Quote from: Smartprofit on Today at 10:46:45 AM

Quote from: Macro Exchange on July 16, 2025, 02:11:33 PM

Housing prices keep rising, but wages haven’t kept up. For many young people, owning a home is no longer a realistic goal - it’s becoming a luxury.

What used to be a natural part of adult life has turned into a debt trap or simply a fantasy. More and more young people are realizing that buying property under current conditions makes little financial sense.

We're witnessing a shift: instead of saving for a home, people are turning to alternative assets, remote lifestyles, or simply accepting long-term renting.

Is this the beginning of a structural economic change - or just another bubble waiting to pop? Huh

Once upon a time, people lived in a world where a man's income was enough to support his entire family (a wife and several children). Then women were given the opportunity to work. This was declared a great social achievement, but from an economic point of view it only meant a decrease in the purchasing power of wages. Now one person could no longer support an entire family👩‍❤️‍💋‍👨

At the same time, processes of centralization of world wealth were taking place. An increasing part of the world's wealth was concentrated in the hands of a small number of very rich people (millionaires and billionaires)🏛️

After the formation of the Soviet Union, the end of the global crisis (global depression) and the end of World War II, the idea of forming a middle class in developed Western countries arose. The Western middle class was supposed to serve as a kind of demonstration showcase of prosperity for the Western world, that is, confirmation of the complete superiority of capitalism over socialism. However, in 1991 the USSR collapsed, and now almost all countries in the world gravitate towards capitalism. At the same time, in recent years, the concentration of world wealth in the hands of a few has acquired a threatening character. The middle class has already turned out to be unnecessary (capitalism now has no competitors)🌚

What do we see now? The development of technology has significantly increased labor productivity. However, has this affected the size of wages? Almost in no way! Now (as before) a family cannot live on the salary of one person (at least two must work). At the same time, people (as a rule) do not have the opportunity to earn and save from scratch for a good apartment. As a result, modern youth are practically deprived of economic prospects and, in fact, are much poorer than the previous generation. This is not so noticeable, since technical progress has brought various services and devices into our lives (which create the illusion of a more interesting and successful life). Nevertheless, in my opinion, this circumstance will become more and more noticeable every day. And similar information signals that the state of the economy and the distribution of world wealth are extremely unfavorable are now coming from different countries of the world.📢

The biggest bait-and-switch of late capitalism. The productivity is skyrocketing, the number of apps is growing, we are able to connect with anyone, any time. But the basics (housing, job security, meaning slip further away. Do you remember when two incomes were supposed to be twice the comfort and not twice the stress? All this empowerment by work was just a change of the baseline and now everyone is just trying to keep up with not falling off the treadmill

The amount of noise out there about "building wealth" is insane when the structural math is brutal. The volume of clatter out there concerning the development of wealth is crazy when the structural math is brutish. Minimum wages, student loans, real estate bubbles, all within a system that is making a pretense that the middle class is still a place that can be reached. People call it "progress", but it is really just "maintenance mode" with better gadgets. And the illusion of prosperity is a feature. Streaming, smartphones, same-day delivery. All of them are clever diversions of the simple truth that, in the majority of cases, the fundamental opportunities have not shifted at all in decades

Why are so many insecure when we are all more productive than ever? That is the new social contract: trade away stability for the latest convenience and a dopamine hit. Capitalism won. There is no enemy at the gate, so the squeeze can finally go global, quiet, and polite. What nobody wants to say out loud: the old middle class showcase was always a marketing campaign