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It is about politics. You need to organise yourselves better into unions. Then, you strike until you get what you deserve.
Why does Denmark and the rest of the Nordic countries have so high quality of living and happy people? Cause the people realized that you need to work together to get what you want. You need to have solidarity with your other workers to push for better compensation and work environments.
Do this, or you're doomed.
The america empire is following in the exact same footsteps of the Roman empire. If you fail to learn from history then history will repeat itself. The great American empire will fall and there will be nothing u can do about it no matter how hard u try.
"Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light."
— Dylan Thomas
Is not about politics
It’s all about politics. Just not about the 24/7 clown show that passes for politics in the US.
It’s about who gets what, how the spoils are divided. It’s obvious how the deck is stacked against ordinary people: the middle class is being bled dry and the hoarder class is taking off with all of it.
What’s extraordinary is that that somehow passes for ‘natural’ and ‘not about politics’.
Well capitalism is based on the horrible unfeeling cruelty of nature, that we originally created human society to escape.
So that's why it feels natural. It's the unfair unfeeling system of nature that society is not supposed to be
buying a house is simply out of reach unless you have dual income
Not in all areas of the United States. Houses routinely sell for under $200k in my city. There's also many for under $100k.
Say city.
Check out much of the Midwest. Check out Detroit.
Median income for the area?
People say this kind of thing a lot, but I don't really understand if they don't have any family or friends, don't care about their family and friends, or just think it's reasonable to have to choose between your relationships and living in an affordable house.
It sucks but you have to do what you think is best maybe the savings allow for some road trips to visit.
My household is in the top few percentile, we're fine. I just think everybody else should also have the luxury of not having to choose between relationships and shelter.
No contest.
Unfortunately, we live in a society
Beautiful. In fact, under royalty, people used to be killed with things like the Breaking Wheel and being boiled alive, which makes the Guillotine a far more humane punishment. I'm tempted, though, to say that "nothing ever happens" and assume the U.S. will proceed as normal.
Nothing ever happens, until it does.
Honestly, the ones who survive well are the ones who build communities that take care of each other: Sharing meals, sharing gardens, sharing skills and labor, sharing rides, sharing emotions and stories, etc.
Capitalism was always pushing the US towards a gigantic class divide, and Boomers and Gen X carried that torch at the expense of their descendants' future. Communities of support are something that will have helped regardless of who is carrying what ideology and regardless of who is in charge, and they thrive in adversity.
So if you're looking for advice, build your local communities. Strengthen your bonds with your neighbors. Participate in local governance.
Gen x is in the same boat as millenials, they just had a tiny bit more of a chance still.
and Gen X carried that torch
Has anyone seen my torch, 'cause I sure can't find it (though I was in the last couple years of Gen X)
I would if the damned bank would let me buy a house!!! Trying to get a 90K bank loan, have 36k in cash, and still denied because I don't have a credit score.
I know this wasn't your point, but I've been confused on a particular point for awhile:
buying a house is simply out of reach unless you have dual income and it better be nearly six figure dual income....
Just the general idea of it being impossible to afford to buy a house. And don't get me wrong, the prices on houses have gotten ridiculous! At the same time, we talk about landlords buying houses and charging exorbitant rent (suggesting at the very least more than what they pay).
So if rent is more than the mortgage, insurance, etc, then how is it impossible to buy a house if it is possible to rent (an equivalent home)? Is it the down payment (if any)? Costs involved in purchasing? Because it seems like month to month it would be cheaper.
I say this as someone who has rented and owned, and owning felt significantly cheaper.
(Full disclosure, I'm in the military, so I had access to a VA loan... though not really sure what that did for me except maybe allow 0% down... if other people are absolutely required to put up a percentage then I can definitely understand it).
Your questions are stating false comparisons. The only alternative to buying a house you listed is renting an equivalent house. But there are several other alternatives. To buy a house you must qualify on you and your spouse's/ Co buyers proven income. So even if you intend to have a roommate, you cannot included the rent they’ll pay in your income. But it’s almost trivial for two couples (4 incomes) to rent a house together. There are also apartments, or trailer parks, or living with parents.
But let’s get back to equivalent homes.
A young couple makes 80k/yr and wants to buy a 250k house. They can’t afford much of a down payment and finance 225k. They’re paying roughly 2500/mo in a mortgage tax and insurance. That’s roughly half their take home income.
Older couple makes 160k/yr and just sold their previous home walking away with about 100k in equity. They also add 25k more for the down payment and finance 125k. Now their mortgage is 1200/ mo and they make more money so that represents a far lower percentage of their take home income as well. Even if they still only made 80k the fact they were already in a home with equity still leaves them with far more spending money each month.
The young couple is going to be in an apartment, or a trailer, they’re never getting into that home, even as a rental, unless the owners bought it during a low market and have a low mortgage and are not trying to get “today’s market rates” for it.
Mortgage interest rates are very high at the moment, and many people "feel" like that's never going to change, but it very likely will, significantly increasing what they'll be able to afford. Home prices in my city have been falling for a couple years since they went out of control bonkers during the pandemic, and I don't think they've hit bottom yet.
Point is, these things are typically cyclical and temporary
I didn't downvote you.
Many homes are being sold very fast, and very competitively. You need to be pre-approved AND have a down payment before the target house is even listed. If you don't put enough down, you have mortgage insurance which makes the monthly payment go up quite a bit.
Some very competitive places homes are being bought for cash, then often remortgaged to free up the cash you put in, but, you have to have it in the first place.
many buyers are telling their broker/agent "If a house comes up in xyz neighborhood, and it has these basic criteria, get my bid in sight unseen". It's going that fast. Your normal work a day, save your pennies home buyer doesn't stand a chance.
This doesn't even touch on investment firms doing this at an enterprise scale.
I have the same question. It seems like a doable goal for me, and I only have an Associates Degree. Are people just bad at saving and paying their bills on time?
My question was less about how doable it is, and more... if you can't afford to buy a house, how can you afford to pay rent (and thus someone else's mortgage plus a little extra)?
The last place I lived, I could afford my mortgage but I wouldn't have been able to afford to rent an equivalent house. Hence my confusion.
I've owned a house for a long time, but the issue is paying their current rent/bills while also saving enough for a down payment.
Va loan helps to make it favourable but also you need to consider that investors can structure it better than first time home buyer. Sometimes it aont about out running the bear just the next guy
Learn how to live in poverty and go unnoticed, because no grand and noble revolution is coming
I’m leaving. I’m tired of fighting.
Serious question, but where do you plan to go and how? I see so many people posting about leaving, but unless you're in a fairly high-demand career field, planning on marrying a local, or are already wealthy to the point that you likely won't be affected by whatever is coming down the line, you're going to have a bad time. Most countries aren't swinging the gates open for people that won't be a net positive on their system. And the ones that do probably aren't ones you want to go to.
I moved to Japan which has its good and bad points (like anywhere). If I had it to do over, I'd probably pick Norway or Finland instead, but I plan on spending the rest of my life here barring some earth-shattering change.
Well, weak yen looks pretty bad for future prospects.
I'm working to get an income stream in another currency as well because of that. It hurts for anything imported for sure, especially given a lot of fuel is imported, but it's still workable for now. If/when they get around to turning on some of the nuclear plants again or getting them replaced with renewables, energy costs and fuel imports should at least drop again.
It’ll take awhile, but the crux of it hinges on the inheritance I stand to receive next year. I know for a fact that I’ll be more than enough to do what we want to do.
Second, I’ve been planning on going back to school anyways for computer engineering, so what’s wrong with studying abroad? I’ve also been in and around IT and tech all my life, and I’m pretty decent with a soldering iron. I currently work as a board rework tech.
My wife is a pharmacy tech that’s been doing it for close to 20 years in a variety of environments. Depending on where we go, her field is one of those that are in demand. Specifically, we know she can get a Canadian work visa pretty easily. We have family in Vancouver so it works out.
I assume you've looked into visa requirements and whether you and your wife will be able to work. Canada is a bit cold for my taste, but if that's what you have your sights on, I hope you can make it work. Best of luck to you.
You get milked by the big corpos. Money flows from the poor to the rich.
And as long as you have only these two extreme right wing parties, there is nobody who would change it.
You can survive on very little, it just will be a lower quality of life than previous generations which feels bad, but you do what you need to in order to get by.
The simplest way to deal with all of this is to actually perform the financial calculations to see what's the best situation for you.
A $80,000 a year job in a city may actually leave you with a lower quality of life than a $40,000 a year job in the middle of nowhere if you're spending $4,500 a month on rent for a two bedroom apartment in the city, and it would only be $1000 for a two bedroom house the middle of nowhere.
Calculate some possible budgets for different areas and different lifestyles, and find out what works best for you. Being in a city is not as good as it used to be financially speaking.
If you're having trouble "surviving" either way, you need to figure out how to reduce your costs and/or up your income.
Common things like sharing a home (with a partner or roommate) can reduce your costs massively, trying to live alone is pretty stupid financially right now.
Learn how to cook things yourself, it's not hard with Youtube these days, you can massively slash your food budget by not eating out or buying pre-made food. One of the stupidest things I see is people picking up a second job, making very little per hour, and then spending 6 hours of their income on a dinner from a restaurant (eat in, eat out, doordash, etc.). You would have been better off just buying decent meal ingredients for 2 hours of your wage, and then spending 1 hour cooking and cleaning. Then you've got 3 hours worth of time back that you can either use to work for more money for other things, or just not bother working at all to have more time for you.
If you're stuck in a dead end low wage job, invest time in getting new skills that will enable you to get a better job. It's never too late to retrain for a better position unless you've already retired.
To be fair the USA seems to have the brightest future compared to basically any other country because you guys don't have this imminent demographic collapse like most other developed countries like Japan, Korea, China, Germany, Italy, etc. And because of your geography and size you are would only be mildly affected by a WW3.
Perhaps it helps to look at other parts of the world and see how comperativelly well you guys have it.
I guess the biggest challenge is to minimize the huge divide between the rich and the poor. Sadly you missed the opportunity to choose Berny Sanders as your leader a couple of times, that would have helped a lot.
Lol we do once the borders close.
heh, and republicans are going to lose their fucking minds when they start to see the consequences of the choices their leaders made. Like when fruit is like $10/lb because its all rotting in the fields because everyone who normally picked it is locked in a border ~~concentration~~ reeducation camp.
Too bad we have to live with the consequences of their choices too.
Lose their minds? Why? Their gameplan is destabilization and collapse. It’s on purpose. They will celebrate when things collapse, not cry.
Yeah those voters aren't turning against Republicans. Trump will piss enough people off that, if there's a free and fair election in 2028, Democrats will win. However, every problem Trump causes will get blamed on Democrats, who won't win a large enough majority to override their token centrist villains and pass meaningful reform, so we'll end up with another even crazier Republican administration in 2032. From there climate change fucks us all up and we die in the water wars of 2035 or the great famine of 2038 or some other horrible thing that we're too stupid to address before it slaps us in the face.
You really believe we're all going to die in the next 30years?
Or are you being hyperbolic?
I'm 72. Pretty likely I'll be gone by then.
Heading upwards or downwards?
I'm 53. Can't we not talk about the next 30-years?
I can't speak for everyone, but if I'm not dead in the next 30 years I'm going to be extremely disappointed.
If I'm not dead in 30 years I'll absolutely make sure I'm dead! I just need to wait out my older family members and then I can finally just stop.