This is why it’s critically important for millenials to buy homes. Good ones. Big ones with land. It’s going to end up a generational home. You’re gonna need room for additions.
uh if you want to live remotely close to where the jobs are, its gonna be a tiny shitty appartement in exchange for life long debt. not a house, most definitely not a desireable one. thats with two median incomes lol.
those who can buy houses do so thanks to family or have exceptional income or both. mostly both
Many other countries have multi generational homes that aren’t huge or massive. This is a very American centric mindset of needing a giant home for more people.
Also, millennials definitely can not afford what you described
Oh yeah let me just reach into my pockets. Oh right, I’m not wearing pants and I’m commenting on Lemmy from my air mattress unable to sleep.
You think it’s gonna be better for your kids?
Oh you don’t have kids? Well then my post isn’t about you. Feel free to fuck off.
Just let me know how someone is supposed to do that when the average person makes like $40k a year.
Are you aware of the general difficulties faced by the Millennial generation with buying housing? Because it sounds like you’re not. Millennials aren’t not buying homes because of a preference as much as a lack of option.
I am. That’s why it’s so important.
Whole thing reeks of setting us up for failure. Insecure housing means no/less kids, and that has huge rippling effects 30 m-50 years from now when millenials are too old and infirm to work and there’s not enough people to replace us in the workforce.
And then our boomer parents, who somehow despite all our best efforts are still alive, will be blaming us for it.
It’s important to make sure you have money.
Okay, wanna give me some?
Shit man I ain’t got no money I was just lucky enough to buy a house before they got stupid expensive. My zillenial brethren have my sympathies, I get that it sucks. But what sucks more is that it’s going to suck more later. The longer you wait to suck it up, the more it’s gonna suck.
Oh, well in that case it’s also really important that I win the lottery
That’s what’s gonna happen here in America. IF and I mean IF your family was lucky enough to have a single home in the family everyone’s going to be living at it. Many aren’t even close to lucky though…I wonder how many more will die on the streets in the coming years.
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.
Maybe gen a will be the ones with the balls to actually rise up, set everything on fire, and kill the people responsible for destroying everything. Because of the rest of us are just sitting around complaining.
And yes, I admit, I’m in that category.
It looks like if gen Z’s massive wave of unionization doesn’t work that’ll be the case. Gen A is likely the water war generation unless we clean up our act enough for it to be gen ß
fails self-restaint check
gen β, not ß
self-restraint, not self-restaint
:)
We cannot name one gen Alpha and the next Beta, that is too mean
No, the Troika changed it when Germany took control of Greece 10 years ago.
Good old Gen SS
I can’t believe I have never seen this joke made in any context before
SS seems powerful, sure but the godlike powers of SSS class generations could put black holes to shame with their inescapable might.
SSSS class generations can harness the power output of a galaxy
The funny thing is that we have politicians here in Australia that complain about “woke” environmentalists standing up for the environment by sitting down on the road. They’re trying to have them labelled as terrorists for simply sitting down in the street.
Meanwhile in France, Farmers who are angry about stopping of diesel concessions are setting things on fire, blocking streets with tractors and dumping manure and dirt into the street to block public servants responsible into buildings.
The point is two fold, French have always done protests better. And the west conservatives have a massive raging boner for eroding ones rights to protest.
I support protesting wholeheartedly, but blocking a road is among the most moronic ways to protest I can think of.
They are blocking emergency vehicles, people going to work, people doing errands, visiting family, goods being transported etc.
There is a reason people get pissed off and pull them off of the road themselves. It does absolutely nothing to further their cause.
It doesn’t even effect the people they protest against.Imagine missing your kids show, mothers dying breath or the flight to your long awaited vacation and family visit because someone couldn’t think of a more appropriate way to protest than sitting down and being an absolute butthole.
Isn’t the inconvenience literally the point though?
I don’t call people potentially dying an inconvenience.
They have no moral right to decide wether or not people make it to where they are going.So what do they hope to achieve?
If it is awarenes, then there are much better ways of doing itJust wondering if you’ve ever participated in a protest or this is just an academic exercise. In my experience well behaved protests are basically ineffective. It’s true that you can actually end up vilifying the cause in the eyes of people that you’ve inconvenienced.
But that creates social pressure on our leaders to address the problem. Either by compromise with the protests demands or clearing them out by force.
I get that it may block the direct path of an ambulance potentially. But most gps algorithms when they see a ton of stationary phones in the street interpret that as traffic and try to route around it.
At the end of the day, yes there is the small potential for harm to a few individuals, but (hopefully) the benefits to a larger group offset that.
I went to UT and there were protests in the street all the time. It always inconvenienced me and I actually came to blows with a few of the protesters, but they should know that’s a possibility going into it. There’s really no right or wrong here. There’s only large organized group against a few impacted drivers.
I appreciate your arguments but respectfyully disagree.
A GPS guided detour should not be necessary for vital social functions to operate.
I also dislike the small potential for harm to a few individuals when there are better ways to get the point across.Block construction.
Occupy offices and locations.
March.
Send letters and run awareness campaigns.
Vote.Do anything you can that makes people see you. Just don’t block the road. To me that is too risky. If everybody would protest like that to achieve their political goals we would live in total anarchy.
Hope my opinions make sense even though you might disagree.
Totally. No animosity here. Never considered occupying an office.
i’d rather complain than be complacent at least
It is getting to the point that is the only option. Voting doesn’t matter, protesting doesn’t matter, complaining doesn’t matter. Millennials were raised that those are the processes, we have come to realize they don’t work and our kids are being raised with the understanding that that doesn’t work. If they want things to change, and it literally HAS to, that is what needs to happen. Either accept the status quo or forcefully change it. If I understand history, that is the most American thing you can do.
I have been educating my child on unions and workers’ rights. When he’s old enough, we move on to the proper engineering and maintenance of guillotines.
deleted by creator
Programming your foot up a billionaire’s ass
Have you considered teaching him welding and bulldozer operation?
Ah, gen Z
Us millenials tried that. It was called Occupy Wall Street and we got tear gassed, beaten, and driven away. And then there was a massive effort to erase what they could from media and history, and tarnish the rest.
It was a massive turning point for our generation. It broke us. We went from angry to depressed. We couldn’t beat them. They have the power of massive physical violence behind them, AND control of the media.
Gen Z is trying via unionization, which is a tactic much more likely to succeed. Don’t try to overthrow those in power, they’re too powerful for that. Build up your own power first in whatever manner possible, and then use their own levers of control against them.
Unions need to make a move on the media next. Shawn Fein has been very good at this but it needs more action.
Lol I’m a millennial too I definitely remember that and it’s not what I’m talking about at all. They just stood around yelling for the most part.
Occupy Wall Street started strong but quickly decended into uncoordinated nonsense. The initial message was simple, popular, and actionable about how it’s bullshit that global austerity and government cutbacks were hurting the 99% whilst the 1% who caused the crash got off scott free with massive bailouts and tax cuts.
Because it was a “leaderless” collective action it quickly got occupied itself by all sorts of weird and wacky movements who diluted the message and gave the right wing media all the ammo they could ever want to paint the whole thing as “just some crazy hippies chatting shit about communism” or whatever.
It’s pretty typical of movements on the left unfortunately. Everyone wants to be super inclusive so all ideas are equally important and you can’t just dismiss ideas as not being relevant without creating a load of infighting. The alternative however means people with bad ideas (ones who often have more time and energy to boot) can easily take over the conversation and your whole message gets diluted, confused, and easily disarmed by the media.
I think the left’s problem isn’t inclusiveness (in things like this) it’s the inability to give power to “strong” leadership. The same mental firewalls that prevent those on the left from falling victim to mountebanks keeps them from letting others speak on their behalf.
It also creates mental roadblocks for anyone on the left who tries to lead. “How can I speak for these people? I am not one of them.” That’s not a limitation of inclusiveness it’s just empathy. So when anyone on the left challenges a left wing leader with anything, really that leader–if they are truly left leaning–will not fight back without near certainty about their position.
This makes it easy for a left wing leader to denounce the illogical and/or racist positions from those on the right but extremely difficult to take a stand on issues where everything sucks like Israeli/Palestinian conflict or immigration. This leaves them open for charlatans to point to them and say, “See? They’re weak!” Which is the exact thing the right hates and fears from left wing leaders.
We need a raised militia in open, violent rebellion against the police and national guard. Anything less than that is theater.
I hear Texas is already on it.
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.
I’m not advocating violence, of course, because that’s illegal both on this platform and in real life.
No it’s not.
-
This platform’s policies do not have the force of law.
-
Advocating for violence in general isn’t illegal; only specific threats are. (Trump, for example, is an idiot-savant at walking that fine line.)
Also the advocating for violence rule has always been weird, because it’s rarely against the rules to advocate for war, even if it’s literally violence and also much much worse due to the scale and horror of it.
-
Don’t advocate violence. Instead, imply advocacy for violence.
It’s not “let’s kill the rich”, it’s “it’d be a damn shame if someone killed the rich”
It’s not “you’re morally obligated to burn that pipeline”, it’s “you’re morally obligated to burn that pipeline in Minecraft”
Wanna reenact the French revolution
In Minecraft
The only way to avoid this that I have ever been able to imagine would require our global society to somehow abandon the concept of currency. But that’s insane, of course, so we’re probably screwed…
Not insane. Insane is making up a system of what is worth keeping alive and then sacrificing life on Earth for that system. If we want to survive as a species, we might have to embrace a sort of gift economy.
Currency is just standardized gifts.
A general strike of 3 days with 10% of the population participating would do a LOT more than public executions of billionaires.
That said, there’s no fucking way you will get 10% of the population to agree on ANYTHING anymore because every single communication channel, forum, and social space is FILLED with people who actively create hostile, circular and unproductive environments. Either for the hell of it or at the behest of their corporate masters, the result is the same.
We can’t do it the easy way, so we will suffer until the only choice is the hard way.
All so 8 people can own half the fucking world.
it is very lame how online you’re not even allowed to type the very normal, casual sentence ‘agh i wanna **** my boss’ because in black and white that’s a “”“serious”“” threat even though that’s just how normal people talk
how are we gonna get from this tiptoe tiktok verbiage to real change?
Assuming change involves violence you simply advocate for the change and “defending” your way of life or “taking back” or “sheparding society”. Violent Neo Nazis use this kind of rhetoric all the time to get people to do stupid shit and then escape accountability for winding them up. The absolute best way though? Thoroughly make your case and spread your ideology. When enough people feel like things aren’t going right and they can’t make change any other way, violence is the natural next inflection point.
That all said. We really should be trying to do things peacefully. Political violence is fucking nasty and modern civil wars see things like militias taking control of small towns or neighborhoods to kill everyone they find because they think they voted the wrong way. If we could avoid that I’d be grateful, I really don’t need to witness a second factional battle with hundreds of people on either side right down a main street in a city.
I certainly don’t want civil war. I would, however, like to see a few billionaires fear for their life enough that they would lossen their death grip on the future health and wellbeing of the rest of the world’s inhabitants.
Yeah the thing about violence though? You don’t get to decide when it stops.
forced to live at home into their 30s. Is Gen A
Rent. Gen A will rent at home. That’s how the parents will finally clear the home; through rent.
Their millennial parents will also be renting. How will they afford a retirement home or nursing home? How did we get here?
Already seen this a few times with people I’ve dated.
Rich parents buy a vacation house, not so rich kids pay rent on it with no equity while also understanding that their shitstain parents will reverse mortgage all that equity for retirement vacations before they ever have a chance to inherit it.
They cope with a ‘this is fine’ attitude.
If I had a nickle for every person I dated that was in this situation, I’d have three nickles. Which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird it happened three times.
To be fair, if they’re bringing home a paycheck they should be contributing. Of course since it’s family you do a split based on income, not a straight split. And they also get a say on things around the home at that point too.
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.
We already have first, primary, and only home exceptions to many things. There’s no reason Frank and Martha’s house should be any less valuable. The problem is housing as speculation is causing houses to be priced higher than their real value.
We should’ve been taxing homes or land that people own but is not their primary residence, from the start.
It would be super easy to implement, and flexible - if housing prices are too high for 75% of the population, you raise those taxes little by little and the problem eventually sorts itself out. If it’s no longer a problem, you reduce the taxes.
Or you keep those taxes the same and use the money to reinforce social programs to make sure no one in your area ever has to go homeless or hungry again.
Por que no los dos?
Raise taxes on 2nd homes, use the tax to fund social programs
The commenter I replied to said"when it’s no longer a problem" to lower the taxes again, I’m suggesting to not lower them again. People who have multiple homes should be paying maximum taxes on all luxury items- homes, cars, airplanes, income, everything possible, and that money should be used to support social programs.
It seems US tries to do Russian history in reverse
“And then things got better”?
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.
Thankfully we don’t live in the US then, but these same dark times are washing over us in Europe too :-(
I moved from the US to Italy, where everything is cheaper and better quality, and we get free healthcare, free college, retirement pension and six months paid maternity leave. All this on a 35% tax rate. Public daycare is about $300 a month, housing expenses are about half of what I paid in the US, and while groceries are about the same, they are all local, organic, non GMO and -get this - crops are grown for flavor rather than weight. Houses are smaller here and wages are usually lower, but working hours are less and less intense, and the pace of life is much chiller.
Oh wow non GMO groceries what a magical fairy tale land.
Europe was reduced to rubble, but my grandfathers, who were a kids during the war and after, both still managed to build a house, raise two kids each and set money aside; one of my grandmothers worked as a seamstress and those grandparents not only built houses for themselves and each kid, but essentially owned a whole block in our village.
I had to take a job that requires great effort, stress and skill and keeps me away from home 40% of the time, it pays well but still I couldn’t dream to be able to do the same as they did.
I think attributing the “good years” just to post war production is an incomplete explanation. The real issue is irresponsible private ownership and hobbling the value our economy can create.
Creating true value in our work is possible. Once some types of work are done the output can continue to benefit our society for decades. But a confluence of decisions by private owners have meant often we don’t receive that benefit, and instead it’s siphoned away as profit.
That’s true to a point. However bigger effects were the rise in executive compensation, the loss of labor and corporate regulations, and the resurgence of the shipping industry such that it was cheaper to ship from China than to make it in the US. It’s true that demand for US manufactured goods has fallen, but there’s no reason our current Service economy should struggle like it is.
enlightened bit of context here.
correct me if i’m wrong, but these are the colloquial “golden days” that so many want to return to, right? a period which undoubtedly contributed to the presumption of american exceptionalism in the minds of its citizens.
if only there was a way to build a future out of transparency and sustainable systems instead of perpetuating our collective delusions.
Historically, most families lived together under one roof (even royalty). It was only in post WWII USA that the idea of each generation having its own home became prevalent.
I think it was a good advancement in society though (aside from suburban sprawl). Having each generation go out and experience life away from where they grew up fosters empathy and understanding through exposure. We should be striving for more of that.
Okay, that doesn’t change the fact that a lot of wealth has been vacuumed out of 90 percent of the country. Even the 90-99 percentile just managed to hold their ground with all of those gains going to the top 1 percent.
Edit to Add - I wouldn’t be against encouraging multi-generational housing again. But the wealth loss is still there.
Part of that was driven by specialization and people having different jobs and jobs in different locations than their parents though.
There’s always someone who shows up to say that. I bet there’s been one of you every time society advanced. “Historically, having clean water a recent development, and they don’t even have access to clean water in other countries!”
Same energy as “eat your vegetables, there are starving children somewhere.” And equally useful as a statement when trying to force me to swallow something I despise.
Genuine question: I see a lot of posts on both sides on lemmy. Does anyone have a rebuttal/counter argument to this?
Here are five fast examples from both sides
- The average new house size went from around 1,000 sq ft in 1910 to 1,500 sq ft in 1970, to 2,000 sq ft in 2000 to aroind 2,400 sq ft today. It’s not easy to buy a new small(er) home and housing prices reflect that
- When the Corvette was launched in 1953 it cost $3,490. That’s around $39,000 in today’s money. A brand new Corvette will cost you $70,000
- A 1970 Datsun 240z was $3,500, which is $28,000 today. You can buy a brand new Mazda Miata or Toyota GR86 for that inflation adjusted amount
- A gallon of milk cost $1.32 in 1970. That’s $10
- According to the 1970 census, median household income was $8,730. Adjusted for inflation, that’s around $71,000 - which is surprisingly close to the 2022 census’s $70,784 number
So what’s going on and why are people not happy? IMO it’s a mix of
- Things are getting nicer, but they’re also getting more expensive. This seems to be a mix of consumer taste and seller side shenanigans. For example, small/mid size cars, which are typically cheap, have had decreasing sales volume for the past 20 years. Enter multiple OEMs de-emphasizing small/mid size cars and leaning into crossovers, which just so happen to cost more. To go back to the earlier housing example, house size has been going up while the average household size is going down. There were 4.5 people per household in 1910. This dropped to 3.15 in 1970 and is down to 2.51 today. In other words, today’s new larger homes have fewer people living in them than 50 years ago. New homes today also tend to be built with nicer furnishings (coming from someone with 1960s builder grade cabinets in their house). Housing is a bit of a mess for a bunch of other reasons too… Zoning, smaller parcel sizes for subdivisions, etc etc
- The wage vs productivity gap
- The… very big imbalance between worker vs CEO wage growth
It goes beyond the cost of goods and gets back to some level of fairness (or a complete lack there of).
The argument I’ve seen “against” this is to point out that if you want to live like they did in the 50s it’s pretty cheap. It’s a lot of canned food. A lot of stuff you might pay for now are DIY projects (such as clothes repair, house repair, car repair etc.) there’s no such thing as your fancy TV, your Internet or any modern kitchen amenities. Medical assistance is garbage so no wonder you paid less for it. The way you live today is like a king compared to the 50s.
Now it’s still an idiotic argument. Before anyone replies, I don’t agree with it. But it’s what people who can’t handle the OP tell themselves.
I know you said you don’t agree, so this argument is for the hypothetical person who holds that opinion…
With that said. My wife and I crunched the numbers recently. If we lived like people in the 50s, which is to say, we lived as poor as we could and completely wrecked our quality of life (eating as cheap as possible, no Netflix, never eating out, no luxuries at all), we would save like $10k a year. Which means that if we did that for 10 years, we would have enough for a down payment on a house that we would not be able to afford the monthly mortgage on (and a house in that price range would be a wreck in our neighborhood. A standard 3bed 2bath in good condition where I live starts at about 800k).
It’s insane. This isn’t some “just stop eating avacado toast” thing.
Yeah not only that but the obvious conclusion is “well yeah, but why should we hold our standards to the 50s?” Sure we have needs we didn’t then for things like TVs and computers but those same computers have made everything about that 50s lifestyle exponentially cheaper and easier to accomplish. It should be nearly free to live like the 50s but for some reason prices have kept rising.
Lots of the DIY stuff is harder now though. I can change the oil on a ‘00 Civic, can’t on a ‘19. Cars now have complicated and user-hostile electronics - they don’t really want you to fix your own car, phone, TV…
I mend my clothes as much as possible, but fast fashion in the last ten years have seen a race to the bottom on material quality. Clothes don’t always come with extra buttons, the fabric is shit… if you find vintage stuff from even the 90s at a thrift shop it’s obvious. Modern clothing is made to be worn a few times and then thrown away.
Cooking can be still be done cheap (if you enjoy lentils and beans!) but requires time, which is easier if you have a stay at home partner. You also need storage space. There’s been substantial declines in the quality of kitchen appliances and tools imho. I’m still upset about what they’ve done to Pyrex.
Lots of the modern fancy stuff is also somewhat necessary. Internet is required for pretty much everything nowadays. You can go to the library/McDick’s/etc for WiFi, but you shouldn’t be filling out a job app on public WiFi.
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
Oh but they actively took our paychecks too. This wasn’t just government welfare for the wealthy and the stock market. When they fired Janet because they only needed one worker instead of two thanks to new software? They didn’t pay Bob extra. That’s wealth just sucked up into the Executive and Shareholder realm. Then to add salt to the wound of doing two jobs they give Bob a December raise below inflation. (because of course there is still actually more that Bob has to do, the software didn’t fix everything.) So now they get Janet’s pay and the extra revenue they denied Bob, because of course their prices damn sure went up in step with inflation.
This kind of fuckery has resulted in an estimated upwards transfer of around 47 Trillion dollars.
The thing I don’t like with that kind of argument is that it is inherently anti efficiency and anti progress. We don’t want jobs to be done in the most inefficient way just so that a lot of people can be paid to do them that way. We want them to be done efficiently and then everyone gets fed,… anyway because society values people over wealth.
I mean with the turnabout of current generation work ethic, I personally think that the current systems anti-productivity / efficiency in the first place. There used to be a worker loyalty and high work ethic but it’d increasing trends among millennial and Gen Z to just… not, and why would they when it’s been proven time and time again that the company culture is now replace first and hope the replacement is better or another annoying trend is replace and then not fill, with the expectation that the rest of the team will take on the extra workload for no additional pay.
I think you are right, and it would be better not to focus on trying to micromanage specific business practices. You cannot write a good set of regulations that will prevent companies from siphoning wealth, because profit is the entire reason for existence of a company to begin with, and they will either find a way around it or stop functioning. Instead I think they should be allowed relative free reign, and the market allowed to do what it does, except that in the end a portion of the wealth extracted is taken and given back to the people, such that the level of concentration is kept stable instead of perpetually increasing.
It’s anti progress to say “don’t improve productivity”, but it’s anti worker to say “don’t increase wages commensurate with improved productivity”.
That’s not what they’re saying the issue is though, the issue is how it’s redistributed. In fact, what you’re saying quite literally is the living example of anti-progress.
It could be fine in the current state if companies paid people fairly, but they don’t, any progress or efficiency that could have been made was stifled by the company pocketing the ex-employees wage. Rather than supporting the current employee by giving them a raise or a team of members to work with, it’s taken.
To put it this way: Bob and Janet are janitors who split their work equally. A new tool the company bought is able to cut their workload down by 15% each. Now Bob and Janet only have 35% of their work, instead of 50%.
A good workplace will support Bob and Janet in various ways, making them both more efficient by being able to accomplish more tasks.
A bad workplace will fire one of them, making the work load for one of them to 70%, without supplemental pay.
That 35% of value Janet brought is no longer going into the economy, it’s going into the corporate profit.
It’s very efficient. That’s why corporations do it. Now one worker is extremely overworked and underpaid, but the job still gets done and the company makes more money? Sounds like a win.
It is not inherently anti-efficiency or anyi-progress. It is pointing out how those things have been corrupted by those in charge. In a more perfect world, Janet and Bob just work less hours due to the software while retaining their pay.
increase housing supply
It makes sense to me that governments should be providing their citizens with items at the base of the pyramid for Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.
Air is everywhere, but governments mostly do have clean air regulations to make sure that air is breathable. Water is also typically provided by the city for every residence. It’s not free, but it’s pretty cheap. But, governments could be doing a lot more when it comes to shelter and food.
It’s a bit strange that governments do spend a lot of effort / money on employment and personal security when they’re higher up the pyramid than basics like housing and food.
It isn’t that strange if you think of us as being in a sort of situation of soft indentured servitude which is intentionally maintained.
Why? Slave owners fed and housed their slaves. Providing housing and food seems basic.
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.
Without violent pushback there is no reason at all to improve things. Cant afford to live?.. fuck you, we’ll find someone who can. Piss off, peasant.
All we would need is 3 days of a general strike with at least 10% participation.
But unfortunately there are several factors that prevent this, some human nature, some deliberately manufactured.
-
Almost no one I know can afford missing a week’s worth of work: This is manufactured with stagflation and at-will work laws
-
The rich inflaming radical partisanship with traditional and social media to distract from who the real enemy is, reducing social cooperation
-
American culture has become largely an ‘observer culture’, where the world is treated as a thing to passively watch while feeling disconnected, this is probably the worst contributor.
So many of the labor movement gains our forefathers bled and died for have been trampled by an owner class hell bent on recapitulating european nobility on American soil and they have been WILDLY successful the last 30 years.
Either we organize a general strike, or there will be food riots within a decade.
People who can’t afford three days off work will certainly fare well by not participating in a general strike.
/S
If I had never sold or lost a single bitcoin I mined I could afford to pay for a few thousand people to cover the costs, even more for the most needed protesters, the fast food workers. If I were a billionaire I would literally break my fortune to pay for every fast food worker in the U.S. (in their pockets, to be clear) to take a week off.
I would live on ramen and burning newspaper for warmth if it would guarantee that even 5% of the fast food and restaurant workforce took off for a week.
Shawn Fain (United Auto Workers president) has been calling for unions across every industry to align their contracts to end at the same time on May 1st, 2028 (International Labor Day), specifically so that we can prepare for a general strike. Gives the already organized unions time to build up a strike fund and non-organized folks time to get organized.
-
We could do a general strike.
Where I’m from, the median house price has risen 600% relative to the median income in the past 50 years.
That means the deposit we pay today is the equivalent of the entire 30 year mortgage of the people calling you lazy.
When houses cost twice a person’s salary there were no 30 year mortgages.
True - that’s been the response to pricing getting out of control rather than addressing the fundamental issues with the economy.
Yup, the 137 points is just “core” inflation. Education, Housing, Food, and Cars all come in over that. Which is fine because those aren’t necessary in the US right?
And yet nearly anyone IRL you point this out to spouts some form of free market propaganda bullshit.
gave the entire country a pay cut
Entire country? Which country? We’re talking about our whole western civilisation.
The data I’m using is for the US.
137 points
What’s a point?
One percent relative what the market was at the starting point.
The market today is 237 % of starting point (probably 1990).
Inflation isn’t prices growing faster than wages, it’s just prices growing in general. Don’t let anyone tell you that gentle inflation is bad for poor people.
Debtors gain from inflation because they pay their fixed debts with currency worth less. When interest rates are low, refinance or borrow at low fixed rates. When inflation rises, your fixed debt costs go down in real terms.
If you want wages to increase, support a higher minimum wage.
This isn’t just inflation over 50 years. This is divergence in the inflation of wages and core inflation. So prices over all have risen by 137 points more than wages have risen. This isn’t the talk about inflation vs deflation vs death spirals. This is everything slowly becoming less affordable over time. And it really doesn’t matter if the money is worth less when the interest rate on the loan is far beyond inflation in the first place. You either pay it back quickly (monthly on a card) or watch it spiral out of control rapidly because adjustable rate loans work off of inflation and your wages didn’t go up to match. So now you have that much less money a month to buy food.
Theoretically inflation is good for borrowers. In practice you need a certain base of money for that to be true. If you can’t cover increased costs over the life of the loan then inflation is going to take you behind the shed.
This is the best post on Lemmy. It’s the best way to say this.
But it’s a post on Reddit
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.
Anytime I see “the good ole days” brought up, I remind them they were only good to them because only cishet white men were allowed to participate.
The capitalists weren’t sharing more wealth, they were sharing with fewer people.
A higher proportion of business’s income went to wages, so yes, they were sharing more wealth (but only because they had to, because of the strong unions).
But yes, that was only being shared with white men
Okay, and now it’s even worse.
Sorry no, you are deliberately sliding this discussion.
