The American Dream™
The American Dream™
The American Dream™
What happened to the 2000s?
Al'so, we're apo'strophe's on 'sale or 'something?
Damn, and we all agreed to never forget
The 2000s would be hard to sum up in a single photo without breaking the narrative. The family would be well off, getting fat and buying a McMansion. They would likely be just as culpable for the issues affecting those later decades.
2000 - 2008: economic boom combined with lots of deregulation on Wall Street led to the creation of almost a trillion in off the books derivative investments which were repackaged and sold off so much that they became toxic despite looking fine on paper, and made you money. Keeping the whole thing going led to something of an 8% increase in subprime lending.
Combine that with lots of folks from the 90s rampantly speculating on house sales, creating a housing bubble as they try to get rich by raising prices and flipping houses. Mix in even more deregulation and you get a Great Recession setting back a generation, in 2008. All while the folks who pushed the deregulation turn around and blame it on a president who wasn’t even inaugurated until 2009.
Thanks, Obama.
They got 9/11'd
Should be cookie cutter condos.
The American dream is to be a middle man who takes a cut while adding nothing, to have a captive consumer (sometimes literally), or to be to big to fail or regulate.
I'll take all of them together
2000’s, like Gen X, completely ignored.
Nothing happened in the 2000s. That decade was "woo it's the future!" Then "oh no 9/11!" Then BAM! 2010!
And now we are permanently in 2019
Well, it was kind of turbulent? Artificially inflated so people thought they got homes, then they suddenly didn't.
Its pulling misleading outliers from your data set. In meme form.
Average new home in 1960: 1300 sq/ft. (without garage)
Average new home in 2020: 2600 sq/ft (+ 2-3 car garage)
Average household size in 1960: 3.4
Average household size: 2.5
Number of households with 2 or more vehicles in 1960: 22%
Number of house holds with 2 or more vehicles in 2020: 59%
Ya'll, I don't know how else to explain this - the reason home ownership and cost of living is expensive is very straightforward. We don't build or accept smaller homes, we don't build enough of them, and we spend far more on vehicles.
Edit: if you want affordable housing, advocate (aka vote, canvas, donate) for candidates in your local government that support -
Okay so I'm with you on walkable cities being good, but everything else you said is offensively fucking wrong.
Care to elaborate on what you felt was offensively fucking wrong?
You agree with walkable cities but:
Don't just say "it's fucking wrong" without explaining yourself. It kills debates and it just looks like you're salty and took the comment personally
Take some time and continue the conversation
No
This is a gross oversimplification and in part just illogical. Yes, new small homes would help everyone out. But compare house prices to purchasing power then vs. now. It’s absolutely incomparable to 1960. That’s not because of square footage. And car ownership as an input here makes no sense. The costs of a downpayment and mortgage are simply out of reach for many people irrespective of car count. I say all this as a homeowner.
It really is not. I'm not saying there are no other economic challenges, but the vast majority of housing costs are effectively caused by this.
Here:
The median home price in 1960 was around 20,000. In inflation adjusted 2020 dollars that would have been close to 200,000.
This puts the price per square foot prices within the $100-150 range.
In 2020, the price per square foot was in the same range.
Wages have remained largely static. To be clear, this is NOT a good thing as productivity has skyrocketed, but is beside the point for now.
Effectively, the reason why people cannot afford a mortgage is massively influenced by the average size of home.
Cars make this fact even worse. On the mid to low income side of the economic spectrum, car ownership can easily cost 30% of household spending. A two car garage easily adds 10%+ to home costs.
The apartment in the 90s is possibly the most expensive place to live. Also, this skips the 00s.
1980s: Cocaine!
Pretty sure that's why 80's father is stoked.
2030s tent colonies aka homeless camps
I think you mean prison towers because being homeless is illegal.
Its only illegal if they can enforce it. And by this I mean fire bottles, car bombs, and whatever else ya can chuck at the police.
Honestly you could put 1930s there and it would work the same
Fantastic work, especially the hairdos of Woejack and Tradwife are spot-on. Best meme I've seen in many months.
I mean, I agree with the underlying complaint, but with the last example makes this come off as a bad faith right wing meme trying to blame the collapse of middle America on "woke" millennials instead of the inexcusable suppression of wages for decades and the greed-flation in every aspect of our lives.
How?
Also the last panel would be zoomers the millennials are the ones that could afford to rent still.
Huh?
I get the point but not entirely accurate. The 90s and 00s were the golden age of McMansions.
Did their children die and they just didn’t age? Did they breed for food? That sounds pretty sustainable. Hmmm. Consuming children for eternal life and being green at the same time!
It’s only a matter of time before the cat gets swapped out for a plant.
Damn Gen Beta and their plants. They could afford a house if they didn't have 3 whole plants to take care of!
human children → pets → plants → cut flowers → virtual pets do a comeback → adult imaginary friends
SMH you think we going to be able to afford plants in the future! It's going to be the parents as pets:*(..
We're gonna bring back virtual pets because real pets are too expensive
EA will fix that. With microtransactions your digital pets can be equally expensive! (If not moreso!)
No they need the cat, otherwise their car might get rats/roaches, then who would want to be roommates?