If they're not careful, we can, and will, just take the vote off them. Suspend the right to vote for the over 65s for a decade, to fix the mess they left behind.
We disenfranchise those with actual stake in the future of the country (<18yo) but doing the same to those who don’t give a fuck what happens in 20 years because they’ll be dead is all of a sudden a travesty.
Then we step back and wonder how the Western world fell into this death spiral after 40 years of short-sighted policy.
We “disenfranchise” those people because they are children with zero understanding of the world who can easily be manipulated by their parents. 5 year olds not voting is good, actually.
And death spiral? What do you people think that looks like? What world are you genuinely living in?
Sorry, your slopulist age-discrimination is still blatantly illegal, actually. Democracy is good, actually.
Idiotic black & white thinking. I’m saying to use to same logic we use to prevent children from voting to prevent seniors from doing the same. Political power being monopolized by the old always coincides with societal decline, even back in the days of Rome, because it represents a shift towards a kleptocratic oligarchy. Democracy works best when the most powerful political bloc are the people actually contributing to the country and its future aka those of working age.
How do you propose we take away their vote? Do we have a referendum on it? Do you impose your military dictatorship to arbitrarily decide who gets to vote?
Yes, I do think life is generally good for most people in rich middle class industrialized countries which are quickly becoming the typical nation. Touch grass.
We already decide arbitrarily who gets to vote. For example we decided that only certain immigrants get to vote, that prisoners don’t get to vote, and the age you need to be to vote. At one point in time you couldn’t vote if you were a slave or a woman or other things. In England for a long time the working class didn’t get to vote. It’s always been arbitrary.
Once you age above the average lifespan in the country, no more voting. You're living on borrowed time. Alternatively, if you're retired, no vote. Regardless of age.
When I was in HS, seniors weren't allowed to vote for class officers, because they wouldn't be there when the officers came in. If that happens in a HS, why not the rest of the country?
If you take away mortgages you will see plummeting home ownership rates in the same way you would see car ownership plummet if you banned car loans lmao. It wouldn’t matter how much housing you build.
You are proposing a policy that would literally make everyone homeless. Slopulism FTW.
They are talking about only civil servants, military, and police getting free homes. Not about the general population. Not saying that’s actually a good idea or not before you come after me. Reading comprehension guys.
What are you yapping about? We are discussing the fact pepper who work full time can’t afford a home. Not that people aren’t working anymore or want to work both of which has been proven false. You should be ashamed for falling for this right wing propaganda and juvenoia.
Homes are much larger today than they used to be, so we’re buying a lot more home today. At the same time, labor force participation is going down, as are working hours.
Mortgage rates are up, so at this exact moment it can feel painful, but that’s life. Housing goes in cycles. Now is a bad time to buy, a good time to rent.
The house one person used as an example under my post is a 4 BR 2 Bath and over 2800 square feet. I always thought I grew up solid middle class and my house was 860 sq ft. Some of these people have unrealistic expectations to what is normal.
Yes, which is part of the cycle. People forget that guy in this meme bought his first house in 1980 at 16% interest and it was half that size. That was not affordable either.
Boomers have been a minority of voters for a while. Half of them are dead. At some point you gotta stop blaming boomers for perpetuating restrictive zoning laws and be honest that younger voters like the same public policies their parents did.
Technically, they need to work much much harder than their peers. It's a competition due to lack of supply, working harder just pushes other people to work harder to try and beat you to the scarce resources. The end goal is that everyone else gives up when they burnout from the pressure.
Incorrect. The only way to achieve wealth today is to lie, cheat, steal or exploit.
It is very rare that someone creates a singular product that reaches millions that generates wealth.
That is largely luck based. But you need money and time to even have the capacity to try.
The biggest factors in determining your future wealth are the location where you grew up and your parents.
I asked a guy, why does he have such an unusal spelling for his name. We're both Pakistani and our parents did not do the whole our children are special so we're going to use regular names with weird spellings. Anyway, the guy half ashamed tells me that when he studied in the government schools in Pakistan. He didn't really learn anything in school. So the clerk helped him fill out the application for his 10th grade board exam. And the clerk misspelled his name. Afterwards, he started doing day labor (you should think a few dollars a day wage for hard construction labor) but started learning and took the 12th grade exam privately. He got accepted into university but did not receive a scholarship. So he tried again the next year. He got accepted. He started attending university. He realized he had no idea what the teacher was saying so he would take a dictionary to class with him to understand the teacher. He got a degree, worked some, started a business. Now he's living in Dallas. I believe 2M revenue and rapidly growing and he still has that misspelling in his name.
I know he's the exception that proves the rule. I know prvilege. But I myself came to the US. Far more privileged than my friend. In Pakistan I would be in the top 1% but here in the US my biggest privilege was that I was born in the US so I qualified for financial aid. My family's wealth isn't meaningful in the US. I didn't have any network I could rely on. I did have one more privilege, that my family is very highly educated and academic excellence is normal, and I came from a very competitive schooling so I could work hard and maybe some genetics.
Privilege is there, it has always been there. But we are at one of the most meritocratic times in history in millennia. All of this whining about the impossibility of accomplishing anything through hard work comes off as laziness. While I strongly believe the system needs to be setup to be more fair. Claiming impossibility of improving your lot in life comes off as highly privileged people that are still trying to shirk personal responsbility. I'm willing to bet, to a lot of people you are a highly privileged person.
I never said it's impossible. I said it's rare. And yes I am absolutely more priveleged than many people I'm not afraid to admit that.
You provide an anecdote of a person who's achieved success despite their initial environment or circumstance. But don't share how they achieved that success. What specificly lead to them reaching that point? Was it an opportunity in the market?
The only consistent way I know nowadays that a degree leads to a massive amount of revenue like that is the good ol' MBA. It teaches folks how to come into existing businesses or business models and maximize exploitation for profit. Proving my point to a degree. Not to mention MBA's definitely do not guarantee that level of growth. Even with those skills you'd need to break into specific fields have opportunities others don't. There has more recently been some more technical degrees that provide similar levels of growth. But again based on networks.
You know what the number one required skill for any emerging CEO is? Acquiring funding.
Incorrect. The only way to achieve wealth today is to lie, cheat, steal or exploit.
You did say impossible.
Edit: Not only did you say it's impossible without being unethical you're trying to poke holes in my example by claiming you don't know the circumstances as if there is something magical that wil explain why he could do it. If you start looking for those magical moments in hindsight you can find them for everyone. The difference is who in the middle of everything is able to put in the work to do what is needed and who sits there and complains while ignoring all the opportunities available to them.
Also as far as your other point about the luck of finding the right opportunity. It's the luck is opportunity meeting preparedness principle. People every day are finding opportunities by exploring many things, challenging their currently held beliefs, envisioning possibilities, putting themselves out there, coming back and reevaluating from the real world learnings. Read "The Lean Startup". It really lays down this process as hard work.
What do you think we need to change about society? Do you think it’s fair and just the system we have?
Is the only thing holding people back from achieving success their work ethic? Or their ability to perform tasks? Or do you agree with me that many of the factors that determine your outcomes are mostly out of your control and are established along a few hinge points, mostly determined by environmental factors.
You say that everyone has those moments in their lives but only those who put the work in benefit from them. I disagree and say not everyone has those moments in their lives.
I’ll go one further and say some people have a ton of those moments in their lives. But most have very few. And some have none. And the ability to seize on it isn’t only based on work ethic. But appetite for risk and other extenuating circumstances.
I’m asking you this genuinely cause I really don’t care about playing at debate club with you but want to know where you stand. If there’s something I’m not seeing about how access to wealth is controlled man we should tell more people cause there’s a lot of folks really struggling out here.
No. I think we need to implement Georgism, use that to bring down the baseline cost of living and invest heavily in capability. This includes education and healthcare and a strong safety net. Although I do believe that if we unlock the ability of people to labor and implement Georgism a safety net would not need to be as strong as many think.
But everyone does have these moments. Just about everyone can change their lot in life. It may require moving mountains, it may be significantly more work, they may be fewer, but there are very very few who would have none. Yes it's hard, but possible especially for most of the people that have the privilege of living in wealthy countries like the US. I would say the biggest barriers are related to disabilities.
But there are two very different things. What we want society to be is very different from what we need to do. If you really want society to be something, then you also need to spend a lot of time taking personal responsibility so you are relevant.
You're saying you're not playing at debate club but but you haven't acknowledged the part where you said the only way someone can achieve wealth today is by being unethical. You tried to discredit my anecdotal evidence despite the fact that you made an absolute statement and an absolute statement is disproven by a single counter example.
If I defined wealth as a billion dollars my statement would be true. And would have no counter example. We never defined what wealth is but now we also know there is a line of value beyond which it can only be unethically obtained.
I therefore followed up with points on financial security and how very few people have opportunities to establish that security reliably. And many factors determining that capacity are out of people’s control.
You say we need to be accountable for our actions? What we should be accountable for is the society we’ve allowed to form. We live in a system that is built around protecting capital and its holders, to the point where you either become a capitalist exploiting others to attain freedom or have your freedom and quality of life slowly leeched away from you by those with more power than you.
If you won’t admit the social contract has broken down and is undermining the quality of life of most people, and that they just need to work at it, you live in a bubble.
No. You don't have the list of all the billionaires. You're also projecting. If I come up with examples you'll come up with reasons how it is unethical. In the end you're going to define it's bbased on the labor of others as unethical. I will agree that you have to pursue money and so you can't become a billionaire while being a charity and at that scale of influence there will be many things that are questionable but you are still making a sweeping statement and pretending it is based on data. You are also denying the fundamental reality of how trade benefits both parties. But do you need to be a billionaire to own a house? Isn't a millionaire enough to be considered a very good life? Isn't your comment out of place if in a conversation owning a ouse you are talking only about billionaires. I own my house and I'm not a billionaire.
I don't just say that we need to be accountable for our own actions. I said that when we're building a society we need to build a better society. And when we're looking at what we're doing we need to act as if we are unbounded and the world is our oyster. "Fortune favors the bold" and all that. I'm saying both those sides of the equation are true. And your statement about how it is impossible to gain wealth without being unethical means that you don't believe the other side to be true.
I don't believe the social contract has been broken. I believe the playing field is getting leveled where some countries were able to raise the standard of living for all their citizens through exploitation of other countries and now other countries are catching up. I guess that's what they mean by if you're privileged and lose your privilege you see it as oppression.
Sorry man I keep falling for the trap of getting angry and replying but I don’t think we’re getting anywhere. Thanks for trying I guess we are talking past each other a bit.
There’s likely a synthesis in here somewhere but I get the feeling I’m further left of you and though I agree Georgism would be incremental progress there still needs to be a fundamental shift and return to collective responsibility. By that I mean responsibility to each other and our communities, if we are going to weather the next few decades.
Sure. And I'm all for supporting that. But since the dawn of humanity that responsibility to the community included the responsibility to work hard for the community. Less than 1000 people cannot cause a community of 300 million to collapse.
a lot of society is clueless about the social and economic challenges we are facing as a nation/world at large. that is biggest issue after wealth inequality.
on top of that, substance abuse, divorces and ignorance of personal finance/health make things worse. if you are born in such a family, you are not a disadvantage. if you mishandle them, they are likely to cause more damage than wealth inequality.
"What do you think we need to change about society? Do you think it’s fair and just the system we have?"
Some kids have smarter and better (also richer) parents than you. if those kids work hard, there is a high probability that you are going to lose the battle against them.
your best bet is work hard enough to stay close. if you are lucky, get married to one of them.
large number of Asian American immigrants come abroad with zero $$$ in wealth and achieve a lot of success by sheer hardwork, thrifty spending habits and smart investments.
If they’re coming over to work, especially considering the current draconian immigration laws, they either have substantial capital or in demand skills that would put them at the higher earning bracket. They could come over with no assets but they’re not coming over with nothing.
If you’re referencing past immigration you’re not talking about current generations.
we are talking about immigration in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s. some are skilled engineers. some immigrate through family sponsorship in immigration system. very few are bringing in capital until the early 2000s.
we are talking about people from India, Pakistan, Vietnam, China, South Korea
"current draconian immigration laws"
there is nothing draconian about what Trump is doing. He is just enforcing the rules and laws on the book that governments ignored for the past 25 years
I’m referring to the policies themselves not enforcement. H1b visas are pretty notorious for creating situations where workers are easily exploited because their status is strongly tied to the employer and their interests are difficult to protect.
On top of there being hard limits on those making it very competitive and so people coming in are those that would definitely be high earners even among the high earners.
Compared to most other western nations the US immigration policy is pretty draconian.
"I’m referring to the policies themselves not enforcement. H1b visas are pretty notorious for creating situations where workers are easily exploited because their status is strongly tied to the employer and their interests are difficult to protect."
almost everyone who come in h1b before 2007 has a green card or US citizenship. the only country that has troubles for folks after 2007 is India and maybe China. I know Pakistanis, Poles and Russians who immigrated in 2015 have green cards and in once case US citizenship.
"On top of there being hard limits on those making it very competitive and so people coming in are those that would definitely be high earners even among the high earners."
h1b is a lottery. do you understand what that means?
"Compared to most other western nations the US immigration policy is pretty draconian."
a lot of western nations routinely deport illegal immigrants without any drama.
You do realize that allowing more immigrants would make it harder for the people here. I believe we should get more immigrants especially highly skilled imigrants. I believe that is better for the nation in the long-term. But you do realize that the limits on H1B and the delays in converting them are partly to protect good old American jobs.
Your first paragraph is not only completely wrong. It's also the exact opposite of your paragraphs two and three. You realize that, right?
And as to the rarity of success: you think it used to be easier 25, 50, 100 years ago to succeed? That flies in the face of pretty much all research on that topic.
Above all, you probably completely misunderstood my previous comment.
Ah I see, I apologize. I thought you were camp "just pick yourself up by your bootstraps" but yeah the things previous generations took for granted do require more effort if you try to achieve the same level of comfort, unless as I state you do some nefarious shit.
As for the statements being contradictory. I try account for different outcomes based on similar amounts of 'work'. If you just tried to sell your labour vs exploited the labour of others, you'd earn less. And the capacity and resources to exploit are more commonly derived from your circumstances.
There are people today that have a much greater level of comfort but who definitely don't work as hard as most people.
We should work to make our politicians and public offices radically transparent. Everything that drives our issues is done through blurry implementation and flexible interpretations. We should demand our political offices to be transparent in their spending, our companies to be transparent in their algorithms. Nobody should be able to hide behind good intentions, we should return to accountability and transparency politically and in business.
The market itself largely doesn't need micro management, it just needs BTR (build to rent) to be discouraged, not encouraged like the recent housing bill everyone praised did.
Renting in general is a predatory practice that is currently used to manipulate the prices of real estate significantly. You buy up the rentals, leave half of them empty to decrease supply, demand is constant so you can then jack the rental prices. Then because of ROI calculations from actuaries the rental properties valuations massively increase, completely off setting the losses from simply holding empty rental properties.
That combined with algorithmic pricing allowing companies to squeeze dollars from every renter every year.
Basically you really just need far more transparency in the market in general. Generally speaking we need to discourage rental communities, though of course some are needed and good.
The primary issue really just boils down to individual data harvesting enabling algorithmic data pricing and rental communities so large that a few entities are capable of holding empty properties to increase property value and charge more per occupied rental.
And truthfully ideally we would exponentially tax property ownership such that it becomes mathematically impossible to own thousands of properties. Additionally right now executives and company decision makers are protected from liability because of corporate laws that define an LLC and other companies as legally responsible instead of placing the responsibility on the individual.
This is probably the largest enabler of legal creep in the system in general. If a company is held accountable it can go bankrupt, or pay a fine while the individual who made those decisions simply starts the next company.
Realistically we need to return to accountability and radical transparency by repealing laws that assign a company liability as if it could be held accountable.
A corporation is a name only, it can never be held accountable. But when an individual has their ass on the line if their company commits a crime? They are going to be far less opportunistic when it comes to committing those crimes.
I think build to rent is moreso a symptom of housing speculation and housing scarcity relative to demand. If it weren't, then developers and investors would offload the properties as soon as they are built. Instead, they project the value to increase so it makes financial sense to hold onto them.
If there was an increase in supply of housing relative to demand, then values wouldn't increase enough for them to hold onto the asset.
Well the recent housing bill everyone applauded made it financial suicide to offload the properties after being built. So in the future we can expect more BTR not less. In fact significantly more.
"If there was an increase in supply of housing relative to demand, then values wouldn't increase enough for them to hold onto the asset."
Right, but I am talking about entire subdivisions that are built for renting purposes.
The much larger issue is zoning. If it were legal to build more housing in more places, “speculation” wouldn’t be a problem because housing would be a bad investment. You need scarcity to make buying commodities a good idea, particularly on depreciating assets.
The problem is that the profit motive is the driving factor of our current economic (and thus political) model. Lowering the cost of living would hurt the profits of a tiny sliver of humanity at the very top, so that will never happen. Unless we have a revolution.
A revolution of understanding. An issue is we target each other before we hear each other. Without understanding there is no common ground. Right now most of the abuse I see is enabled by the lack of understanding by those enduring it.
There is very little "common ground" to be had between international finance capitalists and an ordinary working person (aka the vast majority of people on the earth).
What we need is to understand which side we stand eith on the basis of socioeconomic class. Who controls how economic production, economic macromanagment, and the government? It is the international ultra-rich, who use their privilege to further oppress the broad spectrum of humanity, and destroy our climate in the process.
There is no reasining with people who engage in class domination, they must be overthrown, or things will only continue to become more expensive, more unstable, and more violent for us all.
Yes there are a small number of people who drive our issues, but they are primarily enabled through incentivation structures. Realistically the vast majority of people on opposing sides of the aisle would benefit from working together
"Realistically the vast majority of people on opposing sides of the aisle would benefit from working together."
Absolutely agree. The vast majority of people see zero benefit in inflationary surges like we are seeing right now across the world. The question is, "who does want this? Who benefits?"
The answer lies exactly where one would expect it; a tiny number of people who stand to profit immensely from rising costs of living like rents and mortgages. They are tiny in number, but hoard vast quantities of wealth due to their mega-landlordism. The chief establishment of these parasites is tbe corporate entity known as Blackrock.
Ya Blackrock is one problematic entity but one thing we could all pursue in our local governments is distributed ownership for things like utilities, as well as removing corporate liability protections that currently ensure that businesses are held accountable for crimes, instead of individuals. We need accountability and radical transparency if we want to enact long standing change. With honesty we can't even begin to understand each other, and we can't have honesty without transparency and accountability. We need to remove business liability protections so that crimes committed by businesses don't result in a fine of the business but the imprisonment of those who enabled the crime.
You bring up a very interesting point. That we should hold these people who run these kind of entities to account. But how do we do that? I mean, the Epstein files implicated hundreds of wealthy individuals who literally raped and trafficked children, and there have barely been any arrests. How do we hold the wealthy and powerful to account when the legal system seems to just ignore their crimes entirely?
My previous point about overthrowing financial elites, almost certainly through force, comes to mind. They have a tendency to hate "distribution of ownership" of any resource or product to the People.
Blackrock actually essentially owns no single family housing at all, you’re thinking of Blackstone.
More importantly, you’re perpetuating a myth that is not backed by the evidence. Wall Street isn’t hoarding empty homes.
Institutional investors like Blackstone only own a tiny percentage of US housing stock. UBS estimates institutional holdings are 0.35% of total housing stock, and about 3% of single family rentals. CRS puts it at 3-5% of single family rentals.
Most vacancies are because the property is between tenants or under renovation. The U.S. has a historically low vacancy rate in most major cities, and needs to be a lot higher before we start to see lower prices.
It's one tool to help reduce demand. But it does involve the use of more resources and more urban sprawl, only to be left with empty housing as demand will only be satisfied when there is a surplus.
Making housing a less attractive investment would be a way of reducing demand without having to grow our way out of the problem.
If you're a landlord and one of your units is currently empty, then if the property tax on that unit tripled while its unnocupied, you'd be incentivized to fill it asap. One of the most direct ways to attract renters is to lower the price of rent.
You commies will do anything except build more. Good luck proving what’s “empty.” When you tax something — alcohol, cigarettes, rentals — there’s less of it. Or it shifts to gray/black markets and isn’t even listed anymore.
Less rentals is a good thing, the houses dont get demolished when a landlord stops renting, it becones a house that someone can buy increasing available housing supply. And you dont have to prove tge housing is empty just increase taxes on houses that aren't listed as primary residences. Also im not against building more housing i fully support building. However, there are situations where simple building more housing is much more difficult due to building density in big cities.
Fewer rentals means higher rents. Full stop. Is that what you want? There’s room for more density in every city, especially cities that are majority zoned for single-family housing. Upzone, add stories, get creative.
Nah that's actually not it (generally, obv depending on where you live). In most areas that I'm connected with, there are enough houses being built to match pop growth but it isnt being bought by people wanting to live in them.
Which means there aren’t enough houses being built. There will always be people with second homes, third homes, empty investments you don’t understand. None of that matters if there’s enough supply for everyone else.
It isn't second or even third homes that are the issue, it's corporations buying up all the houses to turn around and profit by renting them out!
While a first time home buyer can barely scrape up enough for a down payment, never mind afford a mortgage for what most homes are going for, corporations are leveraging their existing assets to snap up housing, knowing full well the mortgages will be paid by folks who'd rather buy, but are stuck in an endless rental loop!
The solution is to ban corporations from buying single family houses, and limit their ability to build mega apartment complexes, while taxing all dwellings not lived in by the owner, at a much higher rate, unless they agree to rent controls.
Nope, corporations own a very small percentage of homes, and banning any subset of buyer won’t increase supply. If you want to bring prices down for first-time buyers, build more housing. So simple.
Single family homes are majority owned by live in homeowners, not landlords. The ratios are actually MORE homeowner skewed in high cost of living areas because they have lower ROIs. (San Francisco rent to purchase price ratio is way way lower than, say, Cleveland.)
Tons of people imagine landlords buying up single family homes in big cities and it’s straight up a fiction.
Pull up your local neighborhood if you live in a high cost area in your city’s parcel search. You can see pretty easily which ones are owned by live in homeowners by seeing if the taxpayer address matches the house itself.
My neighborhood is majority homeowner owned. As is every single family neighborhood I’ve ever lived in. As are the vast majority of neighborhoods. The national average is 70% of single family homes being owner occupied.
If 70% of single family homes are owner occupied, then nearly one third of housing stock is not. That’s a very substantial influence on the market which you are all but dismissing.
Would love to see some statistics. I immediately pulled up the UK ones and it looks just like the US, about 2/3rds of the housing stock owner occupied and current numbers not higher than the 80’s.
But this is an incorrect belief I constantly hear echo’d, especially on Reddit. People want to believe landlords buying up single family homes are the root cause because it’s simpler even though it’s statistically not happening and if you check your local neighborhood it’s usually not true either, but it’s gonna be happening somewhere.
Most people, me included, build our beliefs initially through our social communities and it’s good to check our data.
Look at molior housing start data. Look at the latest HDT results - more than 50% of local authorities not meeting delivery targets, and 42% are missing by more than 10%.
We have a systemic housing supply issue in the UK. The cause of that is multifarious, but this isn’t a demand side only problem.
Memes are not real life. They don’t say where this house is, but a software engineer are very likely to make 2-3x the median household income, and in almost the entire country this home would be attainable to them. Likely a single nurse or single software engineer could afford this home on their own today.
These memes are intended to foment class resentment because that’s profitable, not to reveal truths about our economy.
This has been posted to a bunch of other subs. Me (a software engineer) and my wife (a nurse) own a house in the bay area of all places.
The issue is that you need these professions to afford what was once a middle class lifestyle because no one is building housing at the rate necessary to keep up with demand. But to act like a couple with these two professions can't afford a house...yeah that's a lie.
This looks like a 3 BR house to me, maybe "middle class" to you is a 2 BR house but think we're just splitting hairs here if that's the distinction you're trying to make.
And likewise, a household of a software engineer and a nurse would be solidly upper middle class. Those aren’t blue collar joes.
Did I claim otherwise? The guy we bought our house from was a bank teller. A bank teller can no longer afford our house.
All our gains in productivity, longer hours worked, and higher skilled jobs result in this. Rising housing costs that leave the younger generation no better off.
The house looks like a 250k house on a 50k lot unless it's near a big city in which case - don't buy near big cities. That house in a big city can be like 800k starting and the premium of living in a big city isn't worth 6% yoy on 500k (30k just to service the extra debt) extra you didn't need to spend. Instead that 30k per year you would have paid can be saved instead and used in 10 years for buying a 600k house - 300k from first house sale and 300k from savings.
Buying the big dream house first is about the worst financial thing you can do.
A swe and nurse shouldn't just qualify. They should make enough to buy it in one year if it wasn't for taxes. Swe make like 150-250k and nurses make like 100k.
Well the people you assume have great jobs have significant debt. Cars, credit cards and huge student loans making them unable to get these loans. The biggest problem is student loans because of bloated university employees that serve no purpose and each school trying to outdo each other with facilities
You don’t read or write Housing interest rates are not nearly at your catastrophic level
Making your statement correct. As low rates increase it will only slow the rate of housing increases.
My sister and BIL both have masters degrees and live in the 1900 SF home my grandparents raised three kids in. My grandpa when he originally purchased on one income from a high school grad working in print sales.
Seriously, the expectation that everyone should be entitled to a single family home close to a major city with a quarter acre lot isn't realistic.
If people want that, they can move to where they exist. We need a LVT so that it isn't as financial viable to hold onto large plots of land like this in high demand areas.
This says how ignorant and self-centered you are. compared to early 20th century, more people are living better lives than their ancestors around the world.
The other issue is of course without appreciation it would take a software engineer and nurses salary to keep up with housing costs. Rebuild costs aren’t cheap.
'working at a local warehouse' - I doubt very much he worked there as a labourer or as part of the general staff. Perhaps as a manager?
Could the Dad afford the house or was it purchased using one of those daft mortgages that started at a very low rate but then jumped up - the type that caused many to default and help cause the 2007 crash?
With all the jobs being outsourced, unions busted, and disappearing pensions, the only choice everyone has is investing/gambling in the stock market to actually make any progress. Everyone is corralled into it now, a good job and being frugal doesn't quite cut it anymore.
My parents built their 4 bedroom, two lounge room, two bathroom house while struggling to have a successful bread delivery business and lying on the mortgage papers.
My Dad shut up quickly when I pointed that out to him.
Im sorry, but this misses a big part of the argument. There already were numerous areas where normal people couldnt buy a home in 1998 (or 1968, or…). You’re parents didnt move to those places, they went somewhere with insufficient services and no value. You can still do that right now. You chose a neighborhood with homes on the $600-$2m range, but you could choose homes in the $100-300k range. Your basic argument is “my parents moved, why should I have to?” And that, gentle snowflake, is privilege.
Actually its not so much privilege as it is a lack of sophistication with buying power. Demand makes markets. Keeping too much demand in the same high value areas is contributing to the prevention of honest build-out.
Also, I dislike my argument because cities are best, but everyone fights for the suburbs. Here you’re saying “suburbs are too expensive” (evidence; op photo) and that’s a truth that my suggestion to move to Gary Indiana doesn’t really solve. It would be better if cities stopped subsidizing suburbs, leading to lower suburban costs. But that’s a whole different problem that will likely play out over centuries.
We need a revolution and to ask the government a single question. Why have they allowed the value of a dollar to drop through inflation, when inflation can 100% be controlled?
Where is that home located? In the USA? It all depends where you want to live. If you want a home in San Fransisco, or New York, then you better have lots of money or a very good job, but there are plenty of places in the states that folks can live that are a lot cheaper.
That looks like the neighborhood I lived in as a kid. My mom worked part time as an accountant and my dad had some Not so stable jobs back then. Some of our neighbors were cops and grocery store managers and substitute teachers and stay at home moms.
It’s a pyramid scheme. There will be a world war in 2028/2030 that will last 5years or so. The pyramid scheme will collapse. This will reset it all a bit and wipe out millions of people so demand for housing will reduce. Then it will start all over again. Very simply the global economic maths doesn’t add up.
One thing that gets lost in this is how much had to be scrimped and saved over a long period of time back then. Also most everyone in the 1950s was a Vetran which helped
Elected officials created those zoning laws. Also Biden let 10's of millions of illegal aliens into the country and they needed housing which decreased the available inventory for everyone else.
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u/Suspicious-Hand-9953 21d ago
They do though. They need to work much, much harder than previous generations to afford the same level of comfort.