Comment on Poignant post on the state of things

Maggoty@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

• WaxedWookie@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

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

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

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  • Maggoty@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

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

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  • mods_are_assholes@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    And yet nearly anyone IRL you point this out to spouts some form of free market propaganda bullshit.

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  • merc@sh.itjust.works ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    When houses cost twice a person’s salary there were no 30 year mortgages.

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    • WaxedWookie@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

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

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• TengoDosVacas@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

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

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  • mods_are_assholes@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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    • Saurok@lemm.ee ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

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

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      • mods_are_assholes@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

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

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    • TengoDosVacas@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

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

      /S

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      • mods_are_assholes@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

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

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

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  • Maggoty@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    We could do a general strike.

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• bartolomeo@suppo.fi ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  137 points

  What’s a point?

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  • Brainsploosh@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

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

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

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• KevonLooney@lemm.ee ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

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

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

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

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  • Maggoty@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

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

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

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• obinice@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  gave the entire country a pay cut

  Entire country? Which country? We’re talking about our whole western civilisation.

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  • Maggoty@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    The data I’m using is for the US.

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