Prices have risen by 54% in the United States, 32% in China and nearly 15% in the European Union between 2015 and 2024. Though policies have been implemented to increase supply and regulate rentals, their impact has been limited and the problem is getting worse
Housing access has become a critical issue worldwide, with cities that were once accessible reaching unsustainable price points. Solutions that have been proposed, like building more houses, capping rents, investing in subsidized housing and limiting the purchase of properties by foreigners have not stemmed the issue’s spread. Between 2015 and 2024, prices rose by 54% in the United States, 32% in China and by nearly 15% in the European Union (including by 26% in Spain), according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
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Salaries have not grown apace with real estate prices. In the EU, the median rent rose by 20% between 2010 and 2022, with rental and purchase prices growing by up to 48%, according to Eurostat. Underregulated markets are wreaking havoc, and in the United States and Spain, 20% of renters spend more than 40% of their income on housing, while in France, Italy, Portugal and Greece, that percentage varies between 10% and 15%, according to the OECD. Many countries have created programs aimed at increasing the future supply of public housing, but their effectiveness has yet to be determined and analysts say that results will be limited if smarter regional planning decisions are not made.
Where have you been for the last 30 years? You’re just noticing this shit now?
There is no middle class - there is the working class and the exploiter class. People have misidentified a chunk of the relatively better off working class as somehow not part of the working class. Over time the systems of capitalism and the power imbalances at the heart of the non-unionized workplace will eventually reduce better off workers to the lowest common denominator as the exploiter class demands perpetually growing profit that must come at the cost of the working class.
Yep. I’ve never been middle class though I’ve done better than some. I am not really successful in the traditional sense.
Middle class is, mostly, simply the newfangled term for that portion of the proletariat which isn’t lumpen which is now called the precariat. Low-rank petite bourgeois also counts as the same class as it’s actually an economical one (petit bourgeois get shafted amply by capital), not political (what with their penchant for temporarily embarrassed millionaire narratives and support of “business-friendly” policies). That worker / petit bourgeois distinction has always been fuzzy and awkward I mean it’s not like there’s not workers who think like that.
This is posted in lemmy.world so while I appreciate the information I don’t think I’m alone in saying that 90% of the terms you wrote might as well be another language entirely (I get that they literally are from another language lol)
Sure, they are technically part of the working class, but they’re similar to cops. Cops aren’t the owning class, they take down a salary, but they’re also class traitors.
The middle class - aka professional managerial class - as a group fulfill a similar role of keeping the rest of the working class in line in exchange for certain privileges. They just use paychecks and memorandums rather than guns and laws.
Also like cops, they provide an ideological shield for capitalists. Cops are overtly the “thin blue line” between “order and chaos”. The middle class are a shield for aspirations. People are encouraged to identify as middle class so they think they have something to lose if they were to upset the status quo.
So it makes sense to identify this group, but too often it’s as a shield. Like the implication in this article that a housing crisis for the middle class is a huge problem, but who cares about the housing precarity that’s existed in the working class since its inception? Well one reason it would be a big problem for the ruling class is that they would lose their buffer. If it’s just lords and serfs and a sharp distinction between them, then overturning the whole thing is a lot easier to contemplate.
I get where you’re going with this, and yeah, the PMC helps hold the current system in place. I was thinking about the cybersecurity/engineers/architects/other better paid workers who are still subject to class exploitation even though they’re better off than a line cook.
Also, I like your bit about the professional managerial class being an ideological shield - I see that happening in the workplace all the time where people won’t consider rocking the boat because they want to be management one day.
I thought I’d have to explain this part - the technical knowledge workers are also managerial, but in a more indirect way.
All three of the professions you listed make decisions about the function of the systems that workers use every day. They are responsible for taking the policy decisions that are made to serve the owning class, and giving those policies shape.
They literally design our environment, and as the Well There’s Your Problem podcast points out, engineering and other technical decisions are political. The preferences of the bosses are built into them.
I guess this is pretty unpopular though. I guess there are a lot of knowledge workers on this platform and they don’t like being compared to cops.
I believe I’m one of those knowledge workers. I do cybersecurity and I’m actively working on trying to unionize the sector. I’m not management, and I don’t have hiring or firing power, and I’m reliant on wages to survive.
Actually, I can see the comparison. Many cybersecurity people don’t challenge the power relations in their workplace and instead act as enforcers of corporate policy. That always disappoints me, and I can see the pattern of how even our relative privilege is being actively reduced. I just hope more cybersecurity people will recognize the class struggle we have to wage and organize in solidarity with the rest of the working class.
With your username I’m not surprised you’re in cybersecurity lol.
And I never said all managers are bastards. I said that they act that way as a group.
Ultimately the incentive structure reinforces PMC workers who toe the company line. It could never be any other way in a capitalist framework. Yes, it’s possible for knowledge workers to operate outside capitalist organisations, but they are going to have a harder time with less money. The bulk of the work will always be done where the money is. You see this very clearly in FOSS circles - the work involves people who are either too tired from their 9 to 5 to put a lot of effort in, they’re the sort of person who can’t work in a capitalist org, or they’re paid by a capitalist org which will have certain demands on their work. The result is that FOSS tends to be rough around the edges which inherently reinforces the belief that only top-down capitalist structures can make polished software.
You’ll find knowledge workers in general are going to be hard to unionise. They are better compensated and privileged so they have more to lose, and they have to adopt the ideology of their bosses to some extent in order to reproduce it in their work. We’ve seen union action with actors and writers for a long time, and it seems to be bleeding over from them into the videogame space. I hope it will keep spilling over into other technical spaces, but I don’t think we can rely on that happening to fundamentally change the character of that class.
I’ve seen that reinforcement of workers who toe the line first-hand, people are scared and brainwashed into not acting up or demanding better. It’s why I have a hard time maintaining a job - not because I’m not good at what I do, but because I’m bad at pretending to buy into the capitalist ideology in the workplace.
Agreed, not all managers are bastards but the system they are working within creates horrible results.
I was reading a finance book from 2024 talking about “The middle class” and included things like they use check cashing places, loan stuff from rent-a-center, and then struggle to pay for food. The author is a financial “expert”.
Middle class was the owning class in feudal societies, the emergence of the working class and rule of law kind of deleted the status of the aristocracy and largely pushed the aristocracy and middle class into the owning and ruling classes.
If you’re making 50k it’s hard to be convinced someone making 300k…like your boss…or their boss is “part of your struggle”.
Your comment is extremely naive.
No shit, that’s the whole point of what he’s saying. It’s hard to be convinced becuse that’s part of the strategy.
There’s really only two classes: People with “fuck you” money and people without “fuck you” money.
If you work for your money, you’re part of the struggle. If you own for your money, you’re part of the problem.
The problem is capital and it always has been. Sure, there’s a concerted effort by capital to deflect the anger due to them onto CEOs and the like but we have to be smart enough and worldly wise enough not to fall for it.
If you work for your money, you’re part of the struggle. If you own for your money, you’re part of the problem.
But the middle class is those who are able to leverage working for their money to accumulate capital to where they can live off of the proceeds of that owned capital. If you’re able to retire, you eventually become part of the ownership class.
There is a shrinking middle class but the actual people in it are those who split their adult lives into eventually retiring on their wealth, accumulated through working.
Thats not not what middle class means.
Middle class generally means people whose incomes are in the middle half (ranging from 40th to 60th percentile to the 20th to 80th).
If you want to pull out your own new definition based on whether their income comes from work or from return on investments, then I’d still point out there’s a large number of people who do both, especially when compared across the entire life cycle including retirement. So if you insist on this alternative definition, you still have to account for the big chunk of the population who do both.
I have to admire the brazenness with which you made up your own utterly unfounded definition of the term “middle class” then, immediately after being called out for it, accuse the person who hadn’t provided any definition of the term of doing exactly what you had just done.
Thats some advanced level bad faith engagement right there.
Its not my definition. Its a different school of thought that has stood up to scrutiny. It is different to what a lot of people would refer to as middle class and, of course, different again from what you, personally describe middle class to be.
I don’t really recognise a middle class but, if one is to exist, it is simply the middle earners of people who work for their money and they’re predominantly white collar workers. That’s all there is to it. What you described is petite bougouise and may well be middle class but not all middle class people are petite bougouise.
Its not my definition. Its a different school of thought that has stood up to scrutiny. It is different to what a lot of people would refer to as middle class and, of course, different again from what you, personally describe middle class to be.
I’m specifically pointing out the problem with the “how they earn income” definition, that it seemingly assumes that the two categories are mutually exclusive, to try to argue that there’s no such thing as a middle class They’re not. Most people who are in what most would recognize as “middle class” under the traditional definition get income through both methods, especially over the course of their lifetimes.
So even under that definition, which attempts to pretend there isn’t a middle class, there is still a middle class: those who have income through both methods, or even hybrid methods (ownership of an actively managed business that allows them to earn money while working but wouldn’t earn money without their own labor).
Using your logic… if you’re making 50k, it’s hard to convince someone making $20k is part of the struggle.
You really think people who make $300k are out there buying lambos and eating fine dining every night?
Come round everyone! I got a proposal! How about we buy up entire city squares, then remove all vegetation and houses, then build endless labyrinths of corridors, cubes where we can live. And elevators and stairs to reach the next level! Using an elevator is just like riding a commuter bus thru the 4th dimension! Because you start at your cube and suddenly you’re at the cube on the next block that corresponds to your cube! But see you didn’t have to travel a full block horizontally! You rode vertically!
Calm down willy wonka
In Canada in top of that, we have 500k-1 million new people entering the country, per year. We have no housing, and not enough services, schools, healthcare, etc.
Canada is about the same population than California, imagine California going from 39 millions people to 40 next year, then 41 the year after, then 42 the next year, etc. Is it sustainable?
Why are you trying to hijack the thread to make it about your xenophobic hot take on immigration?
Having 500K-1M new people could mean having as many as 500K-1M new construction workers to build more housing, if that’s what the zoning code and the market (etc.) allowed. That that isn’t happening is a failure of those things, not the fault of the immigrants. There is absolutely no reason a properly-functioning society would be unable to keep up with the demand from population increases, and scapegoating immigrants will do absolutely fuck-all to fix any of the real causes of society’s failure to function properly.
Lol I’m a Canadian immigrant, and regular population has something like 4% of people working in construction, new immigrants has something like 2% of people working in construction, so no, they will not build more housing. The problem is not immigrants, it’s a system/society problem, like you wrote, Canada is not a properly-functioning society.
Great if you own property and or buy labour though.
Somehow they’ve got the world convinced that its “tha left”, and not wealthy businesses, who want and benefit from this, despite all evidence to the contrary.
You guys have a middle class?
The middle class is a myth so newspapers can pander to you by letting you pretend you’re better than the working poor. Half of food stamps are in the “middle” class these days.
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Wait, what?
Hold on. Around here, house prices have falled, dramatically recently.
In fact, 54% increase from 2015-2024 is low. When my house was appraised a year ago, it was +72.5%, it is now +54.5%.
Housing prices, anecdotal as it is, are going in the right direction.
Where is “here” for your buddy?
Upper Midwest.
Zillow is months behind, but you can find chunks where they’ve fallen 10-50k since first listing for houses under $500k.
Yeah, my parents just sold their house in the Midwest after dropping the price by 30k. The key is, house prices are dropping in places no one wants to live (like the Midwest). Anywhere worth living, housing is only going up, up, up.
Worth living? :(
TBF it’s boring as fuck out here
Your house matches their estimates and you’re questioning their numbers?
No, they aren’t talking about the sudden drop, they’re talking about the rapid increase. Which I get the point but we may finally be looking at a true correction, which is hopeful more than anything
Or it was just your area reverting back to the prevailing trend. Microeconomics vs macro.
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Stop letting corporations gobble up single family homes.
Stop letting multi-home owners buy and buy and buy.
Tax vacant homes.
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In my city, there’s a bunch of vacant homes that end up becoming crack dens because some out of state financial company bought it hoping to make bank and then forgot about it or defaulted on it.
My city is spending years in court trying to take the property back from these shitty companies.
I subscribe to the newsletter for BIG by Matt Stoller and he’s been writing about corporate slumlords and housing cartels lately. Shit’s fucked.
Tax vacant homes.
I know this is a popular idea on Lemmy, but intentionally vacant homes are a very small minority next to homes that are not livable or not sellable. It’s mostly going to hurt people who can least afford it
Source?
Driving through rural areas and seeing all the unlivable homes. Seeing home listings in the rural area I grew up how long they can be on the market even when houses sell here their first day
I don’t see actual stats, but the internet has l plenty of anecdotes like
Edit: data is mostly by state, but does show rural states have th highest percentage of vacant homes. Looks like about 7.5 million “permanently vacant” homes in the US, or 5% of the market, and some percentage of those just won’t sell
However,Alasaka is a great example, listed as one of the highest percentage of vacant homes - but not one of the highest rates of homelessness
Seems like a solvable problem. If the home isn’t livable, have it condemned. Now it’s a tax write off.
Only put a tax on vacant homes where there is an active housing crisis, rural areas should be excluded
Thats why we don’t make decisions on these sorts of things or wild declarations about them based on anecdotes.
Your reply may have come between my original wording and an edit that I thought was “quick enough”
The edit doesn’t really show why it would effect poor people disproportionately. Also, no one should be surprised that vacant homes in the ass end of alaska have very little effect on rates of homelessness.
Homes where noone wants to live don’t count towards relief for a shortage unless you can figure out how to make those places at least baseline attractive to people. Jobs, schools, parks, a sportsball team, all that stuff.
Exactly. Passing a tax on empty homes will disproportionately hurt people who can’t sell for homes that can’t solve the problem
Still makes sense in places with tight housing markets, though. Triply and quadruply so if it’s infested by speculative investment. Then make sure that short-term rentals require a hotel license if it even smells of being a commercial short-term rental (couch surfing is completely fine, doesn’t take up a housing unit) and last, but not least: Public housing. Look at Vienna as to how to do it but that can literally take the better part of a century to do because land. Specifically in the US, you also need to build tons of public transit don’t worry even if you make your metro free at the point of use it’s cheaper than road/sewer upkeep in suburbia. Suburbia is a financial graveyard for municipalities, they just don’t generate enough tax revenue for the infrastructure they demand.
lol you’re worried about the landlords
At some point we need to have a grown up conversation about the finite nature of land, specifically land that people can live on and find work from.
This “the rich make up the rules and lets pretend land will never run out” nonsense clearly isn’t working for anyone but the rich.
A lot of this was already talked about by the traditional Left, way back in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The discussion back then was all about Power, and by that I mean the capacity of forcing or blocking others from doing what they want, not just the version of “Power” talked about the useful idiots nowadays which only sees the Power of the State, never the Power that comes from Money and Ownership.
This is why some of the suggested solutions they came up with back then explicitly involved things like Confiscating the Means Of Production and Land Reform, which, whether one agrees or not with it, at least recognized and tried to address the Power inherent in the Ownership of that which is needed to produce things for the rest.
The problem is that the supposedly Leftwing (but really mostly Liberal and not even honestly so) thinking since at least the 80s pointedly avoids talking about the Power Of Money as if people’s life’s aren’t shaped by access to a place to live, access to food, access to healthcare and the time they have to spend working being defined by how little of the product of their work ends up in their hands, none of which is trully their choice nowadays.
Maybe we should start again looking back at some of the best things from back then, such as Social Democracy.
I’m in the middle of relocating to Ohio. I sold my house in GA and despite getting mildly fucked by the “they’re first time homeowners” BS I still have about $130,000 profit from the sale. 100k of that has to go into the down payment just so I can afford anything over 200k.
My initial budget was about 310,000 but I had to bump it up to 350 just to find something that isn’t a poorly maintained shit hole that would require 50k just to make it decent again, and to have more than 1.5 bathrooms.
And this is on top of all the houses bought by people who watched a a season of Flippers, and thought it they put shittier grey vinyl on the floor they could net 100k.
Hey, here’s a thought: outside of banks holding the deed in the context of mortgages, corporations aren’t allowed to own residential properties for perma-renting purposes.
I’m on my thirties, I don’t know a single person that can afford to live alone, they are either sharing with a stranger/spouse or still with their parents.
That probably says more about your bubble than anything else
I know three people who can live alone. My friend the computer scientist, my friend who lives on a property her engineer dad bought, and my friend who live in a three room apartment. Bathroom, bedroom, kitchen, top floor of an older Colonial house. Looks like a converted attic.
Basic, modern human needs such as housing, healthcare, education, nutrition, utilities (electricity, internet, water & sewage), and transportation should never be a means of profit. As with everything, there is a cost to maintaining these systems and to profit off of them inherently means diverting resources away from these systems that serve our society into the pocket of an individual.
This is part of the plan to keep crushing the middle class. The powers that be would be able to change this situation within weeks if they really wanted to.
It’s been the plan for a while now. The wealthy look back at the Gilded Age as the Golden Age. That’s what they’re trying to return to very clearly. They want an age in which you and your children go to work in the dark and come home in the dark and that home is owned by the company. They want an age in which none of us have any chance at all of breaking loose of the cycle.
How? There is just too many people, too few houses here in Australia. Not enough materials to build them or tradespeople.
