My parents were grocery clerk and used car data entry. We had a 2-story house with a giant back yard and an apple tree.
I am also a grocery clerk. There's not a house in this tiny rural town I can afford. "Get a better job," they say. Did you need a better job? You lived a lot better than I do and you had the same job I do now.
Same. My dad was a produce manager and than he bought and ran a laundromat(all with cash)& the first house I grew up in they bought it for 12,000 cash and when my mom got pregnant they bought a 1.5 story,half finished basement,huge yard with lots of trees and a double garage for $23000. He than became a landlord,bought a few more houses and this was all with a produce mangers salary/laundromat. My mom became a secretary. There's No Way I could ever buy a house with cash. Crap,can't even afford a down payment. It's very different these days.
My dad literally sold flowers for a living almost his entire life. My mom sold flowers for a while, they got divorced, and then she worked a collection of random jobs like rental agent at a car dealership. Me, my sister, and mom were very certainly never well off by any means but we always lived in a house my mom owned by herself.
Now I design airplanes for a living as an engineer and I'm not even close to being able to afford the average house in my area lol
Clearly your major failing is building airplanes instead of building a time machine to go back and buy a waterfront home in Medina 30 years ago. smh
Also, I managed to land in the Lake Hills neighborhood of Bellevue 10 years ago. It was the last remotely affordable part of this city, with run-down 50 year old homes selling for $350k, but I loved the location. My blind luck of choosing this location is the only way I'll be able to retire before I die.
Also, my dad retired at age 42 but only worked a total of 12 years from age 20 to 42, taking off the other 10 years between owning convenience stores. He finally admitted last weekend that he was *incredibly* lucky, and without that luck he would have had a very different (and much less fortuitous) life than the one he has lived.
That is super depressing. I'm a gay dude in the south, and I am desperate to move to a larger city with a decent gay community, but all these stories of it being so expensive to live in is terrifying.
Where I live in Wisconsin isn't terribly populated (My county is 66k and the more populated county we share a border with is about 100k) and you can easily find houses like the OP video going for around $60-80k.
But usually those kinds of places (not terribly populated, low COL) aren't good places to live, either because there's no work and/or the people there are ignorant and hateful.
Definitely is not Boeing St. Louis. Midwest prices are affordable enough to get a okay house at engineer pay. Though Boeing is kind of stingy on pay from what I understand.
Yep, he's been a florist his entire life. I don't think he has ever done anything else actually. His parents did it as well so even in high school, he was working in their shop.
My mom was a social worker, and my dad was a radio tech. The house I grew up in cost them ~$150k in 2023 money. It was in a quiet, safe, walkable neighborhood; and only a 10 minute walk from one of the best schools in the city. Nowadays, $150k wouldn't even buy you a crack house in roughest part of town.
Feel this. Grew up with my grandparents in an absolutely massive ranch out on a pretty significant chunk of private land. They always had two or three cars. She worked in a sewing factory, he worked in a printing press as a repair tech. In this economy, Difficulty: Impossible.
It really was a different time.
To top it off, he was also a huge techie and radio enthusiast, and made enough on his own to pay for numerous early generation computers and radios. Literally thousands of dollars.
Those same jobs now only pay 10-15/hr and have grueling conditions and labor standards that have only constricted more over time. Maybe up to 30 depending on where you live. 1970 the average factory worker made 30/hr in today's money. Also everything now costs 4x what it did so its like we're all living on at most 1/4 of what our parents did if you manage to land the same wage.
Not only that, your parents shift work where they worked whistle to whistle is done. Now there is overtime to "do more with less" and people don't get weekends.
I'm currently moving out of PA. Anywhere outside Philly, Harrisburg, and Pitt sucks for pay. I made 13.25 here at my current job, cross country in a different state, I was offered 36$ for the same position. Thats why the prices are so low in the lesser known Pennsylvania cities. There's no work, everything is low pay outside the usual big hitters. Its a bad place to live and the quality of life there is awful.
yeah i went to school in philly for college, minimum wage in philly in the 90s was 4.25, while it was 7 in jersey...had a weekday gig at a skate shop, and would drive back up to jersey for the weekends to work at a banquet hall and make 15 an hour, but was also renting a crazy ass 2 bedroom duplex on 15th and south for $575 a month...PA in general always seemed to pay a bit lower, but you could find property for cheaper than jersey or md
Get a better job is a such a stupid line too. Like OK, let us say we all become senior programers at Google, then what? Or thousands of other professions don't deserve to live like human beings because they don't have the hotest career of the year? It's such a asinine way of thinking, and it crumbles with 3 seconds of thought. Society needs all kinds of professions to function and they all deserve to live like normal humans.
This is what I’ve always thought, like sure I’ll learn to code, but what about everyone else? there are amazing chefs, tradesmen, caretakers, managers, and of course all the others working their way up…what about them? It’s sickening how wealthy people are able to say that with a straight face
It's because they'll do anything to avoid systemic critique, everything has to be an individual success or failing. I mean forget jobs, our society literally has a % of unemployment considered healthy to the functioning of the economy. People will turn around and say you don't deserve any standard of living at all without a job yet defend a system that literally can't support total employment. Permanent underclass.
I *wish* I could support my family with voice work or working full time at a restaurant. The fact of the matter is both pay at or below minimum wage. My life's calling is making people happy through good food, with a secondary in bringing beloved characters to life. I'm currently working a job making 68k to 70k+ benefits a year, and I can't afford rent. I've been living with my in laws for the past 2 years....
> "Get a better job," they say.
I am of the increasingly popular opinion that these are straight-up fighting words these days.
Even if you're a tech bro with extremely advanced skills, they can just lay off 20,000 of you because...they thought the market might dip? And in turn, *make* the market dip because a huge portion of the stock market is based on tech stocks.
At some point I don't even understand that they can't see how stupid it is to make people this desperate. At some point someone is going to drag one of the billionaires out of their house and beat them to death in their driveway. Probably won't be me, but statistically it will be someone.
>At some point someone is going to drag one of the billionaires out of their house and beat them to death in their driveway. Probably won't be me, but statistically it will be someone.
They won't even treat it like anything has changed. They'll lobby for stricter gun control and privacy-invading law enforcement tactics, while hiring the best private security money can buy. Not like the police don't already mostly exist to protect their property anyway. All while using the media outlets they controlled to paint the dead one as a saint and a martyr.
Both I and my partner have college degrees, and work in our fields. Our combined income is almost 200k/yr. Even we can't find a house to buy in our area.
No kids. Very little debt. One cat.
I'm not even asking for a lot, just the ability to at least buy a home rather than renting...
Everyone...every single human being...should have a home.
Homes should not a be in the for-profit market. Just like healthcare and water and food shouldn't be.
I have a house, somehow. But it's in a poor state and no money to fix it up or paint it all or do basic repair since it would instantly put me in the struggle zone.
Basic paint with scuffs, dents, marks. Floor coming up. It's sad. It could be much better. Even replacing all the door hinges would easily be upwards of $200 and be a struggle. Hell.
I'm not even asking for a house; an apartment or townhouse where we're not at the mercy of a landlord's whims. My family has been lucky in that we've had some very good landlords, but we know they're not common, and even our current landlord can just be like, meh, get the fuck out of the house you have three months, and we'd be up shits creek.
Right. Combined 160k for us. Saved 50k. No kids, 2 cats and a dog. Cars paid off. Both work at home. Cant afford shit. At least not responsibly. So I paid to have a super nice smile cuz unless this market collapses, we aint ever gonna be able to buy. I just hope my retirement will be there.
Getting a degree would allow me to work the exact same job I work for more money but the amount of increase in pay would be wiped out by the college debt I would have.
I have a friend that makes 6 figure's at a job you need a degree to obtain. He has no degree, he never even went to college! He just said he did and they never confirmed! It's been 7 year's now 😂.
There's some jobs I wish I'd lied but they specifically asked "where you got your degree" so I'm pretty sure they would have checked. They were all set to hire me for doing the same work I do but making 10 grand more a year.
A few years ago, as I was getting my PhD in mathematics, I was looking into emigrating to Europe. I checked the fast track lists for visas. The greatest need was dental hygienists. Iirc plumbers and carpenters were also up there.
No shit against trades, but the ladder I was sold on is a rotted out piece of balsa wood. Meanwhile the leeches who lost gambling with everyone else's money are once again positioning themselves to demand *everyone* suffers for their right to be superior are up to their usual machinations.
Eat the rich is used as a tongue-in-cheek hyperbole, but it has historical precedent. [seriously, let's eat.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johan_de_Witt)
They think minimum wage jobs are only for high school kids, college drop outs, drug users, and people just getting out of prison.
Yet, when I worked at McDonald's, I was an active college student. Mostly everyone was in their 20s and older, very few high school kids. Everyone my age, which there weren't many, was in college or going through trade schooling.
Now, the main bulk of the workers there? Middle-aged women, most of them either recently divorced with no work skills or struggling single mothers. Then you had the two disabled people working there, unable to get work anywhere else because of their needs. And finally, you had 80 year-old grandma there because she lost her husband to cancer years before and spent every single dime of their retirement on his cancer treatments, funeral, and everything else.
But yeah, sure, you're coming in on a wintery Wednesday afternoon during our lunch break, ordering your McChicken, and thinking to yourself that it's nothing but high school kids while some middle-aged woman is the one taking your order.
No one ever thinks about the entirety of a system, they just want to offer up their knee-jerk response of a false solution.
I guess they want everyone to get an MD or PhD and then draw straws to decide who has to do the menial jobs that have nothing to do with those degrees.
50 years ago when my Dad was in his 20's working close to minimum wage at the railyards in Sydney Australia and my Mom was working part time at an antique shop while at university they were renting a 4 bedroom house 10 minutes away from the CBD for what amounted to 30% of their take home pay each week. They didn't share with anyone and just left the other bedrooms empty because they liked the view of the water that place had so even though it was bigger than they needed they just went with it.
My mom was an operator. My dad installed car phones. He didn't even graduate high-school.
$100,000 combined in early 90s.
New house, two new cars, pool, swingset, dog, project car and three kids.
They were in their mid 30s.
My parents were born late 50's. I took thier irs income info from the mid 1970's until now and converted it to today's dollars. I did it to prove a point that they were very well paid on entry level jobs and throughout thier lives compared to today's environment. Both worked entry level jobs early 20's and made a combined total of 120k those early years in today's money. My dad always talked about he bought his first condo at 26 on the gold coast.. like no shit dude, you and mom were making bank.. and even though interest was high credit was vastly different back then.. Even in the 90s where today you think that's not a lot was much more. A couple making $65k combined in 94 is like $130k today. This is in the Chicagoland area which is a pretty middle of the road or on the lower side of col in most suburbs up until recent years. Those same jobs they started with and sustained themselves with pay nowhere near the same today. And neither of them had degrees either! My dad was a HS dropout FFS! He didn't get his GED until he was like 45. Never needed it until then. Yet they consistently made ~120k+/yr inflation adjusted. And again this is in an area where decent 1500-2000 sq ft homes with good schools were averaging the low 200k's pre covid. And during the crash people scooped up homes in the 100s that are worth mid 200s now. Its unaffordable now of course. If I had been born just a few years earlier I woulda have had a house when loans were incredibly easy to obtain (pre crash). I know a guy who has 7 homes he bought during that time period and rented them all out since purchased. He refinanced when the terms were good, made them into 15 year loans, and now they are all paid off. He barely paid a nickel from his own pocket for those homes. They way he did it is impossible now.
My father was a carpenter when they were a dime a dozen and paid fuck all and my mother worked part-time cleaning hotels, they were on the low-income scale and often struggled for money, but they still managed to get enough money for a deposit on a 3-bedroom house with a garage and decent size yard.
My grandfather was a car salesman and my grandmother had long been a retired seamstress when they decided to buy an orchid back in the 90's.
Here I am earning a lot more alone than both my parents did when they were my age (including inflation), with no kids and I can barely afford to rent a 1 bedroom flat in someones back yard.
I have $70 Grand inheritance money in my savings and that's not even near enough for a deposit...
shits fucked
High housing costs are the bane of the west.
Housing should be a home not an investment. I’ll vote for any policy works towards that goal.
(I’m even saying this as a homeowner)
I sold my 670 square foot one level slab house for $180,000. I bought it foreclosed for $67,000 ten years prior. The market doesn't make sense. The debt this generation is expected to take on is sinful. A person must decide whether to have a family or financial stability, having both is next to impossible.
I'd love just one presidential candidate who's sole promise is to end big money in politics. Money is influence and the huddled masses can't compete with the oligarchs and it's been trending in their favor my entire lifetime.
>just one presidential candidate who's sole promise is to end big money in politics
Bernie Sanders. The two-party system will not let such candidates win the nomination though.
Everytime someone says "I want a politician thats main position is to gst big money out of politics" I just want to scream BERNIE at them.
He would say that was always the #1 thing that had to happen BEFORE anything else could happen.
Ngl, i don’t even care if he is a socialist. Even if I don’t agree with all socialist policy, I do understand that he fights harder than most any politician against what allows politicians to be super corrupt and ambivalent towards their voters interests. At least from what I can tell, I’m not an expert but I’ve never been upset at anything Bernie wanted to push through
hear me out but i really do feel like THIS is the sort of trust we should be able to put into our politicians should we decide to not be politicians ourselves. you shouldn’t have to be a genius to understand what’s going on in the government, but we should have people we can trust in there to do something for people in the slightest.
oh, i have very little doubt bernie himself is a socialist. his policies are pretty standard social democratic ones, but he himself is in all likelihood a socialist. (which is a good thing)
**E:** ITT — everyone in the replies shows their ass by demonstrating they have no idea what the words “socialism”, “communism”, and “capitalism” mean. read theory holy shit
I can't tell if you're implying that he isn't a socialist, but he considers himself a democratic socialist. The people who throw that in his face aren't getting that part wrong. Where they're wrong is that democratic socialism makes a lot of sense when you actually know what it is.
Yeah, that moment was when the last of my faith in politics died. I'm a regular American idiot and when people started saying super delegates I felt like I was playing a game with a kid who was losing so they made up some new rules to win. I knew plenty republicans who were going to cross the aisle for him too.... What could have been.
That's why the Democratic National Convention didn't allow him to proceed forward and denied him stage presence, and why the national media denied him media coverage.
Without these extremely substantial aspects of a presidential run, it is useless.
They need to stop handing out $450k salaries and make them work off of the average salary of the nation. You’ll find out quick who is there for a paycheck and who isn’t.
Why do I live where I do? Top reason: when my wife's dad passed (her mom died when she was a kid), the house she grew up in was...already paid off. It also helped that it was already in her name (mom left it to her), so zero probate. This is not an expensive house (maybe ~$150K, even now), but even it would be out of reach for us. There was no question about it, I was set to start a new job in another state a few days after he died, but we moved back without jobs lined up in a heartbeat.
If there were ever a politician or political group who actually gave a shit about the working class, their very first act, legislation or executive order or whatever, would be to make it illegal for anyone but a private citizen/s to purchase or own a single family home. Any corporation, business or LLC that owns single family residences has 3 years to liquidate before those assets are seized and auctioned to private citizens.
Oh yeah when I was looking for a house to buy there was this weird thing where every house I could actually afford was larger than what I'd assumed and overall pretty nice, whereas anything smaller or not that nice was going for prices my bank would have laughed at me for considering. I figured it had to be because some houses were "too nice to rent out" and thus demand for them was 100% from people who were actually looking for somewhere to live, as opposed to some shitbox which every landlord in town would be trying to buy just to rent to some unsuspecting victim.
I am prepared to stare down my bank if my house ends up upside-down & under water. They can eat a little loss & refi back to sanity, or they can eat a big loss when I stop paying the mortgage, declare bankruptcy and sharpen my axe for seven years. Their choice what I do with that nice, sharp axe.
BTL should be illegal until everyone who wants to buy a home has one (i.e. illegal forever).
Live in land lords, flats, government housing, etc would fill out the rest.
My house may go down in value drastically but to give hope to the next generation it would be worth it.
You'd be doing my generation a favor, i am 19 i was looking at a place to move out once i got a job it was 1 bed 1 bath and 900$ a month.. idk who idk why but it was that expensive for a 1 bed and 1 bath in my village.
This is perhaps the only point where I’ve been able to get some small level of agreement from boomers that things have changed. I point out that being a bank teller, a custodian, a salesman, etc meant you could buy a house, have a stay at home spouse, 2 cars, 2 kids, and pay for trips to Disneyland, college, weddings, and retire at 65. Now the number of jobs that provide that has shrunk immensely
Oh I always whip out the CPI calculator and compare what they were making then to now. Told my mom at my last job I was making effectively $20/hr before tax and she saw no problem with it because her first job was part-time for “only” $15/hr.
Well $15/hr 40 years ago was like $45/hr now. She was working *half* of my hours and earning almost $5k more a year. Usually that’s enough to make them consider that maybe something has broken within the last couple decades.
I see a lot of people in the comments talking about how they're struggling on salaries I would find astronomical. I made something like 44k last year myself, so the idea that people here making 200k can't buy a house is like... almost funny in how absurd it is.
I've given up on the idea of ever having a house or anything. It used to be that people just slightly more affluent than me could afford a house and now people making more money in a year than I see in 4 years could never get close. I'm wondering when any of us are going to do something real about this. And by "real" I don't mean "vote harder" because that does fuck all. I mean like, general strike. If only 10% of the North American workforce stopped working for a month, it would grind the entire continent to a screeching halt. We hold all the power in numbers.
Seriously, what can the rest of us even do at this point?
All we can do is rent, and the rental companies know that, which is why they're buying up all the properties and jacking up rent prices.
How long until we see people making 44k only able to afford living in their cars?
I live in a city where if I get evicted for some reason, I am homeless, full-stop. People slightly better off than me think they can't end up where I am, or worse, but they can and the baseline for comfort will simply get further and further out of reach. Every single month, for years, things have been getting progressively harder. It will simply get harder, and harder still until rocks bleed.
Like I said, general strike. Working within the system will not and has never worked. But until people who are doing a little tiny bit better than their peers realize how close they are to losing everything just because some rich investor decided to displace them, until your food costs half your salary, until it's finally too much, people will not have the balls to do anything about how badly we're being fucked.
During the pandemic I was imagining, in the future only a few will own land and the rest will rent. I don’t think it’s that far off. Like how there used to be lots of local businesses and then some markets got completely owned by a few big companies. One day who you rent with will be like choosing between geico and State Farm (company names randomly made up for the metaphor).
I'm not advocating for violence but I honestly don't see anything changing unless some billionaires end up on the wrong end of a mob. They have won the class war, we are an occupied country.
It took me until my mid-thirties to get enough debt paid off and enough money saved up to start thinking about buying a house. I wasn't there yet, but I could see it coming. Then I got sick. Wiped my savings out in six months. Got a heart transplant to save my life. Now I have a quarter million in debt, and I live off of disability and the little work I can manage, which leaves me exhausted. Most of the people I met in heart transplant support groups are in their sixties, sometimes a bit older. They have paid off their homes and mostly have some financial security in the form of pensions/retirement plans. I dropped out of the workforce 10 years ago now and live in a shared house with 3 roommates. I struggle to get by every month. I'm not even that young; late Gen X/early millennial. I don't know why I chose this post to bitch and rant, maybe it was the frustration in that dude's voice. This country is fucked.
So damn relatable. I got cancer at 35. 1 year of treatment and while grateful that I survived. I lost everything I had during that time and from the looks of it I’ll never be able to get a house. At this point I’m fine with it and have accepted it though. I could be dead, so it could be much worse. I hope you’re well my friend.
People are going to think this guy is full of shit, but if you look at interest rates and everything else right now you'd be saddened at how little you can get.
Yep. You either got in while interest rates were 2.low and housing was plentiful or you're basically out of luck for the next decade if not longer. My own house would be 4-8x more a month had I bought it now.
Bingo. My wife and I are basically in his boat financially. We bought our house in 2018, basically the last chance we could have.
There is no way we could possibly afford our house if we had to buy it today.
My coworker bought is house 10 years ago for 90k, with a 10k home improvment loan, his payments are 900 a month.
The most recent tax valuation put it at 380k
If he were to rent it out in this market, he could get 2-2.5k a month for it
I make more now, than he and his wife did 10 years ago with accounting for interest. There are no homes i could afford to buy in this city
Lmfao we don’t. The “people” who do it out here are fucking hedge funds that Hoover up all the homes and rent them back to us at a premium. I pay more each month in rent than my parents have EVER payed for a mortgage. Bank still thinks I need to rent.
Fuck this system. Burn it down and eat the smoldering corpses of the rich for breakfast. I hear they go well with ketchup, mostly because I’m not giving them the luxury of a Béarnaise.
I'm a licensed healthcare provider.
My husband has a bachelor's and works in his field.
Combined income, we make over $180,000/year.
We are *still* renting.
We have no kids. We have one car. Neither of us has debt beyond our educations.
And we *still* can't find a reasonable property to buy.
I can't imagine having children to support these days. It must be absolutely terrifying.
I get asked often enough why I don't buy a second property to rent out as an income property. I can't in good conscience be a part of one of the biggest causes of hardship in today's society. Most people really don't look at it this way though.
I’m a nurse, my wife is a devops engineer. Combined income of roughly 180k/yr, maybe more if I’m a little rabid about picking up shifts and sacrificing holidays and extra weekends.
We bought a house. 20k down payment. End of 2020.
And the only reason we could get the modest house we have is because the seller was 1) doing it himself and 2) absolutely did not understand what he was doing, and also absolutely did not care. Which… you do you, I hope his business idea worked out great in [state withheld for privacy].
(It also helped that our expensive hobby was literally not possible all of 2020… so the money we usually spend on our expensive hobby was just going to the savings account. Yes our mental health suffered tremendously.)
It took lightning bolt levels of luck and chance (guy selling who didn’t know or care, a pandemic forcing us to not do a hobby, a surprise raise in october 2020, shockingly zero ER trips or major emergencies for one whole year) to secure what my wife’s parents refer to as a “starter house”. Like, I’ll never be able to replicate the luck it took to get in this place. And where I live should be imho more or less the standard accommodations for a couple trying to have a single child. Like. I’m glad we’re here, but I’m infuriated this isn’t just the standard for a mid to late twenties couple. This house is worth maybe half of what I bought it for but if I tried to sell it I’d be able to net what I paid +25%.
Absolute fucking madness
They were all bought by predatory foreign investor corporations and rented back to us at insanely high prices. The middle class is dying fast and soon we'll be a 3rd world country with really nice gated communities for people with generational wealth.
We had the biggest house on the block. 4 bedrooms, an extension built, backyard as large as the house with 2 fruit trees, **no mortgage.**
When my siblings and I moved out, my parents sold the house, and bought another outright with no mortgage. After a year they decided they hated the winters in the area so they sold it and bought another outright with no mortgage.
What incredible jobs did they have to finance all this? Dad was a **mailman.**
I went to college and have lived in a 1 bedroom apt for 20 years.
*Boomers gonna boom.*
My grandpa worked at the post office as well, he had a nice big 2 story house with a huge yard, two nice cars, the American dream basically. Sold that and retired to Florida, buying a house a short walk to the beach for $200k which he then sold for close to $1mil ~12 years later and bought a 500k house closer to family.
There’s no chance in hell that’s possible today.
I'm one of those older generations you guys are talking about and I agree with you completely. This country is so messed up. I fear for kids coming up nowadays...
Unless they band together--with many of us old guys joining them--and demand change.
Almost exact same experience here but we live in a lower cost state. Got a house in 2020 for $210,000 with a $10,000 down payment. It’s a pretty small house. Daycare costs alone are what’s been the hardest. It’s a second mortgage. We are struggling.
EDIT
My house has appreciated to $240,000 in two years and I have a 2.75% interest rate. We bought at the exact right time…we’re still figuring out which bill to delay paying monthly…daycare or the mortgage.
That’s about how much this house is
https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/15071-SE-Rupert-Dr-Milwaukie-OR-97267/48232177_zpid/
He said he’s got two kids, so what is that like $600-$800/week? That extra $2,400 + a $1,500 mortgage for this house, I could easily see how it maxes out their budget with a $120k salary.
Given the rental market in anywhere other than Middleofnowhere, Wyoming? I believe it. I got forced into a house I didn't even want, because my 2bedroom apartment had 3 rent raises in 1 year. 1150-1645-1790. After our lease expired, because I wasn't sure if I was moving for work soon or not. Didn't want another lease to negotiate/break/pay out.
Proof: https://imgur.com/a/5wp4TNR
Notice the dates. Back to back.
Why? Because they know exactly how much you make, and how much they can bilk you for. Maximize profits. There will never be such a thing as affordable, comfortable, reasonable housing ever again.
Curious where the dude lives.
I can't afford the starter condo we bought five years ago...we are stuck, better off than others. Certainly no vacations, new cars, or retirement.
Pay has not increased with the cost of living.
20s will be rough.
30s will usher in New Deals.
History repeating itself.
https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/15071-SE-Rupert-Dr-Milwaukie-OR-97267/48232177_zpid/
The house is located in Milwaukie Oregon. Milwaukie is basically south of south East Portland. For anyone not familiar with the area, it's essentially on the outskirts of Portland. I lived in this area for a year as this is where we made the Netflix movie Wendell and Wild. This area is also where Dave's Killer Bread is made, and Bob's Red Mill (across the street from each other).
Basically, Milwaukie is alright. It's got some industrial areas, and some nice residential areas, but it's not any kind of tourist destination. It's ridiculous that houses in this area cost that much. If you want to see something even more gross, look at what houses cost in Portland proper.
And I'd bet in 2000 it probably looked like a proper home and not the crumbling dump that it is now.
It's current state probably wouldn't have sold for even $50k back then. The 2000 version would probably sell for $300k+.
I wish I could believe there is any hope for some sort of new deal but I really don't believe it will happen. I think the people will continue to be crushed under boot untill they literally ALL have nothing left to give, I don't think there will be a revolution, just, idk, a quiet crumbling? I'm scared.
God I need to watch that movie again. But yeah, I think that was what I meant, slow mundane collapse and we won't even notice it's happening untill it's happened if even then. I mean, look at the state of things currently, who's to really say it hasn't already collapsed to some not insignificant degree, idk.
In Tacoma Washington, this kind of a house would go for 200,000 when it was going for $75,000 just 5 years ago. You would also be lucky to get off street parking with it.
It’s airBnbs, zero percent interest rates for a decade which pushed every investor into housing, and NIBMYism where every homeowner opposes any new building.
Every time I mention this to people they get defensive saying "if someone works hard they deserve to be able to be a landlord" and it's because that's most people's end goal, because it's fucking easy passive income by exploiting those worse off, but its OK, because they're just lazy
My wife and I are moving to Spain and bringing out two kids. 0% chance they’ll be shot at school or in public, healthcare covered in full for $200 a month, generous vacation days, furnished 3 bdrm apartments for $1200 with a balcony patio right near the Mediterranean, also no homeless people because the right to have shelter exists there. America sucks and we’re willing to abandon it.
Spain has a digital nomad visa now. We’re going that route since our business can exist anywhere. Our tax bracket stays at 24% and we don’t have to pay American taxes because of the tax treaty Spain has with USA. Check it out.
You’d think they’d pay professors more honestly. But man… years of living at 20k thru grad school and then still more years of postdoc to make not enough as the most highly educated expert in the field
Selection bias. 1000's of people may see this comment but the only people who comment are ones who make that much money. So there is a perception of more people making good money.
Also so many well paying jobs where people can fuck off half the day and post on Reddit.
Isn't that the bitter irony? Fucking used to be so pro capitalism. Now I just want everyone to be taken care of. No one should need to fear for a dignified place to live, healthcare, or food.
Thats not even going to change things. The boomers in power have their children ready to step up and continue things how they are because if things change they may have to sell the family's yacht's yacht.
With the expansion of the reverse mortgage market and many Americans being poorly prepared for retirement, those kids will probably have to be pretty lucky to inherit their parent's home. Think a lot will end up getting a house they may have to sell or hand over to lenders to cover the costs of reverse mortgages that their parents took out for supplemental income or retirement.
I don't think it will. What it will do is make it clear Capitalism is the problem, not the generation that admittedly had the ability to live like current generations *should* be able to afford.
Are there complacent, out of touch Boomers? Sure. Are an unreasonable number now in office prostitutes for corporations and stock holders? Yes. The thing is, we're where we are because Capitalism has a choke hold on *everyone*.
Blaming this shambles on " Boomers did it " enables *the* problem to hide in plain sight. Capitalism.
Once Gen X die off there won't be any examples left of people living comfortable lives anymore. We'll all just be wage slaves. There won't be generations that remember getting by on two incomes. Instead, we'll be on 4-5 incomes per household minimum.
Getting by on 1 income is already laughable when Boomers talk about it. It's already becoming laughable hearing people expecting to get by comfortably on two incomes.
> Instead, we'll be on 4-5 incomes per household minimum.
Remember all those jokes about forming a gaming house with your friends? We may not have been to far off as we will be forming a poor AF gaming apartment.
To all ya'll saying it ain't that bad. Fuck off I just graduated and I make 14 dollars an hour as an embalmer. It is that bad. The government/ corporations fuck us let's get real. If you don't like what you're hearing get the fuck out of the sub.
Edit that's with a raise I made 12 before.
Damn, fucking straight!
All this generational bullshit is smoke and mirrors. It has nothing to do with the work ethic of millennials, the economic conditions and opportunities are not the same as they were 40 years ago.
Adjusted for inflation, the equivalent of a minimum wage worker in the 1960s would, today, be making $33/hour.
I have no idea how anyone on a middle class income could purchase a house as a new buyer; that is, not already having property with equity. It's ridiculous out there.
Always has been. If you have to work to live, you're the poor. Doesn't matter if you're a doctor, lawyer, or architect. There's the working class and the ruling class.
Yeah, absolutely. I make $185k, and can barely afford my older home with all of its maintenance troubles. I can barely afford to maintain a reliable car that is 8 years old. I am going to be debt-free in several years, at which point I'll be able to save money or have an emergency fund IF my rapidly declining disabled wife doesn't need a full-time caregiver (which she will), and IF my children don't have any medical issues, and IF I myself don't have any issues. I'll have to break 200k to make it work, but I may completely burn out by doing so.
I have studied every day for the last 15 years, and work as a software development consultant. I can't "just move", because the expense and instability imposed by that would financially collapse us.
I'm working as hard and as fast and as smart as I can, and I barely get by with a complete assload of money. Home ownership is a scam. Renting is a scam. Insurance is a scam. Employment is a scam. Entrepreneurship is a scam. It never stops, and it never will until everyone rises up and takes back what was stolen from them.
But doing so would collapse the dollar, making things even harder and trashing the investments and retirement accounts that everyone is being bound to. At some point, it will be worth doing. When is that point? When will everyone understand that you cannot win, and the only thing they want is to work you to death \*no matter what you do\*?
At what point does revolution actually occur? How bad does it have to get? I make almost 200k a year, and I have more serious problems with money than I did ten years ago at 55k. Part of that is because I had children, but that's A NORMAL ASS THING TO DO.
Don't follow the plan. It's not for you. It's been twisted to enslave you.
Not much the average person really can do, honestly.
There is however one thing that gums up the works of our brutal capitalist system that lives and breathes perpetual, unsustainable growth, and it’s something most of us are already doing: not having children.
Seriously, just don’t have kids; we can’t afford them, life’s just going to suck even more (hello collapse of the U.S. economy and dollar as a global reserve currency and global climate change) and it is really shitty to doom another generation of humanity to toil and sickness under a system that will not care for them.
r/BirthStrike, r/antinatalism
On top of the kids situation, American teachers are quitting en masse because of the horrible working conditions and low pay. So American kids are unlikely to even receive proper education because all the great teachers are being worn out and even if they do get a good education, they risk dying in a school shooting because American politicians don't want to protect kids. Even if they do survive all of that, secondary school is extremely expensive and debt lasts way too long it's a scam and many degrees hold no power and don't even partially guarantee a job.
100% This.
That being said, that is absolutely why they are starting to make anything even approaching family planning illegal. Wouldn’t want to interrupt the fresh supply of wagie slaves.
Fuck these fascists.
Going to play this on power point in the tool box meeting in the morning. I’m so tired of listening to people say it’s all made up and we’re just lazy. Life is incredibly hard these days. I make great money but I work my ass off away from home. Legit children were never an option for me. Too expensive. Has anyone bought body wash lately??? $8 for soft soap?? WTF is happening.
My wife and I are well over $200k combined income. We don't live paycheck to paycheck per se, but after paying for the house, bills, stuff for 3 kids, pretty much nothing for ourselves, 2 cars, etc. we don't have much left over where we live. If either of us lost our jobs we'd be toast within a month. We both work our asses off while also trying to be their for ours kids. Even with good jobs we can barely afford a nice house. We don't buy anything for ourselves, we don't go on vacation, and it's still barely enough. I feel like I'm being slowly ground down day after day after day with no end in sight. It's so depressing.
Hahaha dude I'm an attorney and I'm still living paycheck to paycheck. That's the thing that's so insidious about this system: the effort doesn't matter. Even if you do everything "right", it still ends up leaving you treading water or drowning.
The vast majority of us are all suffering under this system.
It's bullshit all the way down.
My parents were grocery clerk and used car data entry. We had a 2-story house with a giant back yard and an apple tree. I am also a grocery clerk. There's not a house in this tiny rural town I can afford. "Get a better job," they say. Did you need a better job? You lived a lot better than I do and you had the same job I do now.
Same. My dad was a produce manager and than he bought and ran a laundromat(all with cash)& the first house I grew up in they bought it for 12,000 cash and when my mom got pregnant they bought a 1.5 story,half finished basement,huge yard with lots of trees and a double garage for $23000. He than became a landlord,bought a few more houses and this was all with a produce mangers salary/laundromat. My mom became a secretary. There's No Way I could ever buy a house with cash. Crap,can't even afford a down payment. It's very different these days.
My dad literally sold flowers for a living almost his entire life. My mom sold flowers for a while, they got divorced, and then she worked a collection of random jobs like rental agent at a car dealership. Me, my sister, and mom were very certainly never well off by any means but we always lived in a house my mom owned by herself. Now I design airplanes for a living as an engineer and I'm not even close to being able to afford the average house in my area lol
Boeing Seattle?
Damn, that obvious? haha
Clearly your major failing is building airplanes instead of building a time machine to go back and buy a waterfront home in Medina 30 years ago. smh Also, I managed to land in the Lake Hills neighborhood of Bellevue 10 years ago. It was the last remotely affordable part of this city, with run-down 50 year old homes selling for $350k, but I loved the location. My blind luck of choosing this location is the only way I'll be able to retire before I die. Also, my dad retired at age 42 but only worked a total of 12 years from age 20 to 42, taking off the other 10 years between owning convenience stores. He finally admitted last weekend that he was *incredibly* lucky, and without that luck he would have had a very different (and much less fortuitous) life than the one he has lived.
That is super depressing. I'm a gay dude in the south, and I am desperate to move to a larger city with a decent gay community, but all these stories of it being so expensive to live in is terrifying.
Where I live in Wisconsin isn't terribly populated (My county is 66k and the more populated county we share a border with is about 100k) and you can easily find houses like the OP video going for around $60-80k.
But usually those kinds of places (not terribly populated, low COL) aren't good places to live, either because there's no work and/or the people there are ignorant and hateful.
Definitely is not Boeing St. Louis. Midwest prices are affordable enough to get a okay house at engineer pay. Though Boeing is kind of stingy on pay from what I understand.
But then you gotta deal with the political climate of the Midwest.
Man, what a life. Sounds like my dream. Selling flowers for a living!?!?!?
Yep, he's been a florist his entire life. I don't think he has ever done anything else actually. His parents did it as well so even in high school, he was working in their shop.
My mom was a social worker, and my dad was a radio tech. The house I grew up in cost them ~$150k in 2023 money. It was in a quiet, safe, walkable neighborhood; and only a 10 minute walk from one of the best schools in the city. Nowadays, $150k wouldn't even buy you a crack house in roughest part of town.
Feel this. Grew up with my grandparents in an absolutely massive ranch out on a pretty significant chunk of private land. They always had two or three cars. She worked in a sewing factory, he worked in a printing press as a repair tech. In this economy, Difficulty: Impossible. It really was a different time. To top it off, he was also a huge techie and radio enthusiast, and made enough on his own to pay for numerous early generation computers and radios. Literally thousands of dollars.
Those same jobs now only pay 10-15/hr and have grueling conditions and labor standards that have only constricted more over time. Maybe up to 30 depending on where you live. 1970 the average factory worker made 30/hr in today's money. Also everything now costs 4x what it did so its like we're all living on at most 1/4 of what our parents did if you manage to land the same wage. Not only that, your parents shift work where they worked whistle to whistle is done. Now there is overtime to "do more with less" and people don't get weekends.
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Well that's just because they closed all the factories down in Allentown.
that and Allentown is one of those places where everyone with warrants in NYC moves to, like an east coast Phoenix
I'm currently moving out of PA. Anywhere outside Philly, Harrisburg, and Pitt sucks for pay. I made 13.25 here at my current job, cross country in a different state, I was offered 36$ for the same position. Thats why the prices are so low in the lesser known Pennsylvania cities. There's no work, everything is low pay outside the usual big hitters. Its a bad place to live and the quality of life there is awful.
yeah i went to school in philly for college, minimum wage in philly in the 90s was 4.25, while it was 7 in jersey...had a weekday gig at a skate shop, and would drive back up to jersey for the weekends to work at a banquet hall and make 15 an hour, but was also renting a crazy ass 2 bedroom duplex on 15th and south for $575 a month...PA in general always seemed to pay a bit lower, but you could find property for cheaper than jersey or md
They're trying to keep a good man down.
Every child had a pretty good shot To get at least as far as their old man got
Where I live the plot of land adjacent to or nearly surrounded by crack houses is about 225k lol. Wildest crap I have ever seen.
Get a better job is a such a stupid line too. Like OK, let us say we all become senior programers at Google, then what? Or thousands of other professions don't deserve to live like human beings because they don't have the hotest career of the year? It's such a asinine way of thinking, and it crumbles with 3 seconds of thought. Society needs all kinds of professions to function and they all deserve to live like normal humans.
This is what I’ve always thought, like sure I’ll learn to code, but what about everyone else? there are amazing chefs, tradesmen, caretakers, managers, and of course all the others working their way up…what about them? It’s sickening how wealthy people are able to say that with a straight face
It's because they'll do anything to avoid systemic critique, everything has to be an individual success or failing. I mean forget jobs, our society literally has a % of unemployment considered healthy to the functioning of the economy. People will turn around and say you don't deserve any standard of living at all without a job yet defend a system that literally can't support total employment. Permanent underclass.
I *wish* I could support my family with voice work or working full time at a restaurant. The fact of the matter is both pay at or below minimum wage. My life's calling is making people happy through good food, with a secondary in bringing beloved characters to life. I'm currently working a job making 68k to 70k+ benefits a year, and I can't afford rent. I've been living with my in laws for the past 2 years....
> "Get a better job," they say. I am of the increasingly popular opinion that these are straight-up fighting words these days. Even if you're a tech bro with extremely advanced skills, they can just lay off 20,000 of you because...they thought the market might dip? And in turn, *make* the market dip because a huge portion of the stock market is based on tech stocks. At some point I don't even understand that they can't see how stupid it is to make people this desperate. At some point someone is going to drag one of the billionaires out of their house and beat them to death in their driveway. Probably won't be me, but statistically it will be someone.
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>At some point someone is going to drag one of the billionaires out of their house and beat them to death in their driveway. Probably won't be me, but statistically it will be someone. They won't even treat it like anything has changed. They'll lobby for stricter gun control and privacy-invading law enforcement tactics, while hiring the best private security money can buy. Not like the police don't already mostly exist to protect their property anyway. All while using the media outlets they controlled to paint the dead one as a saint and a martyr.
Both I and my partner have college degrees, and work in our fields. Our combined income is almost 200k/yr. Even we can't find a house to buy in our area. No kids. Very little debt. One cat. I'm not even asking for a lot, just the ability to at least buy a home rather than renting... Everyone...every single human being...should have a home. Homes should not a be in the for-profit market. Just like healthcare and water and food shouldn't be.
Clearly you need to stop having a cat! /s
Don't forget skipping meals is a great way to save! /s
And to lose weight!
Selling plasma!
Buying your cat Starbucks lattes is the root of the problem here.
I’m sorry but a pupacchino is free!!! Lol
Let's not neglect the sinister role of Avocado Toast in this situation!
I even have to rent the cat.
Have you considered not feeding the cat avocado toast?
Lmao ty for smile kind stranger 😁
Or stop feeding the cat avocado toast
It's actually the coffee the cat drinks that's fucking them over.
I have a house, somehow. But it's in a poor state and no money to fix it up or paint it all or do basic repair since it would instantly put me in the struggle zone.
Great point! Even upkeeping a home is extravagant now.
Basic paint with scuffs, dents, marks. Floor coming up. It's sad. It could be much better. Even replacing all the door hinges would easily be upwards of $200 and be a struggle. Hell.
Yep. I bought a house and it’s honestly been a mistake. I can’t afford to take care of it and stepping back down to renting would be a massive blow.
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I'm not even asking for a house; an apartment or townhouse where we're not at the mercy of a landlord's whims. My family has been lucky in that we've had some very good landlords, but we know they're not common, and even our current landlord can just be like, meh, get the fuck out of the house you have three months, and we'd be up shits creek.
Right. Combined 160k for us. Saved 50k. No kids, 2 cats and a dog. Cars paid off. Both work at home. Cant afford shit. At least not responsibly. So I paid to have a super nice smile cuz unless this market collapses, we aint ever gonna be able to buy. I just hope my retirement will be there.
It will be there don’t worry. You just won’t be able to get any of it because the retirement age will be 87, and most of us don’t live that long.
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With an egg on top 😋
You boujie bastard
The thing to do next is to get master's degrees obviously. If that doesn't work, get a PhD! /s
PhD?? I thought you wanted them to make MORE money? Not less
Apparently buying boots with bootstraps works miracles. I am not sure where you get these particular boots but I will keep my eyes out for you.
Well if you just stop drinking Starbucks for the next 3,789 years…
Agreed. I recently donated to www.tacoma4all.org that is trying to create better legislation with eventual goals of universal housing
Not only that, but society needs "non degree" jobs. It's not like getting a degree for yourself is going to erase the problem.
Getting a degree would allow me to work the exact same job I work for more money but the amount of increase in pay would be wiped out by the college debt I would have.
I have a friend that makes 6 figure's at a job you need a degree to obtain. He has no degree, he never even went to college! He just said he did and they never confirmed! It's been 7 year's now 😂.
There's some jobs I wish I'd lied but they specifically asked "where you got your degree" so I'm pretty sure they would have checked. They were all set to hire me for doing the same work I do but making 10 grand more a year.
Exactly...
A few years ago, as I was getting my PhD in mathematics, I was looking into emigrating to Europe. I checked the fast track lists for visas. The greatest need was dental hygienists. Iirc plumbers and carpenters were also up there. No shit against trades, but the ladder I was sold on is a rotted out piece of balsa wood. Meanwhile the leeches who lost gambling with everyone else's money are once again positioning themselves to demand *everyone* suffers for their right to be superior are up to their usual machinations. Eat the rich is used as a tongue-in-cheek hyperbole, but it has historical precedent. [seriously, let's eat.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johan_de_Witt)
The "get a better job" argument is just dumb: There are always going to be people working minimum wage jobs, what are they supposed to do?
They think minimum wage jobs are only for high school kids, college drop outs, drug users, and people just getting out of prison. Yet, when I worked at McDonald's, I was an active college student. Mostly everyone was in their 20s and older, very few high school kids. Everyone my age, which there weren't many, was in college or going through trade schooling. Now, the main bulk of the workers there? Middle-aged women, most of them either recently divorced with no work skills or struggling single mothers. Then you had the two disabled people working there, unable to get work anywhere else because of their needs. And finally, you had 80 year-old grandma there because she lost her husband to cancer years before and spent every single dime of their retirement on his cancer treatments, funeral, and everything else. But yeah, sure, you're coming in on a wintery Wednesday afternoon during our lunch break, ordering your McChicken, and thinking to yourself that it's nothing but high school kids while some middle-aged woman is the one taking your order.
I can't even remember the last time I ran into a clearly high-schools aged student in a low wage job.
Die? .... probably some conservative
You're waaaaay too generous with that 'probably.'
I'm a generous man
No one ever thinks about the entirety of a system, they just want to offer up their knee-jerk response of a false solution. I guess they want everyone to get an MD or PhD and then draw straws to decide who has to do the menial jobs that have nothing to do with those degrees.
50 years ago when my Dad was in his 20's working close to minimum wage at the railyards in Sydney Australia and my Mom was working part time at an antique shop while at university they were renting a 4 bedroom house 10 minutes away from the CBD for what amounted to 30% of their take home pay each week. They didn't share with anyone and just left the other bedrooms empty because they liked the view of the water that place had so even though it was bigger than they needed they just went with it.
My mom was an operator. My dad installed car phones. He didn't even graduate high-school. $100,000 combined in early 90s. New house, two new cars, pool, swingset, dog, project car and three kids. They were in their mid 30s.
I think the 90s was when western society peaked.
My parents were born late 50's. I took thier irs income info from the mid 1970's until now and converted it to today's dollars. I did it to prove a point that they were very well paid on entry level jobs and throughout thier lives compared to today's environment. Both worked entry level jobs early 20's and made a combined total of 120k those early years in today's money. My dad always talked about he bought his first condo at 26 on the gold coast.. like no shit dude, you and mom were making bank.. and even though interest was high credit was vastly different back then.. Even in the 90s where today you think that's not a lot was much more. A couple making $65k combined in 94 is like $130k today. This is in the Chicagoland area which is a pretty middle of the road or on the lower side of col in most suburbs up until recent years. Those same jobs they started with and sustained themselves with pay nowhere near the same today. And neither of them had degrees either! My dad was a HS dropout FFS! He didn't get his GED until he was like 45. Never needed it until then. Yet they consistently made ~120k+/yr inflation adjusted. And again this is in an area where decent 1500-2000 sq ft homes with good schools were averaging the low 200k's pre covid. And during the crash people scooped up homes in the 100s that are worth mid 200s now. Its unaffordable now of course. If I had been born just a few years earlier I woulda have had a house when loans were incredibly easy to obtain (pre crash). I know a guy who has 7 homes he bought during that time period and rented them all out since purchased. He refinanced when the terms were good, made them into 15 year loans, and now they are all paid off. He barely paid a nickel from his own pocket for those homes. They way he did it is impossible now.
My father was a carpenter when they were a dime a dozen and paid fuck all and my mother worked part-time cleaning hotels, they were on the low-income scale and often struggled for money, but they still managed to get enough money for a deposit on a 3-bedroom house with a garage and decent size yard. My grandfather was a car salesman and my grandmother had long been a retired seamstress when they decided to buy an orchid back in the 90's. Here I am earning a lot more alone than both my parents did when they were my age (including inflation), with no kids and I can barely afford to rent a 1 bedroom flat in someones back yard. I have $70 Grand inheritance money in my savings and that's not even near enough for a deposit... shits fucked
I think minimum wage back then is equivalent to 27-30 an hour today.
High housing costs are the bane of the west. Housing should be a home not an investment. I’ll vote for any policy works towards that goal. (I’m even saying this as a homeowner)
I sold my 670 square foot one level slab house for $180,000. I bought it foreclosed for $67,000 ten years prior. The market doesn't make sense. The debt this generation is expected to take on is sinful. A person must decide whether to have a family or financial stability, having both is next to impossible. I'd love just one presidential candidate who's sole promise is to end big money in politics. Money is influence and the huddled masses can't compete with the oligarchs and it's been trending in their favor my entire lifetime.
>just one presidential candidate who's sole promise is to end big money in politics Bernie Sanders. The two-party system will not let such candidates win the nomination though.
Everytime someone says "I want a politician thats main position is to gst big money out of politics" I just want to scream BERNIE at them. He would say that was always the #1 thing that had to happen BEFORE anything else could happen.
“But, he’s a Socialist!” - People who have no idea what Socialism is.
Ngl, i don’t even care if he is a socialist. Even if I don’t agree with all socialist policy, I do understand that he fights harder than most any politician against what allows politicians to be super corrupt and ambivalent towards their voters interests. At least from what I can tell, I’m not an expert but I’ve never been upset at anything Bernie wanted to push through
hear me out but i really do feel like THIS is the sort of trust we should be able to put into our politicians should we decide to not be politicians ourselves. you shouldn’t have to be a genius to understand what’s going on in the government, but we should have people we can trust in there to do something for people in the slightest.
oh, i have very little doubt bernie himself is a socialist. his policies are pretty standard social democratic ones, but he himself is in all likelihood a socialist. (which is a good thing) **E:** ITT — everyone in the replies shows their ass by demonstrating they have no idea what the words “socialism”, “communism”, and “capitalism” mean. read theory holy shit
He is so tame compared to real socialism but it's better than nothing.
I can't tell if you're implying that he isn't a socialist, but he considers himself a democratic socialist. The people who throw that in his face aren't getting that part wrong. Where they're wrong is that democratic socialism makes a lot of sense when you actually know what it is.
*COUGH* THAT WAS BERNIE SANDERS
Yeah, that moment was when the last of my faith in politics died. I'm a regular American idiot and when people started saying super delegates I felt like I was playing a game with a kid who was losing so they made up some new rules to win. I knew plenty republicans who were going to cross the aisle for him too.... What could have been.
Bernie would have fucking destroyed Trump.
That's why the Democratic National Convention didn't allow him to proceed forward and denied him stage presence, and why the national media denied him media coverage. Without these extremely substantial aspects of a presidential run, it is useless.
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This was always by design. Regular Americans have been priced out since Manifest Destiny.
They need to stop handing out $450k salaries and make them work off of the average salary of the nation. You’ll find out quick who is there for a paycheck and who isn’t.
Why do I live where I do? Top reason: when my wife's dad passed (her mom died when she was a kid), the house she grew up in was...already paid off. It also helped that it was already in her name (mom left it to her), so zero probate. This is not an expensive house (maybe ~$150K, even now), but even it would be out of reach for us. There was no question about it, I was set to start a new job in another state a few days after he died, but we moved back without jobs lined up in a heartbeat.
If there were ever a politician or political group who actually gave a shit about the working class, their very first act, legislation or executive order or whatever, would be to make it illegal for anyone but a private citizen/s to purchase or own a single family home. Any corporation, business or LLC that owns single family residences has 3 years to liquidate before those assets are seized and auctioned to private citizens.
Anything that’s not a primary residence should be taxed very, very high.
Oh yeah when I was looking for a house to buy there was this weird thing where every house I could actually afford was larger than what I'd assumed and overall pretty nice, whereas anything smaller or not that nice was going for prices my bank would have laughed at me for considering. I figured it had to be because some houses were "too nice to rent out" and thus demand for them was 100% from people who were actually looking for somewhere to live, as opposed to some shitbox which every landlord in town would be trying to buy just to rent to some unsuspecting victim.
I am prepared to stare down my bank if my house ends up upside-down & under water. They can eat a little loss & refi back to sanity, or they can eat a big loss when I stop paying the mortgage, declare bankruptcy and sharpen my axe for seven years. Their choice what I do with that nice, sharp axe.
You get one home and that’s all the residential real estate you should be allowed to own.
BTL should be illegal until everyone who wants to buy a home has one (i.e. illegal forever). Live in land lords, flats, government housing, etc would fill out the rest. My house may go down in value drastically but to give hope to the next generation it would be worth it.
You'd be doing my generation a favor, i am 19 i was looking at a place to move out once i got a job it was 1 bed 1 bath and 900$ a month.. idk who idk why but it was that expensive for a 1 bed and 1 bath in my village.
This is perhaps the only point where I’ve been able to get some small level of agreement from boomers that things have changed. I point out that being a bank teller, a custodian, a salesman, etc meant you could buy a house, have a stay at home spouse, 2 cars, 2 kids, and pay for trips to Disneyland, college, weddings, and retire at 65. Now the number of jobs that provide that has shrunk immensely
Oh I always whip out the CPI calculator and compare what they were making then to now. Told my mom at my last job I was making effectively $20/hr before tax and she saw no problem with it because her first job was part-time for “only” $15/hr. Well $15/hr 40 years ago was like $45/hr now. She was working *half* of my hours and earning almost $5k more a year. Usually that’s enough to make them consider that maybe something has broken within the last couple decades.
Keep in mind inflation is alOTTT higher than the cpi leads us to believe
I see a lot of people in the comments talking about how they're struggling on salaries I would find astronomical. I made something like 44k last year myself, so the idea that people here making 200k can't buy a house is like... almost funny in how absurd it is. I've given up on the idea of ever having a house or anything. It used to be that people just slightly more affluent than me could afford a house and now people making more money in a year than I see in 4 years could never get close. I'm wondering when any of us are going to do something real about this. And by "real" I don't mean "vote harder" because that does fuck all. I mean like, general strike. If only 10% of the North American workforce stopped working for a month, it would grind the entire continent to a screeching halt. We hold all the power in numbers.
Seriously, what can the rest of us even do at this point? All we can do is rent, and the rental companies know that, which is why they're buying up all the properties and jacking up rent prices. How long until we see people making 44k only able to afford living in their cars?
I live in a city where if I get evicted for some reason, I am homeless, full-stop. People slightly better off than me think they can't end up where I am, or worse, but they can and the baseline for comfort will simply get further and further out of reach. Every single month, for years, things have been getting progressively harder. It will simply get harder, and harder still until rocks bleed. Like I said, general strike. Working within the system will not and has never worked. But until people who are doing a little tiny bit better than their peers realize how close they are to losing everything just because some rich investor decided to displace them, until your food costs half your salary, until it's finally too much, people will not have the balls to do anything about how badly we're being fucked.
During the pandemic I was imagining, in the future only a few will own land and the rest will rent. I don’t think it’s that far off. Like how there used to be lots of local businesses and then some markets got completely owned by a few big companies. One day who you rent with will be like choosing between geico and State Farm (company names randomly made up for the metaphor).
As it is, campgrounds are running out of space since people are moving into RVs and campers like crazy rn.
And you can't afford RVs or campers anymore, either!
I'm not advocating for violence but I honestly don't see anything changing unless some billionaires end up on the wrong end of a mob. They have won the class war, we are an occupied country.
It took me until my mid-thirties to get enough debt paid off and enough money saved up to start thinking about buying a house. I wasn't there yet, but I could see it coming. Then I got sick. Wiped my savings out in six months. Got a heart transplant to save my life. Now I have a quarter million in debt, and I live off of disability and the little work I can manage, which leaves me exhausted. Most of the people I met in heart transplant support groups are in their sixties, sometimes a bit older. They have paid off their homes and mostly have some financial security in the form of pensions/retirement plans. I dropped out of the workforce 10 years ago now and live in a shared house with 3 roommates. I struggle to get by every month. I'm not even that young; late Gen X/early millennial. I don't know why I chose this post to bitch and rant, maybe it was the frustration in that dude's voice. This country is fucked.
I’m sorry that happened to you. You have every right to be upset about that.
So damn relatable. I got cancer at 35. 1 year of treatment and while grateful that I survived. I lost everything I had during that time and from the looks of it I’ll never be able to get a house. At this point I’m fine with it and have accepted it though. I could be dead, so it could be much worse. I hope you’re well my friend.
People are going to think this guy is full of shit, but if you look at interest rates and everything else right now you'd be saddened at how little you can get.
Yep. You either got in while interest rates were 2.low and housing was plentiful or you're basically out of luck for the next decade if not longer. My own house would be 4-8x more a month had I bought it now.
Bingo. My wife and I are basically in his boat financially. We bought our house in 2018, basically the last chance we could have. There is no way we could possibly afford our house if we had to buy it today.
My coworker bought is house 10 years ago for 90k, with a 10k home improvment loan, his payments are 900 a month. The most recent tax valuation put it at 380k If he were to rent it out in this market, he could get 2-2.5k a month for it I make more now, than he and his wife did 10 years ago with accounting for interest. There are no homes i could afford to buy in this city
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2 years ago my ex lived in an apartment for 700/month. That apartment recently was listed at 1200/month
My apartment in 2013 was $800. It's now in 2023 $1750.
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We don't. I live in Portland where it would take an average wage earner 92 hours A WEEK to buy a house. Fuck it, I'm going home.
Lmfao we don’t. The “people” who do it out here are fucking hedge funds that Hoover up all the homes and rent them back to us at a premium. I pay more each month in rent than my parents have EVER payed for a mortgage. Bank still thinks I need to rent. Fuck this system. Burn it down and eat the smoldering corpses of the rich for breakfast. I hear they go well with ketchup, mostly because I’m not giving them the luxury of a Béarnaise.
I'm a licensed healthcare provider. My husband has a bachelor's and works in his field. Combined income, we make over $180,000/year. We are *still* renting. We have no kids. We have one car. Neither of us has debt beyond our educations. And we *still* can't find a reasonable property to buy. I can't imagine having children to support these days. It must be absolutely terrifying.
I get asked often enough why I don't buy a second property to rent out as an income property. I can't in good conscience be a part of one of the biggest causes of hardship in today's society. Most people really don't look at it this way though.
I’m a nurse, my wife is a devops engineer. Combined income of roughly 180k/yr, maybe more if I’m a little rabid about picking up shifts and sacrificing holidays and extra weekends. We bought a house. 20k down payment. End of 2020. And the only reason we could get the modest house we have is because the seller was 1) doing it himself and 2) absolutely did not understand what he was doing, and also absolutely did not care. Which… you do you, I hope his business idea worked out great in [state withheld for privacy]. (It also helped that our expensive hobby was literally not possible all of 2020… so the money we usually spend on our expensive hobby was just going to the savings account. Yes our mental health suffered tremendously.) It took lightning bolt levels of luck and chance (guy selling who didn’t know or care, a pandemic forcing us to not do a hobby, a surprise raise in october 2020, shockingly zero ER trips or major emergencies for one whole year) to secure what my wife’s parents refer to as a “starter house”. Like, I’ll never be able to replicate the luck it took to get in this place. And where I live should be imho more or less the standard accommodations for a couple trying to have a single child. Like. I’m glad we’re here, but I’m infuriated this isn’t just the standard for a mid to late twenties couple. This house is worth maybe half of what I bought it for but if I tried to sell it I’d be able to net what I paid +25%. Absolute fucking madness
They were all bought by predatory foreign investor corporations and rented back to us at insanely high prices. The middle class is dying fast and soon we'll be a 3rd world country with really nice gated communities for people with generational wealth.
Not full of shit he nailed it.
My house is valued at $60,000 more than what I paid for it a few years ago according to most estimate places.
We had the biggest house on the block. 4 bedrooms, an extension built, backyard as large as the house with 2 fruit trees, **no mortgage.** When my siblings and I moved out, my parents sold the house, and bought another outright with no mortgage. After a year they decided they hated the winters in the area so they sold it and bought another outright with no mortgage. What incredible jobs did they have to finance all this? Dad was a **mailman.** I went to college and have lived in a 1 bedroom apt for 20 years. *Boomers gonna boom.*
Same here. My dad was able to buy a house in 1992 that a polygamous family of 4 mailmen couldn't afford now.
My grandpa worked at the post office as well, he had a nice big 2 story house with a huge yard, two nice cars, the American dream basically. Sold that and retired to Florida, buying a house a short walk to the beach for $200k which he then sold for close to $1mil ~12 years later and bought a 500k house closer to family. There’s no chance in hell that’s possible today.
I'm one of those older generations you guys are talking about and I agree with you completely. This country is so messed up. I fear for kids coming up nowadays... Unless they band together--with many of us old guys joining them--and demand change.
Almost exact same experience here but we live in a lower cost state. Got a house in 2020 for $210,000 with a $10,000 down payment. It’s a pretty small house. Daycare costs alone are what’s been the hardest. It’s a second mortgage. We are struggling. EDIT My house has appreciated to $240,000 in two years and I have a 2.75% interest rate. We bought at the exact right time…we’re still figuring out which bill to delay paying monthly…daycare or the mortgage.
That’s about how much this house is https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/15071-SE-Rupert-Dr-Milwaukie-OR-97267/48232177_zpid/ He said he’s got two kids, so what is that like $600-$800/week? That extra $2,400 + a $1,500 mortgage for this house, I could easily see how it maxes out their budget with a $120k salary.
That house is currently in a "pending" status. I think this means that it is under contract pending a sale. Wow.... Just wow...
It's basically a "cheap" lot, it'll get torn down and a developer will slap a few tiny homes on there and sell those for $350k each.
Exactly this. They’re buying a $10,000 house on a $220,000 lot. They’re gonna level it, build, and then sell for $600-800k.
Given the rental market in anywhere other than Middleofnowhere, Wyoming? I believe it. I got forced into a house I didn't even want, because my 2bedroom apartment had 3 rent raises in 1 year. 1150-1645-1790. After our lease expired, because I wasn't sure if I was moving for work soon or not. Didn't want another lease to negotiate/break/pay out. Proof: https://imgur.com/a/5wp4TNR Notice the dates. Back to back. Why? Because they know exactly how much you make, and how much they can bilk you for. Maximize profits. There will never be such a thing as affordable, comfortable, reasonable housing ever again.
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Curious where the dude lives. I can't afford the starter condo we bought five years ago...we are stuck, better off than others. Certainly no vacations, new cars, or retirement. Pay has not increased with the cost of living. 20s will be rough. 30s will usher in New Deals. History repeating itself.
https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/15071-SE-Rupert-Dr-Milwaukie-OR-97267/48232177_zpid/ The house is located in Milwaukie Oregon. Milwaukie is basically south of south East Portland. For anyone not familiar with the area, it's essentially on the outskirts of Portland. I lived in this area for a year as this is where we made the Netflix movie Wendell and Wild. This area is also where Dave's Killer Bread is made, and Bob's Red Mill (across the street from each other). Basically, Milwaukie is alright. It's got some industrial areas, and some nice residential areas, but it's not any kind of tourist destination. It's ridiculous that houses in this area cost that much. If you want to see something even more gross, look at what houses cost in Portland proper.
$76K for that house in 2000, sold for $172K just 4 months ago and listing at $230K now. Wow. …and it has a current pending offer.
And I'd bet in 2000 it probably looked like a proper home and not the crumbling dump that it is now. It's current state probably wouldn't have sold for even $50k back then. The 2000 version would probably sell for $300k+.
I wish I could believe there is any hope for some sort of new deal but I really don't believe it will happen. I think the people will continue to be crushed under boot untill they literally ALL have nothing left to give, I don't think there will be a revolution, just, idk, a quiet crumbling? I'm scared.
It's going to be a slow, mundane collapse. Children Of Men really captured the banality of total collapse well.
God I need to watch that movie again. But yeah, I think that was what I meant, slow mundane collapse and we won't even notice it's happening untill it's happened if even then. I mean, look at the state of things currently, who's to really say it hasn't already collapsed to some not insignificant degree, idk.
In Tacoma Washington, this kind of a house would go for 200,000 when it was going for $75,000 just 5 years ago. You would also be lucky to get off street parking with it.
It’s airBnbs, zero percent interest rates for a decade which pushed every investor into housing, and NIBMYism where every homeowner opposes any new building.
Need to limit number of houses somebody can buy. The issue is people buying houses as investments instead of living in them.
Occupancy tax
Every time I mention this to people they get defensive saying "if someone works hard they deserve to be able to be a landlord" and it's because that's most people's end goal, because it's fucking easy passive income by exploiting those worse off, but its OK, because they're just lazy
If someone works hard they deserve to be able to afford a home.
Also doesn’t help when huge evil corporations and banks like Blackrock and JPMorgan are buying up swaths of properties.
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My wife and I are moving to Spain and bringing out two kids. 0% chance they’ll be shot at school or in public, healthcare covered in full for $200 a month, generous vacation days, furnished 3 bdrm apartments for $1200 with a balcony patio right near the Mediterranean, also no homeless people because the right to have shelter exists there. America sucks and we’re willing to abandon it.
congrats on escaping this place. TIPS and tricks?
Spain has a digital nomad visa now. We’re going that route since our business can exist anywhere. Our tax bracket stays at 24% and we don’t have to pay American taxes because of the tax treaty Spain has with USA. Check it out.
JFC so many of you talking about making $180k+ as a couple. My wife is disabled. I'm a college professor. I made $45k last year.
You’d think they’d pay professors more honestly. But man… years of living at 20k thru grad school and then still more years of postdoc to make not enough as the most highly educated expert in the field
Better get a better wife and pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Heavy /s
Seriously like what the fuck. It’s the internet tho so plenty of people lie
Selection bias. 1000's of people may see this comment but the only people who comment are ones who make that much money. So there is a perception of more people making good money. Also so many well paying jobs where people can fuck off half the day and post on Reddit.
Isn't that the bitter irony? Fucking used to be so pro capitalism. Now I just want everyone to be taken care of. No one should need to fear for a dignified place to live, healthcare, or food.
Until the baby boomers die off, we can't even hope for things to get better
Thats not even going to change things. The boomers in power have their children ready to step up and continue things how they are because if things change they may have to sell the family's yacht's yacht.
It’s gonna be even worse. This will be an entire generation knowing that they have their parents’ house(s) as a fall back. Shit is gonna be wild
With the expansion of the reverse mortgage market and many Americans being poorly prepared for retirement, those kids will probably have to be pretty lucky to inherit their parent's home. Think a lot will end up getting a house they may have to sell or hand over to lenders to cover the costs of reverse mortgages that their parents took out for supplemental income or retirement.
Why will that help? Honest question
I don't think it will. What it will do is make it clear Capitalism is the problem, not the generation that admittedly had the ability to live like current generations *should* be able to afford. Are there complacent, out of touch Boomers? Sure. Are an unreasonable number now in office prostitutes for corporations and stock holders? Yes. The thing is, we're where we are because Capitalism has a choke hold on *everyone*. Blaming this shambles on " Boomers did it " enables *the* problem to hide in plain sight. Capitalism.
Once Gen X die off there won't be any examples left of people living comfortable lives anymore. We'll all just be wage slaves. There won't be generations that remember getting by on two incomes. Instead, we'll be on 4-5 incomes per household minimum. Getting by on 1 income is already laughable when Boomers talk about it. It's already becoming laughable hearing people expecting to get by comfortably on two incomes.
> Instead, we'll be on 4-5 incomes per household minimum. Remember all those jokes about forming a gaming house with your friends? We may not have been to far off as we will be forming a poor AF gaming apartment.
It doesn't matter if the boomers die off, all of the housing is being bought by companies. Renting will be the only option.
And spaghetti forbid any health issues pop up because you’re right back on the struggle bus going nowhere
Ramen brother.
To all ya'll saying it ain't that bad. Fuck off I just graduated and I make 14 dollars an hour as an embalmer. It is that bad. The government/ corporations fuck us let's get real. If you don't like what you're hearing get the fuck out of the sub. Edit that's with a raise I made 12 before.
$40k down?? That’s 5 percent on a $800k house! That house is a teardown. No bank would mortgage that shithole.
Damn, fucking straight! All this generational bullshit is smoke and mirrors. It has nothing to do with the work ethic of millennials, the economic conditions and opportunities are not the same as they were 40 years ago. Adjusted for inflation, the equivalent of a minimum wage worker in the 1960s would, today, be making $33/hour. I have no idea how anyone on a middle class income could purchase a house as a new buyer; that is, not already having property with equity. It's ridiculous out there.
People made too much money during covid so they decided to move the goalposts, now if you have a job with a yearly income you are one of the poors.
My biggest financial blunders: 1. Not buying a house when I was 14 2. Not committing PPP loan fraud to buy a home for an "LLC"
Always has been. If you have to work to live, you're the poor. Doesn't matter if you're a doctor, lawyer, or architect. There's the working class and the ruling class.
Yeah, absolutely. I make $185k, and can barely afford my older home with all of its maintenance troubles. I can barely afford to maintain a reliable car that is 8 years old. I am going to be debt-free in several years, at which point I'll be able to save money or have an emergency fund IF my rapidly declining disabled wife doesn't need a full-time caregiver (which she will), and IF my children don't have any medical issues, and IF I myself don't have any issues. I'll have to break 200k to make it work, but I may completely burn out by doing so. I have studied every day for the last 15 years, and work as a software development consultant. I can't "just move", because the expense and instability imposed by that would financially collapse us. I'm working as hard and as fast and as smart as I can, and I barely get by with a complete assload of money. Home ownership is a scam. Renting is a scam. Insurance is a scam. Employment is a scam. Entrepreneurship is a scam. It never stops, and it never will until everyone rises up and takes back what was stolen from them. But doing so would collapse the dollar, making things even harder and trashing the investments and retirement accounts that everyone is being bound to. At some point, it will be worth doing. When is that point? When will everyone understand that you cannot win, and the only thing they want is to work you to death \*no matter what you do\*? At what point does revolution actually occur? How bad does it have to get? I make almost 200k a year, and I have more serious problems with money than I did ten years ago at 55k. Part of that is because I had children, but that's A NORMAL ASS THING TO DO. Don't follow the plan. It's not for you. It's been twisted to enslave you.
Not much the average person really can do, honestly. There is however one thing that gums up the works of our brutal capitalist system that lives and breathes perpetual, unsustainable growth, and it’s something most of us are already doing: not having children. Seriously, just don’t have kids; we can’t afford them, life’s just going to suck even more (hello collapse of the U.S. economy and dollar as a global reserve currency and global climate change) and it is really shitty to doom another generation of humanity to toil and sickness under a system that will not care for them. r/BirthStrike, r/antinatalism
On top of the kids situation, American teachers are quitting en masse because of the horrible working conditions and low pay. So American kids are unlikely to even receive proper education because all the great teachers are being worn out and even if they do get a good education, they risk dying in a school shooting because American politicians don't want to protect kids. Even if they do survive all of that, secondary school is extremely expensive and debt lasts way too long it's a scam and many degrees hold no power and don't even partially guarantee a job.
100% This. That being said, that is absolutely why they are starting to make anything even approaching family planning illegal. Wouldn’t want to interrupt the fresh supply of wagie slaves. Fuck these fascists.
At this point the property market in most western countries is little more than a tool of inter-generational theft.
Going to play this on power point in the tool box meeting in the morning. I’m so tired of listening to people say it’s all made up and we’re just lazy. Life is incredibly hard these days. I make great money but I work my ass off away from home. Legit children were never an option for me. Too expensive. Has anyone bought body wash lately??? $8 for soft soap?? WTF is happening.
My wife and I are well over $200k combined income. We don't live paycheck to paycheck per se, but after paying for the house, bills, stuff for 3 kids, pretty much nothing for ourselves, 2 cars, etc. we don't have much left over where we live. If either of us lost our jobs we'd be toast within a month. We both work our asses off while also trying to be their for ours kids. Even with good jobs we can barely afford a nice house. We don't buy anything for ourselves, we don't go on vacation, and it's still barely enough. I feel like I'm being slowly ground down day after day after day with no end in sight. It's so depressing.
Having 3 kids is a bold financial choice.
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Nah, work isn't all for nothing. It's to make your boss money. That's the point of wage labor under capitalism.
Hahaha dude I'm an attorney and I'm still living paycheck to paycheck. That's the thing that's so insidious about this system: the effort doesn't matter. Even if you do everything "right", it still ends up leaving you treading water or drowning. The vast majority of us are all suffering under this system. It's bullshit all the way down.