A friend of ours has two weeks to find a new place to rent. 5 out of 5 of the rentals they've applied to have demanded application fees in the hundreds of dollars, per adult applicant. This fee comes with no guarantee your application will be approved. There are dozens of people applying to a single apartment, all paying hundreds in application fees. A lot of them housing companies are straight-up ghosting the applicants after that payment comes in.
One of the locations told them they throw out evey application at the end of the month, even though they applied on the 26th. They held onto an application for 5 days, for $350, and then shredded it. The same company told them the rental was still available, but at a much higher rate now that it's May. In other words, they accepted dozens of $350 application fees for one unit and then gave it to nobody, keeping it on the market for another month for another round of application fees.
Do the math: Let's say a landlord charges $3000 a month to rent an apartment. But then they realize if they charge $300 to even APPLY to it, and 11+ people apply... that's more profitable than actually renting it out...
The new frontier for capitalism is Application Fees. Entire corporations propped up on owning empty houses that hundreds of people pay to apply to live in and then nobody is selected, repeat every month forever.
Our friend has lost over a thousand dollars in application fees alone at this point, and still has no place to live. She's the wealthiest millennial we know, she works in real estate, and she's turning into a Maoist right in front of us.
EXHIBIT B: https://hexbear.net/post/190647
Just to add to your comment:
Since Europeans have a historical tradition of class conflict for centuries, their ruling classes understand the necessity of social and economic compromise to maintain their power. The bourgeoisie of Europe are the legacies of liberal revolutions that bought off, absorbed, and dismantled the antecedent aristocratic ruling class; the bourgeoisie historically made more effort to collaborate across social classes (e.g: worker, landlord aristocrat, clergy ) to provide stability and continuity for the capitalist system. (scapegoating, concessions, and suppression.)
The American state was an exception to this, as class conflict was resolved simply moving to a new frontier, through ethnic cleansing & genocide; the conquest of new land and frontiers. That mindset permeated into the American identity known through a slogan as "land of opportunity", or known as "pulling yourself up by your bootstraps" in the boomers' parlance.
(Or so I recall from one of the Inebreiated past/Chapo-sodes.)