I live in the USA, and our future seems more bleak than it ever has. Is not about politics, although politicians do have an impact on it. It’s really about our quality of life, and cost of living, which has not changed for the better, it seems, in a really long time. The cost of living keeps going up higher and higher, and much of our country still believes that even with increased cost of living, there is never any reason whatsoever to pay people more. So for instance, a job that paid 10 bucks an hour in the year 2002, that same job might still pay $10 an hour now. But I think we all know that the cost of living has dramatically gone up from 2002 to now.
Even White collar jobs though seem to be threatened to now, which is not something I’ve ever seen before. Positions like analyst, engineer, business intelligence, revenue management, whatever you want to think of. Any corporate office job, people are suffering. The cost of living is absurd, buying a house is simply out of reach unless you have dual income and it better be nearly six figure dual income…
I just don’t see how Americans at large are going to survive the next 30 years?
Beautiful. In fact, under royalty, people used to be killed with things like the Breaking Wheel and being boiled alive, which makes the Guillotine a far more humane punishment. I’m tempted, though, to say that “nothing ever happens” and assume the U.S. will proceed as normal.
Nothing ever happens, until it does.
You get milked by the big corpos. Money flows from the poor to the rich.
And as long as you have only these two extreme right wing parties, there is nobody who would change it.
Many of us will not.
For the last 40 years through free trade we’ve had a large population join the market from countries like China, Russia, India etc.
Free trade with China has given us cheap consumer goods but at the cost of our own manufacturing which suppressed wage growth and inflation for a long time. We hit the peak of this just before Covid and we are now feeling the after affects.
China’s dramatically aging population along with geopolitical instability means that the logistics and manufacturing capacity that existed overseas for 20 years Is now failing. The US forced to reshore or nearshore (Mexico) much of its manufacturing capacity. Basically if we want to continue to have stuff we need to find somewhere else to make it besides China. This isn’t a cheap process and it won’t be as efficient as the old system.
Russia’s war with Ukraine has huge implications on resources and energy. Russia exports a lot of raw materials, fertilizer products, food, energy and aluminum. Taking them offline has affected international trade and has many many markets.
Our institutions that support labor have also withered over the last 40 years. Labor unions don’t have the sway they used too and politicians have ignored their needs for decades. Big business will not just give wage increases much like in the 20s and 30s Labor will need to grow and become more combative than it currently is to see any improvements.
In short the world order that we all grew up in is breaking down and changing. It will be at least a decade before these changes finish shaking out and we see solutions to the problems we are facing fully materialize.
You’ll realise just how little people will make do with. And how much lower what you considered a terrible standard of living can be.
I know this wasn’t your point, but I’ve been confused on a particular point for awhile:
buying a house is simply out of reach unless you have dual income and it better be nearly six figure dual income…
Just the general idea of it being impossible to afford to buy a house. And don’t get me wrong, the prices on houses have gotten ridiculous! At the same time, we talk about landlords buying houses and charging exorbitant rent (suggesting at the very least more than what they pay).
So if rent is more than the mortgage, insurance, etc, then how is it impossible to buy a house if it is possible to rent (an equivalent home)? Is it the down payment (if any)? Costs involved in purchasing? Because it seems like month to month it would be cheaper.
I say this as someone who has rented and owned, and owning felt significantly cheaper.
(Full disclosure, I’m in the military, so I had access to a VA loan… though not really sure what that did for me except maybe allow 0% down… if other people are absolutely required to put up a percentage then I can definitely understand it).
and it’d* better be a* nearly six-figure dual income
