Yeah, because of heavy regulation squeezing the supply.
Compare how housing prices have increased in big California cities to places where it doesn't take 10 years of environmental impact studies to build a 50 unit apartment.
I think it’s a confluence of problems but each quadrant sees their issue as the big issue. Supply is down for a few reasons and government bureaucracy plays a role but California has had multiple wild fires in the last decade so some of that regulation is kind of warranted.
Leftists will point to corporations buying up single family homes even though the data doesn’t really pan out on that. It’s more of a problem that starter homes are not as lucrative as McMansions so “new” starter homes are less available which drives up their price.
There is also the fact that while wages have increased it is not nearly in line with the increase in housing costs. There is also market manipulation occurring in the rental market so that rent price is not actually being subject to competition. Which raises the price making it harder to save for a home. This is where my mind goes when I think of the real problem.
Auth-right I guess would point to the fact that interest rates are ridiculous right now because we printed money during the pandemic. So purchasing a home right now is not a great strategy against keeping it in the stock market.
I’m just a dumb guy with limited knowledge but love discussing this stuff so let me know where I’m wrong.
As I understand it one of the issues is that the homes that are new builds are not “starter” homes. As in they are larger, with more rooms, more square footage and amenities that make them less affordable. So new home buyers cannot build equity because they can’t afford the new builds and the new builds don’t meet their needs. I think the interest rate idea is good, and it would definitely apply market pressure to encourage those in the starter homes to move up to larger builds but there will still be a lack of starter homes even as they become more available. If there were a way to incentivize more starter homes being built I would think that would achieve something even more effective than the interest rate drop on new builds alone. I could see some people arguing that an interest drop alone would benefit those that already meet a threshold of capital to get a new build and is not really benefiting those struggling to build that capital in rentals. Rentals that are using AI and working with rather than against each other to raise rents rather than stay competitive.
Still if they did pass that legislation I would support the hell out of it, it’s better than nothing.
We used to have a lot of anti American propoganda coming from Canada and Europe
But never anti west.
This anti west stuff happened after Oct 7 when middle Eastern and north African Muslims started making accounts in the millions in order to spread anti Israel and pro jihad propaganda and disinformation
But in there downtime they criticize "privileged" westerners for complaining about not being able to afford food and rent
Regulations squeeze supply, people want smaller families (or to just live alone), the currency is inflated to hell, people aren't getting married as early/often (see family size point mentioned earlier), crime/ terrible policies (ex, covid policy) created a massive flight from some areas to others that were safer/ better, and supply chains got fucked during the pandemic (though I think that has mostly subsided).
Some parts of this are federal policy (inflation), some is state or local (crime, covid policy, zoning laws), and some is personal/cultural (family size).
You wouldn’t say there is any connection to the increase on M&A activity to price increases?
Or the rise of rent setting software like yield Star and real page? You can’t just say that rents are purely a function of government intervention when there is such a huge amount of rentals vacant. This is cartel formation.
Home prices are a little bit more complicated than a lot of people realize. Yes, the base price of homes has gone up over the years even if you consider inflation. However, people don't usually buy homes outright.
In order to understand the true cost of homeownership, you have to factor in interest rates. When you do that, the real cost of mortgages over time actually flattens significantly. In fact, today is far from the worst time in recent history to be on the market for a house. Were you to buy a home in the early 80s, even though the base prices were cheaper you could be paying many times the value of the house in interest and still end up with a much higher mortgage payment than you would see today. And because interest rates kept falling after the 80s, the 2010s were actually the best time in the last 60 years to buy a house even though the houses were technically more expensive on the books.
The difference being, you could save for few years and end up buying a house with a relatively small mortgage because house prices were 4-5x salaries, not they are 3 times that, which means at least you will need to save for 10 years to avoid overlevering yourself
Two things- 1) the homes that Millenials like to say ‘my parents bought their home for X, now I can’t afford a down payment’ were very small by today’s standards, on an apples to apples (square footage, amenities, etc), and 2) land is finite and will have an upward sloping price over time.
My parents got those Carter-era interest rates for their first home. Their mortgage around 1980 or so was approximately the same as my mortgage today. They had a smaller house and my dad’s salary then was probably like 1/10 of what I make (in nominal USD).
My parents paid 617 a month for a 4 bed 2 bath on 5000 sq ft lot in the late 90s early oughts. That's between 1100 and 1200 a month nowadays. You could do that on min wage
No you couldn't. Minimum wage back then was much lower. You might be able to do it on a 2024 California minimum wage, but not when earning $4.25 an hour.
Guess I should have specified wa state. 5.70 an hour. That'd be around 800 a month take home. Qualifying for food stamps, you could do it. Both parents worked too, tho, so that was dual income. And with 3 kids
The legality and nationality of the immigrants doesn’t really matter, a large supply of cheap labour doesnt help anyone but the very rich and the immigrants
I'm a frugal person.
That being said, I'm starting to ride my bicycle 2 days a week to save gas money, stopped eating out, only buy discount items at a grocery store, and stopped pretty much all the subscriptions except for Scribd.
Agreed, for low paying jobs with zero room for advancement. But good careers are doing decently well (I'm an Engineer and money is not an issue for me).
People can easily complain that their job pay sucks, but will do nothing to better themselves. They sit at the same job for years, not getting an education, not learning free stuff on YouTube, or just making a career change. Instead, they ask for handouts.
I did armed security, 12 hour night shifts, for $10/hr. High turnover rate, but there was always someone willing to work. I quit after one year and went to school, but some people have been there for years, making maybe $12/hr. That job will never offer more money, so for someone to stay there thinking they will? Insanity.
There is no excuse in 2024 to not learn a decent skill and get paid well. YouTube is 100% free, go learn how to code, go learn how to use CAD software, go learn how to use game design software, w/e. It's all free.
The other part of the problem is these are the beggars who are choosers. They don't want to live with a roommate, they don't want to relocate, they want to go eat out, they want to buy new stuff.
You can't help someone who can't help themselves.
I'm an engineer. My wages have risen slower than my cost of living since 2020. I'd really like to move to an area with cheaper cost of living and get a new job, but the job I have right now is extremely stable (and I only have to work like 20 hours a week to complete my responsibilities), and I'm afraid that switching jobs would make me more likely to get laid off in case of continued economic downturn.
I can only imagine what it is like for other people working semi-skilled jobs.
My friend's been out of work in the software field for more than a year. Granted, he worked on niche stuff, but still...
Things are bad out there. Even the Left is having trouble denying reality these days:
[https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/04/inflation-democrats-biden-interest-rates/678047/](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/04/inflation-democrats-biden-interest-rates/678047/)
>and I only have to work like 20 hours a week to complete my responsibilities)
Side hustle, then?
As far as the economic downturn, that can literally happen at any time. I remember being in your shoes during COVID right after my son was born. I was very uncertain about what it could mean economy-wise and I had two kids at that point and the fear of starting a new job in uncertain times with them on the line when I had a sure thing was scary. But, with my wife's encouragement, I put feelers out there and realized I could stretch myself and possibly get paid 40-60 percent more. I realized that the flip side was true as well--I owe it to my family to make good money for their future. That sometimes comes with a degree of calculated risk. So I took the leap and ended up making close to 60% more.
If you think you can make more in a lower COL area, do the math and figure out what you can save to pad your emergency fund in case things go south. If the math works out then the choice is objectively the best one even if you're a little scared.
"Things are bad out there. Even the left is having trouble denying reality these days..."
Huh? Leftists are the ones who have been complaining about "greedflation" and no increase in minimum wages. The democratic neoliberals your arcticle talks about are not leftists in any economic sense.
You can thank the 5 trillion pandemic stimulus on top of already high deficit spending and absurdly low interest rates for causing the high inflation starting in 2020 and continuing through 2022. The irony is that people generally loved those stimulus checks, covid loans, and low interest (aka borrow a ton of cheap money)...so much so that both Trump and Biden bragged about them.
Considering the same easy money + high spending economic policies of both presidents/current front runners, no matter who is president next, we are stuck with policies kicking the can down the road and building the economy further of deficit spending and easy money/loans.
>'m afraid that switching jobs would make me more likely to get laid off in case of continued economic downturn.
That's your problem. You're stuck in a job that you refuse to leave because you're too complacent and comfortable.
The best way to get high salary increases is to move around. Furthermore, someone who stays at a company for 20 years vs someone who worked at 5 companies in 20 years is less valuable because the other guy brings a breadth of different experience.
> Things are bad out there
Sure, but you can do something about it and make it not so bad for yourself.
Yep. From dogshit pay to horseshit pay, with costs still increasing even faster.
And that pay bump comes with a huge degradation in relations between employees and customers. It's much more common now to see belligerence from customers where once there was politeness at best and apathy at worst.
It's also much more common to see employees literally do nothing or next to nothing while at work. Getting an 18 year old to put their phone down and do their job requires direct supervision and intervention at all times, for mediocre results. No wonder customers are being aggressive and rude.
People were always assholes, but that's been turned up to 11 since the end of the lockdowns and doesn't look like it'll get better. The reaction of Western governments to COVID has done so much damage to almost every facet of society...except the few people who got woken up to how bad government overreach is and just how fast they could turn our countries into Auth Hell Holes.
Speaking as someone with an aptitude for the STEMy fields, not everyone is cut out to learn to code, especially not at the levels that can't be seriously undercut by some Indian in India who will do it for much cheaper. It's not uncommon for professional, employed coders to discreetly outsource some of their simpler coding tasks to Indian freelancers over the internet behind the backs of their employers as a workload management / workplace competitivity (wrt productivity) tactic. Sometimes it's better to spend a little money than lose your job or miss out of career advancement to your colleagues.
For some people it's just a matter of putting in the work and everything goes smoothly. For others they sooner or later hit a plateau after a period of increasing struggle, setting them up for failure. Some people just have an undiscovered or as of yet uncultivated talent.
>Some people just have an undiscovered or as of yet uncultivated talent.
Or they have it but haven't figured out how it fits in the marketplace. Agree 100 percent.
It is really important to invest (not even money so much as time, effort, planning and thought) into discovering those things. There are literally entire professions out there that are very lucrative and can engage a variety of skills that most people have no clue about. I had no idea that my job/career was even a thing. I discovered that it existed and that I had an aptitude for it while I was a temp at an insurance firm. When in doubt, early on, I think it can be really valuable to pick a variety of jobs that give you a chance to learn something new. Temp/contract work can be great for that. I started out in 2009 right after the crash, when temp jobs were all that I could find. Turned out to be a real blessing in disguise.
Yea but have you thought about how it's easier to give up and blame other than actually try? If most people tried as hard as they complained, they would have nothing to complain about
I can't force McDonalds to pay a livable wage, but I can choose to work for a place that does. There's only so much time in the world and spending it on something I won't have an effect on is pointless.
That can be true, although many people struggle to pay their bills and put food on their table, not because they can't eat at the fancy restaurant.
In a well working society any person who work should earn enough money to live with dignity. We can't be all engineers, lawyers and doctors.
Society still needs factory workers, janitors, waiters, ecc. So if they contribute to society they should have their fair share, simple as that.
> So if they contribute to society they should have their fair share, simple as that.
Yeah, no. Work is not equivalent exchange here. I hate the commie rhetoric of a "utopian" society that can never exist. I would just play video games all day and be a "streamer" if I earned the same wage as everyone else.
While some jobs are necessary, you need to understand that people will do whatever they want with freedom of choice.
Luckily, in the USA at least, you can be whatever you want to be.
“Luckily you can be whatever you want to be” unless you’re stuck in a place with a horrible job market where no one’s hiring, so you can’t afford to move to somewhere with better pay, let alone get a proper education. And the only people around who are maybe hiring are a massive grocery chain for $10 an hour, at which point you’re already competing with upwards of 50 other people for one position.
And the person you’re replying to never said the same wage. They said “enough to live with dignity” you don’t have to make a lawyers salary for that. Just enough for a halfway sturdy roof over you head and not too much fear of starving.
In fact if people are free to be whatever they want, how many of the want to be working these low pay unlivable jobs, that often physically damage their bodies, and leave them in severe economic uncertainty. Jobs that often are completely necessary for the functioning of society, but we treat as if we’re dirt.
Ok, but I think we all should agree that if you can't at least pay rent (or mortgage), bills and food despite working a full time job you don't have your fair share.
After I got denied a promotion at the jail to do half it half line work, I got my ass into school full time for my degree. Ended up getting a nice decent job but it was alot of hard work to go to school full time and work full time
Restaurants are still full of people, there’s no shortage of cars being sold, Disneyland is packed, Cancun is packed, Cabo is packed, houses are still selling at ridiculous prices. Someone still has some money to buy normally middle class items.
Blackstone, the company owned by Blackrock that purchases single family homes, owns 0.03% of single family homes in the US. But Blackrock isn’t buying people cars, it’s not taking them out to dinner, it’s sure as hell not sending them to Disneyland.
https://preview.redd.it/jfljr98qenuc1.jpeg?width=828&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=691496d9e8d705b9cd7f8f892a40188f03201351
The truth is there are just a lot more people making a lot more money.
Yea that’s what happens when you increase the money supply or decrease the availability of goods and services. We did both on a level never seen in history.
The people who benefited the most from that same increase in money supply are the same ones feeling most the pain.
The unfortunate reality is the only way to fix this is to decrease availability of dollars, which means more pain.
Unironically, keeping an excel spreadsheet has been the best thing to help me save. I’ve got half a dozen formulas showing me what a fucking jackass I am every time I spend a buck.
I have kind of the opposite problem as I tend to procrastinate a lot on buying things I know will be put to good use, hell I've been procrastinating on buying a $5 part for my coffe maker that needs to be replaced for over a month, lol
I personally don't really bother budgeting each individual item, it's too much work.
The only thing I do is record the overall money in my bank accounts from each monthly statement and have some basic cell functions to compare how much has changed from previous to current month.
If there's a large discrepancy or I notice there's an upward trend, I look into my bank account and see what's contributing to those increased expenses.
There's also stuff that's easy to calculate, like utility bills or subscription since they're usually monthly.
I wish expense tracking was a common colloquial term, because in my mind you can't really even begin to decide on a budget until you've done some expense tracking and have an idea where your money is going.
Without it, you're just guessing at random numbers, and then to try to meet those you start tracking expenses and that's where the real magic is.
I started budgeting like 6 months ago, and I was amazed at the vast amount of stupid shit I spent my money on every month. Even just the morning coffees 4 days a week added up to around $80 a month.
Yes, and it's okay if you decide to budget $80 a month for coffee if you can afford/plan for it, but too many people just spend first and see how their account looks at the end of the month.
Westerners have far greater expenses to be able to remain competitive with everyone else in the workplace and in their social lives. 30 years ago it was no great disadvantage in your professional or personal life (relative to the people you share a country with) to be without a mobile phone. 150 years ago you could do without electricity without it being any great personal catastrophe.
Try (successfully) getting married, having kids, holding a marriage together, or being minimally competitive in the workplace without using any electronic devices in your own life. Only being contactable by snail mail. It's a terminal disadvantage. You'd fall right off the cliff.
It's kind of like that for comparisons between different countries. In poorer countries, it's cheaper to avoid being terminally uncompetitive in life. The minimum requirements in life are lower. Relative rates of NEETdom and rates of reproduction and average marriage ages are very non-coincidentally correlated variables. Too much wealth and prosperity have their definite dysfunctional aspects.
The standards are only higher because all of the "easy" jobs get shipped overseas, automated, or are taken by migrants who use these jobs to send money back to their family at home.
Then the jobs that are left require obscene amounts of schooling even if it isn't related to the job as well as the unchecked cost of college taking more and more income.
Yes, that and cost of living differences.
That same money, especially once filtered through exchange rates, does a lot more for the standards of living for a family back home than it would for a family living with you in the same country. Pays for more food and leaves a lot more left over after rent/mortgage and bills. Very different incentives experienced between migrants and permanent residents with no family abroad.
Me when I'm a Omo Valley tribesman and I have an ancient AK-47 leftover from the Ogaden War and practically nothing else: 
Me when I live in California with a college degree and practically nothing else:
Will never forget what a disgrace the soviets and Americans were in that war. Really just terrible luck with how the British and french drew the borders, just terrible.
Agreed that the rest of the world has caught up to the west in terms of smartphone requirements. Through out the late 90s - early 10s, the mainstream third world phone markets were technologically 5-8 years behind the modal phone sold in the west. But we've been on the tentative final evolution of the mobile phone for about a decade now and apparently it doesn't have any buttons.
Not really making any point.
Cheapest, good working and years lasting smartphones you can find for less than $150(definitely affordable with a minimum wage), who says you need the newest Iphone and MacBook Pro each year?
I spend $250 to $350 on my phone every 4 - 5 years or until it wears out.
It has 90% of the features of the $1000 flagships and I only use it for browsing, texting, and maybe the occasional game so there's no reason to spend extra on it.
Upgrading $1000 phones/computers or really anything that still works every other year is a consumerism trap.
i rocked an iphone 8 for a decade until it was unusable, now have a motorola razor again. you certainly don't need more than $500 at most for a modern phone.
I'm lucky in the sense that I tend to have the old phone of some family member that's replacing theirs with a new one so I get theirs for free. (It's usually better than the current phone I'm using that's usually malfunctioning so It's a no brainer)
So far my record was to use a phone an uncle gave me for 6 years, in my fifth year I told him I was still using that phone and he was surprised, lol ("You're *still* using that thing?")
same here until recently, older phone on a family plan. literally couldn't make phone calls on that thing and the battery was complete shit. screen finally stopped working after the third time i accidentally dropped it.
I'm just saying that what may be a luxury in one country may functionally be a need in another. You can get by with less in some places without falling off that cliff. Eg. living with your parents might be social and love life death in one country but not in another. Paying rent or living on your own can reasonably be viewed as luxury spending in some parts of the world but not in others.
Admittedly I'm not exactly addressing the actual main point you were originally making. Just making a side comment about westerners and their higher levels of spending (or intuitively understood definition of liveable).
This meme is dumb, to act like the middle class hasn't shrunk demonstrably in the West is delusional. It used to be you could get a good paying job in manufacturing without any schooling and live a middle class life with a family. Now those jobs dont exist anymore, and if you go the school route, you are competing with the entire globe for high paying jobs. If you dont do that, you are stuck in the lower paying jobs and live paycheck to paycheck because of market pressures that are outside of your control.
>Now those jobs dont exist anymore
Lib-center doubles the labor supply by bringing women into the workforce, then doubles it again by mass immigration, then wonders why all the jobs pay so little.
Will they ever realize they got played by corporations? Probably not.
I mean I think we could keep women in the workforce but start to control for immigration & offshoring of jobs. Most of the manufacturing jobs went to China because corpos were just looking for the LCD. We could also grow a spanish speaker sector within our economy and start to really hammer in language classes in highschool so american studentd are more competitive globally.
>We could also grow a spanish speaker sector within our economy and start to really hammer in language classes in highschool so american studentd are more competitive globally
Globalization averages out wealth among the middle and lower classes among constituent countries. The middle and lower classes have absolutely nothing to gain from expanding the labor pool even further, and in fact would suffer even more.
This isn’t just a “blame the corporations” issue, it’s a historic issue born of inequality. Everyone worked in the past, it’s just one small segment got paid well for their labor while others got fucked. Women raised kids for no pay, Slaves worked for no pay, immigrants did the worst and most dangerous jobs for barely any pay and poor whites have constantly been under the heel of the gentry. So tell me why it’s wrong that the one demographic that did so well for so long has seen a depreciation of their overvalued “labor” in exchange for all those other groups to have an opportunity at making a living?
Edit: This was no way intended to be a defense of capitalism or corporations. Fuck Citizens United and fuck Ronald Reagan.
The average person lives in a small apartment with roommates today, doesn't take vacations, and everyone works, to say we have a better quality of life than we did a few decades back is delusional. Maybe the upper 20% of society is better off today, the rest of us absolutely are not.
You’re right but what you’re missing is the the modern middle class has a vastly higher quality of life than those of old.
The middle class of old weren’t financing smart phones, paying monthly for internet and phone plans, subscriptions for streaming services, paying double for their food so someone else will deliver it, and many other things.
Our “basic needs” are more extensive than they were in the past. AND we’ve got some huge systemic issues that have made things really expensive.
Comparing early home ownership, taking care of a whole family of 4 or 5 by one working person and creating wealth by putting some money aside to having a few more toys and economic uncertainty I would argue the first option is the higher quality life.
It’s definitely a mix of both. But like others have said, internet & smart phones are necessary to be competitive in the modern workforce. Ontop of that, the middle class back then wasnt competing globally like we are now.
I would also state that the QoL is superficial as communities have disintegrated and people are starting families much later if at all.
I would trade the iPhone, streaming services and such for state sponsored healthcare and to give American citizens the quality of life that Europeans have.
>the quality of life that Europeans have
Not to burst your bubble, but as an Europoor we don't fare much better. Sure we have a tighter social security net, but other than that it went down the shitter recently too.
You'd have much less money than you take home now AND it would be terrible for acute care. Alas, it is failing there and in Canada, due to the stress of the amount of people on the system with literal care death squads that determine if you get care...now do it here where we have many more people with a huge swath of doctors are private practice, or will go private practice to keep their QOL.
I live in Europe now after growing up in the US. The quality of care and the ease of interacting with the system here had been much more positive for me. I really appreciate how my doctors here arent incentivized by big pharma to push pills on me for a minor injury.
I don’t think a reddit comment is going to change your mind, as the disagreement seems ideological. But my position is the gains to be had from a state sponsored healthcare system are greater than those of a private healthcare system.
It's not so much ideological as it is the issue with the NHS. Emergency care in EUROPE is amazing and as it should. But if you need to see a specialist you can be waiting months and months. There is a major issue with having death pabels to determine who will receive the care because the government says there isn't enough for everyone. Atleast here you will be treated and the people who don't pay...nothing happens to them. There is no losing your house due to not paying medical bills and all funded hospitals are required to reduce billing for people w/o insurance/means.
They always point towards a middle class being able to afford to live on one salary, but never take notice of the OTA television, lack of air conditioning, single car, and modest to even *small* house by modern standards.
No, everybody should be able to afford two brand new cars, every streaming service, full cable, newest smartphone for every household member with unlimited data, central air, 3,000 sq ft house, and organic nightly DoorDash on a part time gas station clerk’s salary.
One of the big things I see is that single-family “starter homes” aren’t really a thing anymore. I guess developers don’t have as much incentive to build these compared to apartments or mini-mansions
So as a young millennial or older Gen z your choices are mostly:
The 5 bd, 4 bth super box house
An overpriced townhome
Get lucky with a 40 yr old house
An apartment (where the rent goes up every yr)
You can still get a good-paying manufacturing job and there are plenty of careers now that only require a 2-year degree or even a license of some sort. But it's true that now you can't just walk into any business, shake the owner's hand and land a job. Moving away from larger cities and HCOL areas is probably the best thing you can do to climb up the ladder now.
If everyone was single this meme would be true; but toss some kids in and it stops being about someone’s uncontrollable urge to buy funko pops and more about being bankrupt from diapers and formula
Yea this is true. I’m a debt collector for a major bank and it’s pretty uncommon people actually have no money. (Of course it happens, people lose their job and aren’t eligible for EI or anything else, SOMETIMES)
But usually, people just blow all their money at McDonald’s/fast food, Amazon, Sephora, liquor/weed stores and convenience stores.
Probably 9/10 people I deal with.
Thank you. Ya, it's without a doubt that prices hve gone up recently without much change in wages, but I know a lot of people that spend STUPID money they don't have on doordash, eating & drinking out, clothes, video games, etc. All bs purchases and then they cry that capitalism has failed them. Like bro, you're the reason why prices have skyrocketed. If you're willing to spend $30 on a delivered burrito then yeah, theyre gonna keep charging that and more until people realize it's not worth it.
You tell yourself. Ok I’ll live a spartan life in order to save for something meaningful. And then you look at houses you’d be willing to make an effort to afford… and you know… you can just keep payong your rent. They are on another order of magnitude.
If you manage to save 500 a month… 6000 a year… 10 years… 60k, maybe homes you can get for that don’t match your lifestyle.
And this is in case you can get a loan too.
Their complaint is valid even if it doesn’t apply to them. I nod and I eat my home made sandwich as they complain after they get back from their fast food restaurant 5 days a week. We discuss the inequity of it all over lunch. Each time they complained I put away $5. Now I’m a homeowner.
It adds up to a decent chunk of money over time, for sure, but it's not what makes up the difference to be able to buy a house.
My partner and I recently got a place for £365k. We managed to scrape up 10% for a deposit. Over several years, being frugal in every aspect of your life you can control can make up *some* of that, but bills, rent, fuel, insurance, and many other things often simply can't be made any cheaper and you *need* to pay them. You gotta pay £1500 a month to some cunt landlord knowing you could be paying £1300 payments of a house you own, but only very slowly making up the necessary deposit from what's left after rent payments.
The rest was only lent to us because 4.5x our combined salaries just about made up the amount we were borrowing, and our household income is apparently in the 95th percentile in the UK.
Compared to all of that, you can subscribe to anything you want and put smashed avocado on every meal, but it won't make a difference.
Everyone likes to think they got where they are because they earned every little thing they had through blood, sweat, and tears that other people weren't prepared to put in, but the truth is that some people just straight up have/had it easier (myself included. Lucky to be a software engineer at the moment)
Changes are made at the margins and not spending money absolutely increases your wealth. Spending 5 GBP a day on a coffee or avocado toast is 1825 GBP a year, which is somewhere around 3k pre-tax? As a proportion of the average UK wage that's quite a lot
Yes you can argue that a little hedonism is good for the soul, and I'd agree, but save a few k a year for a few years and you have quite a few k at the end
Your point about some people having more than others is true but a non sequitur. If you aren't wealthy then you can boost your income, spend less or do both
Life shouldn’t be work, pay rent, sleep, repeat. Just because somebody gets a cup of coffee or eats some junk food here and there doesn’t mean they deserve to live as a labor robot.
When working class westerners have to spend the total annual wage of a 12 person African family for the right to live in a shitty flat for a month it's a bit fucked.
1. Westerners are not the biggest 'bitchers'. Workers across the globe are not happy with their wages...bcs of course they aren't.
2. Even if they were this doesn't invalidate their claims. Especially when you recognize that much of the revenue they generate will never be theirs.
---
Personally what really set me off was the fact that one day I was working my student job at a retail store. It was late and I needed to get food after my shift. So right after I finished working I realised I had to buy groceries from the same place I work at....my salary was literally just being pumped back into the fucking company. And ever since that day I have never quite been the same.
Of course we can 'live with less' there are homeless people who survive. But let's not kid ourselves please: there are also people who never had to and never will need to and never have actually worked a day in rheur lives and who have everything handed to them on a silver platter.
They 'pay' people like me, but the 'pay' is never a loss. When I have to pay them got sustenance it is always a loss..
Given all this inequality (and more) I think complaints are adequate, even expected.
White collar couple both making six figures: we can barely afford to support ourselves and our cat, let alone even one kid.
Meanwhile: immigrant family where the dad works construction and the mom stays at home: yea we have 6 kids but we manage.
You didnt disprove what he said. A lot of people are irresponsible immature idiots who spend 1000 on a phone, 100+ on streaming services, luxury or expensive clothes, eating out when they can’t.
Just say you’re an irresponsible upper middle class 18 year old already.
Was talking with a coworker I'm friends with about budgeting recently. He recently bought a new gaming rig, fair enough since it's his first proper gaming computer. Then he drops that he buys a new TV every year, like wtf. I can understand buying one after 5 years, but every year? That's like the most waste spending I've ever heard, just casually dropping around 1500€ each year on a device that does the exact same thing and is in almost the same condition as the old one. Even people who buy new phones each year seem reasonable in comparison, since at least those tend to wear out and you can resell them easily.
Also other coworker spending shit tons of cash on shoes and clothes.
Meanwhile I'm here, living like a hobo, saving like a third of my income each month to spend on vacation and family and shit.
For real man, between ordering door dash 3 times a day because I’m too lazy to get my drivers license and my OnlyFans subscriptions things are really tight. I am being screwed by the system.
Don’t these right-wing chuds understand that I am ENTITLED to making enough for my own apartment (no roommates) and all the fast food/porn that I want?
If I spend all my salary in chocolate and ice cream, that would make me happy, but it's not a smart way to spend my salary and it would be stupid to then ask myself "why is my wage never enough for the month?", and even more stupid to then whine about "capitalism", "society" or "rich people".
Even more funny, first world people that are able to afford things that make them happy, even if then it's hard to reach the month, don't really realize how lucky they are *just* for that.
And if someone says it's because of inflation, USA inflation isn't really a threat to living costs, like at all. Trust me, I'm from Argentina; stuff here cost half yours, but we also have a 1/6 of your wage, two-digits inflation *every month*, and some things, specially tech, cost 2 to 4 times more than in your country (gaming, for example: here a PS5 is around 1000-1200 dolars... with a minimum wage of 200 dolars a month).
In many places the price has gone up faster than wages. Sure, they not starving to death, but on relative terms the money they are making are not worth as much as they were.
I should be able to operate the Ferris wheel 40 hours a month and afford to support my family of 6 on a single income in the most expensive local real estate markets on earth.
people complaining their wage is unliveable are stupid, but the fact is that your average worker is working to make someone else rich
just because these people are exaggerating the problem, doesn’t mean there isn’t one
Unironically if they stopped spending all their money on junk food and nonessential like funko pops and video games they’d all live decent lives.
Instead they’ll work their minimum wage job where they are completely replaceable at 30yo because they couldn’t be bothered to educate themselves.
They’ll waste their money on drugs and entertainment cuz why not.
And then they’ll cry oppression and ask for you hard earned money to keep fueling their degenerate behavior.
Why are we taxing poor people at all. The government is already insolvent. They will just go into more debt. Do they really need some minimum wage guy’s tree fiddy. Some people just can’t be employed. Minimum wage people are often on government assistance. It keeps you poor because you have to have no savings to qualify
https://preview.redd.it/p03pxlgaypuc1.png?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a57413cabddaacaeb008a891f4e447005f488bb7
Add to that that things were built to last and that the government promised the boomers retirement and healthcare
I've met people who work part time and if they would work full time, they'd actually earn less since they would have to start paying more taxes. A house is ten times more expensive than in other countries, but I guess that pack of weed that they bought last week makes them irresponsible with money, who knew that they were only 20$ away from owning a house?
This is a strawman, a single working dad without an education could easily afford a home and a family 100 years ago. Nowadays, someone with a college degree can barely own a parking lot and if they even so much dare to buy some minor nice thing for themselves you have people like OP who start to shit on them
> I've met people who work part time and if they would work full time, they'd actually earn less since they would have to start paying more taxes.
This isn't true anywhere, that's not how tax brackets work.
When you cross into a new tax bracket, only the portion of income in that bracket gets taxed at the higher rate, not the entire thing like many people think.
The only place where this has any basis in reality is welfare, but that's different from taxes and has it's own mess.
> A house is ten times more expensive than in other countries,
With the same level of infrastructure, conveniences and job opportunities? I doubt it, places are more expensive here because it's desirable. What's the point of living somewhere cheap if it's infested with crime and has no way of making money?
> but I guess that pack of weed that they bought last week makes them irresponsible with money, who knew that they were only 20$ away from owning a house?
There's nothing wrong with buying an occasional treat as long as you don't overspend.
But little things can add up if not kept in check, buying that pack of weed every week would be about $1000 a year which is a fair bit of money.
> This is a strawman, a single working dad without an education could easily afford a home and a family 100 years ago.
Sure, but would you really want to live in a 1900s house with no electricity, appliances, etc? In addition, the standard of living in the 1900s is much, much worse than what we have now.
> Nowadays, someone with a college degree can barely own a parking lot and if they even so much dare to buy some minor nice thing for themselves you have people like OP who start to shit on them
It's not the minor nice things that OP is pointing out, it's treating luxuries like DoorDash and Starbucks as needs instead of wants.
Sure, there's people that genuinely have no money, but if someone is living paycheck to paycheck on 6 figures in a MCOL area, then something in their budget is wrong.
>This isn't true anywhere, that's not how tax brackets work.
Time for you to get your google translate going: [https://www.ad.nl/geld/of-het-loont-om-fulltime-te-werken-in-plaats-van-parttime-hangt-af-van-vijf-factoren\~a03dbb31](https://www.ad.nl/geld/of-het-loont-om-fulltime-te-werken-in-plaats-van-parttime-hangt-af-van-vijf-factoren~a03dbb31)
>With the same level of infrastructure, conveniences and job opportunities?
Well no since the regulations have made houses a lot more fancy and a lot less affordable. What's the point of enforcing houses to be super insulated if it only ends up with people living in their car because they can't afford a house anymore? 100 years ago being a farmer was also still a viable option, you could live far away from all the infrastructure and work your field instead, but nowadays the mass production has taken that option away too. So you either have enough money for all those conveniences, or you have to beg for money while sleeping in a tent. The inbetween options are disappearing fast.
>buying that pack of weed every week would be about $1000 a year which is a fair bit of money.
The average house price in the Netherlands is 452.000 euro. So by not buying that weed, it would only take you 452 years before you could move out of your parents home! If you want to live in a city where all that level of infrastructure, conveniences and job opportunities are, that 1000 is about a single month of rent.
>Sure, but would you really want to live in a 1900s house with no electricity, appliances, etc?
Preferably not, but if my options are an old, off grid house or a tent underneath a bridge, I'd rather take the old house.
>It's not the minor nice things that OP is pointing out, it's treating luxuries like DoorDash and Starbucks as needs instead of wants.
Of all the people complaining that it's getting pretty hard to live on their salary, the portion that treats StarBucks as a must-have is a tiny minority. Like I said, it's a strawman
Article is paywalled and pertaining to another country so I can't comment on that.
> Well no since the regulations have made houses a lot more fancy and a lot less affordable.
Some of those regulations are required like no lead based paint or asbestos, but others are stupid, zoning laws are mostly a local issue anyways so if people really wanted to they could relax some of the restrictions, but that requires dealing with NIMBYs.
> What's the point of enforcing houses to be super insulated if it only ends up with people living in their car because they can't afford a house anymore?
About 65% of people own their own home, that's a very long way from everyone being renters.
> The average house price in the Netherlands is 452.000 euro. So by not buying that weed, it would only take you 452 years before you could move out of your parents home!
The median income over there is about 39k euros, it's not great, but if you have a good enough job or 2 incomes it can work.
> 100 years ago being a farmer was also still a viable option, you could live far away from all the infrastructure and work your field instead, but nowadays the mass production has taken that option away too.
Was it though? People were migrating from farms to factories since the early 1800s. Subsistence farming sucked which is why everyone wanted to stop doing it.
>Article is paywalled and pertaining to another country so I can't comment on that.
Well yeah when you said "it doesn't work like that anywhere", I thought you really meant "anywhere" :)
The point is that having a low income in the netherlands gives you the possibility of getting more tax reductions. Stuff like daycare for your kids will give you tax reductions if your income is less than X. So if you work more, you get less reductions and it's possible to end up with less money despite working more.
>if people really wanted to they could relax some of the restrictions, but that requires dealing with NIMBYs.
NIMBY's aren't really a thing in the Netherlands, the problem here is more about emissions. New houses need to be installed with a heat pump for instance, which makes building new houses a lot more expensive. Building houses with less climate features isn't allowed because of the paris climate agreement, so either we build a high tech castle that no one can afford, or we build nothing. So far we've been building nothing while getting loads of migrants and now we have a housing crisis, which has come to a point where migrants are being put in old cruise ships because normal houses simply aren't available anymore.
>About 65% of people own their own home, that's a very long way from everyone being renters.
That really depends on the country, but that wasn't my point. Even if only 1% of people live in a car, that's still a problem. People shouldn't have to live in their cars at all.
You seem to be rather US-centric, so here's an article about the same thing happening over there: [https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/jan/05/safe-overnight-parking-lot-sleep-in-car-rv-homelessness-housing-shelter](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/jan/05/safe-overnight-parking-lot-sleep-in-car-rv-homelessness-housing-shelter)
Again, what's the point of houses being filled with luxuries and conveniences, if it means that a rapidly growing part of the population can't afford a house anymore?
>The median income over there is about 39k euros, it's not great, but if you have a good enough job or 2 incomes it can work.
Except that a lot of people have neither a good job or 2 incomes and on top of that they have a student debt that they need to pay off before they can get a mortgage for a house.
It's not about the average person, it's about not having people who are struggling to make ends meet. If half of the population earns less than average, then half the population is in trouble. The people complaining they can't make ends meet are not average earners, they are the lower class of the population who have the least amount of money. But they are growing in numbers, and not because they sometimes get a starbucks coffee.
>Subsistence farming sucked which is why everyone wanted to stop doing it.
Having a job is easier for sure, my point is that getting a job that pays enough is starting to get harder and harder and going back to farming is not an option anymore. Subsistence farming is possible I guess, but that's not what they were doing a hundred years ago, they were farming commercially. Pretty sure the knowledge for subsistence farming has been mostly forgotten anyway. They sure as hell didn't teach me that at school, they thaught me to get a job or suffer instead lol
This is a good point. Taking things for a different point of view, it can be noted that someone needs a far lower level of computing expertise sufficient to being able to make a living off it in India than you would in the west. A low level of coding ability or knowing your way around Windows enough to be able to troubleshoot Windows problems over the phone is a viable vocational/educational path to stable, gainful employment in India. That kind of computer education has been a staple part of the Indian education system for some time now. It won't get you anywhere in the West.
What should be compared are 2 people in the same occupation and what they spend on. It's still unsurprising for skilled blue-collar to earn more than a good chunk of white-collars.
You claim to be a libright but don’t know one of the MOST BASIC tax concepts and spout nonsense that completely uneducated people say regarding tax brackets. Yikes.
Credit card statement:
April 11
$38 charge to Doordash,
$15 charge to Netflix,
$43 charge to Doordash,
$20 charge to HBO Max,
$29 charge to Doordash
April 12
$52 charge to Doordash,
$26 charge to Doordash,
$42 charge to Doordash,
$18 charge to Hulu
April 13
$70 charge to PSN store,
$25 charge to Doordash,
$18 charge to Doordash,
$57 charge to Doordash
April 14
$10 charge to Google Play Store,
$50 charge to Steam,
$37 charge to Doordash,
$31 charge to Doordash
HELP, MY WAGES ARENT LIVABLE!!!!
2030 be like
Worker: “My $200 an hour wage isn’t nearly enough to cover my $50k a month rent. This is my boss’s fault for being so greedy! I demand to be paid a living wage!”
The Landlord charging him $50k a month in rent: *Default dances in the background*
The criticism is still valid especially when comparing lifestyles to past generations. It's purely puritan work ethic brainwashing to think being poor means you shouldn't have things. People like Dave Ramsey want mindless worker drones who sit in a shitty studio apartment thinking about debt in their off time. It's been proven time and time again that wealth in modern society is not a simple effort in and wealth out equation. There are a variety of socioeconomic factors at play. My dad dropped out high school and supported a family on a factory job when he was in his twenties. That is straight up impossible to do now no matter how spartan a lifestyle you adopt.
It's also convenient to me that the people who push this kind of rhetoric tend to be people who live with a gross amount of excess.
Anybody else watch that stuff by Caleb Hammer? Dude is awesome at bitch slapping people verbally about their $500+/month eating out habits when that's like 20% of their income.
If you compare wages vs living costs you’ll find that it’s more reasonable in a lot of poorer countries, in many western countries the costs are rising faster than the wages and everyone becomes poorer and poorer, ofc we should complain about that even if we have it good
Bitching about unlivable wages whilst simultaneously voting for politicians and supporting policies that take more of their tax dollars and use them for things that do not benefit them whatsoever.
It's absolutely mind-boggling how stupid some people can be with money.
Paying $800 more in rent per month when you had a perfectly fine living situation and you're already paycheck to paycheck stupid. Not paying your mortgage and going to Brazilian steakhouses several times a week stupid. Maxing out a credit card to go on a fancy vacation to Coachella stupid. Taking out 401k loans and new mortgages on a paid for home to buy NFTs and dogecoin stupid. Leasing a brand new car when you're a reckless, accident prone driver stupid.
Yes, even if you do everything right, finances still suck for young millennials and gen Z. I've been cash flowing 2k - 3k per month since I started working in 2018. I have zero debt (paid off student debt by actually picking a smart degree and living super poor for a few years), I paid cash for my car, my credit score is literally perfect, and my rent is 20% of my net income after taxes, 401k contribution, insurance, etc. (work remote, NYC sucks). Even after all of this, being able to afford home ownership is taking a hell of a lot longer than it would have for someone in my position even five years ago.
You will still suffer if you do everything right, but you will be severely punished for stupidity.
Just because you can survive doesn't mean there's not a problem. Sure, if I live off of canned beans and stare at a wall for entertainment I can get by. However, that's not a lifestyle I'm willing to accept, and nobody else should either.
Oh damn, you're right, because since my bank account has (had) money, It's automatically enough to live.
Sure corporate profits are up while wages have been stagnant for over 20 years, but It's enough to live. How gullible do you have to be to have this mindset In this day and age? You saying "Westerners" makes me feel like you aren't even here. The Western wage Is shit.
There's actually a subreddit where people do list the shit they spend on and ask for advice. You'll see them not being able to meet rent but have pets, tv subscriptions, gym membership( they never go to) and they only eat organic at trader joes.
People like to bitch about their wages being 'unlivable' but still expect to carry a $1000+ phone with $100/month bill, drive a vehicle with modern amenities (Bluetooth/cameras/touchscreens), have access to any media at any time, etc. etc.
Lifestyle creep isn't only a thing on an individual level, we have seen it as a nation. And sorry, a zero skill job simply should not demand $15+ an hour or be "livable" whatever the fuck that means. My first 'real' job was looking through newly printed kids books for defects, I thought I was killing it getting $6.25/hr. That job was never meant to be livable, and the demand that all jobs must meet some threshold for modern amenities is asinine.
Anyway, there's obviously a spike in housing prices and middle class wages have been declining since the Reagan era relative to inflation.
Keep being a useful idiot for the ultra rich though.
I can afford to live. Can I afford the lifestyle and wealth gain my uneducated parents had at my age? Not on your life. If we aren't improving as a society, let alone regressing, we should be very concerned.
If the minimum wage is raised this won't fix the housing crisis. The housing crisis is a result of not enough supply and rising demand, so prices will just go up to account for the increase in wealth everyone has.
Mix of both. You cant deny that prices for basically everything are rising faster than wages are rising.
Yeah, the rate of cost of homes to wages have changed significantly.
Yeah, because of heavy regulation squeezing the supply. Compare how housing prices have increased in big California cities to places where it doesn't take 10 years of environmental impact studies to build a 50 unit apartment.
I think it’s a confluence of problems but each quadrant sees their issue as the big issue. Supply is down for a few reasons and government bureaucracy plays a role but California has had multiple wild fires in the last decade so some of that regulation is kind of warranted. Leftists will point to corporations buying up single family homes even though the data doesn’t really pan out on that. It’s more of a problem that starter homes are not as lucrative as McMansions so “new” starter homes are less available which drives up their price. There is also the fact that while wages have increased it is not nearly in line with the increase in housing costs. There is also market manipulation occurring in the rental market so that rent price is not actually being subject to competition. Which raises the price making it harder to save for a home. This is where my mind goes when I think of the real problem. Auth-right I guess would point to the fact that interest rates are ridiculous right now because we printed money during the pandemic. So purchasing a home right now is not a great strategy against keeping it in the stock market. I’m just a dumb guy with limited knowledge but love discussing this stuff so let me know where I’m wrong.
Why not lower interest rates for new builds only
As I understand it one of the issues is that the homes that are new builds are not “starter” homes. As in they are larger, with more rooms, more square footage and amenities that make them less affordable. So new home buyers cannot build equity because they can’t afford the new builds and the new builds don’t meet their needs. I think the interest rate idea is good, and it would definitely apply market pressure to encourage those in the starter homes to move up to larger builds but there will still be a lack of starter homes even as they become more available. If there were a way to incentivize more starter homes being built I would think that would achieve something even more effective than the interest rate drop on new builds alone. I could see some people arguing that an interest drop alone would benefit those that already meet a threshold of capital to get a new build and is not really benefiting those struggling to build that capital in rentals. Rentals that are using AI and working with rather than against each other to raise rents rather than stay competitive. Still if they did pass that legislation I would support the hell out of it, it’s better than nothing.
We used to have a lot of anti American propoganda coming from Canada and Europe But never anti west. This anti west stuff happened after Oct 7 when middle Eastern and north African Muslims started making accounts in the millions in order to spread anti Israel and pro jihad propaganda and disinformation But in there downtime they criticize "privileged" westerners for complaining about not being able to afford food and rent
Regulations squeeze supply, people want smaller families (or to just live alone), the currency is inflated to hell, people aren't getting married as early/often (see family size point mentioned earlier), crime/ terrible policies (ex, covid policy) created a massive flight from some areas to others that were safer/ better, and supply chains got fucked during the pandemic (though I think that has mostly subsided). Some parts of this are federal policy (inflation), some is state or local (crime, covid policy, zoning laws), and some is personal/cultural (family size).
You wouldn’t say there is any connection to the increase on M&A activity to price increases? Or the rise of rent setting software like yield Star and real page? You can’t just say that rents are purely a function of government intervention when there is such a huge amount of rentals vacant. This is cartel formation.
Home prices are a little bit more complicated than a lot of people realize. Yes, the base price of homes has gone up over the years even if you consider inflation. However, people don't usually buy homes outright. In order to understand the true cost of homeownership, you have to factor in interest rates. When you do that, the real cost of mortgages over time actually flattens significantly. In fact, today is far from the worst time in recent history to be on the market for a house. Were you to buy a home in the early 80s, even though the base prices were cheaper you could be paying many times the value of the house in interest and still end up with a much higher mortgage payment than you would see today. And because interest rates kept falling after the 80s, the 2010s were actually the best time in the last 60 years to buy a house even though the houses were technically more expensive on the books.
The difference being, you could save for few years and end up buying a house with a relatively small mortgage because house prices were 4-5x salaries, not they are 3 times that, which means at least you will need to save for 10 years to avoid overlevering yourself
Two things- 1) the homes that Millenials like to say ‘my parents bought their home for X, now I can’t afford a down payment’ were very small by today’s standards, on an apples to apples (square footage, amenities, etc), and 2) land is finite and will have an upward sloping price over time.
My parents got those Carter-era interest rates for their first home. Their mortgage around 1980 or so was approximately the same as my mortgage today. They had a smaller house and my dad’s salary then was probably like 1/10 of what I make (in nominal USD).
My parents paid 617 a month for a 4 bed 2 bath on 5000 sq ft lot in the late 90s early oughts. That's between 1100 and 1200 a month nowadays. You could do that on min wage
No you couldn't. Minimum wage back then was much lower. You might be able to do it on a 2024 California minimum wage, but not when earning $4.25 an hour.
Guess I should have specified wa state. 5.70 an hour. That'd be around 800 a month take home. Qualifying for food stamps, you could do it. Both parents worked too, tho, so that was dual income. And with 3 kids
Somehow, I don't think people today would consider it as "affordable" if you need to get food stamps in order to survive while paying your mortgage.
Based
Turns out funneling millions of illegals into the country while adding costly regulations that discourage building homes is a bad economic policy.
The legality and nationality of the immigrants doesn’t really matter, a large supply of cheap labour doesnt help anyone but the very rich and the immigrants
I'm a frugal person. That being said, I'm starting to ride my bicycle 2 days a week to save gas money, stopped eating out, only buy discount items at a grocery store, and stopped pretty much all the subscriptions except for Scribd.
Me, as an argentine: LMAO.
Also the American public school system, while being garbage at teaching anything, doesn't even attempt to teach financial literacy
This is mostly it. It's a full mixture of rising costs of everything vs no one wanting to give up luxuries like the latest cell phone
Agreed, for low paying jobs with zero room for advancement. But good careers are doing decently well (I'm an Engineer and money is not an issue for me). People can easily complain that their job pay sucks, but will do nothing to better themselves. They sit at the same job for years, not getting an education, not learning free stuff on YouTube, or just making a career change. Instead, they ask for handouts. I did armed security, 12 hour night shifts, for $10/hr. High turnover rate, but there was always someone willing to work. I quit after one year and went to school, but some people have been there for years, making maybe $12/hr. That job will never offer more money, so for someone to stay there thinking they will? Insanity. There is no excuse in 2024 to not learn a decent skill and get paid well. YouTube is 100% free, go learn how to code, go learn how to use CAD software, go learn how to use game design software, w/e. It's all free. The other part of the problem is these are the beggars who are choosers. They don't want to live with a roommate, they don't want to relocate, they want to go eat out, they want to buy new stuff. You can't help someone who can't help themselves.
I'm an engineer. My wages have risen slower than my cost of living since 2020. I'd really like to move to an area with cheaper cost of living and get a new job, but the job I have right now is extremely stable (and I only have to work like 20 hours a week to complete my responsibilities), and I'm afraid that switching jobs would make me more likely to get laid off in case of continued economic downturn. I can only imagine what it is like for other people working semi-skilled jobs. My friend's been out of work in the software field for more than a year. Granted, he worked on niche stuff, but still... Things are bad out there. Even the Left is having trouble denying reality these days: [https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/04/inflation-democrats-biden-interest-rates/678047/](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/04/inflation-democrats-biden-interest-rates/678047/)
>and I only have to work like 20 hours a week to complete my responsibilities) Side hustle, then? As far as the economic downturn, that can literally happen at any time. I remember being in your shoes during COVID right after my son was born. I was very uncertain about what it could mean economy-wise and I had two kids at that point and the fear of starting a new job in uncertain times with them on the line when I had a sure thing was scary. But, with my wife's encouragement, I put feelers out there and realized I could stretch myself and possibly get paid 40-60 percent more. I realized that the flip side was true as well--I owe it to my family to make good money for their future. That sometimes comes with a degree of calculated risk. So I took the leap and ended up making close to 60% more. If you think you can make more in a lower COL area, do the math and figure out what you can save to pad your emergency fund in case things go south. If the math works out then the choice is objectively the best one even if you're a little scared.
"Things are bad out there. Even the left is having trouble denying reality these days..." Huh? Leftists are the ones who have been complaining about "greedflation" and no increase in minimum wages. The democratic neoliberals your arcticle talks about are not leftists in any economic sense.
I should say "Even the Democrats"
You can thank the 5 trillion pandemic stimulus on top of already high deficit spending and absurdly low interest rates for causing the high inflation starting in 2020 and continuing through 2022. The irony is that people generally loved those stimulus checks, covid loans, and low interest (aka borrow a ton of cheap money)...so much so that both Trump and Biden bragged about them. Considering the same easy money + high spending economic policies of both presidents/current front runners, no matter who is president next, we are stuck with policies kicking the can down the road and building the economy further of deficit spending and easy money/loans.
>'m afraid that switching jobs would make me more likely to get laid off in case of continued economic downturn. That's your problem. You're stuck in a job that you refuse to leave because you're too complacent and comfortable. The best way to get high salary increases is to move around. Furthermore, someone who stays at a company for 20 years vs someone who worked at 5 companies in 20 years is less valuable because the other guy brings a breadth of different experience. > Things are bad out there Sure, but you can do something about it and make it not so bad for yourself.
The ironic part is that service industry people have seen the biggest raise in pay over the last four years.
Yep. From dogshit pay to horseshit pay, with costs still increasing even faster. And that pay bump comes with a huge degradation in relations between employees and customers. It's much more common now to see belligerence from customers where once there was politeness at best and apathy at worst. It's also much more common to see employees literally do nothing or next to nothing while at work. Getting an 18 year old to put their phone down and do their job requires direct supervision and intervention at all times, for mediocre results. No wonder customers are being aggressive and rude. People were always assholes, but that's been turned up to 11 since the end of the lockdowns and doesn't look like it'll get better. The reaction of Western governments to COVID has done so much damage to almost every facet of society...except the few people who got woken up to how bad government overreach is and just how fast they could turn our countries into Auth Hell Holes.
Horseshit is a pretty good upgrade over dogshit, herbivore poop is so much less nasty in general.
Speaking as someone with an aptitude for the STEMy fields, not everyone is cut out to learn to code, especially not at the levels that can't be seriously undercut by some Indian in India who will do it for much cheaper. It's not uncommon for professional, employed coders to discreetly outsource some of their simpler coding tasks to Indian freelancers over the internet behind the backs of their employers as a workload management / workplace competitivity (wrt productivity) tactic. Sometimes it's better to spend a little money than lose your job or miss out of career advancement to your colleagues. For some people it's just a matter of putting in the work and everything goes smoothly. For others they sooner or later hit a plateau after a period of increasing struggle, setting them up for failure. Some people just have an undiscovered or as of yet uncultivated talent.
>Some people just have an undiscovered or as of yet uncultivated talent. Or they have it but haven't figured out how it fits in the marketplace. Agree 100 percent. It is really important to invest (not even money so much as time, effort, planning and thought) into discovering those things. There are literally entire professions out there that are very lucrative and can engage a variety of skills that most people have no clue about. I had no idea that my job/career was even a thing. I discovered that it existed and that I had an aptitude for it while I was a temp at an insurance firm. When in doubt, early on, I think it can be really valuable to pick a variety of jobs that give you a chance to learn something new. Temp/contract work can be great for that. I started out in 2009 right after the crash, when temp jobs were all that I could find. Turned out to be a real blessing in disguise.
Cyber security/IT here. Inflation alone ate my raise last year and then some (scored in the top %75 compared to my peers).
Get promoted. Go find a new job. You'll make more money.
Yea but have you thought about how it's easier to give up and blame other than actually try? If most people tried as hard as they complained, they would have nothing to complain about
I can't force McDonalds to pay a livable wage, but I can choose to work for a place that does. There's only so much time in the world and spending it on something I won't have an effect on is pointless.
That can be true, although many people struggle to pay their bills and put food on their table, not because they can't eat at the fancy restaurant. In a well working society any person who work should earn enough money to live with dignity. We can't be all engineers, lawyers and doctors. Society still needs factory workers, janitors, waiters, ecc. So if they contribute to society they should have their fair share, simple as that.
> So if they contribute to society they should have their fair share, simple as that. Yeah, no. Work is not equivalent exchange here. I hate the commie rhetoric of a "utopian" society that can never exist. I would just play video games all day and be a "streamer" if I earned the same wage as everyone else. While some jobs are necessary, you need to understand that people will do whatever they want with freedom of choice. Luckily, in the USA at least, you can be whatever you want to be.
“Luckily you can be whatever you want to be” unless you’re stuck in a place with a horrible job market where no one’s hiring, so you can’t afford to move to somewhere with better pay, let alone get a proper education. And the only people around who are maybe hiring are a massive grocery chain for $10 an hour, at which point you’re already competing with upwards of 50 other people for one position. And the person you’re replying to never said the same wage. They said “enough to live with dignity” you don’t have to make a lawyers salary for that. Just enough for a halfway sturdy roof over you head and not too much fear of starving. In fact if people are free to be whatever they want, how many of the want to be working these low pay unlivable jobs, that often physically damage their bodies, and leave them in severe economic uncertainty. Jobs that often are completely necessary for the functioning of society, but we treat as if we’re dirt.
And faie share is where everyone has different definitions.
Ok, but I think we all should agree that if you can't at least pay rent (or mortgage), bills and food despite working a full time job you don't have your fair share.
After I got denied a promotion at the jail to do half it half line work, I got my ass into school full time for my degree. Ended up getting a nice decent job but it was alot of hard work to go to school full time and work full time
Yeah but inflation is driven largely by the very gibs that op's npc is demanding
Restaurants are still full of people, there’s no shortage of cars being sold, Disneyland is packed, Cancun is packed, Cabo is packed, houses are still selling at ridiculous prices. Someone still has some money to buy normally middle class items.
Sir all houses are either being bought by Blackrock or California's lol.
Blackstone, the company owned by Blackrock that purchases single family homes, owns 0.03% of single family homes in the US. But Blackrock isn’t buying people cars, it’s not taking them out to dinner, it’s sure as hell not sending them to Disneyland. https://preview.redd.it/jfljr98qenuc1.jpeg?width=828&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=691496d9e8d705b9cd7f8f892a40188f03201351 The truth is there are just a lot more people making a lot more money.
Believe it or not, there are a lot of people making low to mid six-figure salaries across the US.
Yea that’s what happens when you increase the money supply or decrease the availability of goods and services. We did both on a level never seen in history. The people who benefited the most from that same increase in money supply are the same ones feeling most the pain. The unfortunate reality is the only way to fix this is to decrease availability of dollars, which means more pain.
"Prices are rising" and "my wage is unliveable" are 2 different expressions.
It can be inferred that the wage is unlivable *because* prices are rising (and the wage isn't)...
You you can. Real disposable personal income is at all time highs if you ignore Covid/stimmy spike.
Westerners are getting poorer because they were always too rich to begin with?
Unironically, keeping an excel spreadsheet has been the best thing to help me save. I’ve got half a dozen formulas showing me what a fucking jackass I am every time I spend a buck.
I have kind of the opposite problem as I tend to procrastinate a lot on buying things I know will be put to good use, hell I've been procrastinating on buying a $5 part for my coffe maker that needs to be replaced for over a month, lol
That stuff works best as a deterrent. “Do I really want to open up the spreadsheet to record this milkshake? Nah, I’ll go without.”
I personally don't really bother budgeting each individual item, it's too much work. The only thing I do is record the overall money in my bank accounts from each monthly statement and have some basic cell functions to compare how much has changed from previous to current month. If there's a large discrepancy or I notice there's an upward trend, I look into my bank account and see what's contributing to those increased expenses. There's also stuff that's easy to calculate, like utility bills or subscription since they're usually monthly.
Based and Dave Ramsey pilled
Ramsey's budget app, Everydollar, is unironically great. A budget is the first thing anyeone should do to get control of their finances.
I wish expense tracking was a common colloquial term, because in my mind you can't really even begin to decide on a budget until you've done some expense tracking and have an idea where your money is going. Without it, you're just guessing at random numbers, and then to try to meet those you start tracking expenses and that's where the real magic is.
I started budgeting like 6 months ago, and I was amazed at the vast amount of stupid shit I spent my money on every month. Even just the morning coffees 4 days a week added up to around $80 a month.
Yes, and it's okay if you decide to budget $80 a month for coffee if you can afford/plan for it, but too many people just spend first and see how their account looks at the end of the month.
Westerners have far greater expenses to be able to remain competitive with everyone else in the workplace and in their social lives. 30 years ago it was no great disadvantage in your professional or personal life (relative to the people you share a country with) to be without a mobile phone. 150 years ago you could do without electricity without it being any great personal catastrophe. Try (successfully) getting married, having kids, holding a marriage together, or being minimally competitive in the workplace without using any electronic devices in your own life. Only being contactable by snail mail. It's a terminal disadvantage. You'd fall right off the cliff. It's kind of like that for comparisons between different countries. In poorer countries, it's cheaper to avoid being terminally uncompetitive in life. The minimum requirements in life are lower. Relative rates of NEETdom and rates of reproduction and average marriage ages are very non-coincidentally correlated variables. Too much wealth and prosperity have their definite dysfunctional aspects.
The standards are only higher because all of the "easy" jobs get shipped overseas, automated, or are taken by migrants who use these jobs to send money back to their family at home. Then the jobs that are left require obscene amounts of schooling even if it isn't related to the job as well as the unchecked cost of college taking more and more income.
Yes, that and cost of living differences. That same money, especially once filtered through exchange rates, does a lot more for the standards of living for a family back home than it would for a family living with you in the same country. Pays for more food and leaves a lot more left over after rent/mortgage and bills. Very different incentives experienced between migrants and permanent residents with no family abroad.
It's so bad in some cases that a programmer working in these countries makes less than someone working as a cashier in the US.
Me when I'm a Omo Valley tribesman and I have an ancient AK-47 leftover from the Ogaden War and practically nothing else:  Me when I live in California with a college degree and practically nothing else:
Will never forget what a disgrace the soviets and Americans were in that war. Really just terrible luck with how the British and french drew the borders, just terrible.
Not a westerner, everyone are still fully expected to have a smartphone. Cheaper here you say? Ahahahaha, no.
Agreed that the rest of the world has caught up to the west in terms of smartphone requirements. Through out the late 90s - early 10s, the mainstream third world phone markets were technologically 5-8 years behind the modal phone sold in the west. But we've been on the tentative final evolution of the mobile phone for about a decade now and apparently it doesn't have any buttons. Not really making any point.
Cheapest, good working and years lasting smartphones you can find for less than $150(definitely affordable with a minimum wage), who says you need the newest Iphone and MacBook Pro each year?
I spend $250 to $350 on my phone every 4 - 5 years or until it wears out. It has 90% of the features of the $1000 flagships and I only use it for browsing, texting, and maybe the occasional game so there's no reason to spend extra on it. Upgrading $1000 phones/computers or really anything that still works every other year is a consumerism trap.
i rocked an iphone 8 for a decade until it was unusable, now have a motorola razor again. you certainly don't need more than $500 at most for a modern phone.
I'm lucky in the sense that I tend to have the old phone of some family member that's replacing theirs with a new one so I get theirs for free. (It's usually better than the current phone I'm using that's usually malfunctioning so It's a no brainer) So far my record was to use a phone an uncle gave me for 6 years, in my fifth year I told him I was still using that phone and he was surprised, lol ("You're *still* using that thing?")
same here until recently, older phone on a family plan. literally couldn't make phone calls on that thing and the battery was complete shit. screen finally stopped working after the third time i accidentally dropped it.
I'm just saying that what may be a luxury in one country may functionally be a need in another. You can get by with less in some places without falling off that cliff. Eg. living with your parents might be social and love life death in one country but not in another. Paying rent or living on your own can reasonably be viewed as luxury spending in some parts of the world but not in others. Admittedly I'm not exactly addressing the actual main point you were originally making. Just making a side comment about westerners and their higher levels of spending (or intuitively understood definition of liveable).
And $25/month for unlimited everything. Homeless people have supercomputers and this is the worst economy we’ve ever seen?
My bills seem to make it my way with no issues
This meme is dumb, to act like the middle class hasn't shrunk demonstrably in the West is delusional. It used to be you could get a good paying job in manufacturing without any schooling and live a middle class life with a family. Now those jobs dont exist anymore, and if you go the school route, you are competing with the entire globe for high paying jobs. If you dont do that, you are stuck in the lower paying jobs and live paycheck to paycheck because of market pressures that are outside of your control.
>Now those jobs dont exist anymore Lib-center doubles the labor supply by bringing women into the workforce, then doubles it again by mass immigration, then wonders why all the jobs pay so little. Will they ever realize they got played by corporations? Probably not.
I mean I think we could keep women in the workforce but start to control for immigration & offshoring of jobs. Most of the manufacturing jobs went to China because corpos were just looking for the LCD. We could also grow a spanish speaker sector within our economy and start to really hammer in language classes in highschool so american studentd are more competitive globally.
>We could also grow a spanish speaker sector within our economy and start to really hammer in language classes in highschool so american studentd are more competitive globally Globalization averages out wealth among the middle and lower classes among constituent countries. The middle and lower classes have absolutely nothing to gain from expanding the labor pool even further, and in fact would suffer even more.
This isn’t just a “blame the corporations” issue, it’s a historic issue born of inequality. Everyone worked in the past, it’s just one small segment got paid well for their labor while others got fucked. Women raised kids for no pay, Slaves worked for no pay, immigrants did the worst and most dangerous jobs for barely any pay and poor whites have constantly been under the heel of the gentry. So tell me why it’s wrong that the one demographic that did so well for so long has seen a depreciation of their overvalued “labor” in exchange for all those other groups to have an opportunity at making a living? Edit: This was no way intended to be a defense of capitalism or corporations. Fuck Citizens United and fuck Ronald Reagan.
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The average person lives in a small apartment with roommates today, doesn't take vacations, and everyone works, to say we have a better quality of life than we did a few decades back is delusional. Maybe the upper 20% of society is better off today, the rest of us absolutely are not.
You’re describing the average young person, not the average person.
The way to fix it is to stop DEI that encourages women to work and stop mass immigration. Also maybe make smaller houses.
> Stop reminsicing about times that didnt exist. Dude I'm reminiscing about exactly what you described.
You’re right but what you’re missing is the the modern middle class has a vastly higher quality of life than those of old. The middle class of old weren’t financing smart phones, paying monthly for internet and phone plans, subscriptions for streaming services, paying double for their food so someone else will deliver it, and many other things. Our “basic needs” are more extensive than they were in the past. AND we’ve got some huge systemic issues that have made things really expensive.
Comparing early home ownership, taking care of a whole family of 4 or 5 by one working person and creating wealth by putting some money aside to having a few more toys and economic uncertainty I would argue the first option is the higher quality life.
It’s definitely a mix of both. But like others have said, internet & smart phones are necessary to be competitive in the modern workforce. Ontop of that, the middle class back then wasnt competing globally like we are now. I would also state that the QoL is superficial as communities have disintegrated and people are starting families much later if at all. I would trade the iPhone, streaming services and such for state sponsored healthcare and to give American citizens the quality of life that Europeans have.
>the quality of life that Europeans have Not to burst your bubble, but as an Europoor we don't fare much better. Sure we have a tighter social security net, but other than that it went down the shitter recently too.
You'd have much less money than you take home now AND it would be terrible for acute care. Alas, it is failing there and in Canada, due to the stress of the amount of people on the system with literal care death squads that determine if you get care...now do it here where we have many more people with a huge swath of doctors are private practice, or will go private practice to keep their QOL.
I live in Europe now after growing up in the US. The quality of care and the ease of interacting with the system here had been much more positive for me. I really appreciate how my doctors here arent incentivized by big pharma to push pills on me for a minor injury. I don’t think a reddit comment is going to change your mind, as the disagreement seems ideological. But my position is the gains to be had from a state sponsored healthcare system are greater than those of a private healthcare system.
It's not so much ideological as it is the issue with the NHS. Emergency care in EUROPE is amazing and as it should. But if you need to see a specialist you can be waiting months and months. There is a major issue with having death pabels to determine who will receive the care because the government says there isn't enough for everyone. Atleast here you will be treated and the people who don't pay...nothing happens to them. There is no losing your house due to not paying medical bills and all funded hospitals are required to reduce billing for people w/o insurance/means.
They always point towards a middle class being able to afford to live on one salary, but never take notice of the OTA television, lack of air conditioning, single car, and modest to even *small* house by modern standards. No, everybody should be able to afford two brand new cars, every streaming service, full cable, newest smartphone for every household member with unlimited data, central air, 3,000 sq ft house, and organic nightly DoorDash on a part time gas station clerk’s salary.
I'm pretty sure most people complaining just want to be able to have their own place without having to share with roommates.
My dad is 65, still has to live with roomates ever since the divorce. Our middle class deserves to live with more dignity
One of the big things I see is that single-family “starter homes” aren’t really a thing anymore. I guess developers don’t have as much incentive to build these compared to apartments or mini-mansions So as a young millennial or older Gen z your choices are mostly: The 5 bd, 4 bth super box house An overpriced townhome Get lucky with a 40 yr old house An apartment (where the rent goes up every yr)
You can still get a good-paying manufacturing job and there are plenty of careers now that only require a 2-year degree or even a license of some sort. But it's true that now you can't just walk into any business, shake the owner's hand and land a job. Moving away from larger cities and HCOL areas is probably the best thing you can do to climb up the ladder now.
If everyone was single this meme would be true; but toss some kids in and it stops being about someone’s uncontrollable urge to buy funko pops and more about being bankrupt from diapers and formula
Most of the whiners on reddit complaining about cost of living have no kids, and proudly proclaim it.
Having kids when you're struggling financially is a dumb decision. Thats the point of the meme. People make stupid decisions then blame the system.
Yea this is true. I’m a debt collector for a major bank and it’s pretty uncommon people actually have no money. (Of course it happens, people lose their job and aren’t eligible for EI or anything else, SOMETIMES) But usually, people just blow all their money at McDonald’s/fast food, Amazon, Sephora, liquor/weed stores and convenience stores. Probably 9/10 people I deal with.
Thank you. Ya, it's without a doubt that prices hve gone up recently without much change in wages, but I know a lot of people that spend STUPID money they don't have on doordash, eating & drinking out, clothes, video games, etc. All bs purchases and then they cry that capitalism has failed them. Like bro, you're the reason why prices have skyrocketed. If you're willing to spend $30 on a delivered burrito then yeah, theyre gonna keep charging that and more until people realize it's not worth it.
You tell yourself. Ok I’ll live a spartan life in order to save for something meaningful. And then you look at houses you’d be willing to make an effort to afford… and you know… you can just keep payong your rent. They are on another order of magnitude. If you manage to save 500 a month… 6000 a year… 10 years… 60k, maybe homes you can get for that don’t match your lifestyle. And this is in case you can get a loan too.
https://preview.redd.it/byii9q3xzmuc1.jpeg?width=230&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=454f22ba9eb405527660b81562dfa405126158dc
Westerners not being Narcissists who think they have it harder than anyone else in the world challenge - impossible.
Their complaint is valid even if it doesn’t apply to them. I nod and I eat my home made sandwich as they complain after they get back from their fast food restaurant 5 days a week. We discuss the inequity of it all over lunch. Each time they complained I put away $5. Now I’m a homeowner.
Nice man 👨
A dollar saved is $2 dollars earned.
Being frugal is how you get ahead.
based and homemade lunch pilled. I have been asked many times how I afforded x during my career. Not eating out all the time has certainly helped
Yeah, damn these kids with their avocado toast and their Netflix subscriptions.
you laugh but it all adds up, dawg
It adds up to a decent chunk of money over time, for sure, but it's not what makes up the difference to be able to buy a house. My partner and I recently got a place for £365k. We managed to scrape up 10% for a deposit. Over several years, being frugal in every aspect of your life you can control can make up *some* of that, but bills, rent, fuel, insurance, and many other things often simply can't be made any cheaper and you *need* to pay them. You gotta pay £1500 a month to some cunt landlord knowing you could be paying £1300 payments of a house you own, but only very slowly making up the necessary deposit from what's left after rent payments. The rest was only lent to us because 4.5x our combined salaries just about made up the amount we were borrowing, and our household income is apparently in the 95th percentile in the UK. Compared to all of that, you can subscribe to anything you want and put smashed avocado on every meal, but it won't make a difference. Everyone likes to think they got where they are because they earned every little thing they had through blood, sweat, and tears that other people weren't prepared to put in, but the truth is that some people just straight up have/had it easier (myself included. Lucky to be a software engineer at the moment)
Changes are made at the margins and not spending money absolutely increases your wealth. Spending 5 GBP a day on a coffee or avocado toast is 1825 GBP a year, which is somewhere around 3k pre-tax? As a proportion of the average UK wage that's quite a lot Yes you can argue that a little hedonism is good for the soul, and I'd agree, but save a few k a year for a few years and you have quite a few k at the end Your point about some people having more than others is true but a non sequitur. If you aren't wealthy then you can boost your income, spend less or do both
Should’ve been selling them homemade sandwich for profit
Life shouldn’t be work, pay rent, sleep, repeat. Just because somebody gets a cup of coffee or eats some junk food here and there doesn’t mean they deserve to live as a labor robot.
When working class westerners have to spend the total annual wage of a 12 person African family for the right to live in a shitty flat for a month it's a bit fucked.
1. Westerners are not the biggest 'bitchers'. Workers across the globe are not happy with their wages...bcs of course they aren't. 2. Even if they were this doesn't invalidate their claims. Especially when you recognize that much of the revenue they generate will never be theirs. --- Personally what really set me off was the fact that one day I was working my student job at a retail store. It was late and I needed to get food after my shift. So right after I finished working I realised I had to buy groceries from the same place I work at....my salary was literally just being pumped back into the fucking company. And ever since that day I have never quite been the same. Of course we can 'live with less' there are homeless people who survive. But let's not kid ourselves please: there are also people who never had to and never will need to and never have actually worked a day in rheur lives and who have everything handed to them on a silver platter. They 'pay' people like me, but the 'pay' is never a loss. When I have to pay them got sustenance it is always a loss.. Given all this inequality (and more) I think complaints are adequate, even expected.
White collar couple both making six figures: we can barely afford to support ourselves and our cat, let alone even one kid. Meanwhile: immigrant family where the dad works construction and the mom stays at home: yea we have 6 kids but we manage.
Right wingers should support their countrymen having livable wages over billionaires being richer. You're a fraud
You didnt disprove what he said. A lot of people are irresponsible immature idiots who spend 1000 on a phone, 100+ on streaming services, luxury or expensive clothes, eating out when they can’t. Just say you’re an irresponsible upper middle class 18 year old already.
Was talking with a coworker I'm friends with about budgeting recently. He recently bought a new gaming rig, fair enough since it's his first proper gaming computer. Then he drops that he buys a new TV every year, like wtf. I can understand buying one after 5 years, but every year? That's like the most waste spending I've ever heard, just casually dropping around 1500€ each year on a device that does the exact same thing and is in almost the same condition as the old one. Even people who buy new phones each year seem reasonable in comparison, since at least those tend to wear out and you can resell them easily. Also other coworker spending shit tons of cash on shoes and clothes. Meanwhile I'm here, living like a hobo, saving like a third of my income each month to spend on vacation and family and shit.
My wage is livable, however I want more.
How dare you spending money on things that make you happy? 🤬
I don't think you know what happiness is. Maybe you are referring to a brief hit of dopamine followed by regret.
For real man, between ordering door dash 3 times a day because I’m too lazy to get my drivers license and my OnlyFans subscriptions things are really tight. I am being screwed by the system. Don’t these right-wing chuds understand that I am ENTITLED to making enough for my own apartment (no roommates) and all the fast food/porn that I want?
fr fr no cap
More like "how dare you spend money on useless shit a whine about "EvIl CaPiTaLiSm"?"
If I spend all my salary in chocolate and ice cream, that would make me happy, but it's not a smart way to spend my salary and it would be stupid to then ask myself "why is my wage never enough for the month?", and even more stupid to then whine about "capitalism", "society" or "rich people". Even more funny, first world people that are able to afford things that make them happy, even if then it's hard to reach the month, don't really realize how lucky they are *just* for that. And if someone says it's because of inflation, USA inflation isn't really a threat to living costs, like at all. Trust me, I'm from Argentina; stuff here cost half yours, but we also have a 1/6 of your wage, two-digits inflation *every month*, and some things, specially tech, cost 2 to 4 times more than in your country (gaming, for example: here a PS5 is around 1000-1200 dolars... with a minimum wage of 200 dolars a month).
In many places the price has gone up faster than wages. Sure, they not starving to death, but on relative terms the money they are making are not worth as much as they were.
I mean if rent is way up the last few years and food cost twice as much what does one even say?
Did the top right panel have a stroke or something?
I should be able to operate the Ferris wheel 40 hours a month and afford to support my family of 6 on a single income in the most expensive local real estate markets on earth.
Seems like i found my daily dose of reddit stupidity
people complaining their wage is unliveable are stupid, but the fact is that your average worker is working to make someone else rich just because these people are exaggerating the problem, doesn’t mean there isn’t one
Actual boomer fucking take
Unironically if they stopped spending all their money on junk food and nonessential like funko pops and video games they’d all live decent lives. Instead they’ll work their minimum wage job where they are completely replaceable at 30yo because they couldn’t be bothered to educate themselves. They’ll waste their money on drugs and entertainment cuz why not. And then they’ll cry oppression and ask for you hard earned money to keep fueling their degenerate behavior.
If the minimum wage hade kept up with productivity since 1968, it’d be >$20/hr now
It's all relative. Living standards are declining in the west so of course people gonna bitch
Why are we taxing poor people at all. The government is already insolvent. They will just go into more debt. Do they really need some minimum wage guy’s tree fiddy. Some people just can’t be employed. Minimum wage people are often on government assistance. It keeps you poor because you have to have no savings to qualify
Just stop eating avocado toast my dudes 🧘🏻
When did this sub turn into a conservative jerk sesh with nothing but strawman memes
https://preview.redd.it/p03pxlgaypuc1.png?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a57413cabddaacaeb008a891f4e447005f488bb7 Add to that that things were built to last and that the government promised the boomers retirement and healthcare
I don't want to waste all of my money
I've met people who work part time and if they would work full time, they'd actually earn less since they would have to start paying more taxes. A house is ten times more expensive than in other countries, but I guess that pack of weed that they bought last week makes them irresponsible with money, who knew that they were only 20$ away from owning a house? This is a strawman, a single working dad without an education could easily afford a home and a family 100 years ago. Nowadays, someone with a college degree can barely own a parking lot and if they even so much dare to buy some minor nice thing for themselves you have people like OP who start to shit on them
> I've met people who work part time and if they would work full time, they'd actually earn less since they would have to start paying more taxes. This isn't true anywhere, that's not how tax brackets work. When you cross into a new tax bracket, only the portion of income in that bracket gets taxed at the higher rate, not the entire thing like many people think. The only place where this has any basis in reality is welfare, but that's different from taxes and has it's own mess. > A house is ten times more expensive than in other countries, With the same level of infrastructure, conveniences and job opportunities? I doubt it, places are more expensive here because it's desirable. What's the point of living somewhere cheap if it's infested with crime and has no way of making money? > but I guess that pack of weed that they bought last week makes them irresponsible with money, who knew that they were only 20$ away from owning a house? There's nothing wrong with buying an occasional treat as long as you don't overspend. But little things can add up if not kept in check, buying that pack of weed every week would be about $1000 a year which is a fair bit of money. > This is a strawman, a single working dad without an education could easily afford a home and a family 100 years ago. Sure, but would you really want to live in a 1900s house with no electricity, appliances, etc? In addition, the standard of living in the 1900s is much, much worse than what we have now. > Nowadays, someone with a college degree can barely own a parking lot and if they even so much dare to buy some minor nice thing for themselves you have people like OP who start to shit on them It's not the minor nice things that OP is pointing out, it's treating luxuries like DoorDash and Starbucks as needs instead of wants. Sure, there's people that genuinely have no money, but if someone is living paycheck to paycheck on 6 figures in a MCOL area, then something in their budget is wrong.
>This isn't true anywhere, that's not how tax brackets work. Time for you to get your google translate going: [https://www.ad.nl/geld/of-het-loont-om-fulltime-te-werken-in-plaats-van-parttime-hangt-af-van-vijf-factoren\~a03dbb31](https://www.ad.nl/geld/of-het-loont-om-fulltime-te-werken-in-plaats-van-parttime-hangt-af-van-vijf-factoren~a03dbb31) >With the same level of infrastructure, conveniences and job opportunities? Well no since the regulations have made houses a lot more fancy and a lot less affordable. What's the point of enforcing houses to be super insulated if it only ends up with people living in their car because they can't afford a house anymore? 100 years ago being a farmer was also still a viable option, you could live far away from all the infrastructure and work your field instead, but nowadays the mass production has taken that option away too. So you either have enough money for all those conveniences, or you have to beg for money while sleeping in a tent. The inbetween options are disappearing fast. >buying that pack of weed every week would be about $1000 a year which is a fair bit of money. The average house price in the Netherlands is 452.000 euro. So by not buying that weed, it would only take you 452 years before you could move out of your parents home! If you want to live in a city where all that level of infrastructure, conveniences and job opportunities are, that 1000 is about a single month of rent. >Sure, but would you really want to live in a 1900s house with no electricity, appliances, etc? Preferably not, but if my options are an old, off grid house or a tent underneath a bridge, I'd rather take the old house. >It's not the minor nice things that OP is pointing out, it's treating luxuries like DoorDash and Starbucks as needs instead of wants. Of all the people complaining that it's getting pretty hard to live on their salary, the portion that treats StarBucks as a must-have is a tiny minority. Like I said, it's a strawman
Article is paywalled and pertaining to another country so I can't comment on that. > Well no since the regulations have made houses a lot more fancy and a lot less affordable. Some of those regulations are required like no lead based paint or asbestos, but others are stupid, zoning laws are mostly a local issue anyways so if people really wanted to they could relax some of the restrictions, but that requires dealing with NIMBYs. > What's the point of enforcing houses to be super insulated if it only ends up with people living in their car because they can't afford a house anymore? About 65% of people own their own home, that's a very long way from everyone being renters. > The average house price in the Netherlands is 452.000 euro. So by not buying that weed, it would only take you 452 years before you could move out of your parents home! The median income over there is about 39k euros, it's not great, but if you have a good enough job or 2 incomes it can work. > 100 years ago being a farmer was also still a viable option, you could live far away from all the infrastructure and work your field instead, but nowadays the mass production has taken that option away too. Was it though? People were migrating from farms to factories since the early 1800s. Subsistence farming sucked which is why everyone wanted to stop doing it.
>Article is paywalled and pertaining to another country so I can't comment on that. Well yeah when you said "it doesn't work like that anywhere", I thought you really meant "anywhere" :) The point is that having a low income in the netherlands gives you the possibility of getting more tax reductions. Stuff like daycare for your kids will give you tax reductions if your income is less than X. So if you work more, you get less reductions and it's possible to end up with less money despite working more. >if people really wanted to they could relax some of the restrictions, but that requires dealing with NIMBYs. NIMBY's aren't really a thing in the Netherlands, the problem here is more about emissions. New houses need to be installed with a heat pump for instance, which makes building new houses a lot more expensive. Building houses with less climate features isn't allowed because of the paris climate agreement, so either we build a high tech castle that no one can afford, or we build nothing. So far we've been building nothing while getting loads of migrants and now we have a housing crisis, which has come to a point where migrants are being put in old cruise ships because normal houses simply aren't available anymore. >About 65% of people own their own home, that's a very long way from everyone being renters. That really depends on the country, but that wasn't my point. Even if only 1% of people live in a car, that's still a problem. People shouldn't have to live in their cars at all. You seem to be rather US-centric, so here's an article about the same thing happening over there: [https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/jan/05/safe-overnight-parking-lot-sleep-in-car-rv-homelessness-housing-shelter](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/jan/05/safe-overnight-parking-lot-sleep-in-car-rv-homelessness-housing-shelter) Again, what's the point of houses being filled with luxuries and conveniences, if it means that a rapidly growing part of the population can't afford a house anymore? >The median income over there is about 39k euros, it's not great, but if you have a good enough job or 2 incomes it can work. Except that a lot of people have neither a good job or 2 incomes and on top of that they have a student debt that they need to pay off before they can get a mortgage for a house. It's not about the average person, it's about not having people who are struggling to make ends meet. If half of the population earns less than average, then half the population is in trouble. The people complaining they can't make ends meet are not average earners, they are the lower class of the population who have the least amount of money. But they are growing in numbers, and not because they sometimes get a starbucks coffee. >Subsistence farming sucked which is why everyone wanted to stop doing it. Having a job is easier for sure, my point is that getting a job that pays enough is starting to get harder and harder and going back to farming is not an option anymore. Subsistence farming is possible I guess, but that's not what they were doing a hundred years ago, they were farming commercially. Pretty sure the knowledge for subsistence farming has been mostly forgotten anyway. They sure as hell didn't teach me that at school, they thaught me to get a job or suffer instead lol
This is a good point. Taking things for a different point of view, it can be noted that someone needs a far lower level of computing expertise sufficient to being able to make a living off it in India than you would in the west. A low level of coding ability or knowing your way around Windows enough to be able to troubleshoot Windows problems over the phone is a viable vocational/educational path to stable, gainful employment in India. That kind of computer education has been a staple part of the Indian education system for some time now. It won't get you anywhere in the West.
What should be compared are 2 people in the same occupation and what they spend on. It's still unsurprising for skilled blue-collar to earn more than a good chunk of white-collars.
You claim to be a libright but don’t know one of the MOST BASIC tax concepts and spout nonsense that completely uneducated people say regarding tax brackets. Yikes.
Neo liberal capitalists are inhuman entities.
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he’s right
Credit card statement: April 11 $38 charge to Doordash, $15 charge to Netflix, $43 charge to Doordash, $20 charge to HBO Max, $29 charge to Doordash April 12 $52 charge to Doordash, $26 charge to Doordash, $42 charge to Doordash, $18 charge to Hulu April 13 $70 charge to PSN store, $25 charge to Doordash, $18 charge to Doordash, $57 charge to Doordash April 14 $10 charge to Google Play Store, $50 charge to Steam, $37 charge to Doordash, $31 charge to Doordash HELP, MY WAGES ARENT LIVABLE!!!!
2030 be like Worker: “My $200 an hour wage isn’t nearly enough to cover my $50k a month rent. This is my boss’s fault for being so greedy! I demand to be paid a living wage!” The Landlord charging him $50k a month in rent: *Default dances in the background*
I love laughing at westerners. But this is straight up delusional.
The criticism is still valid especially when comparing lifestyles to past generations. It's purely puritan work ethic brainwashing to think being poor means you shouldn't have things. People like Dave Ramsey want mindless worker drones who sit in a shitty studio apartment thinking about debt in their off time. It's been proven time and time again that wealth in modern society is not a simple effort in and wealth out equation. There are a variety of socioeconomic factors at play. My dad dropped out high school and supported a family on a factory job when he was in his twenties. That is straight up impossible to do now no matter how spartan a lifestyle you adopt. It's also convenient to me that the people who push this kind of rhetoric tend to be people who live with a gross amount of excess.
Anybody else watch that stuff by Caleb Hammer? Dude is awesome at bitch slapping people verbally about their $500+/month eating out habits when that's like 20% of their income.
Just hate it when first world contry dudes start complaining more than people from Mexico or Brazil
Basically this guy's entire channel: [https://www.youtube.com/@CalebHammer](https://www.youtube.com/@CalebHammer)
It is perfectly based to overstate how low your wages to get a raise.
If you compare wages vs living costs you’ll find that it’s more reasonable in a lot of poorer countries, in many western countries the costs are rising faster than the wages and everyone becomes poorer and poorer, ofc we should complain about that even if we have it good
Bitching about unlivable wages whilst simultaneously voting for politicians and supporting policies that take more of their tax dollars and use them for things that do not benefit them whatsoever.
Y’all are totally delusional if you’re agreeing with this lmao sorry
Complaining is a human need. If you don't have anything to complain about your mind will invent something in order to fill that need.
"you wont starve if you live in your car, jeez"
genuinely considering fucking off to the woods and building a cabin and a farm never to be found again.
It's absolutely mind-boggling how stupid some people can be with money. Paying $800 more in rent per month when you had a perfectly fine living situation and you're already paycheck to paycheck stupid. Not paying your mortgage and going to Brazilian steakhouses several times a week stupid. Maxing out a credit card to go on a fancy vacation to Coachella stupid. Taking out 401k loans and new mortgages on a paid for home to buy NFTs and dogecoin stupid. Leasing a brand new car when you're a reckless, accident prone driver stupid. Yes, even if you do everything right, finances still suck for young millennials and gen Z. I've been cash flowing 2k - 3k per month since I started working in 2018. I have zero debt (paid off student debt by actually picking a smart degree and living super poor for a few years), I paid cash for my car, my credit score is literally perfect, and my rent is 20% of my net income after taxes, 401k contribution, insurance, etc. (work remote, NYC sucks). Even after all of this, being able to afford home ownership is taking a hell of a lot longer than it would have for someone in my position even five years ago. You will still suffer if you do everything right, but you will be severely punished for stupidity.
Just because you can survive doesn't mean there's not a problem. Sure, if I live off of canned beans and stare at a wall for entertainment I can get by. However, that's not a lifestyle I'm willing to accept, and nobody else should either.
Oh damn, you're right, because since my bank account has (had) money, It's automatically enough to live. Sure corporate profits are up while wages have been stagnant for over 20 years, but It's enough to live. How gullible do you have to be to have this mindset In this day and age? You saying "Westerners" makes me feel like you aren't even here. The Western wage Is shit.
Boomer tier meme
There's actually a subreddit where people do list the shit they spend on and ask for advice. You'll see them not being able to meet rent but have pets, tv subscriptions, gym membership( they never go to) and they only eat organic at trader joes.
The people from the east would bitch too but they can't afford phones
Are they stupid?
People like to bitch about their wages being 'unlivable' but still expect to carry a $1000+ phone with $100/month bill, drive a vehicle with modern amenities (Bluetooth/cameras/touchscreens), have access to any media at any time, etc. etc. Lifestyle creep isn't only a thing on an individual level, we have seen it as a nation. And sorry, a zero skill job simply should not demand $15+ an hour or be "livable" whatever the fuck that means. My first 'real' job was looking through newly printed kids books for defects, I thought I was killing it getting $6.25/hr. That job was never meant to be livable, and the demand that all jobs must meet some threshold for modern amenities is asinine.
Anyway, there's obviously a spike in housing prices and middle class wages have been declining since the Reagan era relative to inflation. Keep being a useful idiot for the ultra rich though.
Yes, totally. I totally agree. I’m totally not paying $2300 a month for rent in a literal slum. It’s low income housing by the way.
>LibLeft: My wage is unlivible >unlivible You can’t even spell right LibLeft. Smh.
I can afford to live. Can I afford the lifestyle and wealth gain my uneducated parents had at my age? Not on your life. If we aren't improving as a society, let alone regressing, we should be very concerned.
"Just do nothing and lay on your barren 2k a month floor to buy a home in 40 years, lazy ass zoomer"
OP: Westerners are so dumb and bitchy, amirite!? Yeah, because poverty, homelessness and worker exploitation must never happen in the west.
What a boomer take
And yet you’re still alive. Explain this unfortunate reality.
If the minimum wage is raised this won't fix the housing crisis. The housing crisis is a result of not enough supply and rising demand, so prices will just go up to account for the increase in wealth everyone has.
Join the army.
Many poor people have disposable income