Yeah. I hate the negativity of the Internet, but this is what “life” (at least in the first world) has become: the negative stories are amplified and the positive ones are short.
In a time of great planetary wealth creation, there is still disparity. One of the richest nations on the Earth has packed all of its citizenry onto the “liveable coasts”, into cities.
The couple mentioned in the article tried to move away to a more affordable area with more land (Portland is Urban, and Spokane is rural), and were met with boredom and dissatisfaction.
They both earn collectively $250,000/year, which seems like a lot, and to many people in the U.S who earn the median salary of $52-65,000/year, it is.
They mention not wanting to pay more than 30% of their budget to mortgage costs, which they stated with “$5,000 being 50%”, which means their real adjusted income is closer to $120,000, not $250,000.
That’s still a lot, but more reasonable to the point of Median Salary × 2.
What this average couple demonstrates however, is that the erosion of the “middle class” in the United States is complete: The middle class is dead. They are both educated professionals who are working honestly, and don’t make enough money to own a home.
That makes them poor. That makes all of us poor – and it is a gross failure of the economic system with misplaced incentives and lack of regulations that has led us to this point.
The important thing to remember that this socioeconomic and political atmosphere is wholly contrived.
A better world is possible – it however requires sacrifices that many people are unable or unwilling to endure. Whatever you are imagining going through your head right now, that’s exactly what is necessary to change the first world for the better.
It’s not any one individual’s fault this happened. The honest working man and woman haven’t done anything wrong here, and aren’t to blame – it’s precisely because the honest (the just) have enabled the dishonest (the unjust) to continue to run amok, completely unchecked and unchained.
Here is to a better future, and for all the hardship we must all endure, to get there. 🍺
Fuck Private Equity.
I make just north of 50k a year and my wife just over half that and we bought a house. Yes it was built in 1962, it’s not large, it’s not in the middle of a large city. But 250k a year? I’d be able to clear my mortgage in under 10 years.
So either the housing market in the US is much more messed up than the one in Europe, or we aren’t taking into account that buying a house with compromise is better than no house at all.
It’s both, the housing market is a disaster here, but they also could easily buy a house in a less popular, less desirable area. Now maybe that $250K combined salary is also only possible because of the very high cost of living area they live in. I have a friend that was making $150K in CA that had to live in small an apartment with a roommate, and that was nearly a decade ago. It still blows my mind, but that salary simply wasn’t a lot in that area.
For the middle class to be dead, it would have had to be real in the first place, but it has always been an illusion.
There is the owning class and the working class.
If you don’t own the means of production (and or a load of property to leech rent off of), you are part of the working class, however uncomfortable that might make someone with the “temporarily embarrassed millionaire” mentality feel. The lie exists in the first place to create and feed that mentality, to ensure at least some working class people consistently vote against their own interests.
The middle class historically was the loyal servants of the upper class, whose expertise was needed to maintain the system. While they worked for wages they were allowed income sufficient to accumulate surpluses, property, and a facsimile of financial security.
In the 20th century it seemed possible for labor organizing to grant the privileges of the middle class to everyone in society. People who were definitely working-class were able to live like the middle class.
In the 21st century the rich seem to be starting to operate on the idea that, not only can labor be broken and the working class cast back down into hand-to-mouth poverty, but that vast numbers of people in the professions have been misclassified as essential loyal servants and they, too, can be cast down into poverty. I think the end state is that the middle class is squeezed down to the size it was during the gilded age and return to being an afterthought rather than the central focus of our politics.
You are literally just describing how the “middle class” is artificial and manufactured, not an actual thing. High earning working class people are still working class people. Making you think otherwise serves the owning class by dividing the working class and pitting us against each other, and providing a fictional carrot (becoming part of the owning class) and the motivation to step over others to try and get it (but you never will, unless you win a lottery, which is a similar carrot) (E: and no, owning one rental, while still problematic because the essence of landlordism is, doesn’t quite make someone part of the owning class, but it will make them much more likely to vote for owning class interests because they’ve been made to believe they’re one of them, or will be soon).
The middle class is real and was originally identified by Engels.
The important distinction for Engels is that the middle class’s interest are aligned with the upper class. Importantly: they don’t think their interest s are aligned. Their interests really are aligned with the upper class. If you’re a solicitor or, say, hat-maker to the king in 18th century England, you owe your social position to upper class largess.
In the 20th century the idea developed that with organizing, the middle class lifestyle is attainable for everyone. This began the era of the “broad middle class” or what Piketty called the “patrimonial middle class.” Engel’s original middle class in this society was the PMC.
In the late 20th and early 21st century the upper class started a class war, first targeting organized labor. But with that deed done they are now focusing on the ranks of the PMC, which they see as bloated, and they’re going through and evicting as many people as they can from it.
If you really think some doctor who owns a nice house 2 cars and maybe a rental property has more interests in common with an oil baron (E: or even just their local property mogul) than with the person who bags their groceries, I honestly don’t know what to tell you except that you’ve bought in to one of the many lies (or structures, or systems) manufactured to divide the working class and keep the owning and ruling class in power and assets.
doctor who owns a nice house 2 cars and maybe a rental property has more interests in common with an oil baron
Yes he does and what’s more, he knows it! He’s not loyal to the baron because he’s an idiot. He’s doing so because he knows how his bread is buttered.
Yelling at him that he has “nothing to lose but his chains” won’t work because he has a lot to lose besides his chains. In fact he probably suspects (rightly) that his rental property, his medical practice and his fancy car will all be torched in the revolution long before anything happens to the baron.
In a time of great planetary wealth creation, there is still disparity.
There is more disparity, increasing at an accelerating rate.
The middle class is dead.
The middle class was always a fiction designed by the ruling elite to divide and conquer: in reality, there has only ever been the working class and the oppressor class.
They are nowhere near poor they’re just not willing to pay what the market demands.
They are not poor.
I repeat they are not poor.
Not being able to afford things you want doesn’t make you poor. They can afford a house. They do not want to pay a high price.
Square the two cuz u look like a fool defending these whiners.
Renting for life, this is exactly what the landowning class, much of whom are now giant hedge funds that have been soaking up houses and properties for cash on the barrel head, in this country want.
We desperately need national legislation to put an end to people and corporations owning large swaths of homes in this country otherwise we will end up with fiefdoms and are in danger of returning to a world of medieval nobility in land ownership.
It’s high time we get over this notion that in America, you rent for a couple years, save money, and then buy a house. It is simply not possible anymore. The only people buying houses are people that have a house to sell.
We are lifetime renters and we live in a community with lifetime renters. Some of us even have GASP kids in an apartment.
Which is especially fucked up considering how large the US / Canada is and how much space there is.
Politicans are artificially keeping supply low which fucks all the young people, but appeases the Boomers.
Mortgage == death pledge
If you can skip the mortgage, you also dodge the compulsory insurance as well as all that interest rate bullshit.
Bringing in 17k+ per month after tax and cannot afford a home?? I call bullshit. A $750k home is 5k per month including HOA/tax/insurance. That’s less than 30% of their take home.
They could double their payment and pay it off in 5 years, with 7k per month to live on, then they live rent free for the rest of their lives.
This article feels like propaganda. Homes are over priced but 250k per year is a lot of money.
It’s Business Insider, always read whatever they say with spoonfuls of salt
They want to keep their monthly mortgage payment between $3,000 and $3,500 — or around 30% of their monthly take-home income of about $11,000.
This makes it seem like they only take home a little more than half their wages.
Something doesn’t add up. The only issue I see is one might be an independent contractor. Or they’re excluding health insurance and 401k.
Edit: some quick digging. First issue is the definition of take home pay.
Take-home pay is the net amount of income received after the deduction of taxes, benefits, and voluntary contributions from a paycheck. It is the difference resulting from the subtraction of all deductions from gross income. Deductions include federal, state and local income tax, Social Security and Medicare contributions, retirement account contributions, and medical, dental and other insurance premiums. The net amount or take-home pay is what the employee receives.
But the bigger issue is the 30% rule. 30% is on gross and not take home. This would give them a out 7k per month. I bet they’re following the advice of someone like a Dave Ramsey. These people are not victims.
Well, they are saying they bring home $11k, not $17k a month, not sure where you got that number. With $11k of income, spending $5k on mortgage is less appealing. Especially if you consider a risk of layoff.
The headline says they make 250k, or around 21k gross. 17k was my estimate of net. Article doesn’t match the headline.
These stories are always bullshit. They can’t afford a 3000sqft single family home on an acre inside the beltway of a HCOL city. Anyone making $250k can easily afford a condo or townhome anywhere in the US. If you really need useless interior volume or wasteful yard space then you can move farther out and afford that.
Rough math after maxing 2 401ks, taxes and paying 1000 a month for insurance they should be making around 12k take home a month. Even with only 5% down they should be able to get into a 7-800k house and still have 4k-5k a month for other expenses. I found 25 results under 700k in the greater Portland area some as low as 479k (actually in Portland) for 2.5k sf min 4+ bedrooms 2 bath min 1/4 acre lot.
I’m in Canada. The outskirts of Miami are exactly the same price as Swift Current, Saskatchewan. 300 grand American or 400 Canadian. Exact same, except the canadian housing market is so fucked that a place in the literal center of buttfuck nowhere everyone is depressed suicide rate 27x national average…is Miami priced.
Wasteful yard space? Do you enjoy playing Frisbee buddy? How about just running around with your kids.
What is a public park?
In a lot of neighborhoods in the US, you have to cross major, high-traffic streets to get to a fairly small public park.
Then that is less of a city and more dystopian urban sprawl pretending to be a city.
I’ve been house browsing in the Portland area for a couple years and am losing hope of ever being able to afford one. Last year I saw a frame of a house, basically a roof on studs with tarp and plywood as the “walls” being listed for sale. They were asking for $300k.
As someone who lives here:
This is real.
