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-restraint check
gen β, not ß
No, the Troika changed it when Germany took control of Greece 10 years ago.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
The most important thing is the rich getting richer
The Market Has Spoken: Get Fucked.
A riveting exploration of the markets and society of the 21st century that will be written in 2200 lol
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.
Europe was reduced to rubble, but my grandfathers, who were children 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. The other grandfather was the son of an orphan, still managed to do well.
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.
But there's actually an outrageous amount of wealth in the west. It just needs to be redistributed.
It's not an easy problem to fix, but it's relatively simple.
Unfortunately, much of that wealth was stolen from the global south via colonization. Redistribution of ownership must be done at a global, international level.
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 should've been taxing homes or land that people own but are 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.
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:
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.
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.
People who think of their children and want to give them the best future but don't have the money for it don't have children. People who don't care about the future of their children, ended up having children.
This leads to more children being born with shitty parents who don't care about them.
This is a bit unfair. There are lots of circumstances that result in children that weren't planned. Lots of millennials grew up being told to just pop out the babies and the rest will happen. No the fuck it doesn't. Not anymore anyway. Maybe that was true at some point but now what happens is they have to work harder than ever while daycare raises their kids. Meanwhile, they have to work a second job to just pay for daycare. When I was a kid I remember my mom getting a lot more gov assistance than seems to ever happen for people now. It was rough but we never had to worry a out keeping a roof over our heads or food on our table. Half those life changing programs are gone now. At least in my area.
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.
Being a millionaire isn't even enough anymore. You have to be at least a multimillionaire to live off of it.
meanwhile 1000 and 1 Stinkpieces are being written about population decline, blaming young generations for not getting busy while job and housing prospects go down the shitter.
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.
I am in my late 30s and was only just able to buy this month. It's the cheapest place I could find in my city, and the mortgage repayment will clean me and my SO out to the point where we can't afford to run a car. We're both in full time employment with an MSc.
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.
This is why billionaires are so obsessed with developing AI systems to replace all the serfs who will now never be born.
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.
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.
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.
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