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this post was submitted on 11 Jul 2023
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That doesn't mean consumerism can't take hold and pressure people to make unnecessary purchases.
Nah, even people living within their means arent doing well. My partner and I have very good, stable jobs, with a combined household income of nearly~$100,000 after taxes and deductions (union dues, pension deductions, etc).
We drive a 12 year old car, we don't take vacations, we don't have kids, we don't carry debt, and we don't spend beyond our means.
Granted, we had the unmitigated audacity to rent a house instead of an apartment because I like to play music with my friends, so thats an extra $200 a month over the cheapest apartment we could find that we're "wasting" on our comfort.
But factor in the rising cost of *gestures broadly* everyfuckingthing, we have been able to save less than 10% of just the down payment required to begin sniffing at houses in the last 3 years.
The system currently is broken and needs a major overhaul, so we can level the playing field and the middle class has a chance of existing again.
The only reason I could afford the 5% down payment for the place I just bought was because I lucked into buying a cheap foreclosure years ago and sharing the down payment and title with a roommate. When we sold last year the amount we made back in equity was enough to put towards a cheap little old house of my own while still holding on to some for long term savings.
Without that equity I would be stuck renting for the rest of my life.
We did the same - bought a foreclosure at auction about a decade ago at the max we could afford, about $325k.
Now it's a $1.2 million property. We could subdivide and pay off our mortgage entirely, if we needed to.
The amount that we pay for groceries is fast approaching a third of our monthly budget. We've gone a few times in the past year eating instant noodles and plain rice for a week because of unexpected costs. And I make pretty decent money, and even with my partner's income we have been just barely scraping by. A 2 bedroom apartment that doesn't have laundry in it and is a falling apart minimum 80 year old building in a rough neighborhood should not cost 2000 a month. It's unbelievable, but thats what rent costs are like throughout the area I live in.
Does the middle class want to exist again? Let's face it, a big part of why housing has become so expensive is because people don't want to spend their money on starting businesses. Canadian culture in particular is very much "get a job, buy a home, live happily ever after". But if all you have is a job, you're always going to remain working class.
I'd love to. Unfortunately if I quit my day job we'll lose the house in six months.
No need to quit. Middle class implies that you have both a day job and a business. Those who can ride on the proceeds of business alone are the upper class. While I am sure that is the dream, you have to start somewhere. It seems you are echoing that nobody wants to be middle class anymore.
And, really, I'm not sure middle class was ever much of an ideal. It was the outcome of us moving away from the time when most owned farms, with many of them starting to fail as we moved into the industrialization era, and their owners having to pick up jobs off the farm to stay afloat.
Personally, I've been trying to start my own business for about two years now. But that takes money that I don't really have. My estimate right now is at best, I'll be launching in about a year and a half. The products I design aren't even all that expensive in terms of supplies, but when I'm using all my funds to cover my personal bills, restocking supplies to create more inventory isn't even an option.
And that's not even considering how businesses often actively work to suppress the earnings potential of low-wage and essential workers to ensure they stay where they are. For example, one employer I was at years ago (a certain national poutinerie chain) stole our tips the entire time I was there, registered individual corporate locations as separate businesses to avoid paying OT if you were scheduled across locations, and, most egregiously, would outright ask interviewees about their financial position- they wanted to hire people too desperate to quit. My current job regularly messes with people's hours and bonuses so a stable level of income is a luxury, and the whole industry I'm in right now is like that so it's not even like things will get better if I leave. If you're self-funding your startup and you earn a low wage, you really don't stand a chance. And BDC isn't really all that helpful for anything other than advice, unless you already have the money you need to launch.
I've noticed this as well, from being involved in the tech startup scene on the west coast for a while. There's lots of funding and programs to expand your business, but none to help get it off the ground.
Then, frankly, housing was never in the cards for you either. You are not the demographic being talked about.
... excuse me? Because my wages are surpressed, I deserve to live in poverty and don't deserve access to opportunities like home ownership or entrepreneurship and to work for social stratification and to live a good life, am I reading you right here?
No. Not even close. Can you break down my comment to explain where you found applicability to anything you wrote? I am genuinely interested to see where I failed to effectively communicate.
You seem to be under the impression people are complacent as workers and don't want to own their own business. I offered my own anecdote as a counterpoint and an example of the barriers that drive people away from entrepreneurship in Canada today- you don't see the direct relevance, really? Your response is to handwave it away as irrelevant and say these are not opportunities that are meant for someone in my position, when your complaint in the first place was that people lack ambition and drive and that is very much not true, for so many Canadians. "You have to start somewhere" were your exact words, and that is not a reflection of the reality for most people, at all.
What exactly are you trying to communicate, if it's not the implication that the working class is lazy and complacent? If people have to be homeowners for you to be willing to consider their experience, why aren't you willing to recognize that just a few decades ago, the proximity of the working class to the middle class was quite close and had an appreciable level of overlap that no longer exists as a direct result of wage suppression?
I said that people don't want to spend their money on starting businesses, rather they would prefer to spend it on buying houses. If you don't have money at all, you don't fit the conversation.
The question was: Does the middle class want to return?
Being middle class brings the worst of being upper class and the worst of being working class all rolled into one. You have to work all day for "the man" and work all night for yourself. You are in a terrible position where you don't (yet) have an overly successful business, else you could give up your day job and become upper class.
Living that life myself, I totally get there is also some joy. We wouldn't do it at all without that. Being able to see something new come to life that other people love is an amazing feeling. But it takes an insane amount if grit to want to put up with the bad parts – and there are a lot of them! I don't think the masses are into it. The working class is a great place to be for most people. There is good reason why the middle class is forever shrinking.
As I said in another comment,
I do hope you get to live out your dream someday. But if we are being honest, it is not what most people are into. Maybe you think that makes them lazy or complacent. I think it makes them rational. You have to be a bit crazy to want to be middle class.
... and why is that such a terrible thing? The world cannot be full of owners, someone has to actually do the work. Is it much more realistic for us to have a comfortable middle, working class than it is to have a bunch of wealth concentrated in business owners while the majority fight for crumbs.
What suggests it might be terrible? Especially when we are talking about how the middle class, not the working class, is the undesirable option. About how people prefer to be working class – and for good reason. Like I said in another comment,
As I asked originally: Does the middle class want to exist again? I expect the answer is, for the most part, no.