• Mahonia@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    But there’s actually an outrageous amount of wealth in the west. It just needs to be redistributed.

    It’s not an easy problem to fix, but it’s relatively simple.

    • Cowbee@lemmy.ml
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      5 months ago

      Unfortunately, much of that wealth was stolen from the global south via colonization. Redistribution of ownership must be done at a global, international level.

        • in4aPenny@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          Not just their land, but their ideas of “freedom”, “equality”, and “democracy”. Europeans didn’t even know those words until the French Missionaries in the late 1600’s were met with the Indigenous Critique, and how Indigenous Americans had equal rights for men and women, were free to disobey arbitrary authority, had a conglomerate of states that conveined in a “federal” central committee, and could impeach their rulers. Of course, so-called “Enlightenment” philosophers who were just rich trust-fund babies stole that idea to create America and call themselves “Enlightened Thinkers” as if they came up with it themselves, while simultaneously degrading the Indigenous Critique by calling them “savages” who were “less advanced” than Europeans based on evidence they dreamed up while staring at a fireplace (I’m look at you Rousseu and Hobbes), stealing Indigenous politics as their own, and thanking them with ethnic cleansing.

          Fuck Europeans.

          • Plopp@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            As a European I agree. The amount of shit we, on our high white horses, caused across the globe is astonishing. It would be interesting to see what the world would have looked like today had there never been any colonization.

      • Mahonia@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        I can’t imagine why you’d get downvoted for that. Yes that’s absolutely true and I’m all for a globally equitable wealth redistribution.

        • Cowbee@lemmy.ml
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          5 months ago

          It’s the whole “they’re gonna hunt me for sport?!” Meme, I think. They imagine that if we share ownership equitably globally, they will suddenly have to go to eating rats and dying in the streets, when realistically it will just mean a heavier emphasis on industrialization and international public transit, with more equitable distribution of wealth.

          For anyone confused: no, I’m not advocating for people taking your gaming PC.

  • EmperorHenry@discuss.tchncs.de
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    5 months ago

    I’m disabled and can’t work in my early 30s now. The numbers for disability benefits haven’t been adjusted for inflation since world war 2. Obviously I can’t afford to live anywhere else.

    We’re a crumbling empire, we have an exploding homeless population and the billionaires like it that way. There’s laws in many places here in the US where you can’t use any kind of force to remove homeless people from your private property, if you call the cops in those places, they don’t do anything about it.

    Part of the problem is that the billionaires want us all to be terrified of each other and to hate our neighbors so that we beg for authoritarianism…even worse than the authoritarianism we have now.

    You can’t remove squatters or trespassers, but god forbid if you light up a joint, they’ll throw you in prison for that.

  • EdibleFriend@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    Maybe gen a will be the ones with the balls to actually rise up, set everything on fire, and kill the people responsible for destroying everything. Because of the rest of us are just sitting around complaining.

    And yes, I admit, I’m in that category.

    • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      It looks like if gen Z’s massive wave of unionization doesn’t work that’ll be the case. Gen A is likely the water war generation unless we clean up our act enough for it to be gen ß

    • Cryophilia@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Ah, gen Z

      Us millenials tried that. It was called Occupy Wall Street and we got tear gassed, beaten, and driven away. And then there was a massive effort to erase what they could from media and history, and tarnish the rest.

      It was a massive turning point for our generation. It broke us. We went from angry to depressed. We couldn’t beat them. They have the power of massive physical violence behind them, AND control of the media.

      Gen Z is trying via unionization, which is a tactic much more likely to succeed. Don’t try to overthrow those in power, they’re too powerful for that. Build up your own power first in whatever manner possible, and then use their own levers of control against them.

      Unions need to make a move on the media next. Shawn Fein has been very good at this but it needs more action.

      • buzziebee@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Occupy Wall Street started strong but quickly decended into uncoordinated nonsense. The initial message was simple, popular, and actionable about how it’s bullshit that global austerity and government cutbacks were hurting the 99% whilst the 1% who caused the crash got off scott free with massive bailouts and tax cuts.

        Because it was a “leaderless” collective action it quickly got occupied itself by all sorts of weird and wacky movements who diluted the message and gave the right wing media all the ammo they could ever want to paint the whole thing as “just some crazy hippies chatting shit about communism” or whatever.

        It’s pretty typical of movements on the left unfortunately. Everyone wants to be super inclusive so all ideas are equally important and you can’t just dismiss ideas as not being relevant without creating a load of infighting. The alternative however means people with bad ideas (ones who often have more time and energy to boot) can easily take over the conversation and your whole message gets diluted, confused, and easily disarmed by the media.

        • Riskable@programming.dev
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          5 months ago

          I think the left’s problem isn’t inclusiveness (in things like this) it’s the inability to give power to “strong” leadership. The same mental firewalls that prevent those on the left from falling victim to mountebanks keeps them from letting others speak on their behalf.

          It also creates mental roadblocks for anyone on the left who tries to lead. “How can I speak for these people? I am not one of them.” That’s not a limitation of inclusiveness it’s just empathy. So when anyone on the left challenges a left wing leader with anything, really that leader–if they are truly left leaning–will not fight back without near certainty about their position.

          This makes it easy for a left wing leader to denounce the illogical and/or racist positions from those on the right but extremely difficult to take a stand on issues where everything sucks like Israeli/Palestinian conflict or immigration. This leaves them open for charlatans to point to them and say, “See? They’re weak!” Which is the exact thing the right hates and fears from left wing leaders.

    • cooopsspace@infosec.pub
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      5 months ago

      The funny thing is that we have politicians here in Australia that complain about “woke” environmentalists standing up for the environment by sitting down on the road. They’re trying to have them labelled as terrorists for simply sitting down in the street.

      Meanwhile in France, Farmers who are angry about stopping of diesel concessions are setting things on fire, blocking streets with tractors and dumping manure and dirt into the street to block public servants responsible into buildings.

      The point is two fold, French have always done protests better. And the west conservatives have a massive raging boner for eroding ones rights to protest.

      • Bronzie@sh.itjust.works
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        5 months ago

        I support protesting wholeheartedly, but blocking a road is among the most moronic ways to protest I can think of.
        They are blocking emergency vehicles, people going to work, people doing errands, visiting family, goods being transported etc.
        There is a reason people get pissed off and pull them off of the road themselves. It does absolutely nothing to further their cause.
        It doesn’t even effect the people they protest against.

        Imagine missing your kids show, mothers dying breath or the flight to your long awaited vacation and family visit because someone couldn’t think of a more appropriate way to protest than sitting down and being an absolute butthole.

          • Bronzie@sh.itjust.works
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            5 months ago

            I don’t call people potentially dying an inconvenience.
            They have no moral right to decide wether or not people make it to where they are going.

            So what do they hope to achieve?
            If it is awarenes, then there are much better ways of doing it

            • Ian@Cambio@lemm.ee
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              5 months ago

              Just wondering if you’ve ever participated in a protest or this is just an academic exercise. In my experience well behaved protests are basically ineffective. It’s true that you can actually end up vilifying the cause in the eyes of people that you’ve inconvenienced.

              But that creates social pressure on our leaders to address the problem. Either by compromise with the protests demands or clearing them out by force.

              I get that it may block the direct path of an ambulance potentially. But most gps algorithms when they see a ton of stationary phones in the street interpret that as traffic and try to route around it.

              At the end of the day, yes there is the small potential for harm to a few individuals, but (hopefully) the benefits to a larger group offset that.

              I went to UT and there were protests in the street all the time. It always inconvenienced me and I actually came to blows with a few of the protesters, but they should know that’s a possibility going into it. There’s really no right or wrong here. There’s only large organized group against a few impacted drivers.

              • Bronzie@sh.itjust.works
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                5 months ago

                I appreciate your arguments but respectfyully disagree.
                A GPS guided detour should not be necessary for vital social functions to operate.
                I also dislike the small potential for harm to a few individuals when there are better ways to get the point across.

                Block construction.
                Occupy offices and locations.
                March.
                Send letters and run awareness campaigns.
                Vote.

                Do anything you can that makes people see you. Just don’t block the road. To me that is too risky. If everybody would protest like that to achieve their political goals we would live in total anarchy.

                Hope my opinions make sense even though you might disagree.

    • FenrirIII@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      I have been educating my child on unions and workers’ rights. When he’s old enough, we move on to the proper engineering and maintenance of guillotines.

    • Guy_Fieris_Hair@lemmy.world
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      It is getting to the point that is the only option. Voting doesn’t matter, protesting doesn’t matter, complaining doesn’t matter. Millennials were raised that those are the processes, we have come to realize they don’t work and our kids are being raised with the understanding that that doesn’t work. If they want things to change, and it literally HAS to, that is what needs to happen. Either accept the status quo or forcefully change it. If I understand history, that is the most American thing you can do.

  • Haha@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    Agree. I am that 30 y o still living at home. Work full time, 2 jobs and STILL cannot afford a rent without it decimating me to the ground. Its nothing to do with my budget: i get close to 3k/mo yet if i try to rent some place, i will pretty much have only about 400/500 left a month…. In a european capital. What is the point of renting in these conditions? And yes i know rationally its possible with my salary but i choose its more fruitful to help parent and be able to save rather than live ln the verge every month without being able to do much.

    • TokenBoomer@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      The Corporations and Governments broke the social contract, not you. Remember that ish when things pop off. Workers were never to blame.

    • MashedTech@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Honestly yeah, in this economy, it’s better and more fruitful to help your parents than to be decimated by rent.

    • Asafum@feddit.nl
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      5 months ago

      The Market Has Spoken: Get Fucked.

      A riveting exploration of the markets and society of the 21st century that will be written in 2200 lol

  • Colour_me_triggered@lemm.ee
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    5 months ago

    I am in my late 30s and was only just able to buy this month. It’s the cheapest place I could find in my city, and the mortgage repayment will clean me and my SO out to the point where we can’t afford to run a car. We’re both in full time employment with an MSc.

    • Sami_Uso@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Why not just find a nice apartment? I’m not trying to be a jerk here or anything, but if owning a home puts you out that much, why not just keep renting?

      *Oh sick, down voted for adding discussion, awesome. This place really is better than reddit!!

      • Colour_me_triggered@lemm.ee
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        It’s more expensive and less stable. So fuck that.

        Edit: there are no nice rentals here. Tourism is booming, and anyone with half a brain puts their house on Airbnb. What’s left is small and barely habitable for the same price as a mortgage.

      • scoobford@lemmy.zip
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        5 months ago

        Because retiring when you don’t own a home is difficult. Not only is rent a lot more than property taxes, but it tends to go up unpredictably.

        So for most people, buying a home of some kind is a given. Doing so sooner means saving more money, both because rent is generally more than property tax and because loan payments build equity, which is still fundamentally yours.

      • LdyMeow@sh.itjust.works
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        5 months ago

        A lot of people feel rent is throwing away money. However, interest on a loan will cost a lot too so it’s not super straight forward

        • nickwitha_k (he/him)@lemmy.sdf.org
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          A lot of people feel rent is throwing away money. However, interest on a loan will cost a lot too so it’s not super straight forward

          It honestly is pretty straightforward, from my perspective. With a fixed-rate mortgage, yes, there’s front loading of interest but the down payment and the portion of payments that goes into the principal is yours. If the you sell, that portion never goes away, as long as the value at least maintains. And, the payments do not change. You can even take further loans out of it, once you pay in enough (ex - replace a garage door).

          When renting, none of the payment is yours once it leaves your hands. You’re also at the mercy of the landlord’s rules and whims when it comes to rent increases. End up disabled or retired on a fixed income? You’re boned the moment that the landlord decides that they can make more than you can afford to pay. Basically means that you’ll never be able to enjoy your later years to their fullest.

          And that’s purely financial. Not even getting into the messed up limitations on one’s agency. It’s really messed up that the ability to buy a home has been stolen from so many of us.

          • Buglefingers@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            Nothing has given me more ire towards renting than the removal of agency and lack of options. I need permission to do my laundry? I have to request someone fill a card value and the minimum is $15!? Oh and a single load of laundry is $5??

            Ooor I could drive 15 minutes away and sit in the closest laundromat for 2 hrs for $6 (plus gas, time, etc.)

            • Sami_Uso@lemmy.world
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              5 months ago

              This sounds highly specific and not indicative of most people’s renting experience lol I’ve never heard of anything like that in my life. Ive been renting since 08

              • Buglefingers@lemmy.world
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                5 months ago

                Having to use a paycard for laundry because they don’t allow in unit laundry?

                I have yet to live in an apartment that allows me to have my own washer and dryer and I’ve been renting over 10 years myself in multiple cities

      • Colour_me_triggered@lemm.ee
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        Yeah, Norway. House prices are not exclusively an American problem. Also the price of everything is going up especially food. If all goes according to plan I should be able to pay off the apartment shortly before I die.

  • saintshenanigans@programming.dev
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    5 months ago

    It’s not even about money anymore.

    I’m not positive that the world is going to be a comfortable place to live in at all in the next 40-80 years. I can’t be sure it’s morally acceptable to bring a new life into the world just to struggle until death. I know if I were given the choice I would have rather just not have been, it’s not worth struggling forever just to barely get by until the game changes yet again and you get knocked back down to the peg you started on.

    • Icaria@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      I can’t be sure it’s morally acceptable to bring a new life into the world just to struggle until death.

      That has been true for just about everyone throughout history.

      the game changes yet again and you get knocked back down to the peg you started on.

      People in the developed world not having kids is part of how they ‘win’ the game.

      The reason boomers were able to demand so much is because, as the name implies, they’re a big fucking cohort. They were politically influential from the time they could vote. Keeping birthrates depressed and shipping in cheap foreign labour is how those with power keep everyone else powerless.

      It’s a weird situation, but the way to improve living standards for future generations is to… have future generations. Even if you don’t feel like you can entirely support them now.

      • aidan@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        You’ll bring the “Population Bomb” doomers out, proving failed predictions never have consequences for the predictors since they can always say it will happen next year- since 1798

  • Adalast@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    I am that educated couple. Wife has an associates and was just able to find a small job. I have associates, BS, and MA and can’t even get a fucking interview because I don’t have the absolutely insane list of qualifications on my resume that these companies are demanding for a half-decent paying job. I did everything I was supposed to and they still won’t fucking pay me.

  • JohnFoe@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    We’re DINKs just starting to push into the “living a comfortable life” range. As in, we can do what we want and enjoy doing it.

    However, bringing a kid into that picture throws all of that away. Hospital bills, diapers, just the costs in general would wipe us out.

    We most likely wouldn’t qualify for any reimbursements and are already maximizing the ones we have such as house financing and taxes.

    I obsessively try to keep my “IOUs” to a minimum meaning aggressive mortgage payments and credit cards within the limitations of what I can pay off immediately but even that is difficult.

    The house needs work - new siding and windows, unexpected issues like the boiler dieing etc. And I’m generally fearful of what we’d find behind the siding (termites??? everything not up to code?) A new job like that could turn into $40-50K that we just don’t have floating around.

    I don’t go to doctors because I was afraid of what I might find. I’m lucky in the fact that my insurance is now pushing in the correct direction but still ludicrously expensive… And I mean ludicrously for the lack of services available that won’t cost me an additional fortune.

    The wife also works a must-commute 9-5. Not sure how she, or both of us would be able to handle childcare needs and not feel like we would be neglecting the kid.

    When would I ever be able to afford a kid in these situations?

    And I am lucky to say that we are DINKs that are getting paid relatively well… How can people that are below us in income survive having kids?

  • Toneswirly@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    meanwhile 1000 and 1 Stinkpieces are being written about population decline, blaming young generations for not getting busy while job and housing prospects go down the shitter.

        • DragonTypeWyvern@literature.cafe
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          5 months ago

          I don’t really agree, because I consider labor or opportunity based immigration a symptom of continued economic injustice in the global south. Modern societies, among many other things, need to acknowledge the reality that the planet has a material limit on the population it can support.

          • TokenBoomer@lemmy.world
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            You’re right. I was thinking that immigration could be an answer under capitalism, but I agree that exploiting immigration maintains inequality.

          • aidan@lemmy.world
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            Yes it does, but why do you assume we’re anywhere near close to it now? Especially with current growth trends

  • AdolfSchmitler@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    After WW2 almost every other developed nation was in ruin. The US was “the only game in town” when it came to production. This caused US labor to be in high demand and priced at a premium compared to places like in Europe or Japan, who were more concerned about rebuilding than exporting goods.

    THIS is how a high school dropout could afford a house and a family. Because that high school dropout was basically your only option for labor. As those other countries finished rebuilding a lot manufacturing jobs left and things started to get “back to normal”.

    The US was in a unique position but like most things it was just squandered. Now the US is “regressing towards the mean”. This is going to be the new normal because the last 40-50 years was an exception.

    • Damage@feddit.it
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      Europe was reduced to rubble, but my grandfathers, who were children during the war and after, both still managed to build a house, raise two kids each and set money aside; one of my grandmothers worked as a seamstress and those grandparents not only built houses for themselves and each kid, but essentially owned a whole block in our village. The other grandfather was the son of an orphan, still managed to do well.

      I had to take a job that requires great effort, stress and skill and keeps me away from home 40% of the time, it pays well but still I couldn’t dream to be able to do the same as they did.

    • Bennettiquette@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      enlightened bit of context here.

      correct me if i’m wrong, but these are the colloquial “golden days” that so many want to return to, right? a period which undoubtedly contributed to the presumption of american exceptionalism in the minds of its citizens.

      if only there was a way to build a future out of transparency and sustainable systems instead of perpetuating our collective delusions.

    • LesserAbe@lemmy.world
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      I think attributing the “good years” just to post war production is an incomplete explanation. The real issue is irresponsible private ownership and hobbling the value our economy can create.

      Creating true value in our work is possible. Once some types of work are done the output can continue to benefit our society for decades. But a confluence of decisions by private owners have meant often we don’t receive that benefit, and instead it’s siphoned away as profit.

    • Obinice@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Thankfully we don’t live in the US then, but these same dark times are washing over us in Europe too :-(

    • DrQuickbeam@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      I moved from the US to Italy, where everything is cheaper and better quality, and we get free healthcare, free college, retirement pension and six months paid maternity leave. All this on a 35% tax rate. Public daycare is about $300 a month, housing expenses are about half of what I paid in the US, and while groceries are about the same, they are all local, organic, non GMO and -get this - crops are grown for flavor rather than weight. Houses are smaller here and wages are usually lower, but working hours are less and less intense, and the pace of life is much chiller.

    • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      That’s true to a point. However bigger effects were the rise in executive compensation, the loss of labor and corporate regulations, and the resurgence of the shipping industry such that it was cheaper to ship from China than to make it in the US. It’s true that demand for US manufactured goods has fallen, but there’s no reason our current Service economy should struggle like it is.

  • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    This seems like a good place to post this reminder that in the last 50 years income has lost to inflation by 137 points. That’s decades of prices rising faster than wages. It’s not rocket science. They walked away with all of the productivity gains, and gave the entire country a pay cut at the same time. You want a boring dystopia? How about stealing your paycheck a couple percentage points a year until suddenly we realize we can’t afford to live without 3 full time incomes in one household.

    • WaxedWookie@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Where I’m from, the median house price has risen 600% relative to the median income in the past 50 years.

      That means the deposit we pay today is the equivalent of the entire 30 year mortgage of the people calling you lazy.

      • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Yup, the 137 points is just “core” inflation. Education, Housing, Food, and Cars all come in over that. Which is fine because those aren’t necessary in the US right?

        • WaxedWookie@lemmy.world
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          True - that’s been the response to pricing getting out of control rather than addressing the fundamental issues with the economy.

      • Brainsploosh@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        One percent relative what the market was at the starting point.

        The market today is 237 % of starting point (probably 1990).

    • KevonLooney@lemm.ee
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      5 months ago

      Inflation isn’t prices growing faster than wages, it’s just prices growing in general. Don’t let anyone tell you that gentle inflation is bad for poor people.

      Debtors gain from inflation because they pay their fixed debts with currency worth less. When interest rates are low, refinance or borrow at low fixed rates. When inflation rises, your fixed debt costs go down in real terms.

      If you want wages to increase, support a higher minimum wage.

      • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        This isn’t just inflation over 50 years. This is divergence in the inflation of wages and core inflation. So prices over all have risen by 137 points more than wages have risen. This isn’t the talk about inflation vs deflation vs death spirals. This is everything slowly becoming less affordable over time. And it really doesn’t matter if the money is worth less when the interest rate on the loan is far beyond inflation in the first place. You either pay it back quickly (monthly on a card) or watch it spiral out of control rapidly because adjustable rate loans work off of inflation and your wages didn’t go up to match. So now you have that much less money a month to buy food.

        Theoretically inflation is good for borrowers. In practice you need a certain base of money for that to be true. If you can’t cover increased costs over the life of the loan then inflation is going to take you behind the shed.

    • TengoDosVacas@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Without violent pushback there is no reason at all to improve things. Cant afford to live?.. fuck you, we’ll find someone who can. Piss off, peasant.

      • mods_are_assholes@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        All we would need is 3 days of a general strike with at least 10% participation.

        But unfortunately there are several factors that prevent this, some human nature, some deliberately manufactured.

        1. Almost no one I know can afford missing a week’s worth of work: This is manufactured with stagflation and at-will work laws

        2. The rich inflaming radical partisanship with traditional and social media to distract from who the real enemy is, reducing social cooperation

        3. American culture has become largely an ‘observer culture’, where the world is treated as a thing to passively watch while feeling disconnected, this is probably the worst contributor.

        So many of the labor movement gains our forefathers bled and died for have been trampled by an owner class hell bent on recapitulating european nobility on American soil and they have been WILDLY successful the last 30 years.

        Either we organize a general strike, or there will be food riots within a decade.

        • Saurok@lemm.ee
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          5 months ago

          Shawn Fain (United Auto Workers president) has been calling for unions across every industry to align their contracts to end at the same time on May 1st, 2028 (International Labor Day), specifically so that we can prepare for a general strike. Gives the already organized unions time to build up a strike fund and non-organized folks time to get organized.

          • mods_are_assholes@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            If there was an IT workers union with presence in my state I would absolutely do the same, though to be fair I could probably just take a week off that might not end until the owner class comes humble to the table.

            • Saurok@lemm.ee
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              5 months ago

              Might be worth your while to look into Locals in your area that aren’t necessarily IT focused unions. Some unions (like the Teamsters and others) will still help you organize under their union even though they typically represent workers in a specific industry. I don’t have an office workers union local in my neck of the woods, but I’ve been giving it some thought as well.

        • TengoDosVacas@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          People who can’t afford three days off work will certainly fare well by not participating in a general strike.

          /S

          • mods_are_assholes@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            If I had never sold or lost a single bitcoin I mined I could afford to pay for a few thousand people to cover the costs, even more for the most needed protesters, the fast food workers. If I were a billionaire I would literally break my fortune to pay for every fast food worker in the U.S. (in their pockets, to be clear) to take a week off.

            I would live on ramen and burning newspaper for warmth if it would guarantee that even 5% of the fast food and restaurant workforce took off for a week.

  • Flax@feddit.uk
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    5 months ago

    I honestly think free childcare would solve a lot of problems as well

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      5 months ago

      The owner class has, since before the invention of writing, always had limiting the reproduction of the ‘poors’ on their mind. In fact when they were mask-off, European nobility wrote SEVERAL essays about the ‘dangers of unmitigated breeding of the poverty classes’.

      Free childcare is too much burden mitigation for them to allow our politicians to even forward it in a serious manner.

      • in4aPenny@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        European nobility predates writing?

        Also if you were actually aware of human history before writing, you’d know we had classless urban environments inhabiting hundreds of thousands without any evidence of hierarchy or top -down management, through systems of credit in the absence of money. You’d be more accurate to say that, since before the invention of writing (whatever that means), we were able to construct societies without a ruling class. Question is, what happened? How did we lose touch with that? How did the abstract concept of ‘wealth’ be able to be converted into power over people? My own opinion is it started around 600BCE when coin was used to pay armies for violent conquests, making money synonymous with violence and dominion.

        It’s hard being married to an archaeologist that’s confronted with evidence that, for most of human history and societies, there wasn’t a ruling class. Why then do we agree to a rolling class, knowing full well the violence and instability it causes?

        • mods_are_assholes@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          I’m sorry reading comprehension is an issue for you. You deliberately conflated two separate statements with no common reference. Probably just so you could get all righteous and post this.

          we had classless urban environments inhabiting hundreds of thousands without any evidence of hierarchy or top -down management

          Name 3. I dare you.

          The ‘owner class before writing’ and European nobility are separated by time but not by nature.

          The reason I say this is that when writing was becoming established, it contained historical events that were part of the oral culture of the time. We have records of behaviors of the oldest of cultures that already establish a noble and sometimes royal class that pre-existed the oldest extant documents we have.

          Anthropological evidence shows legacy-based class separation as early as the beginning of agriculture and domestication.

          My own opinion is it started around 600BCE when coin was used to pay armies for violent conquest

          That’s nice. You are entitled to your opinion. Ask your archaeologist mate the ages of the oldest decorated burials and then ask them if every burial in that culture was treated the same way or only certain people that also included valuable grave goods while everyone else was bare graves or even mass graves. Class separation has existed significantly longer than 600bce.

          You aren’t here for a conversation, you are just here to muddy the conversation so I’m blocking you now and forgetting you ever existed.

  • Haagel@lemmings.world
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    5 months ago

    I’m not advocating violence, of course, because that’s illegal both on this platform and in real life.

    However, the history of humanity has demonstrated that powerful people need to be publicly executed in order for there to be sea change in economic inequalities. When enough people have nothing to lose, said executions become inevitable.

    • Scubus@sh.itjust.works
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      5 months ago

      Don’t advocate violence. Instead, imply advocacy for violence.

      It’s not “let’s kill the rich”, it’s “it’d be a damn shame if someone killed the rich”

      It’s not “you’re morally obligated to burn that pipeline”, it’s “you’re morally obligated to burn that pipeline in Minecraft”

    • grue@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      I’m not advocating violence, of course, because that’s illegal both on this platform and in real life.

      No it’s not.

      1. This platform’s policies do not have the force of law.

      2. Advocating for violence in general isn’t illegal; only specific threats are. (Trump, for example, is an idiot-savant at walking that fine line.)