This is exactly what mega-corporations want. If we save money, they don't get it.
this post was submitted on 20 May 2024
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The powerful rich are always pushing for the closest thing to slavery they can get away with.
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I'm saving up for the American Dream 2.0™️: Moving to another country
It's not just America though.
Where I'm from:
UK average income before tax) £34,963 - £27,911 after tax (assuming NO student loan and NO pension) (for context: a band 3 nurse with 3 years experience makes £24,336 before tax or £20,631.51 after with no pension)
England average house price: £375,131
Approx ratio after tax: 13:1
Minimum deposit: 5% - £18,756.55
Tax: 0% on first time buyers
Fees: about £1,000 - £5,000
Total cost to get going: Approx £21,750 - nearly a years wage.
Now let's look where I live: Spain!
Turns out Spain really is a load of countries wearing a hat so getting unified stats is not easy. Let's try Barcelona:
Average income before tax: €33,837 - €25,470 after tax
Average house price: €376,399
Approx ratio after tax: 15:1
Minimum deposit: 10% - €37,639.90
Purchase tax: 10% - €37,639.90 (plus 1.5% for new builds)
Fees: 2 - 5% - 7,527.98 - 18,819.95
Total cost to get going: €82,807.78 - €94,099.75
Turns out treating housing as a market to speculate on might just be the problem all along.
Yeah, I hate this American-centric idea of "Oh, only my country is experiencing this totally unique problem, I'll just go somewhere else."
As if late-stage global capitalism would somehow be a problem that is unique to a single country.
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Unfortunately not much better elsewhere, if at all. What would make me move is the idiotic healthcare system.
Every time I read the phrase 'the American Dream' I think of the part of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas when, after spending the whole novel trying to find the American Dream, they're given directions, only to find the remains of a burnt-down nightclub, "a huge slab of cracked, scorched concrete in a vacant lot full of tall weeds."
Thompson rightly concludes that the American dream is already dead by the 70s.
If you look west you can almost see the place where the wave broke and rolled back....
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Fear and Loathing should be required reading in schools. A lot of the meaning gets lost in all of the drugs, but in the midst of that haze one can find a lot true things about America.
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I think of the Carlin bit... It's the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe in it.
If the American Dream were realistic, we wouldn't be calling it a dream...
You have to be asleep to believe it --George carlin... I probably dodnt get it right
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"Everything is very expensive, and people can't save money"
FTFY
Its a curious state of affairs, because the stock market has been booming all the while.
If you have savings you're getting enormous passive incomes. 20-30% jumps in accumulated investments annually. If you don't have savings you're watching prices skyrocket while salaries flat-line in the face of anti-inflation economic policy.
This does kinda raise the question "Where are equities markets getting all this extra cash from?" And the answer appears to be... its very profitable to charge people more and pay them less.
The stock market is a measure of how much wealth can be extracted from the working class.
It does not measure the health of the economy. That sometimes the market is doing well as the economy is doing well is closer to coincidence than causality.
The fact that the working class can no longer save money, and must spend every dime is great for the stock market. Next they will come for the dollars we have not spent yet. Because mortgages are no longer feasible for most people they'll have to find new debt traps. Cars will skyrocket in price, you'll be able to take out a loan to rent an apartment. Student debt will spiral to laughably unrepayable levels.
They'll take every dime we have, then they'll take every dime we'll ever make. And when it gets to the point where there's no more money to bleed, unless a new source of endless dollars can be found, the market will feed on itself.
If you think peacefully protesting Wall Street is going to fix that, I'll sell you the Brooklyn bridge.
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This is true, I asked a new-ish employee about getting/saving for a house and she was like, "why bother? They cost to much."
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I love how Fortune always deflects from the actual issue: wages aren't matching prices, which means the average American is getting screwed by company owners and wealthy investors, at work, at the bank, at university.
It's not about interest rates or inflation, although those are both relevant. If inflation were evenly balanced, it wouldn't hurt most people, right? That is definitional. And high interest rates block house purchases, but in theory they also benefit house owners who have fixed interest rates. So again, if people were able to afford houses in the yhr past few decades, this wouldn't be such a big issue.
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The headline reads like big retail trying to squeeze more profits. Of course people aren't saving as much, they have to buy groceries.
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Oh. Oh shit it hurts that reading this made me self-aware of this behavior. It’s one thing to be in this mindset and not be aware of it and it’s another to have it written out in front of you. 🤢
My retirement plan is a heroine overdose. I'll try to do better than that, but I'm not expecting much.
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Lots of news articles this week using a lot of words to say "Americans don't have savings"
“Prices are going up but wages aren’t. What have millennials done to cause this?”
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🙋♂️ That'd be me. Keep moving the goalposts society. I'm over it. I'll wait for my mom to die to get her house. Idgaf anymore. Don't need a house.
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Well, you gotta be asleep to believe the American Dream, so maybe this means a lot of people are waking up.
By brother in Satan, high inflation makes you spend money now. It's either that or going to hell.
Im saying that this bs is out of some relative comparison of how much generations are saving/investing. Everyone tried saving. But with low relative wages ofc ppl wont save as much as eg boomers - they didn't give up vacations or buying whatevers, but still saved money. Younger gens are just left with no money after that.
And also falling relative wages (inflation) makes you buy things asap to actually save money.
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This is literally a tool tip in the fascist parody helldivers 2.
I've gone the other way with this. I've significantly cut my spending down in the last couple years. No more eating out, no vacations, grow my own food, don't eat meat, no ac and minimal heating to only to keep pipes from freezing. Even with all that and more I'm spending as much as I did a few years ago but a much more restricted lifestyle. Be cool if my pay rate kept up with this inflation but my union agreed to a shit contract just before all this started.
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Organize a mass, simultaneous bankruptcy filing nationwide. Overwhelm the system with claims, and all debt collection ceases the moment you file for bankruptcy while the claims are being processed.
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We have been very lucky and fortunate to acquire the American dream. My wife and I wouldn't have been able to do it without the help of her family though. Every time I look at the housing market it's only gotten crazier.
having family help isn't the american dream. that's the aristocratic dream, where land is only owned by the wealthy who inherit it.
It blows my mind that the world basically runs on Monopoly money and accounting smoke and mirrors.
spoiler
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truth, I feel pressure to buy the things I want because I have no faith I will be able to afford them later. I figure, get it now while I can so that when I can't, I'll have it.
I don't want anything anymore. Everything on the shelves is just crap
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