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this post was submitted on 08 Oct 2023
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Lefty Memes
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An international (English speaking) socialist Lemmy community free of the "ML" influence of instances like lemmy.ml and lemmygrad. This is a place for undogmatic shitposting and memes from a progressive, anti-capitalist and truly anti-imperialist perspective, regardless of specific ideology.
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I believe UBI will never come to pass because the rich have too much to lose. Imagine a workforce not beholden to the capitalists?
"The rich" have names and addresses.
And never walk without a small army.
Their small army is a miniscule fraction of the size of the working class
Work smart, not hard.
You have to understand that the housing crisis, in Aus at least is no longer just affecting the most disadvantaged. It's also affecting middle-aged folks with with defence intelligence backgrounds, as an example.
Besides, I'm talking about civili disobedience that inconveniences them and reminds them that they share our streets and our infrastructure. And they rely on an army of union workers to keep it all going.
I'm not talking about rolling out guillotines yet.
(A lot of what I say should be taken in context, I am Australian, not American).
Im Australian as well and did a bit of number crunching the other day. I live in suburban sprawl 40 minutes from the middle of Brisbane and 40 minutes from the middle of the gold coast. Much worse if there's traffic. No particular natural beauty to speak of. It's an upper blue collar suburb, lots of qualified tradies, wives have a part time gig while the kids are at school.
The median house price is 750k. There is very little variance. All houses are pretty much the same. Right now the cheapest is $650k with 10 houses under 750k (maybe 100 houses on the market right now)
There are 3141 households in the suburb The weekly repayments on 750k is just over $1000/week on a 30 year loan
Of those households, only 2200 households earn enough money to pay the mortgage. That's not earn enough and live, literally earn enough just to pay it and then you cant eat, no electricity, rates etc.
https://profile.id.com.au/gold-coast/household-income?WebID=410
So that leaves 70% who can even just exist.
Affordable housing is considered as being 30% of your income, (https://www.ahuri.edu.au/analysis/brief/understanding-3040-indicator-housing-affordability-stress) that's supposed to cover rates and maintenance too, but let's just see who can afford to pay the mortgage:
270 homes. That's only 8.5%. 8.5% of homes in my suburb can afford to pay the MEDIAN mortgage and live without housing stress.
In that link above it considers that the bottom 40% of houses should not be paying more than 30% of their income. This suburb is great for that because I would suggest it's pretty low-average as far as income goes. It's the definition of what should be affordable housing.
That means we need to see the median house fall to 30% of the $1250-$1499 income bracket. IE repayments at $450/week - or a median house price of $315,000
Basically prices need to halve, or incomes need to double.
It doesn't make any sense how the economy hasn't collapsed yet. I would love someone to explain to me how it all adds up, because when I try to discuss it people just shrug and say "They are worth that much and it's not coming down" like how is anyone affording it?
Yeah thanks for taking the time to post this. So Americans and others can get an idea of just how bad it can get.
I know why it hasn't collapsed yet, it's because folks like me are hanging on. My wife and I moved to a rural location that will never be expensive to rent in. And vetted landlords as best we could.
So many folks are trying to adapt and kicking the can. But there's only so much we can stretch. People are already moving back in with their parents, building granny flats out back and so on.
I was making 90k, but with no generational wealth to back me, I was making just enough to pay rent in a major city, pay my bills and feed myself. Working 13hr days for the priveledge.
Changing careers and joining a union right now.
If enough people want it, they can overpower the relatively few rich. But most of the people have bought I to the lies of the rich; social media is probably a convenient tool for the rich and powerful to control the opinions of others.
It's changing. At least here in Australia, it feels like there has been a shift.
Please elaborate on what you have witnessed?
The election we had? Conservative seats flipping to Greens. Good ol' boy Nats voters acknowledging that young people are indeed fucked and something needs to change.
I live in the birthplace of Australian union organising. So attitudes here may not reflect the country at large.
But the last election was a pretty big step in the right direction. Even if it wasnt as big a shift as I would have liked. It was the renter voting block that delivered the W.
Hey at least Barcaldine has some pretty good water
Actually the capitalists have the most incentive to implement UBI. Better paid workers are more likely to turn around and buy the shit they were just making for themselves, and if the rich are not kept away from the megaphone, an improperly done UBI will be made an excuse to strip welfare benefits.
We can have UBI right now if we pledge 10% of our income and pay it voluntarily.