Americans are living through the toughest housing market in a generation and, for some young people, the quintessential dream of owning a home is slipping away.
Mortgage rates surged in recent years, hitting the highest levels in more than two decades last fall. While rates have come down slightly since then, home prices remain painfully elevated and a limited inventory of housing is still failing to keep up with demand. Such conditions mean that housing has become woefully unaffordable.
Falling mortgage rates in recent weeks have helped, but home prices could remain sticky, according to economists. It’s still a cruddy time to be hunting for a home, but it’s even worse for young, first-time buyers who need to save up for a down payment and build up their credit score during a time when Baby Boomers are refusing to part with their big houses.
The situation isn’t a whole lot better for renters, with rents barely coming down from record highs and half of tenants in that market saying they can’t even afford their payments.
The uneasiness over America’s affordability crisis is captured clearly in surveys and polls, but data that outlines the sentiment specifically among young people is limited.
The trolly problem is designed to teach us that no matter what lies in front of us, we have to make choices. So whatever THEY did then, what will WE do now?
The answer ofc is that the USA will elect Donald Trump a second time. I wish I was kidding but… we are starting to see that there’s a good chance of that at this point. We might have to find out whether a President can run the country from a jail cell, or if that acts as a “I can get away with rape” card, or what. We’ve got some tough choices coming our way…
One thing I’ve been expecting for awhile now to start seeing - just b/c it has happened before, therefore is inevitable to happen again - is corporations making some living arrangements as a “perk” of doing business. Some places do this already, but as the competition drives towards making that an option, corporations could buy out a building for that purpose, then offer an “optional” subsidized living arrangement (as in technically you could turn it down, assuming you had somewhere else to go). That way we, focusing on those in the USA for a moment, would have all of salary, medical care (possibly including preexisting conditions), and then living arrangements all tied up in your workplace. Thus if the boss says suck my… whatever, you do it, b/c you cannot afford to become literally homeless - especially with the pandemic (almost plural at this point) of the unvaccinated greatly increasing the chances of actual death. So that’s slavery in the good ole USA, but also a step towards that elsewhere in the rest of the “Western” world as well (and the Eastern world already offers that iirc).
the trolley problem is designed to teach us the nature and limits of our moral framework. the first iteration tests for consequentialism. each iteration after that tests the limits of that consequentialism.
Ah yes, the REAL (meta-)reason for it - yeah I just said it super poorly there, as in it “is often used for the purpose of illustrating that”.
Lmfao “we all have choices, and here’s why Trump is gonna be the next president” welly welly well