Almost feels like my brain is broken or some shit.

I’m looking at the pricing of houses in my area and comparing it to my salary, and how the actual fuck is anyone affording a house these days? We’re talking almost half a million for a house that takes <2 days to build and is practically an irl copy and paste of some of the homes down the street. What the actual fuck. It seems like I’m the only one (though I know I’m not) who sees how this is completely at odds with everything I learned about the world.

Also, so salaries. How the fuck are they determined? Because it certainly isn’t the result of how much actual work you do, I’m making nearly six figures and I do jack shit yet I’m supposed to just be OK with how morally repugnant that is, as if I’m not also a piece upholding the same utterly corrupt system as well?

Fuck if I know, I try to say this shit to people irl and they just tell me that the world’s not fair blah blah blah. Yeah homie, “not fair” is quite possibly the biggest understatement ever.

I very much understand what people say when they say that money is not real. Feel free to grill my complete ignorance of Econ too if you wish, maybe it’s just something I’ll never understand

  • PKMKII [none/use name]
    ·
    10 months ago

    How fucked is it that my first thought was “oh wow half a million, he must live somewhere with cheap house prices.” Of course it’s not cheap in the abstract, just a sign of how monumentally insane home prices have got in high demand urban and suburban areas. My FIL is selling her house and the ask price is $1.5 million. We’re talking about a modest, 2 bedroom (with an attic that could be used as an extra bedroom but due to the layout can’t be listed as such) house, not some glorious mansion.

    And with interest rates now back up due to the Fed trying to tame inflation by beating down the working class again, the sort of people who used to be able to just barely afford those mortgages can’t now. And like you said, we’re not talking minimum wage earners or entry level white collar workers, we’re talking households making 2-3 times the nation median household income can’t afford to buy a house.

    I think this is part of the reason millennials and zoomers are having fewer kids, besides the cost and starting families latter in life due to those costs. We know how fucked everything is and that it’s likely going to get more fucked, so if we want our kids to have the best chance possible we have to maximize resources per kid which means fewer of them. Effectively, we have to put all our eggs in one basket because we have so few of them.

    • Hohsia [he/him]
      hexagon
      ·
      10 months ago

      Honestly, this is one of the only places I can go to sorta check my sanity. I get that we live in an endless age of information and every “bad thing” is at your fingertips blah blah, but what about when the bad things show up at your front door.

      It’s as if people act like “the information age” isn’t literally an illustration of things happening to people living in the world.

      It’s like a bad movie where the whole town isn’t concerned about the killer until people in the city start dying. And even that isn’t an apt comparison because the killer is here and no one gives a fuck (idk might be a huge stretch but that’s where my brain went for some reason)

      • PKMKII [none/use name]
        ·
        10 months ago

        Not to cut myself on this edge, but it feels like Donnie Darko where

        spoiler

        It turns out the preacher is a criminal predator but everyone keeps supporting him and refusing to believe the stark evidence

        It’s right up in our faces how fucked up the system is right now, but so many people willfully deny it because they’re uncomfortable with the implications in acknowledging it.

        • Hohsia [he/him]
          hexagon
          ·
          10 months ago

          Damn you just gave me a whole new perspective

          The fucked up system is right in our face to a degree never before seen in history (arguable but hopefully you catch my drift). I don’t know if this is too hyperbolic but I feel imprisoned in a way. And if I feel imprisoned having to be babysat by my laptop, I can’t even comprehend how others feel

          And all I can do now is shout into an online void about how everything sucks and continues to get worse

      • bigboopballs [he/him]
        ·
        10 months ago

        There's been decades of fucking around, and we're due for some weeks of finding out.

    • BeamBrain [he/him]
      ·
      10 months ago

      And meanwhile the reactionaries will blame the lack of kids on soybeans and Jewish space lasers