'Disenfranchised' millennials feel 'locked out' of the housing market and it taints every part of economic life, top economist Mark Zandi says
'Disenfranchised' millennials feel 'locked out' of the housing market and it taints every part of economic life, top economist Mark Zandi says
“If they feel like they're locked out of owning a home it colors their perceptions about everything else going on in their financial lives,” Zandi says.
Few milestones in life mean as much to the American Dream as owning a home. And millennials have encountered the kind of trouble totally befitting their generation, which largely graduated into the teeth of the disastrous post-2008 job market. Just as they entered peak homebuying and household formation age, housing affordability is at 40-year lows, and mortgage rates are near 40-year highs.
The anxiety this generation feels about the prospect of never owning their own home affects their entire perception of their finances and the economy, says Moody’s chief economist Mark Zandi.
“If they feel like they’re locked out of owning a home it colors their perceptions about everything else going on in their financial lives,” Zandi says.
Millennials have long been dogged by a brutal housing market. They faced not one, but two, cataclysmic economic events—the Great Financial Crisis in 2008 and the pandemic in 2020. Both of which left them reeling financially and struggling to afford a home. The Great Recession decimated the real estate market as the economy nearly collapsed under the weight of tenuous mortgage backed securities. While the pandemic brought with it a remote work boom that caused millions of citydwellers to flee to the suburbs, sending housing prices soaring.
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Missing the other big factor:
There's a large quantity of influencers profiting off of doomsaying and convincing millennial they can't afford homes with bad math and bogus statistics. They churn out clickbait content with unfounded claims, purposefully designed to rile up viewers and drive engagement.
This of course applies to many topics, housing affordability just being one, that turns out drive big engagement by spreading disinformation.
It's actively profitable to lie on the internet nowadays, so lots of my fellow millennials have an extremely soured and warped perspective of reality, because if you keep getting told lies by enough different random strangers on the internet on a topic you aren't familiar with, you'll start to believe it.
Spreading disinformation, especially about serious topics like economics, medicine, politics, religion, etc, needs to be cracked down on more. Posing as a professional online and spreading damaging info on purpose should result in jail time imo.
I'm not seeing any lies there. I worked my ass off my entire career and still have to go back to school to get a little piece of paper that lets me do what I do in a clinical setting. I've got 2 degrees already, almost a decade of experience and I'm even decently-paid, but thanks to the cost of being alive I was forced into even more schooling to open up a few more doors in the long run. I'm feeling exactly like this article, I've given life everything I've got and the bar keeps getting higher and higher, its soul-crushing, I'm just so tired.
Something I’ve noticed about lemmy is that people here love their anecdotes. Something I miss about Reddit is that data seemed to be held in higher regard.
I don’t mean to single out your comment but this is also a reply to the one above yours.
According to the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey, homeownership rates for millennials sat at 51.5% in 2022, compared to 56.5% for baby boomers in 1990 and 58.2% for Gen X in 2006.
So maybe lots of articles get written about this because it’s a growing problem but also our personal experiences might not be indicative of a larger trend (although yours seems to be).
Huh? If you want to talk data, this is directly from your article:
Substantially fewer of those born between 1981 and 1996 are homeowners today than Gen X and baby boomers were at the same age. Housing affordability is taking a toll on all generations, but the lack of entry-level homes and the dearth of new builds are particularly impacting millennials.
According to the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey, homeownership rates for millennials sat at 51.5% in 2022, compared to 56.5% for baby boomers in 1990 and 58.2% for Gen X in 2006.
From the end of 2019 to the end of 2022, the median sales price of new houses sold in the U.S. has ballooned over 42% to $457,800. Concurrently, 30-year fixed mortgage interest rates rose from 3.74% to 6.42% largely in response to the Federal Reserve hiking the federal funds rate to fight inflation.
This jump in both the price of new homes and cost of taking out a mortgage have made the last six months one of the most unaffordable times to buy a home since 2006, according to the Atlanta Fed’s Home Ownership Affordability Monitor.
Yes. I don’t disagree. The excerpt I quoted made that clear, I thought.
Oh, I read your comment as countering GingaNinga's.
It would appear that you and a bunch of others didn't really read it at all. That, or the reddit hate trumps the point I'm making.
The saying goes you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. Seems, however, that both you and pixxelkick have oddly chosen vinegar.
I don't think it's their choice. I think they're both idiots.
… but you catch the most (flies) with bullshit.
I didn't even have that big of a problem with what pixxelkick said overall until they started in with the "maybe if you had better budgeting software, you'd have an extra $700 a month like we do" bullshit.
Other people's reading comprehension issues aren't my problem. They're the ones who will find daily living difficult.
The funny thing is this thread started with a comment about how people can't manage their money. Maybe reading problems are a part of the issue too.
Today in Lemmy News: poor writer with ambiguous thesis is adamant it's everyone else's fault their point isn't getting across. Writer suggests their difficulties in communicating with others somehow translate to others having difficulties in everyday life. The smugness coupled with a complete lack of self awareness is palpable, folks!
Now back to Chuck in the Weather Wagon!
Nah it's easier to blame everything else in the world instead of take responsibility for one's own issues.
Not a new problem, an issue as old as time.
The amount of people I've met that frivilously waste money daily and constantly indulge in retail therapy, ordering out, etc, then complain they can't afford anything is astronomical.
If I had a nickel for everytime I heard someone wistfully go "once I get my shit sorted out...."
Mate, go fuckin do it then, sort your shit out. Stop going to the bar after work, stop ordering mcdonalds, stop smoking weed, and do something constructive with your time.
Depression sucks, I get it, I've been there. But at a certain point you gotta just accept the only person to blame is the self, but that also means the only person who can fix it is the self.
BOOTSTRAPS DETECTED
Okay, boomer.
People on the internet? Reading things before responding to them?
I dunno, seems tough lol
median sales price
Do you understand what the implications of this figure mean for housing affordability though, cuz it's not the indicator you may think it is.
Too many people think median/average/etc house price figure is meaningful for housing affordability, but it's a mostly useless value for people buying their first home.
You'll notice though most doomer "no one can afford houses" content build their entire info on average and median house prices.
The median or average house is a fucking mcmansion though, not your first home.
Once you realize that, the rest of the following info clicks into place as the entire premise is built on the assumption that you wanna buy a small mansion as your starter home, and suddenly its like "ya no shit that's not affordable"
The median home should not be a McMansion, this is part of the problem. Look at median household income and you will see why.
No, it truly is, because that's how numbers work.
Median income should not be buying Median homes because that ignores the entire existence of renters markets.
You have to factor in the enter renter market plus the buyer market combined.
And if you do that then the Median price of a home suddenly plummets, as now your average home is a very nice well off apartment.
People hate on the concept of renting, but the real issue is unregulated renting.
Renting serves a critical economic role for people so it needs to exist.
But collusion and bad actors have poisoned the renting markets in many cities unhindered and that does need tackling.
Renting may serve a purpose but a permanent underclass of people stuck renting forever does not. And a big reason this exists is the increasingly wide gap between median home price and median income.
The number of people who would choose to rent in a more just society is way smaller than those who are forced into it today.
Sure.
Doesnt change reality though, homes are affordable, you just don't get to live in a mansion on a median income which isn't a hot take.
No one is saying everyone should be able to afford to live in a mansion. But I’m saying the median home should not be a mansion, it should be a normal-sized house that ordinary people can afford.
The fact that most homes being built today cater to the wealthy and not average people is a symptom of the same extreme wealth inequality I was discussing above.
it should be a normal-sized house that ordinary people can afford.
If you factor in renting prices in the range, the median household price drops way down and is around that mark, potentially lower.
The median house price alone when you chop off the entire rental market from the graph will never be that, because you effectively bias the number heavily upward by chopping off the entire lower portion of the data, biasing it upwards.
Rentals+Owning will have a median cost of living that aligns with the median income of the area.
But on average renting is cheaper than owning, so when you chop off and ignore that entire (very large) portion of the market, it's no surprise your median jumps up.
It's literally slightly less than half the entire market one ignores. Don't get fooled by it.
Yeah, and then people would say "why do people buy those useless apartments of 190 ft²?"
Because that's the only affordable housing
A median is a value at the midpoint of a frequency distribution, such that the probability of a value being above or below it is equal. A median value is going to be highly dependent on the area - cities with a boom in the building of luxury homes will have a higher median value that may not be indicative of the existence of more affordable housing but, in a larger market with an even vaguely normal distribution of home prices, it should be an indicator of a fairly average (in the non-statistical sense) home. But why take my word when we can test your hypothesis!
For example, the median home value in Portland, OR is $515K with a median household income of $78K, yielding a median home price to household income ratio of 6.60. So lets hop on realtor.com and look at the first three homes listed at that price, +/- 2%. Look at these McMansions!
$510K for 2500 square feet on 7000 sq.ft. lot built in 1910
$515K for 2,234 sqft on 6,098 sqft lot built in 1992
$525K for a 1542 sqft condo with admittedly nice views of the river
Such luxury! Oh wait, they're just average homes. The largest home in that price range is 2,624 sqft. The smallest is this guy which, while nice, isn't a McMansion. It's a very nice but not luxurious 1200 sqft apartment.
Maybe Portland is a shitty example? How about Gillette, WY? Gillette has a median home value of $390K and a median household income of $72k, yielding a median home value to household income ratio of 5.42. Let's see what's in store!
$390K 2,880sqft 7,200sqft lot built in 2010
$410k 3,002sqft 6,199sqft lot built in 2011
$410k 3,944sqft 6,522sqft lot built in 1975.
The largest in that range is actually my third result, with the smallest coming in at 2706 square feet on 0.31 acres. Check that one out, it looks like they built two houses on top of each other. It's weird looking!
Note: only the first house was close to the median. I had to bump the upper price limit to 5% above median to get more than two results.
You'll get a lot more space for your dollar in Gillette, but a McMansion? They're still lacking the ostentatiousness and cut rate luxury characteristic of the McMansion, so not really. Certainly not the best a man can get.
I love how they've done nothing but bitch about "no one showing facts" but they avoid the posts with citations like the plague because they already got theirs and want the poors to shut up.
Oh yeah, I suspect they just want their biases confirmed. Anyone who shows evidence that the premises upon which their biases are based are flawed gets ignored. It seems those that scream "it's just facts and math, you can't argue with math" the loudest tend to have arguments largely based in neither.
I’m not shaving just because your wordplay was ingenious. Thanks for the housing info though.
Comparing median house price to median income is an instant "doesn't know how housing economy works" flag.
Those properties are all a fair bit on the large side as well, and are in extremely good quality.
The first link is a smaller home but on a large property and literally dead center of Portland on highly valuable land, so that's an instant cherry pick.
The second is absolutely a mcmansion at 3000sqft, well over double the size of a starter home which usually ranges in the ~1500 range. Substantially more than anyone needs as a starter. It's in the suburbs but a quick glance shows you basically everyone has RVs and boats parked on their properties. The house is incredibly good condition and looks newly fully renovated. Several tiers above a starter home by a large margin, it's bizarre you thought thus house supported your argument. This is literally a textbook mcmansion.
The third is insane that you thought to even link it. Clocking in at nearly 3x the size of a starter home, double car garage, also newly renovated, and fairly close to the center of Gillette as well. This is less a mcmansion and just a huge bilevel. At what point did you seriously think that this house did anything other than support my statement, clocking in at that kind of Sq ft and with that location?
This is exactly as I wrote and you've done nothing but confirm, that the "median" house prices are many tiers above a starter home and only a fool thinks these are the houses first time home buyers will be saving up for.
Next time when you wanna try and find houses that aren't affluent, maybe take the five seconds to notice the literal sailboats parked in people's driveways? It's a pretty big tell lol
That's a long response that somehow still manages to miss nearly every point previously made, plus has a hefty dallop of bullshit.
I'm forwarding your comment history to Drs. Dunning and Kruger in case they want to do a case study.
Comparing median house price to median income is an instant "doesn't know how housing economy works" flag.
I included median income because it's interesting and at no point make or even vaguely suggested it has any significance. It's funny how you just make shit up to counter points that aren't being made.
I made this post to definitively test a theory: that you're shockingly, blatantly intellectually dishonest, someone who doesn't care about an honest conversation but who simply wants to be right at all costs, up to and including just lying. Like you did here, repeatedly.
My point was median valued homes aren't McMansions, homes that are defined by their size, ostentation, and luxury, which are none of these homes. But you don't care, you just want to be right, so you lie and use your own personal definition of a McMansion, which is apparently "big and/or nice house maybe with boat", like watercraft ownership has any bearing on the type of home. I live in a 1300 square foot home and own a $95k 5th wheel. I guess I live in a McMansion too! You even move my goalposts for me by pretending my comment was about something it was not, that I was somehow claiming a median valued home was a "starter home". It's easy to refute evidence when you pretend the thesis is something that it's not, but it makes you a liar.
So now we have, for all to see, clear evidence that talking with you is an absolute waste of time. Thank you for that. Easiest block I've made all year. Feel free to have the last word.
I think we all know this already. We're poking the bear because it's fun to watch him dive past points being made and scramble to fabricate data so he can 'win' every argument.
That's higher than the last stat I heard, which was 46% of Millennials owning homes compared to the average of 65% for other generations. Of course, I believe that was also comparing all generations in 2019, not from different dates.
So... you paid for two degrees already and are going for a third, and you are having financial issues?
Do you have all three of your degrees fully paid for (all debt on the first two gone, and enough money for the third without having to take out a loan)?
Otherwise it sounds like you are bad with money. Taking out huge loans you can't afford isn't the path to affordability. It's pretty rare that degrees are a good financial investment.
Degrees are mostly a passion investment. You need to already be well off enough to afford all the extra costs to get the degree, abd you are paying money to do a job you like after.
There's tonnes of jobs that pay incredibly well that don't require a degree at all.
Taking out a large loan to get a degree is a terrible financial choice.
If you just care about finances, go work a job that pays well and has a low barrier of entry that anyone with a pulse can get into.
If you want to do something you are really passionate about and it's financial investment sucks, that's the tax you simply pay to have a job you prefer.
The intersection of:
- job pays well
- it isn't dangerous/strenous/awful hours/tough
- it doesn't require a degree and thus a huge loan, thus isn't a poor investment
Is extremely rare. There's a couple trades that aren't too bad, but they usually pay well due to a low demand low supply situation.
Wow, looks like you put a lot of effort into being condescending.
Am I wrong?
"I have taken out three huge loans and now I can't afford stuff" isnt something I really sympathize with.
That's a terrible financial decision.
Even if you could afford the loans, wasting all the time in school getting three degrees I stead if, you know, working, is also massjve money lost. Every hour in school is an hour that could've been spent at a job instead.
Even at minimum wage you usually "lose" another 10k to 15k a year you spend in school instead of working, best case scenario. If you can make better wage though that can balloon up to like 30k a year in lost potential income.
You sound 4 years doing that a d that's *120k you can never get back on top of the actual cost of the degree.
And this person did that twice and is gonna do it a third time?
Bruh that's like 360k+ now, that's a whole ass house they just lost
Stop jumping between degrees, it's not gonna magically make you stop hating work. Pick a lane and stay in it. Everytime you jump lanes you set yourself backwards 6-8 years
This person's indecision and inability to just stick to it, combined with "grass is greener" mentality is why they can't afford shit.
Terrible financial choices. I'm not being mean here, it's just a stone cold fact.
I'm hoping they realize this and don't make the mistake a third time.
No, your not really wrong, it's just the tone that comes off as blaming others for their failures.
There's a place for that but it is IMO not really on a public forum. Praise in public and criticize in private is good life advice. Maybe your tone is unintentional due to the nature of internet text communication.
To me, it seems like you could stop and realize that making sound financial decisions isn't as big of a factor to most people as it is to you. There is more to life than worrying about money.
Corporate media does hyperfocus on that but I don't think it helps make our (North American) society happy. It distracts us with escapism and temporary happy emotions.
Extra time in college is hugely expensive like you said. This is a cost people don't realize and don't like to admit. Each extra year "costs" around 100k between tuition costs and lost earning potential. The people I graduated with that took 7-8 years to get a bachelor's were so much further behind financially they won't ever catch up with those taking 4 years.
And those that spent 1 year getting a specialized certificate or two and entering into specialized markers that have low supply are even farther ahead.
Mind you, this isn't an option for many industries... but it is an option for some and extremely lucrative. (Welding, machining, tonnes of "confined space" jobs, anything in waste management...)
Spending 7 years on a degree to get a high supply low demand job though was and is a scam...
I feel really bad for folks who fell for it though, they trusted people who told them it was a good choice and ot sucks watching so many people suffer for it.
Literally all I did at 19 was crunch the numbers. "Average salary for that field is this, at min wage I would lose this much a year not working and going to school. After paying off my debt it'd cost this, I'd make this much more per year if I get the job asap... so it'd take.... thirty years for the investment to pay out? Wat?"
After comparing some costs vs others and contacting people in the fields, it became apparant that my dream field was actually a huge money sink, and my second best wasn't much better... but my third option was actually very low barrier of entry, growing demand, and paid less but cost almost nothing to get into.
So I went with that.
Thanks for the judgment and assumptions, that really helped me out! I worked throughout my BSC, so yes that was paid for and a must-have starting point for my field, so no way around that. Then i did my Msc which comes with a stipend so I was able to come out of that with a debt that I paid off in 3 months. Right out the gate I was incredibly lucky and was hired at a top research institute and paid well since I was proficient in a relatively niche field. Things were ok then the pandemic blew everything up, my landlord sold my place from under me, rent is crazy high with few alternatives available, buying is out of the question, groceries and bills are insane... I get your point, I'm not exactly out to collect degrees like pokemon, I'm definitely done schooling after this and never again.
Ah, that changes things a lot, upgrading a degree is a bit different than getting another one, that makes more sense.
What's stopping you from just moving somewhere better and applying your degree in a better market? Chances are there's a big corporation somewhere that will hire you with your experience and masters degree, with an office in a better location that actually has an affordable cost of living.
Honestly thats not completely off the table, the upgrade will give me some freedom and a lot of options so I've been considering a move. Due to the nature of my program I have to be near a hospital, university or major research institute and the best opportunities are unfortunately in major cities, where things are expensive.
Due to the nature of my program I have to be near a hospital, university or major research institute
What field? There can be surprisingly financial options that are outside these scopes for industries that you typically associate with those.
Many private industries need to contract in specialists in fields for on site work. You end up away from home a month at a time often, but the pay can be very compelling.
Lol warped perspective? Millennials are the poorest working generation since the great depression. Millennials, the largest working generation ever in America only hold ~3% of the wealth. Our parents at the same age owned ~30%. So Ya shut up
Case in point, lol
Bro elder millennials are like 40 now. Millennials are not teens reading a headline about a new video game and saying fuck it. They're doing basic math and laughing at how their real world adult ass jobs still won't pay for shit.
They’re doing basic math and laughing at how their real world adult ass jobs still won’t pay for shit.
Sounds like they are bad at math then, or budgeting.
What point exactly?
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Don't need a professional expert to acertain whether the market is sour. Where I am the cost of renting a one bedroom apartment is around $1800 a month plus utilities on the low end. Mind you I am in a city but is you drive an hour and a half away to the farthest "commutable" burbs you are still looking at rents that are $1400 for essentially a one bedroom basement suite.
There are a lot of people my age I know who are working proper professional jobs double income no kids situations who are never able to save up enough for the initial down payment for a house. Why would they when they face so much precarity? Whatever money they are able to sock aside for a rainy day might only cover a car repair or some time off work if they have a life altering event like a parent dying and paying down chunks of student loan.
They wouldn't be able to handle paying for repairs and maintenance for an actual property while still paying high mortgage. Practically every early millenial I know who didn't start making their nest egg through a job in trades right out of high school and instead spent time in the post secondary system getting a degree got bit.
Where I am the cost of renting a one bedroom apartment is around $1800 a month plus utilities on the low end. Mind you I am in a city but is you drive an hour and a half away to the farthest “commutable” burbs you are still looking at rents that are $500 for essentially a one bedroom basement suite.
So a suite halfway between the two for ~1100 probably exists 45 minutes away, which sounds completely workable and average.
That only sounds marginally worse than pre2020 when it was closer to ~1000.
That sounds pretty normal mate and not that unaffordable.
Are you familiar with the term "sold out"? Supply is not unlimited, and you shouldn't spread a hypothetical like it's a fact. That's exactly the thing you complained about in your original post.
I've yet to see an example city I couldn't find plenty of options, even Toronto of all places.
When push comes to shove this convo always boils down to this:
Me: okay fine what city?
Them : (city)
Me: (proceeds to link 4-5 solid options I found in a couple minutes)
Them: noon those don't count because (arbitrary reasons)
Me: ah so it's not a housing problem... you are just picky and don't want a solution, you just wanna be mad
Every. Single. Time.
"Alright, I know they didn't have toilets..."
Usually it's more like, "yeah but it's west facing" or some shit.
Things that didn't happen for $1000, Alex.
Hour and a half commute, each day, not counting when there’s a bad accident at rush hour? Kill me instead, I’d rather not live life in rush hour traffic
I don’t think this is as important as your making it out to be because it’s not far off from the truth for many. The reality is that a condemned or empty lot in my area starts at 6 times my annual salary. To get something that can be lived in starts around 9 times. That means I need at about a year’s salary to afford the land alone. To be able to live on that lot is closer to 2 years salary. Realistically this won’t happen because the rent in the area is 60% of my income and after required expenses like fuel, insurance, food, etc I can usually save about 5% of my income. Any unforeseen expenses like car repairs eat that away, so I’m left with an annual savings rate of about 3%. At this rate homes will inflate faster than my income will accrue. The math doesn’t work and I suspect it doesn’t for many others.
So, you live in a place that the local area has exceptionally high cost of living...
Why would you want to buy a home specifically there?
If you can't afford the cost of living in a location, that just means you have to move somewhere you can.
Which usually just means moving to the suburbs or 1 town over and suddenly the price is 1/10th.
You’re mistaken, I already live 45 minutes from my job. Moving further from that would be untenable because it would increase my commute by another 30 minutes which wouldn’t leave enough time for me to care for my father in the area.
me to care for my father
That's your choice to make then.
Moving is an option, you are prioritizing your father's comfort over your own life.
You can do that, but no one us forcing you to.
You can tell your dad "look I'm leaving, I can't afford it here. You can come with me or not, but I have my own life to live and this place is killing me"
If he doesn't come with you, then that's on him.
He is a grown ass man, you aren't his parent...
Often I see this case, if you purposefully choose to shackle yourself to a relative, that's no longer "the economy"s fault you can't afford life. You made a choice to live outside your means, and that choice has consequences.
You always have the option to leave and most if the time if push came to shove, your relative will cave and follow.
Of not, you aren't responsible for them, stop lighting yourself on fire to keep someone else warm.
Man you just keep finding new and inventive ways to continuously prove how much of a dick you are in this thread.
It's a fundamental truth. Children feeling compelled to care for their parents is purely their choice.
I never said it was a bad choice, but it is a choice.
But if you do make that choice, it has consequences.
The concept of children "owing" their parents their lives is anachronistic and ignores the fact the parent chose to have them.
Any parent that feels their children owe taking care of the parent in their older age is an asshole, period. A parent that raised their child well should produce a child that wants to help their parent out of love, not a feeling of owed necessary.
The former is family and love, the latter is narcissistic parents that think they "own" their child.
BUT a child shouldn't be killing themselves to take care of their parent. Any parent that actually loves their child would never ask their child to give up their own life to suit the parents comfort.
A good parent will do whatever it takes to support their child, and if that means leaving their old life behind to move (with their child) somewhere more affordable so the child can actually afford to take care of them, that shouldn't even be a tough question for the parent to answer, it should be an instant "yes, if you are sure you want to do that I'll support your decision"
Parents that compel their children to live outside their means just because they won't move with them somewhere in their means because they dont want to leave their old home behind are shitty parents, period
Parents should never be prioritizing their own comfort at the cost of their children's success in life. If you do that, you were never fit to have a child.
The concept of children "owing" their parents their lives is anachronistic and ignores the fact the parent chose to have them.
We get it. Your parents were shit to you, so the concept of loving and being loved is foreign and unheard to you. People choose to care for their parents because they love them, ya dink.
I'll take "didn't read the post and responded asap" for 200.
He is a grown ass man, you aren't his parent...
Man, I sure hope your kids tell you this when you're unable to care for yourself. Or better yet I hope you don't have kids, no need to continue your parasitic family tree. Self righteous prick.
Dude you really need to get off the internet now and then. You are so entirely out of touch with normal humans..
That’s a lot of psychopathic assumptions I’m just going to pretend you didn’t say. The point is the reality for most is dire and your clearly more interested in winning the conversation than understanding those shitheads on social media are only getting views because they are validating real problems in the economy.
I’m just going to pretend you didn’t say
That's easier than confronting reality.
Confronting reality is when you realize you'll be old and alone, with no one around to give a shit about you. Don't worry, you'll see it someday, champ. I'm hoping for it.
K
Of not, you aren't responsible for them, stop lighting yourself on fire to keep someone else warm.
Imagine if all of society operated on this person’s principals of “fuck you, I got mine!”.
It’s basically the GOP playbook.
There's a huge difference between helping others within your means vs outside your means.
This is actually the first principle of the Hippocratic Oath that doctors take, if you've read it.
Prioritizing your own health comes first, because a dead doctor can't save anyone else anymore.
Sacrificing your own health to try and help others typically is net negative cause now someone else has to look after your sorry ass in the fallout.
Working yourself to the bone helps no one, it's just net negative and doesn't do any favors.
That's explicitly why I said "lighting yourself on fire", which is actively harmful and tends to be, you know, lethal.
But it's so much easier to strawman what I said into something else entirely and attack that instead yeah?
lol.
Troll.
Go troll elsewhere.
Holy shit dude. You are an actual psychopath aren't you? Fucking Ebenezer Scrooge pre ghostly trio levels of heartless.
Fucking hell...
Probably saw shows like House and Sherlock and thought "if I act like this it'll mean I'm special too!"
See my write up in detail here, hopefully it helps shed more light on my point:
Heeeeellllll no. Seen enough that I am not touching that with a ten foot pole. I value my mental health more than that.
That does sound a lot easier, making assumptions about people and not bothering to read what they wrote sounds like it makes it easier to sleep at night, knowing there's zero possibility you maybe were just mistaken about something.
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Perhaps, but as far as assumptions go I have not neglected to notice you have not bothered to correct me either.
I have also experienced that some people refuse to give up and feel like they must deliver some nebulous and ultimately wanting ad hominem "parting shot" not persuant to the original arguement so they can self-rationalize their own position and feel like they came away saving face. You wanted to find a rationale to dismiss me and there you have it : I am not worth engaging with because I don't "understand you". Now back to your comfortable life you go.
I have no idea what you are talking about at this point. You literally admitted to not being able to mentally handle my points and that they were bad for your mental health.
I'm curious what you think my point is, that's it's so eldritch and terrible its causing you 8d6 psychological damage.
Cuz I seriously don't think my take is even a hot take, it's wild how I'll write what I perceive to be pretty basic "don't be a dick" logic and people will be like "whooaaa hey now we got a psycho over here, hey this dude thinks parents shouldn't treat their kids like objects, what the fuck right?"
W i l d
1/10nth for one town over?
Saving 90% is a number so ridiculous I find that impossible to believe even for a place like New York City or San Francisco.
EDIT: It appears that you can see a 10x pricing factor in some super high demand areas. The markup is much more extreme at some locations than I thought, though, I'm not sure how hard it would be to avoid with a reasonable commute and still own.
And yet, it's reality. Same property size will go from millions to 100ks.
2.5mil~3mil prop will be 250k~300k.
Which is indeed, 90% less. Math is hard yo.
This is less a case of the difference and more a case of "center if major cities are hyper inflated and priced dumb, ignore them if you are a millionaire", going literally 1-2 steps out and the hyper inflation rapidly fades out back to normal prices.
A better way I could word it is: "properties in the middle of cities tend to be overpriced by about 10x." If that makes more sense.
I think it's not so much the 10x prices so much as the 1-2 steps out to get that 90% discount that might be making people skeptical.
In the interest of not simply moving the goalposts, I'll edit my original comment.
Yeah bruh a 1500 sf house in my hood sold for $1.3 million.
They aren't lying. The housing market has become incredibly prohibitive due to how property prices have gone up with speculation and demand.
Maybe the older millennials can afford a home eventually, but they'll be 10-15 years behind their parents into achieving that goal.
Even in Canada, in the cheapest city to live in, Montreal, 1 and 2 bedrooms go for about 400k. Houses are over half a million. You can't afford these with our average wages unless you're in a couple and have a very solid down payment.
I'm with you. In my area which has traditionally been very affordable (mountain ski town in CA), houses are now starting at $500k for absolute pieces of shit and only go up from there. Most of the housing stock up here is compromised of second/vacation homes, many with deferred maintenance due to absentee owners or have been thrashed by years of partying tourists/local renters. A number of these houses should be condemned, but they still fetch a premium.
At this point, it would be cheaper to build a house, but lot prices are through the roof ($100k starting for anything remotely with a yard, no financing possible on land here), and lumber/materials are insane as well. I'm in construction and have plenty of friends in as well, so it's certainly feasible. And at the end of the day, building our own modest bungalow and expanding as money becomes available would still be cheaper than buying an old piece of junk requiring all the repairs, especially with the reduced maintenance costs and building to modern efficiency standards.
Even in Canada, in the cheapest city to live in, Montreal, 1 and 2 bedrooms go for about 400k.
Shit like this is what I am talking about.
This is so deeply out to lunch it's laughable.
Post your sources for that mate, I live in a major city in Canada and I assure you those numbers are hyper inflated.
I fucking live here. I bought my 2 bedroom condo in 2019 at 380k. My next door neighbor who has a unit line mine just sold his for over 400k.
I'm the fucking source.
How close to the centre? I find near the centre of cities the prices become hyper inflated aggressively, but slightly outside that wtf zone the hyperinflation wears off fast and prices go back to being sane just 1 step out from the centre.
I can understand that price if it's downtown near the core, but outside of that sounds like a scam.
The same here out west is like 200k if not downtown. Downtown the price can shoot up to 1mil but it's largely a scam and inflated. Drive like 10min out and the price drops pretty fast and out in the suburbs you can get 2 bedroom houses for less than your condo cost.
Looking it up, Montreal itself has about a dozen or two 2bed homes for 200k-300k that are in good shape, but in that "non core" ring.
And as soon as I expand out to include nearby towns within 45 minutes you get literally like a hundred+ hits that all look solid.
Looks like starters are around 250k to 275k within 30min of the center, and then drop down to 225k if you expand out to 45min.
Very reasonable price, a smidge on the high side but definitely way lower than "400k for a condo"
https://www.realtor.ca/real-estate/26284331/5445-rue-de-la-légion-longueuil-saint-hubert-orchard
https://www.realtor.ca/real-estate/26332130/240-rue-des-terrasses-saint-marc-sur-richelieu
https://www.realtor.ca/real-estate/25733996/12-rue-de-lespérance-saint-charles-sur-richelieu
Two of those are even 3bed houses. So yeah, your numbers are either bullshit, or your condo is near the city centre and way inflated compared to the rest of the city.
Or you got scammed.
I live in Hochelaga. A historically poor neighborhood. The units in my building started at 100k in 2010 when it was built.
I bought in 2019. All the places we visited were sold ~100k over asking price. Ours was 300k but we had to make an offer 80k over asking to be sure to get it.
The prices shown in realtor aren't the prices the places are actually going for. They put a lower price knowing people are going to offer more. When they don't get the offer they want, they cancel and start over.
Have you ever even bought a place? Do you even know what the market is like today in reality? Or are you just basing yourself on a few anecdotal posts on realtor.ca? What constitutes a reasonable price for a property for you exactly???
Edit: Who the fuck would live in Saint-Marc-sur-Richelieu to work in Montréal???? That's over two hours by car in traffic. That area isn't even considered the "greater Montreal area" because of how far that is. You'd know that if you ever lived here. Your examples are complete bullshit. And I'm sorry but that little shack in Longueuil? For 245k????? Are you fucking kidding? That piece of shit house shouldn't even go for over 100k. Is that what you call reasonable?
Get the fuck out. You're a troll.
Have you ever even bought a place?
I have, I bought a quite recently.
While shopping, homes we looked at had been on market for awhile, and there was no such case of what you described. We actually got our house for 15k under listed, as we found a couple minor issues we brought up to get the tag knocked down during inspection.
There continue to still be houses for sale in the area at reasonable prices, I've seen some take weeks on end to sell.
And I never found the prices listed on realty sites to be off from actual sale.
Well good for you.
How much was it? What town, if you don't mind me asking? And how long did it take you too save enough for your down payment?
Edmonton, AB.
265k, 2 bed, 1.5 bath, unfinished basement, no garage, definitely a bot of a fixer (has a lot of landlord specials left behind we had to put work into fixing up)
Took a year and a half to save up the down payment + nest egg at ~$700/month set aside by cutting out a lot of expenses and living sorta frugal. No mcdonalds, no buying fun stuff, meal prepping, canceling subscriptions, etc etc.
We were at the time making a total of 70k combined before taxes. We could've prolly saved even more but we didn't want to go full peasant mode, lol.
I also had a large chunk of crypto from many years prior (~12k value at the time we signed the mortgage) I could've dipped into if needed, but we actually never needed to sell out that for the house and I wanted to keep holding it.
Good thing I didn't give in and sell, because a year later that 12k turned into 22k and I used that to substantially improve the home and build my makerspace in the basement, as well as build my garden in the back.
The house is definitely got a lot of... character... but I'm very happy with it and I don't need or want a bigger home. It's small with a big yard which means less space to clean, and all the fixing stuff keeps me busy.
I could do with less electrical issues though, prior owners didn't seem to give a shit about proper wiring work and I've had to basically re-install every switch and plug in the house. Also went on a fun adventure pulling ethernet through the attic to got modern wired gigabit internet delivered to key points in the house so everything didn't have to use wifi. Added security cameras, a PoE switch and server rack in the basement, and got air conditioning installed recently too.
House feels like a home now, and that's what matters.
I have lived in several major Canadian cities in my life and I can assure everyone that this guy is a fuckin dumbass.
Come visit me in Vancouver where a two bedroom rents for 3700 on average and avg home price is 1.2m. 'Avg home' being a 750sq foot condo with $350/month strata(HOA) fees.
We used to live in Montreal and thought that was pricey when we saw rents hit $2000. I do anything for that kind of rent:space ratio now.
Ten years ago? Sure. I remember basically everyone insisting there wasn't any point in even looking for a house until you could break the PMI threshold and how houses were so much more expensive than rent and you would never break even. And I have a few friends who, regardless of what the rest of us said, may have lost their "window" to ever own a home.
These days? It is just the truth that you are fucked. Because unless you can afford to pay considerably over asking price and waive inspections, you are basically fucked outside of unicorn scenarios. And... basically the only way to amass enough wealth to reach that point is to come from money or have a high paying remote job and actively choose to live in the middle of nowhere next to two trailers with confederate flags painted on the walls.
This is the sorta shit the aforementioned disinformation has been spreading.
As someone who recently bought a home in a major city, we had no issues like that.
Everything was by the book, we got an inspection, paid under asking price by a small margin, and now live in it. We did the min 5% down payment, and our household income was only about 70k total between the two of us combined.
Took us about a year and a half to save up the down payment, but we got there.
Right now there's dozens of homes I've seen up for sake for weeks and weeks, this month.
Mayne your specific city just sucks and you need to move somewhere affordable and sane.
Based on the rest of your ranting in this thread reeking of "just pull yourself up by your bootstraps and make better life decisions":
actively choose to live in the middle of nowhere next to two trailers with confederate flags painted on the walls
That aside: Some people get genuinely lucky. Others will learn the hard way about WHY that house was cheap (see: Texas and Florida). That doesn't change the reality. Unless you are going to say the entire housing crisis is "fake news" which, again, wouldn't overly surprise me based on your other comments.
I own a house, in a major city, in Canada, that I purchased fairly recently.
There are houses in my area that are just as affordable right now.
Are you saying all these for sale signs are fake, it's some kind of psyop or some shit?
Dunno what to tell you but half decent homes go for about 300k here, closer to mid 200ks if it's a fixer upper.
Edmonton, Alberta, population of ~1mil.
Pretty much everytime this comes up, any city discussed, in about 5 minutes I've been able to find affordable homes for 250k to 300k or so that are decent looking and not too far out in the burbs.
But I guess the home I literally live in and bought isn't real.
And no, I didn't get any help from my parents, I didn't get lucky, and my partner and I aren't rich, between the two of us our income was about 70k total combined, took us about a year and a half to save up the down payment on our home, while living in the city.
Turns out your experiences don't equate to everyone else's.
I've yet to see anyone post actual contrary examples.
It's always built on top of bullshit. Either they dip out, or they post clickbait articles that kick things off with the average or median house prices as their foundation.
That or they give an example city and within minutes I can find decent looking affordable homes and suddenly they have a million excuses for why those affordable homes dont count. You can audibly hear the sound of the goal post dragging across the grass.
1 million is not a particularly high population. Not going to do a deep dive on infrastructure or culture because all of that is incredibly subjective and I am not going to really pretend that my opinion is that of the average Canadian
But I think I see the key. You still think that when Pewdiepie looked into the camera, he was looking into your eyes and speaking to you. He wasn't. He, like most Personalities, was looking at a spot just above the camera lens to make it look like he was looking into your eyes. And he was saying general stuff to make you feel special.
Not everyone has your life experience. You appear to have gotten incredibly lucky. Good on you. That doesn't mean everyone else did or that everyone else's cost of living is low enough that they can save up in just two years on a 70k salary. And, ignoring the reasons people might not want to move out of a region, they likely also don't have the savings or job skills to be able to pull off that move.
So maybe learn empathy? Or keep screaming about bootstraps and accusing the entire world of lying because people can't possibly have a different life experience than you.
Math is a universal truth, not an experience.
I've yet to see a SINGLE person on this thread provide any concrete examples of locations that truly are as bad as people claim.
And as always, if it starts with using the "average" or "median" household price, reminder that that's the price of a small mansion, not a starter home, starter home and median home are mutually exclusive.
Median home is the 50% mark, starter homes are closer to the 20% or lower mark. So you're starting things off about doubled of actual home prices you'd be looking at.
Median vehicle price is a brand new sports car off the lot, remember that. You wouldn't look at brand new sports cars as the price for your first car, would you? That's what happens when you use the "median" or "average" price.l as your baseline.
You were given examples, you just didn't like them so you made even more shit up to pretend they don't count somehow.
Opposite.
The examples literally count as supporting exactly what I said.
It's not complicated.
A sterling example of how anything is possible when you lie.
Everytime this topic comes up, the absolute inundation of people willing to proudly demonstrate their vital lack of reading comprehension and math skills is fantastic.
People are just way more interested in being mad and blaming their problems on everything else, to the degree they will proudly post examples supporting exactly what I have said and proceed to act like they just proved me wrong and really got one over on me.
After many years of this, it's such a common occurrence I'm shocked when anything otherwise happens.
Feels b4 reals, as always.
People just wanna be mad about shit, but they direct their anger at the wrong shit (I assume this is intentional redirection at times though, better to get all the idiots malding at ghosts so they don't notice the actual causes of their issues)
The thing that's funny is the only person your comment really applies to here is you. You're wholly unable to substantiate a single thing you say yet you keep projecting your inadequacy on others. When someone is able to show that you're full of shit, you just lie and pretend they said something else.
You saying feels b4 reals has to be the funniest thing I've read all day, given all you've given us is feels and not a single reals. You're so far up your own ass yet you still manage to fail to see how full of shit you are.
I assume this is intentional redirection at times though, better to get all the idiots malding at ghosts so they don't notice the actual causes of their issues.
I lied, this is the funniest thing you've said. I originally thought you had zero self awareness but you've somehow managed to go negative.
Yes, I'm stalking this guy because it's funny.
The irony of a guy who has left 49 heavily refuted responses lecturing anyone on just wanting to be mad might be the best for me. It's either that or how he repeatedly tells people their math and reading comprehension skills suck as he repeatedly demonstrates a lack of both. Dude is so convinced he's right that he's engaging in Olympic class mental gymnastics to avoid any evidence otherwise. He's a schadenfreude factory and I'm loving it.
Oh shut up and enjoy retiring in your home that you worked half as hard for as the rest of us you privileged turd.
You sound salty. What budgeting software do you use, out of curiosity? I find without auto import support for my transactions and debt tracking, it felt way more challenging to get my finances in lime to save up.
I swapped to Mint at the time (though it's shutting down now RIP) and having that ability to see every penny we were spending lined up really helped a lot in terms of tightening the budget up to improve our ability to save.
We squeezed another $300/month out of our budget, pushing us up from $400/month to $700/month and that effectively halved our time to hit out goal.
There's just so much random shit people seriously don't think about as expenses adding up. My quick energy drink I'd often grab with a snack in the morning otw to work barely registered on my radar, but it was $5 or whatever a day, 3-4 days a week, which adds up to nearly 90 bucks monthly.
Just ordering a bulk box of energy drinks instead and remembering to grab it otw out the door was saving me like $50 a month.
If you don't have specific budgeting tools installed and actively used, you don't really have a leg to stand on (yet) when complaining about cost of living.
Go start there, run the numbers and import your last couple months transactions, and if you truly can't see a few hundred bucks a month you can squeeze than I can sympathize with ya.
We squeezed another $300/month out of our budget, pushing us up from $400/month to $700/month and that effectively halved our time to hit out goal.
Cool. Once in a while we can afford to go out to a restaurant if we can put enough towards healthcare bills, credit card bills and student loans that month.
During the year abd a half we saved, we only ate out a couple times total? Our anniversary and Christmas. Maybe on my birthday too IIRC.
So yes indeed, while saving money you diont waste it on frivolous stuff like eating out, that is 100% correct and very normal.
Cool. We don't have anything left to save. If you can save $700 a month by only going out to eat twice in a year, you must be going to extremely expensive restaurants.
But hey, maybe you're not thousands of dollars in medical debt. We are. I'm looking forward to you telling me that that's my fault for getting sick.
That sucks mate, the US Healthcare system is fucked.
$700/month in savings is very solid though, and that's after paying off existing loans as part of our budget.
Great, but your claim was better budgeting software was the problem. It's not the problem for many, many people. Debt is the problem. So is the fact that over 60% of Americans can't afford to save anything because all of their money is gone to pay bills, rent and debts once they get paid. And better budgeting software won't pay off debt if you aren't paid enough to do it. Nor will it pay inflated rent. And it certainly won't get you a house.
We're lucky enough to already have a house and we still had to take out a HELOC on our mortgage just so we could cover other costs.
We don't buy endless luxuries. We don't buy the latest goods. My computer is from 2015 and was a gift. My phone is from 2018. My car is from 2016 and I only bought it (used) because my 2002 car's engine block cracked. Our kitchen is not filled with high-end brand name foods. Yes, we very occasionally do something fun as a family. Should my child never get to have fun just so we can somehow magically save $700 a month through budgeting software?
If you use budgeting software and truly can't find any highlighted costs you can actually cut, and despite that can't afford to save money, then you have my sympathy, that sounds shitty and challenging.
My point is and continues to be if you complain about cost of living but you don't use freely available budgeting tools, I won't sympathize with you (yet), because every grown adult should just be doing that. It's a basic part of life and being an adult that people just don't bother doing.
Itd be the equivalent of someone complaining their car doesn't work but then admitting they've never checked their oil.
If you talk to any financial advisor, having a budget system is always step 1, so if a person hasnt dine that yet, their complaints just sound like whining to me as the person hasn't even done the absolute bare minimum step 1 yet to try and address or even understand the problem.
I assume such a person doesn't want to put any work in to get out of the hole they dug themselves into.
IF they do have a budget and their costs simply are just that bad, and they've already cut every single cost they can, then they have my sympathy as that means they actually are trying.
But unfortunately, after working with a LOT of people in various industries who complain about these issues, it has become abundantly clear that most people just want to complain and not actually do anything about it, and just keep wasting money.
I don't know your situation, but I've worked with so many people and so so so few of them even could hold a convo about budgeting, let alone talk about what tool(s) they use and tracking solutions they leverage.
So I now, after many many years of seeing how awful everyone seems to be at budgeting, just assume the average person is completely incompetent when it comes to managing money as the default.
For every 1 person I meet who has preferred budgeting tools, I have met dozens and dozens that couldn't even explain what a tax bracket actually means or is.
So I just assume the average person is at that level for finances. No hate, it's just facts that most people just... don't know or care to know how money works, they have other priorities in life, like family and their jobs and hobbies, /shrug
No.
Spreading disinformation, especially about serious topics like economics, medicine, politics, religion, etc, needs to be cracked down on more. Posing as a professional online and spreading damaging info on purpose should result in jail time imo.
After four years of having Trump as president, how is it possible that you cannot see how dangerous ideas like this are?
You mean the president that largely became elected due to massive waves of disinformation smear campaigns and fear mongering?
Did you forget the DNC worked with media outlets to install him as the "easy" opponent for Hilary to beat?
https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/148198/1/paper_2019012.pdf
I mean, I'll side with the academic research conducted by experts.
Wait a moment... This says home ownership is related in a statistically significant way to parental status, even among skilled graduates...
Hrm...
It's so much more than that though, imho.
For one thing, it's not merely people "posing" as professionals - i.e. those who have no credentials to show - but the actual professionals themselves who are often the source of misinformation. Remember when Trump told people to drink bleach (and then two guys in Kansas literally did precisely that)? He also told people that sunlight can destroy the virus - I know people irl who when they got sick, they went outside to sunbathe... in the dead of winter, in sub-freezing temperatures.
For another, there are charts & graphs of news media outlets from before being bought out by billionaires vs. after that, which conclusively prove that the name of the buyer is mentioned drastically less often (and most especially in a negative context) after that purchase compared to before it. If "reporters" - the literal card-carrying members of this establishment - cannot be trusted to tell the news, then who can?
To become TRULY informed about something... takes many, MANY years. When I was a kid, I believed in trickle-down economics, because that's what I was told. I even voted based on that. Many people still do believe it, but not in spite of listening to their news organization of choice, and rather b/c of it.
I upvoted your comment bc I think it adds value to the conversation, but ultimately I disagree with your ending sentence: it seems far more likely that those who speak out against "the establishment" will end up in jail, thus turning that into one more tool for those who speak "untruths" to remain in political power, than for the reverse to happen.
My latter statement needs to legally be specifically limited to disinformation on specific topics. Posing as a doctor and giving faje health advice, posing as an investor, etc.
Will it cover all disinformation sources? God no, you are 100% right that major news outlets are a captured market now.
But cracking down on some disinformation is better than nothing.
During Covid 2020, there was a study that found the vast majority of disinformation could be sourced back to like, I want to say it was like a total of only a couple dozen specific people? Like a small handful of trolls basically could be blamed for a huge amount of disinformation. Some of them profited off it.
I think cracking down on the "source" points of bullshit could be a good starting point to at least taking a very large chunk out of the problem.
(100 bucks says many times it will be found to be Russian or Chinese actors at play in one way or another)
Aren't the things that you describe "already* illegal? Not that rich white people ever face any consequences for things these days, but... even so, aren't there technically laws in place for that already? "Fraud" for one.
Which illustrates that regardless of Right or Wrong, a thing that is not enforced is basically not a thing at all - a mere suggestion that people can feel free to ignore, especially if their finances depend on them doing so.
Whereas conversely, that same issue in reverse, let's call it Wrong or Right, if it receives oh let's say Congressional backing, receives legal protections. At worst, imagine someone doing a crime, then immediately receiving a Presidential pardon, was it really a "crime" then? (Yes, obviously, but... is it though? Not by all definitions of that word.)
So you are right, but naive: "misinformation" is not something that you or I get to define, but rather those in power do, hence they will twist and pervert it to suit their own ends.
I see that you are trying to avoid the "politics" surrounding the topic and trying to discuss it in isolation or that, but that is simply not how the world of humans has ever worked, at any point in our existence. Like, at best that only works when all sides are participating in a "good faith" effort to arrive at The Truth - and yes, under those conditions what you said is an effective means, e.g. a doctor who gives bad advice regardless of the criminal court system can lose their medical license that is governed independently - but the problem is that wherever politics gets involved, we can no longer depend on people acting in good faith anymore.:-(
“Fraud” for one.
Fraud doesn't necessarily cover socialed7a as you aren't selling a product or directly profiting off a service you are selling, so it's a gray area.
You can have multiple layers of abstraction between the disinformation and actual income stream with social media influencers, which heavily muddies the water.
But at this time, AFAIK no... it's not illegal in the US to cosplay in medical outfit and say random shit on Instagram.
“misinformation” is not something that you or I get to define
They are defined, and we are talking about disinformation, not misinformation.
Disinformation is the purposeful spreading of factually incorrect info willfully and knowing it's wrong.
Misinformation is the same but not knowing it's wrong, basically "on accident" or because you genuinely think it's the truth.
For disinformation to be legally acted on it would be up to the prosecutor to prove without a shadow of doubt that the defendant knew the info was wrong and benefited from still spreading it.
Which you can guess is very difficult to price, you'd need effectively to convince a jury that the person didn't truly think they were right.
There are already precedents for this, as there is a type of disinformation that is illegal right now, and that is Libel.
The Depp v. Heard case was a well published example of this. The prosecters had to effectively prove that Heard truly knew she was lying and benefited from that lie, and acted to deceive. An extremely high bar to prove.
But they had evidence photos of her clearly doctoring photos, testimony of witnesses that went against her accounts, text messages, etc.
So it's a high bar but not an impossible bar.
The same would be the bar for making "professional disinformation" illegal. You'd need to prove the person knew they were lying, which is very tough but not impossible (you'd be surprised how often these idiots just admit to it outright)
Who will enact this grand plan though? Lawyers? Politicians? Scientists? Congressional funding controls all of those, and already-known facts are choosing to be ignored right this very second. So yeah, very few here will disagree with you that disinformation should not be prosecuted - what people are saying is that there is a difference between knowing the path, and walking the path. How to get it DONE?
But far, Far, FAR worse than that even, asking Congress to do this for us would be... significantly worse than not doing that. Congress will use this tool as a weapon to enact the precise and exact opposite of what you say: instead of shutting down the dis-information sources, they will shut down the pro-information ones. Remember all the rhetoric against Fauci? Politicians care about facts, if and only when they can use them to further their own agendas.
Congress is the very source of much of the disinformation going around right now. They aren't going to stop simply b/c we ask nicely. Nor are they likely to cooperate. Instead, if what you are saying were proposed as a law, they are likely to simply gladly accept the gift that we offered them, then proceed to bash our heads in with it.
That is my own two cents anyway. And as you can see, I am not terribly trusting:-). For example, China is doing exactly what you are proposing - though young people there do not seem terribly happy with the results:-(.
For those downvoting, the most effective lies always have some truth to them.
Honestly the biggest reason they can’t afford housing is because the majority don’t know how to budget and/or stick to it. This goes for a large amount of the poor as well. They’re constantly spending their money on consumables and other non-wealth building things. In the US, as a society, we’ve done a shit job of teaching our kids this valuable lesson, pun intended.
Doesn’t mean the value of the dollar isn’t lower than it has been in a while and that mortgage rates aren’t high (they aren’t the highest, by the way; it was at ~12% in the 90s). That food prices aren’t insane and that corporations aren’t taking advantage and jacking up their margins, they are.
If the system isn't working for the majority, maybe it's the system that's flawed rather than individuals?
It is working for the majority is the thing. Most people have jobs, food on the table, and a roof over their head.
The people not well off are at a local maxima, sure, but way more than 50% of people have a comfortable life here in the west, so the system is working for most people.
It's a tough pill to swallow, as much as life sucjs here in the west, it's still a fuck tonne better than many other way way way shittier countries out there. US and Canada are still in the top 20% of places to live in the world.
If you look at the current state of society and think "things are working well for the majority of people" I'm not sure we'll be able to engage in any meaningful discussion.
It literally is working for the majority of people mate, however you feel about it, poverty is the very small minority.
I would love to make poverty even less of an issue in the west, dont get me wrong, but the average person is fed, has a roof over their head, has a job, and is getting by.
Homelessness, poverty, illness, etc is a minority and that literally means the average person is not in that group.
Literally by definition, the average person is not the minority. That's what the average means...
Poverty doesn't refer exclusively to homeless people.
Literally by definition, the average person is not the minority. That’s what the average means…
I had to come back to this comment just to point out that this isn't the definition of "average" and the "average" person could very well be in the minority depending on what we're measuring (and which measure of central tendency we're referring to when we say "average").
As an example: The mean number of limbs for humans is lower than 4. However, the overwhelming majority of humans have four limbs.
Irrelevant - people who already own their homes, and people who already locked in mortgage rates in the past are not the topic of discussion here.
Rather, even people who are diligent are losing hope that a home will be within reach, due to all the factors under discussion. Also, diligent people who cannot afford a home NOW are having to shell out rent, rather than build up equity, which isn't helping their future situation.
A better argument might be "the housing market undergoes swings, and you just have to wait it out, the same as past generations had to do". However, there are several indicators that point to the fact that people in younger generations are not living life as high as was done previously - and there are many reasons for that, some intrinsic, some external such as globalization and automation - but regardless, the fact is that they have less hope than people in past generations.
And I am not certain that they should? Hope in what, based on what evidence - that the major Powers That Be, which secularly are what, the Presidency, Congress, and the Supreme Court as part of government, and outside of that, Corporations? Will the dawn of AI fix everything?
Please check your privilege: life in the Western world is only better than many third world nations for those who have money. For those who do not, it is significantly worse.
For those who do not, it is significantly worse.
Factually false mate.
The west has enormous infrastructure for people, welfare programs, shelters, upskilling programs, anti-poverty measures, etc.
Do you actually think someone without money in a third world country is better off than someone without money in the United States?
That's wild if you do. I can't imagine what a sheltered life a person has to lead to think that a homeless person in Mexico, or North Korea, or Russia, etc etc, is actually living a better life than a homeless person in the US...
Wild.
I do not expect you to believe me - this world would be a far better place if people were not so naive and actually looked at facts. Also, I doubt my ability to convey things well, or accurately, but to give you a start at least: take a look at the stats for, lets say, infant mortality. They are rather wild. Also visit an inner city: the lack of medical care in particular is shocking. I am not shitting you, but doctors organizations have literally started sending teams here to the USA, particularly in the southwestern areas near the border. One of the more interesting data points is the percentage of vaccinated people: some citizens of a third-world nation might literally kill for a vaccine, whereas here in the USA people snub their noses and refused to take it even when it was free.
Also visit an inner city: the lack of medical care in particular is shocking
Mate you understand that literally having a hospital at all already puts one in the top 50% out if the gate, right?
Quick litmus test:
If you take a shower in water you can drink, you are in the top 20% worldwide. If you can fill your water bottle up at a tap, you are in the top 20%.
I volunteer at a homeless shelter on weekends and literally just the incredulous reaction some folks had when they same me casually refill my water bottle from the tap really firmly reminded me where some people are at from other countries.
We wash our hands casually with water we can also drink.
That is incredible wealth on the global scale
Palestinians right now are drinking literal sewage to survive.
I shower and can open my mouth and gargle the water coming out of that shower head.
On the global scale, the very fact you are posting on this Lemmy instance means you are in the global 1%.
It could be better, bit by God it ca be a billion times worse too, so I try and always keep perspective on that when I see doom posting about how it sucks so bad that millenials don't all get to own individual mcmansions like boomers got to.
First, thank you SO MUCH for your personal service. This should never devolve into a mere academic issue, to win fake points in some impersonal debate with someone online that will never meet irl. But if it was that, then you are definitey winning in the boots-on-the-ground sense, and I for one think that's so freaking awesome!:-P
Yeah I do not know everything, I just know what I read, e.g. https://www.ajmc.com/view/us-has-highest-infant-maternal-mortality-rates-despite-the-most-health-care-spending. Ofc not every place world-wide is the same, and not every place in the USA is the same either, though I find it highly troubling that not just one but many places inside the USA has an infant mortality rate worst than SOME (though not all) nations that are considered "third-world" (e.g. https://www.uhhospitals.org/blog/articles/2019/04/addressing-the-health-crisis-of-black-maternal-death-and-infant-mortality, and this was even from several years ago before the recent data - COVID? - pushed our ranking down from 32 to 51st).
Though details aside, yes it could always be worse, I cannot argue with you there:-). Mostly I think it means that we should not pat ourselves on the back saying "good job, America!" b/c there's so much that remains to be done. But also, I don't see how telling people who are grieving the loss of their futures that it can always get much worse is going to help? Then again, we are only dancing around semantics here - regardless of how it is phrased or handled, I do agree that we need to adjust our expectations moving forward, and opening our eyes to check our first-world privileges is a fantastic start to that:-).
This is a valid concern, and it's true you can measure QoL on a variety of different metrics.
I'd be really curious to know by what the infant mortality rate is so high in the US specifically, what's killing them by comparison?
Cuz I know their Healthcare statement isn't great but still, it's hard to imagine it's doing that bad, is another factor at play? Their poverty isn't bad enough to explain it, and I dunno if gun violence plays a huge role for infant deaths (child and teen deaths though, absolutely)
What's the cutoff for infant? Old enough for guns to start factoring in, cuz that's a serious issue on its own as well.
I truly don't know. But why would poverty be insufficient to account for it? If you lack access to medical care facilities, it's a whole different world. "Third-world" nations at least have a history of midwives and such, but in the USA if the "expectation" was to go to the hospital, but then you don't actually go, the facilities that are available can be lesser. There is also a segment of society where rich women choose to use midwives rather than go to care facilities, and I wonder how much that plays a role as well (in terms of infant deaths not due to poverty, but bc of misinformation).
https://www.cdc.gov/reproductivehealth/maternalinfanthealth/infantmortality.htm - admittedly I am no expert at reading this, but it looks like poverty at first glance. Moreover, it looks like if not all the right-wing-controlled areas, at least the ones that are the most racist - looking at the race distribution table it is, how shall we say, not white people even in those areas. Almost like "those people" (non-white) are allowed to pay taxes, but when it comes time to apportion the spending priorities, the white people in charge choose to spend elsewhere, every time. Access to food, ability to get away from toxins, as well as pregnancy-specific concerns.
Interestingly (to me), the causes of infant deaths in America seem very different (again to my unpracticed eye) than those worldwide: https://www.nichd.nih.gov/health/topics/infant-mortality/topicinfo/causes.
But I could be biased, after having watched this: https://youtu.be/-v0XiUQlRLw?si=3CruIh83bPWX6dKA. That's probably a good thing, since we should be biased towards facts:-). I hope that video helps explain my contention that there is not just one single "American experience", and rather there is kind of a second experience altogether depending on skin color and location. And the latter overlaps nontrivially with "third-world" nations, despite being amidst the land of plenty.
Part of what made America a beacon of hope for the world was how while it had its top people and the people mashed down at the bottom, same as everywhere, most of the people were somewhere in the middle. Whereas now, the bottom isn't so much getting any lower (if anything it should mainly rise as medical stuff becomes even cheaper over time?) but the average is dropping, fast, to get closer to joining it.:-| Though ofc it still has a long way to go, and things may always change in the meantime (even if that looks doubtful right now).
Boomer take.
That’s cool. I’m not a boomer.
Boomer response
A boomer take is, pick yourself by your bootstraps. I didn’t say anything close to that nor do I believe it. It takes a support system, even if it’s one person, to get out of a gutter.
Try something with a better argument than a low effort single sentence. You’re embarrassing yourself.
No, you basically said “stop eating avacado toast and make your coffee at home.”
Ok, boomer.
If you wanna be reductive and lack reading comprehension, sure.
lol, troll.
Again.
Go troll elsewhere.
This is a lie and you've been manipulated. I've seen poverty and watched people starve themselves skinny for savings. There are individual differences and if your differences make you useless to the economy (where you aren't coerced into seperating from your money for your health) then that's absolutely fantastic for you. But please don't chime in to preach at people who are starving thanks.
Not everyone who is poor is starving. The vast majority aren’t.
"Come on, people, some of the poors are still fat!"
Your attitude is beyond despicable.
Words of someone who has never had a real relationship with someone financially struggling. I could explain the small accumulation of hardships such as medical, transport, food, rent, gas, electricity expenses and the psychological impact it has but idk if you are at the stage of life where you can swallow that properly.
I work with several people and have worked with many people that are financially struggling and they all have the same thing in common, which I’ve already outlined.
I’m not trying to say that you aren’t in a different boat but that doesn’t mean your experience is the same as all those who are poor either.
I hope you find the support you need to help you out of whatever situation you find yourself not able to get out of. We obviously aren’t going to have the same perspective.
You might not be starving while living paycheck to paycheck as nearly half of all Americans are currently, but make no mistake, you are poor.
I've been saving my cash for over a decade in hopes of buying a house someday, and it's still not realistic for me to purchase one right now. The line just keeps getting further and further away. I've done everything "right" according to you, yet it's still not getting me any closer to ownership.
We need government to step in and help us. This problem isn't going to go away just by having everyone tighten their belts and save for a year or two. It's going to require a massive legislative sweep to overhaul the system in favor of owner occupants and not investment hedge funds.
Those wealth building things are vehicles of exploitation. Someone has to be the neck getting stepped on as it stands
Everyone is able to be exploited no matter status.
Who’s exploiting Zuckerberg?
How does one budget their way out when the mortgage for a median priced house exceeds half your take-home pay for the month for a median household income?
Median home price in Sept: $412,000 Median household income 2022 (latest census data): $74,580 Today's 30-year fixed rate mortgage rate est.: 7.30% Down payment assumption 10%.
So your monthly payment would be $3,121.60 while your monthly income before taxes is $6,215.
You're spending well over half of your take-home pay after tax just on the mortgage payment for a typical household buying a typically priced house, which is not affordable even in this extremely generous example that ignores all other fees, insurance, and the fact that you're on the hook to maintain that property.
Budget your way out of that?
median priced house
Not trying to buy a small mansion as your starter home is a good place to start lol.
You do know what the median home is, right?
(Hint, the median priced vehicle, to compare to a similar market, is aprox a brand new off the lot sports car)
You are looking at the 50% mark, starter homes are in the bottom 20%, and it's an exponential curve too.
This is just the "everyone is buying avocado toast" argument which is a rebranded "everyone is buying smartphones" argument. Budgeting isn't going to turn your $30k yearly pay into a $30k down payment and $2,000 PITI payment
