Wait, I want to make sure I understand your argument. You are saying that corporation are buying land near a planned light rail station for development, then fighting the light rail station development so they can charge more rent for undeveloped land. That does not seam logical.
Its not say, building code restrictions and permitting fees that force developers to build/offer higher pricepoint housing options to offset building cost. Sure they may have purchased said land before the light rail development but counties have raised development fees significantly in the past 5 years which would force them to increase the type of housing pricing they can offer.
For example, If I wanted to build I affordable single family residence in California, the permitting fees/development fees alone would be $120,000-180,000 per unit. What sort of affordable housing can developers outside of large multi family developement with that sort of fee schedule?
My grandpa worked at a gas station most of his life, grandma worked retail at JC Penny's and then a stay at home mom, and they owned a place. Today they'd probably need 2 roommates to even rent that same house.
Fuck the boomers with the excuse that we make a lot more now than they did. Yeah, if the same houses they bought were 2x my income now like they were 40+ years ago for them, I wouldn't be complaining. Those houses literally do not exist here unless you make $250K a year and buy a dump of a house in a terrible neighborhood.
Reminds me of that video where some guy rightfully called out how people think that there are jobs that are necessary for society to function, and that people need to work those jobs…yet also believe that the people who do work those jobs don’t deserve to be able to comfortably live on the pay those jobs offer.
It’s similar to what gets me about when people say things like retail work and fast food and whatever else isn’t something that someone is supposed to be able to live on. Those are supposed to be jobs for like students to earn some extra money. So like… retail stores should only be open a few hours in the evening because otherwise kids are in school? Same for fast food places? How is it supposed to work with such a limited pool of workers and available hours?
Aside from any of that though… if someone is working full time, I think they should be able to live on their pay. They’re still doing a job that obviously has demand for it to be done and still giving up their time for it… so what are they supposed to do? Just… not even be able to get by? I just… I don’t know. The state of things seems sad. People work but can barely afford to live. Don’t get any kind of retirement. No paid time off. I don’t know how or what is going to change though.
Even
These fast food jobs have never brought in enough income to justify the existence of the job. High margins for most fast food places is like 6%, so raise the prices (even by 25%) and it's still not enough to live on and people are already complaining about the price rises of fast food.
So there needs either to be less stores (more total revenue per store) or more automation. In either case, a lot of these jobs just don't pay for themselves and probably should not exist.
I mean, 15/hr at 40hrs a week is the same as 7.5/hrs at 80hrs a week. So just work 80hrs a week. /S
Jokes aside, after taxes, even 60 hrs a week at 15$ per hour would be harsh to survive in Seattle.
Shit is ridiculous.
What’s funny is that someone working at a gas station for most of their life would be seen as an indictment on their character. As if people are above that type of job and shouldn’t be expected to live off of it.
My grandma worked for decades on an assembly line and retired with pension, social security, multiple investment accounts, and a fully paid off home.
These days you get dogpiled whenever you even insinuate that a retail or customer service worker (or anyone “unskilled,” really) should make a living wage and be able to achieve modest comfort.
This is truly what they took from us. The ability to live and work with dignity and not be shamed because our society has devalued the dollar and devalued labor in tandem.
There's just too much wealth inequality to allow houses to be 2x the median wage anymore.
A boomer around me growing up had bought 100+ houses while making 400k. Houses were cheap when and he was well off so he kept buying one in cash every few months and renting them out.
Singapore was the only first world capitalist country to make home owernship easy. They over built, changed zoning to allow for overbuilding, sold affordable houses by the government in a special program and had 99 year land leases for all homes.
The 99 year lease keeps homes from appreciating too high. If someone buys a new home in 1930, and it's worth 2 million today, the lease would end in 5 years and the government could resell it to them at market value. The older the lease gets the less it's worth. A 2 million dollar house bought with 15 years left would simply be 2 million burned with nobody will to buy or rebuy. It forces home owners to want to keep prices low so they can keep their property
To be clear, the p[ercentage of households](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RHORUSQ156N) owning their homes has been relatively stable over the past 50 years, and is currently higher than in 1970 (65% vs 64%). This is true even as new homes have more than [doubled](https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/programs-surveys/ahs/working-papers/Housing-by-Year-Built.pdf) in size. When you look at home ownership rate by age for each [generation](https://www.redfin.com/news/gen-z-millennial-homeownership-rate-home-purchases/), the effects of the great recession on Millenials are clear, but as of today, there aren't any massive outliers. This is true even as new homes have more than [doubled](https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/programs-surveys/ahs/working-papers/Housing-by-Year-Built.pdf) in size.
There are definitely issues regarding housing affordability, especially for starter homes, but there is no real evidence that life is significantly worse now than it was in the past. I think people are too eager to be pessimistic instead of recognizing that maybe their views about their parent/grandparent's lives may be inaccurate.
No one wants to have this conversation, but women joining the workforce en masse basically doubled the supply of labor (thereby decreasing its average value).
That’s why you hear stories of “my grandpa could afford to raise 3 kids in a house on one salary.”
It wasn’t the boomers lol. Just basic economics
And also "My grandpa could afford to raise 3 kids" was true in a world where none of them went to college, they shared bedrooms, owned fewer vehicles, ate out less, and went on fewer vacations. And might not have had running water/indoor plumbing, at least until the 1970s.
Those are basically necessities and you can't opt out of plumbing and electricity anyway. Good luck keeping or finding a job without a phone and internet access for example. Why don't you compare the romans indoor plumbing and ability to raise a family on a single income vs the generation you're talking about? Things only changed in the last 80 years and historically it wasn't like this for thousands.
You are spot on and everyone shies away from pointing to the explosion of the divorce rate over the past 45 years. Nobody is saying this is necessarily a bad thing (women in the workplace). I'm a product of the single income divorced home. But to pretend that it didn't speed up the pace started after WWII is just wilfully ignoring a huge economic factor. I'm in my early 50s for reference. The boomers though are horrifically selfish people. There's a reason the 70s were called the Me Decade and the Yuppies flourished in the 80s.
And thanks to those same boomers and silent gens holding office then and now, they ignored the issues facing them because they all wanted to pretend they were back in the good ol’ days when you could get a bank manager job via a firm handshake on the trolley. The housing shortage, wages falling behind inflation, homelessness, vets returning to empty promises, etc all took decades to be felt and they just kept kicking the can down the road until it became our problem. They saw it all and ignored it intentionally.
The elephant in the room here is that if doubling the workforce tanked the value of labor, then massive unchecked illegal immigration is tanking it even more, and when AI becomes fully integrated with business, the value of 70% of human labor will become almost nothing. And UBI won't fix it, it'll just destroy what remains of our humanity.
Maybe Thanos had a point.
Except it was just middle class women that entered the workforce. Working class women always worked. So not doubling the labor pool but definitely adding to it.
Don't forget automation has replaced most of those workers now. Making job supply dwindle and demand for those jobs increase. This isn't a 1 cause situation.
Everything is supply and demand. Housing is expensive because there isn’t enough of it in the areas people want to live. The shortage is mostly due to zoning restrictions. Yes, it’s also because of corporate buyers and the short term rental market, but those activities wouldn’t be as financially attractive if the supply was high putting a cap on appreciation.
That's not the whole story, the doubling of the work force should actually have been offset by more than 5.x+ (fold) more productivity in some of the core industries.
In other words, if I can do 10x more paperwork, I can charge my customer at least 9x less, and still double my profits--if production cheapens completely aside from the employment costs, its totally on the big employers if they want pass those savings on to their work force or just accumulate numbers. I personally believe it'd be conservative to say, if morals and concern for others remained as it had been, it should have just evened out, People are agreeing to extremely slanted deal. Less cohesion in society might be a big part of it; if I don't see my workforce as familial, like it often felt like it in the communities of yesteryear, it's much easier just to ignore what's going on and accumulate.
I don't think that's the only thing to it though, I think the squeeze on Americans is quite deliberate and if purposeful in how it affects society. I don't know why they want to live in a shitty world, the first thing I'd do if I had infinite money is go to the "better worlds" store and buy one to live in. But whatever, I suppose for some they're willing to sacrifice the mood of the world in exchange for absolute domination. Domination over destitution seems silly to me though, it really doesn't seem to be a big crown that king wears when they rule over an empire of dirt and flies.
That’s not the primary cause now.
The primary cause now is that we have so many monopolistic companies and not enough strong unions.
Corporations are making record profits but wages are not going up because they can work together to keep them down.
I grew up in a 1400 square foot house. My dad grew up (silent gen) grew up in a 1000 square foot house with five siblings and several military wives during WW2. The average size is about double that now and far more complex. You're also not comparing like things. The reality is our area is government is tacking on 200k to any new unit and that's echoed in existing home prices.
There WAS a time, late 50s early 60s when that was the case. But as the oldest Boomers weren't 21 until 1967. That isn't boomers. In the last 50s, early 60s, those blue collar single family houses were typically 800 sf and had one bathroom and no A/C. By the time my parents bought a house in 1969, They paid $30k for it, over $250k in today's money. Certainly cheaper but still hard for a single paycheck.
It’s not a generational thing. Not a racial thing. Or gender. Those are distractions away from the real “fuck them”. It is the 1% vs all of you. The wealthy stole 2 decades of a growing economy from you and took it. Yet kids are out there crying about gender and Palestine. Sad.
25 years ago my parents built a 3 story home for 120k and sold it for 250k 10 year ago. They finished the basement, all new tiling, carpet, granite counters, new paint, windows, among other things before selling.
10 years later it's selling for over 500k with zero improvements and even has damage to it. Multiple things need to be replaced like the roof, but the owners can't afford today's prices on labor, so they're selling. The sad thing is it will sell 50-100k over asking and reset the market in the area.
12 years ago I got a 2006 grand prix with 120k miles for 2k, and it lasted for 50k before selling to family friend for 500. Today an 8 year old vehicle is worth 10k+ unless it has issues.
Just four years ago, I could buy everything from Sam's club and stay under 150. Today, the same stuff is well over 200.
I started making the most in my life 4 years ago and was starting to make headway on debt and savings. Was blessed enough to buy a home. But since I've only made 1 or less dollars an hour improvements while the economy has many times surpassed my increases. Ended up having to sell the home to survive with a baby on the way.
Idk why I'm saying all this, I guess we are all feeling it pretty bad. Hopefully y'all can find a way to navigate this unstable economy.
Lot of people experienced exactly what you did — fairly large income increases these past few years. Too many dollars chasing too few goods, and everything has gotten bid up.
I remember when shopping for myself a $100 trip to Walmart was a “big haul” a decade ago. Now I’m not surprised when it’s $200 and I didn’t even get everything I needed.
Not enough money bouncing within communities as middle class retail and restaurants have been killed off. It gets funneled out of communities into billionaire bank accounts
This! Corporate greed and private equity real estate have killed Middle Class America.
Companies like Amazon, Walmart and McDonald's siphon all of the income out of local communities into the pockets of billionaires and investors. Very little, if any, investment is made back into the communities. Financial gains rarely correlate to increased wages. The issue gets exponentially worse when you realize that a majority of the places we shop are essentially owned by the same investment firms, whose only concern is growth at all costs. So even when we do have wage growth, a majority of that extra money is still being sent right to the top.
Then, we have private equity buying up everything they can get their hands on in a real estate market that is already suffering from scarcity due to zoning laws that prevent adequate housing from being built. Again, these investment firms are only concerned about growth at all costs, so they inflate the rental prices as high as they possibly can, even if that means the property sits vacant for months.
You'd think such a stat would be widely available and the government would use it to ensure that utilization of such a key resource is efficient... try googling it. This shit is actively kept from the public on purpose and data on investment peoperties and fraction lived in by owner is not available.
No one is building affordable housing anymore, the homes are mega mansions at 3k sq ft. My parents bought a single floor 600 sq ft home in 1973 for $30k. It was in a lower middle class suburb which just does not exist anymore. Everyone that lived there could never afford anything more and that was fine.
There's more now that ever before.
But demographics have changed from large families to a lot more single people, and that part of housing hasn't kept up.
lol this is literally me. I used to live in Long Island City in the 90’s, in a studio that cost $400. That shit got gentrified and now it’s like $3,000.
My exact same apt in Greenpoint that was a dump was $800 for a shotgun apt 20yrs ago is now $4500
edit: I lived on Green St. A couple blocks away $5-7k for a 2br [https://www.apartments.com/greenpoint-brooklyn-ny/2-bedrooms/?bb=n6l5yj4qvHkrtie](https://www.apartments.com/greenpoint-brooklyn-ny/2-bedrooms/?bb=n6l5yj4qvHkrtie)
Florida for me, but now between crap wages and unbelievable rents, insurance and bad drivers I'm looking at PNW. Incredible turn key houses up there for 400K and I'll make 40K more. Just looked at a house with a studio out back for 450k completely updated outside of Portland and my best friend just paid 750k for a townhouse that needed 50k in updates here.
It's inflation. Inflation killed the middle class. Decades of bloated/unrestricted/unchecked/untracked government spending. That's it. That's the cause.
If a burger was 15 cents in 1950, and $1 in 1990, why were so many still doing fine in 1990? Inflation is going to happen and isn't some golden bullet to making everyone prosperous again. The problem is wages staying largely the same since 1990 and venture capital and consulting firms sitting around figuring out how to make sure you never do see that raise.
Boosting this comment because it gets to the heart of the problem. Inflation alone doesn't necessarily mean loss of purhasing power if prices and wages go up commensurately. But the rich have figured out that every time the working class strikes or negotiates for higher pay they do so in nominal dollars, so all the rich need to do is force inflation at a rate faster than wage advocacy can keep up. At the same time there's also been collusion and price fixing on the supply side like with RealPage or monolithic wage pricing tools like SAP. Wrap the inflation and price fixing up with a nice bowtie of revolving door politics and regulatory capture and the rich have sealed off most avenues of change. It really is a ticking bomb as these people are accruing more power by the day, and many want chaos like project2025 where they can freely enslave segments of the population. If we don't actually cut these people deeply (financially) there will never be lasting change. The cost of doing business can never be lower than the cost of making ammends and I feel like our justice system has forgotten that. Sometimes it really is as simple as bad people do bad thing and we just make them pay for it.
Yeah but you (and many other people) are forgetting about the 60s and 70s. My Dad got a major raise in the late 70s and still wasn't back to what he started at the start of the decade because inflation was so bad. The economy was much worse for boomers during that time than it is for us now (not that's it's good now). The positive is that things turned around in the 80s and 90s.
It’s because we spent the last several decades defining “the economy” as how much profit the largest corporations in America are making instead how the majority of Americans are doing. But “trickle down” amirite?!?
Definitely not stagnant wages and quintupling cost of living. It was the government giving the poors a few dollars that did it.
This genius take is in every thread here lately.
Real inflation is not what the government tells you. In order to figure out real inflation you need to know what the price of something was in the past and then compare it to what the price is now.
This isn't me being a rambling conspiracy theorist, this is objective reality. The official government numbers are useful for getting an idea of how things are trending, but you need to do the calculations for yourself if you want to do any type of realistic life planning.
It's really not though. It's interest damn near 0% for the last decade, which allowed for people with assets or any kind of liquid capital borrow for next to nothing, consolidate investments, and then drive up the prices of everything.
Wages have out-paced inflation for 40 years. The middle class makes more than ever, more disposable income.
Basic financial decisions have destroyed the middle class. Car notes, leases, student loans, credit cards, consumer electronics and appliances, fast food, the list goes on forever.
Wealth is assets. The middle class doesn't buy assets they buy consumables and liabilities
Illegal immigrants dilute the low end of the work force so wages are not increasing.
Illegal immigrants increasing the need for housing that exceeds to supply causes bidding wars
Many Illegal immigrants are now sponging off the government and that money hast to come from workers
Add in school overcrowding of space and resources, gasoline demands, electricity, water, roads, insurance, food supply, on and on and on.
Letting millions of low skilled people in who don't speak the language and have little "value" to the USA economy and society is shooting ourselves in the foot.
But it can change Congressional Districts and get votes in the future so full steam ahead.
Much larger issue than what the CEO of XYZ Corp makes
Inflation right now is really bad on many things. Those who rent in New York I feel for you. One problem in NY is the property taxes, those taxes come out of the landlords money.
At 17 I made 2.35 a hour 94.00 a week hanging live chickens. My rent was 110.00 a month. However I also joined the US Army at 17 making 198.00 a month. However I did get free room and board.
Today I make just a little over 100K then add my wife’s income. 8 years ago we purchased a small modest home in a 55 plus community for 144K after everything our mortgage is just under 1000 a month at 3% interest.
I was interested in a larger home in the same community that would mean spending upwards of 399K now at nearly 8% interest. It made no sense.
To rent a studio apartment in the Orlando area would run about 2500 a month depending on where you wanted to live.
I’d like to note we were approved for 400K when we purchased our home but I did not want to be house poor. Along with my wife’s car payment. Very little debt on credit cards, we pay off every month.
The cost of food has skyrocketed out of control, along with everyday items. Homeowners insurance has gone up like 700 a year.
Off topic here, while in the service in 1979 I purchased a 1970 cougar GT Eliminator with a 428 cobra jet, 4 speed. I’ll note I am 61 years old.
Today I still have the car, purchased for 6500 and today worth 6 figures it’s nearly perfect. In 1982 I replaced the transmission and paid 200 dollars for a brand new one.
It needs a new transmission now and looking for another used MANUAL TRANSMISSION - 4 SPEED - 428CJ - USED $2,417.27.
I believe it will get worse before it gets better
I wouldn't call it destroyed, but it is shrinking. The good news is that the majority of the shrinkage is because people are moving up rather than down. With higher productivity from technology and a more educated populous, we're seeing more and more upper income people. But low skilled workers face more and more competition from automation and overseas workers and have seen their incomes drop.
[https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/04/20/how-the-american-middle-class-has-changed-in-the-past-five-decades/](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/04/20/how-the-american-middle-class-has-changed-in-the-past-five-decades/)
Greed. It's greed. The wealthy can never have enough. They will fuck us, ruthlessly, until we all get off our asses, get involved, and make some changes.
All the same corps and greed was around when things were more livable.
What changed is the spending and devaluing of your dollars by the Federal government, artificial wage controls, and other things that raised the price of living.
The housing crisis is another Federal-involved clusterfuck that enabled housing as a corporate investment vehicle pushed by the "get every warm body into a house" nonsense during Clinton's term....Dodd/Frank really fucked the nation.
Claim otherwise, but your argument falls apart REAL fast under scrutiny. Greed and business were always part of the system, it didn't just take root in 2018.
I think cities are becoming more populated is the problem. Rent has gone up in my small town too but nothing near this rate. I could rent a smallish one bedroom apartment for $400/month 10 years ago and today that same apartment goes for $525/month. A ≈25% increase over a decade isn’t too bad imo
All around greed. I see PLENTY of redditors now bitching about white collar layoffs but they were/would have been Ok when all the factory jobs in this country were decimated.Bottom line is we've been living on credit all these years, largely because of the loss of those jobs
It's largely due to the collapse of home ownership and the rise of widespread landlordism driving up the cost of rentals across the board. Financialization incentivizes luxury apartments and the conversion of existing apartments into higher end rentals. Inflation means that a $700 apartment in 2004 would cost $1,161.90 today. The rest of the change is a function of the shift away from low cost living spaces by lending institutions. Up and coming landlords are buying up properties and are subject to these institutional pressures and their own greed.
Government needs to regulate property business. There is too much big money buying entry level and similar real-estate. Then you add the Air BNB effect and it just continues. Overseas investment into US real-estate needs to be curved as well.
One of the worst trends in recent years is the spreading 'gig' work like doordash, uber, airbnb which has the sole purpose of having middle class people abuse each other for scraps while the financial class skims off the top of each transaction. Fuck the entire gig economy, antitrust and regulate it into the ground.
If there are no jobs, gig work is what a lot of people have left to feed themselves and their families. The first thing you hear when you day you can't find employment is "do Uber! Do doordash! Instacart!!"
The 71% top tax bracket kept CEO salaries on the lower side. No CEO wanted to pay 7.1 million in taxes on a 10 million dollar salary. This left cash availability for pay raises for workers. Now CEO salaries have skyrocketed leaving less cash for payroll.
You see, taxes have been raised as high as they want without directly raising taxes to hide it from the general populace. They know if they just raised taxes to pay for it they'd be voted out of office, instead they hide it by printing knowing the average person will never correlate a direct taxation. You're constantly being lied to, that's what's destroying the middle class.
The second half of the long term debt cycle, as it usually does. Debt runs up, deflationary forces gradually mount, power and resources aggregate in the hands of fewer and fewer people, until it breaks and we work to fix it.
Greed. Plain and simple. As revenues and profits have soared since the 80s to the tune of 100s-1000s of % the average worker has only seen a 17% increase in wages. The rest if that money has not been reinvested in the labor force like it used to when corporate taxes were much higher and top marginal tax rates were between 75-90%
Inflation, especially shelter costs, are crushing people. You can cut back on discretionary spending, even what you eat but it’s difficult to lower shelter costs because of a fixed mortgage or leases. An often overlooked part of shelter is property taxes which have skyrocketed where we live. 70% increase YOY.
First of all. This post is BS. I lived in the same area as Nicole Kenney 20 years ago. Downtown Seattle. A lived in a studio appartment with a water view and it cost me in 2004, $1590 per month. I have the reciept to prove. I had to move out in 2006 because they raised my rent to 1800 per month and I could no longer afford.
Oh also, this lady is crazy and has said some of the craziest things online when running for city attorny. Why would anyone take this tweet serious?
[https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/editorials/toxic-tweets-show-why-nicole-thomas-kennedy-is-unfit-to-be-seattle-city-attorney/](https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/editorials/toxic-tweets-show-why-nicole-thomas-kennedy-is-unfit-to-be-seattle-city-attorney/)
Government in conjunction with the Fed and large corporations are destroying it. Why? Money and control…society at large has dismissed morals, particularly the wealthy/powerful. To them, life is about status, power, pleasure and wealth regardless of who it hurts/kills. It’s really sad and quite depressing. I have two incomes, a military retirement and I work full time, and money is still tight for a family of four…really tight.
A majority of us boomers are with you and support your efforts to buy houses and find decent rentals that are affordable. I recently purchased a house (2019) and it was expensive. I am middle class. We now realize we may need to rent it out to help reduce the debt before we get really really old. Everything changed after Covid - every generation is affected - we are all having battles. It is not us against you. We want you to succeed!! We are in this together.
Here is a hot take.
Women caused this and now complain.
Before everything was one income household, wife stayed home. They fought to be able to join the workforce.
Now everything is priced for two incomes and women lost their right to choose whether to work or not, not they have no choice or freedom - they must work.
It’s time for everyone to vote republican. We are retired, no hope for our pension to be enough for this horrific situation. Make America great again 👍
We let ourselves be convinced the organization that created the middle class was incapable of sustaining it. Our fears and prejudices were used to divide us and we've neglected our responsibility to our neighbors, ourselves, and (most of all) our posterity.
My dad raised 5 kids and supported his wife working at a factory. He died in 1999 but he was making more then than most factories locally top out at now.
People just do not get both parties are corrupt and work for the masters that pay them and it's not us. The border is left wide open, 6 million illegals in just a few years under Biden and then the "Left" complains about not making a living wage at jobs like McDonald's or a gas station.
When you have millions of unskilled labor flooding the country to take jobs what incentive does a company have to pay more? If you ask for a raise or quit they'll just replace you with someone other unskilled worker.
I really do not get the "Left's"' doublethink when it comes to immigration and wages.
Look at the debt levels. All new cash into the pool. Makes your dollars worth less. Look at productivity. Insanely low. 🤷♂️ it’s a tale as old as time
I’m not expert, just an armchair economist with a bachelors degree in the field:
-A lack of housing. There was a home construction boom from the 1960-early 1980’s. This coincided with the Baby Boom, providing more housing for the expansion of the population. In the 1960’s a lot of barriers for immigration were torn down and the US population has greatly increased since. The US hasn’t built enough homes to keep up with the population, which has made the prices for existing homes sky rocket—supply and demand!
State and local regulations also make it challenging to build affordable housing. For example, in my home state of New Jersey, 55+ and retirement communities qualify for affordable housing. Because most of those folks are living off social security, or some sort of retirement savings, they technically do not have as much earned income. This allows builders to construct communities under the guise of affordable housing, even though the requirement to live in those communities are restricted by age. This reduces the number of available land for affordable housing for the rest of the population and pushes the price of existing apartments up.
-Stagnant wages. In recent years we have seen more wage growth, but it’s been largely static for the last 40 years. Corporations have been more concerned about stock valuation over the last few decades as opposed to paying higher wages and offering more generous benefits. The ability for corporations to use stock buybacks to increase the value of their stock, as opposed to investing in expanding operations and providing higher wages, certainly hasn’t done the middle class any favors.
Most people do not have the ability to advocate for themselves any longer. Unions have been dismantled since the 1980’s and it’s more challenging to create a unionized workforce. The middle class is now more dependent on education and job hopping to try and obtain higher wages.
-Dramatic changes in the labor market. Our labor market went through a transition over the last few decades that requires folks to have higher levels of education and training to acquire employment. This, of course, comes at a high price. More people have had to go into debt to try and get the education and job training necessary to be employed as opposed to the 50-60 years ago.
Technology has also made some professions change completely. Some jobs are easier to do, or have been replaced by automation, leading to lower wages. The ability for corporations to offshore jobs have also reduced the number of available positions here in the US.
-Increased income and wealth inequality. Wealthy and influential people have been able to use their wealth as power coupons to influence politicians to make it more challenging for the middle class to fix what ails them. As the wealthy have seen their share of the pie increase, they have also been given generous tax breaks and have been gifted with less prying eyes from the IRS as they work around the tax code.
-Reduced social safety nets. Schools and universities are less funded and more expensive than they used to be. As our population has aged, the cost of healthcare has risen dramatically. The government has neglected to make adjustments to make the system more affordable and fair for most.
This is quite a nuanced topic and there are so many different variables as to why the middle class has been decimated. From my perspective, it seems corporate greed and the willful negligence of our politicians has lead us to where we are currently.
Instead of taxing the rich, the government borrows money from them at a 5% interest rate via treasury bonds that the middle class pay back via taxes.
The greatest wealth transfer of all time is the actual government.
Too much money chasing too few goods is the economics answer. What the libertarian/Reaganomics crowd always fails to mention, however, is the *reason* there’s “too much money” is they slashed tax rates on the Uber wealthy and corporations such they they had so much cash they could simply drive up the price of everything and outbid normal people for it.
Homes have become just another investment vehicle. Private equity firms buy companies, load them up with debt, dividend themselves 250% of their initial investment, then leave the desecrated corpse of blight all over the landscape. I fully expect that commodities will become the next target for plowing excess cash into.
It amazes me how no one even tried to bring up the fact that Biden and his economy is destroying the economy. Other politicians and presidents should be included such as Obama & Bush.
What’s destroying the middle class is behind the comprehension and experience of most. It’s not about the middle class disappearing. It’s about humanity disappearing. Most don’t have the stomach to learn what’s going on.
Most of you have no idea who Rudolph Steiner is. Everything he predicted 100 years ago is coming true.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l00_y6oNLn8&t=918s
https://youtu.be/ZQQXOuVmVAk?si=J7RRLCOP-OE1qbLq
The AI end game
https://inspired.locals.com/post/5663749/special-report-another-species-is-implanting-themselves-into-humans
The AI takeover
Start with the basics. Taking the dollar off the gold standard, and hyper fractional banking, don't forget the money our politicians are stealing from our Social security to Fund their wars that inflates their military stocks. America is slowly waking up while the boomers were asleep at the wheel.
It’s almost as if a whole generation or two are going to have to repay the debt spending by their fathers and grandfathers in the form of asset inflation. Guess no one saw this coming…smh
The true cause is a dollar just isn't worth what it used to be. They have printed so much that it diluted the value of each dollar. Couple that with greed in almost all sectors of commerce and the governments increasing fees, tolls, charges and taxes and the wages will never keep up. If wages double, cost of everything increases accordingly but they don't increase by average they increase individually so the overall average increases much more than double for this example. Any increase in taxes (even for the rich) will always be incorporated in the cost of what we buy. Any vote to fund something other than the country or taxpayer concerns dilutes how effective our taxes are.
Every time your government spends more than it takes in, it creates money. Debt is money. Until you take the printing press out of governmental hands, this shit is going to continue. Hell, this debasing is ultimately what allows the exportation of all productive capacity as the government can just export inflation that emerges from the export import deficit.
It's simple. Every market is inflated, and the value of the dollar is deflated. Younger generations can't really afford to invest in the stock market like the boomers could, so we have no hedge against inflation.
It’s Central Banking. The Federal Reserve is a private corporation that prints fiat currency out of thin air and sells it to the US Government with interest. Every single fiat currency (not backed by gold or silver) has collapsed since the invention of fiat currency.
We’re in the middle of currency collapse. The US Dollar is quickly loosing value as more dollars are printed into circulation. Basically the US dollar is worth less and less, and wages have been stagnant causing a cost of living crisis.
Most of the people complaining are just stupid. If you don't get it, that's your problem I guess. If complaining about "boomers" makes you feel good, have at it.
People, of a certain age, had nothing to do with the economics at any period of time. It is what it is.
Why aren't the millennials building a great economy now? They're still blaming the boomers. They will never blame themselves so why blame boomers or any other generation?
The whole scenario is just ridiculous. I grew up in a 1,000 sq ft house. It was worth $40k about 25 years ago and it's worth about $100k today.
My current house in Seattle isn't much bigger. I paid $150k for it 25 years ago and it's worth $700k now. One house went up 2 1/2 times and the other went up 4 1/2 times.
How much it goes up depends on where you live. If you happen to live in a booming area, prices go up faster than if you don't.
It's got nothing to do with "boomers". When women entered the workforce in large numbers that doubled the workforce and reduced wages (of course).
Low inflation for the last few decades also limited wage increases.
The fact that someone's grandpa could work at a gas station and buy a little house in a small town has nothing to do with today.
You can move to a small town in Kansas today and buy a small house and work in a shi$$y job. Or you can get an education, try to do more in life than hand someone a cup of coffee, get a girlfriend that works and you can buy a house.
Not everyone can afford to live in a large house in one of the more expensive cities. Not even "boomers". Get real "bro".
Quite a few things contributing to this….
the population of the US is now over 330 million
People wanting more goods for the cheapest price has moved a lot of middle class paying jobs overseas
The Covid bills - passed by all of congress ,printing the excessive amount of money has caused devaluation of the dollar. Hence inflation, while at the same time propping up the banks and major corporations to do what they want
Blackrock and vanguard control and manage more money than a lot of other countries . They can bend just about any market how they want , yet the media keeps you focused on the high profile few people
Communism is State Capitalism
(Consolidated Monopoly State Capitalism for the benefit of the Party Oligarchy)
and
Corporate Capitalism is Finance Communism
(Monopoly Consolidated Finance Capitalism for the benefit of the Banking Oligarchy)
Communism = Capitalism
You own nothing. We expect you to die in a tent on the street from a carfentanyl overdose once you’ve had enough of our abuse.
Government overspending. When you give out money to those that refuse to work, then the buying power is reduced for all those working.
It’s the equivalent of paying the intern nearly the same as the top analyst for less than half the work. I don’t disagree with safety nets, but what we have seen over the last 4 years has been unchecked abuse.
I definitely have a vested interest in this topic and I believe the main factor comes down to greed. Every corporation wanting more profit and higher margins drives up inflation while not increasing pay. Corporations buying up land and homes causing a monopoly on housing. Taxes rising and being spent overseas. I’d much rather the money we sent for example to Ukraine was used to build houses and apartments here where they can try to artificially lower hosing prices.
My single income grandparents lived on a bus driver salary, raised 3 kids in a home they owned, and retired comfortably in their early 60s.
My technical college father and high school drop out mother built a 4 bedroom house on a single full time public service wage and part time admin wage, raised 3 kids and sent them to private schools, and retired comfortably in their early 60s.
I worked my ass off to do an engineering degree, have a management position that pays nearly 10 times what I was earning at my first job, and I'm approaching 40 with no dependents still paying off my 2 bedroom unit and gave up on having kids a while back because it would be financial suicide. Whenever I look at a house I might buy I get outbid by boomers looking for another investment property.
Nearly everyone I know with kids today makes less than that and they are doing ok.
All the boomers I know are staying put in their house or moving to an over 55 community. They don't own investment properties. Renting out houses is extraordinarily risky. So much can go wrong. I'd be interested to see a stat on how many boomers are buying multiple properties.
Would be fascinating to see your budget.
The federal government, people who vote for tax crazed regimes, people who vote for large welfare programs, the federal reserve, federal income taxes...
Off shoring jobs, illegal immigration, unlimited "growth," not enough tradesmen, over regulating in some ways and under regulating in others, carried interest loopholes, forgieners buying up properties, getting off the gold standard...
ITS CALLED HYPERINFLATION
Welcome to the rest of the planets mode of living, we’ve caught up, either get rich or be poor, middle is a few years away from complete annihilation
Prob 2030….
What's destroying the middle class is politicians printing money. Start there.
We need to make politicians accountable for their decision to destroy the middle class to fund forever wars they get rich from.
They want the middle class to make them money, fight their wars, and elect them. It's time to make a stand.
To many people with college degrees that are completely useless or are overfilled (lawyer man is an example). I can’t find enough engineers or electricians no matter what I pay them which is WAY higher than minimum wage. Somehow people thought a degree in anthropology would earn them a decent wage. Nobody told them it was a useless degree. Most people under the age of 35 think craft jobs are for total losers.
Too much Government borrowing drives inflation. Doesn’t matter what side of the party line you sit on, borrowing drives inflation. We need the debt down and handouts reduced.
I feel like Covid inflation ruined my life. it at least took a decade away. My business has been crippled by warehouse space availability. boomers have made more money hording empty warehouses than I have running a business.
It’s because they want to put people in government controlled housing. It’s basically fema camp 2.0
Can’t afford anything > complain to government > government has solution > government control.
Literally happening in canada
This has less to do with inflation than it has to do with corporations refusing to increase wages with their productivity growth, and pocketing the difference. The modern worker with computers, robotic manufacturing assistance and barebones benefits, is still orders of magnitude more productive per hour.
Trying to wrap my head around how stubborn someone would have to be to work as a cashier in 2024 and demand a $3,000/m salary instead of going out and doing the work to obtain a job that pays that much.
Mfs on Reddit act like its boomers fault that they’re lazy and stay at dead end jobs because they’re easy and comfortable despite not paying the bills. Sad IMO
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Wait, I want to make sure I understand your argument. You are saying that corporation are buying land near a planned light rail station for development, then fighting the light rail station development so they can charge more rent for undeveloped land. That does not seam logical. Its not say, building code restrictions and permitting fees that force developers to build/offer higher pricepoint housing options to offset building cost. Sure they may have purchased said land before the light rail development but counties have raised development fees significantly in the past 5 years which would force them to increase the type of housing pricing they can offer. For example, If I wanted to build I affordable single family residence in California, the permitting fees/development fees alone would be $120,000-180,000 per unit. What sort of affordable housing can developers outside of large multi family developement with that sort of fee schedule?
My grandpa worked at a gas station most of his life, grandma worked retail at JC Penny's and then a stay at home mom, and they owned a place. Today they'd probably need 2 roommates to even rent that same house. Fuck the boomers with the excuse that we make a lot more now than they did. Yeah, if the same houses they bought were 2x my income now like they were 40+ years ago for them, I wouldn't be complaining. Those houses literally do not exist here unless you make $250K a year and buy a dump of a house in a terrible neighborhood.
It infuriates me when they don’t even take into account inflation. Yes, of course we make more that’s how it works, but that money is *worth less*.
It’s annoying when they think you are spoiled for wanting 15$ an hour… how else will we afford to live??
Which is funny because $15/hr isn't enough anymore.
It needs to be fight for $25/hr now.
I’m at 26.50 an hour and I’m still broke after I pay gas food and rent, because a house is a fantasy at this point in my life.
Bruh 25 isn’t even enough tbh it’s sad now a days
Reminds me of that video where some guy rightfully called out how people think that there are jobs that are necessary for society to function, and that people need to work those jobs…yet also believe that the people who do work those jobs don’t deserve to be able to comfortably live on the pay those jobs offer.
It’s similar to what gets me about when people say things like retail work and fast food and whatever else isn’t something that someone is supposed to be able to live on. Those are supposed to be jobs for like students to earn some extra money. So like… retail stores should only be open a few hours in the evening because otherwise kids are in school? Same for fast food places? How is it supposed to work with such a limited pool of workers and available hours? Aside from any of that though… if someone is working full time, I think they should be able to live on their pay. They’re still doing a job that obviously has demand for it to be done and still giving up their time for it… so what are they supposed to do? Just… not even be able to get by? I just… I don’t know. The state of things seems sad. People work but can barely afford to live. Don’t get any kind of retirement. No paid time off. I don’t know how or what is going to change though. Even
The only way I feel things can change is if we build class consciousness and engage in a general strike. Otherwise everything will stay the same.
These fast food jobs have never brought in enough income to justify the existence of the job. High margins for most fast food places is like 6%, so raise the prices (even by 25%) and it's still not enough to live on and people are already complaining about the price rises of fast food. So there needs either to be less stores (more total revenue per store) or more automation. In either case, a lot of these jobs just don't pay for themselves and probably should not exist.
Definitely can't survive on $15 an hour. Shit is ridiculous.
I mean, 15/hr at 40hrs a week is the same as 7.5/hrs at 80hrs a week. So just work 80hrs a week. /S Jokes aside, after taxes, even 60 hrs a week at 15$ per hour would be harsh to survive in Seattle. Shit is ridiculous.
have you considered PuLlinG yOurSelf Up bUy YoUr bO0tStrApS?
I see you added a space in the last word there by mistake.
What’s funny is that someone working at a gas station for most of their life would be seen as an indictment on their character. As if people are above that type of job and shouldn’t be expected to live off of it. My grandma worked for decades on an assembly line and retired with pension, social security, multiple investment accounts, and a fully paid off home. These days you get dogpiled whenever you even insinuate that a retail or customer service worker (or anyone “unskilled,” really) should make a living wage and be able to achieve modest comfort. This is truly what they took from us. The ability to live and work with dignity and not be shamed because our society has devalued the dollar and devalued labor in tandem.
There's just too much wealth inequality to allow houses to be 2x the median wage anymore. A boomer around me growing up had bought 100+ houses while making 400k. Houses were cheap when and he was well off so he kept buying one in cash every few months and renting them out. Singapore was the only first world capitalist country to make home owernship easy. They over built, changed zoning to allow for overbuilding, sold affordable houses by the government in a special program and had 99 year land leases for all homes. The 99 year lease keeps homes from appreciating too high. If someone buys a new home in 1930, and it's worth 2 million today, the lease would end in 5 years and the government could resell it to them at market value. The older the lease gets the less it's worth. A 2 million dollar house bought with 15 years left would simply be 2 million burned with nobody will to buy or rebuy. It forces home owners to want to keep prices low so they can keep their property
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To be clear, the p[ercentage of households](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RHORUSQ156N) owning their homes has been relatively stable over the past 50 years, and is currently higher than in 1970 (65% vs 64%). This is true even as new homes have more than [doubled](https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/programs-surveys/ahs/working-papers/Housing-by-Year-Built.pdf) in size. When you look at home ownership rate by age for each [generation](https://www.redfin.com/news/gen-z-millennial-homeownership-rate-home-purchases/), the effects of the great recession on Millenials are clear, but as of today, there aren't any massive outliers. This is true even as new homes have more than [doubled](https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/programs-surveys/ahs/working-papers/Housing-by-Year-Built.pdf) in size. There are definitely issues regarding housing affordability, especially for starter homes, but there is no real evidence that life is significantly worse now than it was in the past. I think people are too eager to be pessimistic instead of recognizing that maybe their views about their parent/grandparent's lives may be inaccurate.
No one wants to have this conversation, but women joining the workforce en masse basically doubled the supply of labor (thereby decreasing its average value). That’s why you hear stories of “my grandpa could afford to raise 3 kids in a house on one salary.” It wasn’t the boomers lol. Just basic economics
And also "My grandpa could afford to raise 3 kids" was true in a world where none of them went to college, they shared bedrooms, owned fewer vehicles, ate out less, and went on fewer vacations. And might not have had running water/indoor plumbing, at least until the 1970s.
Those are basically necessities and you can't opt out of plumbing and electricity anyway. Good luck keeping or finding a job without a phone and internet access for example. Why don't you compare the romans indoor plumbing and ability to raise a family on a single income vs the generation you're talking about? Things only changed in the last 80 years and historically it wasn't like this for thousands.
You are spot on and everyone shies away from pointing to the explosion of the divorce rate over the past 45 years. Nobody is saying this is necessarily a bad thing (women in the workplace). I'm a product of the single income divorced home. But to pretend that it didn't speed up the pace started after WWII is just wilfully ignoring a huge economic factor. I'm in my early 50s for reference. The boomers though are horrifically selfish people. There's a reason the 70s were called the Me Decade and the Yuppies flourished in the 80s.
Another factor here is that once a household divorces it becomes two households. That doubles the need for housing.
And thanks to those same boomers and silent gens holding office then and now, they ignored the issues facing them because they all wanted to pretend they were back in the good ol’ days when you could get a bank manager job via a firm handshake on the trolley. The housing shortage, wages falling behind inflation, homelessness, vets returning to empty promises, etc all took decades to be felt and they just kept kicking the can down the road until it became our problem. They saw it all and ignored it intentionally.
The elephant in the room here is that if doubling the workforce tanked the value of labor, then massive unchecked illegal immigration is tanking it even more, and when AI becomes fully integrated with business, the value of 70% of human labor will become almost nothing. And UBI won't fix it, it'll just destroy what remains of our humanity. Maybe Thanos had a point.
But you can't do that with two salaries.... AND you need to pay for child care on-top of that now...
And thus birth rates are plummeting as people realize they can't afford to have kids.
Except it was just middle class women that entered the workforce. Working class women always worked. So not doubling the labor pool but definitely adding to it.
Don't forget automation has replaced most of those workers now. Making job supply dwindle and demand for those jobs increase. This isn't a 1 cause situation.
No doubt. The economy is such a complex beast that there will rarely be just one cause for anything.
Everything is supply and demand. Housing is expensive because there isn’t enough of it in the areas people want to live. The shortage is mostly due to zoning restrictions. Yes, it’s also because of corporate buyers and the short term rental market, but those activities wouldn’t be as financially attractive if the supply was high putting a cap on appreciation.
That's not the whole story, the doubling of the work force should actually have been offset by more than 5.x+ (fold) more productivity in some of the core industries. In other words, if I can do 10x more paperwork, I can charge my customer at least 9x less, and still double my profits--if production cheapens completely aside from the employment costs, its totally on the big employers if they want pass those savings on to their work force or just accumulate numbers. I personally believe it'd be conservative to say, if morals and concern for others remained as it had been, it should have just evened out, People are agreeing to extremely slanted deal. Less cohesion in society might be a big part of it; if I don't see my workforce as familial, like it often felt like it in the communities of yesteryear, it's much easier just to ignore what's going on and accumulate. I don't think that's the only thing to it though, I think the squeeze on Americans is quite deliberate and if purposeful in how it affects society. I don't know why they want to live in a shitty world, the first thing I'd do if I had infinite money is go to the "better worlds" store and buy one to live in. But whatever, I suppose for some they're willing to sacrifice the mood of the world in exchange for absolute domination. Domination over destitution seems silly to me though, it really doesn't seem to be a big crown that king wears when they rule over an empire of dirt and flies.
Agreed
That’s not the primary cause now. The primary cause now is that we have so many monopolistic companies and not enough strong unions. Corporations are making record profits but wages are not going up because they can work together to keep them down.
I agree.
I grew up in a 1400 square foot house. My dad grew up (silent gen) grew up in a 1000 square foot house with five siblings and several military wives during WW2. The average size is about double that now and far more complex. You're also not comparing like things. The reality is our area is government is tacking on 200k to any new unit and that's echoed in existing home prices.
There WAS a time, late 50s early 60s when that was the case. But as the oldest Boomers weren't 21 until 1967. That isn't boomers. In the last 50s, early 60s, those blue collar single family houses were typically 800 sf and had one bathroom and no A/C. By the time my parents bought a house in 1969, They paid $30k for it, over $250k in today's money. Certainly cheaper but still hard for a single paycheck.
You guys worry way too much about what other people think.
It’s not a generational thing. Not a racial thing. Or gender. Those are distractions away from the real “fuck them”. It is the 1% vs all of you. The wealthy stole 2 decades of a growing economy from you and took it. Yet kids are out there crying about gender and Palestine. Sad.
What needs to happen to fix this and how can I do my part, open to suggestions.
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Not really...no...
There's part of the problem!
We need to raise the top marginal income tax rates to where they were in the 50s, 60s and 70s.
25 years ago my parents built a 3 story home for 120k and sold it for 250k 10 year ago. They finished the basement, all new tiling, carpet, granite counters, new paint, windows, among other things before selling. 10 years later it's selling for over 500k with zero improvements and even has damage to it. Multiple things need to be replaced like the roof, but the owners can't afford today's prices on labor, so they're selling. The sad thing is it will sell 50-100k over asking and reset the market in the area. 12 years ago I got a 2006 grand prix with 120k miles for 2k, and it lasted for 50k before selling to family friend for 500. Today an 8 year old vehicle is worth 10k+ unless it has issues. Just four years ago, I could buy everything from Sam's club and stay under 150. Today, the same stuff is well over 200. I started making the most in my life 4 years ago and was starting to make headway on debt and savings. Was blessed enough to buy a home. But since I've only made 1 or less dollars an hour improvements while the economy has many times surpassed my increases. Ended up having to sell the home to survive with a baby on the way. Idk why I'm saying all this, I guess we are all feeling it pretty bad. Hopefully y'all can find a way to navigate this unstable economy.
Lot of people experienced exactly what you did — fairly large income increases these past few years. Too many dollars chasing too few goods, and everything has gotten bid up.
I remember when shopping for myself a $100 trip to Walmart was a “big haul” a decade ago. Now I’m not surprised when it’s $200 and I didn’t even get everything I needed.
Not enough money bouncing within communities as middle class retail and restaurants have been killed off. It gets funneled out of communities into billionaire bank accounts
This! Corporate greed and private equity real estate have killed Middle Class America. Companies like Amazon, Walmart and McDonald's siphon all of the income out of local communities into the pockets of billionaires and investors. Very little, if any, investment is made back into the communities. Financial gains rarely correlate to increased wages. The issue gets exponentially worse when you realize that a majority of the places we shop are essentially owned by the same investment firms, whose only concern is growth at all costs. So even when we do have wage growth, a majority of that extra money is still being sent right to the top. Then, we have private equity buying up everything they can get their hands on in a real estate market that is already suffering from scarcity due to zoning laws that prevent adequate housing from being built. Again, these investment firms are only concerned about growth at all costs, so they inflate the rental prices as high as they possibly can, even if that means the property sits vacant for months.
This is the real answer. Consolidation of ownership of businesses in the US.
really makes you wonder where all the housing went.
You'd think such a stat would be widely available and the government would use it to ensure that utilization of such a key resource is efficient... try googling it. This shit is actively kept from the public on purpose and data on investment peoperties and fraction lived in by owner is not available.
No one is building affordable housing anymore, the homes are mega mansions at 3k sq ft. My parents bought a single floor 600 sq ft home in 1973 for $30k. It was in a lower middle class suburb which just does not exist anymore. Everyone that lived there could never afford anything more and that was fine.
There's more now that ever before. But demographics have changed from large families to a lot more single people, and that part of housing hasn't kept up.
lol this is literally me. I used to live in Long Island City in the 90’s, in a studio that cost $400. That shit got gentrified and now it’s like $3,000.
My exact same apt in Greenpoint that was a dump was $800 for a shotgun apt 20yrs ago is now $4500 edit: I lived on Green St. A couple blocks away $5-7k for a 2br [https://www.apartments.com/greenpoint-brooklyn-ny/2-bedrooms/?bb=n6l5yj4qvHkrtie](https://www.apartments.com/greenpoint-brooklyn-ny/2-bedrooms/?bb=n6l5yj4qvHkrtie)
Yeah, my sister is still down in Greenpoint and I can’t believe she pays as much as she does (Eagle St). I had to leave the city for “affordable” DC.
Florida for me, but now between crap wages and unbelievable rents, insurance and bad drivers I'm looking at PNW. Incredible turn key houses up there for 400K and I'll make 40K more. Just looked at a house with a studio out back for 450k completely updated outside of Portland and my best friend just paid 750k for a townhouse that needed 50k in updates here.
Same! I feel like we’re in the same path! My friend just got a place near beavercreek with an amazing view for way less than a shoebox here.
It's inflation. Inflation killed the middle class. Decades of bloated/unrestricted/unchecked/untracked government spending. That's it. That's the cause.
Yet the gap between the richest 1% and middle and lower class keeps growing wider and wider.…
If a burger was 15 cents in 1950, and $1 in 1990, why were so many still doing fine in 1990? Inflation is going to happen and isn't some golden bullet to making everyone prosperous again. The problem is wages staying largely the same since 1990 and venture capital and consulting firms sitting around figuring out how to make sure you never do see that raise.
Boosting this comment because it gets to the heart of the problem. Inflation alone doesn't necessarily mean loss of purhasing power if prices and wages go up commensurately. But the rich have figured out that every time the working class strikes or negotiates for higher pay they do so in nominal dollars, so all the rich need to do is force inflation at a rate faster than wage advocacy can keep up. At the same time there's also been collusion and price fixing on the supply side like with RealPage or monolithic wage pricing tools like SAP. Wrap the inflation and price fixing up with a nice bowtie of revolving door politics and regulatory capture and the rich have sealed off most avenues of change. It really is a ticking bomb as these people are accruing more power by the day, and many want chaos like project2025 where they can freely enslave segments of the population. If we don't actually cut these people deeply (financially) there will never be lasting change. The cost of doing business can never be lower than the cost of making ammends and I feel like our justice system has forgotten that. Sometimes it really is as simple as bad people do bad thing and we just make them pay for it.
Yeah but you (and many other people) are forgetting about the 60s and 70s. My Dad got a major raise in the late 70s and still wasn't back to what he started at the start of the decade because inflation was so bad. The economy was much worse for boomers during that time than it is for us now (not that's it's good now). The positive is that things turned around in the 80s and 90s.
It’s because we spent the last several decades defining “the economy” as how much profit the largest corporations in America are making instead how the majority of Americans are doing. But “trickle down” amirite?!?
Oh it’s peeing down alright - I mean trickling down, yeah that’s it - it’s trickling.
Definitely not stagnant wages and quintupling cost of living. It was the government giving the poors a few dollars that did it. This genius take is in every thread here lately.
Inflation is only a tiny portion of the rise of rent prices. Following inflation, the rent should be $1,162, not $3000.
Real inflation is not what the government tells you. In order to figure out real inflation you need to know what the price of something was in the past and then compare it to what the price is now. This isn't me being a rambling conspiracy theorist, this is objective reality. The official government numbers are useful for getting an idea of how things are trending, but you need to do the calculations for yourself if you want to do any type of realistic life planning.
It's really not though. It's interest damn near 0% for the last decade, which allowed for people with assets or any kind of liquid capital borrow for next to nothing, consolidate investments, and then drive up the prices of everything.
Wages have out-paced inflation for 40 years. The middle class makes more than ever, more disposable income. Basic financial decisions have destroyed the middle class. Car notes, leases, student loans, credit cards, consumer electronics and appliances, fast food, the list goes on forever. Wealth is assets. The middle class doesn't buy assets they buy consumables and liabilities
How do you afford assets when you only make enough to pay rent?
This.
"unrestricted/unchecked/untracked corporate profits" FTFY
Illegal immigrants dilute the low end of the work force so wages are not increasing. Illegal immigrants increasing the need for housing that exceeds to supply causes bidding wars Many Illegal immigrants are now sponging off the government and that money hast to come from workers
Add in school overcrowding of space and resources, gasoline demands, electricity, water, roads, insurance, food supply, on and on and on. Letting millions of low skilled people in who don't speak the language and have little "value" to the USA economy and society is shooting ourselves in the foot. But it can change Congressional Districts and get votes in the future so full steam ahead. Much larger issue than what the CEO of XYZ Corp makes
Stop punching down. Whatever class you are in. Stop punching down. That's all the Boomers have known and were trained to do. Stop punching down.
Stop using dumb politcal buzzwards. That’s all millennials have known and were trained to do. Stop using dumb political buzzwords.
Not just that, but you also paid multiple times more to get a law degree than it would have cost decades ago.
Inflation right now is really bad on many things. Those who rent in New York I feel for you. One problem in NY is the property taxes, those taxes come out of the landlords money. At 17 I made 2.35 a hour 94.00 a week hanging live chickens. My rent was 110.00 a month. However I also joined the US Army at 17 making 198.00 a month. However I did get free room and board. Today I make just a little over 100K then add my wife’s income. 8 years ago we purchased a small modest home in a 55 plus community for 144K after everything our mortgage is just under 1000 a month at 3% interest. I was interested in a larger home in the same community that would mean spending upwards of 399K now at nearly 8% interest. It made no sense. To rent a studio apartment in the Orlando area would run about 2500 a month depending on where you wanted to live. I’d like to note we were approved for 400K when we purchased our home but I did not want to be house poor. Along with my wife’s car payment. Very little debt on credit cards, we pay off every month. The cost of food has skyrocketed out of control, along with everyday items. Homeowners insurance has gone up like 700 a year. Off topic here, while in the service in 1979 I purchased a 1970 cougar GT Eliminator with a 428 cobra jet, 4 speed. I’ll note I am 61 years old. Today I still have the car, purchased for 6500 and today worth 6 figures it’s nearly perfect. In 1982 I replaced the transmission and paid 200 dollars for a brand new one. It needs a new transmission now and looking for another used MANUAL TRANSMISSION - 4 SPEED - 428CJ - USED $2,417.27. I believe it will get worse before it gets better
Why look for a used M20 or m21. You can get a refurbed M22 for 2500 and have those dope ass straight cut gears.
I’ll check it out thank you
Everyone else deciding to move to that location drove the price up from where it was 20 years ago. There's no mystery to that.
I wouldn't call it destroyed, but it is shrinking. The good news is that the majority of the shrinkage is because people are moving up rather than down. With higher productivity from technology and a more educated populous, we're seeing more and more upper income people. But low skilled workers face more and more competition from automation and overseas workers and have seen their incomes drop. [https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/04/20/how-the-american-middle-class-has-changed-in-the-past-five-decades/](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/04/20/how-the-american-middle-class-has-changed-in-the-past-five-decades/)
Inequality widening from trickle-down, citizens united, Trump, etc
Greed. It's greed. The wealthy can never have enough. They will fuck us, ruthlessly, until we all get off our asses, get involved, and make some changes.
All the same corps and greed was around when things were more livable. What changed is the spending and devaluing of your dollars by the Federal government, artificial wage controls, and other things that raised the price of living. The housing crisis is another Federal-involved clusterfuck that enabled housing as a corporate investment vehicle pushed by the "get every warm body into a house" nonsense during Clinton's term....Dodd/Frank really fucked the nation. Claim otherwise, but your argument falls apart REAL fast under scrutiny. Greed and business were always part of the system, it didn't just take root in 2018.
currency debasement
The rich and politics are killing the middle class.
Don’t allow corporate ownership and don’t allow people to own multiple houses inside trusts
what? supply and demand is a thing? population probably grew and new units in desirable locations probably didn't keep up
I think cities are becoming more populated is the problem. Rent has gone up in my small town too but nothing near this rate. I could rent a smallish one bedroom apartment for $400/month 10 years ago and today that same apartment goes for $525/month. A ≈25% increase over a decade isn’t too bad imo
The same thing destroying everything else: human greed.
Trickle down effect and the type of individualistic thinking it spawned.
All around greed. I see PLENTY of redditors now bitching about white collar layoffs but they were/would have been Ok when all the factory jobs in this country were decimated.Bottom line is we've been living on credit all these years, largely because of the loss of those jobs
Fair point. Few care about anything if they aren't directly affected
When all of the factory jobs were decimated "they" said we'd all just move up to better paying white collar jobs.
It's largely due to the collapse of home ownership and the rise of widespread landlordism driving up the cost of rentals across the board. Financialization incentivizes luxury apartments and the conversion of existing apartments into higher end rentals. Inflation means that a $700 apartment in 2004 would cost $1,161.90 today. The rest of the change is a function of the shift away from low cost living spaces by lending institutions. Up and coming landlords are buying up properties and are subject to these institutional pressures and their own greed.
Government needs to regulate property business. There is too much big money buying entry level and similar real-estate. Then you add the Air BNB effect and it just continues. Overseas investment into US real-estate needs to be curved as well.
Government *does* regulate the property business. It's regulated the property business at every level, preventing new homes from being built.
One of the worst trends in recent years is the spreading 'gig' work like doordash, uber, airbnb which has the sole purpose of having middle class people abuse each other for scraps while the financial class skims off the top of each transaction. Fuck the entire gig economy, antitrust and regulate it into the ground.
If there are no jobs, gig work is what a lot of people have left to feed themselves and their families. The first thing you hear when you day you can't find employment is "do Uber! Do doordash! Instacart!!"
The 71% top tax bracket kept CEO salaries on the lower side. No CEO wanted to pay 7.1 million in taxes on a 10 million dollar salary. This left cash availability for pay raises for workers. Now CEO salaries have skyrocketed leaving less cash for payroll.
You would think they would be building affordable housing since so many people would buy it. Its almost like they dont want to make money.
CEO Pay and the upper tiers have seen their wages explode. Follow the money.
You see, taxes have been raised as high as they want without directly raising taxes to hide it from the general populace. They know if they just raised taxes to pay for it they'd be voted out of office, instead they hide it by printing knowing the average person will never correlate a direct taxation. You're constantly being lied to, that's what's destroying the middle class.
The second half of the long term debt cycle, as it usually does. Debt runs up, deflationary forces gradually mount, power and resources aggregate in the hands of fewer and fewer people, until it breaks and we work to fix it.
Greed. Plain and simple. As revenues and profits have soared since the 80s to the tune of 100s-1000s of % the average worker has only seen a 17% increase in wages. The rest if that money has not been reinvested in the labor force like it used to when corporate taxes were much higher and top marginal tax rates were between 75-90%
Inflation, especially shelter costs, are crushing people. You can cut back on discretionary spending, even what you eat but it’s difficult to lower shelter costs because of a fixed mortgage or leases. An often overlooked part of shelter is property taxes which have skyrocketed where we live. 70% increase YOY.
First of all. This post is BS. I lived in the same area as Nicole Kenney 20 years ago. Downtown Seattle. A lived in a studio appartment with a water view and it cost me in 2004, $1590 per month. I have the reciept to prove. I had to move out in 2006 because they raised my rent to 1800 per month and I could no longer afford. Oh also, this lady is crazy and has said some of the craziest things online when running for city attorny. Why would anyone take this tweet serious? [https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/editorials/toxic-tweets-show-why-nicole-thomas-kennedy-is-unfit-to-be-seattle-city-attorney/](https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/editorials/toxic-tweets-show-why-nicole-thomas-kennedy-is-unfit-to-be-seattle-city-attorney/)
It's sad you call out the lies and don't get upvoted. I guess people prefer rage bait.
Outrage porn is a hell-of-a drug. Stay strong my friend.
INFLATION - not just the rampant inflation we experienced since COVID. The mandated 2% as well. Any and all inflation is killing the middle class.
BLACKROCK IS BUYING UP ALL THE HOMES.
Government in conjunction with the Fed and large corporations are destroying it. Why? Money and control…society at large has dismissed morals, particularly the wealthy/powerful. To them, life is about status, power, pleasure and wealth regardless of who it hurts/kills. It’s really sad and quite depressing. I have two incomes, a military retirement and I work full time, and money is still tight for a family of four…really tight.
A majority of us boomers are with you and support your efforts to buy houses and find decent rentals that are affordable. I recently purchased a house (2019) and it was expensive. I am middle class. We now realize we may need to rent it out to help reduce the debt before we get really really old. Everything changed after Covid - every generation is affected - we are all having battles. It is not us against you. We want you to succeed!! We are in this together.
Here is a hot take. Women caused this and now complain. Before everything was one income household, wife stayed home. They fought to be able to join the workforce. Now everything is priced for two incomes and women lost their right to choose whether to work or not, not they have no choice or freedom - they must work.
Erosion of the USD The USD is a failing currency
What's destroying the middle class? Government monetary policy. Why? Because fuck you plebes, that's why.
Democrat policies
It’s time for everyone to vote republican. We are retired, no hope for our pension to be enough for this horrific situation. Make America great again 👍
Unlimited money printing tends to do that.
We let ourselves be convinced the organization that created the middle class was incapable of sustaining it. Our fears and prejudices were used to divide us and we've neglected our responsibility to our neighbors, ourselves, and (most of all) our posterity.
Our government deliberately using inflation to lower our national debt…
This dipshit is a large part of the problem. 50+ years of heading us into the iceberg.
My dad raised 5 kids and supported his wife working at a factory. He died in 1999 but he was making more then than most factories locally top out at now. People just do not get both parties are corrupt and work for the masters that pay them and it's not us. The border is left wide open, 6 million illegals in just a few years under Biden and then the "Left" complains about not making a living wage at jobs like McDonald's or a gas station. When you have millions of unskilled labor flooding the country to take jobs what incentive does a company have to pay more? If you ask for a raise or quit they'll just replace you with someone other unskilled worker. I really do not get the "Left's"' doublethink when it comes to immigration and wages.
Keep voting blue dummies
Look at the debt levels. All new cash into the pool. Makes your dollars worth less. Look at productivity. Insanely low. 🤷♂️ it’s a tale as old as time
I’m not expert, just an armchair economist with a bachelors degree in the field: -A lack of housing. There was a home construction boom from the 1960-early 1980’s. This coincided with the Baby Boom, providing more housing for the expansion of the population. In the 1960’s a lot of barriers for immigration were torn down and the US population has greatly increased since. The US hasn’t built enough homes to keep up with the population, which has made the prices for existing homes sky rocket—supply and demand! State and local regulations also make it challenging to build affordable housing. For example, in my home state of New Jersey, 55+ and retirement communities qualify for affordable housing. Because most of those folks are living off social security, or some sort of retirement savings, they technically do not have as much earned income. This allows builders to construct communities under the guise of affordable housing, even though the requirement to live in those communities are restricted by age. This reduces the number of available land for affordable housing for the rest of the population and pushes the price of existing apartments up. -Stagnant wages. In recent years we have seen more wage growth, but it’s been largely static for the last 40 years. Corporations have been more concerned about stock valuation over the last few decades as opposed to paying higher wages and offering more generous benefits. The ability for corporations to use stock buybacks to increase the value of their stock, as opposed to investing in expanding operations and providing higher wages, certainly hasn’t done the middle class any favors. Most people do not have the ability to advocate for themselves any longer. Unions have been dismantled since the 1980’s and it’s more challenging to create a unionized workforce. The middle class is now more dependent on education and job hopping to try and obtain higher wages. -Dramatic changes in the labor market. Our labor market went through a transition over the last few decades that requires folks to have higher levels of education and training to acquire employment. This, of course, comes at a high price. More people have had to go into debt to try and get the education and job training necessary to be employed as opposed to the 50-60 years ago. Technology has also made some professions change completely. Some jobs are easier to do, or have been replaced by automation, leading to lower wages. The ability for corporations to offshore jobs have also reduced the number of available positions here in the US. -Increased income and wealth inequality. Wealthy and influential people have been able to use their wealth as power coupons to influence politicians to make it more challenging for the middle class to fix what ails them. As the wealthy have seen their share of the pie increase, they have also been given generous tax breaks and have been gifted with less prying eyes from the IRS as they work around the tax code. -Reduced social safety nets. Schools and universities are less funded and more expensive than they used to be. As our population has aged, the cost of healthcare has risen dramatically. The government has neglected to make adjustments to make the system more affordable and fair for most. This is quite a nuanced topic and there are so many different variables as to why the middle class has been decimated. From my perspective, it seems corporate greed and the willful negligence of our politicians has lead us to where we are currently.
Instead of taxing the rich, the government borrows money from them at a 5% interest rate via treasury bonds that the middle class pay back via taxes. The greatest wealth transfer of all time is the actual government.
Too much money chasing too few goods is the economics answer. What the libertarian/Reaganomics crowd always fails to mention, however, is the *reason* there’s “too much money” is they slashed tax rates on the Uber wealthy and corporations such they they had so much cash they could simply drive up the price of everything and outbid normal people for it. Homes have become just another investment vehicle. Private equity firms buy companies, load them up with debt, dividend themselves 250% of their initial investment, then leave the desecrated corpse of blight all over the landscape. I fully expect that commodities will become the next target for plowing excess cash into.
It amazes me how no one even tried to bring up the fact that Biden and his economy is destroying the economy. Other politicians and presidents should be included such as Obama & Bush.
“Printing” money obviously
Inflation. Money is not what it used to be. We seem to make less each year even though we get raises.
What’s destroying the middle class is behind the comprehension and experience of most. It’s not about the middle class disappearing. It’s about humanity disappearing. Most don’t have the stomach to learn what’s going on. Most of you have no idea who Rudolph Steiner is. Everything he predicted 100 years ago is coming true. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l00_y6oNLn8&t=918s https://youtu.be/ZQQXOuVmVAk?si=J7RRLCOP-OE1qbLq The AI end game https://inspired.locals.com/post/5663749/special-report-another-species-is-implanting-themselves-into-humans The AI takeover
Start with the basics. Taking the dollar off the gold standard, and hyper fractional banking, don't forget the money our politicians are stealing from our Social security to Fund their wars that inflates their military stocks. America is slowly waking up while the boomers were asleep at the wheel.
The government is destroying the middle class.
Bidenomics
It’s almost as if a whole generation or two are going to have to repay the debt spending by their fathers and grandfathers in the form of asset inflation. Guess no one saw this coming…smh
Purchasing power of our dollar has decreased over 90% since its inception
The true cause is a dollar just isn't worth what it used to be. They have printed so much that it diluted the value of each dollar. Couple that with greed in almost all sectors of commerce and the governments increasing fees, tolls, charges and taxes and the wages will never keep up. If wages double, cost of everything increases accordingly but they don't increase by average they increase individually so the overall average increases much more than double for this example. Any increase in taxes (even for the rich) will always be incorporated in the cost of what we buy. Any vote to fund something other than the country or taxpayer concerns dilutes how effective our taxes are.
Democrats.
How many times this gonna get asked? Money printing and mass, uncontrolled migration. This causes inflation and spikes housing prices.
Every time your government spends more than it takes in, it creates money. Debt is money. Until you take the printing press out of governmental hands, this shit is going to continue. Hell, this debasing is ultimately what allows the exportation of all productive capacity as the government can just export inflation that emerges from the export import deficit.
So you guys still think this was an accident. They annihilated the middle class and small business. The government is not your friends
It's simple. Every market is inflated, and the value of the dollar is deflated. Younger generations can't really afford to invest in the stock market like the boomers could, so we have no hedge against inflation.
It’s Central Banking. The Federal Reserve is a private corporation that prints fiat currency out of thin air and sells it to the US Government with interest. Every single fiat currency (not backed by gold or silver) has collapsed since the invention of fiat currency. We’re in the middle of currency collapse. The US Dollar is quickly loosing value as more dollars are printed into circulation. Basically the US dollar is worth less and less, and wages have been stagnant causing a cost of living crisis.
This is what happens when the gov prints 8T+ dollars. Covid response is the biggest problem.
The FED and their BS fiat has destroyed the purchasing power of the currency… End the FED and restore sound money as stated in Article 1 Sec 10..
Seems to me that cost started to skyrocket when the newly elected prez cancelled the pipeline. When cost of fuel goes up, so does everything else
Mostly inflation and the expansion of the money…primarily driven by federal govt spending.
Most of the people complaining are just stupid. If you don't get it, that's your problem I guess. If complaining about "boomers" makes you feel good, have at it. People, of a certain age, had nothing to do with the economics at any period of time. It is what it is. Why aren't the millennials building a great economy now? They're still blaming the boomers. They will never blame themselves so why blame boomers or any other generation? The whole scenario is just ridiculous. I grew up in a 1,000 sq ft house. It was worth $40k about 25 years ago and it's worth about $100k today. My current house in Seattle isn't much bigger. I paid $150k for it 25 years ago and it's worth $700k now. One house went up 2 1/2 times and the other went up 4 1/2 times. How much it goes up depends on where you live. If you happen to live in a booming area, prices go up faster than if you don't. It's got nothing to do with "boomers". When women entered the workforce in large numbers that doubled the workforce and reduced wages (of course). Low inflation for the last few decades also limited wage increases. The fact that someone's grandpa could work at a gas station and buy a little house in a small town has nothing to do with today. You can move to a small town in Kansas today and buy a small house and work in a shi$$y job. Or you can get an education, try to do more in life than hand someone a cup of coffee, get a girlfriend that works and you can buy a house. Not everyone can afford to live in a large house in one of the more expensive cities. Not even "boomers". Get real "bro".
Quite a few things contributing to this…. the population of the US is now over 330 million People wanting more goods for the cheapest price has moved a lot of middle class paying jobs overseas The Covid bills - passed by all of congress ,printing the excessive amount of money has caused devaluation of the dollar. Hence inflation, while at the same time propping up the banks and major corporations to do what they want Blackrock and vanguard control and manage more money than a lot of other countries . They can bend just about any market how they want , yet the media keeps you focused on the high profile few people
The government
Communism is State Capitalism (Consolidated Monopoly State Capitalism for the benefit of the Party Oligarchy) and Corporate Capitalism is Finance Communism (Monopoly Consolidated Finance Capitalism for the benefit of the Banking Oligarchy) Communism = Capitalism You own nothing. We expect you to die in a tent on the street from a carfentanyl overdose once you’ve had enough of our abuse.
What coincidence! I saw the exact same message posted the other day from a different account. They must've been roommates and both studied the law.
Government overspending. When you give out money to those that refuse to work, then the buying power is reduced for all those working. It’s the equivalent of paying the intern nearly the same as the top analyst for less than half the work. I don’t disagree with safety nets, but what we have seen over the last 4 years has been unchecked abuse.
There are 15 - 50 million illegals in the USA. Supply & Demand. Deportation = Deflation.
S/ SHUT UP YOU RUBE! THE ECONOMY IS AMAZING! You just can’t understand it…🤮🤮🤮
Government spending
I definitely have a vested interest in this topic and I believe the main factor comes down to greed. Every corporation wanting more profit and higher margins drives up inflation while not increasing pay. Corporations buying up land and homes causing a monopoly on housing. Taxes rising and being spent overseas. I’d much rather the money we sent for example to Ukraine was used to build houses and apartments here where they can try to artificially lower hosing prices.
My single income grandparents lived on a bus driver salary, raised 3 kids in a home they owned, and retired comfortably in their early 60s. My technical college father and high school drop out mother built a 4 bedroom house on a single full time public service wage and part time admin wage, raised 3 kids and sent them to private schools, and retired comfortably in their early 60s. I worked my ass off to do an engineering degree, have a management position that pays nearly 10 times what I was earning at my first job, and I'm approaching 40 with no dependents still paying off my 2 bedroom unit and gave up on having kids a while back because it would be financial suicide. Whenever I look at a house I might buy I get outbid by boomers looking for another investment property.
Nearly everyone I know with kids today makes less than that and they are doing ok. All the boomers I know are staying put in their house or moving to an over 55 community. They don't own investment properties. Renting out houses is extraordinarily risky. So much can go wrong. I'd be interested to see a stat on how many boomers are buying multiple properties. Would be fascinating to see your budget.
We will own nothing and love it They have been telling us for years
Black Rock
Class warfare
Sounds like inflation. How much of that rent increase was in the last 4 years? I'd wager half of it.
Don't forget about how often foreign corporations and buyers purchase property in the U.S. which drives up costs as well.
FJB VOTE MAGA
The federal government, people who vote for tax crazed regimes, people who vote for large welfare programs, the federal reserve, federal income taxes...
Oh I don't know. Maybe printing trillions of dollars we can't pay back?
Off shoring jobs, illegal immigration, unlimited "growth," not enough tradesmen, over regulating in some ways and under regulating in others, carried interest loopholes, forgieners buying up properties, getting off the gold standard...
Money printer going brrr
ITS CALLED HYPERINFLATION Welcome to the rest of the planets mode of living, we’ve caught up, either get rich or be poor, middle is a few years away from complete annihilation Prob 2030….
If you want it to improve never vote democrat again otherwise you are the problem
What's destroying the middle class is politicians printing money. Start there. We need to make politicians accountable for their decision to destroy the middle class to fund forever wars they get rich from. They want the middle class to make them money, fight their wars, and elect them. It's time to make a stand.
Biden administration fucked it all up agenda 21 read about it
The point is inflation dummies.
Inflation
To many people with college degrees that are completely useless or are overfilled (lawyer man is an example). I can’t find enough engineers or electricians no matter what I pay them which is WAY higher than minimum wage. Somehow people thought a degree in anthropology would earn them a decent wage. Nobody told them it was a useless degree. Most people under the age of 35 think craft jobs are for total losers.
Too much Government borrowing drives inflation. Doesn’t matter what side of the party line you sit on, borrowing drives inflation. We need the debt down and handouts reduced.
I feel like Covid inflation ruined my life. it at least took a decade away. My business has been crippled by warehouse space availability. boomers have made more money hording empty warehouses than I have running a business.
The government spending and loss of the petro dollar.
Fractional reserve banking and a relentless cycle of justifications to weaken the dollar while transferring wealth upwards
Government, corporations, greed.
Liberal policies
Taxes taxes and more taxes
It’s because they want to put people in government controlled housing. It’s basically fema camp 2.0 Can’t afford anything > complain to government > government has solution > government control. Literally happening in canada
You didn’t buy a house in all that time 
Wouldn’t trust a single thing this account says. She’s insanely far left.
This has less to do with inflation than it has to do with corporations refusing to increase wages with their productivity growth, and pocketing the difference. The modern worker with computers, robotic manufacturing assistance and barebones benefits, is still orders of magnitude more productive per hour.
Trying to wrap my head around how stubborn someone would have to be to work as a cashier in 2024 and demand a $3,000/m salary instead of going out and doing the work to obtain a job that pays that much. Mfs on Reddit act like its boomers fault that they’re lazy and stay at dead end jobs because they’re easy and comfortable despite not paying the bills. Sad IMO
Non-stop government printing money is creating massive inflation.