This seems like a good place to post this reminder that in the last 50 years income has lost to inflation by 137 points. That's decades of prices rising faster than wages. It's not rocket science. They walked away with all of the productivity gains, and gave the entire country a pay cut at the same time. You want a boring dystopia? How about stealing your paycheck a couple percentage points a year until suddenly we realize we can't afford to live without 3 full time incomes in one household.
We're DINKs just starting to push into the "living a comfortable life" range. As in, we can do what we want and enjoy doing it.
However, bringing a kid into that picture throws all of that away. Hospital bills, diapers, just the costs in general would wipe us out.
We most likely wouldn't qualify for any reimbursements and are already maximizing the ones we have such as house financing and taxes.
I obsessively try to keep my "IOUs" to a minimum meaning aggressive mortgage payments and credit cards within the limitations of what I can pay off immediately but even that is difficult.
The house needs work - new siding and windows, unexpected issues like the boiler dieing etc. And I'm generally fearful of what we'd find behind the siding (termites??? everything not up to code?) A new job like that could turn into $40-50K that we just don't have floating around.
I don't go to doctors because I was afraid of what I might find. I'm lucky in the fact that my insurance is now pushing in the correct direction but still ludicrously expensive... And I mean ludicrously for the lack of services available that won't cost me an additional fortune.
The wife also works a must-commute 9-5. Not sure how she, or both of us would be able to handle childcare needs and not feel like we would be neglecting the kid.
When would I ever be able to afford a kid in these situations?
And I am lucky to say that we are DINKs that are getting paid relatively well... How can people that are below us in income survive having kids?
After WW2 almost every other developed nation was in ruin. The US was "the only game in town" when it came to production. This caused US labor to be in high demand and priced at a premium compared to places like in Europe or Japan, who were more concerned about rebuilding than exporting goods.
THIS is how a high school dropout could afford a house and a family. Because that high school dropout was basically your only option for labor. As those other countries finished rebuilding a lot manufacturing jobs left and things started to get "back to normal".
The US was in a unique position but like most things it was just squandered. Now the US is "regressing towards the mean". This is going to be the new normal because the last 40-50 years was an exception.
There are many things that need change, but fixing the housing prices isn't complicated, it's just unpopular. You just need to take make speculating on housing as an asset very expensive. This will drive down the demand from non owner occupiers (businesses). It will also reduce the value of the largest asset most people own. People who invested so much into owning a home with the expectation that it will appreciate aren't going to support policies that do the opposite.
I'm not advocating violence, of course, because that's illegal both on this platform and in real life.
However, the history of humanity has demonstrated that powerful people need to be publicly executed in order for there to be sea change in economic inequalities. When enough people have nothing to lose, said executions become inevitable.
It's wealth inequality. Capital accumulates capital, and it actually means something because wealth is control, and things like housing that determine control over people's lives are forms of wealth that get concentrated away from regular people along with everything else.
IMO two main things need to happen:
- redistribution of wealth
- increase housing supply
It's not even about money anymore.
I'm not positive that the world is going to be a comfortable place to live in at all in the next 40-80 years. I can't be sure it's morally acceptable to bring a new life into the world just to struggle until death. I know if I were given the choice I would have rather just not have been, it's not worth struggling forever just to barely get by until the game changes yet again and you get knocked back down to the peg you started on.
Die.
Whenever I hear someone say "what are people supposed to do?", that is what I remind myself is the default.
When the rich have taken everything that they want, that is all that is leftover for literally everyone else.
A magic utopia is not the default. That took effort to build, and now the ultra-wealthy are putting in effort to tear it down, so it is ludicrous to think that without effort that things will magically go back to the way they were. That is neither how inertia nor entropy work.
Sorry this is upsetting, but it is the Truth. When Trump wins, it will get even worse, not better. Maybe we should do something about it.
This is why 3rd world countries have 3-4 generations living under one roof while subsisting on beans and rice. Eventually youre kinda forced into co-housing and living on starches when housing, meat, and veg gets too expensive. Also first world countries export finished goods, third world countries export their natural resources. Remember when they got rid of all the factories and started fracking instead. The oligarchs have slated the united states for a haircut and we're seeing it at every level.
It's class warfare, plain and simple.
The owner class has collectively decided there are too many worker class people and have gone out of their way to make sure that fewer and fewer are born, and to actively punish those who choose to have children.
One thing I want to point out because I'm sure some rightie tightie always whitie is going to come by and say 'Butbutbut... there are more millionaires now than evar!!!11!1one1!!'
Yes.
They are trust fund kiddies, nearly all of them.
Upward mobility has been actively crippled by stagflation and several 'once in a lifetime economic crises' all in the span of 20 years.
Even lower end millionaires are scared of this and claim they are struggling.
Eat the rich, it is the only solution.
I am that educated couple. Wife has an associates and was just able to find a small job. I have associates, BS, and MA and can't even get a fucking interview because I don't have the absolutely insane list of qualifications on my resume that these companies are demanding for a half-decent paying job. I did everything I was supposed to and they still won't fucking pay me.
I'm disabled and can't work in my early 30s now. The numbers for disability benefits haven't been adjusted for inflation since world war 2. Obviously I can't afford to live anywhere else.
We're a crumbling empire, we have an exploding homeless population and the billionaires like it that way. There's laws in many places here in the US where you can't use any kind of force to remove homeless people from your private property, if you call the cops in those places, they don't do anything about it.
Part of the problem is that the billionaires want us all to be terrified of each other and to hate our neighbors so that we beg for authoritarianism...even worse than the authoritarianism we have now.
You can't remove squatters or trespassers, but god forbid if you light up a joint, they'll throw you in prison for that.
I went to college, acquired two diplomas, my SO went to college and acquired one as well. My brother has two as well if I recall correctly, and his wife has one as well.
Together, we are four college graduates with upwards of six diplomas between us.
The four of us also had to pool our finances to afford one home.
Quad income, one house.
It's not a small house but it's not exactly in a high demand city (we're pretty far out in a rural area, surrounded by farmland). I also wouldn't describe the house as large. If my SO and I, or my brother and his wife were to buy this place it might be "large" but with four of us here, it's fairly modest. We have no significant land, less than a quarter of an acre, and there's nothing special about the house that makes it cost more (in fact, there were several things that should have lowered the cost). Yet here we are, scraping by with multiple incomes barely able to save at all because the monthly cost of the mortgage is so high... And we need to save, because all of those savings need to exist for when the water heater and furnace and air-conditioner inevitably fail.... They're not new, this is not a new home. I'm still finding aluminum wires that I have to rip out and replace, because if the place burns down and my insurance finds a scrap of aluminum wire, they'll deny me any coverage for the damage.
My SO and I have no children. That fact is never changing.
Gotta tax the rich.
It'll have two effects... 1) not as much money being dumped into real estate. 2) more money available for social programs.
Though on the other side of things some expectations may need to change. Owning a house is going to be really only possible if you live in a rural area. Having a house in the suburbs and having a couple of cars in the garage that you use for everything from commuting to work to picking up groceries will have a high environmental cost so that style of life should be expensive.
Though we can improve the livability of apartments, and lower rent (or mortgage costs for a condo) for high density apartments. Make them larger improve nearby greenspaces nearby so people can comfortable raise a family in high density residential areas.
A lot of the real estate thing is problematic politically. Everyone says they want housing prices to go down, but people that already own a house really don't. The value of their house will drop if that happens. But given that the suburban ideal isn't actually all that ideal considering environmental factors, having the price of a house stay high while reducing the cost while increasing the quality of high density housing feels like it should be a politically achievable goal.
But yeah tax the rich, they aren't all that motivated to to fix housing prices given their current investments in real estate will lose value if they do that. Municipal governments aren't likely going to zone high density housing either since they get more tax revenue per person from low density housing. If people in low density housing use cars instead of transit, tax revenue - costs of services per person is higher than for people living in high density housing. I'd suggest changing how municipalities raise taxes to avoid this, but saying we should get rid of property taxes sounds like some pro-wealthy kind of thing so isn't politically feasible. So... tax the rich use the money for social programs, building better public transit and building high density housing.
So yeah the expectation of living the suburban dream isn't really feasible in most places because of environmental factors. But living a different kind of dream living in a spacious apartment with a green space nearby with reliable public transit available to take people where they need to go seems achievable. And dare I say, may even be better than the suburban dream. But we gotta tax the rich to make it happen.
Reproduction isn't a luxury item. It's a survival need. The only reason that it's viewed as such in western society is because our economic system is all kinds of screwed up. People have been brainwashed to consider survival, as a society, in terms of our economic systems rather than in terms of the actual people.
Agree. I am that 30 y o still living at home. Work full time, 2 jobs and STILL cannot afford a rent without it decimating me to the ground. Its nothing to do with my budget: i get close to 3k/mo yet if i try to rent some place, i will pretty much have only about 400/500 left a month…. In a european capital. What is the point of renting in these conditions? And yes i know rationally its possible with my salary but i choose its more fruitful to help parent and be able to save rather than live ln the verge every month without being able to do much.
Is anyone on Lemmy doing okay? I always come to the comments of these posts and see the doom and gloom. I’m a millenniaI. I paid off my student loans. I own a home I can afford. I’m debt free besides my mortgage. I have an emergency fund. I have a 401k that’s on track. I worked hard and made sacrifices to get where I am. I can only assume there are others out there who have done the same.
At this point gen a or g or whatever is going to live in the popular democratic republic of north America
This decline is a necessary aspect of Capitalism. Competition, for all it helps initially with forcing prices lower, ultimately comes at the cost of increased exploitation of the Working Class. As all value comes from labor, there is only so much you can immediately automate away to lower cost of production before you must further exploit your labor force to remain competitive.
Socialist markets, ie ones controlled by Worker Co-operatives, still face these issues, but delay them due to being of and for the workers themselves.
Only a non-market form of Socialism, such as Anarchism or Communism, can actually permanently solve these issues. Markets are a useful tool during Capitalism, but just as feudalism gave way to Capitalism, so too will Capitalism give way to a more equitable distribution of control.
Maybe we'll see planned communities pop up that pool resources and create their own "circular economy". Certain things are incredibly cheap today, e.g. learning how to do things. And technology can make certain basics needed to live very cheap. Food, water, energy, housing, education, safety, medical, community.
If you could e.g. buy some farmland and build a compact apartment block out of e.g. shipping containers (or something even cheaper) then you could produce your own food, have your own school (partially over internet), a doctor / medic, and have workshops to make and maintain whatever you need.
Maybe the "buy in" costs for each person could be pretty low, like 10-20k.
A kind of "democratization" of economy for the basic needs. The global economy is completely out of whack because nobody can compete with mass produced garbage and marketing, so our work is getting worth less and less and we're getting poorer.
We have the ability to feed everyone in the world, but we don't. We could house everyone, but we don't. We could heal everyone, and we don't.
Capitalism was great for raising a huge portion of humanity out of poverty. It has its limits however, and we are reaching them. It's time to find a new way of doing things, not for profit, but because those things need to be done.
Like they say tough times make tough people. Our parents had it (relatively) easy. We've had it (at least economically) pretty tough. I've seen millennials put way more time, attention, and resources into their children than boomers ever did. I've been more and more frequently getting the sense of millennials as a sort of lost generation, dealing with the fallout from the last generation's greed, while sacrificing where we can for our kids (up to and including having fewer children to better provide for the ones we already have).
Gen A is just gonna be Gen
exit
Immigration can be used to replenish deficits in the working population.
Man I'm glad I was born and raised in a working class town now. Prospects looked pretty dire here when I was a kid. Local industry fell flat in the 1990s and into the 2000s so tonnes of my fellow millennials left to go to uni and get jobs in cities. That kept the cost of living here low and I was able to buy my first house at 22.
Now those deserters are saddled with student debt and unaffordable rents with no prospect of ever buying their own home. Recently the local industry started taking off again in a big way. I'm already making a pretty good wage but I'm also in track to have a Masters Degree and a high paid job after 3 years with a house that should have its value skyrocket over the next decade.
I don’t find it so poignant. The idea of living your parent house to adult properly is cultural. Their is nothing fondamental weird about most people still living with their parents until they passed away. Sure not every siblings can benefit from it if they also want to get spouse and children. But one people arriving in a house to marry is leaving room in another one. And as sad as it is when the elders leave, their is more space for the new-born.
Of course, it is important that people are housed and not dependent of landlord but why the solution should be that every couple ( and every adult that is single) buy its own house. That’s a far stretch. Especially in countries where demography isn’t booming.
The idea that any working class boomer could raise a family/ own a house on a single income is a myth. That was only true if you were a man, and happened to be white. The federal government built the interstates to the suburbs, the GI bill loaned the money to buy the house, and sent you to college. All to the exclusion of POC and women.
Even the labor unions told black men that you couldn't be in a union without a job, and couldn't get hired unless you were in a union. This "golden age" economy was also when a divorced woman couldn't get a bank account, an apartment, or a job.
The capitalists weren't sharing more wealth, they were sharing with fewer people.
The real answer to that is, dear firstworlders, you want too much and you think you deserve it. For the entirety of history people lived in big families exactly because they couldn't afford all the shit on their own, the couldn't get more houses out of nowhere or easily get more land. The shithole countries live like that right now and nobody says I'm gonna stop reproducing because I can't decide whether I want a steamdeck or like a child crib. Because of this mindset we do actually have the global warming, and no amount of banned (but not really) plastic straws will fix that.
You want infinite expansion of wealth? Go to Mars.
I really enjoy that West is crumbling. You guys did dun dirty to us Iranians in the past 10 years, pressuring our economy and crippling it. Now you are experiencing a literal 'Karma, Bitch!'.
It's not far-fetched that, once Iran manages to have America fuck off the middle east, it will become the next superpower (for the 5th time over the past 2 millennia I believe and don't say 'Persia is not Iran', you will show how uneducated you are, because Persia is a province in Southern Iran, it's a Netherlands/Holland situation) and I hope I am alive to see the fall of West. Because you Westerners have been nasty to me, insulted me, been racist against me, etc. You deserve nothing but a nice fall from grace.
Let's raise our cups to the fall of 'jorsumeh' that is the West.
