TL;DR: Americans now need to make $120K a year to afford a typical middle-class life and qualify to purchase a home. Minimum.
I honestly don’t even know why this upsets me so much. I am 50 and all set. I don’t have children and barely any debt. I never considered myself particularly patriotic but somehow this whole thing gets under my skin. I guess it sours my achievements and fruits of decades of struggle (it took three generations of planning and hustle to get us out of poverty). It’s like being a kid having a birthday party at Chuck E Cheese by yourself while all your friends are locked outside and you can see them through the glass windows.
Because you have empathy for others, it’s a good thing.
I agree. Something I wish we saw more of.
Something foreign to MAGAts
It gets under my skin because the west was on the right trajectory; improving wealth equality, quality of life, work life balance, etc — Then Capitalists killed all those gains using Conservatism, Neoliberalism, and a bastardised version of Libertarianism — just to enrich a tiny percentage the human population and return the rest of humanity to feudalism.
Why should they own all the gains from humanities collective efforts, when all of us have a rightful claim to a share of those gains?
the west was on the right trajectory
A lot of the west is still on the right trajectory. It’s the US that is not.
There are a lot of developed countries, especially in Europe, where the “American Dream” is much easier to attain than in America. But, more often than not, they don’t even want that dream. For good reason.
Wanting other people to have what you have, without your struggle, is an opinion we need more of.
Especially when we have a society with a huge number of people who think that if you’re poor, you deserve it.
What gets me is, a lot of the POOR people say that about POOR people.
We live in the most effectively propagandized society ever created. It hasn’t been until more recently that it’s started to slip. A lot of folks still believe in the old lies and believe that everything would work if we just got rid of the immigrants, Jews, and corrupt politicians. Still I think more people are waking up to the reality that this system is broken not the people in it.
I’m in a similar boat, except in my early 40’s.
My parents are in their 80’s and working for DoorDash. They are lucky they at least paid off their home, because they didn’t save enough and this country is sucking every penny it can get from them.
I bought a condo that I love, have almost all my debt paid off, and am saving for what I hope will be an early retirement. It breaks my heart to see people struggling everywhere, and if I had Elon Musk money, I wouldn’t be blowing it on a vanity space program.
I’m so glad my Dad, also in his 80s, programs COBOL. My parents have owned their home since 86, but I’m sure that without the random COBOL job they’d have to do door dash or something as well.
Here’s what happened in a nutshell.
Lyndon Johnson had great plans for the US, but wanted to win the Vietnam War with one huge push. That quickly turned into a giant quagmire. LBJ and later Nixon, ordered bombing of the North. That meant the US factories were working 24/7. Nice for factory owners and union workers, but LBJ was paying for it with paper money because he didn’t want to raise taxes. Ironically, Nixon ran for President as an anti inflation and pro peace candidate.
Nixon and Kissinger doubled down on the bombing and inflation started to spiral. Also, those factories were getting a bit worn down. Unable to met the deamnd for the bombing and supply foreign markets the US ceded local steel making to Germany and Japan. This is going to bite the US in the ass when the Arab Oil boycott hits. US steel is much more oil dependant than the newer factories, so suddenly Toyotas and VWs are the hot cars, and US manufacturing takes a huge hit.
Carter tried to control inflation and cut oil use, but got kicked out over the Iran hostage mess. Reagan came in and cut taxes for the rich. This increased the debt, but gave the economy an unrealistic jolt.
tl dr. In 1960, minimum wage was $1.00/hour. The average house was $11,000.00 and $1 million was considered a vast fortune.* Middle class meant a High School graduate with a Union job supporting a family of four.
By the time Nixon, Reagan and Bush Sr were done, ‘middle class’ was two college degrees supporting the house and $1 million was what a rich guy paid for a party.
- In case anyone tells you that $1 million is 1960 would be $10 million today, tell them that in 1960, $100,000 would buy a mansion in Beverly Hills.
The massive difference in the purchasing power of what the Official Inflation Figures tell us - when we used them to adjust an amount of money at a past date for inflation over the years and get a supposedly equivalent present day amount - is the same salary now as in 1960, shows just how fake Official Inflation Figures are.
The reason for Official Inflation Figures being so much bullshit and always on the understating inflation side, is because the lower the Inflation used in calculating the Official GDP figures, the higher that latter figure gets.
All that talk of GDP Growth in the last few decades is the product of some very consistent (and hence likely purposeful) understating of the Inflation so that the Maths used to produce the Real (i.e. Official) GDP output a higher number hence politician can proudly declare GDP is growing strongly.
As Mark Twain once said,
There are lies and there are big damned lies, and then there are statistics!
Lyndon Johnson had great plans for the US
I recently learned that Johnson’s “Great Society” plan was partially a continuation of Kennedy’s “New Frontiers” plan (which he wasn’t very successful in pushing through Congress before he was assassinated).
LBJ is probably the most WTF President of the 20th Century. He pushed the Civil Rights Act, and created the Vietnam fiasco.
I like this story. Someone who worked for Kennedy and Johnson put it this way; if JFK came into your office and saw you reading he’d assume you were working. If LBJ saw you reading a book he’d think you were goofing off.
If we hadn’t had Wilson we wouldn’t have had Hitler, or Stalin. We may not have had Nixon and Reagan…
$1 million today is still a vast fortune to most people tbh
I think most people would see the gulf between owning one moderately nice house and a small business [$1 million in 2024] and owning an estate with several acres and some horses, a half dozen cars, and enough in the savings account to keep a few families going. [$1 million in 1960]
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Saved bro i need to marry a real welfare qween
Humans can’t marry corporations.
fair warning: my application packet was around 100 pages
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This happened because people were lulled into voting for the very people who gave their fair share of corporate profits to the rich. Looking at you, Republicans, especially Ronald Reagan.
You can argue that Democrats inability to support the working class and unions helped to kill the American dream. “Both sides” are capitalists.
Hell, Clinton essentially adapted Reaganism for the Democratic Party.
I didn’t expect upvotes. It’s an election year for christ sakes.
Lemmy is a leftist haven
Don’t blame me I voted for Kodos
And they’ll do it again.
dude ronald regan gave my family papers my cousins are named ronald and ronny
i am a communist too. sometimes bad people do good things
Poor tax laws on the richest 1% killed the American Dream.
Capitalism did that too. Capitalism is in a constant state of decline with short upward bursts of innovation that too will decline. Enshittification infects all.
My wife and I manage it because we both work.
I didn’t intend on marriage as a way to own a home but I couldn’t do it without my partner.
TL;DR: Americans now need to make $120K a year to afford a typical middle-class life and qualify to purchase a home. Minimum.
Maybe in the middle of nowhere America. Meanwhile my wife and I make well above that in Los Angeles and we can’t afford the monthly on a two bedroom house in a sketchy neighborhood.
SF Bay Area, $125k a year, I gave up on buying a house. I’ll just inherit my parents’ when they die, thanks.
A friend was looking at getting a home lately and I offered to look into co-signing with them, so we gave our information to see what they would qualify for. With both of our details, they offered them a home loan of something like $100k, really not even enough to get anything that’s on the market now except for the worst crack houses possible. I then looked at what would be possible if I just applied by myself and if I applied for a home loan for a place that I would rent out. Not sure if it was considered a business loan, but I wouldn’t be the occupant, it would be an investment property for me. Suddenly, by myself, I qualified for a $300k loan, same loan agency, just different terms. I do have great credit, so maybe that helped, it’s just weird how they come up with the numbers sometimes. Like you would think two people together would qualify for more than what a single person would qualify for.
What happened is that the other person apparently has absolutely terrible credit, so holy hell don’t cosign with him!
It’s a risk assessment. A low score as a primary borrower is more risky, even with a secondary borrower, the hassle to get paid if the first defaults isn’t worth it. Investment vs primary residence is also a different risk profile, you can assume some level of income from an investment property.
Don’t cosign anything for a friend, ever. It will screw up your friendship.
What’s to prevent someone from buying a house this way and then just “renting it” from themselves? lol
If you buy a house declared as investment, but you really intended to live there, it’s mortgage fraud.
Generally, mortgages for your primary residence offer more favorable terms then ones for investment properties. The issue in the above story is likely related to the friend. If they had tried the same thing, their offer would likely have been even worse than what they got for a primary residence with a cosigner. Assuming they got an offer at all.
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Good thing investment “firms” are buying up all the rental properties, right, guys? Neofeudalism for the win!
But you can buy a microshare of the fund through Robinhood, so it all works out. Right?
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This is what happens when most people think the disparity in wealth should grow.
It does.
Smith explained how, just a few years ago, $60-$70K a year would have been sufficient to qualify for a home.
“Most people are carrying student loan debt, which is at an all-time high, and the average payment in the country is $500 a month for your college degree. [There are] some people I’m seeing in my comment section saying ‘$500, I wish, it was $1,200 a month for me’,” said Smith.
“If you are someone who bought a house before 2020 and you have it paid off or you have a 3% interest rate, you are not burdened by the housing costs like the 2024 adults are now,” the relator said, explaining how debt, especially college debt, housing costs and childcare are burdening millennials and Gen Zers starting their lives.
It’s scary how everything seemed to change so fast, yet the ingredients for this very situation have been simmering for some time. It’s no coincidence that since student loans ballooned it didn’t take much for the dominoes to really begin to fall and have drastic effects on everything else downstream.
At least part of the equation is that Trump pressuring the Fed to lower rates (that were already historically low in the first place) to add even more fuel to what already was an overheated market prior to COVID completely wrecked the housing market for the foreseeable future.
I bought in 2020 and I’m glad I did because if I hadn’t I would’ve likely been permanently priced out.
Yeah, I bought a couple years before and I’m glad I did, but it’s really sad to think of everyone who couldn’t or didn’t for whatever reason.
Everything is so messed up now and the uncertainty will probably continue for awhile.
Just a reminder that high prices are a markets signal to build more.
Let people build housing, is it too much to ask for?
All the housing in the world won’t matter if the same 10 people are buying everything up. Supply isn’t our problem.
Op is saying it’s a problem of supply not meeting demand
You’re saying that supply can’t meet demand if the rich have infinite demand
These aren’t exactly incompatible. I haven’t seen good evidence that demand from the wealthy explains the massive increase in housing cost, but you can both build more housing to increase supply and try to limit the wealthy buying too much housing. They’re not incompatible
That makes no senes. We can literally build as much as we want.
It’s literally illegal to build more in most places. Go read the zoning code.
I know… let us build!!!
its a land problem. if you gave every homeless man half an acre yes they would literally just do that. however land has property tax and bums never open letters
so a simple micro acre tax free law would probably solve homelessness. it would have to be someplace like alaska or arklaska. of course these would be called concentratation camps by the far right but its a two bird solution. alaska could easily fit 50 million people
would you sign up for the free half acre in north alaska?
Arklaska?
Texas and california could easily fit an extra 50 million people. They’re both massive.
Yet disability pays $11k a YEAR that’sthe same as $5.42/hour.
The US government would rather disabled people just not exist. From their perspective, nobody on disability creates shareholder value, therefore you are subhuman. And non-disabled humans to them are cattle.
If we have more than $2k in assets, a number that hasn’t changed since 1974, we lose our food and Medical on SSI, too… it’s ridiculous
Doesn’t help that corporations own 27% of single family homes.
If you want the results of the American dream the only way to do so is crime. Probably always been true, but boy is it truer than ever now.
I achieved the American dream by leaving America.
dont glamorize it man criminals get gulag /supermax
I can technically afford my house and acre on my wife and mys income
Doesn’t mean I’m not currently planning and setting up my network of legit customers of shitake and no other mushrooms to help make sure I can survive, no sir
Probably always been true
No, it really was true for a long time (as long as you weren’t a minority). Wealth disparity has skyrocketed in the last few decades. It’s why boomers can’t grasp that people just can’t afford to live–in their day, anyone who couldn’t afford to live was just plain lazy*.
*Wasn’t true, but that’s a whole other thing.
inflation has hit ALL industries
It wasn’t perfect but there was dignity to being an American 24 years ago. Inequality is not helping anything at all
That 120k a year is still assuming you buy a house on a long term mortgage.
It even says 120k to qualify, not actually comfortably buy.
also out in the Boonies
