My rent was $25 a month when I came to California in 1976, that was $25 bucks on a $3.00 an hour part time job making pizza after school. That $250 a month from my job went a long way back then, in the old century.
So the secret goals of golden-hued-history-phile conservatives are finally coming to fruition. I was wondering why they agreed to team up with free-trade neo-liberals. Turns out it was all a plot to return us to agrarian-style multigenerational homes through economic ruination. Soon youâll all see why itâs so much better for your economic and moral purity to be beholden to whatever nutjobs you happened to be born to. So much better than that godless welfare state!
What if we live with other peopleâs parents? What if they donât know weâre there?
Yeah. My first job paid 3 CAD back in 1970, which meant a weekly cheque of about 96 CAD after taxes. At that time, I could have paid the monthâs rent on a 3-bedroom apartment in Lower Westmount (the âpoorerâ part of the wealthiest part of Montreal) with a weekâs pay.
So youâre down with OPP, huh?
This is a fairly common thing in Latin countries, iâm sure the percentage of people doing this for longer periods of time has increased though. But culturally this is fairly normal, and even encouraged in Venezuela where i grew up. Making it on your own is much harder there, so itâs expected for kids to stay at home all the way up until theyâre ready to get married. Even then itâs still possible to still live with family.
I currently make enough to live comfortably on my own, and my parents still let me know theyâd be happier if i moved back in 
Which is an offer i appreciate. This kind of cultural relationship with parents is quite different in the US, and living at home with family seems to cause more friction.
I spend 85% of my paycheck on rent. I recently tried to apply for a credit card and was told that I need to have â$1000 a month in disposable incomeâ to qualify. I laughed out loud from the sheer absurdity of the very idea.
The reason all this money is getting parked by investors in rental properties is that there are no safe investments any more.
Every bank and every government in the world now operates on the principle of âpunters, si!, savers, no!â
Chirst - what city?
The economic context for this is terrible, of course. I do wonder, though, if this also reflects a good thing: is the generation gap shrinking?
In particular, most of my Gen X peers were subject to weird âMy house, my rulesâ policies. We mostly didnât get married until our late 20âs but were nonetheless expected to maintain a no-sex-until-marriage fiction with our parents â if you wanted to have your SO sleep over, you needed your own place.
Maybe modern parents are better at treating their adult children like adults, so moving back in isnât so bad?
Damn, i spend about 30-40% of my check for rent and i thought i was paying too much. I could save even more if i was at a place with roommates but i hate living with random people. If i were in a situation where rent was that much of my paycheck i would probably live out of a van or with my parents.
they will never be able to live on their own working those factory jobs trump wonât be bringing back from china. how about MAKE AMERICA UNION AGAIN?
There is a problem and the status quo is not an option.
The US is still HUGE in manufacturing. I know we like to highlight all the jobs going over seas, but it was only like 2 years ago that China FINALLY surpassed the US in manufacturing. The US just tends to specialize in higher end manfuacturing. The low to no skill required stuff that a rice farmer can do is what gets exported.
Thatâs just inconceivable now - even with the new $18 minimum wage, 90%+ of a 40-hour-a-week paycheck would go towards the average studio apartment rent. $25 might pay the water bill, assuming you donât actually use any water. And this isnât even in San Francisco, so we canât blame urban property speculation. I donât know how anyone survives here anymore, even knowing that all the small single-family homes near me are filled with half-a-dozen people, including in garages and garden sheds.
Also, we complain about the gap in wealth between rich and poor countries. Chinaâs increase in wealth and emergence of a middle class is thanks to all those jobs going there.
Yeah, I saw a statistic recently that pointed out that the US actually manufactures more stuff now than ever in its history, in fact we produce 50% more stuff than even 20 years ago. Yet the jobs arenât here, but thatâs because of automation. Itâs easier for Trump and other demagogues to pretend the issue is all about outsourcing, though, because that at least seems like something they could reverse.
Countries with stronger unions, like Germany for example, have utilized automation in a worker-centric way that didnât eliminate jobs, but I donât know the situation is particularly reversible in the US, even if unions came back.
That has long been the staple of low rent places in San Diego, but the City is cracking down hard on illegal living places. I havenât a clue as to what the average 18-25 year old would have to do to pay for a living place by themselves, itâs just too expensive here.
