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The avocado toast of today is what a cheeseburger used to be (back in the day when it was well-made), just healthier. Boomers used to gorge themselves on ingredients that were much more expensive than fucking avocado and bread, they can stfu.
Today I learned that I, with a BS degree and a decade of experience in IT work, am not making the minimum wage my dad made as a teenage high school dropout.
Have you tried having a useful degree instead of a bs one?
/s
My degree is useless in the sense that I realized it was wrong for me as a career path very close to graduation. It would also have paid badly. I got extremely lucky landing a random ass job in a very physically demanding role. It fucked up my body. I got lucky transitioning out of that role into an entirely different but decent field closer to family. (A couple “placeholder” jobs in there for about 2 years just to maintain insurance for my wife.)
I don’t know that a different degree would have mattered for me. Hindsight being what it is; I do think pursuing electrical engineering and the trade would have made the most sense for me. but I didnt even know i had any aptitude for that, just never exposed to it. Pushing 40 (weird to say.) So the days of weathering an apprenticeship are behind me from a temperment perspective.
The first job covered housing so I basically paid off student loans immediately, funded my IRAs for a few years, one year with a loan (dont ever do this, btw.) This let me also live off of my “base 40” and save 65 hours of overtime per week for 7.5 years.
I say all of this to get to my point; We bought a house last year and the amount of effort, toil, literally body breaking work that I did to get here is not the American Dream I bought into as a young man.
All of this considered, luck should not be the key factor of success in a functioning, equitable society.
That’s because back then we made products the world wanted, and we used our power as the world reserve currency to tax the world. Now we are the ones being “taxed” as countries continue to dump bonds and we don’t make anthing of value anymore, so there is no need for the world to keep paying us.
America was also the manufacturing hub of the world at the time, since they were one of the few countries with sizeable industry, that hadn’t been turned into a crater by the War.
There’s probably a chunk of wealth/purchasing power that would have to be disentangled from that post-war prosperity as well.
Why are you making minimum wage with a degree and ten years experience?! Or are you comparing pay rates and housing? If so, I see…
I think they are saying they make less than $66 an hour, the equivalent of which their dad was making
Only equivalent in terms of house prices.
and inflation by m2 supply. Minumum wage in 1950 was 0.75/hr, which would be $58.97 today.
I’m not totally sure what you mean by that but it can’t have translated into actual price inflation, which would give around $10 today from 75c in 1950.
Using m2 for inflation is the most accurate way to do it. If you use cpi is will be off by a large number in the long run
No, didn’t you read? Regardless of the cost problems, their degree is either bullshit or in the field of bullshit.
Apparently bull semen can be valuable (I guess their degree could be on that topic as well), but I’ve never heard that other excretions are worth much.
Jokes aside, I make a lot more than my dad ever did annually. With his income, he owned a home outright, supported up to four kids and a wife, and had fairly extensive savings. I have one kid, one wife, and one home. I’m very fortunate and grateful to have what I have, but it is unlikely I’ll ever match his success.
It’s not really matching his success, it’s matching his pay. Very different things, especially as we know that people today are vastly more productive than in years past.
Just because someone is stealing your work doesn’t mean you didn’t succeed at it(and deserve fair pay).
I see your point, but in this case I wasn’t considering it a personal failure. I am having difficulty providing for my family; being able to do so would be my success, in which I could approach his.
I’m not being intentionally self deprecating, nor am I (currently) ashamed, but I do appreciate the reassurance you offered.
I’ve commented this before elsewhere, but I also believe I make more than my dad. He raised a family on one income, paid off a house in 15 years, sold it, took all the money and bought a house twice the size with a very small mortgage that is probably paid off by now.
I’m living paycheck to paycheck renting a one bedroom apartment with me and my two cats and my dad has told me if he had to pay what I do for housing he couldn’t afford to survive.
We can’t afford the luxury of corrupt politicians, billionaires and shareholders anymore. We need a revolution
This lazy ass ruined generation cannot even get a job or a relationship. You think starting a revolution is more or less difficult than that?
As a genZer, we can’t get the jobs we were tertiary educated for due to bots and excessive experience standards for entry-level positions, and the relationships thing is a misconception, since everyone in general is more isolated these days, so naturally every generation is facing the harsh reality that getting into a relationship is more difficult than it used to.
In a decade, I could easily say gen Alpha is a “lazy ass ruined generation”, but getting your life settled and stable is difficult, especially in a day and age where you can easily dissociate from your surroundings and problems by indulging in the mind numbing infinite scroll of algorithmically chosen short form videos in your pocketable supercomputer.
Great framing and well articulated
Lmao Gen Z is rocking the free world right now. I’m damn proud of those kids in France, Serbia,Spain, Italy and Albania
Lol. cannot even get a job? really? read the post again, slowly. for me, pretty please?
Like I have a house, but I dream of just living in a van or an RV.
I think a lot of people who have never owned a home don’t realize how much of a hassle it is.
You don’t even really get much equity out of it. If your houses value increases because of the market, so does all the other housing. All the money you have to spend on maintaining it just keeps from dropping in value.
I know at least a half dozen people who have sold their house and gone back to renting.
That’s what I try to get across to my friends. It’s like we’re all getting older. If you can’t get down and fix your sink drainage, don’t get a house. It’s one thing after another. I’m lucky I can do a lot of stuff myself.
You don’t even really get much equity out of it. If your houses value increases because of the market, so does all the other housing.
Wrong, so very wrong. First you get to keep 30-60% of your payment as principle, as opposed to rent where you keep 0. Second, the mortgage payment stays the same while rent goes up. Even during modest times this makes a noticeable impact but over the last 15 years the effect has been insane. Even just looking at equity your logic is wrong. Assume I buy a house worth $100k (to keep math easy) and pay $0 down. Now assume it doubles in value, the house is worth $200k and the mortgage is worth $100k. You just made $100k or in real growth close to $50k.
If you plan on staying in one spot for 4+ years, buying is essentially always the correct move. Renting gives you the ability to move as you desire but you’re paying in unseen ways.
You don’t even really get much equity out of it
You do get more than if you rent, and pay someone else’s mortgage.
Except if you rent you don’t have the same financial risk. A new roof or HVAC can easily be over $20k.
A new roof or HVAC
But then you own a home with a new roof or Hvac. Not disputing these are very expensive (and that wages have been left in the dust by inflation for decades), but my parents didn’t get HVAC until 3 years ago. And when you rent you only get a place to live, no equity.
I never understood that dream as someone who lives in an area with real winters.
Ehh, we used to live in caves and even tents in those same winters.
Well cave temperatures are extremely consistent (and anyway ppl generally didn’t live in caves 'cause there aren’t many of them, they have very poor ventilation, ans they’re dark). But fair point on tents.
You can insulate your stuff lol. Don’t worry, I know what real winters are. -40 is a cakewalk for me. There’s a lot of cool solutions now for that.
Have any cool info or resources? Curious what inside temps are like and what is being used for heating.
Kind of how you wear sleep wear and jeans (with the sleepwear lining lol). Overall the main thing is layering. Aluminum and insulation (can be a composition, even using cardboard between layers). Piss tanks and water tanks are to be inside instead of underneath unless you like piss Popsicles. Shit is best dealt–your on your own with that one lol. Heating is fun, I’d go for a wood or a gas system, they’re like tiny boxes. The upside to gas systems is that they can be modded for wood gas.
This is for climates.
Otherwise it’s all about AC lol
Thankfully with global warming our dreams will no longer be memes! ✨️ 🙌
Yep, the 1% lost a lot of their workforce during the war. They needed to treat them right and give concessions. The 1% wants their fiefdom back and have been working on it every since.
Think of it like if Apple, Microsoft and Amazon didn’t have agreements to keep wages down and it was actually competitive, they would offer bonuses and paid vacation, etc. to even medium employees to keep them.
My parents bought a house in the 90’s and after they bought it, they realized they couldn’t really afford the mortgage.
As a comparison, my wife and I tried buying a house 3 years ago. We had around $3,000 left in our budget after ALL our expenses was paid, and we got rejected in 3 banks before we got a loan.
Our rent was $1,500 / month. Our mortgage is $1,000 / month. We have more money after expenses living in our house compared to the place we lived before.
They make it really damn difficult to buy a house, even when you have the money.
Some of that is due to the 2008 bullshittery. Bank are trying not to get caught holding the bag again when mortgage rates rise and people end up underwater.
Banks lending infinite money to AI companies: Yes sir I’ll hold that bag no problem sir, the government will protect me
Private citizens vs corporations.
“The citizens can eat the losses, it’s their fault for being so irresponsible anyway, but we need those companies for the economy.” - the government
Well yeah, it was a housing crisis in '08, not an AI crisis. Totally different scenario. Just like how no one could have known sub prime mortgages would be a problem then, there’s no telling what will happen after throwing everyone’s 401ks into AI.
That’s just the thing. Everyone (in the industry) knew the sub prime market was going to be a problem. My sister worked for a company that specialized in mortgages and said in the early 2000s that the sub prime market was predatory, was lending too much to people that were never in a position to repay the load, and that the whole system was going to crash.
the government knows that protecting the banks costs less than paying out FDIC insurance like they fucking should.
They added even more regulation more recently.
We met all the criteria except the positive net wealth due to student loans and in our budget we would have been net positive within 5 years, but 3 banks didn’t believe that. We only got the loan because we had 15 % in down payment.
These are the current criteria:
Down payment - minimum 5% of the purchase price from your own funds
Debt factor - total debt must not exceed roughly 4–5× household income before tax
Interest stress test - your budget must handle rates of at least 4.5%
Positive net wealth - either upfront, or a repayment plan making it positive within max. 5 years
Minimum disposable income - $750 - $1050/month left after all expenses, and each child adds $400-500 to that amount.
Holy fuck when I bought my house just 5 years ago it was just the debt to income ratio and down payment I had to worry about. We probably wouldn’t have qualified for our current home loan back then if these requirements were active
The mistake was talking to banks. We went to a mortgage broker. They get quotes from like 500 banks and tell you immediately the chances with each one. Sometimes banks reject you for random reasons, like their own exposure to the real estate market.
Plus we got 0.3% lower interest rate than the best offer we got directly from a bank. And the broker handled all the paperwork and communication with the bank.
Of course they got their commission, but if they save us money and effort, good for them, well deserved.
Whatever happened to “source?”
You can go back as far as you’d like to; if memory serves 1950s was our best time re salaries and purchasing power.
Here’s a 20% drop since 2010 straight from the horse’s mouth.
https://www.bls.gov/cpi/factsheets/purchasing-power-constant-dollars.htm
Not sure about this one I haven’t checked sources on it, this is just a quick search for you because you’re a good kid
https://www.macrotrends.net/4534/cpi-purchasing-power-of-the-dollar
There’s zero debate, we are fucked
Recall that in addition to this drop in purchasing power, we are taxed in countless new ways that we never had to worry about decades ago. In my state we pay a tax on toilet paper. We have to pay the state to take a shit.
The solution is obvious. Let’s print more money!
p.s. a good way to spot check the economy is to check the price of gold. My gold is now worth 400% of what it cost years ago. So… it’s not actually worth more than it was… it’s just our dollar has lost that much value.
Trickle-down economics at work
American culture is fucked. I have a wife and two kids now, but I had to move to the UK for it. American media has the population so indoctrinated that you’re unlikely to find any American stable enough to last any considerable amount of time in marriage. I’m at 5 years, now. If you aren’t dealing with an algo-indoctrinated social media scroller, things are better
You moved to a country that had to invent a whole ass religion just so they could have divorces lol
Ok, I’ve never heard it phrased that way but that’s comedy gold
Enjoy terf island I guess 🫠
Bro had to outsource the means of reproduction to an island nation run by a shadowy cabal of mostly white dudes wearing funny outfits pulling the strings behind a figurehead monarchy the local culture is completely infatuated with. Basically just like every successful American business venture ever.
This a good post. People love to argue about current wages and the like, but it is buying power that is the issue.
In the early to mid 70s buying was the best it has ever been. One job could afford a house, car, and education.
Then in 1971 and onwards, productivity continued upwards, while purchasing power flatlined…
Gee I wonder why we have so many Billionaires…
I’d say automation played a decent sized part in that as well. A massive chunk of those high paying jobs were factory work. A lot of those production type tasks were automated away, and the increased number of maintenance jobs required doesn’t even come close to covering that loss of required factory workers.
Increasing automation lowered the cost to produce goods. The people who owned the machines (capital) could have lowered prices, but they didn’t. They used the lower wage cost to increase their own profits, then used those profits to buy more machines (increasing their capital).
Now we have a small number of people who own a large amount of capital, raising prices on everything to keep increasing their profits, and refusing to help the people who used to do the now automated work, or raise wages for the existing workers. The shareholders don’t care about working conditions or product quality, they only care about getting a bigger return on investment (by a bigger margin) than the previous year.
“Sustainable growth” (actually exponential growth) is literally impossible to sustain, yet almost every major company’s shareholders demand it. What happens when your economy is reliant on the impossible?
I’m not excusing the behavior of the corporate leadership here, but I think that the problem would have shown up regardless. Even cheap goods are too expensive if your income is $0.
Some form of basic income is going to be required, but good luck convincing anyone of that before the violence starts.
And with AI they hope to continue or even accelerate that trend.
Wages are a huge part of buying power.
But focusing on the numeric wage causes people to lose sight of the issue.
Like it was posted minimum wage should be well over 45.00 an hour. Meaning people that make 45.00 should be making 400.00, if that was true we would be equivalent to the buying power of the 70s.
Increasing minimum wage is literally the easiest step of the many things that affect buying power. Dismissing it is like downplaying doctors washing their hands.
Im not dismissing it, but unless we address both ends of the problem nothing changes.
Politically you are not going to get a minimum wage increase of 50.00, which is what is needed.
I only have a house because I inherited it from my dad, and my dad only had a house because he inherited it from my late grandpa, and he only had a house because he bought a farmland for some cows back when this was barely a town
Only reason I even have a house is because of inheritance. Only reason I have money to spend in this shit economy where I’m coming up on two years of unemployment is because of inheritance.
and that’s how most people should have houses, generational poverty is silly
they want it to be 0, and most countries are just burying thier heads in the sand, as long as the rich are buying homes, they believe nothing bad will happen.
Voting is important kids.
There’s plenty of money to go around, and we could easily pay that minimum wage, but gotta make those 1%ers richer.
Who needs a functioning society when you can just have a couple trillionaires instead…
Won’t somebody think of the oligarchs‽
No, but let’s look at it more positively: Cease eating entirely, and the problem will become immaterial soon enough.
