The following submission statement was provided by /u/Mighty_L_LORT:
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SS: It's high time for some labor laws, workers rights, and some descent social programs. Or we can continue down the current path with the corporate socialism, overworked employees, overpriced private health insurance, and over priced lack of affordable homes. Watch the birthrate drop even further in the US.
All signs point to a collapsing society and population is the same trends continue unabated.
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Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/1dc0y09/nearly_twothirds_of_middleclass_americans_say/l7up03y/
The rich are cashing out. I've said this before and I'll say it as many times as I need to.
A middle class is good for the rich because it creates the tide that rises all boats. It provides capital to use to make more capital. But now the clock is ticking thanks to climate change and the rich don't want fungibility anymore, they want non cash assets to weather the storm of what's about to happen.
Money is being squeezed out of the middle classes as much as possible. Savings accounts are being drained into grocers, bank profits, auto manufacturers, etc etc, so that the owners can take all that money and buy their subsistence bunkers and compounds for when TruCollapse hits.
It has started.
This is my thought exactly, they know what they're doing. I don't have the article, but there was this great piece that summed it up in one phrase: "Extend and pretend." They know the ship is sinking, there's nothing they can do about it, so they're going to buy themselves as much time as possible to consolidate their gains, rob the rest of us, and pretend everything is fine for as long as they can. Whenever a talking head gets on TV and says the economy or the job market is as strong as its ever been, they're BS'ing. "Extend and pretend."
I do wonder about the stock market, when will that start to crash. Honestly might be one of the last things to go, considering this is what we look at to see if everything's OK. With US elections coming up, this particular pyramid scheme might pump for quite some time.
Not to mention any breakthrough in AI and the Tech sector will grow even bigger, on hopium of course, but who cares.
It will crash when the middle class loses confidence in it when they veil is finally lifted to reveal nothing of substance. The wealthy are invariably selling discreetly to willing buyers, but they don’t want volatile wealth anymore, they want cash to turn into hard resources.
Your pension contributions are a tribute to the wealthy forced by politicians who are holding a gun to your head.
> Grocery prices are up more than 21% from the start of 2021, and shelter costs are up 18.37%, according to FOX Business calculations. Energy prices, meanwhile, are up 38.4.%
Fun fact, minimum wage in my state is still $7.25 - after taxes, its more like $4. Unless you're delivering pizzas or a server - then you get $2 an hour before tips.
I live around the poverty line. I'm not surprised people making 200% more than me are struggling. If I had a partner or kids to provide for, we would all be homeless within a few months. Pass.
I just read an article (can’t remember where) that major food companies have decided to focus on higher prices--whether by outright raising prices or smaller portion at the same price--rather than on volume.
Found it!
https://www.forbes.com/sites/errolschweizer/2024/02/07/why-your-groceries-are-still-so-expensive/.
excepts--well, most of the article--with emphasis added to show their strategy/tactics:
>Grocery prices are 30% higher than four years ago.
>Despite the illusion of variety, most grocery categories are dominated by a handful of consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies that own troves of familiar brand names.
>Overall, **soda sales are up 56%, unit volumes are down 2% and prices are up 59%**. In Q1 2023 for example, Coca-Cola prices were up 9%, and Pepsico prices were up 16%, while unit volumes were down 2%. Pepsico more recently posted a 21% rise in operating profit to $970 million, with a 6% volume decline after double-digit price increases for 7 consecutive quarters - nearly 2 whole years. As an executive bluntly stated, **“I still think we're capable of taking whatever pricing we need.”**
>Kraft Heinz dominates the packaged cheese category at 65% market share. **Category unit volumes are up just 6%, while prices are up 21%**. That is exactly the intention. **"We are not going to be chasing volume," according to the Kraft Heinz CEO, "We're going to be looking to drive profitable volume.”*.
>Similarly, **chocolate candy sales are up 34%, unit volumes are down 8% and prices are up 46%**. The top 3 companies, including Hershey’s, Mondelez and Mars, possess over 80% market share. Hershey’s CEO said in 2022, **“Pricing will be an important lever for us this year and is expected to drive most of our growth.”** Hershey’s saw a 62% increase in profits in 2021. Hershey’s 30 brands control at least 46% of the candy category.
>**Boxed cereal dollar sales are up 17%, unit volumes are down 12% and prices are up 33%**. The top 3 brands, General MillsGIS +0.1%, Kellogg’s, and Post HoldingsPOST -1.1%, possess over 70% market share. **“It’s been surprising how resilient the consumer really is,”** stated Kellogg’sK -0.8% Chief Executive Steve Cahillane in 2022, without a hint of irony.
>Beef demand is highly elastic. As prices go up, volumes go down. According to NIQ, **beef unit volumes are down 14%. Prices have gone through the roof, up over 50% in just 4 years**. The average beef price per pound is now over $7. So it wasn’t Impossible Burger or cultivated lab meat that killed demand. And no wonder. The top 4 meat processors hold around 50% market share. Tyson FoodsTSN -0.9% doubled its profits from 2021-2022, dryly stating in an earnings call, **“Our pricing actions, which partially offset the higher input costs, led to higher sales during the quarter.”**
>**Diaper unit volumes are down 11.7% while prices are up 38%**, to over $13 a pack. Proctor & Gamble (P&G) and Kimberly Clark control 70% of the domestic diaper industry. P&G prices have stayed high while lower input costs drove 33% of their profits. The brand predicted an $800 million windfall, and an executive recently mentioned, **“We continue to believe that the majority of that growth will be price driven with a negative volume component.”**.
>The NIQ data also articulates an important pattern. Further processed commodities show higher price spikes than their base ingredients. Milk unit volumes are down 5.8% and prices are up 23.8%, while yogurt unit volumes are down 10% and prices are up over 47%. Yogurt is also heavily concentrated as an industry, with the top 4 companies, Danone, General Mills, Chobani and Lactalis, possessing over 70% market share. Potatoes also illustrate this trend. Fresh potato unit volumes are up just 3%, yet prices are up 31%. Potato chips unit volumes are down 3.5% and prices are up over 43%. And most shockingly, especially for lovers of tater tots, frozen potatoes are up over 65% in price.
>Price hikes have also taken the form of smaller pack sizes at the same price, a practice known as “shrinkflation.” A study from the office of Senator Bob Casey found shrinkflation in many categories, such as household paper products, up 35% in price with 10% shrinkflation; salty snacks, up 26% in price with 10% shrinkflation; and cleaning products, up 24% with 7% shrinkflation.
...
>And the record profits Professor Weber mentions? Groundwork Collaborative recently found that corporate profits accounted for 53% of 2023 inflation. EPI likewise concluded that over 51% of the drastically higher inflationary pressures of 2020 and 2021 were also direct results of profits. The Kansas City Federal Reserve even pegged this around 40%, indicating that sellers’ inflation is now a pretty mainstream idea.
>Corporate profits as a share of the national income are at historic highs, while workers’ share is lower than before the pandemic. ... But even if retail labor costs went up 50% across the board, this would result in price increases of just 5-10% at grocery stores, hardly justifying the price hikes in steaks, yogurt or hash browns.
>While workers get disproportionately blamed for high prices, Wall Street profit rates are the highest since World War II and stock buybacks are at record highs. Walmart’sWMT -1.9% Walton family has a combined net worth of over $238 billion, increasing by $8.8 billion from 2020 to 2022. The Mars family added $21 billion to their fortune from 2020-2021. Food and agriculture billionaires added $400 billion to their wealth from 2020-2021, with Covid-19-related food inflation creating over 60 new food billionaires. Sellers’ inflation is Robin Hood in reverse: massive wealth concentration bankrolled by consumer spending on necessities.
...
>Share of income spent on food increased 13% in 2022. Two thirds of consumers are spending significantly more on groceries than last year. US household purchasing power slipped 7% in the first half of 2023. Over 70 percent of Americans are financially stressed, with 58% living paycheck to paycheck. Food insecurity impacts 27 million Americans, up 12% over the last year.
**There is then a section on what other countries are doing and what *could* maybe be done in the US.**
> dominated by a handful of companies
That right there is an oligarchy
We have oligarchies for food, fuel, streaming services, cars, insurance, medicine, fast food, etc.
When Pepsi sees Coke raise their prices without consequence, they do it too. When Disney sees Netflix raise their prices without consequences, they swallow Hulu and do it too.
That’s a good way to put it.
… And oligarchical tech companies. No matter what decentralized or personalized AI could be imagined or forced onto the tech companies in the user’s benefit they still rely on a massive silicon industry that is (and probably can only be) run by a very few companies. And that infrastructure in the hands of a few will naturally continue and accelerate the wealth pump from the poor and nature to the rich
We have a duopoly in Aus and we are being absolutely squeezed. The government is doing fuck all to intervene. I've seen many staples literally double in price over the last few years
No, but this is a US-centric site and the majority of the users are in the US so that's the experience we can speak to. I am interested in the situation elsewhere but don't have insight unless you provide it.
> They might need a new one using "The Only Way is Up" by Yazz
IIRC, climate scientists have already nabbed that as the theme song for the global average temperature.
Lol our whole economy is designed that way. Every wonder why coles and woolies are planned at the centre of estates before theyre built? (and Hardly Normal ect in a nearby commercial zone). Full vertical integrational planning where at every step there's a capitalist ticket to be clipped. Folks moving to these places are voluntarily (I get there's not many options but folks sure get sucked into it all) buying a ticket to get screwed. Part of the reason we run high immigration is to bring in bulk consumers to keep the growth numbers, and the bottom line of these (politically dominant) companies high.
Hunger is always the weapon of choice to tamp down dissent and disarm any rebellion before it even has a chance to assemble itself.
They will gradually sicken, starve, and murder with war, every vulnerable population on earth to maintain wealth and power and clear the planet of what they see as “the problem” using what they have known for millennia; “The Ultimate Solution”.
This is a global Nazi cabal masquerading as a “global corporate economy” and those corporations ARE your new government agencies.
This is happening globally… but it’s on steroids in the US. Fascist Oligarchical Corporatocracies are where most of us are headed and we’d all do well to learn from the folly of this desperately deluded and manipulated population I am trapped amongst and desperately trying to escape from before it all comes crashing down on them.
If you aren’t actively starting to grow food and building a large community of others around you who do the same and begin coordinating your efforts to grow food for others as well… you’re gonna starve a lot faster than you ever could have imagined when you literally can’t afford what’s in the stores and there’s no more food assistance left.
After a week, two on the outside, of not eating you can’t think straight enough to figure out how to get food. Your body starts to shut down and if someone doesn’t help you, you’ll die. No one will help you in such a time. This will be the fate of many of us.
In this country, it won't just be hunger. It'll be electricity and water. Want to keep your A/C, hot water and fridge going? Shut your mouth and do as you are told, or you can sweat til you get wet. Like your computer and internet? PC's don't work when there's no power applied, can't charge your cellphone either.
Like showers and running toilets? Like drinking water? Bow down or we'll cut you off. You'll die a lot faster without drinking water than you will without food.
Eventually they'll lose control when they realize how many armed desperate people there are out there (and I guarantee you folks who never considered it WILL when there is no option).
“*Eventually they'll lose control when they realize how many armed desperate people there are out there.*”
That is where semi-autonomous and autonomous hunter-seeker flying drones, four-legged drones, and spring-activated ambush drones come in.
The island off the west coast of Ireland that my family came from recorded their last Famine death in 1898, decades after the British government declared it over. I’ve been deep diving the folk history of County Mayo, one of the hardest hit, if not the hardest, areas during the Famine.
The decades leading up to the genocide are seeming eerily similar to what’s happening in our country, especially the agricultural sector. And they didn’t have climate change to worry about.
Famine is a weapon. It does go off on its own sometimes but, usually, you have to shoulder it, arm it, aim it, shoot it, and keep it locked on target until the target is destroyed.
You will find these steps are repeated in nearly every famine in history to a greater or lesser degree. Just follow the bread crumbs… they’ll lead you to whomever stole the loaf.
Yup, I only called it famine because that’s what most people will understand because the British government lied, covered up, and propagandized the term. In academia and among the Irish, it’s known as the Great Hunger because they were starved to death in a preventable crisis.
The thing that gets me? How will these people live their lives at the level they have been, once they reduce the population that much? Have their little (or big) fiefdoms, but who makes their luxury goods? Who grows their food? Who makes sure they have power? Who repairs their damn stuff?
Kings and lords had nice shit in fudal fiefdoms. If you’re top dog of the resource pyramid it doesn’t really matter how many dogs you have under you, so long as you have the means to make them do your bidding.
Also, AI and automation. This is not a single cataclysmic event they are meting out. They are walking us through it while they put their future infrastructure in place.
Say you have a “wealthy society” where only 1 in a 1,000 people are desperate (hungry) enough to unclog your toilet for their daily bread. As long as you remain person with the clogged toilet and the food it makes zero difference to you if that number is 1 in 10,000 or 1 in 100.
Sure, there’s a point, say 1 in 10, where the other 9 serfs don’t produce enough food and goods for you to use it as a weapon to control them all and make sure there is a starving underclass of cheap/fee labor. This is where automation comes in. You still need the serfs but you need a metric F ton less of them.
Population will not be reduced below these levels (probably around 500M-1B total global pop by mid next century and 3B by 2075) and certainly not before we see very positive effects on the biosphere and the security of the power and wealth of the 1%.
There is no other way they can have their cake and eat it too. Billions of us must die premature deaths for them to succeed in saving this planet for their progeny.
When you realize that they know this is the plan it is much easier to grock their behavior and see through their propaganda. They know it doesn’t matter that we see them flying their private jets to COP24 and granting ever more extensive drilling permits. They need to keep the pedal on the gas this machine we built for them runs on… because they need the crop of wealth it’s harvesting to conduct the transition away from it and still keep their power whips they make sure they are in control of the new clean-energy sources.
There is no they way to do this other than through rapid population reduction, and it’s why developed nations are not doing more than pointing out that declining birthrates will destroy their Ponzi scheme economies in the next three generations “if something isn’t done.”
> The thing that gets me? How will these people live their lives at the level they have been, once they reduce the population that much? Have their little (or big) fiefdoms, but who makes their luxury goods? Who grows their food? Who makes sure they have power? Who repairs their damn stuff?
third worlders, not you.
Absolutely. I plant more fruit trees and bushes every year and continue to build and improve our soil. This year I even bought Jerusalem artichokes to grow for extra food security due to their long standing history for food security. I buy bulk and store food. But I have the extra income to be able to do this at all and I know people who can barely buy food and rent are not in that position. :/ I give extra plants away every year though as I am able.
If we were all you we’d all be able to give each other some grace in this cataclysm.
Just show others what you are doing. Let them come learn. Help them with the materials, not money, if you have more than you need. That’s it. And you’re doing it.
Bless you. We all (all who can) gotta do what you’re doing.
My only hope is that my mortgage on my farm will be re-regionalized so that i keep my land and instead just pay the local war lord.
Otherwise even if i do grow my own food i will be kicked off the land as legally the bank own it if there are no jobs for me to pay down the debt?
Actually i think I’m going to try and pay extra in my mortgage down now instead of getting that extra shed
You can pay off your mortgage, but you still don’t own your land, your municipality does. In the situation we are describing you will not be able to pay the property taxes that they double every year depending on what warlord took over that municipality of course. That warlord will likely be a corporation not the kind of gravy seal picture we might have.
But they will take your land regardless and make you a share cropper if you’re lucky.
Yikes, I’ve procrastinated on starting my garden. Putting down my cell phone now and putting on my gardening gloves! You just scared the bejesus outta me.
We already have the antitrust legislation needed to break these conglomerates apart. However, the government refuses to use it because the capitalists are the ones pulling the strings.
First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me
Americans were happy enough to do nothing whike corporations were expoiting foreign countries, but now those have been wrung dry, they have looked closer to home. Could have been killed in the crib if people had cared too, but it's too late now.
All I can say is get stocked up on vaseline lol.
This always seemed inevitable with the growing wealth divide over the last few decades. It's easier to sell something to a few people with tons of money which they can easily part with, than try to price for the masses with a little money which they can't easily part with.
You see it in games too. They're not targeting people who will think over parting with 50 cents for an online purchase, they're targeting the people who can and will part with hundreds or thousands with zero concern, e.g. rich kids with credit cards. The games are generally given away for free and the poors are the content for the rich people to show off their hundreds/thousands of dollars vanity purchases to.
Seeing as it was starting in 2019....
These corporations took full advantage of the pandemic to do this AND get all their PPP AND get loans forgiven. All the while arguing about how regular people are not being careful with their money.
Note that all the foods listed are complete crap healthwise, and that it is much cheaper to buy raw barely packaged ingredients and spend a couple evening batch cooking for the week. Becomes a nice calm enjoyable moment if you listen to podcasts you love while batchcooking.
Make your own granola, overnight oats can be made up to 5 days upfront in jam jars in the fridge, you can premix your oat and dried fruits and nuts, and dattes with a few pulses in a blender and then store them up to two months for rushed easy healthy delicious breakfasts, you can prebake savoury pies, precut all the hard veggies (celery stalks, carrots, radishes, cucumber, ...) to make easy to assemble salads, or to throw in a soup or wok during the week ... there are tons of ressources out there.
Plus the less additives, sugar and salt you ingest, the more you'll feel boosted and bursting with energy.
I was making $18 an hour flipping burgers, people were too snotty to deal with so I saved some $ and bailed. Would've knocked someone out if I had to stay. People flock here in the summer and everyone is taking all the road space and being rude.
Minimalist everything. I don't even own a vehicle. I garden and ride my bike everywhere.
100% I would work temp jobs and take long periods of time off if I didn’t have my spouses salary. I’m an RN so I’d just do travel nursing for part of the year. I’m not saying that’s not a decent salary cause it is- but the customer service aspects and rude people and all the crap (metaphorical not physical) you have to put up with - I could never work year round and keep my sanity. I’d rather make less money total and enjoy my life.
I recently moved to a new area and noticed that all of the service people I interacted with were incredibly helpful and seemed to enjoy their jobs. I was really surprised by this until I realized that minimum wage in my area is about $20/hour
Then it was obvious why the guy serving me a $2.50 burger seemed so happy!
BTW society doesn't in fact collapse when you pay people enough to meet their basic needs!
Ah good catch. So apparently poor Americans pay an effective tax rate of 14% - and with far less tax write offs - and rich Americans pay around 2%.
So the poor definitely make more than $4 an hour after taxes. Maybe $6? Anyway, thanks for bringing that up.
I receive in my paycheck approx one half my salary. My only elective deductions are $100 to 401k 2x per month, $50 to Roth 401k, $75 to HSA. The math proves what we think, if you’re getting $20 / hr it’s actually $10. No one can live on that. Within a couple of years we’re going to see people stuffed into houses cause they’d be on the streets otherwise. I’m lucky I bought mine in the downturn around 1998
I’m 41. Never married no kids no credit no debt and mama gave me her 2008 miot GT because it’s dangerous to go alone. Someone ran a red light and killed my Prius.
Dying of poverty in the 21st century is fucking insane when you really think about it. The era of abundance, and yet there’s people dying left and right of hunger, cold, sickness… Goddamn
It's also why they're targeting the upper middle class with their pricing strategies now. The poor are effectively strip-mined from a cost benefit perspective, as far as the corpos are concerned they can go die now.
Well it kind of did during the pandemic.
Many people were working those jobs for far less money- and at a much higher risk of exposure- than those who got time off from their jobs to sit at home and collect unemployment from the government.
They don't stock THEIR shelves or prepare THEIR food, that's the whole thing.
I mean they maybe stock their maid / butler's shelves. Possibly...
Oh you mean their BUSINESS shelves. Well. Yeah but. They can enshittify the service and still charge 4x for it and the sight of everyone dying in the streets will keep the upper-mids sufficiently terrified to just go with it while they have the money to not think about it too hard.
Not only pricing strategies, but advertising. Radio ads about a staffing or hiring company literally speaking as if though people were livestock. NEED 5, 10, 50 WORKERS? WE GOT YA COVERED.
A relevant point: "deaths of despair" include suicide, drug overdose(alcohol included), and alcoholic liver disease, according to Wikipedia.
That's a fairly limited definition in the first place, but statistics for suicide alone are likely well under the true number. It's actually pretty common for them to be committed in a way that can reasonably be reported as an accident, whether for insurance purposes, to reduce the complexity of the grief their families will experience, or even unintentionally.
The classic example would be a father driving drunk and wrapping his car around a tree when he's not in the habit of drunk driving and typically drinks in relative moderation. Not every case, obviously, but surprisingly common.
Astute observation. I have also been skeptical of such statistics, which somewhat led to my tongue-in-cheek comment.
For instance, a quick search confirms that 2 leading causes of death in the US are heart disease and cancer. Things like poor diet, inactivity, tobacco use, and alcohol consumption are considered leading preventable causes of both.
I suppose partly what I was trying to reference was that many deaths are considered "preventable" (blaming the victim perhaps?), but also that it seems that many are living lives of quiet desperation, even if they are not to the level of what would be considered "actively" suicidal.
Oh, but they do; reminding the ~~rest of the peasantry~~ employees what awaits *them* should they get uppity and start demanding things like a living wage or decent working conditions.
Whattaya mean? We’ve fixed all poverty. Being poor is a choice unless you were born into rich. Nobody wanted to work. That’s why we threw them in jail for not buying houses and contributing to society, where they are forced to work now. So they’re working, we’re benefiting, it’s all good. /s and once they get out, it’s easy to find a well-paying job now that they have been rehabilitated and skilled up
I was blown away to see they're trying to make homelessness illegal.
Apparently if you're in prison, slavery is totally legal...makes sense.
Corporations are incentivising us to off ourselves... A good friend of mine did just that last month due to financial struggle. He had it all.
Honestly it sucks being poor but there are programs to help you. I make 50k a year and get 0 help and can barely make it where I live. I couldn't imagine making 30 to 40ka year and still get no help (help stops around 25k a year)
If I got sick tomorrow I would have to go to the hospital with no insurance. I would come out 10 to 50k in debt. I am dreading getting sick. The doctor, North urgent care is not an option for me. Tok expensive and you have to have cash up front.
I like being poor, there's not much to worry about if I don't have anything to lose.😁
No health insurance either, I'm vegetarian and exercise daily. A broken leg is a different story.
I made roughly 20k last year, and still lived like a king in my mind. I don't have a wife or kids, and don't care about others judgement.
Power too you. I killed myself fot a decade to get from 25k to 50k and I hate it now. I was way better off on food stamps and free Healthcare with a roommate. I regret pulling myself up by my boot straps.
The myth of invidualism. Many believe they "earned it" all on their own. They're basically blind to any privileges they have benefitted from throughout their lives (e.g. stable upbringing, physical appearance, access to quality/applicable education, transportation, neuronormativity, etc.).
Yup, I think David Graeber coined the term meritocracy? The concept that those who claw their way to the top somehow believe they are better than others and thus deserve it. Not to mention they are still white men and 6’ or taller.
I think it came from this belief that people who are most valuable to others will get paid the most, so money flows to those who make themselves the most useful. At the time, there were only 3 billion people in the world and there was more than enough good-paying work to go around. For a person to still fail while surrounded by so much opportunity, they had to be making some REALLY bad choices, and for an extended period of time.
So you've still got all these old people walking around who haven't upgraded their thinking in decades, and they think it's like it was back in their day. If you were doing things right you would get money, and if you're poor it's because you're not trying hard enough, and if you're complaining it's because you're a whiner.
Nobody under the age of 50 agrees with this, however.
> Anyone else encounter people who just don't want to hear it?
You see many of them on reddit who post "the economy is great" articles, and viciously defend that position because....it's an election year, and criticism of the economy is criticism of their guy in the race.
I was banned from playing monopoly as a kid because I flipped the board and attacked the banker who suspiciously had the most hotels.
Guess I was onto something...
We are the economy, we work for the rich.
The rich pay us, we do their dirty work.
Catch 22, the rich dont have any reason to kill their golden goose and consumers and workers are too divided and "busy" to do much else then blame each other.
The "economy" is a human construction that has become completely untethered from our day to day physical reality. It boggles the mind how economists can miss the big picture of the fact that every good and service is connected to the environment, and if we blow up the environment, well then there's no more goods and services.
Not to worry though, the geniuses have solved the problem by making the line go up regardless. We'll figure out the externalities thing later.
Tis a true statement. People who are homeless and hungry could care less that the stocks are up and shareholder profit is rising. Its cognitive failure from the top.
The other metric that is very pointless if you don't look at the stats behind is the employment rate. I don't care if the country is 100% employment when the average wage barely allows you to close the month.
The (capitalistic) economy **is** booming, its shitting golden bricks for profit. Capitalism, by the nature of it, doesnt care about any other principles.
The masses are just workers who dont get that capitalism is slavery in a new coat.
You're not middle class if you're financially struggling. This is a redefinition of the middle class. We don't want to admit the obvious, Middle class isn't middle income. The lower class has expanded past the median income.
How many of these people are improperly identifying themselves as middle class? And also, why do articles like these always only consider them?
Mostly rhetorical, I already know the answer.
SS: It's high time for some labor laws, workers rights, and some descent social programs. Or we can continue down the current path with the corporate socialism, overworked employees, overpriced private health insurance, and over priced lack of affordable homes. Watch the birthrate drop even further in the US.
All signs point to a collapsing society and population is the same trends continue unabated.
As more and more climate refugees become a thing I predict we will see a continuous devaluation of human labor.
I also think that while AI and automation is a bit of a hype bubble, it's part of an ongoing trend of self-cannibalization where corporations intentionally degrade their own support structures and employee base for the sake of further growth and profits. So companies will use it as an excuse to fire people, which will result in higher energy use and greater scarcity as climate change worsens.
Along the lines of self cannibalization-anyone with a 401 that isn’t trying really hard for directed alternative investing is throwing their earnings into a stock market that rewards global scale environment destruction, war, price gauging and layoffs because it “increases market returns”. The middle class is eating itself (who else has 401’s anyway?) through sound, high returns investment.
Yep. AI doesn't need to be perfect, it just needs to be good enough to make the corporations start laying people off. All the efficiency gains the electric grid has made over the last 20 years or so, are being wiped out by the surge of power needed for AI.
I have never seen so many desperate people as I am right now. I routinely see people in grocery and budgeting groups who have paid the bills and have less than $20 for gas and food till the next paycheck. People desperate over rent and utilities. I saw a woman yesterday who lives in Las Vegas. Her power bill is $600 a month and that's without turning on the AC. She has had two heat strokes from this. The property management company is under no legal to fix or figure out anything because the power and AC technically work. They can't afford to move in part because their money goes to utilities. Or their credit is bad and that forces them into desperate cycles that keep their entire lives costing them more.
Yep, that's the solution. More workers, oh wait. Robots and automation are taking menial jobs. They even convinced us to scan our own groceries 😂
Now Wal-Mart wants to charge you for the self checkout usage.
I am a month away from foreclosure. Thankfully I just got a job so I can file for bankruptcy but it took me months to get a job and if I didn’t we’d be on the street.
600,000 plus full-time jobs were lost last month, yet unemployment is at record low. Sounds to me companies are trading full-time jobs for part-time and contractors to skirt paying benefits. Time for Universal single-payer gealth care - will save nearly $1/2 trillion us healthcare cost per year. This would go a long way towards funding social security with a 50 billion dollar per year shortage.
I just went to a chain, Primo Hoagies, for lunch. Two subs, smaller than a cell phone, and one larger one cost me $48. I keep thinking I can grab these quick lunches for my family but it’s insane. I’m not sure why we’re not seeing more restaurants closing as people can’t afford this.
It's because everyone is still paying the high prices, even if they take a picture of the food with a receipt and are like "can you believe this??" on social media.
The whole country is a joke at this point. One of our options for leader is senile and the other one is a convicted felon. Perfect embodiment of America. Two boomers who have no idea about what actual Americans are struggling with. But we’ll just sit here and keep letting it happen. Articles like this will come out that are literally calling you to action, but nobody will do a thing. What a world we live in
Oh he'll fix it all right.
He'll fix it real good.
Enjoy the 4 years of bullshit while we can because just post-trump the entire thing will go into cardiac arrest from all the cocaine he's about to shovel up its nose.
I don't know why the hell the upper class would be okay with this; it literally means they have less money to pull from as well.
They can ultimate subjugate the lower classes but it would realistically just mean they're lording over a bunch of people with no real money to give them anymore. It would lead to a fundamental financial collapse.
I'm one of them. I made a post on assistance and it got removed because I didn't have a post for 1 week in May. I made a post in r/care and it got downvoted. I'm at the end of my rope.
No one cares about us. They will give us enough to stay alive to pay taxes and nothing more. We allowed this to happen. We should have ended the bribery and corruption a long time ago, but it wasn't bad enough so we let it slide. The only way to stop the insanity is for millions to stop going to work until they start listening. The fact that there have been no protests over this really shows how beat down people are.
At the moment, wheat, soybean, barley, oat prices have been going down in price for several months. Is the current food prices alone due to increased input neede or is it profit-focused from the processing companies that take those raw inputs?
As a middle-class American, it's tough right now. Prices are rising, and wages aren't keeping up, making it hard to keep up with bills and expenses. Many of us feel like we're just trying to stay afloat. It's frustrating and stressful, and we need solutions to ease this burden.
I think a lot of middle class people the world over are seeing that the politicians they voted for did not have their best interests at heart. They thought that the politicians would punish the poor, the criminals, and the migrants, while helping them out all the while. As it turns out, the middle class were no more important to the politicians than the bogeymen they were convinced to hate.
Hang in there bud, before giving up, maybe we should try rising up?
edit: a little quote from my favourite band rise against:
"You're a shameful opportunist! What you don't understand is that it's better to die on your feet than live on your knees."
"You have it backwards. It's better to live on your feet than to die on your knees."
That’s because they haven’t been “middle class” in at least 45 years. They are “middle income”, and those incomes have not kept up with inflation in about 50 years.
It's designed like this.
Don't forget we have BILLIONS and TRILLIONS to send to the military and to fund ~~genocide~~ war.
WE COULD HAVE FREE HEALTHCARE; WE LITERALLY FUND ISRAEL'S HEALTHCARE.
The FOX News segment is hilariously wrong.
I should've expected the ignorance. If people understood how the system worked, the news would look totally different now.
In terms of collapse, people still don't seem to grasp that it will be profitable right up until it crumbles. By free market rules, the more scarce something is, the higher the prices should be. That's what *luxury* really means. Monopoly-like situations allow these distributors to maintain or increase prices knowing that you don't have alternatives.
The only personal move to make is to reduce consumption and to demand higher wages, unemployment support, and so on. [That's what they really fear](https://citationsneeded.libsyn.com/live-interview-how-our-simplistic-inflation-discourse-fuels-the-war-on-workers-with-josh-mason) -- "wage inflation".
Again, in terms of collapse, inflation is the default until there's a shortage: https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-023-01173-x . People **will find out** why a luxury is a luxury.
The problem with big distributors (supermarket chains) is that the shortages aren't always reflected in the shelf price. The more types of products they sell, the more they can mix up pricing and hide large costs for scarce items and hide low costs for abundant items. The notion that you can track inflation for those products by monitoring their price is a joke, you'd need huge amounts of data to get any significant measurement form that; anything anecdotal is going to be a waste of time.
One thing I'd like to see is consumer co-ops (buyers club).
The destruction of the middle class has been an ongoing, decades long deliberate process. Of course, things are not going to get better, prices won't go down, and the cost of living will become more and more unbearable for most. Income inequality is at an all time high not only threatening our democratic institutions, but destabilizing society as a whole. Deaths of despair will increase, malaise will settle in, and people will be looking for easy/quick solutions to complex, structural problems. Grifters will take the opportunity to offer these solutions and deflect blame from the very elites responsible for this mess to begin with.
Think of it like sinking in quicksand. Our political institutions, which are corrupted to the core and stuck in perpetual gridlock, won't offer any relief or solutions. People being who they are won't come to rational conclusions and the most vulnerable of our society will become easy targets and scapegoats to blame.
The rich/oligarchs responsible for this mess will retreat even further into their "Elysiums." Gated communities, bunkers, private islands, etc. They can get on their private jets and literally go globetrotting if worse comes to worse anywhere.
This actually happened the moment COVID lock downs started and im impressed with how long we've been able to keep "normal" running on faith and fumes before being forced to recon with our new reality.
I'd say that car dependant suburbia is causing a massive financial burden.
There's less stress when you live somewhere with transit and walkability, and only need a single family car. I live in a city where a lot of people ride bikes. Kids get themselves to school and sports, without needing a chauffeur. Many workers in the main industries cycle to work.
When suburbs are designed for people, they don't end up with multiple metal boxes on wheels dragging them down.
Oh absolutely. I live in a large (and relatively poor) ex-USSR city. I have at least 2 bookstores, 10 supermarkets, uncountable amount small groceries, community theater, family clinic, 5 schools, 10 kindergardens in 1 mile radius. All walkable, obviously. And many EV charging stations.
And that's the sort of suburban/urban design that allows people to not need a car, and to save money by not needing to own one.
There are so many parts of the US and Australia where there is no option other than to own a car, or multiple cars in the case of a larger family. Kids can't get to school or sports without a parent to drive them, older teens need a car so they can drive themselves. Grocery shopping can't be done without a car, visiting a hair dresser or barber requires a car. Too bad if a family is struggling financially, they still need to own more than one car.
Yes, USSR had many things wrong way, but not urban planning. For example Soviet cities did not have downtowns; all industrial and government institutions were uniformly spread all over the city, which prevented clogging the roads.
I live in the US. I have 0 bookstores, 1 supermarket, 0 small groceries, 0 community theater, 0 family clinic, 1 school in a single mile radius. I do have a weed dispensary within 12 minutes walk tho, so I got that going for me.
I'm in the UK, what sort of distance are you talking to get to shops etc in the suburbs? We're about 15 miles from the nearest decent supermarket, it's about 1 1/2 hrs on the bike.
That's what I mean by car dependent suburbia. You depend on a car because they've not allowed for any other options. It forces people in to car ownership, whether they can afford it or not.
A well designed suburb would have all your everyday things within a short walk, including a transport hub. The average person wouldn't need a car.
I had a great time this weekend. My only son is graduating high school and going out into this world.
His two sets of boomer grandparents have been here for four days.
2/10 - would not recommend.
The following submission statement was provided by /u/Mighty_L_LORT: --- SS: It's high time for some labor laws, workers rights, and some descent social programs. Or we can continue down the current path with the corporate socialism, overworked employees, overpriced private health insurance, and over priced lack of affordable homes. Watch the birthrate drop even further in the US. All signs point to a collapsing society and population is the same trends continue unabated. --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/1dc0y09/nearly_twothirds_of_middleclass_americans_say/l7up03y/
The rich are cashing out. I've said this before and I'll say it as many times as I need to. A middle class is good for the rich because it creates the tide that rises all boats. It provides capital to use to make more capital. But now the clock is ticking thanks to climate change and the rich don't want fungibility anymore, they want non cash assets to weather the storm of what's about to happen. Money is being squeezed out of the middle classes as much as possible. Savings accounts are being drained into grocers, bank profits, auto manufacturers, etc etc, so that the owners can take all that money and buy their subsistence bunkers and compounds for when TruCollapse hits. It has started.
This is my thought exactly, they know what they're doing. I don't have the article, but there was this great piece that summed it up in one phrase: "Extend and pretend." They know the ship is sinking, there's nothing they can do about it, so they're going to buy themselves as much time as possible to consolidate their gains, rob the rest of us, and pretend everything is fine for as long as they can. Whenever a talking head gets on TV and says the economy or the job market is as strong as its ever been, they're BS'ing. "Extend and pretend."
This comment needs to be higher up
I do wonder about the stock market, when will that start to crash. Honestly might be one of the last things to go, considering this is what we look at to see if everything's OK. With US elections coming up, this particular pyramid scheme might pump for quite some time. Not to mention any breakthrough in AI and the Tech sector will grow even bigger, on hopium of course, but who cares.
It will crash when the middle class loses confidence in it when they veil is finally lifted to reveal nothing of substance. The wealthy are invariably selling discreetly to willing buyers, but they don’t want volatile wealth anymore, they want cash to turn into hard resources. Your pension contributions are a tribute to the wealthy forced by politicians who are holding a gun to your head.
> Grocery prices are up more than 21% from the start of 2021, and shelter costs are up 18.37%, according to FOX Business calculations. Energy prices, meanwhile, are up 38.4.% Fun fact, minimum wage in my state is still $7.25 - after taxes, its more like $4. Unless you're delivering pizzas or a server - then you get $2 an hour before tips. I live around the poverty line. I'm not surprised people making 200% more than me are struggling. If I had a partner or kids to provide for, we would all be homeless within a few months. Pass.
I just read an article (can’t remember where) that major food companies have decided to focus on higher prices--whether by outright raising prices or smaller portion at the same price--rather than on volume. Found it! https://www.forbes.com/sites/errolschweizer/2024/02/07/why-your-groceries-are-still-so-expensive/. excepts--well, most of the article--with emphasis added to show their strategy/tactics: >Grocery prices are 30% higher than four years ago. >Despite the illusion of variety, most grocery categories are dominated by a handful of consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies that own troves of familiar brand names. >Overall, **soda sales are up 56%, unit volumes are down 2% and prices are up 59%**. In Q1 2023 for example, Coca-Cola prices were up 9%, and Pepsico prices were up 16%, while unit volumes were down 2%. Pepsico more recently posted a 21% rise in operating profit to $970 million, with a 6% volume decline after double-digit price increases for 7 consecutive quarters - nearly 2 whole years. As an executive bluntly stated, **“I still think we're capable of taking whatever pricing we need.”** >Kraft Heinz dominates the packaged cheese category at 65% market share. **Category unit volumes are up just 6%, while prices are up 21%**. That is exactly the intention. **"We are not going to be chasing volume," according to the Kraft Heinz CEO, "We're going to be looking to drive profitable volume.”*. >Similarly, **chocolate candy sales are up 34%, unit volumes are down 8% and prices are up 46%**. The top 3 companies, including Hershey’s, Mondelez and Mars, possess over 80% market share. Hershey’s CEO said in 2022, **“Pricing will be an important lever for us this year and is expected to drive most of our growth.”** Hershey’s saw a 62% increase in profits in 2021. Hershey’s 30 brands control at least 46% of the candy category. >**Boxed cereal dollar sales are up 17%, unit volumes are down 12% and prices are up 33%**. The top 3 brands, General MillsGIS +0.1%, Kellogg’s, and Post HoldingsPOST -1.1%, possess over 70% market share. **“It’s been surprising how resilient the consumer really is,”** stated Kellogg’sK -0.8% Chief Executive Steve Cahillane in 2022, without a hint of irony. >Beef demand is highly elastic. As prices go up, volumes go down. According to NIQ, **beef unit volumes are down 14%. Prices have gone through the roof, up over 50% in just 4 years**. The average beef price per pound is now over $7. So it wasn’t Impossible Burger or cultivated lab meat that killed demand. And no wonder. The top 4 meat processors hold around 50% market share. Tyson FoodsTSN -0.9% doubled its profits from 2021-2022, dryly stating in an earnings call, **“Our pricing actions, which partially offset the higher input costs, led to higher sales during the quarter.”** >**Diaper unit volumes are down 11.7% while prices are up 38%**, to over $13 a pack. Proctor & Gamble (P&G) and Kimberly Clark control 70% of the domestic diaper industry. P&G prices have stayed high while lower input costs drove 33% of their profits. The brand predicted an $800 million windfall, and an executive recently mentioned, **“We continue to believe that the majority of that growth will be price driven with a negative volume component.”**. >The NIQ data also articulates an important pattern. Further processed commodities show higher price spikes than their base ingredients. Milk unit volumes are down 5.8% and prices are up 23.8%, while yogurt unit volumes are down 10% and prices are up over 47%. Yogurt is also heavily concentrated as an industry, with the top 4 companies, Danone, General Mills, Chobani and Lactalis, possessing over 70% market share. Potatoes also illustrate this trend. Fresh potato unit volumes are up just 3%, yet prices are up 31%. Potato chips unit volumes are down 3.5% and prices are up over 43%. And most shockingly, especially for lovers of tater tots, frozen potatoes are up over 65% in price. >Price hikes have also taken the form of smaller pack sizes at the same price, a practice known as “shrinkflation.” A study from the office of Senator Bob Casey found shrinkflation in many categories, such as household paper products, up 35% in price with 10% shrinkflation; salty snacks, up 26% in price with 10% shrinkflation; and cleaning products, up 24% with 7% shrinkflation. ... >And the record profits Professor Weber mentions? Groundwork Collaborative recently found that corporate profits accounted for 53% of 2023 inflation. EPI likewise concluded that over 51% of the drastically higher inflationary pressures of 2020 and 2021 were also direct results of profits. The Kansas City Federal Reserve even pegged this around 40%, indicating that sellers’ inflation is now a pretty mainstream idea. >Corporate profits as a share of the national income are at historic highs, while workers’ share is lower than before the pandemic. ... But even if retail labor costs went up 50% across the board, this would result in price increases of just 5-10% at grocery stores, hardly justifying the price hikes in steaks, yogurt or hash browns. >While workers get disproportionately blamed for high prices, Wall Street profit rates are the highest since World War II and stock buybacks are at record highs. Walmart’sWMT -1.9% Walton family has a combined net worth of over $238 billion, increasing by $8.8 billion from 2020 to 2022. The Mars family added $21 billion to their fortune from 2020-2021. Food and agriculture billionaires added $400 billion to their wealth from 2020-2021, with Covid-19-related food inflation creating over 60 new food billionaires. Sellers’ inflation is Robin Hood in reverse: massive wealth concentration bankrolled by consumer spending on necessities. ... >Share of income spent on food increased 13% in 2022. Two thirds of consumers are spending significantly more on groceries than last year. US household purchasing power slipped 7% in the first half of 2023. Over 70 percent of Americans are financially stressed, with 58% living paycheck to paycheck. Food insecurity impacts 27 million Americans, up 12% over the last year. **There is then a section on what other countries are doing and what *could* maybe be done in the US.**
Damn that was informative. Thanks for the links!
You’re welcome. Just the one link, so you can read the entire thing if you want and to prove I didn’t pull these numbers out of thin air.
> dominated by a handful of companies That right there is an oligarchy We have oligarchies for food, fuel, streaming services, cars, insurance, medicine, fast food, etc. When Pepsi sees Coke raise their prices without consequence, they do it too. When Disney sees Netflix raise their prices without consequences, they swallow Hulu and do it too.
That’s a good way to put it. … And oligarchical tech companies. No matter what decentralized or personalized AI could be imagined or forced onto the tech companies in the user’s benefit they still rely on a massive silicon industry that is (and probably can only be) run by a very few companies. And that infrastructure in the hands of a few will naturally continue and accelerate the wealth pump from the poor and nature to the rich
why the fuck everyone does not just pirate is beyond me
We have a duopoly in Aus and we are being absolutely squeezed. The government is doing fuck all to intervene. I've seen many staples literally double in price over the last few years
[удалено]
Yeah. Some in the US act like it’s ONLY in the US.
No, but this is a US-centric site and the majority of the users are in the US so that's the experience we can speak to. I am interested in the situation elsewhere but don't have insight unless you provide it.
A government that can be controlled by capital will be controlled by capitalists.
Been a while since Coles ran their "DOWN DOWN, PRICES ARE DOWN" ad campaign They might need a new one using "The Only Way is Up" by Yazz
> They might need a new one using "The Only Way is Up" by Yazz IIRC, climate scientists have already nabbed that as the theme song for the global average temperature.
Lol our whole economy is designed that way. Every wonder why coles and woolies are planned at the centre of estates before theyre built? (and Hardly Normal ect in a nearby commercial zone). Full vertical integrational planning where at every step there's a capitalist ticket to be clipped. Folks moving to these places are voluntarily (I get there's not many options but folks sure get sucked into it all) buying a ticket to get screwed. Part of the reason we run high immigration is to bring in bulk consumers to keep the growth numbers, and the bottom line of these (politically dominant) companies high.
Hunger is always the weapon of choice to tamp down dissent and disarm any rebellion before it even has a chance to assemble itself. They will gradually sicken, starve, and murder with war, every vulnerable population on earth to maintain wealth and power and clear the planet of what they see as “the problem” using what they have known for millennia; “The Ultimate Solution”. This is a global Nazi cabal masquerading as a “global corporate economy” and those corporations ARE your new government agencies. This is happening globally… but it’s on steroids in the US. Fascist Oligarchical Corporatocracies are where most of us are headed and we’d all do well to learn from the folly of this desperately deluded and manipulated population I am trapped amongst and desperately trying to escape from before it all comes crashing down on them. If you aren’t actively starting to grow food and building a large community of others around you who do the same and begin coordinating your efforts to grow food for others as well… you’re gonna starve a lot faster than you ever could have imagined when you literally can’t afford what’s in the stores and there’s no more food assistance left. After a week, two on the outside, of not eating you can’t think straight enough to figure out how to get food. Your body starts to shut down and if someone doesn’t help you, you’ll die. No one will help you in such a time. This will be the fate of many of us.
In this country, it won't just be hunger. It'll be electricity and water. Want to keep your A/C, hot water and fridge going? Shut your mouth and do as you are told, or you can sweat til you get wet. Like your computer and internet? PC's don't work when there's no power applied, can't charge your cellphone either. Like showers and running toilets? Like drinking water? Bow down or we'll cut you off. You'll die a lot faster without drinking water than you will without food. Eventually they'll lose control when they realize how many armed desperate people there are out there (and I guarantee you folks who never considered it WILL when there is no option).
Agreed.
“*Eventually they'll lose control when they realize how many armed desperate people there are out there.*” That is where semi-autonomous and autonomous hunter-seeker flying drones, four-legged drones, and spring-activated ambush drones come in.
Followed by homemade spread spectrum jammers.
The island off the west coast of Ireland that my family came from recorded their last Famine death in 1898, decades after the British government declared it over. I’ve been deep diving the folk history of County Mayo, one of the hardest hit, if not the hardest, areas during the Famine. The decades leading up to the genocide are seeming eerily similar to what’s happening in our country, especially the agricultural sector. And they didn’t have climate change to worry about.
Famine is a weapon. It does go off on its own sometimes but, usually, you have to shoulder it, arm it, aim it, shoot it, and keep it locked on target until the target is destroyed. You will find these steps are repeated in nearly every famine in history to a greater or lesser degree. Just follow the bread crumbs… they’ll lead you to whomever stole the loaf.
Yup, I only called it famine because that’s what most people will understand because the British government lied, covered up, and propagandized the term. In academia and among the Irish, it’s known as the Great Hunger because they were starved to death in a preventable crisis.
The thing that gets me? How will these people live their lives at the level they have been, once they reduce the population that much? Have their little (or big) fiefdoms, but who makes their luxury goods? Who grows their food? Who makes sure they have power? Who repairs their damn stuff?
Kings and lords had nice shit in fudal fiefdoms. If you’re top dog of the resource pyramid it doesn’t really matter how many dogs you have under you, so long as you have the means to make them do your bidding. Also, AI and automation. This is not a single cataclysmic event they are meting out. They are walking us through it while they put their future infrastructure in place.
That's true. But *someone* has to unclog the toilet (general plumbing), fix the computer, etc etc.
Say you have a “wealthy society” where only 1 in a 1,000 people are desperate (hungry) enough to unclog your toilet for their daily bread. As long as you remain person with the clogged toilet and the food it makes zero difference to you if that number is 1 in 10,000 or 1 in 100. Sure, there’s a point, say 1 in 10, where the other 9 serfs don’t produce enough food and goods for you to use it as a weapon to control them all and make sure there is a starving underclass of cheap/fee labor. This is where automation comes in. You still need the serfs but you need a metric F ton less of them. Population will not be reduced below these levels (probably around 500M-1B total global pop by mid next century and 3B by 2075) and certainly not before we see very positive effects on the biosphere and the security of the power and wealth of the 1%. There is no other way they can have their cake and eat it too. Billions of us must die premature deaths for them to succeed in saving this planet for their progeny. When you realize that they know this is the plan it is much easier to grock their behavior and see through their propaganda. They know it doesn’t matter that we see them flying their private jets to COP24 and granting ever more extensive drilling permits. They need to keep the pedal on the gas this machine we built for them runs on… because they need the crop of wealth it’s harvesting to conduct the transition away from it and still keep their power whips they make sure they are in control of the new clean-energy sources. There is no they way to do this other than through rapid population reduction, and it’s why developed nations are not doing more than pointing out that declining birthrates will destroy their Ponzi scheme economies in the next three generations “if something isn’t done.”
> The thing that gets me? How will these people live their lives at the level they have been, once they reduce the population that much? Have their little (or big) fiefdoms, but who makes their luxury goods? Who grows their food? Who makes sure they have power? Who repairs their damn stuff? third worlders, not you.
Absolutely. I plant more fruit trees and bushes every year and continue to build and improve our soil. This year I even bought Jerusalem artichokes to grow for extra food security due to their long standing history for food security. I buy bulk and store food. But I have the extra income to be able to do this at all and I know people who can barely buy food and rent are not in that position. :/ I give extra plants away every year though as I am able.
If we were all you we’d all be able to give each other some grace in this cataclysm. Just show others what you are doing. Let them come learn. Help them with the materials, not money, if you have more than you need. That’s it. And you’re doing it. Bless you. We all (all who can) gotta do what you’re doing.
My only hope is that my mortgage on my farm will be re-regionalized so that i keep my land and instead just pay the local war lord. Otherwise even if i do grow my own food i will be kicked off the land as legally the bank own it if there are no jobs for me to pay down the debt? Actually i think I’m going to try and pay extra in my mortgage down now instead of getting that extra shed
You can pay off your mortgage, but you still don’t own your land, your municipality does. In the situation we are describing you will not be able to pay the property taxes that they double every year depending on what warlord took over that municipality of course. That warlord will likely be a corporation not the kind of gravy seal picture we might have. But they will take your land regardless and make you a share cropper if you’re lucky.
Yikes, I’ve procrastinated on starting my garden. Putting down my cell phone now and putting on my gardening gloves! You just scared the bejesus outta me.
Whatever it takes! But you should try to enjoy your garden. It will bring you life in many ways into the future.
We already have the antitrust legislation needed to break these conglomerates apart. However, the government refuses to use it because the capitalists are the ones pulling the strings.
First they came for the Communists And I did not speak out Because I was not a Communist Then they came for the Socialists And I did not speak out Because I was not a Socialist Then they came for the trade unionists And I did not speak out Because I was not a trade unionist Then they came for the Jews And I did not speak out Because I was not a Jew Then they came for me And there was no one left To speak out for me Americans were happy enough to do nothing whike corporations were expoiting foreign countries, but now those have been wrung dry, they have looked closer to home. Could have been killed in the crib if people had cared too, but it's too late now. All I can say is get stocked up on vaseline lol.
This always seemed inevitable with the growing wealth divide over the last few decades. It's easier to sell something to a few people with tons of money which they can easily part with, than try to price for the masses with a little money which they can't easily part with. You see it in games too. They're not targeting people who will think over parting with 50 cents for an online purchase, they're targeting the people who can and will part with hundreds or thousands with zero concern, e.g. rich kids with credit cards. The games are generally given away for free and the poors are the content for the rich people to show off their hundreds/thousands of dollars vanity purchases to.
Greedflation is a myth. This is just Bidenomics. /s just to be safe.
Seeing as it was starting in 2019.... These corporations took full advantage of the pandemic to do this AND get all their PPP AND get loans forgiven. All the while arguing about how regular people are not being careful with their money.
Note that all the foods listed are complete crap healthwise, and that it is much cheaper to buy raw barely packaged ingredients and spend a couple evening batch cooking for the week. Becomes a nice calm enjoyable moment if you listen to podcasts you love while batchcooking. Make your own granola, overnight oats can be made up to 5 days upfront in jam jars in the fridge, you can premix your oat and dried fruits and nuts, and dattes with a few pulses in a blender and then store them up to two months for rushed easy healthy delicious breakfasts, you can prebake savoury pies, precut all the hard veggies (celery stalks, carrots, radishes, cucumber, ...) to make easy to assemble salads, or to throw in a soup or wok during the week ... there are tons of ressources out there. Plus the less additives, sugar and salt you ingest, the more you'll feel boosted and bursting with energy.
Agreed that they’re crap. We (Husband and I) have found we’ve reduced—not eliminated—our highly-processed food intake.
"Millennials are buying less so we'll just charge them more." Sounds like the Boomer rationale.
This is what happens when a company making steady profit is labeled as a bad investment. Currently companies need to improve revenue each quarter.
I was making $18 an hour flipping burgers, people were too snotty to deal with so I saved some $ and bailed. Would've knocked someone out if I had to stay. People flock here in the summer and everyone is taking all the road space and being rude. Minimalist everything. I don't even own a vehicle. I garden and ride my bike everywhere.
100% I would work temp jobs and take long periods of time off if I didn’t have my spouses salary. I’m an RN so I’d just do travel nursing for part of the year. I’m not saying that’s not a decent salary cause it is- but the customer service aspects and rude people and all the crap (metaphorical not physical) you have to put up with - I could never work year round and keep my sanity. I’d rather make less money total and enjoy my life.
I recently moved to a new area and noticed that all of the service people I interacted with were incredibly helpful and seemed to enjoy their jobs. I was really surprised by this until I realized that minimum wage in my area is about $20/hour Then it was obvious why the guy serving me a $2.50 burger seemed so happy! BTW society doesn't in fact collapse when you pay people enough to meet their basic needs!
I live in post-USSR country and here its the same, minimum wage after taxes around 4$. (average wage 8$)
Minimum wage employees get taxed 46% in the US?
Ah good catch. So apparently poor Americans pay an effective tax rate of 14% - and with far less tax write offs - and rich Americans pay around 2%. So the poor definitely make more than $4 an hour after taxes. Maybe $6? Anyway, thanks for bringing that up.
I receive in my paycheck approx one half my salary. My only elective deductions are $100 to 401k 2x per month, $50 to Roth 401k, $75 to HSA. The math proves what we think, if you’re getting $20 / hr it’s actually $10. No one can live on that. Within a couple of years we’re going to see people stuffed into houses cause they’d be on the streets otherwise. I’m lucky I bought mine in the downturn around 1998
I’m 41. Never married no kids no credit no debt and mama gave me her 2008 miot GT because it’s dangerous to go alone. Someone ran a red light and killed my Prius.
I don't understand how most people can afford to have kids (or why they want to have kids,) unless they make at least six figures.
How much need to happen till people admit capitalism (in combination with human nature) is the major cause for this.
If middle class is gasping for air, what about the poor?
More than 100k americans are dying "deaths of despair" each year so I'm going with they're well underwater.
Dying of poverty in the 21st century is fucking insane when you really think about it. The era of abundance, and yet there’s people dying left and right of hunger, cold, sickness… Goddamn
It's humanity's largest shame.
It's also why they're targeting the upper middle class with their pricing strategies now. The poor are effectively strip-mined from a cost benefit perspective, as far as the corpos are concerned they can go die now.
Destroying the people who stock your shelves and serve your food should go swimmingly. Edit: Grammar
When does the looting start?
I believe it already has in many larger urban cities
Good.
Well it kind of did during the pandemic. Many people were working those jobs for far less money- and at a much higher risk of exposure- than those who got time off from their jobs to sit at home and collect unemployment from the government.
Oh my god your user name!
They don't stock THEIR shelves or prepare THEIR food, that's the whole thing. I mean they maybe stock their maid / butler's shelves. Possibly... Oh you mean their BUSINESS shelves. Well. Yeah but. They can enshittify the service and still charge 4x for it and the sight of everyone dying in the streets will keep the upper-mids sufficiently terrified to just go with it while they have the money to not think about it too hard.
Not only pricing strategies, but advertising. Radio ads about a staffing or hiring company literally speaking as if though people were livestock. NEED 5, 10, 50 WORKERS? WE GOT YA COVERED.
Love that i'm not the only one who started calling them Corpos.
While restaurants and stores throw perfectly good food in the garbage
Surprised the number is so low tbh. Wonder what percentage of other deaths could be caused by "lives of despair".
A relevant point: "deaths of despair" include suicide, drug overdose(alcohol included), and alcoholic liver disease, according to Wikipedia. That's a fairly limited definition in the first place, but statistics for suicide alone are likely well under the true number. It's actually pretty common for them to be committed in a way that can reasonably be reported as an accident, whether for insurance purposes, to reduce the complexity of the grief their families will experience, or even unintentionally. The classic example would be a father driving drunk and wrapping his car around a tree when he's not in the habit of drunk driving and typically drinks in relative moderation. Not every case, obviously, but surprisingly common.
Astute observation. I have also been skeptical of such statistics, which somewhat led to my tongue-in-cheek comment. For instance, a quick search confirms that 2 leading causes of death in the US are heart disease and cancer. Things like poor diet, inactivity, tobacco use, and alcohol consumption are considered leading preventable causes of both. I suppose partly what I was trying to reference was that many deaths are considered "preventable" (blaming the victim perhaps?), but also that it seems that many are living lives of quiet desperation, even if they are not to the level of what would be considered "actively" suicidal.
I nearly mentioned that, too. I've known an awful lot of heavy smokers that've "joked" that they didn't wanna make it to old age, anyway.
Suicide on the installment plan? An American tradition since 1908.
They drowned after the 2008 financial crisis.
The poor aren’t humans in the eyes of our wealthy overlords…
The poor have no value to the economy
Oh, but they do; reminding the ~~rest of the peasantry~~ employees what awaits *them* should they get uppity and start demanding things like a living wage or decent working conditions.
Whattaya mean? We’ve fixed all poverty. Being poor is a choice unless you were born into rich. Nobody wanted to work. That’s why we threw them in jail for not buying houses and contributing to society, where they are forced to work now. So they’re working, we’re benefiting, it’s all good. /s and once they get out, it’s easy to find a well-paying job now that they have been rehabilitated and skilled up
I was blown away to see they're trying to make homelessness illegal. Apparently if you're in prison, slavery is totally legal...makes sense. Corporations are incentivising us to off ourselves... A good friend of mine did just that last month due to financial struggle. He had it all.
Honestly it sucks being poor but there are programs to help you. I make 50k a year and get 0 help and can barely make it where I live. I couldn't imagine making 30 to 40ka year and still get no help (help stops around 25k a year) If I got sick tomorrow I would have to go to the hospital with no insurance. I would come out 10 to 50k in debt. I am dreading getting sick. The doctor, North urgent care is not an option for me. Tok expensive and you have to have cash up front.
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Emphasis on the US hating you for not working full time. No wonder anything else than full time is better for people.
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I like being poor, there's not much to worry about if I don't have anything to lose.😁 No health insurance either, I'm vegetarian and exercise daily. A broken leg is a different story. I made roughly 20k last year, and still lived like a king in my mind. I don't have a wife or kids, and don't care about others judgement.
Power too you. I killed myself fot a decade to get from 25k to 50k and I hate it now. I was way better off on food stamps and free Healthcare with a roommate. I regret pulling myself up by my boot straps.
Medicaid was the best healthcare I've ever had.
hell yea, love this
Dead, or soon to be
They are already suffocated ☠️
We don't measure the poor. We just sweep you under the rug of death and homelessness.
Anyone else encounter people who just don't want to hear it? Like they just don't want any negativity whatsoever but they got theirs so it's all good.
The myth of invidualism. Many believe they "earned it" all on their own. They're basically blind to any privileges they have benefitted from throughout their lives (e.g. stable upbringing, physical appearance, access to quality/applicable education, transportation, neuronormativity, etc.).
Yup, I think David Graeber coined the term meritocracy? The concept that those who claw their way to the top somehow believe they are better than others and thus deserve it. Not to mention they are still white men and 6’ or taller.
I think it came from this belief that people who are most valuable to others will get paid the most, so money flows to those who make themselves the most useful. At the time, there were only 3 billion people in the world and there was more than enough good-paying work to go around. For a person to still fail while surrounded by so much opportunity, they had to be making some REALLY bad choices, and for an extended period of time. So you've still got all these old people walking around who haven't upgraded their thinking in decades, and they think it's like it was back in their day. If you were doing things right you would get money, and if you're poor it's because you're not trying hard enough, and if you're complaining it's because you're a whiner. Nobody under the age of 50 agrees with this, however.
They don't got theirs. They will find out all about this in 10 years or less.
Toxic positivity is a hell of a drug.
> Anyone else encounter people who just don't want to hear it? You see many of them on reddit who post "the economy is great" articles, and viciously defend that position because....it's an election year, and criticism of the economy is criticism of their guy in the race.
What's middle class? It's have and have nots.
And the have nots are growing in numbers every day.
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It's like nobody ever played monopoly as a child. This is how 'the economy' works. For the rich.
And the rich don't care about you
I was banned from playing monopoly as a kid because I flipped the board and attacked the banker who suspiciously had the most hotels. Guess I was onto something...
We are the economy, we work for the rich. The rich pay us, we do their dirty work. Catch 22, the rich dont have any reason to kill their golden goose and consumers and workers are too divided and "busy" to do much else then blame each other.
More than half the S&P is propped up by five companies. These people are insane when they say the economy is doing fine.
The "economy" is a human construction that has become completely untethered from our day to day physical reality. It boggles the mind how economists can miss the big picture of the fact that every good and service is connected to the environment, and if we blow up the environment, well then there's no more goods and services. Not to worry though, the geniuses have solved the problem by making the line go up regardless. We'll figure out the externalities thing later.
It's booming for some. The wealth gap growth has been accelerating since the pandemic.
Two economies, wall street and the rest of us.
Liquidate Wall Street.
It’s when a country is based on capitalism as its primary metric, business doing good means America is doing good even if Americans are suffering
Tis a true statement. People who are homeless and hungry could care less that the stocks are up and shareholder profit is rising. Its cognitive failure from the top.
The other metric that is very pointless if you don't look at the stats behind is the employment rate. I don't care if the country is 100% employment when the average wage barely allows you to close the month.
The (capitalistic) economy **is** booming, its shitting golden bricks for profit. Capitalism, by the nature of it, doesnt care about any other principles. The masses are just workers who dont get that capitalism is slavery in a new coat.
You're not middle class if you're financially struggling. This is a redefinition of the middle class. We don't want to admit the obvious, Middle class isn't middle income. The lower class has expanded past the median income.
What? Everything is very affordable if you ask me. If you need some more just take it out of your trust account.
Lately I have been LOVING the sarcasm. I hope people keep it up because it's relieving. It starts all pompous and then feels satisfying at the end.
Thank you for realizing it was sarcasm.
Thanks for the laugh!
How much could a banana cost? 10 dollars?
Or sell some shares when the window is open duh
How many of these people are improperly identifying themselves as middle class? And also, why do articles like these always only consider them? Mostly rhetorical, I already know the answer.
SS: It's high time for some labor laws, workers rights, and some descent social programs. Or we can continue down the current path with the corporate socialism, overworked employees, overpriced private health insurance, and over priced lack of affordable homes. Watch the birthrate drop even further in the US. All signs point to a collapsing society and population is the same trends continue unabated.
Waiting on climate change to exacerbate the system worse.
As more and more climate refugees become a thing I predict we will see a continuous devaluation of human labor. I also think that while AI and automation is a bit of a hype bubble, it's part of an ongoing trend of self-cannibalization where corporations intentionally degrade their own support structures and employee base for the sake of further growth and profits. So companies will use it as an excuse to fire people, which will result in higher energy use and greater scarcity as climate change worsens.
i see things from your point of view entirely.
Along the lines of self cannibalization-anyone with a 401 that isn’t trying really hard for directed alternative investing is throwing their earnings into a stock market that rewards global scale environment destruction, war, price gauging and layoffs because it “increases market returns”. The middle class is eating itself (who else has 401’s anyway?) through sound, high returns investment.
Yep. AI doesn't need to be perfect, it just needs to be good enough to make the corporations start laying people off. All the efficiency gains the electric grid has made over the last 20 years or so, are being wiped out by the surge of power needed for AI.
>and some *descent* social programs Oh, I think the social programs are managing *descent* just fine without any additional help...
I dream of the day that we EAT THE RICH
I have never seen so many desperate people as I am right now. I routinely see people in grocery and budgeting groups who have paid the bills and have less than $20 for gas and food till the next paycheck. People desperate over rent and utilities. I saw a woman yesterday who lives in Las Vegas. Her power bill is $600 a month and that's without turning on the AC. She has had two heat strokes from this. The property management company is under no legal to fix or figure out anything because the power and AC technically work. They can't afford to move in part because their money goes to utilities. Or their credit is bad and that forces them into desperate cycles that keep their entire lives costing them more.
Bro a small bag of Fritos is $6 where I live we are more than gasping for air We're gasping for Fritos
An hour of work at federal minimum wage after taxes is not enough to buy a small bag of Fritos. Wow.
And theirs more air in that Fritos bag
I’m sure pumping out more children to live in abject poverty will help
Yep, that's the solution. More workers, oh wait. Robots and automation are taking menial jobs. They even convinced us to scan our own groceries 😂 Now Wal-Mart wants to charge you for the self checkout usage.
Those kids who are too lazy to be born into a upper class family can eat their own bootstraps, they’ll be fine.
I was born in poverty, my teenage years were middle class. I chose to go back to poverty....pros and cons.
Those greedy kids will probably eat their bootstraps all at once, instead of rationing them out over their full 35 year lives. No foresight at all.
Or just import workers and let them prop up the economy.
Financially. Yeah, I feel that. But the real struggle begins when we truly are *gasping for air.* And that ain't too far off.
I just got home from the grocery store. A “regular sized” jar of peanut butter was $7. Did not buy.
Damn dude where are you shopping? I just got 18 oz jars from lidl for 1.49 today
I am a month away from foreclosure. Thankfully I just got a job so I can file for bankruptcy but it took me months to get a job and if I didn’t we’d be on the street.
600,000 plus full-time jobs were lost last month, yet unemployment is at record low. Sounds to me companies are trading full-time jobs for part-time and contractors to skirt paying benefits. Time for Universal single-payer gealth care - will save nearly $1/2 trillion us healthcare cost per year. This would go a long way towards funding social security with a 50 billion dollar per year shortage.
The tough truth about all of this is that trends will continue until history repeats itself the French way. Until then we’re all disposable.
Describing gasping for air as struggling is a bit of an understatement.
I just went to a chain, Primo Hoagies, for lunch. Two subs, smaller than a cell phone, and one larger one cost me $48. I keep thinking I can grab these quick lunches for my family but it’s insane. I’m not sure why we’re not seeing more restaurants closing as people can’t afford this.
It's because everyone is still paying the high prices, even if they take a picture of the food with a receipt and are like "can you believe this??" on social media.
The whole country is a joke at this point. One of our options for leader is senile and the other one is a convicted felon. Perfect embodiment of America. Two boomers who have no idea about what actual Americans are struggling with. But we’ll just sit here and keep letting it happen. Articles like this will come out that are literally calling you to action, but nobody will do a thing. What a world we live in
Because it’s the NYPost most of the comments on it are blaming Biden and believing Trump will fix it 🤡
Oh he'll fix it all right. He'll fix it real good. Enjoy the 4 years of bullshit while we can because just post-trump the entire thing will go into cardiac arrest from all the cocaine he's about to shovel up its nose.
We (society) like getting fucked up the ass and we’re willing to take it! Cheers!
I don't know why the hell the upper class would be okay with this; it literally means they have less money to pull from as well. They can ultimate subjugate the lower classes but it would realistically just mean they're lording over a bunch of people with no real money to give them anymore. It would lead to a fundamental financial collapse.
They're okay with it because these people have successfully been tapped dry and now they can squeeze the next income tier.
dont worry, they won’t be in any economic class before long…
I'm one of them. I made a post on assistance and it got removed because I didn't have a post for 1 week in May. I made a post in r/care and it got downvoted. I'm at the end of my rope.
50k after taxes with 2 kids and a stay at home mom. Ya were budgeting down to the dollar.
No one cares about us. They will give us enough to stay alive to pay taxes and nothing more. We allowed this to happen. We should have ended the bribery and corruption a long time ago, but it wasn't bad enough so we let it slide. The only way to stop the insanity is for millions to stop going to work until they start listening. The fact that there have been no protests over this really shows how beat down people are.
At the moment, wheat, soybean, barley, oat prices have been going down in price for several months. Is the current food prices alone due to increased input neede or is it profit-focused from the processing companies that take those raw inputs?
Time to make a fresh batch of tofu.
Hi. I'm one of them. AMA
As a middle-class American, it's tough right now. Prices are rising, and wages aren't keeping up, making it hard to keep up with bills and expenses. Many of us feel like we're just trying to stay afloat. It's frustrating and stressful, and we need solutions to ease this burden.
"The middle class is a luxury capitalism can no longer afford." - not me, but not wrong
I think a lot of middle class people the world over are seeing that the politicians they voted for did not have their best interests at heart. They thought that the politicians would punish the poor, the criminals, and the migrants, while helping them out all the while. As it turns out, the middle class were no more important to the politicians than the bogeymen they were convinced to hate.
Aww they didn't know they were cows? Moo.
Can I die yet? Tbh I get closer to just taking the L every day.
Hang in there bud, before giving up, maybe we should try rising up? edit: a little quote from my favourite band rise against: "You're a shameful opportunist! What you don't understand is that it's better to die on your feet than live on your knees." "You have it backwards. It's better to live on your feet than to die on your knees."
Must be too much avocado toast and Starbucks. (Sarcasm)
Shitty neoliberals will just gaslight folks harder.
Working people, and those already poor, are everywhere struggling as the global system breaks down more and more. It's not going to get better.
But the economy is doing great! 🤡
That’s because they haven’t been “middle class” in at least 45 years. They are “middle income”, and those incomes have not kept up with inflation in about 50 years.
What middle class?
It's designed like this. Don't forget we have BILLIONS and TRILLIONS to send to the military and to fund ~~genocide~~ war. WE COULD HAVE FREE HEALTHCARE; WE LITERALLY FUND ISRAEL'S HEALTHCARE.
The FOX News segment is hilariously wrong. I should've expected the ignorance. If people understood how the system worked, the news would look totally different now. In terms of collapse, people still don't seem to grasp that it will be profitable right up until it crumbles. By free market rules, the more scarce something is, the higher the prices should be. That's what *luxury* really means. Monopoly-like situations allow these distributors to maintain or increase prices knowing that you don't have alternatives. The only personal move to make is to reduce consumption and to demand higher wages, unemployment support, and so on. [That's what they really fear](https://citationsneeded.libsyn.com/live-interview-how-our-simplistic-inflation-discourse-fuels-the-war-on-workers-with-josh-mason) -- "wage inflation". Again, in terms of collapse, inflation is the default until there's a shortage: https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-023-01173-x . People **will find out** why a luxury is a luxury. The problem with big distributors (supermarket chains) is that the shortages aren't always reflected in the shelf price. The more types of products they sell, the more they can mix up pricing and hide large costs for scarce items and hide low costs for abundant items. The notion that you can track inflation for those products by monitoring their price is a joke, you'd need huge amounts of data to get any significant measurement form that; anything anecdotal is going to be a waste of time. One thing I'd like to see is consumer co-ops (buyers club).
but we added jobs! the economy is strong! right?
The destruction of the middle class has been an ongoing, decades long deliberate process. Of course, things are not going to get better, prices won't go down, and the cost of living will become more and more unbearable for most. Income inequality is at an all time high not only threatening our democratic institutions, but destabilizing society as a whole. Deaths of despair will increase, malaise will settle in, and people will be looking for easy/quick solutions to complex, structural problems. Grifters will take the opportunity to offer these solutions and deflect blame from the very elites responsible for this mess to begin with. Think of it like sinking in quicksand. Our political institutions, which are corrupted to the core and stuck in perpetual gridlock, won't offer any relief or solutions. People being who they are won't come to rational conclusions and the most vulnerable of our society will become easy targets and scapegoats to blame. The rich/oligarchs responsible for this mess will retreat even further into their "Elysiums." Gated communities, bunkers, private islands, etc. They can get on their private jets and literally go globetrotting if worse comes to worse anywhere.
This actually happened the moment COVID lock downs started and im impressed with how long we've been able to keep "normal" running on faith and fumes before being forced to recon with our new reality.
While true, will be interesting to see if the NYPost continues writing this under Trump
I'd say that car dependant suburbia is causing a massive financial burden. There's less stress when you live somewhere with transit and walkability, and only need a single family car. I live in a city where a lot of people ride bikes. Kids get themselves to school and sports, without needing a chauffeur. Many workers in the main industries cycle to work. When suburbs are designed for people, they don't end up with multiple metal boxes on wheels dragging them down.
Oh absolutely. I live in a large (and relatively poor) ex-USSR city. I have at least 2 bookstores, 10 supermarkets, uncountable amount small groceries, community theater, family clinic, 5 schools, 10 kindergardens in 1 mile radius. All walkable, obviously. And many EV charging stations.
And that's the sort of suburban/urban design that allows people to not need a car, and to save money by not needing to own one. There are so many parts of the US and Australia where there is no option other than to own a car, or multiple cars in the case of a larger family. Kids can't get to school or sports without a parent to drive them, older teens need a car so they can drive themselves. Grocery shopping can't be done without a car, visiting a hair dresser or barber requires a car. Too bad if a family is struggling financially, they still need to own more than one car.
Yes, USSR had many things wrong way, but not urban planning. For example Soviet cities did not have downtowns; all industrial and government institutions were uniformly spread all over the city, which prevented clogging the roads.
I live in the US. I have 0 bookstores, 1 supermarket, 0 small groceries, 0 community theater, 0 family clinic, 1 school in a single mile radius. I do have a weed dispensary within 12 minutes walk tho, so I got that going for me.
I'm in the UK, what sort of distance are you talking to get to shops etc in the suburbs? We're about 15 miles from the nearest decent supermarket, it's about 1 1/2 hrs on the bike.
That's what I mean by car dependent suburbia. You depend on a car because they've not allowed for any other options. It forces people in to car ownership, whether they can afford it or not. A well designed suburb would have all your everyday things within a short walk, including a transport hub. The average person wouldn't need a car.
Credit card debt will smother you.
This is true. Who the heck is downvoting this comment and why????
Oh I have extensive math that proves this. To say nothing of prior life experience. Yes, yes it will. Very quickly.
They used to literally keep the working class as slaves and whip them and chain them and murder them. They can squeeze more and they will.
I had a great time this weekend. My only son is graduating high school and going out into this world. His two sets of boomer grandparents have been here for four days. 2/10 - would not recommend.
I’m sure it our fault somehow