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Smoogs ,

“Consumers demoralized by capitalism…” …paywall…

Gradually_Adjusting ,
@Gradually_Adjusting@lemmy.world avatar

Let’s go a little hollow, as a treat 💀

3volver ,

We’re in late stage capitalism. Getting rid of the gold standard was one of the biggest mistakes in US history.

clearedtoland ,

It blows my mind that the world basically runs on Monopoly money and accounting smoke and mirrors.

undergroundoverground ,

For a while now, I’ve had a hypothesis that money does have a real, tangible underlying asset attached to it, in the exact same way as it used to be backed by gold or oil.

The underlying asset is human capital and the value is derived from human labour.

The reason for my belief is because private banks actually create 80% of the money in circulation. They create this money when they issue loans.

How do we determine the amount of loan we can take? The amount of money we earn. We earn money either via our own labour or someone else’s. Ergo, money is created at the value human labour you own, like how we used to do so with gold and oil.

Money here acting as both an iou and as a labour token, in the same way a British Bank note was both an iou for gold and affected gold prices, we have been buried under a labour debt our great grandkids would come close to paying off. Printing of future Labour ious also depresses wages for everyone who works for their money.

Imo, its much worse than monopoly money.

halowpeano ,

Well yeah. If you trace it backwards, before fiat, what was commodity backed currency? What inherent value is there to gold and silver? Back then there was little industrial use, it was just useful as something to trade for other things.

So going back further, at it’s core, currency is just a middle man to bartering. Instead of trading the grain you labored to grow for shoes from the cobbler, when you don’t need shoes right now, you take gold/shells/beads knowing you can use them to trade for repairs to your plow from the blacksmith. Currency has always been a social construct, not inherent to the commodity.

This is actually one argument against the hoarding behavior of the ultra wealthy. It disrupts the natural economy and creates unhealthy power dynamics. The rich person can distort labor away from productive things healthy for future development of the society, say by using their vast wealth to pay a ton of farmers to build statues of the rich guy, until suddenly there’s famine because no one is growing food.

Semi_Hemi_Demigod ,
@Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world avatar

So going back further, at it’s core, currency is just a middle man to bartering. Instead of trading the grain you labored to grow for shoes from the cobbler, when you don’t need shoes right now, you take gold/shells/beads knowing you can use them to trade for repairs to your plow from the blacksmith. Currency has always been a social construct, not inherent to the commodity.

This is what David Graeber calls “The Myth of Barter” and has no basis in history or anthropology. Trade was happening for thousands of years before the first currency was invented in the 6th Century BC. There are other ways to arrange trade that don’t require currency as an exchange of value.

For example, if I were a barley farmer in ancient Mesopotamia and I wanted to get drunk before harvest, I could write an IOU for part of my barley harvest to the bar owner. Then, if he needed to buy something he could take my IOU and trade that for whatever it was. This IOU would go round and round the economy, but it also made them pretty unstable if the barley crop didn’t meet expectations.

If this is interesting to you I highly recommend the book Debt: The First 5,000 Years which goes into a lot of detail about many different economic systems that have existed.

jj4211 ,

Think the point is that alternative strategies were in play when the biggest, most overwhelming cities in the world were maybe 100k people, the world population was 1% of what it was today, and economic activity was relatively limited in what sorts of goods and services were for trade.

Currency came about because as the indirect bartering relationships became overly complex and the number of participants exploded.

Though the currency situation did set up a sort of ‘meta’ of gaming the numbers for sake of the numbers themselves, which grew out of control until breaking the gold standard. Of course it’s still out of control, but what we see is nothing compared to the instability of a gold standard currency trying to tackle current day human activity.

Semi_Hemi_Demigod ,
@Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world avatar

IIRC it had a lot more to do with exerting central control on trade. That’s why going back to their invention coins had pictures of rulers on them.

Asafum ,

I’m not an expert and really a bit of a moron, but it’s nice to actually see something I “thought of” taken seriously. I’ve argued with friends that money really is just “human potential energy.” The only thing you do with money is “inspire” others to do work. I usually just get laughed at though lol

Preflight_Tomato ,

Ultimately, the question is: “What is the dollar a unit of?”. The answer is roughly “energy” in the physical sense, or effort/labor in more human language.

What I think is interesting is that then, the social and physical definitions of the word “power” collapse into the same thing; one with more “power” is able to expend more “energy”, the labor of others, in a shorter time.

If you’re really interested in the topic, read the book “Energy and Civilization: A History” by Vaclav Smil, published in 2017. It covers the efficiencies of tool use and how innovations in technologies that caused increased labor efficiency have catalyzed societal changes and revolutions, even going so far as to discuss GDP in units of Joules.

undergroundoverground ,

Sorry to hear that. Personally, and I might be a millions miles off here, i find its usually only stockbros who react that way. You know, the kind who get their financial advice from wallstreetbets.

I know that it’s a radical idea to lots of people and I may end up being ultimately wrong but I think its a position I can a least logical argue. I think better than the “power of friendship” or infinite debt loop of debt that isn’t owed to anyone, nor does it ever have to be repaid (making it, by definition, not debt).

For me though, money would be an IOU for human labour, exactly like the old British pound was a literal IOU for gold. Its not far from what you said at all, tbf, but I think its more sound wording. Kind of the technical long form of that which could exist in our society.

calcopiritus ,

Every currency’s value is “potential to convince others to do labor for you”, that doesn’t make fiat different, it would be a chicken and egg problem otherwise.

The value of a currency is “what makes people want to accept this currency?”. The answer is taxes. You live in a state. That state requires you to pay taxes in a currency (or set of currencies). Doesn’t matter how much gold you have, if you want to keep your house in country X, you have to pay it for property taxes in a currency that that state accepts, otherwise that state’s police will revoke your ownership of the property.

States have a monopoly of violence, therefore currencies have value because it’s the only way to preserve your ownership of property via taxes.

undergroundoverground ,

The difference being, like in the roman times you’re referring to, the coins at least had some other kind of underlying value.

I agree that was heavily inflated and, eventually, the value of the coins became more than the value of the metals the coins ended up as after clipping etc.

However, now there isn’t even that pretence. Human labour is the underlying asset here imo.

It’s not that I dont know how money works. Its that I think about it differently. To me, it makes a lot more sense than just that we believe in it really hard, with extra steps. Its that now, the rich get to keep hold of the gold too.

A way to think about the idea is the financial crash. “Sub prime mortgages” means “fraudulent loans to people who didn’t exist” (money creation). The money created by those loans was spent a thousand times over, all due back to bigger banks who leant them money, with new loans and made with them as collateral and all packed into toxic financial instruments. When it was found out that those people didn’t exist, the money literally disappeared. Thats how “companies balance sheets just vanished.” Thats whys Governments had to print money: because the money had vanished and there was a gapping money void due to it.

There was no one to work off the value of the money that had been created and, just like if you found out thr bank didn’t have any gold (back in the gold standard days), the IOUs (money) would be worthless.

To me, it point to seeing the world as a human labour farm and the currency is human labour IOUs, in the same way cotton, sugar and steel nails and their IOUs in Virginia, the Caribbean and the North East of England respectfully were also used currency or were the equivalent of currency.

Trainguyrom ,

A way to think about the idea is the financial crash. “Sub prime mortgages” means “fraudulent loans to people who didn’t exist” (money creation). The money created by those loans was spent a thousand times over, all due back to bigger banks who leant them money, with new loans and made with them as collateral and all packed into toxic financial instruments. When it was found out that those people didn’t exist, the money literally disappeared. Thats how “companies balance sheets just vanished.”

Uhhh that’s not what the sub-prime mortgage crisis was. What you’re describing was extremely risky mortgages being rubber-stamped to borrowers who shouldn’t have received them, then bundled into Mortgage Backed Securities (basically a type of bond backed by, say, 500 mortgages containing a variety of risk profiles designed to balance out into a low risk but decent yield investment) and the fraud was that too many of these high risk mortgages were bundled into these securities and the risk level was misrepresented to investors, so when people defaulted on their mortgages in large numbers this caused the MBSes to rapidly devalue (which given they were treated as a way to protect capital against instability this greatly damaged many funds such as retirements and bank investments, 2 things that are heavily regulated to make safe investments because the risk is too high should they fail)

Or just go read the Wikipedia page for far more detail: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subprime_mortgage_crisis

undergroundoverground ,

Thanks, I’ve read it. None of what you said is wrong and none of it refuted what I said about it all either. They’re not mutually exclusive.

Plenty weren’t simply “risky loans.” That’s corporate speak. Technically true in all instances but not incriminating. After all, what loan could be riskier than one made to someone who doesn’t exist etc.?

publicintegrity.org/…/at-top-subprime-mortgage-le…

theguardian.com/…/tax-timeline-credit-suisse-scan…

But the important part is that you’re not cross referencing that with how money is actually created and destroyed these days or, it would seem, or acknowledging the level of fraud involved on the issuing of the mortgages, bundled up into those MBSs.

Therefore, if you borrow £100 from the bank, and it credits your account with the amount, ‘new money’ has been created. It didn’t exist until it was credited to your account.

This also means as you pay off the loan, the electronic money your bank created is ‘deleted’ – it no longer exists.

www.bankofengland.co.uk/…/how-is-money-created

The BoE is the UK fed and its not going to be different in America. Both countries have the same monetary policy.

Money is created - human labour - money goes back and is destroyed.

Back to the banks, they created money when they issued those mortgages. They wouldn’t me mortgages otherwise. As a bank, in a system of fractional reserve banking, they’re as good as money. Those mortgages didn’t get parked on some balance sheet in the sky. Not trying to be patronising but to really crystallise it.

When the people couldn’t pay it off with either their own work or someone else’s, either through being dead or just not being able to pay, the money already created, already in the system, vanished. Just like if it turned out the bank of England had no gold at all, back in the gold standard days.

buddascrayon ,

I find people who make this “argument” very silly. The gold standard is unsustainable. The amount of cash in circulation will always outstrip the amount of gold in whatever vault it been tied to. Fiat money is always an economic inevitability for a growing state.

HasturInYellow ,

That’s only true when you are dealing with the infinite growth of capitalism. Nations and empires have used the gold standard for thousands of years. It only became “impossible” when we tried to inflate the value of economies into the stratosphere to enrich the aristocrats of society.

UnderpantsWeevil ,
@UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world avatar

Nations and empires have used the gold standard for thousands of years.

Crack open David Graeber’s “Debt: The First 5000 Years”. He’s an anthropologist who spent his career investigating this theory, and he found it wanting. Hardly the first, but probably a more fun read than Thomas Piketty or Milton Friedman or Adam Smith. Nations and empires didn’t use gold specie until fairly recently in human history. Most of human civilization revolved around different types of credit and debt, typically enumerated in volume of agricultural produce.

Wheat/corn/rice, fish, olive oil, and salt were the most common standards of exchange. Gold was ornamental, but far too little of it existed to circulate as common currency or even reserve currency. It wasn’t until the colonial era and the mass exploitation of Africa, East Asia, and the Americas that European Banks had a large enough surplus gold reserve to treat it as coinage.

So you’re talking at best hundreds of years, and even then only within the handful of European powers capable of plundering the gold reserves of foreign nations on a global scale. And even that only got these countries from the 15th to the 18th century before the system started breaking down.

HasturInYellow ,

Ok. Fair. Let me correct myself: money was based on material goods and not rich peoples feefees about the economy.

UnderpantsWeevil ,
@UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world avatar

Definitely closer to the market. Although one major form of historical debt is taxation, and that’s traditionally been subject to how rich people feel about the economy.

3volver ,

The amount of cash in circulation will always outstrip the amount of gold in whatever vault it been tied to.

That’s… the entire fucking point. They printed away our futures, now we suffer.

UnderpantsWeevil ,
@UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world avatar

They printed away our futures

If the amount of potatoes we produce every year goes up and the amount of currency we print every year goes up but the amount of gold we have in our vault stays fixed, the real economy doesn’t care. You’re trading dollars for potatoes and potatoes for dollars. The gold is irrelevant.

But if potatoes go up and currency stays fixed, you have too few dollars chasing too many goods. This deflates the cost of the potato and discourages the next crop. Smaller crops mean food shortages. And food shortages impact social stability. So now you’ve got riots from a food shortage that was created entirely because you didn’t print enough currency to buy up all the potatoes.

3volver ,

Riots from a food shortage because potatoes became too cheap? Funny speculative statement. What about riots because everything is too expensive?

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/cfd60dad-91ea-4cc4-8a96-8ce2eaefcaf3.png

UnderpantsWeevil ,
@UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world avatar

Riots from a food shortage because potatoes became too cheap?

Riots because people stop growing potatoes and start growing bitcoins, in order to chase the highest possible ROI.

What about riots because everything is too expensive?

You’re looking at debt without looking at revenues.

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/1bedb03f-f990-4292-9f04-8b4294f62741.png

Far worse to owe $10 when you make $10/year than $10M when you make $10M/year. Particularly when I the value of the asset I’ve purchased is rising faster than the debt-rate. Owning a $100M house on a $10M note is an incredibly deal. Public Debt in service of GDP growth is simply investment. And the ROI on that debt has been incredibly good.

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/8d1e4597-0e01-413b-90d0-811068c91344.png

Eximius ,

The government runs out of money… so it drops the gold standard to “to invigorate the economy”… by taking away value from those that hold cash… which is always the lower class. Higher classes hold assets that dont inflate away.

NotMyOldRedditName ,

Holding cash makes it sound like it only impacts those who have cash savings, but it takes value away from the work you do as you get paid in cash and those wages never keep up to inflation from the printing machine. So they “invigorate” the economy by devaluing your work.

UnderpantsWeevil ,
@UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world avatar

The problem with this argument is that it neglects the consequence of specie entering and existing the market.

The California and Alaska Gold Rushes did more to devalue the money supply than anything Nixon tried. The Spanish economy of the 1700s imploded in the face of the gold glut it imported from the Incas and Aztecs.

A gold standard doesn’t stabilize the money supply. It simply deflects the question of what that money supply should be onto the private commodity market for gold. But volatility in the gold supply does happen, particularly during times of economic turmoil. And a pegged currency encourages private arbitrage, which increases the frequency of these sharp shifts in gold availability.

And that’s not even getting into what happens when you’ve got a private speculative asset independent of gold - maybe we call it real estate or company stock or cryptocurrency - that siphons off investment dollars one minute and floods the market with currency/commodity-hungry panic sellers the next. Even if you’ve got a stable gold/currency ratio, these aren’t the only two variables in your economic model.

No amount of gold changes the number of potatoes the Irish have to eat.

UnderpantsWeevil ,
@UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world avatar

laughs in Calvin Coolidge

Yes. YES! Let the Austrian Economics flow through you! Speculation is a consequence of federal monetary policy and commodity inflation. I can’t possibly have anything to do with private credit or free market auction rates.

Nobody ,

Organize a mass, simultaneous bankruptcy filing nationwide. Overwhelm the system with claims, and all debt collection ceases the moment you file for bankruptcy while the claims are being processed.

AlecSadler ,

I was thinking similar. Would be interesting to see what happens. I just wonder if it’d be possible to do on a mass scale before they catch on and start disallowing bankruptcy filings.

Might devolve into everyone just ceasing payments on CCs, loans, mortgages period.

abigscaryhobo ,

Problem is things will have to get worse for a lot more people for that to really happen en masse, I support the idea but I wouldn’t probably stop because none of my debts are debilitating. I have a good savings and my only payment is my mortgage and whatever I put on my credit card that month. I’m not going to just stop paying my mortgage for a political movement, and a lot of other people won’t either, supporting or not, people don’t like risking their homes when they don’t technically have to.

All the banks have to do is make examples of a few good people and all the others will likely fall back in line. Finances and debt is something that is very personal to a lot of peopl so people are hesitant to let that flag fly and unite publicly as well.

Ragnarok314159 ,

Yeah, mass bankruptcy would be a dream for the finance industry. They will immediately own all our homes and rent them back and ridiculous rates, as well as absorbing cars. We would have to buy our cars back at higher interest rates.

There are a lot of effective ways to protest, but everyone surrendering all their assets via bankruptcy isn’t going to be effective.

4grams ,
@4grams@awful.systems avatar

truth, I feel pressure to buy the things I want because I have no faith I will be able to afford them later. I figure, get it now while I can so that when I can’t, I’ll have it.

Dkarma ,

I don’t want anything anymore. Everything on the shelves is just crap

4grams ,
@4grams@awful.systems avatar

That’s why one of the things I bought is a 3D printer.

Ragnarok314159 ,

Someone much smarter than me explained how you don’t own stuff, it ends up owning you. This is outside of necessities.

You buy some decorations? Now you have to dust them, keep a place for them in your home. There are all kinds of examples, and collecting trinkets and oddities will never make you happy or fulfilled.

4grams ,
@4grams@awful.systems avatar

Oh, I know, I’m being somewhat facetious. I do have 3D printers but that’s because I’m a nerd; not like, preparing for anything…

Ragnarok314159 ,

Well damn, I wanted to talk about the neat things made during Covid when the hardware stores were closed.

It was fun modeling household items.

4grams ,
@4grams@awful.systems avatar

Agreed! The phone I’m typing this on right now is dressed in my finest yellow TPU.

TubularTittyFrog , (edited )

pretty much.

i purchased a new car in 2018. it was 20K. that same car today is close to 30K. in another 5 years it will be closer to 40 probably.

4grams ,
@4grams@awful.systems avatar

Right, my fully loaded vehicle was like 43k all in when I bought it in 2016. Today, the same car with the same trim level (granted a newer model) costs over 20k more.

Zerlyna ,
@Zerlyna@lemmy.world avatar

Yup.

Pixlbabble ,

And that’s while already having a trillion in credit card debt.

Blackmist ,

The wonderful thing about debt is, if you have enough of it, it suddenly becomes somebody else’s problem.

Pixlbabble ,

I wish I can go back in time to when I was 18 and never accept that damn cc offer. Took 30+ years to pay off since it started a series of debt that didn’t stop until I changed my life.

lagomorphlecture ,

The headline reads like big retail trying to squeeze more profits. Of course people aren’t saving as much, they have to buy groceries.

NightAuthor ,

No, but even for those of us with some extra money… we’re not building a savings pile for a house or anything… we’re just spending the extra on doing things and buying stuff beyond our needs.

Dkarma ,

This is how you never accumulate wealth…

Burn_The_Right ,

Itty bitty savings will never lead to wealth either. The working class and “middle class” that remains has a low enough income to recognize this.

Ullallulloo ,
@Ullallulloo@civilloquy.com avatar

It depends on what you call “itty bitty” and “wealth”. Saving $1,000/month is doable for many people and will make you a millionaire by retirement age, even adjusting for inflation.

Burn_The_Right ,

Bro, what?! Who the fuck can save $1000/month with current rents and home prices? 🤣

I thought you were serious for a second! Good one.

Takios ,
@Takios@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

Saving $1,000/month is doable for many people

You’re not being serious, right?

blusterydayve26 ,

Crackitalism is a serious drug Jimmy, it’s deadly serious.

akakunai ,

And don’t call me Shirley.

Psychodelic ,

lol. It’d actually be kinda disrespectful if it wasn’t clear you’ve never met a struggling American in your life

sgtgig ,

$1,000/mo in savings is pretty difficult for most people.

$300/mo, invested earning 8% for 40 years, does get to a million though (10% rate of return + 2% interest safe assumption.) This is as $60k/yr job, contributing 3% to a 401k with an employer match, not something that’s particularly rare.

I know prices are high and people are hurting… but there’s a lot of people who are just not really trying.

eatthecake ,

Not if you’te middle aged by the time you get a job that allows you to save.

StaySquared ,

we’re just spending the extra on doing things and buying stuff beyond our needs.

That’s one of many problems and majority of the people who fit this category like to point the finger at anything and everything else… when the problem is themselves and their spending habits.

cantw8togo ,

This is what happens when history is forgotten. Obviously we’ve had inflation B4. Don’t read all the negative sh*t out there. And don’t let other people with their agenda run your life.

BigPotato ,

We’ve had inflation before and, on a historic timescale, we’ve had revolutions to correct that inflation. France existed for almost a thousand years before they had the big one.

FlyingSquid ,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

Every time I read the phrase ‘the American Dream’ I think of the part of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas when, after spending the whole novel trying to find the American Dream, they’re given directions, only to find the remains of a burnt-down nightclub, “a huge slab of cracked, scorched concrete in a vacant lot full of tall weeds.”

Anise ,

Fear and Loathing should be required reading in schools. A lot of the meaning gets lost in all of the drugs, but in the midst of that haze one can find a lot true things about America.

WanderingVentra ,

Never read it because I assumed it was just a funny story about guys on drugs with his characteristic cool writing style, but if it had actual things to say about America, maybe I’ll read it sometime. Or watch the movie lol.

FlyingSquid ,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

The movie actually takes all of that out unfortunately and makes it much more of a funny story about guys on drugs. I still like the movie, but the book is so much deeper and more meaningful.

toofpic ,

I liked the book and I was surprised how close to it was the movie, the part tgat got there. And yes, they left out many things, but it’s understandable, because the movie was planned as a “funny movie”, not a “socio-economical movie”. So the book was like “drugs-capitalism-drugs-Vietnam-drugs”, tgey cut out all the “boring” parts, leaving only drugs.
The movie is cool though, but It’s just me always trying to appreciate what is shown to me, and not trying to compare with another media.

FlyingSquid ,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

It’s definitely not a bad movie or even a terrible adaptation of a book. Like you said, it just had a different goal with the same story. That’s fine.

Dkarma ,

Thompson rightly concludes that the American dream is already dead by the 70s.

If you look west you can almost see the place where the wave broke and rolled back…

rwhitisissle , (edited )

Thompson rightly concludes that the American dream is already dead by the 70s.

Important context for that is that the novel is a famous, and relatively early, meditation on the failures of the 1960s counterculture movement and the intense, if ultimately unfocused vision for a better future for the nation that was central to it.

bss03 ,

I think of the Carlin bit… It’s the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe in it.

Aceticon ,

Well, you gotta be asleep to believe the American Dream, so maybe this means a lot of people are waking up.

girlfreddy ,
@girlfreddy@lemmy.ca avatar

The American Dream

return2ozma OP ,
@return2ozma@lemmy.world avatar

Why You’ll Never Achieve The American Dream youtu.be/vu7IJ-HDIos

Evil_Shrubbery ,

By brother in Satan, high inflation makes you spend money now. It’s either that or going to hell.

Im saying that this bs is out of some relative comparison of how much generations are saving/investing. Everyone tried saving. But with low relative wages ofc ppl wont save as much as eg boomers - they didn’t give up vacations or buying whatevers, but still saved money. Younger gens are just left with no money after that.

And also falling relative wages (inflation) makes you buy things asap to actually save money.

freebee ,

If you would have bought a basement full of canned food somewhere shortly before corona or shortly before the russians went full loco in ukraine, it would have been a top tier investment. And if it wouldn’t have been, they don’t go bad fast and you can still eat them :') In high inflation environment, buying stuff instead of stacking money can make sense indeed.

Evil_Shrubbery ,

Why grind when production is way higher than needed.

Just eat the rich.

Historically it always led to an era of prosperity.

Monument ,

It’s literally cheaper to buy things I know we’ll need at some point (assuming we have the space to store the thing) using a rewards credit card that’ll give us 1-3% back than it is to save and buy those things later when they’re even more expensive. (Paying off the CC before it accrues interest, of course.)

The only move that is ‘smarter’ is to be risky with our money and invest in some way. Which then either makes me a part of the corporate enrichment cycle or a member of the rentier class.

Evil_Shrubbery ,

Investing isn’t that cheap, especially if you want to be moral about it (no shadow pools, company screening, etc). Coz you know, you are just fueling the same problem you are solving.

aesthelete ,

The only move that is ‘smarter’ is to be risky with our money and invest in some way. Which then either makes me a part of the corporate enrichment cycle or a member of the rentier class.

Online savings accounts also exist.

Monument ,

A solid suggestion.
I often discount those because I think of them in terms of cable TV pricing, that you have to hop around on to get the maximum benefit. It seems that there’s no trustworthy info to find online these days, so I don’t really know how they stack up, or even if my assumption about them is correct.

Something to add to the vast hopper in my brain labeled “things to research if I ever find enough time.”

aesthelete ,

Ymmv but I’ve found Ally Bank to be good and the rates fluctuate with the baseline rates. I think you get over 4% interest right now. I’ve seen them go up and down just as the fed makes movements, unlike my ing direct account (which became capital one or something) where the rates only ever went down.

BigTrout75 ,

This is true, I asked a new-ish employee about getting/saving for a house and she was like, “why bother? They cost to much.”

TubularTittyFrog ,

the price of homes goes up faster than anyone can save. that’s the problem.

housing prices used to rise at or below inflation. now they rise at like 3x inflation.

Empricorn , (edited )

Even you are thinking too far ahead. I’m spending rent money every month that obviously could be saved to someday buy a house… But on top of that my rent has increased faster than my income. Every place I’ve lived. By renting, you’re guaranteeing you’re going to be priced out of affording your shelter. And most young people have to rent, to start out. The rich have us fucked at every turn…

Raiderkev ,

🙋‍♂️ That’d be me. Keep moving the goalposts society. I’m over it. I’ll wait for my mom to die to get her house. Idgaf anymore. Don’t need a house.

fishpen0 ,

Better hope you live in a state that doesn’t let Medicaid take the house or that you adequately used foresight to move the house into a trust 5-10 years before she enters assisted living, disability, or dies. Or that she didn’t take out a second mortgage at any time without telling you.

Otherwise I have bad news for you

ChonkyOwlbear ,

Same. My dad dying and leaving me his house is the only way I was able to afford to stop renting and stop living paycheck to paycheck. A perk of being an only child I suppose.

ArmoredThirteen ,

I’m saving up for the American Dream 2.0™️: Moving to another country

astreus , (edited )

It’s not just America though.

Where I’m from:

UK average income before tax) £34,963 - £27,911 after tax (assuming NO student loan and NO pension) (for context: a band 3 nurse with 3 years experience makes £24,336 before tax or £20,631.51 after with no pension)

England average house price: £375,131

Approx ratio after tax: 13:1

Minimum deposit: 5% - £18,756.55

Tax: 0% on first time buyers

Fees: about £1,000 - £5,000

Total cost to get going: Approx £21,750 - nearly a years wage.

Now let’s look where I live: Spain!

Turns out Spain really is a load of countries wearing a hat so getting unified stats is not easy. Let’s try Barcelona:

Average income before tax: €33,837 - €25,470 after tax

Average house price: €376,399

Approx ratio after tax: 15:1

Minimum deposit: 10% - €37,639.90

Purchase tax: 10% - €37,639.90 (plus 1.5% for new builds)

Fees: 2 - 5% - 7,527.98 - 18,819.95

Total cost to get going: €82,807.78 - €94,099.75

Turns out treating housing as a market to speculate on might just be the problem all along.

BeardedGingerWonder ,

Just to add to this, there’s zero chance you’re getting a 13x mortgage. For a 375k house on a 25k salary you’re going to need something more like 250k to start.

astreus ,

To add to this, the rule of thumb in the UK is your maximum loan is 4.5x your salary.

The average worker could borrow about £157,000.

JustEnoughDucks ,
@JustEnoughDucks@feddit.nl avatar

To be fair, the UK is essentially aiming to be America 2.0

Many countries are trending more expensive (Belgium went up 30% house price in 4 years) but the UK is on another level of the wealthy literally owning all property and purposely leaving tens of thousands of houses empty just to spite the working class.

astreus ,

I knew someone would say this, which is why I also used Spain where the houses are as expensive, the pay is worse, and the tax is higher!

It doesn’t matter where you go in the West, the dream of liberalism is dead

djsoren19 ,

Yeah, I hate this American-centric idea of “Oh, only my country is experiencing this totally unique problem, I’ll just go somewhere else.”

As if late-stage global capitalism would somehow be a problem that is unique to a single country.

Semi_Hemi_Demigod ,
@Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world avatar

The fediverse is a lot more multinational than That Other Site, and I’m seeing the same sort of articles from all over the place.

pantyhosewimp ,

Yep.

The theatre is closed. There is no place else to go.

And by “theatre” we mean the theatre of conflict not the cinema.

It is time to stand and fight.

GiddyGap ,

Unfortunately not much better elsewhere, if at all. What would make me move is the idiotic healthcare system.

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