Politicians and political commentators whine about young people not buying homes and starting families (not getting married) and then do NOTHING to help the young people (who do exist) who would love to do one or more of these things but can't because it's too damn expensive.
Build housing and coops where young people want to live. Protect their jobs with unions. Make health care not an issue.
Do not make some marriages impossible because you don't like the genders.
@futurebird
A big thing I've not seen anyone talk about is how back in the day, a person could work at one company for their entire career. That stability enabled people to consider "putting down roots" and buying a house they'd live in for fifty years.
Jobs would give people real raises every year (not just cost of living increases) to retain experienced employees.
These days you have to jump from job to job (and move) to get any kind of raise. Buying makes less sense.
This is part of why I like being in education... where you can still find some of that in some places.
Also, by being with the same school for a long time I've been able to become ... just better at my job. I know things that only come from experience at the same place for a long time.
This works for companies too. Everything can't be contract work and endless hot swapping of people.
@futurebird oddly, I think some of this could be ameliorated by addressing senior care at the same time as addressing infant/pre-school care. There's a symmetry that politicians like, the older base will vote for socializing the risk of draining their savings on long term care, and there's a cost streamlining opportunity bringing the programs to life together.
@futurebird
And while they're at it, they should make it illegal for anyone to buy a house if that person already owns a house which is unoccupied for over half the year.
And maybe any house that is unoccupied for more than, say, five years should be seized, refurbished if necessary, and either sold at auction (with no reserve price) or given to a homeless person.
I'm a big fan of laws that punish sitting on resources while they rot. It's too easy to make money (if you have a lot of money) by simply buying houses, or land and waiting.
@futurebird that assumes that politicians have an interest in actually fixing problems.
They don't.
To win the popularity contest our democracies are based on, it's much easier to sell a scapegoat to your likely voters, so that they can feel better about themselves and their worsening lives, have someone to kick down and know that they don't have to change anything about themselves.
Politicians who care only about power are more likely to get in power.
Politicians that care more about fixing problems then power are less likely to get on power.
@futurebird i had this same conversation with my dad after he went off about some population crisis. “dad, do you know how expensive it is to have children these days? the whole world is working against you and your family”
@futurebird
But if they did THAT, how could they use the massive cost of buying houses/starting families in this economic environment to trap young people into debt and a permanent underclass that can be mined for their cheap labor in service to the rich? Because let's be honest, that's what the endgame here is.
@futurebird I think the commentators yelling about young people not doing X or Y are mostly either...
A) whining for the sake of whining, or
B) trying to commiserate with old people yelling at clouds (so that those old people will like them more)
Either way, they are not treating the behavior of young people as a phenomenon that can be understood, because "Maybe if I yell at the youths from they'll do what I want!" is probably not a winning strategy.
@futurebird While we're at it, if those people were not burdened with usurious college debts, they could then use that money towards buying homes and starting families.
And of course some people just won't want kids. But not most people. It's not something anyone needs to worry about. If it's not a project of suffering you'll have tons of families and it'll be great.
@futurebird isn't the middle class's existence entirely dependant on the govt programs and policies that forced capitalists to accept some policies that workers wanted or face their own demise? That's a very simple short version of labor history, at least in the northern states up until WW2. The John Birchers and their spawn have been dismantling all of the "communist" policies ever since. There has been little pushback in decades. Imo
@futurebird and right, those benefits have not been evenly distributed. A forum in Cleveland the other day addressed how the fair housing act wasn't even a half measure to fix the problem it was meant to fix.