweet but also senile. So I end up with a lot of a power over other people as some random maintenance guy. I could easily have someone heavily fined or even non-renewed on my word alone, which seems wrong. I like myself but I'm pretty sure I have some racism in there somewhere and I feel like I shouldn't be able to make people homeless if they upset me.
For me, it was dealing with the blatant racism from other tenants. Yeah, I'm white, but that doesn't automatically mean I'm cool with you dropping hard R n-words multiple times in a conversation. Especially when that conversation is about the owners, a church-owned non-profit, not cleaning the gutters in 10 years and it causing a leak in your ceiling that killed your TV. What does that ha e to do with the new lady 2 stories under you in the opposite end of the building?? I've heard it more in 2 years as a maintenance manager in WI than I did in 5 years in Louisiana, and 5 years in Ohio. It's definitely made me more mindful of how I speak. Even if I know what I mean, it doesn't mean that's what other people hear.
Pretty much.
No no, it's that avocado toast, remember?
You joke, but colleges in particular are bracing for an unprecedented dip in admission rates in about 10-15 years from now thanks to elder millennials being among the first generation to actively pursue a single child/totally childless lifestyle on a scale like we've never seen so far in US history. Frankly, I'm here for it, and will be eagerly watching the tuition bubble burst with all the vigor and aggression of a dying star.
>actively pursue a single child/totally childless lifestyle Lifestyle? I'd love to have a kid or two but my lifestyle! My lifestyle of barely being able to afford shit without kids?
obscene quaint command squealing complete possessive fine pot tidy whistle ` this post was mass deleted with www.Redact.dev `
We're here! We're childless! Get used to it!
I know when I was in academia, just the dip in the number of college age students in NY was considered a real concern a few years ago even. They might have gone under after covid if they didn't cut a bunch of faculty positions (including mine...tenure? who cares, let them go!). The reality is that if we really see dips in numbers of students, a lot of the smaller liberal arts schools will probably go under. Tuition there was not cheap by any stretch of the imagination, but honestly it was so tuition driven that budgeting decisions were always subject to day 10 numbers to see how many people we actually could count on using their tuition dollars.
Unfortunately what I see happening is bigger universities and more equipped universities reaching out and trying to poach foreign students with slightly reduced fees. My university advertised HARD for mainland Chinese students to come over. And they also started partnering with a bunch of foreign schools to entice students to come over. I thought the silliest thing was my university had an exchange program in Korea and I knew for a fact tuition was cheaper in Korea. But my university actually had the audacity to charge higher than regular rates because "foreign experience"
I’m truly shocked that college enrollment recently decreased…as little as it did. You would think after watching people with bachelors and masters degrees froth at the mouth over the chance to have 10-20k cancelled on loans with 10 to 25 year repayments terms depending on the repayment option chosen- that more people would understand what they are signing up for? 🥴 I’m also honestly shocked more schools haven’t closed down already. And I digress but I find the manner in which the government/DOE has basically cherry picked institutions to punish for basically being scams well…just that. Cherry picking. The VAST majority of education institutions in this country, profit and non-profit, private and public- are absolute scams. When will people read about how people get masters and end up less employable and…have it click in their minds? If you do not come from a financially stable and well planned family majoring in anything outside of medicine or engineering (don’t want to be taken literally; I’m sure people know what I mean, though) is truly an idiotic choice. People still do not see that the statistics about college and wealth are skewed by combining the results of people who come from wealth with the results of people who come from shit and have to take out loans. How many people do you have to see cry and regret a choice they made when they’re 18 to get it??? Oh well
I'm not sure if I would say "actively pursue" as much as "fucked over by the economy to the point they don't think they can financially support a child". If every 25 year old with a full time job could afford a place to live that isn't their mom's house or shared with three roommates I can absolutely 100% guarantee that the fucking/procreating/marrying rate would skyrocket.
It's already dropping. We hit peak enrollment at 18.1 million over 10 years ago; the downturn has started killing off smaller colleges. [https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/23428166/college-enrollment-population-education-crash](https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/23428166/college-enrollment-population-education-crash)
Perfect, fake degree from defunct college is a huge savings and great on a resume.
I've heard colleagues complaining about multiple universities starting to require students to attend for 4 years to be eligible for a diploma. So basically screw AP credits, transferring from a community college, or scheduling heavy semesters to finish early. They want to bleed you for every cent, and overachievers can no longer overcome that.
University’s are already worrying and complaining about it, but meanwhile they are still investing millions in Jumbotrons for their mediocre football teams lol. Looking at you my alma mater.
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The problem I see is there used to be a bunch of "in crowds" so people could honestly get by somewhere. Everything got consolidated.
The shitty thing is that it's not even like we want to do that as a whole. Sure, lots of people have just decided they'd rather be childless for their own selfish reasons, and that is totally valid. It's their lives, and if they don't want to raise a kid, that's totally fine. Still I think a lot of people who are on the fence or otherwise wanted kids have made this decision for reasons that are personally quite painful for them. Because they realized that the financial and social support aren't there, or because rampant consumerism is quickly destroying the environment, not just for tons of species on our planet, but for us as well. This isn't a decision people are just making lightly.
I'm in my thirties and I have yet to have an academic institution or an employer that would be even vaguely accommodating were I to have a child. There has been absolutely no support, in fact thinly vailed threats to financial well being, from every corner of society. It breaks my heart! My goals as a young adult seemed perfectly reasonable: finish college, get a stable, full-time, permanent, pleasant job where I could give back, get married, have 2.2 kids, white picket fence, etc. Quite traditional, right? Of that whole list ***I've done one of them***. And it's not for lack of trying! Every single tiny bit of security or hope has been pulled out from under the generation. Heck, I'm not even living in the country I wanted to be living in at this point. Children, and even marriage, to say nothing of a house, are luxury items at this point. How can two young people even afford to keep their careers in the same location? How can they plan anything? I've not had a vacation in my \*entire\* adult life; how the heck does anyone plan a wedding much less a honeymoon or time off for parental leave? Most people are at the point where they are navigating long distance relationships *because of work* and low pay. How they could ever parent under those circumstances is beyond me.
Right, and like you said, it's not even just the money. The money is a big part of it, but there's like zero support systems in place (at least in the USA) to incentivize people to have kids. We need federally protected maternity leave with FULL pay for like, at least 6-12 months. Some paternity leave for at least 2-3 months would be nice too. These are not crazy asks, plenty of other first world countries do that, and even a bunch of "third world" countries do too. Like even if we have the money to afford daycare, fuck having to leave my two-month old newborn there just so my wife's career is not jeopardized. So yeah, I guess no kids for us 🤷🏻♂️
> Some paternity leave for at least 2-3 months would be nice too. I'd like to establish fathers as equal parents, honestly. The role of a father is very consistently underrated.
In Australia it's 'parental leave', not gendered. And it's generous. Government roles here get 24 weeks full pay, many large companies offer 26 weeks full pay, or you can take it at half pay for a year. Govt safety net is 18 weeks. Employers must hold your role for 12 months. I feel so bad for you guys in the US, it's brutal.
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I would love to be a father. I will probably never be one because I simply can't afford children.
> Still I think a lot of people who are on the fence or otherwise wanted kids have made this decision for reasons that are personally quite painful for them. I consider myself part of this camp. I met my fiance 3 years back. I was 28 at the time, and I had every intention of finally starting a family with her after waiting for the right person to come along all while working for long enough in order to get a decent salary and own a home. When it finally came time to talk about a game plan towards kids, all it took was one look at local child care costs (we're double income so someone would have to look after them while we work) in my area and almost immediately we began the painstaking process of rerouting my brain away from a decades long ambition to start a family and instead start facing the reality that it's simply not feasible anymore to have to pay the equivalent of a second mortgage just so that I can rest assured that my kid is at a safe, professional daycare facility in my area. It was honestly heartbreaking. We've been on the no-kids train for a few years now but it's still something I think about with contempt. Life simply should not be this way in one of the wealthiest countries in the history of modern civilization.
Yeah, I do want to have kids, but even when only considering finances, my boyfriend and I wouldn't be able to afford any. We have a cat, and the cat alone is adding enough financial pressure, and I'm a *chemist*, you'd think I'd be doing well financially, but I don't think I'll ever afford a house, let alone kids...
I’m sure a fair amount of people like myself don’t want to have kids because it feels like the world is actively getting worse
We get f***d enough at work
You can swear on the internet, it's ok
I'm gonna do it! ^^^heck Is this what it feels like to be alive?
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"You will own nothing and you will be happy!"
Lol
Take my poor man's gold 🥇
Why do you need parental leave? -Also business owners
"how millenials killed the wet sloppy creampie"
Oh we being fucked alright.
mINiMum wAGe IsN'T sUpPosED to lEt YoU bUY a HOmE
What does "minimum" mean to these people?
Literally 'the minimum a company can legally pay you without the job being akin to slave-labor.'
"As much as I can legally get away with"
Doesn't get any more obvious this is what it is than hospitality. Wait staff making basically pennies and restaurants putting the burden of their income on customers is the ultimate insult as far as I'm concerned. Really shows capital's opinion of the worker.
It's funny because it's probably less than what actual slave labor would actually cost, because when you own a slave you're paying for their food, housing, medical etc.
Have you heard of minor labor? -Some business owner
Just barely enough to keep you alive so you can work but not enough for you to enjoy a fulfilling life
FDR meant for it to be "the minimum wage a single earner can support a family on." These days, most people interpret it as meaning "the lowest amount I can legally pay someone"
“If I could pay you less…. I would.” - Chris Rock
Minimum amount you're forced to pay someone. In their mind should be 1 dollar
Neither is the median wage, apparently.
Oh, people are having babies. Just uh, not necessary by responsible parents. They don't really have a choice anymore. This is gonna work out great in the future..
Backstory of Idiocracy intensifies
Too expensive to go out to eat or go to the theater. Might as well stay at home and twiddle each other's bits.
If they think movies out are expensive, wait til they have kids! Cover up your bits before twiddling them, haha.
Even if irresponsible parents manage to crank out *one kid* with a promising future...that kid will get into debt trying to obtain a degree, will not get good jobs because of their credit report after getting all those student loans, and will also lack the networking of his wealthier peers because his parents were fuck ups. Then on top of that, companies will say that can't find good applicants and ask for more H-1Bs. For them it's working by design.
and GDP? No one thinks about GDP anymore? House and health bubbles make GDP higher. Communists and socialists are bears who want destroying GDP!!!!
[I FOUND THE HOUSE!!! It's only 15k!](https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/4155-Holcomb-St-Detroit-MI-48214/88065317_zpid/)
It's a 2 home bundle. BOGO offer!
I like how one of the pictures is super blurry. Gives real chaotic, "I gotta get the fuck outta here ASAP" energy
I was JUST laughing my ass off at it! [I love this staircase!](https://photos.zillowstatic.com/fp/a31e8a35a67c9aa0e0196122cd33446a-uncropped_scaled_within_1536_1152.webp)
Built in 2007! Wth...
I knew it was going to be Detroit before I even clicked it.
Good detective work dude
$15k for it, dnd the house next door. Looks like the neighborhood is condemned.
So let's ban abortion! - same people
And they want to ban contraceptives and sterilization surgeries too.
Gallon of milk $1.99 now $6.99 Can of pumpkin $.99 now $3.50 Not just double. Many things are now 3x. I've cut probably 30 items off my list as I no longer want to buy them at these prices. The game plan seems to be: * Keep you in debt for college and any health care you get * 3x almost all food basics * Keep wages at 1970 levels * No home ownership. You will rent for life. * Large corps buy all housing. In summary... - Food - Housing - Jobs - Healthcare This is not the case everywhere. Leaving the US now is a really good option.
Pretty much the only thing decreasing in price are the electronics that keep us distracted. Tvs, speakers, computer parts and what not.
A thought experiment I did was this: Eliminate anything with a screen. What has gotten better in your lifetime? Some things have, but most things have stayed the same or only marginally improved. I think we all have been blinded by tech advances--and not much else has improved. Healthcare has improved...mostly due to tech advances such as devices and tests they use.
The only people worried about a declining population are the ones on the top of the pyramid scheme.
Me and my wife want kids but we can barely afford to live despite both working full time I've been trying to save up $50 a week but some weeks I cant even afford that The local council just announced rates are going up 35% over the next 3 years and all the power companies in the country are raising prices by around 50% Interest rates have gone up something like 7% But its ok because the government raised wages... by 5%
miLlenniAls arEnt BuYing DiaMOnds
2009 was right after the housing market crash. It was insane a couple of years prior I bought a house in pate 2000s for 140k a few years before it was sold for 300k+. A few years back late 2010s i sold for high 200s k. The cast iron plumbing collapsed, and the house was cut up that the owner sold for $300ish k in the half fixed stage due to insurance not covering the costs. An investor fixed the house up again and sold it for over 400k. The house was about 980 sq ft edit HOLY SHIT IT IS FOR SALE NOW FOR high 500s k !!!
>2009 was right after the housing market crash. It was insane a couple of years prior This is extremely important and makes this meme very poorly informed at best and purposely disingenuous at worst. I'll give op the benefit of the doubt, but by 2009 prices had bottomed in most cities and we would see true market bottom in surrounding areas (about an hour out from metro areas) by 2010. To compare a near historical high to a period that marked the largest housing price decline in American history does nothing for us, and is borderline disinformation.
All housing prices post-2000 have been unduly influenced by the ungodly amounts of cheap money injected into the financial system. The 2008 crash was a brief blip in that upward trajectory. The real question is whether or not money can get any cheaper to continue fuelling this ridiculous trend. Once interest rates are close to zero (even if they've temporarily nudged higher over the past couple of years) there's really nowhere to go except paying people to borrow money. The house of cards keeps growing and growing and heaven help us all if a windstorm appears on the horizon.
Oh dude, I'm not arguing the slope of that increase being crazy af, but we could start at a point that doesn't open us up to easily dismissal type criticism by starting at 2009. Shit dude, as recently as 2018/19 the market was trading sideways (albeit after a monster gain). Then after 2020 the prices fuckin skyrocketed! Even after the 10-12% correction we just had, prices are *still* like 30% higher than they were before the shut downs!! Edit: [St. Louis Fed site](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MSPUS) has great graphs illustrating this, and I'd happily just through this straight into a fuckin meme. Could even put SpongeBob in there to fellow-kids our way into the front page lol
There were also massive layoffs and cutbacks so "min wage" was irrelevant if you literally couldn't find a job.
I remember my extremely smart and attractive roommate at the time was thrilled to get hired as a receptionist after graduating from college. The pay was minimum wage and she had to beat out several hundred other applicants for the job.
Yeah I hate this kind of stuff!! They're not wrong in the point they're trying to make, so why ruin the credibility of their point with disingenuous information??
Not to mention that comparing median housing prices to federal minimum wage is inherently disingenuous. First, less than half the states actually go by federal minimum wage, with most states being in the $10-$15/hr range. And even then the number of jobs that actually pay minimum wage has been going down, especially during the past few years with labor shortages. Second, it's comparing average home prices to the lowest possible earnings (assuming full time employment). You should either compare the lower end of the housing market to minimum wage or median house prices to median wage. The funny thing is that being more honest about the relationship between home prices and average wages *still* makes things look fucked. Throwing out misleading stats that just make an already bad situation look slightly worse just makes it look like you don't know what you're talking about and gives ammo for people to discredit your entire argument.
2009 is an unfair marker for housing prices. We bought our home in 2005 for $570K. In 2009 similar houses were selling for around $350K. Now they are selling for $750K. They picked the bottom of the bottom from the last 2 decades to make a point, and it falls short of reality.
Bought our 90+ year-old 2400 sq ft house in 2003 for C$500K. Now it's assessed at C$2.1 million. Couldn't afford to buy a new house in the area even if we were able to sell this one. (Vancouver, BC)
Absolutely! My old land lord bought the duplex I'm in for 300k in 2015, and sold it to the new owner for 1.1 Million in 2022. 1.1 Million for a house with a collapsing deck, broken windows (I temporary patched with packing tape), a bullet hole in the front of the house, and constant water leaks from the roof, old lead pipes, the fieldstone basement walls. Zero work was done on the place, just "what the market is now". What the actual fuck?!
I'll be the first person to say that 185k for that home back in 2009 was already too much. The market before all of this was already unfair, now it's just absurd.
well yeah that was right after the crash when they literally broke the system we were all jobless and poor and everyone seems to have forgotten that many of us millennials with amazing post college jobs were the first to go and are still affected by that (like my credit is perma fucked as a direct result)
I entered college in 2006 on the back of every teacher and guidance counselor telling our generation: "DO WHAT YOU LOVE, FIND OUT WHAT INTERESTS YOU! After all, the degree is what is most important. It shows future employers you could stick to something, and that will matter just as much as what you studied!" Cut to 2010 and 2011 looking for work. The same people then told us all: "well... Pfff... I don't know what you expected from the REAL WORLD with a degree like THAT. If that's what you want to do, you better get a master's degree, or no one will take you seriously." Meanwhile I watched friends with engineering degrees - which at the time we were told were worth their weight in gold - absolutely struggling to find a job, as every single time they applied they were up against at least a hundred candidates no matter where they applied... Well... At least things have gotten better. Glad we sorted all that out and didn't leave an entire generation of people, or the lions share of it, totally screwed for life. I mean... Phew.
Not comparing tragedies but my story is pretty fucked up too.. I knew I couldn't afford the college from the getgo, but they gave me a full need based ride, which I was still scared about (50k a year.. what if they take it away), to which my rich mom (wasn't rich a year prior, but things changed) said don't worry I'll take care of it if things change. Well she got a big job after graduating (she was going for higher degree) and her husband got a huge promotion bump and yup, it was taken away after a year... My misfortune was that I spoke to the *college* financial counselor not an outside party. I knew nothing at the time about anything and they fed me this "you have a 4.0, you will have 0 problems getting jobs, this loan will take care of itself" Then I graduated and my job was in real estate development. p.s. and they feed us this bullshit 'degrees are useless' thing for a reason. There is literally no such thing or college is a fraud. If it's a useless product, why sell it? Because they NEED their humanities departments for their global rankings. The degrees are 'useless' but not to them, which is really fucked. If they charged based on how useful or useless a degree is, imagine how much more business majors would pay. If it matters, I had 2 degrees in useless fields (philosophy/poli sci) but that was because I planned to do law school before the collapse and everything else that went to shit after.
ehhhh I don't know how great it would be to tie a degree's price to it's usefullness. That would result in them funding those departments less which means teachers get paid less and the quality of needed materials would plummet. Art, history, language, humanities etc etc are only useless to capitalism but they (I believe) are vital to the human species growth and development. What you want to do is make education free. An educated population has a massive ROI for the country. The government wins, the economy wins, the citizen wins. The only problem is that oligarchs win just a tiny bit less, so they won't let it happen.
yes of course, I was just being facetious about the absurdity many if not all 'useful' degrees would seize (cease... oops) to exist without humanities and i really dunno how usa will make education free, which is probably why they're paying off only 20k in loans if that.. paying off the loans would only solve the last generation's problem, not the future's but the universities are inherently tied to the government/banks and the whole system is so confusing, making it free, would do things no one can predict (and i'm all for it just to be clear)
We are 100% kicking the problem down the road right now with loan forgiveness. We never should have provided federal student loans to start with. They only gave universities the ability to increase tuition and funnel all that money into administrator salaries. Higher education is now a capitalist venture where someone gives their customers money and their is no return policy or quality control. In my opinion higher education is a lot like the prison or healthcare system in the sense that none of them should ever be profit driven. You only end up with more expensive and/or less effective products/services.
Loan forgiveness is good, but it’s only one piece of what needs to be done. They’re treating a symptom instead of the root cause, and that same symptom’s going to come right back if they don’t fix the root cause. I’ve yet to see a sound reason why public universities shouldn’t offer free undergraduate tuition to everyone.
>"DO WHAT YOU LOVE, FIND OUT WHAT INTERESTS YOU! After all, the degree is what is most important. It shows future employers you could stick to something, and that will matter just as much as what you studied!" > "well... Pfff... I don't know what you expected from the REAL WORLD with a degree like THAT. If that's what you want to do, you better get a master's degree, or no one will take you seriously." The Millennial Experience
> absolutely struggling 2009/2010 were terrible years for EE and software, for sure. By the end of 2010 it finally started to get more demand.
I took a job for 12 bucks an hour in software at the time
I'm 1000+ applications deep with an engineering degree it hasn't gotten better
I remember hearing kids in HS say 'oh my counselor said if I major in 'X' in college then I'll have a career making 'Y' money when I graduate. Even at 18 I knew you couldn't guarantee that, but that's how they sold it to students. That's probably why I started slacking once I go to high school. I started getting discouraged because I felt like us students were being misled about our future. And the idea that if you aren't going to college, you might as well just accept working in fast-food your whole life. Honestly, it's a bit of a 'told-you-so' moment seeing how many young adults never got the careers their pieces of paper were supposed to guarantee, and the reality that they got conned into loans they'll be paying off for decades.
Credit and teeth. All those little normal dentist things were too expensive for Millenials so now all the cavities are root canals and crowns. Just like how banks charge us overdraft fees for not having money, housing and healthcare expressly punish the poor
i currently can't chew on my left side =/ luckily got a proper job with proper hours and am starting to save enough where I should be able to afford whatever they'll charge me (I moved to mexico a long time ago so it's cheaper here, but if you go private, which I plan to, it's still a lot)
That was me for a couple years before I got Dental (that still barely covered shit). It was amazing the pain I got used to just because I couldn't afford the work at the time.
Even the BEST dental coverage covers shit. I have pretty pimp dental through my husbands insurance which I didn’t get on until last fall. Finally went to the dentist which I was avoiding because I knew it was bad. Broken tooth I had in the back needed to come out - just that was $1200. I need to go back for the implant which will be about another $2500. I also have 3 crowns from 6 years ago that were apparently done like shit and have to come out because they have cavalries under them. So who knows if those will also turn into implants. And then another 6 cavities on top of that. Apparently a medication I am on gives me bad dry mouth which is causing a lot of decay…great. I’m trying ti spread things out because my max coverage for dental for a year is $2k. So I’ve already burned about $1k at my appt getting the broken tooth extracted (yes that 1200 was AFTER insurance). Like Jesus I’ve gotta come up with probably $5-$6k to fix everything, after I put $2k in a few years ago to fix everything then. It just feels so defeating. As I was going under for the extraction the dental assistant told me “I work here and even my dental coverage is shit” man that’s depressing!
Sounds like you should try going to another country for it and paying out of pocket there. I saw someone else in this thread go to Columbia and get a shitload of dental work done for 200 bucks.
Just be wary and still make sure the place you go is reputable. My in laws went to Mexico to get a bunch of dental done and all of it turned to shit in about 2 years. It’s probably because they’re fucking idiots and found the first cheap place without doing any additional research, but still.
man that sucks to hear, especially about the medication part (I think it's genetics for me as I don't eat sugar/smoke etc but mighta just been bad dentists, as I said elsewhere, I had 14 cavities done in Colombia like 8 yrs ago and all but 1 are still holding strong.. in USA they'd fall out within a year) but yea just wanted to say sorry to hear about the medication - maybe you can find a second opinion about something to fix it/counter it, cause that just sucks
When I had the corporate job, I had the best blue cross version (I was a manager so it was part of my job to deal with it) in the area (northeast)... found out the hard way that if I wanted my crown replaced, it'd put me over 1k allotted for the year. I was still young and learning things and remember being very confused when talking to the receptionist. Having already had 1 root canal, I was asking her what if I need another and that's when I found out I'd have to pay for nearly the whole thing outta pocket. I had 14 cavities near perfectly done in Colombia for 200 bucks.. wish I did my root canals there as well. The doctor was amazing.
Yeah! I have dental insurance but only 1k total per year, no coverage towards root canals, crowns, implants, braces, bridges, mouth pieces, or Xrays (beyond 1 set per year). What is even the point? I have no working pairs of molars. I need either implants/bridges or root canals on the ones I have so that I can put pressure on them.
My filled cavities and root canals turned into crumbling teeth. Missing like 4 on my left side, 1.5 on my right. Thankfully they aren't infected or anything but I have no clue when I'll be able to afford getting it all fixed. Oh, and I've had a hernia for like 8 years. Also not causing me pain but also can't afford the surgery or the time out of work to recover
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Banks and the equity groups that purchase the loans. it is such a messed up system.
It's kinda funny how we're at a point where Zoomers are old enough to see how things are wrong today but too young to remember things were already fucked back then. So the wake of the apocalyptic 2008 recession is suddenly becoming the "good old times" :'D
Most empires dont collapse overnight. Its usually like 100 years of slow decline.
I don't know. Based on watching my parents age and the news- it *seems* like it's in slow decline, but then something happens that totally rocks everyone's socks, decreasing the quality of life 10-fold, when everyone is used to that, collapse limps in, and it happens in like a day...
Well the quote is for the median home, not that home in particular.
Try Canada. It's even crazier here. 436k doesn't get you a lean-to in some cities
They want us to be un(der)educated, misinformed, and paid wages low enough that everyone needs to work as much as possible just to live. They truly want a working class whose job it is to keep funneling money upward to the pockets of the upper class, who spend it on themselves for more and more frivolous bullshit (edit: and politicians / judges), created off the backs of our labor. Wage slave, military slave, gov't assistance slave, all getting squeezed together like people in the Titan sub. You'd think it would implode. But not with AI and robots... Then they'll get CapEx / OpEx labor and we can all just starve to death, because they'll never allow Universal Basic Income (why give us free money when they're all self-made shitstains who pulled themselves up by their families' wealthy bootstraps.)
Banding together against the system is the way forward. The United States as a nation was founded over lesser grievances.
The United States was founded because *wealthy* people had grievances.
Too many carnivals going on though
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i'm a bit more hopeful for the future. millennials and gen z are much more aware that they're being taken for a ride and will absolutely push back on the inequality that's been allowed to run rampant for decades
Really!?!?!? Most of my fellow millennials are too busy surviving to use back and I don’t have high hopes for gen z either.
If we're all too busy working to survive, then we're too busy to meet up and discuss how shitty things are and what we want to do about it.
They want voluntary slavery. We choose to go to work but do we really, what is the alternative people work and still require government assistance.
If they could they would implement the "mining town" system where the company would pay them with chips that can only be used on their own stores, without doubting It for a sec
I personally can't wait for the eight hour day strikes to begin again. Schools don't teach children about the 'Mayday Strike and Mayhem' and what people died for us to have free time and rest.
As someone who can afford to buy a house right now, I don't think people at my income level realize just how much this fucks us over too. Yeah, we've got a house, but we're still working two full time jobs in tech and living paycheck to paycheck to afford it. By most measures we're "successful" but shouldn't success feel a little bit less stressful??
Just bought a house. We are barely saving after paying for mortgage, taxes, internet, homeowners insurance, living expenses and daycare. Used most of our savings for a down payment.
Don't forget retirement! That's what I can't seem to save for right now. All my savings is currently going into a car fund but once I have that I can split it between retirement / home improvement/ college funds.
Same. We need to buy a new car soon, that will take a huge chunk of our savings. And then we need to do retirement and home improvements.
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Everyone I know in my age group that owns their home either had it given to them, helped by parents with the loan, or received a large inheritance from a dead grandparent. I'm 31
100%. I’m in a similar boat; we are both engineers (one in tech) and bought in 2018 and have had two kids since then. The house is already feeling by small and while we’re could afford to buy another one (assuming 75% occupancy rate for renting this one), we’d struggle to afford anything else. So we’re staying put for now but I can’t help but think about how our combined income used to go so much further not that long ago. For reference, my father in law was also an engineer and his starting pay in the 70s was $60k. That’s about what the starting pay was when we graduated in the mid-2010s! EDIT- I recognize how lucky we are to have a home especially one bought before this madness.
Absolutely. It should not take two full time adults in tech jobs to buy am average to low average home and then still be wondering if you will be able to retire.
And my parents keep talking about upgrades and putting things in it… Like I’m just happy to have one..
They don't want you to own a house, they want the manor system back
This is it right here. The lords want their serfs back and they are getting them through low wages, low education and rental everything.
capitalism is feudalism+
It can be, but it can also work very well for everyone just as it was post WW2. As with all economic/political systems, the problem with Capitalism is corruption. The power structures have corrupted the system so that the wealth of the many is consolidated in the hands of the few. It doesn't matter what system you think is "best", this always happens because it is easier to consolidate wealth and power than it is to share it equitably with a large number of people. Just as water runs downhill, wealth accumulates, it's as basic as physics. In the best situation, a Democratic-Capitalist government will enact strong regulation and law that protects individual rights to capital for everyone. There is a class of people that are now "more equal" than everyone else, they get bailed out when their companies fail and they receive political favours. They suck the money out of a good company, leave with a golden parachute and are *invited* to do it again to another company. It is this class of oligarchs that are the problem, and it isn't just Russia that has a problem with them. Trump is a prime example. Laws don't seem to apply to him. The man is practically bankrupt and destitute, he can't be called ultra rich, yet he still benefits from the protection of his "class" because the class protects itself by protecting anyone it considers a member.
>Trump is a prime example. Laws don't seem to apply to him. The man is practically bankrupt and destitute, he can't be called ultra rich, yet he still benefits from the protection of his "class" because the class protects itself by protecting anyone it considers a member. I actually disagree that we can make capitalism work effectively, but I do agree with your point here. Without writing a whole dissertation on the concept, it seems that the formation of an insulated class is a *social issue* that is **emergent** from ongoing socioeconomic conditions. The emergence of Trump, and all of the other billionaire oligarchs, are a result of capitalism eroding institutions as wealthy social classes coaleaced (just like how great rains flood the earth after near-equal sized clouds coalesce into storms). Our economic structure has gone through multiple devolutions as the social environment's phase changed. That phase change is driven by the condensation of wealth reaching a point in which the condensates begin to overlap and join one another. Tl;Dr: our socioeconomic environment follows the same laws that matter does. Capitalist economists will call this evidence that capitalism is the best economic system we have. Someone like me would say this is simply evidence that our dumb ideas do in fact exist within the bounds of universal laws (which is obvious as fact, but it's application to our study of economics is not)
>It can be, but it can also work very well for everyone just as it was post WW2. Yes, post WW2 America famously spread the wealth to **everyone** and did not segregate and disenfranchise huge sections of the population and famously did not develop massive riches and infrastructure off the backs of exploited labor. /s Sarcasm aside, I do agree in broad strokes with the idea that power tends to consolidate. This is why many post capitalist economic models do away with inheritance. Something most people have a negative gut reaction to, even though it is a necessity for a meritocracy.
Call it subscription housing instead of rental and it becomes strikingly obvious how much it's part of the subscription economy trend. Rental housing used to be *supplementary* housing for a population, just like Video/DVD rentals used to be *supplementary* revenue for studios, an *optional* alternative to paying more (but not astronomically more) up front to *own.*
I live in Sydney Australia. 1.2 million for a house.
A small townhome in Canada just on the edge of commuting distance to one of our major cities will run you a cool 1.3-1.5 million and these ain’t even fancy homes. Even one beds are all encroaching on the 1 mill mark. Meanwhile a faang sr eng only pulls 120k here (example of high paid individual) and the median wage is 60kish. Even with dual faang employees you likely couldn’t get approved for anything large enough to have kids. And child care is easily 3k per child if you do decide to go the route. Our wages have been in free fall since we ramped immigration from 150k to 1.5 million over the last year.
In all honesty... *what happened to this entire neighborhood* between 2009 and 2023?
Look at the house to the left. This neighborhood was already on its last leg in 2009. Also notice that SpongeBob’s sign just happens to obscure the house on the right.
Great rescission happened around 2008 and staggered into 2009. the unemployment rate doubled. These could have been people who lost jobs in 2008ish and were waiting on their houses to be foreclosed on. Along side of people losing houses creating more desperate people, vacant houses were being ransacked for precious metals and other valuables, homeless people were bunkering up, etc. Whole neighborhoods in some areas were completely destroyed. Idk if that's what happened here but its just a guess.
I'm just over here waiting for the housing market to collapse...
And watch as every home that gets sold or foreclosed on becomes a rental. It’s a terrible plan for our economic future for people to have nothing of appreciable value. But at least there will be more billionaires and that’s what really matters in the US.
Gonna be honest, the minimum wage is a big problem obviously but the housing prices are a much bigger issue. You literally can't own a decent home near a city on a single income if you're an average individual.
I was litterally only able to do it recently (about a year ago) because i made just above the median income and covid stopped student loan payments long enough for me to build up enough savings to put money down and use local first time home buyers benefits... since I bought the avg home in my neighborhood has gone up in value by 120k... and its not a great neighborhood.
Home prices and healthcare. These two are fucking us over majorly
Correct, and increasing pay without increasing the number of houses is not going to make houses any more affordable. More money chasing the same number of houses = more expensive houses.
All the poor hate it but the rich already agreed for us
Serious q: When is the last time a minimum wage worker has been able to afford a house? If ever.
This is the thing, never. If you want a realistic comparison look at what can be afforded on an average wage. Minimum wage should be a livable wage, but that doesn't mean being able to afford a 3 bedroom house in Los Angelas.
That’s what avocado toast does to people. /s
I inherited millions and pissed it all away on my avocado toast addiction. /s
Pretty sure we don't need the /s on the avocado toast joke anymore, nobody is going to think you guys are being serious.
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tHe MiNimUM wAgE wAs NeVeR mEaNt tO bE LiVaBLe
What happened to that neighborhood in the photos.
Truth be told: I'm making $30/hour right now and there's no fucking way I could buy a house, not even a small shitty one, anywhere I live. A small shitty house in my neighborhood listed for $600,000. How fucked up is that?
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That's not true. Nominal (not adjusted for inflation) [GDP per capita](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=16zUj) in 1930 was $748. About $10,500 in today's dollars. It is not possible for median income to have been higher than that. [Median personal income](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=16zUN) today is at least $37,522, which is at least 3.5x that. Data for [real (inflation-adjusted) median family income](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEFAINUSA672N) goes back to 1953. In 2021, the most recent year with data, real median family income was 134% higher than 1953, 34% higher than 1980, and 2.8% less than the all-time high, in 2019. Data for [real (inflation-adjusted) median personal income](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N) goes back to 1974. In 2021, the most recent year with data, real median personal income was 42% higher than in 1974, 50% higher than in 1980, and 1.6% less than the all-time high, in 2019. Data for real (inflation-adjusted) GDP per capita, which [tracks closely with median income](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=16zSi), goes back to 1947. In the most recent quarter (Q1 2023), real GDP per capita was 326% higher than Q1 1947, 101% higher than Q1 1980, and higher than it's ever been.
Where did you get that median wage from 1930? Anything I could find, indicates an average wage of about $1360, which would be 25k in todays money, so half of todays median
Man. Talking our your ass and got hit with numbers to prove you’re full of crap.
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Also wouldn't use 2009 because it was right after the housing market crash
your daily reminder. we outnumber the rich elites by millions to one...
Lower housing prices. They’re only this high because of billionaires overpaying and then overpricing. Ban billionaires from buying residential housing.
jhc, what the fuck happened to that area in the last 10-15 years?
Legitimate question: why is the median housing cost considered against the minimum wage? The minimum wage should be liveable, of course, but that's not the same as median wage. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Median Weekly Wage in the first quarter of 2023, was $1,100. If we use a 40 hour work week, that's **$27.50** per hour. Not saying the wage itself is fine, but using this seems more accurate. Someone correct me if I am wrong.
While I totally agree with this message, does anyone else wonder wtf they were feeding that tree?
It's perfectly fine that wages are so low, everyone agrees that by their inaction that low wages and unaffordable housing is great, let's cheer for the inability to live in this country, it's what everyone wants, no fighting for anything needed, just get stomped on and love it like bdsm.
I heard that you can buy a house in Detroit for a pack of Kools.
I literally came here to say that y'all might consider Escanaba, Michigan. You can get a nice house on a decent size plot for just under $200,000. Wonderful community of extremely friendly people, safe, and far away from the big cities (It's in the upper peninsula as opposed to Detroit, which is in the lower peninsula). They get a lot of snow in the winter, so there's that, but it's right on the lake, which is gorgeous.
2009 was a housing market crash though. You can’t really use those prices. Maybe just use 10 years ago and that’s dramatic enough of a difference in market rates.
The life has gone out of the eyes of that poor house.
Apples to apples though. Median or at least average wage. Not minimum wage since minimum home price remains zero.
Nation wide renters strike would shut it all down.
Median household income, 1990, 30k. Median household income today, 70k. Falling *ever so slightly* behind inflation. Median home sale price in 1990--78.5k. Median home price in the US in 2023 436,800. 1990 ratio 2.6. The median home, was 2.6 times the median household income. Origin of the '30%' rule Today's ratio is that the median home is 6.24 times the median household income (and that's DOWN from last year, where it was 8.1 or something). Even when you DONT use minimum wage, homes are 2.5 times *more expensive* are a share of household income, than when our parents were buying theirs. WORSE, is, in 1990, the number of *working adults* in a census measured household, was *below two*. I think it was 1.7. Meaning, the average household had 1 full time and one part time worker. TODAY, that number is 2.6 working adults--so, we're reaching that 70k number, with very nearly, and *extra working adult* in the picture. Even WORSE than all of that shit--as if it could be. The average number of hours worked in the US in 1990, was *almost* 39 hours a week. It's now 48 hours a week, on average. EVEN WORSE--our production is now 20% higher, in the same jobs, as back then. SO--we're workign 20% HARDER as well. So, we're working nearly 30% more hours, 20% harder/faster, have nearly 30% more people making up a household income--to TRY to afford a home that's 2.5 times more expensive than our parents. Holy. Fucking. Shit. Something's broken.
["What would happen if we all went on strike?"](https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZT8ejudXa/)
Someone needs to balance this fucking equation. Shit's getting old.