this post was submitted on 11 Dec 2023
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Yep, it's obvious that that's how many people here see all their problems.
Many people have problems related to income inequality. We went to college, got good jobs, and we still don't have enough money to maintain the lifestyle we were promised. We don't live in a socialist country, we live in a capitalist country.
What were you promised? Like, owning a home? Home ownership rates in the US have been in the 63-70% range during all of 1966-2023, almost completely stable. Local purchasing power is #5 in the world for americans. What exactly is the problem over there?
We in Europe are having it much worse if you look at the data, especially now when Russia is being fucking Russia.
So 30% of people can't afford their own house and that doesn't seem like inequality to you?
Here's the wiki page on global income equality, to address your claim that Europe is worse than the US:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality
Income inequality is a completely different thing from home ownership. Also, some of those 30% choose to not own a house. Also further, the average home ownership rate in EU is almost exactly the same as in the US, but our local purchasing power tends to be quite a lot worse.
USA is doing pretty fine economically.
[citation needed]
And even if true, what do you think is driving that decision? Decisions aren't made in a vacuum. I posit - it's the financial burden.
Perhaps things are different where you live, but where I live, there's always a significant additional bureaucratic cost when selling a house and buying another one. Because of that, renting has at least a single clear benefit beyond just being able to afford it: greater flexibility. Also, the financial risk is almost zero when you rent.
This really only affects landlords and estate agents. Most people looking for a home are looking for a place to stay for life, and any "bureaucratic cost", if you're purely talking about red tape, form-filling, phone calls etc, is more than worth it for a lifetime home. Again, citation needed. If you're talking about a literal monetary cost... whoa, look at that - capitalism!
"Flexibility" is a daft measure, only useful for people who plan to move often, which, again, is not common, except in the case of people needing to move often for work, which - hey, it's capitalism again!
"Almost" is doing a lot of work in this sentence. The risk of being made homeless by your landlord for petty reasons is a pretty clear risk. Having your rent hiked is a financial risk. Having to bite the bullet and choose an expensive place to rent because it's the only one reasonably close to work is a financial risk. Being under someone's thumb to provide them income is itself an inherent financial risk.
And by the way - what do you think causes the financial risk of home ownership, since you're so intent on proving my point for me?
Accidents, subpar maintenance, market changes, divorce.
Try and think a little more deeply. An accident in itself is not a financial risk. Even flooding isn't inherently a financial risk. Do you know what is?
Also, "market changes" is a part of what I'm pointing at ;)
It's capitalism!
That's cute, but also not how any of this works.
I suggest https://www.amazon.com/Basic-Economics-Thomas-Sowell/dp/0465060730 -- it's 700 pages but I'm sure you can do it if you put some effort in.
fosforus uses deflection!
It's not very effective!
Answer me instead of making bad jokes, coward.
By the way - are you unaware of the incredible self own inherent in this? In your attempt to "recommend" a book for more information on these issues, you recommend "basic economics". Well...
Dude. It was entirely a deflection. Answer my fucking comment. I have literally no need whatsoever to respect your "recommendation". It was an attempt to avoid answering my statements and nothing more than that. So go ahead, answer. Or are you too scared?
Also, I have Cowbee's statements to lean on, which you yourself conceded to, to know what the book is like.
Read the book. Educate yourself beyond the crap you've studied so far.
I conceded that he has such an opinion.
Do you need more internet points for being so incredible?
Still not an answer. You can say all you like, but until you answer you are only continuing to deflect.
Oof, unironically suggesting Sowell? Might as well toss in Prager-U, or DailyWire.
Ok, so which multiple award-winning, widely respected PhD of Economics would you suggest instead? Or you just against things instead of having any positions of your own, like most other deep-end socialists are?
For one, I wouldn't recommend a clown that supports removing the minimum wage, or argues that colonization was a good thing. Recommending a far-right Chicago economist, who is far-right even by Chicago school standards, is laughably absurd.
I have many positions of my own. Decentralization is key, as is democratization, and this extends to production. I think protecting worker power is key, and I think Imperialism and colonization are terrible. As such, I can't agree with recommending Sowell.
All of those are reasons why I'm a leftist and am on Lemmy, rather than a Capitalist site like Reddit.
Fair enough.
Henry Kissinger won a nobel peace prize lmao
Capitalist awards often mean you are bad at the thing they're commending you for
Now do the home ownership rate in socialist countries
(Hint, the "American dream" of owning a home is much easier under socialism)
It's also clear that people who deny the extent to which capitalism actually makes the world worse either a) don't know what capitalism is, or b) are rent seekers
Or perhaps we know history and economics.
What history? What economics? Vague gesturing and feigning superiority without actually saying anything is peak.
Edit: turns out the economics was just Sowell all along, lol. Guess we have an AnCap over here.
You're implying that the meme "capitalism bad" has amazing amounts of nuance.
You weren't replying to the meme, you were replying to someone else in the origin of this fork of the comment chain. I'm implying that you in particular have no nuance.
Well, you're not wrong, but what I replied to ("don't know what capitalism is" and "are rent seekers") wasn't exactly filled with nuance, either.
Fair enough, but again, you somehow had even less nuance and pulled the classic bit of feigning superiority.
Edit: oof, you unironically suggest Sowell in another comment as a good resource. Looks like I'm correct, the superiority was indeed completely unfounded.
Instead of berating him for not leaving a robust enough comment for your taste, why don't you ask for more information? Calling capitalists uninformed or rent seekers is way more unfair than alluding to historical or economic evidence to the contrary. The latter clearly leaves itself more open to good faith discourse, getting nothing out of it has simply been a failure on your part
The very first thing they said was "what history? What economics?" - so yeah, they've asked for information.
Or not. Adam Smith - the father of Capitalism recognised the problem of Rent Seeking behaviour.