@EconomPic@BarryRoland19 Dude, I don’t think you get it. If the contractor goes across the street for 2% more, and the finishes the job later, he makes materially more. If the Owner gets the building 30 days later, he has losses + penalties.
American bought a home for $138,000, she says she’d rather be renting because of interest
- They’ve paid $9,286.32 in payments
- $6,423.23 has gone to interest
- $1,911 has gone to taxes and insurance
- Only $952 of our actual mortgage paid off
This is a scam
What is happening to Google now is pretty much textbook of what happened to Xerox PARC, but worse:
PARC invented all the foundations of personal computing, yet Apple and Microsoft commercialized it
Google invented many of the foundations of AI, yet everyone else is commercializing it
Even worse, everyone else is now competing with them, and now those competitors are coming for their biggest money maker: Search
The “16% mortgage rate” argument is a textbook example of historical distortion through omission. Let’s break the illusion:
Yes, rates were 16% in 1981 - for a few quarters.
But the median home price was $70K.
And median income was about $21K.
That’s a 3.3x price-to-income ratio, even at peak rates.
Today? Median home price is ~$430K. Median income ~$60K.
That’s 7.2x price-to-income - more than double the burden.
Even with lower interest rates today,
the actual monthly cost of housing is higher, and the duration of debt slavery is longer.
And that’s before we account for:
•No student debt in 1981
•Single-income households buying homes
•Employer-provided pensions
•Healthcare tied to stable employment
•No gig economy, no $1,200 rent for a 300 sq ft box
Now let’s address Vietnam. Yes, war is horrific. But here’s the trap:
Using selective trauma to deny systemic decay is a diversion tactic.
You can’t compare mandatory conscription with
an entire generation locked out of asset ownership forever.
This isn’t about “who had it worse”
It’s about who inherited a functioning system
and who inherited a collapsing simulation.
Stop pretending the current generation is soft.
They’re resilient inside a rigged structure
where every ladder has been pulled up
and every escape hatch monetized.
You want honesty? Here it is:
Past generations struggled to survive.
Ours struggles to belong in a world they no longer own.
That’s the difference. And that’s the whole point.
@Kas_the_Hater@resetbasis@elonmusk Add up the sources and subtract the uses, this is elementary math (not to mention the dev fee calc is TX is 15% of eligible costs).
The median family income in the US has gone from 10K in 1971 to 55K today, a gain of 5.5x
however,
The median cost of a car has gone from 4K to 48K, an increase of 12x.
The median cost of a house has gone from 25K to 357K, an increase of 14x.
The median cost of an ivy league college has gone from 3K a year to 87K, an increase of 29x.
The average cost of healthcare per person has gone from $400 to $15,000, and increase of 37x.
Basically, the average person in the US is worse off today than in 1971. So much for "progress"