And just for context, if you work 40 hours a week for $15 (well above minimum wage), your annual pre-tax income is $31,200.
The workers of the US really need unionize. Here in Scandinavia the average pre-tax income is closer to $84,000 with a 36-hour work week. We do however have a higher tax-rate, so that ends up at around $45,000 after taxes. Cost of living is also generally higher that the US. Of course that higher tax gives us free health care and education.
The extra fun thing is that Americans don’t have that much lower of a tax burden. Only the wealthiest and those with investment-based income really pay appreciably lower taxes than in countries such as yours. However, the populace in the US gets far, far lower return on investment for their taxes (which has been continuously being reduced since Regan).
That’s definitely not a solution. You just made the argument against it. The U.S. government is the primary reason why our economy is effed.
Nah, it’s because we don’t tax the wealthy and corporations as the average individual, and let the “market” dictate the price of inelastic sectors ie Healthcare, Food, and Housing.
Housing is elastic. I lived with my dad until I was like 30 because of housing prices.
I really don’t know how people are existing in today’s hellhole of a capitalistic landscape. I’m fairly lucky with a good-paying job and a lowish house payment. I’m still paying a lot more for food and whatnot than I did before covid.
I always think the same and can’t stop feeling bad. I used to live in an apartment the payment kept creeping up until I said fuck it and bought a house 6 years ago. My mortgage is $1000. People now pay $2000+ a month for an apartment. This is a fucked time to be a renter.
I feel the same way. Our mortgage is $2K/mo for over 3K/sqft. Apartments around here start at $1500 for a studio … poor bastards indeed.
Why do people always turn these posts into opportunities to brag about how low their house payment is?
I don’t see it as that, it’s just a comparison to show how fucked up things are now.
Believe me I’m super bitter about being getting fucked on rent and being priced out of buying, but I dont take those kinds of comments as rubbing it in, just providing context.
I think Biden is giving out money for first time home buyers. I read that somewhere. An article mentioned it was like $400 a month for 2 years for first time home buyers to help them afford this shit. I mean a better fix would be stop all these corporations buying up houses and making it very expensive for others to buy, but I guess better than nothing?
That wasn’t my intentions, and I apologize if that has stepped on someone’s toes. I’m just mentioning how things have changed. I don’t think a mortgage payment is something to brag about, not for me at least. Hell, I’m still a broke ass mo fo who’s living paycheck to paycheck trying so hard to raise two kids.
Let’s flip it this way. My rent was 1500 a month, and it was going to go up 13% this year. I bought a house this year instead, 2500 a month. In 5 years, that shithole apartment will cost more than my house.
People aren’t bragging about how low their house payments are, their warning everyone about how shitty apartment price gouging is.
The human race is truly fucked ain’t it? We are all out for ourselves. Nothing will ever change.
What single contributing factor would you say carries the most weight? Throughout history there has been inequality, but never like this. Even medieval peasants worked less than modern Americans.
Source?
Edit:lol downvoted for posting a source.
Thanks, the medieval worker put in much longer work hours, which is interesting
I think at this point, all of us poors are just crossing our collective fingers and hoping the rent doesn’t go up, we don’t lose our jobs and we don’t have to move for any reason. I’m hoping my landlord turns out to be immortal right now. “Affordable” units in the hood here are going for $3,000+, and you need to make less than the equivalent of minimum wage at a full-time job each to qualify for them. We stumbled our way into a three-bedroom apartment in a nice neighborhood for $2,200/month, and he hasn’t raised the rent at all. The people who lived downstairs before said he charged them the same rent for close to 10 years before they moved out, so hopefully that streak will continue. Just have to worry that he’ll die and whoever inherits the house comes in and jacks up the rent once they can, in which case we’d definitely need to move pretty far away to be able to afford something.
My SO and I live in a 4 bedroom house with 4 other adults in their 30’s. I haven’t had this many roommates since I was 17, but I’m finally making some progress on my ridiculous medical debt. Best country in the world.
Of course you’re paying more, it’s called inflation. You also have a higher income than you did before COVID, but you didn’t mention that
Naw, naw, it’s cool… see, surely their income went up 30% in 5 years, right?.. Right?
But we matched inflation last year! That means everything’s okay now doesn’t it? The inflation from previous years just goes away!
And it’s totally not an average skewed higher by higher paying jobs right?. Us working class people didn’t get shit. I listened to a nurse the other day complain that they were only getting cost of living adjustments instead of a “real raise.” Like holy shit a lot of us got nothing. I’m making the same thing as I was during the pandemic and my money is worth the equivalent of $6 less per hour due to inflation.
We beat inflation
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/eci.nr0.htm
Check the constant dollar column, all positive
You should really read your sources. The chart is not inflation adjusted. The report tells you the 12 month inflation adjusted figure.
Inflation-adjusted wages and salaries increased 0.8 percent for the 12 months ending March 2024.
Oh yeah we beat the pants off inflation! Whew baby! Oh by the way, there’s still the preceding years of wild fucking inflation to make back. As well as the decades of stagnant wages versus inflation.
I did read my sources, because when I said we beat inflation, that’s what my source says
Decades of stagnant wages
Good news, we had more than a decade of growing wages (the COVID spike is due to compositional effects)
A. You don’t know how medians work. In a set of [1,1,1,1,5,8,9,9,9] 5 is the median. But you wouldn’t say that’s representative of the average worker. You’re looking for the mode. Which would be 1 in that data set.
B. .8 percent is not the hot news you’re looking for.
5 is more representative than the mode, since it does show that about half make more and half made less
1 is ignoring the rest of the data completely
If this was a representative sample the ones would have rebelled already. This is a teaching example.
They did not, but it’s ok because they’re just feeling it wrong this year. Maybe someone should tell them how to feel about the economy so their income and expenses won’t matter anymore.
It did, actually: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881500Q
951 to 1136, Q1 2020 to Q1 2024.
+19.45% from Q1 2020, which doesn’t help you if rent is +30% and inflation in general hit +9%.
Q1 2019 was 899, so +26%, a little closer.
But the REAL problem is workers don’t see that gain unless they change jobs. Working the same job year after year you’re lucky to get 4% per year.
+19.45% from Q1 2020, which doesn’t help you if rent is +30% and inflation in general hit +9%.
Which means workers are making more overall. You don’t pay just rent, but a complete basket of goods. If wages are up 19% while the basket of goods is up 9%, then workers have more money in their pocket.
There will often be some individual thing that sticks out in the basket. If not rent, then maybe food. If not food, then maybe energy. That can tell us where to focus policy to reduce inflation. It doesn’t tell us that workers make less money in real terms.
But the REAL problem is workers don’t see that gain unless they change jobs. Working the same job year after year you’re lucky to get 4% per year.
This is a big problem. Companies do not value loyalty.
public housing needs to double and the requirements to get on it need to be slashed.
Slashed? No - removed. Then landlords can’t make us pay their give mortgages while they retire on our labor.
public housing is the thing people hate and fear the most.
The people in charge are either landlords themselves or on the side of the landlords, so this is will never happen without a massive political paradigm shift.
I guess I’m a shit landlord, because I’m still charging the same as 5 years ago.
This is a risky site to admit you’re a landlord on xD
a stable tenant is worth more than a few rent increases.
…Got any openings? 😭
Are you my landlord?
No worries, we all got bigass raises, right?
I did.
My income has gone up 50% since the pandemic. So did most of my friends who were working in any technical fields.
The economy is skewed. I keep telling my friends to learn to code or learn basic IT skills… and they just actively refuse and continue doing manual labor jobs and complaining about how they can’t make more money. And such is there lot.
A few peopel I know moved into healthcare, and are doing financially much better, but their jobs are very high stress due to the shortages.
Bro if everyone moves to the jobs that pay enough to live decently, very important jobs will not get done. Our society needs manual laborers to keep everything from falling apart.
Also, the jobs that pay decently will start to not pay decently. And now we’re back at square one
Actually worse than square one, because in this scenario, nobody’s picking up the trash.
I make 120k a year installing carpets lol. I absolutely bust my ass but I make more than many people I know who went to college. My dad also installed carpets for 48 years before retiring at 71. I plan to retire sooner though lol but will work for many years to come and pump.up that IRA
Holy wow, where are you located if you don’t mind me asking? My dad lays carpet and makes like 35k a year.
Does your dad work for himself or someone else? If he works for himself I don’t know how he’s only making 35k lol. I live in Western New York though (no where near NYC)
Works for himself. But we live in Iowa so it isn’t quite as bad of a salary as it sounds. Still not great though
How the fuck did his knees last that long. Are they original equipment?
We don’t use kickers much any more we use power stretchers so the wear on the knees is not that bad. Our backs hands and shoulders hurt more than our knees.
Ahh. My dad was briefly in the trade in the 70s/80s and still has the tools (kicker included) from the era.
Watched him install a carpet once as a kid (as DIY, not a job…he had long moved on since then) and I couldn’t believe people could put that much trauma on their knees day in/day out for decades. Then a few years ago he installed another and just decided to rent the damn power stretcher. World of difference, he said.
Your solution does not apply to the whole society, it’s just a patch to make your life easier but globally it doesn’t fix anything. This is part of the american mindset: “fuck everyone else while I’m doing great”… don’t get me wrong, I understand your point of view but this is not how we move forward.
That is a misnomer solution telling everyone to learn how to do the same thing like to learn to code as it then creates its own market issue of too much supply for need.
Additionally it’s not diverse. Diverse jobs are still needed. They need to just pay more in those jobs. But all this is besides the point anyways.
There is no house shortage. There is plenty to house people and the issue is with capitalism being unchecked for too long over its control on living arrangements. This is something capitalism shouldn’t have a say in. Society has become beyond its required need for helping people survive as a whole and it’s become unsustainable. It was never supposed to be about sustaining a rich person’s yacht and 5th house that has nobody living in it anyways. This is not a society that is thriving.
Exactly, banning or severely limiting short-term rental housing ie VRBO and foreign land/property purchases Id wager would make a huge impact on righting the boat.
Not really, then local landlords just make more profit because the demand is the same
Without the supply of homes going into shortterm rentals like VRBO it would increase supply for people who actually live in that city, travelers can use hotels. Not a full stop fix, but it would increase supply/lower rent.
That would increase hotel prices, making hotel owners purchase more land and build hotels until the equilibrium price is reached
It’s a short term fix that eventually loses to market forces
Even if it ends in more hotels, hotels fit more people and supply more jobs than the equivalent space in houses. For temporary lodging houses don’t make sense.
even then you’re fucked. I’ve been on “the bench” at my contracting company since christmas, which led to my wages getting halved. every fucking day I read about layoffs in software development flooding the market with better programmers than me.
Strange argument. Yes people can swap but that might make them unhappy and we also need people to do other work than it and healthcare and they should still be able to afford a house
The more people get into it the less valuable it becomes is the thing. But others pointed out there’s a ton of other reasons it’s problematic, like the need for those other jobs to exist to actually, like, have a functioning society.
Edit: Also arguably a lot of the low hanging fruit coding positions aren’t as lucrative as they once were. People with experience are doing well. New people are having a tougher time getting their foot in the door compared to 5-10 years ago.
learn to code
Didn’t we already try this one?
That was the UK Govs approach for a lot of industries: “Just do cyber”
It sounds like you’re describing the same thing that happened when we globalized manufacturing. Economists said everyone would retrain and go to other fields, but it just doesn’t seem to happen IRL.
people hate change. that’s why.
No War But The Class War
Aren’t wars fought by both sides? This seems like something other than “war”
Yes usually they are, but in this particular case one side has rock solid solidarity among people of their side and is very honest and aware of the class war going on and the other (i.e. the 99%) is largely composed of people that get upset and annoyed at you if you point out we are in a war, we both are on the same side, and we are losing the war bad like catastrophically bad.
This looks like it means rent increased smoothly by $300 a month each year, bad enough, but what happened here was that it doubled in one year for many people. Went up by thousands, all at once.
I keep reading articles like this. Between rent being too expensive, home prices going through the roof, food prices outpacing wage growth, car and home insurance going up just because it can, utilities getting more expensive, my question is when does it just become too much. The whole thing just screams corporate greed and I’m getting sick of it. I make 60% more than I did 20 years ago and I feel like I’m barely scraping by.
It is just waiting for a tipping point to kick the whole powder keg off, basically. Like a dormant volcano as the pressure builds below the surface. At that point, people will seem irrational and random, just because there are so many vectors of fail taking place in parallel.
Random example that comes to mind, was talking to a friend and they were mentioning their employer is going to start a weekend rotation for teams. One of the shifts has 3 people, so once every three weeks, one employee will be working 7 days a week. They previously had weekend staff to cover the weekend shift. The company’s solution wasn’t to hire more, redistribute, or one of the many other ways to solve the problem. Just, Lumberg from Office Space instead.
Lumberg from Office Space
Yeaaah, I’m gonna need you to go ahead and come in every day of the week from now on, mmkay? Thanks!
Me saying fuck it and moving to Asia was one of the best decisions of my life. But the fact people aren’t willing to do it (but muh family! But muh language!) shows it’s not nearly bad enough
Where in Asia?
Korea, but if I could do it again I would probably consider China (because so many people speak Mandarin, it’s an amazing skill to have) and Vietnam (because it’s even cheaper, and software jobs are about as good) as well
Food prices have not outpaced salaries for more than a year now
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.htm
Food up 2.2%
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/eci.nr0.htm
Private wages up 4.3%
I’m trying so goddamn hard not to lose all hope
Stay with us comrade. We need you for the revolution.
What revolution lmao? As soon as things get a little bit spicy all the equality hobbiest say it’s going too far
this is true. americans will not revolt unless they are starving or something
Headline: “5 years ago renters needed to make less than $60,000 a year to afford the typical rent; now they need to make almost $80,000”
5 years ago renters needed to make less than $60k, they made $69k. Now they need to make “almost $80k”, they make $77k. When you put numbers to it, it seems less stark.
Median household income in 2024 is $77,400.
Median household income in 2019 was $68,700.
That’s still pretty stark, but I get the point.
Median individual income is $47,684 in 2019
https://www.bls.gov/cps/aa2019/cpsaat39.htm
Median individual income is $58,084 in 2023 a little hard to find
https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat39.htm
Median individual income extrapolated from first quarter data of 2024 is $59,228
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/wkyeng.pdf
Rent units median in January 2024 is>
Overall $1,712
Studio $1,434
1-bed $1,591
2-bed $1,892
https://www.realtor.com/research/january-2024-rent/
2019 Total:$1,097
No bedroom:$934
1 bedroom: $953
2 bedrooms: $1,086
3 bedrooms: $1,217
4 bedrooms: $1,519
5 or more bedrooms $1,586
https://data.census.gov/table?q=B25031: Median Gross Rent by Bedrooms&y=2019
It’s a good thing Republicans are NOT trying to make Homelessness ILLEGAL and punishable by PRISON!
And then bill you for your stay on release
Don’t you realize? We need more legal slaves.
I can tell you that an average 2-bedroom apartment was about 600USD when I moved to the city I currenlty live in. Today the cheapest apartment in town is 1300USA/month and getting higher. If I hadn’t been lucky enough to buy a house when I did, I couldn’t afford to live anymore.
I could afford it but I’d have a 2 bedroom apartment instead of 5 bed, 3.5bath w/ 2 offices. We absolutely bought at the right times (2x).
And now we’re blessed in that we get to die in our starter homes, which is absolutely a privilege these days.
peasants should just eat less avocado toast, amirite?
If you eat the pit too, you save money!
*taps temple*
That 7 for a dollar is definitely the problem
7 what for a dollar?
Avocados they are usually 7 for a dollar
Did you mean to say $7 for a ONE?
Well the price changes sometimes its 10 avocados for a dollar or somethings it’s 5 avocados for a dollar
I have an old picture of one of the local stands
Wait here’s a more recent one but back when it was raining a lot so probably won’t be 15 for a dollar anymore
Touche! Oh to live in Socal during avocado season…
Haha this is south bay area
I mean… I’m up in Canada but in one of the highest cost of living cities in the country which isn’t as bad as San Francisco or NYC but it’s bad…
20k is 1666 a month extra.
The only thing thats gone up $1666 a month more would be a larger house.
Fancy 1 bedrooms are up to 2000-2500 and they were never $334 to 734 even 15 years ago.
Something is wrong with that headline or their math
Rent as a percentage of income. General rule (and what I’m assuming the article is using without getting around the paywall) is 1/3 of your income should be rent. So if the avg rent in 2019 was $1666 and it’s now $2000 you should be making $80k/year instead of $60K.
I’m old enough to have learned that housing should be 1/4 of your take home pay
That’s the general rule of thumb that I learned as well… try to stay within 1/4th of salary for mortgage/rent.
Ah, assuming that’s what’s behind the paywall that makes much more sense.
Just a small distinction. Not more than 1/3 of your income should be rent. Also this figure is based on the net income, not pre-tax
if the rent is, for instance, 40% of income then the additional income is also to offset the 60% nonrental income.
eg if you pay 400 in rent and now its 700 your overall income needs to go from 1000 to 1750 to maintain the same level of affordability.
That’s a major issue about inflation - it’s really just an additional tax. In inflation, cost of living goes up, income/wages do not.
It could be including how much food has gone up as well
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it’s relative to where you live, yes.
but generally rents and housing costs have doubled the past 5 years. and doubled the ten years ebfore that, so are about triple where they were in 2009. A 2 bed in my city was 1200-1500, now it’s 3000-4000 and often 3-4 people are living there to make rent. a lot of two beds were converted to 3-4 beds (remove living and dining room).
