A global housing crisis is suffocating the middle class
Prices have risen by 54% in the United States, 32% in China and nearly 15% in the European Union between 2015 and 2024. Though policies have been implemented to increase supply and regulate rentals, their impact has been limited and the problem is getting worse
Housing access has become a critical issue worldwide, with cities that were once accessible reaching unsustainable price points. Solutions that have been proposed, like building more houses, capping rents, investing in subsidized housing and limiting the purchase of properties by foreigners have not stemmed the issue’s spread. Between 2015 and 2024, prices rose by 54% in the United States, 32% in China and by nearly 15% in the European Union (including by 26% in Spain), according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
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Salaries have not grown apace with real estate prices. In the EU, the median rent rose by 20% between 2010 and 2022, with rental and purchase prices growing by up to 48%, according to Eurostat. Underregulated markets are wreaking havoc, and in the United States and Spain, 20% of renters spend more than 40% of their income on housing, while in France, Italy, Portugal and Greece, that percentage varies between 10% and 15%, according to the OECD. Many countries have created programs aimed at increasing the future supply of public housing, but their effectiveness has yet to be determined and analysts say that results will be limited if smarter regional planning decisions are not made.
Sure, they are technically part of the working class, but they're similar to cops. Cops aren't the owning class, they take down a salary, but they're also class traitors.
The middle class - aka professional managerial class - as a group fulfill a similar role of keeping the rest of the working class in line in exchange for certain privileges. They just use paychecks and memorandums rather than guns and laws.
Also like cops, they provide an ideological shield for capitalists. Cops are overtly the "thin blue line" between "order and chaos". The middle class are a shield for aspirations. People are encouraged to identify as middle class so they think they have something to lose if they were to upset the status quo.
So it makes sense to identify this group, but too often it's as a shield. Like the implication in this article that a housing crisis for the middle class is a huge problem, but who cares about the housing precarity that's existed in the working class since its inception? Well one reason it would be a big problem for the ruling class is that they would lose their buffer. If it's just lords and serfs and a sharp distinction between them, then overturning the whole thing is a lot easier to contemplate.
I get where you're going with this, and yeah, the PMC helps hold the current system in place. I was thinking about the cybersecurity/engineers/architects/other better paid workers who are still subject to class exploitation even though they're better off than a line cook.
Also, I like your bit about the professional managerial class being an ideological shield - I see that happening in the workplace all the time where people won't consider rocking the boat because they want to be management one day.
I thought I'd have to explain this part - the technical knowledge workers are also managerial, but in a more indirect way.
All three of the professions you listed make decisions about the function of the systems that workers use every day. They are responsible for taking the policy decisions that are made to serve the owning class, and giving those policies shape.
They literally design our environment, and as the Well There's Your Problem podcast points out, engineering and other technical decisions are political. The preferences of the bosses are built into them.
I guess this is pretty unpopular though. I guess there are a lot of knowledge workers on this platform and they don't like being compared to cops.
I believe I'm one of those knowledge workers. I do cybersecurity and I'm actively working on trying to unionize the sector. I'm not management, and I don't have hiring or firing power, and I'm reliant on wages to survive.
Actually, I can see the comparison. Many cybersecurity people don't challenge the power relations in their workplace and instead act as enforcers of corporate policy. That always disappoints me, and I can see the pattern of how even our relative privilege is being actively reduced. I just hope more cybersecurity people will recognize the class struggle we have to wage and organize in solidarity with the rest of the working class.
With your username I'm not surprised you're in cybersecurity lol.
And I never said all managers are bastards. I said that they act that way as a group.
Ultimately the incentive structure reinforces PMC workers who toe the company line. It could never be any other way in a capitalist framework. Yes, it's possible for knowledge workers to operate outside capitalist organisations, but they are going to have a harder time with less money. The bulk of the work will always be done where the money is. You see this very clearly in FOSS circles - the work involves people who are either too tired from their 9 to 5 to put a lot of effort in, they're the sort of person who can't work in a capitalist org, or they're paid by a capitalist org which will have certain demands on their work. The result is that FOSS tends to be rough around the edges which inherently reinforces the belief that only top-down capitalist structures can make polished software.
You'll find knowledge workers in general are going to be hard to unionise. They are better compensated and privileged so they have more to lose, and they have to adopt the ideology of their bosses to some extent in order to reproduce it in their work. We've seen union action with actors and writers for a long time, and it seems to be bleeding over from them into the videogame space. I hope it will keep spilling over into other technical spaces, but I don't think we can rely on that happening to fundamentally change the character of that class.
I've seen that reinforcement of workers who toe the line first-hand, people are scared and brainwashed into not acting up or demanding better. It's why I have a hard time maintaining a job - not because I'm not good at what I do, but because I'm bad at pretending to buy into the capitalist ideology in the workplace.
Agreed, not all managers are bastards but the system they are working within creates horrible results.