this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2026
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Work Reform
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A place to discuss positive changes that can make work more equitable, and to vent about current practices. We are NOT against work; we just want the fruits of our labor to be recognized better.
Our Philosophies:
- All workers must be paid a living wage for their labor.
- Income inequality is the main cause of lower living standards.
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- Higher wages for underpaid workers.
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I mean, no offense to the OP, but this is a constant game of bullshit in a country as large and sprawling as the United States. The problem with housing prices isn't simply "median price", it's "proximity to the work site" and "proximity to public services" and "size sufficient to host my whole family". You can show me a house for $80k out in the de-industrialized Midwest or the boonies of rural Wyoming. I won't buy it, because I have nowhere to commute to work or send my son to school or a grocery store to shop at or potable water that won't kill me. You can show me a high rise in walking distance to everything I need, but if it's $1.5M I can't afford it.
If it's $100k for one of a hundred vacant rotted out homes in the slum and $300k for a single unsold 70 year old ranch house in the burbs and $500k for one of the fifty newly built 600 ft condos in city, taking the "average price" doesn't answer the question "Where am I going to live?"
This is an important aspect. Someone above this said “houses are twice the size now so they cost twice as much” and I just had to shake my head. It’s not only new construction that’s expensive.
But whether it’s the cost of all homes or the pricing of homes where they’re in demand, the ultimate question is still the same: why haven’t we had enough housing where it’s needed for prices to be more stable?
But any good answer to this is going to hit 20 different points. Urbanization. NIMBYism. Private equity. Foreign buyers. Empty homes. Changing codes. Suitable land. And on and on.
"Enough housing" is a bad way to frame it. Because - again - we have plenty of vacant housing in the deindustrialized midwest. We have plenty of vacant real estate in the Great Plains. We have a dormant cache of vacant units in large dense metropoles. Why aren't these being filled?
No jobs
No infrastructure
Speculative rent-seeking
In that order.
You can drill down to any individual location and ask why the current housing situation exists/persists. But this YIMBY attitude that the solution is always more New Build constructions on the suburban periphery or massive teardowns of inner city occupied real estate is just six developers in a trench coat putting one over on you.
Yeah, there's complexity in these markets. But private sector finance driven central planning really does boil down to "profit maximization" wherever you are. The real question, at any given region, is whether you have a housing surplus (because absent demand) or deficit (because excess supply) and how that shapes the prices of units. And a lot of that comes back to who has access to easy credit and who does.
Sure, cutting my sentence in half IS a bad way to frame it. So bad that I’m not even going to read the remainder of your comment.
have you tried living off investment so you can live out in rural Wyoming?
No. I do not have nearly enough banked for that.