I really don’t know how people are existing in today’s hellhole of a capitalistic landscape. I’m fairly lucky with a good-paying job and a lowish house payment. I’m still paying a lot more for food and whatnot than I did before covid.
I always think the same and can’t stop feeling bad. I used to live in an apartment the payment kept creeping up until I said fuck it and bought a house 6 years ago. My mortgage is $1000. People now pay $2000+ a month for an apartment. This is a fucked time to be a renter.
Why do people always turn these posts into opportunities to brag about how low their house payment is?
I don’t see it as that, it’s just a comparison to show how fucked up things are now.
Believe me I’m super bitter about being getting fucked on rent and being priced out of buying, but I dont take those kinds of comments as rubbing it in, just providing context.
I think Biden is giving out money for first time home buyers. I read that somewhere. An article mentioned it was like $400 a month for 2 years for first time home buyers to help them afford this shit. I mean a better fix would be stop all these corporations buying up houses and making it very expensive for others to buy, but I guess better than nothing?
That wasn’t my intentions, and I apologize if that has stepped on someone’s toes. I’m just mentioning how things have changed. I don’t think a mortgage payment is something to brag about, not for me at least. Hell, I’m still a broke ass mo fo who’s living paycheck to paycheck trying so hard to raise two kids.
Let’s flip it this way. My rent was 1500 a month, and it was going to go up 13% this year. I bought a house this year instead, 2500 a month. In 5 years, that shithole apartment will cost more than my house.
People aren’t bragging about how low their house payments are, their warning everyone about how shitty apartment price gouging is.
Agreed. Sign me up for one of these $1000 a month houses please
The human race is truly fucked ain’t it? We are all out for ourselves. Nothing will ever change.
What single contributing factor would you say carries the most weight? Throughout history there has been inequality, but never like this. Even medieval peasants worked less than modern Americans.
I think it’s our survival instinct to hoard. I don’t think we’ve evolved to live in such a massive civilization. We weren’t meant to live this way.
I do think this level of equality would exist in older times if they knew they could get away with it.
However the scale at which we live (the global economy) is so much larger that it’s easier for them to extract and hoard wealth. In older times our communities were much smaller. The consequences for fucking around were a lot higher because it was easier for the poors to hold them accountable.
Source?
Edit:lol downvoted for posting a source.
Thanks, the medieval worker put in much longer work hours, which is interesting
I feel the same way. Our mortgage is $2K/mo for over 3K/sqft. Apartments around here start at $1500 for a studio … poor bastards indeed.
I think at this point, all of us poors are just crossing our collective fingers and hoping the rent doesn’t go up, we don’t lose our jobs and we don’t have to move for any reason. I’m hoping my landlord turns out to be immortal right now. “Affordable” units in the hood here are going for $3,000+, and you need to make less than the equivalent of minimum wage at a full-time job each to qualify for them. We stumbled our way into a three-bedroom apartment in a nice neighborhood for $2,200/month, and he hasn’t raised the rent at all. The people who lived downstairs before said he charged them the same rent for close to 10 years before they moved out, so hopefully that streak will continue. Just have to worry that he’ll die and whoever inherits the house comes in and jacks up the rent once they can, in which case we’d definitely need to move pretty far away to be able to afford something.
My SO and I live in a 4 bedroom house with 4 other adults in their 30’s. I haven’t had this many roommates since I was 17, but I’m finally making some progress on my ridiculous medical debt. Best country in the world.
Of course you’re paying more, it’s called inflation. You also have a higher income than you did before COVID, but you didn’t mention that
Naw, naw, it’s cool… see, surely their income went up 30% in 5 years, right?.. Right?
They did not, but it’s ok because they’re just feeling it wrong this year. Maybe someone should tell them how to feel about the economy so their income and expenses won’t matter anymore.
But we matched inflation last year! That means everything’s okay now doesn’t it? The inflation from previous years just goes away!
And it’s totally not an average skewed higher by higher paying jobs right?. Us working class people didn’t get shit. I listened to a nurse the other day complain that they were only getting cost of living adjustments instead of a “real raise.” Like holy shit a lot of us got nothing. I’m making the same thing as I was during the pandemic and my money is worth the equivalent of $6 less per hour due to inflation.
We beat inflation
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/eci.nr0.htm
Check the constant dollar column, all positive
You should really read your sources. The chart is not inflation adjusted. The report tells you the 12 month inflation adjusted figure.
Inflation-adjusted wages and salaries increased 0.8 percent for the 12 months ending March 2024.
Oh yeah we beat the pants off inflation! Whew baby! Oh by the way, there’s still the preceding years of wild fucking inflation to make back. As well as the decades of stagnant wages versus inflation.
I did read my sources, because when I said we beat inflation, that’s what my source says
Decades of stagnant wages
Good news, we had more than a decade of growing wages (the COVID spike is due to compositional effects)
A. You don’t know how medians work. In a set of [1,1,1,1,5,8,9,9,9] 5 is the median. But you wouldn’t say that’s representative of the average worker. You’re looking for the mode. Which would be 1 in that data set.
B. .8 percent is not the hot news you’re looking for.
5 is more representative than the mode, since it does show that about half make more and half made less
1 is ignoring the rest of the data completely
If this was a representative sample the ones would have rebelled already. This is a teaching example.
It did, actually: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881500Q
951 to 1136, Q1 2020 to Q1 2024.
+19.45% from Q1 2020, which doesn’t help you if rent is +30% and inflation in general hit +9%.
Q1 2019 was 899, so +26%, a little closer.
But the REAL problem is workers don’t see that gain unless they change jobs. Working the same job year after year you’re lucky to get 4% per year.
+19.45% from Q1 2020, which doesn’t help you if rent is +30% and inflation in general hit +9%.
Which means workers are making more overall. You don’t pay just rent, but a complete basket of goods. If wages are up 19% while the basket of goods is up 9%, then workers have more money in their pocket.
There will often be some individual thing that sticks out in the basket. If not rent, then maybe food. If not food, then maybe energy. That can tell us where to focus policy to reduce inflation. It doesn’t tell us that workers make less money in real terms.
But the REAL problem is workers don’t see that gain unless they change jobs. Working the same job year after year you’re lucky to get 4% per year.
This is a big problem. Companies do not value loyalty.
Lesse… in 2020 we had a .5% CoL and up to 2% performance because of economic uncertainty… most people didn’t notice because of CERB (Canadian PPP)… In 2021 there were concerns about economic stagnation so it was a 1% CoL and up to 1.3% raise. 2022 we had a bad sales year (commissions were supplemented to retain sales) so 1% CoL, up to 1% raise and .75% bonus. And this year our PE firm is clamping down so 1.5% CoL, .5% performance raise and a 1% bonus due to continued inflation grumbling.
It’s a good thing Republicans are NOT trying to make Homelessness ILLEGAL and punishable by PRISON!
And then bill you for your stay on release
Don’t you realize? We need more legal slaves.
And just for context, if you work 40 hours a week for $15 (well above minimum wage), your annual pre-tax income is $31,200.
The workers of the US really need unionize. Here in Scandinavia the average pre-tax income is closer to $84,000 with a 36-hour work week. We do however have a higher tax-rate, so that ends up at around $45,000 after taxes. Cost of living is also generally higher that the US. Of course that higher tax gives us free health care and education.
The extra fun thing is that Americans don’t have that much lower of a tax burden. Only the wealthiest and those with investment-based income really pay appreciably lower taxes than in countries such as yours. However, the populace in the US gets far, far lower return on investment for their taxes (which has been continuously being reduced since Regan).
That’s definitely not a solution. You just made the argument against it. The U.S. government is the primary reason why our economy is effed.
Nah, it’s because we don’t tax the wealthy and corporations as the average individual, and let the “market” dictate the price of inelastic sectors ie Healthcare, Food, and Housing.
Housing is elastic. I lived with my dad until I was like 30 because of housing prices.
peasants should just eat less avocado toast, amirite?
If you eat the pit too, you save money!
*taps temple*
That 7 for a dollar is definitely the problem
7 what for a dollar?
Avocados they are usually 7 for a dollar
Did you mean to say $7 for a ONE?
Well the price changes sometimes its 10 avocados for a dollar or somethings it’s 5 avocados for a dollar
I have an old picture of one of the local stands
Wait here’s a more recent one but back when it was raining a lot so probably won’t be 15 for a dollar anymore
Touche! Oh to live in Socal during avocado season…
Haha this is south bay area
No War But The Class War
Aren’t wars fought by both sides? This seems like something other than “war”
Yes usually they are, but in this particular case one side has rock solid solidarity among people of their side and is very honest and aware of the class war going on and the other (i.e. the 99%) is largely composed of people that get upset and annoyed at you if you point out we are in a war, we both are on the same side, and we are losing the war bad like catastrophically bad.
It’s a good thing we all got fantastic promotions or hired into higher-status jobs or this could have been a problem. /s
In my last company, everybody could easily obtain “manager” status… because that was just the title for everyone who was salaried. Which didn’t necessarily mean more money. In fact, usually not. It certainly meant more overtime… a lot more.
Which companies are supposed to pay for. Salary isn’t a “now you get to work more for the same pay”.
Though even if you aren’t willing to rock the boat for fear of reprisal (which is also illegal), just document everything so you have evidence of a history of a pattern should you change your mind in the future. Then your tough decision mind end up “take payout and sign NDA” vs “reject offer and get coworkers in on it”.
And hopefully that least sentence makes it clear that their downside in those negotiations isn’t just everything they owe you, but everything they owe everyone in your company, including those who have already left and future employees, plus the cost of defending a class action suit in court, plus the PR hit for having to fight employees for wage theft and adjust your expectations for the amount accordingly. Once you’re at that point in the negotiations, you could probably even plainly say that you know why they want that NDA signed and that it’s going to cost them. And the negotiator personally might have their job at risk if they can’t bring that situation back into control. I wish everyone knew just how much they can have their employer’s balls to the flame when they don’t follow the rules.
In Canada, some employment disputes have resulted in 7 figure judgements.
This looks like it means rent increased smoothly by $300 a month each year, bad enough, but what happened here was that it doubled in one year for many people. Went up by thousands, all at once.
Article behind a paywall
Okay… now they need $20,100 dollars more per year.
Cut the journalists some slack; ChatGPT 4.0 subscriptions can get expensive.
I guess I’m a shit landlord, because I’m still charging the same as 5 years ago.
This is a risky site to admit you’re a landlord on xD
…Got any openings? 😭
Are you my landlord?
I can tell you that an average 2-bedroom apartment was about 600USD when I moved to the city I currenlty live in. Today the cheapest apartment in town is 1300USA/month and getting higher. If I hadn’t been lucky enough to buy a house when I did, I couldn’t afford to live anymore.
I could afford it but I’d have a 2 bedroom apartment instead of 5 bed, 3.5bath w/ 2 offices. We absolutely bought at the right times (2x).
And now we’re blessed in that we get to die in our starter homes, which is absolutely a privilege these days.
public housing needs to double and the requirements to get on it need to be slashed.
Slashed? No - removed. Then landlords can’t make us pay their give mortgages while they retire on our labor.
The people in charge are either landlords themselves or on the side of the landlords, so this is will never happen without a massive political paradigm shift.
The average rent increase was my entire yearly take-home.
No worries, we all got bigass raises, right?
I’m trying so goddamn hard not to lose all hope
Stay with us comrade. We need you for the revolution.
What revolution lmao? As soon as things get a little bit spicy all the equality hobbiest say it’s going too far
this is true. americans will not revolt unless they are starving or something
