Millennials: Uhm, we've been living that dream for over twenty years now.
I'm over 40 (one of the ancient Millennials) and literally I have only been able to live alone for exactly four years out of the twenty-three years since I moved out of my parents. I currently live with a partner, because, you guessed it, it's about the only way we can afford things now.
20 years ago, I could rent a 1 bedroom small apartment for under $1k. Now you're lucky to find the same for $2.5k. Pay has not more than doubled. They definitely have it worse than us.
In a city of 200k I can rent a two bedroom apartment for about 1.2k and have access to everything I might possibly need (including a job) except an Ikea...
Edit: funny how people get insulted when they're told wanting to live in major city centers might be the issue... Nothing new about living in New York being more expensive than Albany.
"Well it worked for me so if you can't do it then you're just not trying hard enough!" Don't be intentionally obtuse. There are jobs in major cities.
People also have other shit in their lives you know nothing about. You have no idea what every single person does for a living. Maybe they work for the government and need to be near a military base, or the state capital happens to be a major metro area. Maybe they live near their elderly parents they take care of. Maybe they have family nearby who can watch their kids while they go to work and if they moved they'd have to start paying a ton in childcare. Maybe there's a cheap private school there and they don't want to have to switch their kid to public school. Maybe they have a chronic health condition or disability and need to live near the best doctors. Maybe one person went back to college and the classes they need are on campus. Especially if it's a higher degree where they can't just go to any community college in buttfuck nowhere. Maybe they had to move there for a postdoc fellowship. But why am I telling you when you already have all the answers.
Nothing new about living in New York being more expensive than Albany.
I met someone who moved to Albany to get an advanced degree and they hated it. They alluded to the fact that they were broke and living with a group of people. Unless you're suggesting living out in the woods, in which case, sure. You're right. I've heard there's some great career opportunities out in the catskills.
We have no idea what other people's lives are like and none of us should assume we do. Especially when you're going to be a dick about it.
Man, if we were to listen to you the majority of people are living edge case scenarios which makes it impossible for them to find a way to improve a situation they hate!
I met someone who moved to Albany to get an advanced degree and they hated it. They alluded to the fact that they were broke and living with a group of people.
And I'm sure they would have hated New York and would have had to live with an even bigger group of people! It's also completely ridiculous to complain about having to live with others while you're in school and can't work a job full time.
The only dick I see here is you, I merely suggested that it's possible to live in places where you have access to everything THE MAJORITY OF PEOPLE needs and to still have inexpensive housing. Not everyone needs to live in cities of a million or more but a lot of people will never consider moving out of them because they never do the math to realise that they might be better off doing it even if it means sacrificing some other things.
Yeah let's not pretend it isn't so much worse now though.
Yes, but it's worse for everybody. Millennials that have been renting for decades... How the hell are they going to get ahead enough to save up for a down payment!? Meanwhile, housing prices keep rising, outpacing even combined incomes. I realize some people are able to make it work, but I don't think it's the majority...
Oh absolutely, didn't mean for that to be a takeaway. These kids have got it way worse than we do, they were fucked right out of the gate even harder than we did. Just had my Gen X "they forgot about us" moment.
They'll never forget about us. Someone has to be responsible for things going out of business.
I lived alone for exactly one year before the apartment raised the rent by over %13. I had never been late or missed a payment. Luckily, my fiance, now wife, offered me to move in with her. But I would have had to move soon either way back then because I was being priced out quickly.
I’m over 40 (one of the ancient Millennials)
I think you might be very very late Gen X, TBH.
I think 79 is supposed to be the last year for gen X.
Yea 1980 is the cut off. And I was born in 81 and while I understand the gen x around me, my values align with working class millennials and gen z.
I've met so many narcissistic gen x that I'm default sus of anyone older than me. Some of the best people I've ever known are gen x. But unfortunately many many more of the worst are too.
Don't misunderstand, I let everyone introduce themselves to me through their own words and actionn. My priors might register but that shits stays in the cupboard, its not even on the back burner. Knowledge of stereotypes, or behaviours associating shit I don't like does not equal those things, and everyone comes blank slate.
It occurs to me now that that's prob a remnant of being raised on the meritocracy mythos. And meritocracy IS a myth, that shit isnt real in the slightest. You can't point at anything in your field of vision and say there, that's merit. It's an illusion, but one that feeds to our innate, internal sense of justice. And if you want to dive into an esoteric rabbit hole, Justice is a much more rewarding one.
Rawls for the win.
81 gang.
This all reads like a middle aged man making excuses for not trying.
Lolololols. K bud. I think that's a a big leap you're taking but you do you.
You can take whatever you want from that, I'm not here to change yr mind.
It's sometimes 79, sometimes 80, but I just barely scraped by on the other side.
I think 79 is supposed to be the last year for gen X.
Definitive cutoffs for generations is stupid anyway. It depends way more on socioeconomic class and region than a single year. A millenial born in 81 has way more in common with an Xer from 80 than a millenial from 96.
No to derail anything, but the cusp of X and Millenials (77-83) is commonly referred to as a micro-generation in itself (Xennials).
Oh yeah, no question.
I'm also 40. Too bad you never figured out how to make decent money in 23 years.
Well, that was a bit elitist.
If that's what you want to call a guy who learned a difficult trade as a straight apprentice instead of dicking around.
Why are you so bitter, old man?
Let me translate for them:
I got mine, and I'm mad everyone isn't clapping for me
Nah, more sick of this whiny narrative from people gave up, that's become so pervasive, people seem to use it to make themselves feel better about either never really trying, staying in a bad situation, or doing drugs till they're 36 and then wondering why they don't have nothing.
Gonna blow your mind here. Both can be true! People can make it work with some effort and (even you) a ton of luck, but that doesn't also mean there's not A HUGE issue. I guarantee you every single person who is struggling day-to-day, and doesn't have some kind of reality-altering mental illness, wants to improve themselves. Most people either don't know how, or have tried and tried and tried and just not been fortunate to find their break. Instead of being met with "ah, man, that's rough bud. Let's see if we can figure out some resources to help" though, it's "get a job, don't do drugs, pull yourself up with those bootstraps you bought (no handouts here!) And fuckin grind til you get it you worthless maggot!" One of those approaches will actually lead to people doing better for themselves, and it's not the one you chose.
I guarantee you every single person who is struggling day-to-day, and doesn’t have some kind of reality-altering mental illness, wants to improve themselves
I can 100% guarantee you this is false. You are dramatically underestimating the number of people who are happy living with nothing if it means they don't have to try hard.
I'm literally in favor of paying these people money just to spend, and totally supporting their life of uselessness, but we need to accept that a shitload of these people exist or there cannot be any serious discussion about reforms.
Most poor people want to not be poor anymore. However millions of poor people are poor because they don't want to work at all, and only work as much as they have to in order to pay core bills.
You can't "save" those people because they don't want to be saved. Their quality of work sucks, too, so the best thing for everyone is just to have a gov program give them cash and let them contribute to the economy through spending.
See, I think those people are living their best lives already. There's no saving them because there's nothing to save them from. But I bet they're still improving their lives in other ways. Everyone wants better for themselves, we just don't always agree on what better IS.
I agree that there is nothing to save them from. They absolutely get to choose how they want to live their lives.
I simply disagree with the idea that they want to better themselves at all. That doesn't match my experience, having worked with thousands of people like this.
I wasn't really big on UBI until I really learned about this entire subclass. They're what sold me on the concept.
Again, I think they're still working on improving their situation in their own way. They don't WANT what we see as improvement. For us, improvement is comfort, money to live, a better home, etc. For some people, it could be achieving an altered brain state. Or reading a book. Or spending a day walking the streets. All of this would, in my view, be "trying to improve your situation" - they all make you more comfortable. They may not be long-term viable, or what the broader society may define as improvement, but that's kinda irrelevant.
Yeah yeah, just keep telling yourself that. Maybe when you're 60 and still broke and renting, it'll make you feel better.
Well, something must be weighing you down if you're on here being shitty at the thought of people needing a bit of help to get out of their rough spot. Hopefully by the time YOU'RE 60, you can get that sorted. It'll make you feel better.
And there's the projection, right on cue.
No projection needed, you display it well enough on your own
I'm 39 and I do drugs a lot and I pretty much guarantee I'm more successful than you, given what you've said.
Maybe let's leave the drugs out of this discussion
Could be. Could be I've seen so many die to opiod/fentanyl reasons I've took a real dim view of recreational use. Addicts need help, sure, not my point though.
I've also had a lot of bad experiences with friends and opioids. I feel you there for sure, and understand the comment a bit better.
C'mon man, that's a little harsh, don't ya think? I get that you don't owe him anything but for real, not everyone's calling is equally rewarding financially, and you know this, and you know how fucked up it is.
Teachers deserve a wage that allows them to save and vacation every year.
In fact, we all do.
Fast food burger flippers do too. Society could afford it before, that we aren't doing it now is the result of policy decisions, not some invisible market moral correction voodoo. Workers at Dicks Burgers in Seattle make $21/hr + bene's and Dicks food is 1000x better than any fast food chain, and cheaper too. The money's there, it's just not being spread around.
Good for you achieving your own security, honestly, I mean that. But the scales being balanced is something we all need to work towards. Youre still working class, and right now the games still rigged to make sure you die broke. If we can't collectively work together to make sure the economy works for us all (cuz what's the point of a society then? It's just a fancy meat grinder otherwise), that paramedics make more than minimum wage. I'd like to live in a world where words matter. Where "essential" workers weren't just sacrificed on the alter of capitalism bc the beaurocratic class got furloughed and are actually treated essential.
Otherwise it's just a matter of time until another round of Reaganomics or fascists usurp power and either way your union gets busted. Ask the control tower what it's like when the government doesn't give a shit about the law, or precident. The law only matters if it's enforced.
I sure hope you vote for higher local taxes every election. Local elections really matter!
Vote for zoning reform too!
Too bad you managed to make it to 40 without developing any sense of perspective
Or maybe I did.
Thanks for feeding into the consumerist "all that matters is the money you make and the things you can buy" attitude that's doing so well for us all right now! We really need it!
Making a priority in ,ife of not being a renter forever, isn't consumerism, it's the ooposite. Renting is peak consumerism.
Making a priority in life to earn more so that you can buy buy buy is pretty peak consumer. Your post made a pretty hefty value judgement at the person above (you didn't make enough money, so why do you deserve...). Peak consumerism is you have to earn so you can buy. The opposite of consumerism is recognizing that we're more than our bank accounts, and that people need shelter in order to survive, so let's make it accessible to everyone.
It is. You just gotta quit expecting to buy in LA, Vancouver, NY without a serious money making plan or go where an average dude can afford. Or just sit around and whine, see how far that gets you.
It's funny that calling out very real problems is "whining" to some people. There's absolutely some issues going on with housing prices and wages right now, but Mr(s) GotTheirs refuses to see it. You can be proactive and make progress in your own life while also acknowledging that the game is pretty rigged right now, and having a bit of humility that the GotTheirses at least partially got theirs through some luck.
Also, way to make some baseless assumptions about where I, or anyone, is trying to buy.
Blah blah blah. Its always excuses.
Nice nice. Just disregard the actual words and points others are making. That really shows how good faith you're being.
Disregarding and recognizing it are two similar but not the same, things. I disregard it after.
Are we pretending that millennials are affording apartments alone? Cause I know very few doing that. Moving back in with your parents, though, that shit's common.
I was gonna say, most of Gen X has had roommates since we graduated college.
The headlines just keep repeating. Insert newest generation and print
It's getting measurably worse at a fairly predictable clip - boomers had it easy, x/y less so, it's dark for milennials, and impossible for zoomers/alpha.
The guardrails were removed and wheels set in motion by the boomers so they could more effectively ransack the economy - everything since then has been a consolidation of wealth and power at the direct expense of workers.
It is actually worse each time, though. In previous times, it was "oh lordy, prices are going up, shucky darn, guess I will only have 2 pieces of avocado toast each day from now on". Now people just can't even get by.
I'm in the Midwest. Most millennials I know are living on their own or with their partner. However, the younger millennials and gen Z I know? Very few I know aren't living with parents.
I'm an older millennial and my brother is younger. Our parents are old enough we each have a parent living with us.
I'm in Seattle, most of my friends have roommates or moved back in with their parents (which I did in 2020 when I lost my last job). I am making slightly more than my last job now with a second degree but after inflation I'm making quite a bit less and rent has gone up significantly since then. So I still can't afford my own place.
Older Millenials are more like younger Gen X, while younger Millenials are more like older Gen Z.
Landlords dream of a future where they can charge so much for rent that you need 3 generations of people crammed into a tiny apartment to make payments.
Which would be exactly why the rest of us dream of a future where they don't exist
This feels like a rerun
History doesn't repeat, but it rhymes.
Isn't that called a slum lord?
Used to be. It's moving towards just being a landlord though.
It's called one of the sexiest human beings alive and they would have most people you or I would be interested in at their beck and call.
We breed for greed.
Time polish up that guillotine.
Black Rock l, vanguard and others are turning the American Dream into a subscription model
Just a reminder.
In 1960, minimum wage was $1.00/hour and the average home was $11,000.
So, national minimum wage is $7 something, so homes should be about $77k, right?
Quick history of inflation in America. President Eisenhower started the US/Vietnam War, and JFK kept it going. Ike and Kennedy both wanted to keep it small, but LBJ made a major commitment of troops and air power to deliver a knockout punch. That turned into a quagmire where the US couldn't pull out without looking like losers. President Johnson [LBJ] started printing money to pay for the War, rather than raise taxes. Nixon was elected as a peace candidate. Nixon's Vietnam policy alone is worth several books, but we'll just talk about the US dollar.
Nixon doubled down on Johnson's bombing policy; the US factories were working 24/7 to make more weapons. Great, except the money was all paper. When the Arab Oil boycott hit the price of everything went through the roof. Suddenly stay at home moms were forced to get jobs to keep the family fed. In 1968 'middle class' was one job to support a family, by 1980, two income families were becoming the norm.
Then came Reagan. Big tax cuts for the rich were supposed to make everything golden again. In 1980, $1 million was considered a vast fortune; by 1992 it was what a really rich guy paid for a party.
None of the timeline matches up with increases in inflation.
Direct spending on Vietnam starts to ramp up in the mid-60s and draws down in the mid-70s. Inflation, however, goes through a major shock in the early 70s and another one in the early 80s. None of this seems to match any kind of cause and effect we would expect. Further, the real cost of Vietnam was born decades later, as those veterans draw on benefits such as the VA hospital system. (Which, BTW, is expected to start happening about now with the veterans of Afghanistan and Iraq; healthcare costs are a veteran issue.)
And then we have another big increase in military spending during the Reagan years, but no particular increase in inflation is seen. Not even if there's some argument that it'd be delayed by a decade. Not like it had been in the 70s, anyway.
Oil costs are the main reason for these shocks. "Printing money" is a naive libertarian approach to inflation which largely serves people who use money to make money (i.e., billionaires) as opposed to people who use their labor to make money. I was just lamenting earlier today how leftists around here have started to absorb libertarian narratives on inflation, and it's not a good thing.
Dang.
The working class has been selling itself out ever since the end of world war 2.
Que the Iraq war part deux. Immediately followed by the Afghan invasion.
Paid for on credit card. Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
Don't forget the giant expansion of the government under Bush² either, the TSA, DHS, Medicare expansion
The aughties fucked over the entire upcoming century. Obama swaging the wall street plutocrats after 2008 with, not just the bail outs, but with relaxing corporate control of rental property is looking really, REALLY short sighted about now
Trump repealing Obama's DoddFrankLite is gonna come back and haunt us too, when wall street implodes in the inevitable 2008 repeat, because if you can trust a banker to do anything, it's to suck as much blood out as possible and let the public pay for life support. It's gonna happen again. Guaranteed.
Suddenly stay at home moms were forced to get jobs to keep the family fed. In 1968 ‘middle class’ was one job to support a family, by 1980, two income families were becoming the norm.
This was not because of inflation, but because women were beginning to be seen as fully human
Frankly between this and "but the money was paper" just makes you sound like some kind of neotraditionalist goldbug.
'Were forced to work'
VS
'Were permitted to work'
I'm not sure what went wrong with your brain to not be able to distinguish between these two. You're responding to someone who said the first version. You clapped back with serious attitude about the second version.
They're not the same though.
SCB is just a contrarian, block them and move on they aren't worth your time.
Yes I am aware that this person used slanted and incorrect language. That's sort of my entire point.
You'll forgive me for not taking someone, who wants the gold standard and traditionalist housewives back, very seriously.
You funny. I never mentioned the gold standard or 'traditional' roles. If you're going to put words in my mouth, I'd like them with an order of nachos and a fruit punch.
You can still buy one for that, as long as you don't mind living in Flint and like the taste of lead.
I got one in a niceish area for that. All you have to do is buy a small foreclosure and then spend literal years renovating while you live somewhere else and run up a bunch of high interest credit card debt paying for those renovations. 🥲
Man you just dashed my only last real dream of home ownership with your reality. I was like yeah I'll just find a fixer upper and make it work. I know better now. Thanks for the heads up.
That's it? Sign me up.
I came in to say something similar. Don’t focus on the price of the rent. The problem is the salary. Rent to salary has been going up and someone is pocketing the difference.
The problem is both.
Edit:
Of course this isn't universally applicable, but in my city there's basically six large landlords that own and manage the types of large, multi-family apartment buildings where the majority of people live.
There's no competition in housing and it shows in the pricing, which has been skyrocketing not coincidentally as the firms consolidate and then all "somehow" price align using the same software market rates.
That’s not how an inflationary economy works. Rent will always go up in yesterday’s money.
If the market was doing its job, salaries wouldn’t be much behind. So the ratio of rent:salary would be relatively stable.
So you're saying solely blame employers for consistent rent increases that top 10% year over year in some markets?
Employers aren't going to keep raising everyone's salary 10% every year to compete with the amount of greed in housing markets. Small ones can't afford to, and large ones will be punished brutally by their investors for doing so.
Two things can be true: salaries can have stagnated, and rents / housing prices can have skyrocketed as well.
It's both. You're getting robbed both ways. It's not one or the other.
That's $10.39/hr adjusted for inflation.
Imagine if the average home was $114,290 adjusted for inflation.
Houses were smaller back then and priced more appropriatly because they weren't being bought up for renting and as financial safe-haven by financial entities. The majority of new homes are 2,500+sqft, average new homes in the post-war era were around 1,000sqft. In the 70s average homes were around 1,500sqft.
There are a lot of homes in the 1,000-1,200sqft range that are under $150k. In my area there are about 1k homes under $150k(2/3 under $120k), there are about 3k priced $150-350k.
You referenced the adjusted price and I am talking about $150k homes because the homes under $120k tend to be houses that need $30k in renovations/repairs because the previous owners stopped doing maintenance and haven't updated in decades which leaves first-time buyers holding the bag.
Home prices aren't even the problem, stagnated wages are the problem. The size of homes increasing doesn't help and people demoing reasonably priced homes to build 2.5+sqft homes doesn't help. If builders had incentive to build sane starter homes and wages were where they should be, the housing market would be in better shape for people trying to start a life and own property.
Home prices and minimum wage not linked and linking them would cause a spiral upward in home prices, as available spending money would go up but supply would not.
... you mean what's already happening?
Are you serious?
This is not happening in any way the way it would if home prices were somehow tied to wages.
Do you really not understand that bad things can become worse things?
So stop talking about things, they could be worse?
More like "don't offer suggestions that will make things demonstrably and predictably worse or someone might point out how much worse things will get"
Not all solutions are equally valid.
In our current situation, I can't think of many ideas worse than "tie wages to home values" aside from maybe just burning down a fuckload of apartment buildings. It's that bad of an idea.
'Adjusted for inflation ' is kind of a joke. If inflation worked the way the adjustments would have you believe, the average home of today would be $120,000 apx. It's about three times that.
Adjusted for inflation works to show people how much less they're paying us every year.
I'm a disabled millennial. I live in a dangerous old house with 5 roommates and I am still spending over half my money on rent.
Well there's you're problem! You're disabled, so therefore unprofitable. It's criminal that you have the ability to live while someone who could make profit for our corporate overlords might not. Shame on you for being a leech on society! (In case it wasn't obvious, /S)
Disabled people are literally paid just to be alive.
Trying to paint reality as a hellish dystopia only works if you say true things.
Disabled people have to jump through years of hoops for those payments.
Further, the top payout is around $750 a month and they aren't allowed to generate any kind of income outside of that or they will lose it.
This means they can only afford to live in subsidized housing which can take years of being on a waiting list to access.
We pay them far less than subsistence level and many of them end up on the street because of it through no fault of their own.
For five years I gave change to an old man who begged for change while he waited for his name to come up on the housing availability list. He lived out his car the entire time up to that.
We do not pay them to live. We pay them and go "hope you can figure it out" and kick them to the street.
If we subsidize their housing, we're paying for their housing too.
We pay them to be alive, yes. You can argue we could pay them more, and id support that, but we very much pay them just to exist.
Permanently Deleted
Jesus Christ, who hurt you?!
No one? I don't understand the question
I’m referring to your comment about disabled people. I can’t imagine being such a piece of shit that I can’t see the value of anyone beyond what money they can bring in through physical labor. What a way to view the world.
Well it's a good thing I never implied anything of that sort.
You ok man?
Your comment “Disabled people are literally paid to be alive” heavily implies that you view disabled people as though they have no value at all, and are nothing but a drain on society. If I’ve misunderstood, please feel free to explain.
Here's how the conversation went:
person mentions having a disability
second person chimes in with "society has determined the disabled are useless and we do not care about you"
I say "that's not true. We pay disabled people to live."
you say "you're a monster who doesn't think disabled people have value"
I get very confused
I must have misinterpreted your intent, because to me you came across as incredibly cold and callous. Glad to hear that’s not the case.
the traditional way of life has been snuffed out by the forces of capitalism. there's no point trying to live a normal life anymore, we have to forge a new path
Let me stop you for a second.
In North America single family houses became the norm after the second world war, that means you might still have living relatives who weren't raised in what you think is the "traditional way of life".
It's more traditional for North Americans to live in multi generational housing or housing provided by their employer than it is to own their own house and expect to only be two living in it once their kids leave.
Everyone getting their own single family homeis unsustainable and 70% home ownership is an historical anomaly that pretty much only concerned WASPs. It's the American dream, not the American tradition.
That's very true. Although it's also true that forcing people into cramped quarters with one another for long periods exacerbates interpersonal issues, and people need the ability to walk away from one another and decompress.
Whether that's as simple as having their own room where they can close the door, or having a "third place" where they can go without needing to spend money to decompress and not have to be around others, you can't just endlessly force people to live together, especially when it keeps leading to domestic violence outcomes.
I agree, for most of history humans lived in shared, community housing, and that's not a bad thing, however I do think it's bad to promote the idea that we all need to be crammed into incredibly tiny spaces with multiple people living with them.
It would be different if housing was equitable and we didn't have billionaires using up massive amounts of housing literally for only themselves while the rest are stuck in tiny boxes that they can barely fit inside. Housing size needs to be an equitable issue, because housing size and cramped quarters is a mental and physical health issue.
Although it’s also true that forcing people into cramped quarters with one another for long periods exacerbates interpersonal issues,
I dislike this take. Before the Baby Boom, you lived with, moved around with, interacted with...well...everyone. Being familiar with others reduces stress, fear, xenophobia, etc. A lot of the problems we now face are due to people who have no empathy or concern for others and instead live within their own bubble.
Millions of LGBT youth abused by their birth families would wildly fucking disagree.
Before the baby boom? You mean segregated USA?? Wtf are you smoking?
I'm gay, but ok, tell me about my lived experiences or something. And you seem angry for some reason, so I'm gonna go ahead and disengage.
Way ahead of you.
The traditional way of life was multi-generational homes. If your goal is to live with as few people as possible, the traditional way of life is not for you. Why are you complaining about having the choice to live in homes with many, many fewer people than was traditionally required?
Lol, what? The American tradition has always, in the last century, been to move out as an adult and work your way up into a house and raise a family. On your own. What hell are you calling traditional? Farmer families from the 1800s?
*The American white and middle-class tradition.
Always, in the last century… those two statements contradict each other. Never mind that it wasn’t that common outside of the middle class, even during the height of American wages.
This is completely false and there is 0 data to back it up. There were 3 small blips of young people moving out regularly and otherwise the norm has been not to do that.
He's probably from Europe where historically a wealthy family of multi generations all lived in one house. Because people wanted to be near their family (cringe)
If I heard "traditional lifestyle" out of context and I had to assume the rest, I'd be thinking about, yeah, living with your family unless married. Most of the people in the world live like this still.
Big "bUt ThErE aRe ChIlDrEn StArViNg In AfRiCa" energy. How dare someone complain when things could be worse, right? What an ungrateful dick for wanting better just because the previous generation had that, huh?
That's the point.
Expect things to continue to get worse as long as most people believe the disparity in wealth should continue to grow.
It blows my mind just how many people support this through their rabid worship of billionaires. Not because they love the billionaires themselves, but that they think in some fevered future they too will be billionaires. Well, guess what? It’s never, ever, ever, ever going to happen and every day that passes the now-billionaires are tirelessly working to consolidate money and power to prevent proles from getting foothold. Stop being morons, and stop working against your own interests unless you’re a masochist then go nuts I guess. Leave the rest of us out of it
I saw a quote that I found 100% applicable and will never forget: "Europeans vote as if they will one day be homeless. Americans vote as if they will one day be billionaires."
US really needs a reality check on which one is more likely.
We believe it's more possible to claw yourself up to the top in this country purely on the basis of dated propaganda. More Americans believe the "American dream" is possible here because look at the name of it, when the reality is social mobility by every measurable metric is worse here than many other countries.
I think a lot of them see it as a degree of "fairness." That these people earned it (ignoring the facts that got them to where they are now) and they deserve to keep it. It's more of a moral thing to them than any real worship, and there definitely is a touch of "don't let that happen to me." As if their wealth is at risk.
That's hardly a new situation.
The only people I know that live alone do so in extremely tiny apartments in unpopular areas.
The only real way to buy is as a couple, and has been for decades.
Yeah no kidding -- I moved out of my parents at 18 in 2006, and had a roommate all through univeristy and afterwards until getting married (and I couldn't afford my current flat without my partner's salary). Very few people I knew had a place to themselves, and if they did they were either scraping by, or they had help.
You're literally talking about when you were 18. No shit.
Yeah, that's been true for most Millennials.
Right, does no one remember the ubiquitous TV show of young, modern life: friends? It had two groups of folks living in threes. Now, yes, their apartments were mansion-sized for New York, but the premise was still there, and that was the 90s. Heck, my boomer mother talked about how it wasn't uncommon for people she knew on the east coast of the US to live with parents until early 30s. '
This isn't a completely new phenomenon, but the percentage of the paycheck it costs to afford housing, even with a roommate, still seems to be on the rise.
Yeah, and that was considered unrealistic living even at the time.
Only by people who didn't watch the first episodes in which they explain how they got the main-stage apartment.
Everyone that doesn't live in the free apartment has a very nice job, a roommate, or both (as with Chandler and Joey).
Right? I had some kind of roommate every place I lived into my early 30s. And I’m GenX.
This is not a new situation, it’s rediscovering the wheel by this new generation. The boomers were probably the only generation that could graduate, grab a good Union factory job, and buy a small home in suburbia in their early 20s. Everyone else I know had a transitional period of working smaller jobs and sharing an apartment for a long time until they got a really good job or paired up and married.
In my father's case, he worked part time pumping gas at Sears and had an apartment with three friends while still paying for all of college in cash. The early 1970s were the place to be, apparently.
lol can't believe you got downvotes for this. people really do drink the koolaid.
We need a new deal, I mean a new new deal. Because this is getting ridiculous, I'm lying it was ridiculous 20 years ago, now it is just the reason why dystopian fiction is impossible to write, how can you top real life?
What kills me is when you go into the realestate subs and they talk about how they have to constantly increase every year because the cost of everything is going up.
Nah bruh, I've had my house for 4 years and nothing has increased at any noticeable level.
Yeah boy am I glad I pulled the trigger on a real estate purchase when I did. My costs (mainly HOA, and to a lesser extent taxes) have gone up very slightly in the last few years, but nowhere near the 30-40% increases I used to get smacked with renting over the same timeframe.
It's like 1.5-2x as expensive as it was to rent in this (already expensive) area 3 years ago.
I'm determined to never rent again. Landlords are unbelievably greedy.
My father is in real estate and recently had a "talk" with me about how putting 15% into retirement won't help me and that the only way to secure my future is through real estate. I didn't have the reverse "talk" with him where I would have pointed out how he's completely underestimating how much money it's going to cost to change his diapers in a couple years and how that house will only offset the costs rather than repair them.
Square Deal (1908)
New Deal (1933)
I Have Altered The Deal (2024)
didn't this happen a long time ago to an earlier generation
We need a new new deal
This isn't new. I'm 43 so call me whatever you want, Gen X, Millenial, somewhere in between. I didn't live on my own (meaning without roommates) until about 10 years ago. And even then, I bought a house with my wife. so still kinda roommates.
Completely off topic, but in the article they say some apartment complexes are offering "private liquor lockups." Wtf?
Anecdotal, but when I was looking for my first apartment about ten years ago I toured a building that didn't allow residents to keep alcohol. Unsure if it's even legal (or enforced), but the landlord and property manager were a local pastor and his wife.
I see. religious scumbags. fuck them
I first read this as 'religiois scumbrage' as if you misspelt umbrage. Not only was I wrong once, but twice as well.
But goddamn, scumbrage feels like a word I can get behind.
Yes, that's illegal. I would have been kegging in everyday the first week of my residency just to fuck with them.
How is it illegal? If the terms are on the lease, and you agreed to them, then it's no different than any other business contract. What law prevents a landlord from making that one of the terms?
Unless it is a shared dwelling where you sign the agreement in statement that you cannot drink alcohol due to some underlying mutually agreed reason, no tenant can be prohibited from consuming alcohol in their OWN dwelling space. What you do in your home is your business and no landlord can prohibit anyone from drinking alcohol, period.
Even if you sign the agreement on a lease or rental saying you will not, it would not be enforceable in a court of law and the landlord can be sued for cancellation of the contract for attempting to infringe on your personal rights (religious or otherwise).
I could possibly see it being a legal grey area in a dry county, but that's just bonkers to me.
Dry countries are a weird concept to me already
Edit: I meant counties, but I'll leave it.
No one bats an eye at this but if it was a Muslim family who prevented people from having pork in their homes people would be losing their minds
I bet that it had a free pedo-cell in the basement, thou.
Neither can Gen-X.
Gen X still had a chance
Gen Z AND millenials
Would it surprise you to learn that the demographic most likely to be rendered homeless is Boomers because life got expensive around them? As best I can tell, they are also among the worst generations for having prepared for their retirement.
You're not wrong, but at least they got a chance to prepare.
I asked my boomer mother why her generation wasn't leading the revolt. I took the first job I remember her having when I was just a wee one, asked her that pay, extrapolated inflation on it and showed her that she's making the same amount of money today as she was then. Inflation, as a tool to control the masses, has robbed her of every "pay raise" or advancement of her entire life.
Her story is not unique.
That doesn't let them off the hook for the housing market tho, that shit, intentional or not, is literally just robbing their kids and grandkids futures for themselves.
I judge them based on their voting record.
I got evicted this year so I feel it
"anymore" implies that until recently that wasn't the case
Meanwhile, in Canada, rent prices are so high that basically nobody lives alone anymore.
They just changed the generation in the headline. This has been the case in the US for awhile.
What's sad is we're going to be sharing this meme 40 years from now and it will still be true.
Owners don't lose :/
If anything, it will become more true with every passing year.
Jimmy McMillan 2024
The first 38K of my pre-tax income goes to renting a 500 sq ft efficiency. The change in the last 20 years is astonishing. I remember in high school, being exhorted to put aside at least $300/month for rent.
fuck me where do you live that it's $3200/mo for 500 sq ft?? San Francisco?
2600 - 1/2 hour outside of DC.
500 sq feet???
I am 40 min from DC and pay 2k for 750sqft.
I thought I was getting robbed, are your counters made of marble and faucets made from gold??
Yes, the rent is too damn high, but living in an apartment alone has been a luxury for young people as long as I can remember. I sure as hell couldn't afford it when I was in my twenties. I lived in a pantry for a couple years and didn't complain. This is a weird measuring stick.
No one is saying that people haven't historically had roommates to save money.
What you are failing to recognize is that someone working the same job back then and now are living very different realities.
The average home used to cost two times the average salary.
Now it is 8 times the average salary.
In 2023 your money is getting you less, completely adjusted for inflation. A waitress today is far worse off than a waitress in the 70s.
Imagine a waitress telling you they are paying their way through college with their tips. That used to be a possibility, in 2023 you would just assume they meant tips from selling their body.
Yeah I know all of these things. I'm also a person who exists in this economy. I'm just saying that not being able to afford living alone is a bad choice of things to highlight.
I don't assume women are prostitutes though. That's just fucked up.
shut up you know exactly what I meant. nice try at being a white knight though
The only people I knew in college that were able to pay for it while going to school were strippers, one was a man. Some were open about being prostitutes on the side. You think a fucking waiter could pay their way through college?
You either sell sex, your organs, or your future. pick one
I actually genuinely don't know what you meant. I said something and it seemed like you just said a bunch of other things that were kinda related but also not. It's not "White Knighting" when someone tells you that something you said is fucked up. It's just someones telling you you're saying fucked up things.
Gen Z are what... 26 at most?
Yeah, not many millennials or gen X were able to afford to live alone before their 30s, stop thinking you're the only ones who had it hard for years after being done with school.
Heck, my parents came out of university with unemployment at 12+% and interest rates at 18+%, sounds like fun, right? Good climate to think about owning a first house! I wonder what they did... Oh, that's right, they rented an apartment from my great grandmother and lived right above her and my grandparents! A fucking dream, right?
They purchased their first house when they were in their early/mid thirties.
Wanna know how I managed to do better than them? I got 10k from my father's life insurance after he hung himself when I was 26 and let me tell you, I would rather have continued renting.
I truly thought shittymorph had come to lemmy.
You are angry and you deserve to be, and you should talk to somebody about it, but not like this.
I'm just tired of Zs acting like they're the only ones who were delt a bad hand, it's just a way to turn people of different generations against one another while the real issue is billionaires manipulating is into hating each other.
I don't see you telling them they're angry and should talk to someone and it.
Because they know they’re angry and those that can afford to talk to someone already are. Hell most of my millennial friends are in therapy.
And if you really don’t want to see division between generations, well, you’re the impediment there. If gen Z says things suck, and your response is stfu everyone has always had it bad… you’re the problem.
No my reaction is "If you're angry at the previous generations then you're barking at the wrong tree."
Fair enough
It's not an oppression-depression Olympics. Because someone else has something worse off or similar does mean you win. Because someone else has something better off than you does not mean you lose.
There is one thing you can do; Organize. Help people not ever have the same situation you and your family had. Make it so anyone who faced such hardships doesn't need to, nor anyone else would again.
I'm sorry you had a rough life, and I hope you feel better soon, but the people who are struggling are not your enemy, they are compatriots in a similar mental struggle. They are not the ones who caused your family pain and strife, but feel it in a similar vein. They are not your enemy.
Sorry that's how you interpreted it, my message was intended to make people realize that it's not a gen Z thing, it's a systemic issue that's affected many generations.
Hey man, sorry your dad hanged himself.
Holy fucking shit
Heck!
So? I'm Gen-X and I've only lived alone for approximately 1 year of my life combined, and most of that was in my mid-30s when I was already 15 years into an above-average-paying IT career.
This is nothing new.
living alone is inefficient for so many reasons.
it should be rare - and i expect it has been in the past.
i mean its an expensive luxury for those who like it and can afford it , should not be seen as a norm, status quo, or something that most people "lack".
i'm not saying rent isnt too high a fraction of living costs, and i am in favour of seriously considering rent controls in ome city central business districts.
But I dont see a benefit in setting or condoning unrealistic expectatioins.
Put another way, if a city implemrnted rent controls aiming to improve affordability, but ended up with declining household size and lower population density in cities, then that'd be a bad outcome.
Such a shit take you had to post it thrice
Honestly, it’s not just inefficient, it’s literally antisocial. But in the U.S., antisocial behavior is encouraged, and pro social behavior discouraged.
I mean, people are reportedly lonely as fuck these days too, so maybe there is a silver lining to this terrible situation?
Edit: Thanks for the downvotes y’all. Rage and negativity are apparently the only appreciated responses here. Lol
There is a massive difference between alone and lonely.
And conversely:
Just because you are forced to share a living space does not mean you have a connection with those people.
Fair response, but being around and meeting people can help even if it’s something you’re forced to do out of necessity.
Living with disrespectful or negative people can suck too though.
How can you be lonely? You always have someone to talk to. If you are nice they might be willing to cook a meal for you (as long as you cook something too). Plenty of entertainment (when they fight with their significant other). Someone to play games with (cards, chess, hide their keys, watch them shower).
You just don't get it.
Many people suck, find someone that works better with you. One should not be lonely when living with others.
Why would you necessarily want to talk to your roommates? Just because you live with someone doesn't mean you want to hang out. Also, I have never had a roommate cook a meal for me and enjoying them fighting with their partner is kind of sick.
I think you missed the obvious /s. Look at the list part when I said "watch them shower"
What a weird comment section. The most controversial comment is "Well I guess friends are good". I think Lemmy is feeling the outrage cycle right now. Social media addicts gotta get they neuro rush
Have you never had roommates? If they're friends, they often stop being friends pretty quickly once you find out how they live. Not having roommates is a way to keep friends, not make them.
People should be able to take care of themselves.
If you mean people should be able to financially afford to live alone by choice. I 100% agree.
Rage and negativity are apparently the only appreciated responses here. Lol
No, you just said something legitimately stupid. There's a huge difference between living with a partner or roommate by choice vs. having to do so out of necessity, but you're entirely ignoring it.
Are you always this antagonistic? Calling what I said “legitimately stupid” is pretty rude.
I had 3 roommates in a small apartment out of necessity for years and it was stressful, but it did help me feel less lonely. I was literally just pointing to one small positive (in my opinion and from my perspective) in an otherwise shitty situation.
Are you always this antagonistic?
No, just when it's deserved. You're the one who rudely bitched and moaned about rightfully getting downvoted, disparaging everybody else in the process, you know.
Ah, you just like to fight. Got it.
Nah, you don't get to absolve yourself like that. You provoked it with your incivility.
Take some responsibility for yourself.
This dude has been nothing but friendly and polite. Saying shit you don't like is not incivility. You're being an asshole for no reason
Bullshit. This:
Rage and negativity are apparently the only appreciated responses here. Lol
Is the polar opposite of polite.
That was after you and others acted like a jackass though.
The first comment I made in the thread was replying to it.
You're acting the same as everyone else, which is jackassy.
This person dared look for an upside, and you just had to be a cunt about it.
Take one minute and be introspective about how maybe you're the problem.
...Says the guy who wrote something demonstrably false and then just continued on like it was nothing when it was pointed out to him.
I'm starting to think you're just the original dipshit's sockpuppet.
I get this is a joke, but this is the reason why people are lonely.
When my parents had me and bought a house, they found a neighborhood full of people their age who also were also parents. If you wanted to live near specific friends, you could make that your first priority... Maybe not next door, but a street or two over, for sure.
These days, price is the first concern, location is the second. With car centric infrastructure, you generally are going to have stratification based on your income, and being close to work is critical for mental health. Unless both you and your friends have similar budgets and ideal locations, it takes big sacrifices to live in a place where you can get the socialization we all crave
In New York or LA, sure. But in my hometown of <20,000 where rent prices have quadrupled in the past decade? No
But now thirty, forty, and fifty-somethings get to have them, too!
Yep. People historically lived in multi-generational homes and moved out to live with roommates in a dorm or with their partner to start a family. Living by oneself is historically very uncommon. Homes are expensive, it only makes sense to split that cost with others.
If you can afford to live by yourself, more power to you. If you can't, consider moving to a cheaper area or finding someone to live with.
Multi-generational homes doesn't necessarily equate to multiple incomes for support. Historically there was a single income earner because cost of living was more balanced with average income (not true for everyone and every demographic, but on average). Having two or more people in the family earning a paycheck is a modern invention as wages flatlined. I suppose you could go further back when the income was the family farm or business and the kids were free labor, but that's not really a comparable situation to what's being discussed.
Having two or more people in the family earning a paycheck is a modern invention as wages flatlined
This was not caused by flattening wages, but by women not being seen as possessions
Women being able to have jobs, own property and generally be self-sufficient is historically very uncommon.
Maybe we shouldn't give a fuck about what was common historically.
I don't think Gen Z'ers are smart enough to survive living on their own anyway. If you put enough of them together in the same room they might have enough brain cells left, that haven't been rotted away by TikTok, to make it.
Millennials: Uhm, we've been living that dream for over twenty years now.
I'm over 40 (one of the ancient Millennials) and literally I have only been able to live alone for exactly four years out of the twenty-three years since I moved out of my parents. I currently live with a partner, because, you guessed it, it's about the only way we can afford things now.
20 years ago, I could rent a 1 bedroom small apartment for under $1k. Now you're lucky to find the same for $2.5k. Pay has not more than doubled. They definitely have it worse than us.
In a city of 200k I can rent a two bedroom apartment for about 1.2k and have access to everything I might possibly need (including a job) except an Ikea...
Edit: funny how people get insulted when they're told wanting to live in major city centers might be the issue... Nothing new about living in New York being more expensive than Albany.
"Well it worked for me so if you can't do it then you're just not trying hard enough!" Don't be intentionally obtuse. There are jobs in major cities.
People also have other shit in their lives you know nothing about. You have no idea what every single person does for a living. Maybe they work for the government and need to be near a military base, or the state capital happens to be a major metro area. Maybe they live near their elderly parents they take care of. Maybe they have family nearby who can watch their kids while they go to work and if they moved they'd have to start paying a ton in childcare. Maybe there's a cheap private school there and they don't want to have to switch their kid to public school. Maybe they have a chronic health condition or disability and need to live near the best doctors. Maybe one person went back to college and the classes they need are on campus. Especially if it's a higher degree where they can't just go to any community college in buttfuck nowhere. Maybe they had to move there for a postdoc fellowship. But why am I telling you when you already have all the answers.
I met someone who moved to Albany to get an advanced degree and they hated it. They alluded to the fact that they were broke and living with a group of people. Unless you're suggesting living out in the woods, in which case, sure. You're right. I've heard there's some great career opportunities out in the catskills.
We have no idea what other people's lives are like and none of us should assume we do. Especially when you're going to be a dick about it.
Man, if we were to listen to you the majority of people are living edge case scenarios which makes it impossible for them to find a way to improve a situation they hate!
I met someone who moved to Albany to get an advanced degree and they hated it. They alluded to the fact that they were broke and living with a group of people.And I'm sure they would have hated New York and would have had to live with an even bigger group of people! It's also completely ridiculous to complain about having to live with others while you're in school and can't work a job full time.
The only dick I see here is you, I merely suggested that it's possible to live in places where you have access to everything THE MAJORITY OF PEOPLE needs and to still have inexpensive housing. Not everyone needs to live in cities of a million or more but a lot of people will never consider moving out of them because they never do the math to realise that they might be better off doing it even if it means sacrificing some other things.
Yeah let's not pretend it isn't so much worse now though.
Yes, but it's worse for everybody. Millennials that have been renting for decades... How the hell are they going to get ahead enough to save up for a down payment!? Meanwhile, housing prices keep rising, outpacing even combined incomes. I realize some people are able to make it work, but I don't think it's the majority...
Oh absolutely, didn't mean for that to be a takeaway. These kids have got it way worse than we do, they were fucked right out of the gate even harder than we did. Just had my Gen X "they forgot about us" moment.
They'll never forget about us. Someone has to be responsible for things going out of business.
I lived alone for exactly one year before the apartment raised the rent by over %13. I had never been late or missed a payment. Luckily, my fiance, now wife, offered me to move in with her. But I would have had to move soon either way back then because I was being priced out quickly.
I think you might be very very late Gen X, TBH.
I think 79 is supposed to be the last year for gen X.
Yea 1980 is the cut off. And I was born in 81 and while I understand the gen x around me, my values align with working class millennials and gen z.
I've met so many narcissistic gen x that I'm default sus of anyone older than me. Some of the best people I've ever known are gen x. But unfortunately many many more of the worst are too.
Don't misunderstand, I let everyone introduce themselves to me through their own words and actionn. My priors might register but that shits stays in the cupboard, its not even on the back burner. Knowledge of stereotypes, or behaviours associating shit I don't like does not equal those things, and everyone comes blank slate.
It occurs to me now that that's prob a remnant of being raised on the meritocracy mythos. And meritocracy IS a myth, that shit isnt real in the slightest. You can't point at anything in your field of vision and say there, that's merit. It's an illusion, but one that feeds to our innate, internal sense of justice. And if you want to dive into an esoteric rabbit hole, Justice is a much more rewarding one.
Rawls for the win.
81 gang.
This all reads like a middle aged man making excuses for not trying.
Lolololols. K bud. I think that's a a big leap you're taking but you do you.
You can take whatever you want from that, I'm not here to change yr mind.
It's sometimes 79, sometimes 80, but I just barely scraped by on the other side.
Definitive cutoffs for generations is stupid anyway. It depends way more on socioeconomic class and region than a single year. A millenial born in 81 has way more in common with an Xer from 80 than a millenial from 96.
No to derail anything, but the cusp of X and Millenials (77-83) is commonly referred to as a micro-generation in itself (Xennials).
Oh yeah, no question.
I'm also 40. Too bad you never figured out how to make decent money in 23 years.
Well, that was a bit elitist.
If that's what you want to call a guy who learned a difficult trade as a straight apprentice instead of dicking around.
Why are you so bitter, old man?
Let me translate for them:
Nah, more sick of this whiny narrative from people gave up, that's become so pervasive, people seem to use it to make themselves feel better about either never really trying, staying in a bad situation, or doing drugs till they're 36 and then wondering why they don't have nothing.
Gonna blow your mind here. Both can be true! People can make it work with some effort and (even you) a ton of luck, but that doesn't also mean there's not A HUGE issue. I guarantee you every single person who is struggling day-to-day, and doesn't have some kind of reality-altering mental illness, wants to improve themselves. Most people either don't know how, or have tried and tried and tried and just not been fortunate to find their break. Instead of being met with "ah, man, that's rough bud. Let's see if we can figure out some resources to help" though, it's "get a job, don't do drugs, pull yourself up with those bootstraps you bought (no handouts here!) And fuckin grind til you get it you worthless maggot!" One of those approaches will actually lead to people doing better for themselves, and it's not the one you chose.
I can 100% guarantee you this is false. You are dramatically underestimating the number of people who are happy living with nothing if it means they don't have to try hard.
I'm literally in favor of paying these people money just to spend, and totally supporting their life of uselessness, but we need to accept that a shitload of these people exist or there cannot be any serious discussion about reforms.
Most poor people want to not be poor anymore. However millions of poor people are poor because they don't want to work at all, and only work as much as they have to in order to pay core bills.
You can't "save" those people because they don't want to be saved. Their quality of work sucks, too, so the best thing for everyone is just to have a gov program give them cash and let them contribute to the economy through spending.
See, I think those people are living their best lives already. There's no saving them because there's nothing to save them from. But I bet they're still improving their lives in other ways. Everyone wants better for themselves, we just don't always agree on what better IS.
I agree that there is nothing to save them from. They absolutely get to choose how they want to live their lives.
I simply disagree with the idea that they want to better themselves at all. That doesn't match my experience, having worked with thousands of people like this.
I wasn't really big on UBI until I really learned about this entire subclass. They're what sold me on the concept.
Again, I think they're still working on improving their situation in their own way. They don't WANT what we see as improvement. For us, improvement is comfort, money to live, a better home, etc. For some people, it could be achieving an altered brain state. Or reading a book. Or spending a day walking the streets. All of this would, in my view, be "trying to improve your situation" - they all make you more comfortable. They may not be long-term viable, or what the broader society may define as improvement, but that's kinda irrelevant.
Yeah yeah, just keep telling yourself that. Maybe when you're 60 and still broke and renting, it'll make you feel better.
Well, something must be weighing you down if you're on here being shitty at the thought of people needing a bit of help to get out of their rough spot. Hopefully by the time YOU'RE 60, you can get that sorted. It'll make you feel better.
And there's the projection, right on cue.
No projection needed, you display it well enough on your own
I'm 39 and I do drugs a lot and I pretty much guarantee I'm more successful than you, given what you've said.
Maybe let's leave the drugs out of this discussion
Could be. Could be I've seen so many die to opiod/fentanyl reasons I've took a real dim view of recreational use. Addicts need help, sure, not my point though.
I've also had a lot of bad experiences with friends and opioids. I feel you there for sure, and understand the comment a bit better.
C'mon man, that's a little harsh, don't ya think? I get that you don't owe him anything but for real, not everyone's calling is equally rewarding financially, and you know this, and you know how fucked up it is.
Teachers deserve a wage that allows them to save and vacation every year.
In fact, we all do.
Fast food burger flippers do too. Society could afford it before, that we aren't doing it now is the result of policy decisions, not some invisible market moral correction voodoo. Workers at Dicks Burgers in Seattle make $21/hr + bene's and Dicks food is 1000x better than any fast food chain, and cheaper too. The money's there, it's just not being spread around.
Good for you achieving your own security, honestly, I mean that. But the scales being balanced is something we all need to work towards. Youre still working class, and right now the games still rigged to make sure you die broke. If we can't collectively work together to make sure the economy works for us all (cuz what's the point of a society then? It's just a fancy meat grinder otherwise), that paramedics make more than minimum wage. I'd like to live in a world where words matter. Where "essential" workers weren't just sacrificed on the alter of capitalism bc the beaurocratic class got furloughed and are actually treated essential.
Otherwise it's just a matter of time until another round of Reaganomics or fascists usurp power and either way your union gets busted. Ask the control tower what it's like when the government doesn't give a shit about the law, or precident. The law only matters if it's enforced.
I sure hope you vote for higher local taxes every election. Local elections really matter!
Vote for zoning reform too!
Too bad you managed to make it to 40 without developing any sense of perspective
Or maybe I did.
Thanks for feeding into the consumerist "all that matters is the money you make and the things you can buy" attitude that's doing so well for us all right now! We really need it!
Making a priority in ,ife of not being a renter forever, isn't consumerism, it's the ooposite. Renting is peak consumerism.
Making a priority in life to earn more so that you can buy buy buy is pretty peak consumer. Your post made a pretty hefty value judgement at the person above (you didn't make enough money, so why do you deserve...). Peak consumerism is you have to earn so you can buy. The opposite of consumerism is recognizing that we're more than our bank accounts, and that people need shelter in order to survive, so let's make it accessible to everyone.
It is. You just gotta quit expecting to buy in LA, Vancouver, NY without a serious money making plan or go where an average dude can afford. Or just sit around and whine, see how far that gets you.
It's funny that calling out very real problems is "whining" to some people. There's absolutely some issues going on with housing prices and wages right now, but Mr(s) GotTheirs refuses to see it. You can be proactive and make progress in your own life while also acknowledging that the game is pretty rigged right now, and having a bit of humility that the GotTheirses at least partially got theirs through some luck.
Also, way to make some baseless assumptions about where I, or anyone, is trying to buy.
Blah blah blah. Its always excuses.
Nice nice. Just disregard the actual words and points others are making. That really shows how good faith you're being.
Disregarding and recognizing it are two similar but not the same, things. I disregard it after.
Are we pretending that millennials are affording apartments alone? Cause I know very few doing that. Moving back in with your parents, though, that shit's common.
I was gonna say, most of Gen X has had roommates since we graduated college.
The headlines just keep repeating. Insert newest generation and print
It's getting measurably worse at a fairly predictable clip - boomers had it easy, x/y less so, it's dark for milennials, and impossible for zoomers/alpha.
The guardrails were removed and wheels set in motion by the boomers so they could more effectively ransack the economy - everything since then has been a consolidation of wealth and power at the direct expense of workers.
It is actually worse each time, though. In previous times, it was "oh lordy, prices are going up, shucky darn, guess I will only have 2 pieces of avocado toast each day from now on". Now people just can't even get by.
I'm in the Midwest. Most millennials I know are living on their own or with their partner. However, the younger millennials and gen Z I know? Very few I know aren't living with parents.
I'm an older millennial and my brother is younger. Our parents are old enough we each have a parent living with us.
I'm in Seattle, most of my friends have roommates or moved back in with their parents (which I did in 2020 when I lost my last job). I am making slightly more than my last job now with a second degree but after inflation I'm making quite a bit less and rent has gone up significantly since then. So I still can't afford my own place.
Older Millenials are more like younger Gen X, while younger Millenials are more like older Gen Z.
Landlords dream of a future where they can charge so much for rent that you need 3 generations of people crammed into a tiny apartment to make payments.
Which would be exactly why the rest of us dream of a future where they don't exist
This feels like a rerun
History doesn't repeat, but it rhymes.
Isn't that called a slum lord?
Used to be. It's moving towards just being a landlord though.
It's called one of the sexiest human beings alive and they would have most people you or I would be interested in at their beck and call.
We breed for greed.
Time polish up that guillotine.
Black Rock l, vanguard and others are turning the American Dream into a subscription model
Just a reminder.
In 1960, minimum wage was $1.00/hour and the average home was $11,000.
So, national minimum wage is $7 something, so homes should be about $77k, right?
Quick history of inflation in America. President Eisenhower started the US/Vietnam War, and JFK kept it going. Ike and Kennedy both wanted to keep it small, but LBJ made a major commitment of troops and air power to deliver a knockout punch. That turned into a quagmire where the US couldn't pull out without looking like losers. President Johnson [LBJ] started printing money to pay for the War, rather than raise taxes. Nixon was elected as a peace candidate. Nixon's Vietnam policy alone is worth several books, but we'll just talk about the US dollar.
Nixon doubled down on Johnson's bombing policy; the US factories were working 24/7 to make more weapons. Great, except the money was all paper. When the Arab Oil boycott hit the price of everything went through the roof. Suddenly stay at home moms were forced to get jobs to keep the family fed. In 1968 'middle class' was one job to support a family, by 1980, two income families were becoming the norm.
Then came Reagan. Big tax cuts for the rich were supposed to make everything golden again. In 1980, $1 million was considered a vast fortune; by 1992 it was what a really rich guy paid for a party.
None of the timeline matches up with increases in inflation.
https://media.nationalpriorities.org/uploads/military_spending_since_1940_fy_2024_large.png
https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Fig-1.jpg
Direct spending on Vietnam starts to ramp up in the mid-60s and draws down in the mid-70s. Inflation, however, goes through a major shock in the early 70s and another one in the early 80s. None of this seems to match any kind of cause and effect we would expect. Further, the real cost of Vietnam was born decades later, as those veterans draw on benefits such as the VA hospital system. (Which, BTW, is expected to start happening about now with the veterans of Afghanistan and Iraq; healthcare costs are a veteran issue.)
And then we have another big increase in military spending during the Reagan years, but no particular increase in inflation is seen. Not even if there's some argument that it'd be delayed by a decade. Not like it had been in the 70s, anyway.
Oil costs are the main reason for these shocks. "Printing money" is a naive libertarian approach to inflation which largely serves people who use money to make money (i.e., billionaires) as opposed to people who use their labor to make money. I was just lamenting earlier today how leftists around here have started to absorb libertarian narratives on inflation, and it's not a good thing.
Dang.
The working class has been selling itself out ever since the end of world war 2.
Que the Iraq war part deux. Immediately followed by the Afghan invasion.
Paid for on credit card. Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
Don't forget the giant expansion of the government under Bush² either, the TSA, DHS, Medicare expansion
The aughties fucked over the entire upcoming century. Obama swaging the wall street plutocrats after 2008 with, not just the bail outs, but with relaxing corporate control of rental property is looking really, REALLY short sighted about now
Trump repealing Obama's DoddFrankLite is gonna come back and haunt us too, when wall street implodes in the inevitable 2008 repeat, because if you can trust a banker to do anything, it's to suck as much blood out as possible and let the public pay for life support. It's gonna happen again. Guaranteed.
This was not because of inflation, but because women were beginning to be seen as fully human
Frankly between this and "but the money was paper" just makes you sound like some kind of neotraditionalist goldbug.
'Were forced to work'
VS
'Were permitted to work'
I'm not sure what went wrong with your brain to not be able to distinguish between these two. You're responding to someone who said the first version. You clapped back with serious attitude about the second version.
They're not the same though.
SCB is just a contrarian, block them and move on they aren't worth your time.
Yes I am aware that this person used slanted and incorrect language. That's sort of my entire point.
You'll forgive me for not taking someone, who wants the gold standard and traditionalist housewives back, very seriously.
You funny. I never mentioned the gold standard or 'traditional' roles. If you're going to put words in my mouth, I'd like them with an order of nachos and a fruit punch.
You can still buy one for that, as long as you don't mind living in Flint and like the taste of lead.
I got one in a niceish area for that. All you have to do is buy a small foreclosure and then spend literal years renovating while you live somewhere else and run up a bunch of high interest credit card debt paying for those renovations. 🥲
Man you just dashed my only last real dream of home ownership with your reality. I was like yeah I'll just find a fixer upper and make it work. I know better now. Thanks for the heads up.
That's it? Sign me up.
I came in to say something similar. Don’t focus on the price of the rent. The problem is the salary. Rent to salary has been going up and someone is pocketing the difference.
The problem is both.
Edit:
Of course this isn't universally applicable, but in my city there's basically six large landlords that own and manage the types of large, multi-family apartment buildings where the majority of people live.
There's no competition in housing and it shows in the pricing, which has been skyrocketing not coincidentally as the firms consolidate and then all "somehow" price align using the same software market rates.
That’s not how an inflationary economy works. Rent will always go up in yesterday’s money.
If the market was doing its job, salaries wouldn’t be much behind. So the ratio of rent:salary would be relatively stable.
So you're saying solely blame employers for consistent rent increases that top 10% year over year in some markets?
Employers aren't going to keep raising everyone's salary 10% every year to compete with the amount of greed in housing markets. Small ones can't afford to, and large ones will be punished brutally by their investors for doing so.
Two things can be true: salaries can have stagnated, and rents / housing prices can have skyrocketed as well.
It's both. You're getting robbed both ways. It's not one or the other.
That's $10.39/hr adjusted for inflation.
Imagine if the average home was $114,290 adjusted for inflation.
Houses were smaller back then and priced more appropriatly because they weren't being bought up for renting and as financial safe-haven by financial entities. The majority of new homes are 2,500+sqft, average new homes in the post-war era were around 1,000sqft. In the 70s average homes were around 1,500sqft.
There are a lot of homes in the 1,000-1,200sqft range that are under $150k. In my area there are about 1k homes under $150k(2/3 under $120k), there are about 3k priced $150-350k.
You referenced the adjusted price and I am talking about $150k homes because the homes under $120k tend to be houses that need $30k in renovations/repairs because the previous owners stopped doing maintenance and haven't updated in decades which leaves first-time buyers holding the bag.
Home prices aren't even the problem, stagnated wages are the problem. The size of homes increasing doesn't help and people demoing reasonably priced homes to build 2.5+sqft homes doesn't help. If builders had incentive to build sane starter homes and wages were where they should be, the housing market would be in better shape for people trying to start a life and own property.
Home prices and minimum wage not linked and linking them would cause a spiral upward in home prices, as available spending money would go up but supply would not.
... you mean what's already happening?
Are you serious?
This is not happening in any way the way it would if home prices were somehow tied to wages.
Do you really not understand that bad things can become worse things?
So stop talking about things, they could be worse?
More like "don't offer suggestions that will make things demonstrably and predictably worse or someone might point out how much worse things will get"
Not all solutions are equally valid.
In our current situation, I can't think of many ideas worse than "tie wages to home values" aside from maybe just burning down a fuckload of apartment buildings. It's that bad of an idea.
'Adjusted for inflation ' is kind of a joke. If inflation worked the way the adjustments would have you believe, the average home of today would be $120,000 apx. It's about three times that.
Adjusted for inflation works to show people how much less they're paying us every year.
I'm a disabled millennial. I live in a dangerous old house with 5 roommates and I am still spending over half my money on rent.
Well there's you're problem! You're disabled, so therefore unprofitable. It's criminal that you have the ability to live while someone who could make profit for our corporate overlords might not. Shame on you for being a leech on society! (In case it wasn't obvious, /S)
Disabled people are literally paid just to be alive.
Trying to paint reality as a hellish dystopia only works if you say true things.
Disabled people have to jump through years of hoops for those payments.
Further, the top payout is around $750 a month and they aren't allowed to generate any kind of income outside of that or they will lose it.
This means they can only afford to live in subsidized housing which can take years of being on a waiting list to access.
We pay them far less than subsistence level and many of them end up on the street because of it through no fault of their own.
For five years I gave change to an old man who begged for change while he waited for his name to come up on the housing availability list. He lived out his car the entire time up to that.
We do not pay them to live. We pay them and go "hope you can figure it out" and kick them to the street.
If we subsidize their housing, we're paying for their housing too.
We pay them to be alive, yes. You can argue we could pay them more, and id support that, but we very much pay them just to exist.
Permanently Deleted
Jesus Christ, who hurt you?!
No one? I don't understand the question
I’m referring to your comment about disabled people. I can’t imagine being such a piece of shit that I can’t see the value of anyone beyond what money they can bring in through physical labor. What a way to view the world.
Well it's a good thing I never implied anything of that sort.
You ok man?
Your comment “Disabled people are literally paid to be alive” heavily implies that you view disabled people as though they have no value at all, and are nothing but a drain on society. If I’ve misunderstood, please feel free to explain.
Here's how the conversation went:
person mentions having a disability
second person chimes in with "society has determined the disabled are useless and we do not care about you"
I say "that's not true. We pay disabled people to live."
you say "you're a monster who doesn't think disabled people have value"
I get very confused
I must have misinterpreted your intent, because to me you came across as incredibly cold and callous. Glad to hear that’s not the case.
Literally the exact opposite of the case.
the traditional way of life has been snuffed out by the forces of capitalism. there's no point trying to live a normal life anymore, we have to forge a new path
Let me stop you for a second.
In North America single family houses became the norm after the second world war, that means you might still have living relatives who weren't raised in what you think is the "traditional way of life".
It's more traditional for North Americans to live in multi generational housing or housing provided by their employer than it is to own their own house and expect to only be two living in it once their kids leave.
Everyone getting their own single family homeis unsustainable and 70% home ownership is an historical anomaly that pretty much only concerned WASPs. It's the American dream, not the American tradition.
That's very true. Although it's also true that forcing people into cramped quarters with one another for long periods exacerbates interpersonal issues, and people need the ability to walk away from one another and decompress.
Whether that's as simple as having their own room where they can close the door, or having a "third place" where they can go without needing to spend money to decompress and not have to be around others, you can't just endlessly force people to live together, especially when it keeps leading to domestic violence outcomes.
I agree, for most of history humans lived in shared, community housing, and that's not a bad thing, however I do think it's bad to promote the idea that we all need to be crammed into incredibly tiny spaces with multiple people living with them.
It would be different if housing was equitable and we didn't have billionaires using up massive amounts of housing literally for only themselves while the rest are stuck in tiny boxes that they can barely fit inside. Housing size needs to be an equitable issue, because housing size and cramped quarters is a mental and physical health issue.
I dislike this take. Before the Baby Boom, you lived with, moved around with, interacted with...well...everyone. Being familiar with others reduces stress, fear, xenophobia, etc. A lot of the problems we now face are due to people who have no empathy or concern for others and instead live within their own bubble.
Millions of LGBT youth abused by their birth families would wildly fucking disagree.
Before the baby boom? You mean segregated USA?? Wtf are you smoking?
I'm gay, but ok, tell me about my lived experiences or something. And you seem angry for some reason, so I'm gonna go ahead and disengage.
Way ahead of you.
The traditional way of life was multi-generational homes. If your goal is to live with as few people as possible, the traditional way of life is not for you. Why are you complaining about having the choice to live in homes with many, many fewer people than was traditionally required?
Lol, what? The American tradition has always, in the last century, been to move out as an adult and work your way up into a house and raise a family. On your own. What hell are you calling traditional? Farmer families from the 1800s?
*The American white and middle-class tradition.
Always, in the last century… those two statements contradict each other. Never mind that it wasn’t that common outside of the middle class, even during the height of American wages.
This is completely false and there is 0 data to back it up. There were 3 small blips of young people moving out regularly and otherwise the norm has been not to do that.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/3790690
He's probably from Europe where historically a wealthy family of multi generations all lived in one house. Because people wanted to be near their family (cringe)
If I heard "traditional lifestyle" out of context and I had to assume the rest, I'd be thinking about, yeah, living with your family unless married. Most of the people in the world live like this still.
Big "bUt ThErE aRe ChIlDrEn StArViNg In AfRiCa" energy. How dare someone complain when things could be worse, right? What an ungrateful dick for wanting better just because the previous generation had that, huh?
That's the point.
Expect things to continue to get worse as long as most people believe the disparity in wealth should continue to grow.
It blows my mind just how many people support this through their rabid worship of billionaires. Not because they love the billionaires themselves, but that they think in some fevered future they too will be billionaires. Well, guess what? It’s never, ever, ever, ever going to happen and every day that passes the now-billionaires are tirelessly working to consolidate money and power to prevent proles from getting foothold. Stop being morons, and stop working against your own interests unless you’re a masochist then go nuts I guess. Leave the rest of us out of it
I saw a quote that I found 100% applicable and will never forget: "Europeans vote as if they will one day be homeless. Americans vote as if they will one day be billionaires."
US really needs a reality check on which one is more likely.
We believe it's more possible to claw yourself up to the top in this country purely on the basis of dated propaganda. More Americans believe the "American dream" is possible here because look at the name of it, when the reality is social mobility by every measurable metric is worse here than many other countries.
I think a lot of them see it as a degree of "fairness." That these people earned it (ignoring the facts that got them to where they are now) and they deserve to keep it. It's more of a moral thing to them than any real worship, and there definitely is a touch of "don't let that happen to me." As if their wealth is at risk.
That's hardly a new situation.
The only people I know that live alone do so in extremely tiny apartments in unpopular areas.
The only real way to buy is as a couple, and has been for decades.
Yeah no kidding -- I moved out of my parents at 18 in 2006, and had a roommate all through univeristy and afterwards until getting married (and I couldn't afford my current flat without my partner's salary). Very few people I knew had a place to themselves, and if they did they were either scraping by, or they had help.
You're literally talking about when you were 18. No shit.
Yeah, that's been true for most Millennials.
Right, does no one remember the ubiquitous TV show of young, modern life: friends? It had two groups of folks living in threes. Now, yes, their apartments were mansion-sized for New York, but the premise was still there, and that was the 90s. Heck, my boomer mother talked about how it wasn't uncommon for people she knew on the east coast of the US to live with parents until early 30s. '
This isn't a completely new phenomenon, but the percentage of the paycheck it costs to afford housing, even with a roommate, still seems to be on the rise.
Yeah, and that was considered unrealistic living even at the time.
Only by people who didn't watch the first episodes in which they explain how they got the main-stage apartment.
Everyone that doesn't live in the free apartment has a very nice job, a roommate, or both (as with Chandler and Joey).
Right? I had some kind of roommate every place I lived into my early 30s. And I’m GenX.
This is not a new situation, it’s rediscovering the wheel by this new generation. The boomers were probably the only generation that could graduate, grab a good Union factory job, and buy a small home in suburbia in their early 20s. Everyone else I know had a transitional period of working smaller jobs and sharing an apartment for a long time until they got a really good job or paired up and married.
In my father's case, he worked part time pumping gas at Sears and had an apartment with three friends while still paying for all of college in cash. The early 1970s were the place to be, apparently.
lol can't believe you got downvotes for this. people really do drink the koolaid.
We need a new deal, I mean a new new deal. Because this is getting ridiculous, I'm lying it was ridiculous 20 years ago, now it is just the reason why dystopian fiction is impossible to write, how can you top real life?
What kills me is when you go into the realestate subs and they talk about how they have to constantly increase every year because the cost of everything is going up.
Nah bruh, I've had my house for 4 years and nothing has increased at any noticeable level.
Yeah boy am I glad I pulled the trigger on a real estate purchase when I did. My costs (mainly HOA, and to a lesser extent taxes) have gone up very slightly in the last few years, but nowhere near the 30-40% increases I used to get smacked with renting over the same timeframe.
It's like 1.5-2x as expensive as it was to rent in this (already expensive) area 3 years ago.
I'm determined to never rent again. Landlords are unbelievably greedy.
My father is in real estate and recently had a "talk" with me about how putting 15% into retirement won't help me and that the only way to secure my future is through real estate. I didn't have the reverse "talk" with him where I would have pointed out how he's completely underestimating how much money it's going to cost to change his diapers in a couple years and how that house will only offset the costs rather than repair them.
Square Deal (1908)
New Deal (1933)
I Have Altered The Deal (2024)
didn't this happen a long time ago to an earlier generation
We need a new new deal
This isn't new. I'm 43 so call me whatever you want, Gen X, Millenial, somewhere in between. I didn't live on my own (meaning without roommates) until about 10 years ago. And even then, I bought a house with my wife. so still kinda roommates.
Completely off topic, but in the article they say some apartment complexes are offering "private liquor lockups." Wtf?
Anecdotal, but when I was looking for my first apartment about ten years ago I toured a building that didn't allow residents to keep alcohol. Unsure if it's even legal (or enforced), but the landlord and property manager were a local pastor and his wife.
I see. religious scumbags. fuck them
I first read this as 'religiois scumbrage' as if you misspelt umbrage. Not only was I wrong once, but twice as well.
But goddamn, scumbrage feels like a word I can get behind.
Yes, that's illegal. I would have been kegging in everyday the first week of my residency just to fuck with them.
How is it illegal? If the terms are on the lease, and you agreed to them, then it's no different than any other business contract. What law prevents a landlord from making that one of the terms?
Unless it is a shared dwelling where you sign the agreement in statement that you cannot drink alcohol due to some underlying mutually agreed reason, no tenant can be prohibited from consuming alcohol in their OWN dwelling space. What you do in your home is your business and no landlord can prohibit anyone from drinking alcohol, period.
Even if you sign the agreement on a lease or rental saying you will not, it would not be enforceable in a court of law and the landlord can be sued for cancellation of the contract for attempting to infringe on your personal rights (religious or otherwise).
Edit: All this assumes all parties are in the USA, are of drinking age and there are no dry-county statutes in the area. Consumption of alcohol is protected by the 21st Amendment of the Constitution https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-first_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution
I could possibly see it being a legal grey area in a dry county, but that's just bonkers to me.
Dry countries are a weird concept to me already
Edit: I meant counties, but I'll leave it.
No one bats an eye at this but if it was a Muslim family who prevented people from having pork in their homes people would be losing their minds
I bet that it had a free pedo-cell in the basement, thou.
Neither can Gen-X.
Gen X still had a chance
Gen Z AND millenials
Would it surprise you to learn that the demographic most likely to be rendered homeless is Boomers because life got expensive around them? As best I can tell, they are also among the worst generations for having prepared for their retirement.
You're not wrong, but at least they got a chance to prepare.
I asked my boomer mother why her generation wasn't leading the revolt. I took the first job I remember her having when I was just a wee one, asked her that pay, extrapolated inflation on it and showed her that she's making the same amount of money today as she was then. Inflation, as a tool to control the masses, has robbed her of every "pay raise" or advancement of her entire life.
Her story is not unique.
That doesn't let them off the hook for the housing market tho, that shit, intentional or not, is literally just robbing their kids and grandkids futures for themselves.
I judge them based on their voting record.
I got evicted this year so I feel it
"anymore" implies that until recently that wasn't the case
Meanwhile, in Canada, rent prices are so high that basically nobody lives alone anymore.
They just changed the generation in the headline. This has been the case in the US for awhile.
What's sad is we're going to be sharing this meme 40 years from now and it will still be true.
Owners don't lose :/
If anything, it will become more true with every passing year.
Jimmy McMillan 2024
The first 38K of my pre-tax income goes to renting a 500 sq ft efficiency. The change in the last 20 years is astonishing. I remember in high school, being exhorted to put aside at least $300/month for rent.
fuck me where do you live that it's $3200/mo for 500 sq ft?? San Francisco?
2600 - 1/2 hour outside of DC.
500 sq feet???
I am 40 min from DC and pay 2k for 750sqft.
I thought I was getting robbed, are your counters made of marble and faucets made from gold??
Something isn't adding up
What's keeping you in the DC loop?
Yes, the rent is too damn high, but living in an apartment alone has been a luxury for young people as long as I can remember. I sure as hell couldn't afford it when I was in my twenties. I lived in a pantry for a couple years and didn't complain. This is a weird measuring stick.
No one is saying that people haven't historically had roommates to save money.
What you are failing to recognize is that someone working the same job back then and now are living very different realities.
The average home used to cost two times the average salary. Now it is 8 times the average salary.
In 2023 your money is getting you less, completely adjusted for inflation. A waitress today is far worse off than a waitress in the 70s.
Imagine a waitress telling you they are paying their way through college with their tips. That used to be a possibility, in 2023 you would just assume they meant tips from selling their body.
Yeah I know all of these things. I'm also a person who exists in this economy. I'm just saying that not being able to afford living alone is a bad choice of things to highlight.
I don't assume women are prostitutes though. That's just fucked up.
shut up you know exactly what I meant. nice try at being a white knight though
The only people I knew in college that were able to pay for it while going to school were strippers, one was a man. Some were open about being prostitutes on the side. You think a fucking waiter could pay their way through college?
You either sell sex, your organs, or your future. pick one
I actually genuinely don't know what you meant. I said something and it seemed like you just said a bunch of other things that were kinda related but also not. It's not "White Knighting" when someone tells you that something you said is fucked up. It's just someones telling you you're saying fucked up things.
Gen Z are what... 26 at most?
Yeah, not many millennials or gen X were able to afford to live alone before their 30s, stop thinking you're the only ones who had it hard for years after being done with school.
Heck, my parents came out of university with unemployment at 12+% and interest rates at 18+%, sounds like fun, right? Good climate to think about owning a first house! I wonder what they did... Oh, that's right, they rented an apartment from my great grandmother and lived right above her and my grandparents! A fucking dream, right?
They purchased their first house when they were in their early/mid thirties.
Wanna know how I managed to do better than them? I got 10k from my father's life insurance after he hung himself when I was 26 and let me tell you, I would rather have continued renting.
I truly thought shittymorph had come to lemmy.
You are angry and you deserve to be, and you should talk to somebody about it, but not like this.
I'm just tired of Zs acting like they're the only ones who were delt a bad hand, it's just a way to turn people of different generations against one another while the real issue is billionaires manipulating is into hating each other.
I don't see you telling them they're angry and should talk to someone and it.
Because they know they’re angry and those that can afford to talk to someone already are. Hell most of my millennial friends are in therapy.
And if you really don’t want to see division between generations, well, you’re the impediment there. If gen Z says things suck, and your response is stfu everyone has always had it bad… you’re the problem.
No my reaction is "If you're angry at the previous generations then you're barking at the wrong tree."
Fair enough
It's not an oppression-depression Olympics. Because someone else has something worse off or similar does mean you win. Because someone else has something better off than you does not mean you lose.
There is one thing you can do; Organize. Help people not ever have the same situation you and your family had. Make it so anyone who faced such hardships doesn't need to, nor anyone else would again.
I'm sorry you had a rough life, and I hope you feel better soon, but the people who are struggling are not your enemy, they are compatriots in a similar mental struggle. They are not the ones who caused your family pain and strife, but feel it in a similar vein. They are not your enemy.
Sorry that's how you interpreted it, my message was intended to make people realize that it's not a gen Z thing, it's a systemic issue that's affected many generations.
Hey man, sorry your dad hanged himself.
Holy fucking shit
Heck!
So? I'm Gen-X and I've only lived alone for approximately 1 year of my life combined, and most of that was in my mid-30s when I was already 15 years into an above-average-paying IT career.
This is nothing new.
living alone is inefficient for so many reasons.
it should be rare - and i expect it has been in the past.
i mean its an expensive luxury for those who like it and can afford it , should not be seen as a norm, status quo, or something that most people "lack".
i'm not saying rent isnt too high a fraction of living costs, and i am in favour of seriously considering rent controls in ome city central business districts.
But I dont see a benefit in setting or condoning unrealistic expectatioins.
Put another way, if a city implemrnted rent controls aiming to improve affordability, but ended up with declining household size and lower population density in cities, then that'd be a bad outcome.
Such a shit take you had to post it thrice
Honestly, it’s not just inefficient, it’s literally antisocial. But in the U.S., antisocial behavior is encouraged, and pro social behavior discouraged.
I mean, people are reportedly lonely as fuck these days too, so maybe there is a silver lining to this terrible situation?
Edit: Thanks for the downvotes y’all. Rage and negativity are apparently the only appreciated responses here. Lol
There is a massive difference between alone and lonely.
And conversely:
Just because you are forced to share a living space does not mean you have a connection with those people.
Fair response, but being around and meeting people can help even if it’s something you’re forced to do out of necessity.
Living with disrespectful or negative people can suck too though.
How can you be lonely? You always have someone to talk to. If you are nice they might be willing to cook a meal for you (as long as you cook something too). Plenty of entertainment (when they fight with their significant other). Someone to play games with (cards, chess, hide their keys, watch them shower).
You just don't get it.
Many people suck, find someone that works better with you. One should not be lonely when living with others.
Why would you necessarily want to talk to your roommates? Just because you live with someone doesn't mean you want to hang out. Also, I have never had a roommate cook a meal for me and enjoying them fighting with their partner is kind of sick.
I think you missed the obvious /s. Look at the list part when I said "watch them shower"
What a weird comment section. The most controversial comment is "Well I guess friends are good". I think Lemmy is feeling the outrage cycle right now. Social media addicts gotta get they neuro rush
Have you never had roommates? If they're friends, they often stop being friends pretty quickly once you find out how they live. Not having roommates is a way to keep friends, not make them.
People should be able to take care of themselves.
If you mean people should be able to financially afford to live alone by choice. I 100% agree.
No, you just said something legitimately stupid. There's a huge difference between living with a partner or roommate by choice vs. having to do so out of necessity, but you're entirely ignoring it.
Are you always this antagonistic? Calling what I said “legitimately stupid” is pretty rude.
I had 3 roommates in a small apartment out of necessity for years and it was stressful, but it did help me feel less lonely. I was literally just pointing to one small positive (in my opinion and from my perspective) in an otherwise shitty situation.
No, just when it's deserved. You're the one who rudely bitched and moaned about rightfully getting downvoted, disparaging everybody else in the process, you know.
Ah, you just like to fight. Got it.
Nah, you don't get to absolve yourself like that. You provoked it with your incivility.
Take some responsibility for yourself.
This dude has been nothing but friendly and polite. Saying shit you don't like is not incivility. You're being an asshole for no reason
Bullshit. This:
Is the polar opposite of polite.
That was after you and others acted like a jackass though.
The first comment I made in the thread was replying to it.
You're acting the same as everyone else, which is jackassy.
This person dared look for an upside, and you just had to be a cunt about it.
Take one minute and be introspective about how maybe you're the problem.
...Says the guy who wrote something demonstrably false and then just continued on like it was nothing when it was pointed out to him.
I'm starting to think you're just the original dipshit's sockpuppet.
You're being rude
Well yes, but actually no.
Regardless I hope you have a good evening and I wish you better interactions with others. I don’t plan on replying anymore.
...but actually yes.
I wish you self-awareness.
Aww little dumbass is upset they have to face their own stupidity?
Feel better now? You sound like a cartoon bully.
I get this is a joke, but this is the reason why people are lonely.
When my parents had me and bought a house, they found a neighborhood full of people their age who also were also parents. If you wanted to live near specific friends, you could make that your first priority... Maybe not next door, but a street or two over, for sure.
These days, price is the first concern, location is the second. With car centric infrastructure, you generally are going to have stratification based on your income, and being close to work is critical for mental health. Unless both you and your friends have similar budgets and ideal locations, it takes big sacrifices to live in a place where you can get the socialization we all crave
WFH is helping - but rent is still too damn high
20-somethings have always had roommates.
In New York or LA, sure. But in my hometown of <20,000 where rent prices have quadrupled in the past decade? No
But now thirty, forty, and fifty-somethings get to have them, too!
Yep. People historically lived in multi-generational homes and moved out to live with roommates in a dorm or with their partner to start a family. Living by oneself is historically very uncommon. Homes are expensive, it only makes sense to split that cost with others.
If you can afford to live by yourself, more power to you. If you can't, consider moving to a cheaper area or finding someone to live with.
Multi-generational homes doesn't necessarily equate to multiple incomes for support. Historically there was a single income earner because cost of living was more balanced with average income (not true for everyone and every demographic, but on average). Having two or more people in the family earning a paycheck is a modern invention as wages flatlined. I suppose you could go further back when the income was the family farm or business and the kids were free labor, but that's not really a comparable situation to what's being discussed.
This was not caused by flattening wages, but by women not being seen as possessions
Women being able to have jobs, own property and generally be self-sufficient is historically very uncommon.
Maybe we shouldn't give a fuck about what was common historically.
I don't think Gen Z'ers are smart enough to survive living on their own anyway. If you put enough of them together in the same room they might have enough brain cells left, that haven't been rotted away by TikTok, to make it.
Hurr durr dae younger generations r dum dums