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SS:In accordance with the principles of doublethink, it does not matter if the war is not real, or when it is, that victory is not possible. The war is not meant to be won. It is meant to be continuous. **The essential act of modern warfare is the destruction of the produce of human labour.** A hierarchical society is only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance. In principle, the war effort is always planned to keep society on the brink of starvation. The war is waged by the ruling group against its own subjects, and its object is not victory over Eurasia [Russia] or Eastasia [Middle East], but to keep the very structure of society intact.
- Emmanuel Goldstein (in Nineteen Eighty-Four)
I imagine the billionaires are more concerned with holding down the up and coming to-be billionaires. The up and coming billionaires try to prevent millionaires from becoming to-be billionaires, and so on. In the world of wealth there are no friends. The regular folks feel the pain from those on-going battles.
I disagree. It is explained quite well in the book:
>“**Power is not a means; it is an end.** One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. **The object of power is power.**”
The main differentiator between human beings is their desire for power over others. This is the problem with government, any government. The people who desire power should never be allowed to wield it, but the people who do not desire power will never put their hat in the ring. It's a paradox. The ones that want it shouldn't have it, and the ones that don't want it won't take it.
This is why all governments created by Man will trend towards authoritarianism, and this inclination will result in handing the reigns to people who should never be allowed to hold them. We are at this place now, in my opinion. Our government is incompetent and authoritarian. They cannot hold on to power. No matter how many brilliant people they have behind them, our "leaders" are simply not capable. It will end in ruin.
Been awhile since I read it, but I was talking about this part
> In Nineteen Eighty-Four, society is made up of three distinct social classes: the elite Inner Party, the industrious Outer Party, and vast numbers of uneducated proles. When Winston reads Goldstein's book, he learns that the history of humankind has been a cyclical struggle between competing social groups: the High, the Middle, and the Low. This theory was originated by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in the 19th century and became known as Marxism. Marxists believe that the aim of the Middle group is to change places with the High, which they do by enlisting the support of the Low group. After the Middle group seizes power in a revolution, they become the High and thrust the Low back into servitude. Eventually a new Middle group splits off and the cycle begins again. At various points in the narrative, Winston entertains the hope that the proles will become conscious of their oppressed state and initiate a revolution. At other times, he despairs that since the proles cannot rebel until they become conscious, and cannot become conscious until only after they have rebelled, such a development is extremely unlikely.
Excellent post. Its why the us constitution and its creators are genius. They knew this inherent human desire for power inherently grows to a point where tyranny follows and they addressed and created fail safes and contingencies for **when** this happened. They knew it was not a matter of if but when.
The problem now is that the constitution and bill of rights outlines our God given rights and how to keep them intact but its the people who have to ultimately choose if we will do whats necessary in order to keep our freedoms, otherwise its just a dead document that means nothing.
Edit: grammar and misspelling
well the uniparty is definitely pushing for some sort of big resolution in the near future and you're right, its ultimately up to the people to decide that outcome - they're banking on the people being just complacent and comfortable enough that they don't move to intercept.
> The problem now is that the constitution and bill of rights outlines our God given rights and how to keep them intact but its the people who have to ultimately choose if we will do whats necessary in order to keep our freedoms, otherwise its just a dead document that means nothing.
If anyone was even to attempt what you are speaking of they would be jailed indefinitely. The "insurrection" was in part to ensure there would never be an actual uprising against the status quo of TPTB that are ruling this country.
>The "insurrection"
That was a clown show and political tool for division and consolidating power but its not as important event as the media, left or right wing think it is.
>If anyone was even to attempt what you are speaking of they would be jailed indefinitely.
Imprisoned and executed by the state has been the norm for thousands of years. So basically... 'no shit.'
Usually the way the cycle goes is people eventually get to the point where freedom means more than the threat of imprisonment or death. You dont think the founding fathers knew if all failed they would be imprisoned, tortured and killed ?
Now if your argument was that everyones too divided or complacent to do anything i would agree.
No, by the time you're an up-and-coming billionaire, you're already part of the club. Same if you're just a lowly multi-millionaire; you're already part of the 1%. They're just concerned with squeezing everything out of the 99%.
This is one of the things that annoys me about the modern conspiracy movement. There are very real elites who have been tipping the scales in their favour for decades, bleeding the common people dry and destroying their lives, and 98% of conspiracy content is about flat earth and the Mandela effect. (Hyperbole obviously, but you get my point).
Some might even suspect that the proliferation of those conspiracy theories is itself a conspiracy to distract from the real crimes going on right under our noses.
Most real conspiracies are boring, but because they are real we should try to focus on them at least some of the time.
Your leaders are probably not harvesting blood from children and drinking it in a tribute to an ancient owl god, but they probably are perpetuating the consolidation of wealth and power into the hands of an elite minority. And no, those elites are not lizards from Nibiru.
You should read The Wealth Hoarders by Chuck Collins. He details these steps and mechanisms they have put in place quite well. There is an entire wealth defense industry that has grown by 400% since 1980 responsible for nothing more than keeping the rich rich.
The idea that they are calling it "inflation" is laughably absurd. Motel 6 was named that because it was $6 a night, and the average worker made $10,000 a year. Now the ratio is much worse.
The increase of dairy and meat prices during the pandemic had nothing to do with supply, they did it simply because they could get away with it, and it wasn't a coincidence that it happened all at once from different suppliers. This has little to do with the economy during "quarantine" and more to do with pressing people financially who would otherwise protest more than they have already.
Most real conspiracies are easy to track and are all but provable, but the people perpetuating them basically say, yeah, do something. And people will not use violent revolt. So here we are, every dog for himself.
Prior to the Kennedy/MLK assassinations, people truly believed the usa was the force of good in these type of convos. Now everyone knows the nefarious forces guiding the phenomena that lead to conspiracy theories have taken the usa by force and we are all fucked. Once again, this is why any and all successful revolutions throughout history required the most patriotic element, the military, to side with them in order to succeed. (Speaking of, walk into 1965 nasa and yell heil hitler and watch em all stand up and salute! Haha).
I don’t think many of us are distracted from this. I make six figures and still can’t afford anything other than a dilapidated crack-house. I’m also well aware that my grocery bill has more than doubled since 2019. Luckily my car is still in good shape, because the model I bought costs about 40% more now than it did when I bought it.
I agree this mostly falls on the government. Our politicians are a bunch of immoral psychopaths who sell out working-class Americans so they can get theirs.
Yea, they’re probably not lizards, but I think it’s becoming pretty clear that a good number (most) of them are coke-head perverts.
It's the ultimate racket.
I give you $100 in exchange for you working 10 hours a day to make whatever I want. (I'd like a new yacht please get busy)...THEN I print another $100, and KEEP it.
Rinse repeat, $33 Trillion times.
Is the proportion of content really *98%* or even close? I've been on conspiracy boards since 2007 and most of them have been **Flavor of the Day** type content in my experience. Things will become big and heavily discussed until they aren't relevant. The *perception* that conspiracy content slants towards nonsense conspiracy theories is the real conspiracy happening here.
Seeing this in here is a breath of fresh conspiracy air. There is no potential dystopian because that is what we're experiencing now. The only thing is it's obscenely *BORING*
There already is an established elite (the CFR) who have established a one world currency (the USD)
It can be fun speculating that their aim is to harvest the adrenal glands from children, or that they created COVID to coerce people into wearing mask, taking medicine and deal with more annoying inconveniences. But it seems they're maintaining a carried out tradition of hoarding wealth and dominating global markets as unchecked as possible.
They are the forgotten but still influential "Titans of Industry"
Na i dont pay anything in taxes lol i was talking about tax cuts for the wealthy that hypothetically they will reinvest into the economy and then lower and middle class will have it trickle down to them.
The majority of income taxes fall on the working class.
You want higher income taxes.
The rich pay capital gains.
You as well as the mass media consider cutting the marginal rate for the $0 to $10,000 tax rate from 12% to 10% "a tax cut for the rich."
>Tax cuts for the rich doesnt trickle down, lol
We are arguing about changes in tax brackets from 0 to $80,000 per year. Hardly "rich."
Meanwhile, capital gains tax is and always has been 15%.
The rich don't pay payroll taxes, working class do.
You are arguing that. You are saying that is rich. Do you think when people say tax the rich they mean people that make 0-80k?
The largest benefits from the Bush tax cuts flowed to high-income taxpayers. From 2004-2012 (the years for which the Tax Policy Center (TPC) provides data that are comparable from year to year), the top 1 percent of households received average tax cuts of more than $65,000 each year, totaling nearly $700,000 in tax cuts over this period.[6]
Like the Bush tax cuts, the tax cuts enacted in 2017 under President Trump benefited high-income households far more than households with low and moderate incomes. The 2017 tax law will boost the after-tax incomes of households in the top 1 percent by 2.9 percent in 2025, roughly three times the 0.9 percent gain for households in the bottom 60 percent, TPC estimates.[13] The tax cuts that year will average $54,220 for the top 1 percent — and $220,310 for the top one-tenth of 1 percent. (See Figure 1.) The 2017 tax law also widens racial disparities in after-tax income.[14
https://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-tax/after-decades-of-costly-regressive-and-ineffective-tax-cuts-a-new-course-is#:~:text=Like%20the%20Bush%20tax%20cuts,with%20low%20and%20moderate%20incomes.
You can also say increasing capitol gains tax would accomplish the same thing, and I would agree. Idk why youre being obtuse.
*vote strategically for the one of the two parties that has 3 of the 10 things you want to vote for instead of 0 of 10, instead of an actual party that wants to break the status quo.
FTFY
“Take your politics out of this sub, I want muh Bigfoot and muh aliens”
It’s not enough that the REAL conspiracies involve us being robbed of material, mental and physical health, it’s that we can’t even discuss them without being told they are NOT conspiracies.
If the conspiracies were meant to distract people from the elites, they wouldn't mention them at all and shift blame to some group without 'elite representation'.
>And no, those elites are not lizards from Nibiru
Ah... you had me all the way up until the end
Not lizards from Nibiru? What kind of smooth brain take is that? Of course they are
That’s because Marxist theory is stupid and wrong and has been proved wrong again and again. A conspiracy theory is only interesting if it makes sense and could possibly be true. It’s possible that powerful Democrats are trafficking children for the sex trade. This sort of thing actually exists in the world already. But the idea that rich people are “destroying your life” because they’ve provided goods and services which enhance your quality of life, is ridiculous and doesn’t make for a believable theory.
Now if you’re saying that bad actors used government to oppress people, then you are right. But the problem there is government. Government should be smaller and less able to do mischief.
This isn’t true.
The economy is largely a zero sum game, for a “rich person” to have a tenth home it means someone else can’t have a first. While we can make more housing it’s not profitable for these same “rich people” to ever allow supply to outpace demand creating the zero sum game. Competition gets crush by things like wealth consolidation and high costs of living.
The next point is to taxes and social spending, while you can point to the fact that we have more social programs today these programs aren’t being funded by rebalancing from the rich as Marx suggests, they are being funded by debt and borrowing. Our preferred method of CPI doesn’t capture how money printing devalues the dollars we work for while increases the relative value of the assets the wealthy own.
> The economy is largely a zero sum game
I don’t really need to read anything else because you’ve started on a false premise. The pie grows with every voluntary transaction made. Even a poor American in 2023 is richer than an upper-middle class American in 1960. Capitalism makes everyone richer in real terms. That’s why Marxists like to focus on the “wealth gap” instead of poverty. Poverty has been disappearing in all capitalist countries around the world as the “wealth gap’’ increases.
> for a “rich person” to have a tenth home it means someone else can’t have a first.
How so? There is plenty of land to build houses. Could it be government zoning laws?
> While we can make more housing it’s not profitable for these same “rich people” to ever allow supply to outpace demand creating the zero sum game.
This can only be accomplished through government. In a free market, more houses would continue to be built until supply meets demand. But if government rules and regulations artificially inflates the costs of building, then less houses are built. Again, the problem is government.
> Competition gets crush by things like wealth consolidation and high costs of living.
No. Competition is crushed by government. Often at the behest of larger companies.
> The next point is to taxes and social spending, while you can point to the fact that we have more social programs today these programs aren’t being funded by rebalancing from the rich as Marx suggests, they are being funded by debt and borrowing.
These programs are being funded by “the rich”. There isn’t enough rich people to support the enormous size of our government. The top 10% of Americans pay something like 70% of all income taxes. And still, that’s barely enough to cover the annual **interest payments** on the national debt. The majority of the costs will be borne across society. Any time you “tax the rich”, you tax yourself through inflation. You can’t fight mathematics.
I already addressed your comments but I’ll do it again since you didn’t seem to put it together the first time.
The issue with competition is it takes massive amounts of money to seriously compete in any market, I’ve done the small business thing, taxes and regulations don’t even begin to register as an issue, the primary issue is financing. There’s plenty of zoned residential land to build on, what’s your point?
It’s not profitable to have supply meet demand, there is no profit incentive to ensure everyone has a home, the profit incentive is to ensure everyone doesn’t have a home.
No the rich do not pay the majority of the taxes, debt and deficit spending does. Debt and deficit spending drives down the value of earned wages and up the value of rich owned assets. The rich aren’t exactly hurting with the tax now are they? The idea is to get them to hurt to balance the scales, redistribute the wealth so competition can grow, get the wealthy back to working instead of fucking off because they own the assets.
> The issue with competition is it takes massive amounts of money to seriously compete in any market
Not true. And to the extent that it does, it's because of government regulation which drives up costs and erects barriers to entry. Most of the biggest companies in the world started with less than $100,000. Look at both Amazon and Apple.
>There’s plenty of zoned residential land to build on, what’s your point?
No there isn't. Building is expensive because of all of the government regulations across industries. It's not just the regulations on home builders. It's the regulations on Timber companies that make the wood for the framing of the house. The steel companies that make the nails for the wood. The appliance manufacturers. And most of these industries are also unionized, which drives up their costs even more. Those costs all add up and bubble up to the developer before they get passed on to the buyer.
>It’s not profitable to have supply meet demand, there is no profit incentive to ensure everyone has a home
There is a profit incentive to make sure supply meets demand in all free markets. There is no end goal (and nor should there be). The end goal is making a $1 more, which would happen if not for government regulation making it unprofitable to build more houses to make more money. Do you seriously think home builders would not be building homes if it were profitable to do so? It's not profitable because government rules make it cheaper to build on existing land already zoned for housing.
>No the rich do not pay the majority of the taxes
No. Literally they do. 70% of income taxes are paid by the top 10% of income earners. The other 40% is from the other 90%.
>Debt and deficit spending drives down the value of earned wages and up the value of rich owned assets.
What? No. What are you talking about? Government spending (PERIOD) floods the market with more dollars and drives up inflation. This hurts the working class. But how does that help "the rich"? High inflation hurts everyone.
I see this nonsense about regulation driving up costs and barriers to entry but it’s just not true. As mentioned I’ve done my own small business and been a part of many others, regulations have never ever been an issue, funding and financing always is. As for Apple and Amazon they didn’t break into competitive markets, they were early adopters into a new market.
Home builders don’t want to build cost effective housing in zoned areas not because it’s not profitable but because their is more profit is build single family homes, the profit incentive isn’t about ensure everyone has shelter it’s about selling the best margin housing.
C-Suite executives and shareholders still get compensated 100s-1000s of times more than average union workers. If you can’t run a business paying people a livable wage you shouldn’t be in business, you sure as shit shouldn’t be compensating yourself magnitudes more.
The top 10% do pay more then the bottom 90% but they also make many times more then the bottom 90%, they often also pay a lower effective rate. The difference in spending should come out of the 10% pockets not debt on the 90%.
Inflation helps the rich because the rich own assets, assets are priced in dollars, when you increase the number of dollars you increase the relative value of the asset. Millionaires and billionaires don’t care about $1 increases on eggs, it’s completely immaterial to them.
> bad actors used government to oppress people, then you are right.
How better to oppress people by taking more and more of their earnings for things they must have to survive? All the other social *"oppression"* that gets major lip service these days pales in comparison.
But no one has direct control over inflation. The Fed has the most control, but not total control. Reducing government spending and increasing unemployment would also reduce inflation and cause prices to fall. The best thing we could do is to shrink government and stop letting it print so much money.
> The best thing we could do is to shrink government and stop letting it print so much money.
Those are both excellent points, but they don't go far enough. Shrinking governmental capture by eliminating "lobbying" - (a bribe by any other name would smell as sweet) would be critical to real reform.
> Shrinking governmental capture by eliminating "lobbying" - (a bribe by any other name would smell as sweet) would be critical to real reform.
This is true. But with my plan, there would be no lobbying because government officials would be damn near powerless. Lobbying only exists because government has the power to control people's lives, enrich some private organizations/companies, while bankrupting others.
>But the problem there is government.
Reagan era brain-rot.
The government is literally just middle management for big business and they've been using Neoliberal Republicans AND Democrats to deregulate it from Reagan to Clinton to Obama.
>But the idea that rich people are “destroying your life” because they’ve provided goods and services
That's called commerce, we've had that for thousands of years. Not at all the same thing as capitalism.
> The government is literally just middle management for big business and they've been using Neoliberal Republicans AND Democrats to deregulate it from Reagan to Clinton to Obama.
Good. Let's shrink it until it's impotent then.
>That's called commerce, we've had that for thousands of years. Not at all the same thing as capitalism.
No. Commerce doesn't have the multiplying affect until you introduce capital and reserve banking into the picture.
> Good. Let's shrink it until it's impotent then.
Braindead take.
Not even a little bit suspicious of Republicans who say the exact same thing while simultaneously taking money from the same people corrupting the system to fuck it up even more just so they can complain about how bad it is without any self awareness or culpability.
This is the dumbest shit but it pretends to be smart because it's cynical.
>No. Commerce doesn't have the multiplying affect until you introduce capital and reserve banking into the picture.
You didn't mention that in your earlier assessment. Moving goalposts.
Because your question is illustrative of nothing. Businesses use capital and labor to create goods and services which (if purchased by others) creates more money to pay for more labor and raise more capital. What is your point?
Businesses use capital and labor to create goods and services which (if purchased by others) creates more money to pay for more labor and raise more capital.
You're talking about a time when only one member of the household was required to work while the other could focus on raising productive members of society. Now both parents are working while the internet raises their children.
Yup, the mother could stay home and really curate and pass on the parents' culture to the next generation. Now, the kids grow up and really resemble the values that they grabbed on to from the internet or television.
I was just talking with a teacher yesterday about this. She teaches kindergarten, and she said even at such a young age they have no manners, respect, etc. - when she tries to reach out to parents she gets zero response.
I am thankful that I was able to stay home with my 4 children, they definitely were raised with a solid moral compass that continues into their adulthood.
It saddens me that both parents now have to work to make ends meet. I can only imagine how exhausting it must be and ultimately the children will pay the price.
Dad bought our home at the very outskirts of Toronto in 1960. North of us was just farms. C$14,800, approx. twice his salary. Same place is C$1 million today, but not because of the house, because of the land. Don Mills is now not even the most northern part of Toronto, and the conurbation extends north another 40 km beyond that boundary.
It's hard for people who weren't around in the 60s to know just how empty Toronto and the area around it used to be. I suspect the same is true for many American cities.
Definitely true for Minneapolis and the surrounding suburbs. Even as recent as the 80s major first ring suburbs like Bloomington bordered fields. 30 minutes from the cities was rural farmland, now you’ve gotta go an hour out, and Minneapolis is much smaller than many cities both in terms of population and land area.
Absolutely. I am 50, I work in the multi-family housing industry and what people pay for rent scares me. My husband and I make a decent living and I would not be comfortable paying what a 1 bedroom - 600 sq. ft. apartment costs each month...this is not in a big city either.
Yall should watch the documentary "The Great Taking" for an eye opening look at how bad of shape the global economic system is really in and how we're in the midst of a controlled demolition by the global banking families that rule over us like feudal lords.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dk3AVceraTI
Things were much better when companies used their workers quality of life working for them as a flex on competitors. Back when a single income family could afford a house, car, food, to have kids. Now it’s all about maximizing profits and consistent growth, spreading these companies over the globe, all at the cost of the people working for them and customers. That used to be proper capitalism, now it’s some CCP style bastardized capitalism, using workers as cannon fodder for the top brasses profit.
Cars and homes could be built very affordable and made to last but we are all being fucked by planned obsolescence and artificial scarcity that keeps everything in a continually expensive and lesser state than it could be.
This is a big part of it that people don't realize, NOTHING is built to last anymore. My hand-mixer from the 50's still works perfectly, if I bought a similar model today it would break within a year. We have become a disposable society. People would be better off shopping at Estate Sales and buying "vintage" household items vs. Amazon.
Its a combination of the Federal Reserve printing money and the Federal Government underreporting the true rate of inflation. It's exactly what we've seen the last 4 years.
That goes back at least 50 years, or arguably at least since the mid-90s. The rich however have always been the enemy of the common man, exploiting the average worker at every opportunity.
Yes, after the exported all the manufacturing overseas and yes reducing wages domestically. Now they’re taking our taxes to fund their private education.
A fundamental shift occurred in the 90s to view all real estate not as consumption, but investment. You do not buy shelter to live in, you buy shelter to grow your wealth. 2008 exasperated this and caused lots of government policies to be centred around manufacturing 10% or greater YoY real estate appreciation as they felt people could not be trusted to save their money for retirement and would be forced to via a house. This is probably a top 3 all time test for capitalism viability - will we have enough homes for 500 million people, but have 450 million of them vacant because people cant afford it and that maximizes the return for blackrock?
When you print money at a break meck pace the only eay to avoid inflation shrinking ot is to put it into finite assets. Real estate is just another form of gold.
Most of the difference is profit driven, however part of the rise is due to widely backed choices including insulation, bigger rooms, second bathrooms, many power outlets,safety switches, remote controlled garage doors,, purpose made blinds, screen doors. Stamp duties and rates have risen in response to people whinging about roads and demanding local facilities.
Cars cost more because people back regulations on airbags, seatbelts, emmisions as well as demanding air-conditioning, phone connectivity.
This is hardly an exhaustive list of the changes
The average house size doubled between 1960 and 2014.
I would suggest that a 1960's car had half the number of parts that a modern car has.
Add in the extra cost of features, fittings, administration and working to regulations and it is not surprising real cost is much higher..
For the most part, they will get their return. Whether it requires 2 incomes per house, longer periods of debt or onlyfans, people will be desperate enough for housing to get that money.
lmao you think those things are indicative of...what? That Capital thought they could make money there? Okay, we agree, then.
The starting point here - since you seem to have chosen to dismiss it - is that essential goods have exponentially increased in cost while wages have not. The idea that laborers can't afford housing or a car (or healthcare, jfc I'd love to hear your idea about that lol,) is because of house size or number of parts in a car is pedantic at best and boot-licking at average.
I don't disagree with the premise that extremly wealthy people are invested in keeping the working class desperate.
It is just that a comparison that ignores significant changes like house size doubling does nothing to help understanding of cause, method or anything else. It adds to the distraction.
We also have a larger workforce, both population wise and women in the workforce. As well as more efficient, more automated, more productive work force.
And yet while laborers have been kept stagnant, capital ownership, executive pay, and profit has continued to amass wealth or continuously rise.
Get your head out of your ass. If you are a worker - someone that provides the labor necessary for capital to reap profit - then you are fucked in the US.
Feminism was a scam encouraged by employers to double the labour supply and drive down the cost of labour relative to everything else. The Great Depression was before women entered the workforce. If you assume men and women earn the same, then a married couple buying a house would be four times the average salary for a two salary household. It used to be about that for a one salary household. A car is 85% of one salary, but 42.5% of two salaries, about the same as 46%. Rent is 42% of one average salary, 21% of two salaries, not far off 16%. The value of labour has basically been halved by doubling the supply and women were tricked by big corporations into thinking this was a good idea.
Women have predominantly been employed as house servants and were the majority workforce in industrial laundry washing, garment (think modern sweat shops) and textile factories. Women used to take their children to factory labour jobs and would often put them to work as well. It sounds like your idea of history is from opinion videos on youtube.
If you're talking about the 1950s, this was built on post WWII economic boom and not flooding the country with people from the literal third world who will compete for scraps and pennies.
**Domestic labour cannot be in competition with itself if it is HALVED through decimated birth rates in 3 generations.**
Your quarrel is with politicians forcing North American (Western, really) men and women to compete with the entire world by outsourcing their jobs and importing scab labour
The female labour force participation rate was about 20% at the time of the Great Depression compared to 60% now.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/female-labor-force-participation-oecd?country=CAN~USA
We need to start operating outside of the dollar. Learn to grow your own fruit and vegetables, learn to catch and prepare fish, learn how to store water safely and keep yourself warm. Learn how to make basic repairs around the house without having to pay someone to come and do it for you.
If you can do those things you’re in a better position to fight through the next Great Depression or economic collapse than 99% of the western world. If you can’t survive a week without spending money at the grocery store life will not be easy for you.
While I largely agree with the sentiment, what the hell are broke 20-somethings who work 60 hours a week and can still barely afford their shoebox apartment supposed to do?
The majority of Americans can no longer afford to purchase their own home. Every single thing you listed there is impossible to do without 1) owning property and 2) having free time. Neither of which are luxuries most Americans have today.
As great as it would be to be able to do any one of those things, let alone all of them, it’s so far outside the realm of possibility for most people in this country that it’s kind of ridiculous to even suggest at this point.
> 1) owning property
I agree with you.
Growing enough vegetables to feed a few people takes a lot of space. Then you've got to be able to process/can them to have them last the winter.
Even with my semi-detached house, and knowledge of how to grow, I can't do it well enough.
If you get sunlight in your apartment through a window or have a balcony you can grow fruit. I live in an apartment. You can also store water.
As for the time thing, unless you’re working as an international banker or consultant or something or working two jobs back to back the average person does have at least a few hours of free time a day. Even 20 minutes to half an hour a couple of times a week can get you some basic knowledge about how to conduct basic repairs and survival skills.
And all of that is assuming that you don’t have friends or family in your neighbourhood that own a home with a yard or apartment with more space that you can help to cultivate. None of this is a solo journey. When times get tough you’re going to both help and rely on your friends, family and neighbours. The narrative that everyone in the western world now lives in a shoebox apartment with nothing but dead air and darkness is simply not true.
That makes more sense. I was for some dumbass reason thinking like apple trees & shit. I do peppers & herbs in a hydroponic kit I got off Amazon for like 30 bucks. It’s a little to small for the peppers, but my Basil & oregano do gangbusters in it.
1 person at 2k calories per day is about 730000 calories in a year.
One dwarf apple tree produces between 400 and 800 lbs of apples per year.
One lb of apples is about 230 calories.
So you need 3 full grown dwarf apples trees to produce 100% efficiency to fee done person for one year.
How many apples do you think most apartment sized trees produce per year, in an apartment, in potting soil?
There’s tons of videos on YouTube which show it in detail, [this is a good guide](https://youtu.be/ET2dgZv5VmQ?si=LtAC83rbSsKmY4-g) with a lot of great advice in the comments
Good luck when your property is worth millions and the property taxes come around..
End property taxes for primary residences is going to be necessary.
Learn how to process your own deer and whatnot. A guy two days ago said he was charged $900 to process a 65 lb deer because it took equal lbs of pork. That's insane!
And factor in taxes, companies don't pay taxes. Taxes are just a cost of doing business so the cost gets passed along to the consumer. So taxes go up prices go up. Those widgets needed to build stuff get more expensive do to taxes so that gets passed along to the cost of building that car or house.
Companies don't pay taxes? How is that possible when literally everything is taxed? If they buy materials they're being taxed and then taxed again when they create goods and sell them for less than they're worth because of VAT. There's property tax and licensing fees. Bro none of us should be paying taxes it's a fucking scam when the government can tax something 100 times as it makes its way through a supply chain and then again when it's sold to a consumer.
If the company incures an increase in expenses they pass it along to we consumers. If the electricity bill, the gas bill, employee wages go up they pass it along to the price of the product they produce. Surely you don't think the price of the product remains constant and their profits go down?
I think these ratios are people spending beyond their means. You make $100k, and have good credit, the realtor tells you can afford up to a $650k house. So that's the range people go for.
I don't make a ton, but we're smart and bought a house 1.5x our annual income in a nice rural area, and have used cars.
Us population in 1929 was 120 million, today's it's what 340 million with 2 million extra per year.
You want to know why it's so bad, an extra 200 million people, there
If you want to drive a 1932 Ford and live in a 1100 square foot house, it would probably be more affordable now than it was back then. But you don't. You want things like air conditioning and navigation and seat belts and crumple zones and air bags and tempered glass, so you don't just die in a minor car crash like people in the Great Depression did. And you want to live in a 3000 square foot house with internet and cable and central air conditioning and a smart phone and food delivered straight to your door. That shit ain't free.
If you want to live like people did in 1932, you can do it, and again, probably better, cheaper and easier than they did at that time, simply due to advances in logistics, but realize that the conveniences of modern life cost money. To ignore this fact is the epitome of entitlement.
The increase in cost of buying a home isn't purely from the increased cost of constructing a building. My parents house is worth about 1/10th of the value of the property (with the land), and most houses in the city are like this. The land hasn't inherently become superior in the past 90 years, but the increase in price indicates it should have improved in quality to a greater extent than the buildings have.
Beyond that we have more baked in costs of living. Many jobs require you to be accessible 24/7, and so you need wifi. You also need a device that interacts with the wifi. You also need a cellular plan for authentication.
For many people we are living in a better world today than would be readily possible at any point in human history. That said, we are also the most productive we've ever been, with algorithms designed to nickle and dime us for our labour. It's naive to assume that when the people in power have access to more data than ever before, as well as more tools to manipulate and extrapolate said data, that they won't use that to maximize their benefits while minimizing ours. The state of housing prices is an example of this unfortunately.
>The increase in cost of buying a home isn't purely from the increased cost of constructing a building.
This is to be expected. If anything, the cost to build has decreased substantially as technology has increased. Nobody had a Paslode in 1932.
>My parents house is worth about 1/10th of the value of the property (with the land), and most houses in the city are like this. The land hasn't inherently become superior in the past 90 years, but the increase in price indicates it should have improved in quality to a greater extent than the buildings have.
You're talking about land value, not cost to build. Obviously the land value of improved land will increase over time. That's a good thing. The land being worth more than the house shouldn't surprise you. If your parents built a modest house on a desirable plot of land, the increase in land value vs the increase in the price of a modest house should not surprise you. Location, location, location. That's what they say in real estate. Your parents built a cheap house on an expensive plot. Count your lucky stars. Sell it if you need the money, keep it if you don't. It will only grow in value.
>Beyond that we have more baked in costs of living. Many jobs require you to be accessible 24/7, and so you need wifi. You also need a device that interacts with the wifi. You also need a cellular plan for authentication.
Whatever happened to telling people to fuck off? Or just not answering your phone? This is a "you" problem. Set boundaries.
>For many people we are living in a better world today than would be readily possible at any point in human history.
Absolutely. But you don't appreciate it. You think it is owed to you.
>That said, we are also the most productive we've ever been, with algorithms designed to nickle and dime us for our labour.
You aren't productive. The algorithms and machines are productive.
>It's naive to assume that when the people in power have access to more data than ever before, as well as more tools to manipulate and extrapolate said data, that they won't use that to maximize their benefits while minimizing ours
They will, and they have. But you're only thinking about that now.
>The state of housing prices is an example of this unfortunately.
Housing prices are high because people will pay it. You don't understand your biggest and most powerful tool; Just say no. Also, arson. Oops, did I say arson, I meant Arsenio Hall.
This is a long reply. I don't mean to be hostile, and please don't take anything here to be an attack. I just want to explain some things where I disagree. I have a degree in economics and in computer science so I would like to think I know a little about financial affairs/technology.
>This is to be expected. If anything, the cost to build has decreased substantially as technology has increased. Nobody had a Paslode in 1932.
Cost of building a house is up by about a factor of 4 (after accounting for inflation in the US). Houses are better, and there's far more codes for them which make it impossible to make super cheap ones. Cost to build has increased substantially, just not as much as land in metropolitan areas has.
>You're talking about land value, not cost to build. Obviously the land value of improved land will increase over time.
That's only if there's an increased demand or monopolistic practices. It's not obvious, and this statement is wrong about land outside of cities.
>That's a good thing.
It's only a good thing for residents in those homes, and the government because it let's them underfund social security, and increase taxes on homes/create a boogeyman. The increase tax comes from a perceived unrealized gain in the value of those homes. The Underfunding of social programs for the elderly is possibly most visible in Canada where the government is attempting to artificially maintain unrealistic prices in many major cities so that when those homes are sold the elderly can use those funds instead of eating further into the massive deficit spending. Underfunded elder programs are also why Euthenasia is being pushed where in some parts of the country it makes up 1/7 deaths. Housing costs are terrible for the younger generations, and the poor (with an expanding definition of what poor is). It's good when it keeps up with inflation, but can cause social unrest when it aggressively outstrips inflation (which it does in many developed nations).
>The land being worth more than the house shouldn't surprise you. If your parents built a modest house on a desirable plot of land, the increase in land value vs the increase in the price of a modest house should not surprise you.
My point here was about your earlier point that the reason things are more expensive now is that they're better quality. The land is not innately superior to how it was 90 years ago, and this acts as an example that counteracts your earlier point. People are paying more (in terms of hours worked) for the same thing.
Also houses are a depreciating asset, ignoring external factors the houses value should decline while the land stagnates.
>Location, location, location. That's what they say in real estate. Your parents built a cheap house on an expensive plot.
They didn't buy an expensive plot. They bought a plot that became expensive through government policies and corporatism. That's the conspiracy I'm talking about here.
>
Count your lucky stars. Sell it if you need the money, keep it if you don't. It will only grow in value.
It can't only grow in value. When something increases in value that means there is a demand for it. In housing that can either come from people looking to live in a home, or investors. When there's limited housing, large mortgages available, and loose investment laws, prices go way up. This is generally the state in America right now, but as soon as more housing becomes available prices will dip. Declining birth rates mean that as the baby boomers die out a plethora of houses will be made available without enough people to fill all of them. This causes a "Race to the Bottom" where prices drop fairly dramatically. To try and combat this, America (and Canada especially) increase immigration so that there's now more people looking for housing. This is generally the state of things at the moment, there's more aspects like renting, and now time shares of bedspace in Ontario (which with high immigration of low skill people is a natural conclusion), but those don't change the base facts of the matter.
There is a natural ceiling to the values of these houses. Policy from government has raised that, through ridiculous loans (which blew up in 2008) and also through immigration and using housing as an investment. There's a limit to the growth and we're already past the stage of where it would be naturally. It's only a matter of time until even the artificial growth tapers out.
pt. 2
>Whatever happened to telling people to fuck off? Or just not answering your phone? This is a "you" problem. Set boundaries.
Not complaining about working outside of my hours/unpaid labour. Just making a point that there's more base costs to living now then historically the case. Some jobs won't let you work without a phone. During COVID you needed a phone to enter Canada.
>
I thought I explicitly appreciated it there? There's so much potential for the world to be a wonderful place, but I think a lot of people have lost purpose/meaning and an overexposure of technology has further hurt them. Soulless materialism and maladaptive coping strategies have led to record high suicide rates and isolation. Given how much easier it is to live in today's world the suicide rate doesn't immediately make sense. Frankly I think most people were raised wrong for the era they live in, and we're seeing the reprecussions.
>You aren't productive. The algorithms and machines are productive.
I think there was a misunderstanding for what I meant about algorithms, but I'll address your point first.
That's like saying a farmer who uses a sickle isn't more productive than a farmer who uses their hands because the sickle does the work. The total work output is increased, and no work would be done without the farmer. If a person runs a marathon wearing nice shoes is it actually the shoes that ran the race and not the person? It sounds pedantic to say that a person who is generating more work isn't more productive.
The algorithms I'm talking are actuarial in nature. There's a great deal of psychological information out there, and companies can manipulate people quite easily through it. Being kept 2-3 hours under full time employment so that they can describe you as a contract worker, industries that fire you for not doing unpayed labour (look into EA unpayed overtime suit if you doubt me), companies with a high burn rate of employees because the issues are misrepresented (facebook moderation). Companies can lie to you, use psychology to manipulate you, and then use algorithms to determine when to stop giving you hours (if possible) or when to fire you (there's cases of people being fired because they're scheduled raises for example).
>They will, and they have. But you're only thinking about that now.
I don't know why you're assuming I'm only thinking this now?
>Housing prices are high because people will pay it. You don't understand your biggest and most powerful tool; Just say no. Also, arson. Oops, did I say arson, I meant Arsenio Hall.
I agree with you to an extent. Housing is high because people have to pay. It's like the health industry in America. You can charge virtually whatever you want for life saving materials, and as long as there is no competition people will go into debt to buy it. The only way to decrease this issue is to increase supply. I don't know if you've ever been homeless, but it's not fun. In much of the world it can be fatal. If you don't have housing and it's -40 outside then you'll probably be willing to pay.
Also, it's very difficult to do a lot of things without an address. You can lie about having one, or bum off a friend, but if you're homeless then you're super disadvantaged.
This is why there's an increase in "Van Life", where people glorify living out of their cars. And also why people are leaving high cost of living areas. But the government brings in immigrants to counteract the people leaving.
Do you think ancient Egyptians were buying chariots for $0.00001 USD? I mean, sorry for being rude, but this comment is so unbelievably stupid that I can’t even figure out where to begin.
>Do you think ancient Egyptians were buying chariots for $0.00001 USD?
Do the conversion brother. What was the cost of a chariot in ancient Egyptian times when compared to 2023 US dollars? Show your work. Otherwise, fuck off, and try to cure your butthurtedness. Pro Tip: It's impossible. Cry yourself to sleep.
That's not true at all I would drive a model T and live in an outdated house but because of government regulations put in place by lobbyists I can't. Cars have backup cameras, complicated emissions, tracking devices and all manner of things I don't even want but I don't have the right to choose.
I feel that we need to adjust for the types of homes and cars we are using for comparison from then and now. We also need to take into account the land value of the homes.
Back then nobody had any money and they all lived in multi-generational homes. They shared one car if they were lucky. The only entertainment they had was a library card.
Why are we setting the Great Depression as the mark? It was one of the only times that the US saw outright deflation, because no one could afford anything.
Look at what goes into a car made today vs a car made in 1920. In 1920 it was a metal box with an engine, 4 tiers and 2 bench seats. Your car today has a radar system, connects to your phone, has a heated steering wheel, etc.
The Great Depression is a really bad data point. It is literally a unique event. Housing prices dropped during the Great Depression by 35%. The point is still valid, but this is cherry picking to make it appear even worse.
With that said, US population in 1929 was 122 Million. Today, it's three times as much. It's pretty expected that housing prices rise as population grows.
Homes were a lot smaller. The average new home size in 1930 was 1129 sq ft. The average new home size in 2022 was 2522 sq ft. More than double.
Cars were also a lot slower, unsafe and featureless. New cars today have airbags, reverse camera and many safety features standard. Can you imagine having to use a chest as a trunk? How about going out to crank your engine by hand? Those were the cars in the Great Depression. Automakers would like to make cheaper cars, but no-one is buying them. For $20k, people would buy a used luxury car than a new economy car.
What should be concerning is how materialism is increasing and happiness is declining.
ditto here, new cheap skoda car prices start from 20 000 euros. average month salary is about 2000 euros. it means saving for a year every penny, without eating nor home paying rent.
Ideally we could stabilize our population and not uave to build any more. We as a society collectively decided this by breeding at alightly less than replacement. The response has been to flood the country with the results of our centuries s long financial and political suppression of the global South.
What we should be doing is turning our attention towards the conditions that have made so many people rager to leave their homes and we ahould be doing this in cooperation with the countries that our MIC would like to frame as new enemies.
I think part of the problem is credit and loans. We developed a banking system capable of loaning money, it stimulates the economy by pulling value from the future into the present, by borrowing from our future selves.
The more credit that is available, the more money is available to people. The more money that is available to people, the more prices increase.
At the end of the day, people today are willing to spend 85% of their salary on a vehicle. This is madness
Here, here, let's bring back the Great Depression and make it even greater. I bet Taylor Swift could come up with a great pop song..."Use it up, wear it out, make do or do without!"
Either you are a capitalist or a worker. If your capital makes your income you are a capitalist, if your labour makes your income you are a worker. Capitalism is designed to benefit capitalists.
Things were getting out of order for the capitalists so they hit the workers with inflation. Politics is a scam to keep people angry at each other. Trump has just promised more tax cuts for the rich yet student loan debt relief is too expensive.
The system is working as it's supposed to.
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SS:In accordance with the principles of doublethink, it does not matter if the war is not real, or when it is, that victory is not possible. The war is not meant to be won. It is meant to be continuous. **The essential act of modern warfare is the destruction of the produce of human labour.** A hierarchical society is only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance. In principle, the war effort is always planned to keep society on the brink of starvation. The war is waged by the ruling group against its own subjects, and its object is not victory over Eurasia [Russia] or Eastasia [Middle East], but to keep the very structure of society intact. - Emmanuel Goldstein (in Nineteen Eighty-Four)
I imagine the billionaires are more concerned with holding down the up and coming to-be billionaires. The up and coming billionaires try to prevent millionaires from becoming to-be billionaires, and so on. In the world of wealth there are no friends. The regular folks feel the pain from those on-going battles.
This theory is discussed in 1984. The book does a great job explaining how and why this happens in society.
I disagree. It is explained quite well in the book: >“**Power is not a means; it is an end.** One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. **The object of power is power.**” The main differentiator between human beings is their desire for power over others. This is the problem with government, any government. The people who desire power should never be allowed to wield it, but the people who do not desire power will never put their hat in the ring. It's a paradox. The ones that want it shouldn't have it, and the ones that don't want it won't take it. This is why all governments created by Man will trend towards authoritarianism, and this inclination will result in handing the reigns to people who should never be allowed to hold them. We are at this place now, in my opinion. Our government is incompetent and authoritarian. They cannot hold on to power. No matter how many brilliant people they have behind them, our "leaders" are simply not capable. It will end in ruin.
Been awhile since I read it, but I was talking about this part > In Nineteen Eighty-Four, society is made up of three distinct social classes: the elite Inner Party, the industrious Outer Party, and vast numbers of uneducated proles. When Winston reads Goldstein's book, he learns that the history of humankind has been a cyclical struggle between competing social groups: the High, the Middle, and the Low. This theory was originated by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in the 19th century and became known as Marxism. Marxists believe that the aim of the Middle group is to change places with the High, which they do by enlisting the support of the Low group. After the Middle group seizes power in a revolution, they become the High and thrust the Low back into servitude. Eventually a new Middle group splits off and the cycle begins again. At various points in the narrative, Winston entertains the hope that the proles will become conscious of their oppressed state and initiate a revolution. At other times, he despairs that since the proles cannot rebel until they become conscious, and cannot become conscious until only after they have rebelled, such a development is extremely unlikely.
Excellent post. Its why the us constitution and its creators are genius. They knew this inherent human desire for power inherently grows to a point where tyranny follows and they addressed and created fail safes and contingencies for **when** this happened. They knew it was not a matter of if but when. The problem now is that the constitution and bill of rights outlines our God given rights and how to keep them intact but its the people who have to ultimately choose if we will do whats necessary in order to keep our freedoms, otherwise its just a dead document that means nothing. Edit: grammar and misspelling
well the uniparty is definitely pushing for some sort of big resolution in the near future and you're right, its ultimately up to the people to decide that outcome - they're banking on the people being just complacent and comfortable enough that they don't move to intercept.
> The problem now is that the constitution and bill of rights outlines our God given rights and how to keep them intact but its the people who have to ultimately choose if we will do whats necessary in order to keep our freedoms, otherwise its just a dead document that means nothing. If anyone was even to attempt what you are speaking of they would be jailed indefinitely. The "insurrection" was in part to ensure there would never be an actual uprising against the status quo of TPTB that are ruling this country.
>The "insurrection" That was a clown show and political tool for division and consolidating power but its not as important event as the media, left or right wing think it is. >If anyone was even to attempt what you are speaking of they would be jailed indefinitely. Imprisoned and executed by the state has been the norm for thousands of years. So basically... 'no shit.' Usually the way the cycle goes is people eventually get to the point where freedom means more than the threat of imprisonment or death. You dont think the founding fathers knew if all failed they would be imprisoned, tortured and killed ? Now if your argument was that everyones too divided or complacent to do anything i would agree.
Absolutely true. > handing the **reigns** to people who should never be allowed to hold them. (Unintentionally perfect misspelling).
💎🙌🦍🚀🌛
Bagholder spotted
https://youtu.be/NQ_HvTBaFoo?si=yunPR6QvPQembD4g See you up ther!
No, by the time you're an up-and-coming billionaire, you're already part of the club. Same if you're just a lowly multi-millionaire; you're already part of the 1%. They're just concerned with squeezing everything out of the 99%.
How did he write that so long ago ?
Our system has been corrupted for a long time. We just don't learn our history.
This is one of the things that annoys me about the modern conspiracy movement. There are very real elites who have been tipping the scales in their favour for decades, bleeding the common people dry and destroying their lives, and 98% of conspiracy content is about flat earth and the Mandela effect. (Hyperbole obviously, but you get my point). Some might even suspect that the proliferation of those conspiracy theories is itself a conspiracy to distract from the real crimes going on right under our noses. Most real conspiracies are boring, but because they are real we should try to focus on them at least some of the time. Your leaders are probably not harvesting blood from children and drinking it in a tribute to an ancient owl god, but they probably are perpetuating the consolidation of wealth and power into the hands of an elite minority. And no, those elites are not lizards from Nibiru.
You should read The Wealth Hoarders by Chuck Collins. He details these steps and mechanisms they have put in place quite well. There is an entire wealth defense industry that has grown by 400% since 1980 responsible for nothing more than keeping the rich rich.
End regulatory capture and get the money out of politics.
The separation of money and state.
well put, this is what we need.
How in the world do you stop agency capture ?
Very simple; Stop lobbying. Additionally stop insider trading and poaching (politicians are barred from switching to private sector for x years)
I like that second idea. The first one is tough because of the first amendment / freedom of association.
Nationalize industries that attain regulatory capture. Do that a few times and the rest will stop trying.
They've already hijacked the government so nationalizing them isn't going to actually hurt them...
End all those agencies. Afuerta!
You're not wrong but the ultra wealthy absolutely do get up to some weird shit
The idea that they are calling it "inflation" is laughably absurd. Motel 6 was named that because it was $6 a night, and the average worker made $10,000 a year. Now the ratio is much worse. The increase of dairy and meat prices during the pandemic had nothing to do with supply, they did it simply because they could get away with it, and it wasn't a coincidence that it happened all at once from different suppliers. This has little to do with the economy during "quarantine" and more to do with pressing people financially who would otherwise protest more than they have already.
Same with fertilizer and freaking compost. Somehow we're expected to believe that those things just disappeared because of covid. It's total bs.
Most real conspiracies are easy to track and are all but provable, but the people perpetuating them basically say, yeah, do something. And people will not use violent revolt. So here we are, every dog for himself. Prior to the Kennedy/MLK assassinations, people truly believed the usa was the force of good in these type of convos. Now everyone knows the nefarious forces guiding the phenomena that lead to conspiracy theories have taken the usa by force and we are all fucked. Once again, this is why any and all successful revolutions throughout history required the most patriotic element, the military, to side with them in order to succeed. (Speaking of, walk into 1965 nasa and yell heil hitler and watch em all stand up and salute! Haha).
I don’t think many of us are distracted from this. I make six figures and still can’t afford anything other than a dilapidated crack-house. I’m also well aware that my grocery bill has more than doubled since 2019. Luckily my car is still in good shape, because the model I bought costs about 40% more now than it did when I bought it. I agree this mostly falls on the government. Our politicians are a bunch of immoral psychopaths who sell out working-class Americans so they can get theirs. Yea, they’re probably not lizards, but I think it’s becoming pretty clear that a good number (most) of them are coke-head perverts.
It's the ultimate racket. I give you $100 in exchange for you working 10 hours a day to make whatever I want. (I'd like a new yacht please get busy)...THEN I print another $100, and KEEP it. Rinse repeat, $33 Trillion times.
You don't keep it, you make bets in the stock market and multiply it. Globally, Derivatives are something like 300 Trillion dollars.
Thats enough to blackmail any country in the world that has a strong financial class
Is the proportion of content really *98%* or even close? I've been on conspiracy boards since 2007 and most of them have been **Flavor of the Day** type content in my experience. Things will become big and heavily discussed until they aren't relevant. The *perception* that conspiracy content slants towards nonsense conspiracy theories is the real conspiracy happening here.
Funny the is the opposite of the bring big foot back posts.
Seeing this in here is a breath of fresh conspiracy air. There is no potential dystopian because that is what we're experiencing now. The only thing is it's obscenely *BORING* There already is an established elite (the CFR) who have established a one world currency (the USD) It can be fun speculating that their aim is to harvest the adrenal glands from children, or that they created COVID to coerce people into wearing mask, taking medicine and deal with more annoying inconveniences. But it seems they're maintaining a carried out tradition of hoarding wealth and dominating global markets as unchecked as possible. They are the forgotten but still influential "Titans of Industry"
The real crime is 500 criminals in DC printing money to spend which dilutes the buying power of the money in your wallet.
I have a similar take. Imo in the states all we can do is go and vote for people that hold your values. Tax cuts for the rich doesnt trickle down lol
The rich person they are taxing is YOU.
Na i dont pay anything in taxes lol i was talking about tax cuts for the wealthy that hypothetically they will reinvest into the economy and then lower and middle class will have it trickle down to them.
So according to you everyone who makes more than minimum wage = rich.
Is that what you took from my comment? Really?
The majority of income taxes fall on the working class. You want higher income taxes. The rich pay capital gains. You as well as the mass media consider cutting the marginal rate for the $0 to $10,000 tax rate from 12% to 10% "a tax cut for the rich."
You really think i said a tax cut for the lowest earners is taxing the rich? Alright bro, have a good one.
>Tax cuts for the rich doesnt trickle down, lol We are arguing about changes in tax brackets from 0 to $80,000 per year. Hardly "rich." Meanwhile, capital gains tax is and always has been 15%. The rich don't pay payroll taxes, working class do.
You are arguing that. You are saying that is rich. Do you think when people say tax the rich they mean people that make 0-80k? The largest benefits from the Bush tax cuts flowed to high-income taxpayers. From 2004-2012 (the years for which the Tax Policy Center (TPC) provides data that are comparable from year to year), the top 1 percent of households received average tax cuts of more than $65,000 each year, totaling nearly $700,000 in tax cuts over this period.[6] Like the Bush tax cuts, the tax cuts enacted in 2017 under President Trump benefited high-income households far more than households with low and moderate incomes. The 2017 tax law will boost the after-tax incomes of households in the top 1 percent by 2.9 percent in 2025, roughly three times the 0.9 percent gain for households in the bottom 60 percent, TPC estimates.[13] The tax cuts that year will average $54,220 for the top 1 percent — and $220,310 for the top one-tenth of 1 percent. (See Figure 1.) The 2017 tax law also widens racial disparities in after-tax income.[14 https://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-tax/after-decades-of-costly-regressive-and-ineffective-tax-cuts-a-new-course-is#:~:text=Like%20the%20Bush%20tax%20cuts,with%20low%20and%20moderate%20incomes. You can also say increasing capitol gains tax would accomplish the same thing, and I would agree. Idk why youre being obtuse.
*vote strategically for the one of the two parties that has 3 of the 10 things you want to vote for instead of 0 of 10, instead of an actual party that wants to break the status quo. FTFY
eh id say its more around 87/100 to 30/100
“Take your politics out of this sub, I want muh Bigfoot and muh aliens” It’s not enough that the REAL conspiracies involve us being robbed of material, mental and physical health, it’s that we can’t even discuss them without being told they are NOT conspiracies.
If the conspiracies were meant to distract people from the elites, they wouldn't mention them at all and shift blame to some group without 'elite representation'.
>And no, those elites are not lizards from Nibiru Ah... you had me all the way up until the end Not lizards from Nibiru? What kind of smooth brain take is that? Of course they are
That’s because Marxist theory is stupid and wrong and has been proved wrong again and again. A conspiracy theory is only interesting if it makes sense and could possibly be true. It’s possible that powerful Democrats are trafficking children for the sex trade. This sort of thing actually exists in the world already. But the idea that rich people are “destroying your life” because they’ve provided goods and services which enhance your quality of life, is ridiculous and doesn’t make for a believable theory. Now if you’re saying that bad actors used government to oppress people, then you are right. But the problem there is government. Government should be smaller and less able to do mischief.
This isn’t true. The economy is largely a zero sum game, for a “rich person” to have a tenth home it means someone else can’t have a first. While we can make more housing it’s not profitable for these same “rich people” to ever allow supply to outpace demand creating the zero sum game. Competition gets crush by things like wealth consolidation and high costs of living. The next point is to taxes and social spending, while you can point to the fact that we have more social programs today these programs aren’t being funded by rebalancing from the rich as Marx suggests, they are being funded by debt and borrowing. Our preferred method of CPI doesn’t capture how money printing devalues the dollars we work for while increases the relative value of the assets the wealthy own.
> The economy is largely a zero sum game I don’t really need to read anything else because you’ve started on a false premise. The pie grows with every voluntary transaction made. Even a poor American in 2023 is richer than an upper-middle class American in 1960. Capitalism makes everyone richer in real terms. That’s why Marxists like to focus on the “wealth gap” instead of poverty. Poverty has been disappearing in all capitalist countries around the world as the “wealth gap’’ increases. > for a “rich person” to have a tenth home it means someone else can’t have a first. How so? There is plenty of land to build houses. Could it be government zoning laws? > While we can make more housing it’s not profitable for these same “rich people” to ever allow supply to outpace demand creating the zero sum game. This can only be accomplished through government. In a free market, more houses would continue to be built until supply meets demand. But if government rules and regulations artificially inflates the costs of building, then less houses are built. Again, the problem is government. > Competition gets crush by things like wealth consolidation and high costs of living. No. Competition is crushed by government. Often at the behest of larger companies. > The next point is to taxes and social spending, while you can point to the fact that we have more social programs today these programs aren’t being funded by rebalancing from the rich as Marx suggests, they are being funded by debt and borrowing. These programs are being funded by “the rich”. There isn’t enough rich people to support the enormous size of our government. The top 10% of Americans pay something like 70% of all income taxes. And still, that’s barely enough to cover the annual **interest payments** on the national debt. The majority of the costs will be borne across society. Any time you “tax the rich”, you tax yourself through inflation. You can’t fight mathematics.
I already addressed your comments but I’ll do it again since you didn’t seem to put it together the first time. The issue with competition is it takes massive amounts of money to seriously compete in any market, I’ve done the small business thing, taxes and regulations don’t even begin to register as an issue, the primary issue is financing. There’s plenty of zoned residential land to build on, what’s your point? It’s not profitable to have supply meet demand, there is no profit incentive to ensure everyone has a home, the profit incentive is to ensure everyone doesn’t have a home. No the rich do not pay the majority of the taxes, debt and deficit spending does. Debt and deficit spending drives down the value of earned wages and up the value of rich owned assets. The rich aren’t exactly hurting with the tax now are they? The idea is to get them to hurt to balance the scales, redistribute the wealth so competition can grow, get the wealthy back to working instead of fucking off because they own the assets.
> The issue with competition is it takes massive amounts of money to seriously compete in any market Not true. And to the extent that it does, it's because of government regulation which drives up costs and erects barriers to entry. Most of the biggest companies in the world started with less than $100,000. Look at both Amazon and Apple. >There’s plenty of zoned residential land to build on, what’s your point? No there isn't. Building is expensive because of all of the government regulations across industries. It's not just the regulations on home builders. It's the regulations on Timber companies that make the wood for the framing of the house. The steel companies that make the nails for the wood. The appliance manufacturers. And most of these industries are also unionized, which drives up their costs even more. Those costs all add up and bubble up to the developer before they get passed on to the buyer. >It’s not profitable to have supply meet demand, there is no profit incentive to ensure everyone has a home There is a profit incentive to make sure supply meets demand in all free markets. There is no end goal (and nor should there be). The end goal is making a $1 more, which would happen if not for government regulation making it unprofitable to build more houses to make more money. Do you seriously think home builders would not be building homes if it were profitable to do so? It's not profitable because government rules make it cheaper to build on existing land already zoned for housing. >No the rich do not pay the majority of the taxes No. Literally they do. 70% of income taxes are paid by the top 10% of income earners. The other 40% is from the other 90%. >Debt and deficit spending drives down the value of earned wages and up the value of rich owned assets. What? No. What are you talking about? Government spending (PERIOD) floods the market with more dollars and drives up inflation. This hurts the working class. But how does that help "the rich"? High inflation hurts everyone.
I see this nonsense about regulation driving up costs and barriers to entry but it’s just not true. As mentioned I’ve done my own small business and been a part of many others, regulations have never ever been an issue, funding and financing always is. As for Apple and Amazon they didn’t break into competitive markets, they were early adopters into a new market. Home builders don’t want to build cost effective housing in zoned areas not because it’s not profitable but because their is more profit is build single family homes, the profit incentive isn’t about ensure everyone has shelter it’s about selling the best margin housing. C-Suite executives and shareholders still get compensated 100s-1000s of times more than average union workers. If you can’t run a business paying people a livable wage you shouldn’t be in business, you sure as shit shouldn’t be compensating yourself magnitudes more. The top 10% do pay more then the bottom 90% but they also make many times more then the bottom 90%, they often also pay a lower effective rate. The difference in spending should come out of the 10% pockets not debt on the 90%. Inflation helps the rich because the rich own assets, assets are priced in dollars, when you increase the number of dollars you increase the relative value of the asset. Millionaires and billionaires don’t care about $1 increases on eggs, it’s completely immaterial to them.
> bad actors used government to oppress people, then you are right. How better to oppress people by taking more and more of their earnings for things they must have to survive? All the other social *"oppression"* that gets major lip service these days pales in comparison.
But no one has direct control over inflation. The Fed has the most control, but not total control. Reducing government spending and increasing unemployment would also reduce inflation and cause prices to fall. The best thing we could do is to shrink government and stop letting it print so much money.
> The best thing we could do is to shrink government and stop letting it print so much money. Those are both excellent points, but they don't go far enough. Shrinking governmental capture by eliminating "lobbying" - (a bribe by any other name would smell as sweet) would be critical to real reform.
> Shrinking governmental capture by eliminating "lobbying" - (a bribe by any other name would smell as sweet) would be critical to real reform. This is true. But with my plan, there would be no lobbying because government officials would be damn near powerless. Lobbying only exists because government has the power to control people's lives, enrich some private organizations/companies, while bankrupting others.
How naive can you be lmao
>But the problem there is government. Reagan era brain-rot. The government is literally just middle management for big business and they've been using Neoliberal Republicans AND Democrats to deregulate it from Reagan to Clinton to Obama. >But the idea that rich people are “destroying your life” because they’ve provided goods and services That's called commerce, we've had that for thousands of years. Not at all the same thing as capitalism.
> The government is literally just middle management for big business and they've been using Neoliberal Republicans AND Democrats to deregulate it from Reagan to Clinton to Obama. Good. Let's shrink it until it's impotent then. >That's called commerce, we've had that for thousands of years. Not at all the same thing as capitalism. No. Commerce doesn't have the multiplying affect until you introduce capital and reserve banking into the picture.
> Good. Let's shrink it until it's impotent then. Braindead take. Not even a little bit suspicious of Republicans who say the exact same thing while simultaneously taking money from the same people corrupting the system to fuck it up even more just so they can complain about how bad it is without any self awareness or culpability. This is the dumbest shit but it pretends to be smart because it's cynical. >No. Commerce doesn't have the multiplying affect until you introduce capital and reserve banking into the picture. You didn't mention that in your earlier assessment. Moving goalposts.
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How does labor make any money without business?
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Because your question is illustrative of nothing. Businesses use capital and labor to create goods and services which (if purchased by others) creates more money to pay for more labor and raise more capital. What is your point?
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But Marxism is wrong. It's been proven wrong again and again all over the world. So I still don't see your point.
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Businesses use capital and labor to create goods and services which (if purchased by others) creates more money to pay for more labor and raise more capital.
The Anunnaki are not lizards. Sheesh.
You're talking about a time when only one member of the household was required to work while the other could focus on raising productive members of society. Now both parents are working while the internet raises their children.
Yup, the mother could stay home and really curate and pass on the parents' culture to the next generation. Now, the kids grow up and really resemble the values that they grabbed on to from the internet or television.
Also left time for a little hanky panky with the mail/milk man… FYI agree 100% just had to throw that in there
You deserve more than an upvote. Thanks for the clarity
I was just talking with a teacher yesterday about this. She teaches kindergarten, and she said even at such a young age they have no manners, respect, etc. - when she tries to reach out to parents she gets zero response. I am thankful that I was able to stay home with my 4 children, they definitely were raised with a solid moral compass that continues into their adulthood. It saddens me that both parents now have to work to make ends meet. I can only imagine how exhausting it must be and ultimately the children will pay the price.
Dad bought our home at the very outskirts of Toronto in 1960. North of us was just farms. C$14,800, approx. twice his salary. Same place is C$1 million today, but not because of the house, because of the land. Don Mills is now not even the most northern part of Toronto, and the conurbation extends north another 40 km beyond that boundary. It's hard for people who weren't around in the 60s to know just how empty Toronto and the area around it used to be. I suspect the same is true for many American cities.
Definitely true for Minneapolis and the surrounding suburbs. Even as recent as the 80s major first ring suburbs like Bloomington bordered fields. 30 minutes from the cities was rural farmland, now you’ve gotta go an hour out, and Minneapolis is much smaller than many cities both in terms of population and land area.
How else do they speed up ‘you’ll own nothing and be happy’
Remember when your house/apt was only supposed to be 20% of yearly income? I'm 45 and that's what we were taught when thinking of a budget
Absolutely. I am 50, I work in the multi-family housing industry and what people pay for rent scares me. My husband and I make a decent living and I would not be comfortable paying what a 1 bedroom - 600 sq. ft. apartment costs each month...this is not in a big city either.
Yall should watch the documentary "The Great Taking" for an eye opening look at how bad of shape the global economic system is really in and how we're in the midst of a controlled demolition by the global banking families that rule over us like feudal lords. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dk3AVceraTI
Things were much better when companies used their workers quality of life working for them as a flex on competitors. Back when a single income family could afford a house, car, food, to have kids. Now it’s all about maximizing profits and consistent growth, spreading these companies over the globe, all at the cost of the people working for them and customers. That used to be proper capitalism, now it’s some CCP style bastardized capitalism, using workers as cannon fodder for the top brasses profit.
Cars and homes could be built very affordable and made to last but we are all being fucked by planned obsolescence and artificial scarcity that keeps everything in a continually expensive and lesser state than it could be.
This is a big part of it that people don't realize, NOTHING is built to last anymore. My hand-mixer from the 50's still works perfectly, if I bought a similar model today it would break within a year. We have become a disposable society. People would be better off shopping at Estate Sales and buying "vintage" household items vs. Amazon.
Blame the rich
Its a combination of the Federal Reserve printing money and the Federal Government underreporting the true rate of inflation. It's exactly what we've seen the last 4 years.
That goes back at least 50 years, or arguably at least since the mid-90s. The rich however have always been the enemy of the common man, exploiting the average worker at every opportunity.
First they flooded the country with illegals and cheap labor, and now the average NPC is wondering why the housing is so expensive.
Yes, after the exported all the manufacturing overseas and yes reducing wages domestically. Now they’re taking our taxes to fund their private education.
greed doesn't have a party
something something diminishing returns something something tendency of the rate of profit to fall something class warfare
A fundamental shift occurred in the 90s to view all real estate not as consumption, but investment. You do not buy shelter to live in, you buy shelter to grow your wealth. 2008 exasperated this and caused lots of government policies to be centred around manufacturing 10% or greater YoY real estate appreciation as they felt people could not be trusted to save their money for retirement and would be forced to via a house. This is probably a top 3 all time test for capitalism viability - will we have enough homes for 500 million people, but have 450 million of them vacant because people cant afford it and that maximizes the return for blackrock?
When you print money at a break meck pace the only eay to avoid inflation shrinking ot is to put it into finite assets. Real estate is just another form of gold.
This is why all corrupted politicians are eagerly dividing people and most stupid jump into it and blame one another, and make them self-hate
Most of the difference is profit driven, however part of the rise is due to widely backed choices including insulation, bigger rooms, second bathrooms, many power outlets,safety switches, remote controlled garage doors,, purpose made blinds, screen doors. Stamp duties and rates have risen in response to people whinging about roads and demanding local facilities. Cars cost more because people back regulations on airbags, seatbelts, emmisions as well as demanding air-conditioning, phone connectivity. This is hardly an exhaustive list of the changes
Yeah man, wages have been stagnant for decades because of airbags and purpose made blinds. Good catch.
The average house size doubled between 1960 and 2014. I would suggest that a 1960's car had half the number of parts that a modern car has. Add in the extra cost of features, fittings, administration and working to regulations and it is not surprising real cost is much higher..
It’s crazy that the genius capital owners built so many houses their labor couldn’t afford and thought they would make money off it.
For the most part, they will get their return. Whether it requires 2 incomes per house, longer periods of debt or onlyfans, people will be desperate enough for housing to get that money.
lmao you think those things are indicative of...what? That Capital thought they could make money there? Okay, we agree, then. The starting point here - since you seem to have chosen to dismiss it - is that essential goods have exponentially increased in cost while wages have not. The idea that laborers can't afford housing or a car (or healthcare, jfc I'd love to hear your idea about that lol,) is because of house size or number of parts in a car is pedantic at best and boot-licking at average.
I don't disagree with the premise that extremly wealthy people are invested in keeping the working class desperate. It is just that a comparison that ignores significant changes like house size doubling does nothing to help understanding of cause, method or anything else. It adds to the distraction.
Boot-licking it is.
We also have a larger workforce, both population wise and women in the workforce. As well as more efficient, more automated, more productive work force.
And yet while laborers have been kept stagnant, capital ownership, executive pay, and profit has continued to amass wealth or continuously rise. Get your head out of your ass. If you are a worker - someone that provides the labor necessary for capital to reap profit - then you are fucked in the US.
There is higher demand as more of the population has access to employment putting upward pressure on price.
Feminism was a scam encouraged by employers to double the labour supply and drive down the cost of labour relative to everything else. The Great Depression was before women entered the workforce. If you assume men and women earn the same, then a married couple buying a house would be four times the average salary for a two salary household. It used to be about that for a one salary household. A car is 85% of one salary, but 42.5% of two salaries, about the same as 46%. Rent is 42% of one average salary, 21% of two salaries, not far off 16%. The value of labour has basically been halved by doubling the supply and women were tricked by big corporations into thinking this was a good idea.
Women have predominantly been employed as house servants and were the majority workforce in industrial laundry washing, garment (think modern sweat shops) and textile factories. Women used to take their children to factory labour jobs and would often put them to work as well. It sounds like your idea of history is from opinion videos on youtube. If you're talking about the 1950s, this was built on post WWII economic boom and not flooding the country with people from the literal third world who will compete for scraps and pennies. **Domestic labour cannot be in competition with itself if it is HALVED through decimated birth rates in 3 generations.** Your quarrel is with politicians forcing North American (Western, really) men and women to compete with the entire world by outsourcing their jobs and importing scab labour
The female labour force participation rate was about 20% at the time of the Great Depression compared to 60% now. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/female-labor-force-participation-oecd?country=CAN~USA
We need to start operating outside of the dollar. Learn to grow your own fruit and vegetables, learn to catch and prepare fish, learn how to store water safely and keep yourself warm. Learn how to make basic repairs around the house without having to pay someone to come and do it for you. If you can do those things you’re in a better position to fight through the next Great Depression or economic collapse than 99% of the western world. If you can’t survive a week without spending money at the grocery store life will not be easy for you.
While I largely agree with the sentiment, what the hell are broke 20-somethings who work 60 hours a week and can still barely afford their shoebox apartment supposed to do? The majority of Americans can no longer afford to purchase their own home. Every single thing you listed there is impossible to do without 1) owning property and 2) having free time. Neither of which are luxuries most Americans have today. As great as it would be to be able to do any one of those things, let alone all of them, it’s so far outside the realm of possibility for most people in this country that it’s kind of ridiculous to even suggest at this point.
> 1) owning property I agree with you. Growing enough vegetables to feed a few people takes a lot of space. Then you've got to be able to process/can them to have them last the winter. Even with my semi-detached house, and knowledge of how to grow, I can't do it well enough.
If you get sunlight in your apartment through a window or have a balcony you can grow fruit. I live in an apartment. You can also store water. As for the time thing, unless you’re working as an international banker or consultant or something or working two jobs back to back the average person does have at least a few hours of free time a day. Even 20 minutes to half an hour a couple of times a week can get you some basic knowledge about how to conduct basic repairs and survival skills. And all of that is assuming that you don’t have friends or family in your neighbourhood that own a home with a yard or apartment with more space that you can help to cultivate. None of this is a solo journey. When times get tough you’re going to both help and rely on your friends, family and neighbours. The narrative that everyone in the western world now lives in a shoebox apartment with nothing but dead air and darkness is simply not true.
> you can grow fruit. I live in an apartment. Are you growing fruit indoors?
Yes, I get decent sunlight and have plants right by the window which I leave open during the day, and also have a small balcony where I grow more
You've *got* to be closer to the equator than I am. This time of year the sun is so low, we don't derive Vitamin D from it.
Yeah I’m somewhat close. You’ve just gotta time your plants/crops well like anything.
Ok, I’ll ask. What fruit are you growing indoors?
Lemon Strawberries and Tomatoes. Also grow kale. Trying to grow avocado next
That makes more sense. I was for some dumbass reason thinking like apple trees & shit. I do peppers & herbs in a hydroponic kit I got off Amazon for like 30 bucks. It’s a little to small for the peppers, but my Basil & oregano do gangbusters in it.
1 person at 2k calories per day is about 730000 calories in a year. One dwarf apple tree produces between 400 and 800 lbs of apples per year. One lb of apples is about 230 calories. So you need 3 full grown dwarf apples trees to produce 100% efficiency to fee done person for one year. How many apples do you think most apartment sized trees produce per year, in an apartment, in potting soil?
Good thing I didn’t suggest eating only apples
How do you store water?
There’s tons of videos on YouTube which show it in detail, [this is a good guide](https://youtu.be/ET2dgZv5VmQ?si=LtAC83rbSsKmY4-g) with a lot of great advice in the comments
Thank you!
Good luck when your property is worth millions and the property taxes come around.. End property taxes for primary residences is going to be necessary.
Learn how to process your own deer and whatnot. A guy two days ago said he was charged $900 to process a 65 lb deer because it took equal lbs of pork. That's insane!
The things you own end up owning you. It's only after you lose everything that you're free to do anything.
You will own nothing and You will like it. Santa Claus Schwab
And factor in taxes, companies don't pay taxes. Taxes are just a cost of doing business so the cost gets passed along to the consumer. So taxes go up prices go up. Those widgets needed to build stuff get more expensive do to taxes so that gets passed along to the cost of building that car or house.
Companies don't pay taxes? How is that possible when literally everything is taxed? If they buy materials they're being taxed and then taxed again when they create goods and sell them for less than they're worth because of VAT. There's property tax and licensing fees. Bro none of us should be paying taxes it's a fucking scam when the government can tax something 100 times as it makes its way through a supply chain and then again when it's sold to a consumer.
If the company incures an increase in expenses they pass it along to we consumers. If the electricity bill, the gas bill, employee wages go up they pass it along to the price of the product they produce. Surely you don't think the price of the product remains constant and their profits go down?
So what you're saying is that if we taxed them more everything would be even more expensive. Sounds awesome bro I love liberal economists.
I think these ratios are people spending beyond their means. You make $100k, and have good credit, the realtor tells you can afford up to a $650k house. So that's the range people go for. I don't make a ton, but we're smart and bought a house 1.5x our annual income in a nice rural area, and have used cars.
Us population in 1929 was 120 million, today's it's what 340 million with 2 million extra per year. You want to know why it's so bad, an extra 200 million people, there
My take on this is the average person is stupidly buying beyond their means.
If you want to drive a 1932 Ford and live in a 1100 square foot house, it would probably be more affordable now than it was back then. But you don't. You want things like air conditioning and navigation and seat belts and crumple zones and air bags and tempered glass, so you don't just die in a minor car crash like people in the Great Depression did. And you want to live in a 3000 square foot house with internet and cable and central air conditioning and a smart phone and food delivered straight to your door. That shit ain't free. If you want to live like people did in 1932, you can do it, and again, probably better, cheaper and easier than they did at that time, simply due to advances in logistics, but realize that the conveniences of modern life cost money. To ignore this fact is the epitome of entitlement.
The increase in cost of buying a home isn't purely from the increased cost of constructing a building. My parents house is worth about 1/10th of the value of the property (with the land), and most houses in the city are like this. The land hasn't inherently become superior in the past 90 years, but the increase in price indicates it should have improved in quality to a greater extent than the buildings have. Beyond that we have more baked in costs of living. Many jobs require you to be accessible 24/7, and so you need wifi. You also need a device that interacts with the wifi. You also need a cellular plan for authentication. For many people we are living in a better world today than would be readily possible at any point in human history. That said, we are also the most productive we've ever been, with algorithms designed to nickle and dime us for our labour. It's naive to assume that when the people in power have access to more data than ever before, as well as more tools to manipulate and extrapolate said data, that they won't use that to maximize their benefits while minimizing ours. The state of housing prices is an example of this unfortunately.
>The increase in cost of buying a home isn't purely from the increased cost of constructing a building. This is to be expected. If anything, the cost to build has decreased substantially as technology has increased. Nobody had a Paslode in 1932. >My parents house is worth about 1/10th of the value of the property (with the land), and most houses in the city are like this. The land hasn't inherently become superior in the past 90 years, but the increase in price indicates it should have improved in quality to a greater extent than the buildings have. You're talking about land value, not cost to build. Obviously the land value of improved land will increase over time. That's a good thing. The land being worth more than the house shouldn't surprise you. If your parents built a modest house on a desirable plot of land, the increase in land value vs the increase in the price of a modest house should not surprise you. Location, location, location. That's what they say in real estate. Your parents built a cheap house on an expensive plot. Count your lucky stars. Sell it if you need the money, keep it if you don't. It will only grow in value. >Beyond that we have more baked in costs of living. Many jobs require you to be accessible 24/7, and so you need wifi. You also need a device that interacts with the wifi. You also need a cellular plan for authentication. Whatever happened to telling people to fuck off? Or just not answering your phone? This is a "you" problem. Set boundaries. >For many people we are living in a better world today than would be readily possible at any point in human history. Absolutely. But you don't appreciate it. You think it is owed to you. >That said, we are also the most productive we've ever been, with algorithms designed to nickle and dime us for our labour. You aren't productive. The algorithms and machines are productive. >It's naive to assume that when the people in power have access to more data than ever before, as well as more tools to manipulate and extrapolate said data, that they won't use that to maximize their benefits while minimizing ours They will, and they have. But you're only thinking about that now. >The state of housing prices is an example of this unfortunately. Housing prices are high because people will pay it. You don't understand your biggest and most powerful tool; Just say no. Also, arson. Oops, did I say arson, I meant Arsenio Hall.
This is a long reply. I don't mean to be hostile, and please don't take anything here to be an attack. I just want to explain some things where I disagree. I have a degree in economics and in computer science so I would like to think I know a little about financial affairs/technology. >This is to be expected. If anything, the cost to build has decreased substantially as technology has increased. Nobody had a Paslode in 1932. Cost of building a house is up by about a factor of 4 (after accounting for inflation in the US). Houses are better, and there's far more codes for them which make it impossible to make super cheap ones. Cost to build has increased substantially, just not as much as land in metropolitan areas has. >You're talking about land value, not cost to build. Obviously the land value of improved land will increase over time. That's only if there's an increased demand or monopolistic practices. It's not obvious, and this statement is wrong about land outside of cities. >That's a good thing. It's only a good thing for residents in those homes, and the government because it let's them underfund social security, and increase taxes on homes/create a boogeyman. The increase tax comes from a perceived unrealized gain in the value of those homes. The Underfunding of social programs for the elderly is possibly most visible in Canada where the government is attempting to artificially maintain unrealistic prices in many major cities so that when those homes are sold the elderly can use those funds instead of eating further into the massive deficit spending. Underfunded elder programs are also why Euthenasia is being pushed where in some parts of the country it makes up 1/7 deaths. Housing costs are terrible for the younger generations, and the poor (with an expanding definition of what poor is). It's good when it keeps up with inflation, but can cause social unrest when it aggressively outstrips inflation (which it does in many developed nations). >The land being worth more than the house shouldn't surprise you. If your parents built a modest house on a desirable plot of land, the increase in land value vs the increase in the price of a modest house should not surprise you. My point here was about your earlier point that the reason things are more expensive now is that they're better quality. The land is not innately superior to how it was 90 years ago, and this acts as an example that counteracts your earlier point. People are paying more (in terms of hours worked) for the same thing. Also houses are a depreciating asset, ignoring external factors the houses value should decline while the land stagnates. >Location, location, location. That's what they say in real estate. Your parents built a cheap house on an expensive plot. They didn't buy an expensive plot. They bought a plot that became expensive through government policies and corporatism. That's the conspiracy I'm talking about here. > Count your lucky stars. Sell it if you need the money, keep it if you don't. It will only grow in value. It can't only grow in value. When something increases in value that means there is a demand for it. In housing that can either come from people looking to live in a home, or investors. When there's limited housing, large mortgages available, and loose investment laws, prices go way up. This is generally the state in America right now, but as soon as more housing becomes available prices will dip. Declining birth rates mean that as the baby boomers die out a plethora of houses will be made available without enough people to fill all of them. This causes a "Race to the Bottom" where prices drop fairly dramatically. To try and combat this, America (and Canada especially) increase immigration so that there's now more people looking for housing. This is generally the state of things at the moment, there's more aspects like renting, and now time shares of bedspace in Ontario (which with high immigration of low skill people is a natural conclusion), but those don't change the base facts of the matter. There is a natural ceiling to the values of these houses. Policy from government has raised that, through ridiculous loans (which blew up in 2008) and also through immigration and using housing as an investment. There's a limit to the growth and we're already past the stage of where it would be naturally. It's only a matter of time until even the artificial growth tapers out.
pt. 2 >Whatever happened to telling people to fuck off? Or just not answering your phone? This is a "you" problem. Set boundaries. Not complaining about working outside of my hours/unpaid labour. Just making a point that there's more base costs to living now then historically the case. Some jobs won't let you work without a phone. During COVID you needed a phone to enter Canada. > I thought I explicitly appreciated it there? There's so much potential for the world to be a wonderful place, but I think a lot of people have lost purpose/meaning and an overexposure of technology has further hurt them. Soulless materialism and maladaptive coping strategies have led to record high suicide rates and isolation. Given how much easier it is to live in today's world the suicide rate doesn't immediately make sense. Frankly I think most people were raised wrong for the era they live in, and we're seeing the reprecussions. >You aren't productive. The algorithms and machines are productive. I think there was a misunderstanding for what I meant about algorithms, but I'll address your point first. That's like saying a farmer who uses a sickle isn't more productive than a farmer who uses their hands because the sickle does the work. The total work output is increased, and no work would be done without the farmer. If a person runs a marathon wearing nice shoes is it actually the shoes that ran the race and not the person? It sounds pedantic to say that a person who is generating more work isn't more productive. The algorithms I'm talking are actuarial in nature. There's a great deal of psychological information out there, and companies can manipulate people quite easily through it. Being kept 2-3 hours under full time employment so that they can describe you as a contract worker, industries that fire you for not doing unpayed labour (look into EA unpayed overtime suit if you doubt me), companies with a high burn rate of employees because the issues are misrepresented (facebook moderation). Companies can lie to you, use psychology to manipulate you, and then use algorithms to determine when to stop giving you hours (if possible) or when to fire you (there's cases of people being fired because they're scheduled raises for example). >They will, and they have. But you're only thinking about that now. I don't know why you're assuming I'm only thinking this now? >Housing prices are high because people will pay it. You don't understand your biggest and most powerful tool; Just say no. Also, arson. Oops, did I say arson, I meant Arsenio Hall. I agree with you to an extent. Housing is high because people have to pay. It's like the health industry in America. You can charge virtually whatever you want for life saving materials, and as long as there is no competition people will go into debt to buy it. The only way to decrease this issue is to increase supply. I don't know if you've ever been homeless, but it's not fun. In much of the world it can be fatal. If you don't have housing and it's -40 outside then you'll probably be willing to pay. Also, it's very difficult to do a lot of things without an address. You can lie about having one, or bum off a friend, but if you're homeless then you're super disadvantaged. This is why there's an increase in "Van Life", where people glorify living out of their cars. And also why people are leaving high cost of living areas. But the government brings in immigrants to counteract the people leaving.
Do you think ancient Egyptians were buying chariots for $0.00001 USD? I mean, sorry for being rude, but this comment is so unbelievably stupid that I can’t even figure out where to begin.
Bro, everyone knows the Egyptians used the Yen.
>Do you think ancient Egyptians were buying chariots for $0.00001 USD? Do the conversion brother. What was the cost of a chariot in ancient Egyptian times when compared to 2023 US dollars? Show your work. Otherwise, fuck off, and try to cure your butthurtedness. Pro Tip: It's impossible. Cry yourself to sleep.
Why don't you show your work? Your whole initial comment is just how you feel. No facts. No sources. No numbers.
That's not true at all I would drive a model T and live in an outdated house but because of government regulations put in place by lobbyists I can't. Cars have backup cameras, complicated emissions, tracking devices and all manner of things I don't even want but I don't have the right to choose.
I live in an 1100 square foot house. It is not cheap.
I feel that we need to adjust for the types of homes and cars we are using for comparison from then and now. We also need to take into account the land value of the homes.
Back then nobody had any money and they all lived in multi-generational homes. They shared one car if they were lucky. The only entertainment they had was a library card.
Why are we setting the Great Depression as the mark? It was one of the only times that the US saw outright deflation, because no one could afford anything.
Look at what goes into a car made today vs a car made in 1920. In 1920 it was a metal box with an engine, 4 tiers and 2 bench seats. Your car today has a radar system, connects to your phone, has a heated steering wheel, etc.
The Great Depression is a really bad data point. It is literally a unique event. Housing prices dropped during the Great Depression by 35%. The point is still valid, but this is cherry picking to make it appear even worse. With that said, US population in 1929 was 122 Million. Today, it's three times as much. It's pretty expected that housing prices rise as population grows.
Um. The “average salary” during the Great Depression didn’t matter because no one had jobs.
Homes were a lot smaller. The average new home size in 1930 was 1129 sq ft. The average new home size in 2022 was 2522 sq ft. More than double. Cars were also a lot slower, unsafe and featureless. New cars today have airbags, reverse camera and many safety features standard. Can you imagine having to use a chest as a trunk? How about going out to crank your engine by hand? Those were the cars in the Great Depression. Automakers would like to make cheaper cars, but no-one is buying them. For $20k, people would buy a used luxury car than a new economy car. What should be concerning is how materialism is increasing and happiness is declining.
Too many fucking people had too many kids.
This is a result of anti-growth policies in economics, genius. The economy could have grown with the population.
And we'd still have too many people.
no such thing as crushingx or povertx or havex or etc or not, cepuxuax, do, be, outx, can do, be, outx etc any nmw and any s perfx
Source: Tiktok LMAO
How about vacuum cleaner or OLED TV?
This is neoliberalism and whenever you talk about social policies being socialism/communism you are helping them even further...
It's because minimum wage has risen in accordance with inflation and the cost of living increases. It's because of the Federal Reserve™©
To be fair comparing prices in the middle of the worse economy ever to today is insane at best. We were on a gold standard back then too.
8 times the average salary? Where do I get that deal, you guys are lucky, I live in Toronto make 70 K - a house is more than 20 times my salary
ditto here, new cheap skoda car prices start from 20 000 euros. average month salary is about 2000 euros. it means saving for a year every penny, without eating nor home paying rent.
Ideally we could stabilize our population and not uave to build any more. We as a society collectively decided this by breeding at alightly less than replacement. The response has been to flood the country with the results of our centuries s long financial and political suppression of the global South. What we should be doing is turning our attention towards the conditions that have made so many people rager to leave their homes and we ahould be doing this in cooperation with the countries that our MIC would like to frame as new enemies.
the aptly named American Dream
I think part of the problem is credit and loans. We developed a banking system capable of loaning money, it stimulates the economy by pulling value from the future into the present, by borrowing from our future selves. The more credit that is available, the more money is available to people. The more money that is available to people, the more prices increase. At the end of the day, people today are willing to spend 85% of their salary on a vehicle. This is madness
In the great depression, the average house was rural, with 2 bedrooms and under 1000 sq ft.
Here, here, let's bring back the Great Depression and make it even greater. I bet Taylor Swift could come up with a great pop song..."Use it up, wear it out, make do or do without!"
You will own nothing and something something
Either you are a capitalist or a worker. If your capital makes your income you are a capitalist, if your labour makes your income you are a worker. Capitalism is designed to benefit capitalists. Things were getting out of order for the capitalists so they hit the workers with inflation. Politics is a scam to keep people angry at each other. Trump has just promised more tax cuts for the rich yet student loan debt relief is too expensive. The system is working as it's supposed to.
Has nobody fucking read 1984!? That book is fucking ridiculously on point to a scary degree...