I live in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. I bought my place in 2016 and I competed with other locals for this modest home. I was not the highest bidder but the seller honored our verbal agreement. By 2021 this house was valued at over $800k. I paid $185k. No local, including myself can afford this house.
This is unsustainable.
I go to Hawaii a lot for work. And only work. Get off plane, get onsite, work, sleep, get on plane.
Every time I get an Uber, they talk about cost of living, unprompted by me. They ask how much it is in SoCal, one of the worst and most expensive places to live in the entire country.
They’re always shocked by how much cheaper it is.
Born and raised locals work like slaves every day for the bourgeois that can afford to stay in the Hyatt resorts and residences and Hiltons and….
Buying a home is simply not something local working class even considers possible. And they’re forced to watch as every year, more $2MM 600sqft condos get built, blocking out the beautiful ocean.
Meanwhile Zuck and Obama and a hundred others are buying hundreds of acres for their mansions. While the kupuna die in the streets.
Rich neighborhoods like Portlock full of the parasite class, contributing nothing to the state yet demanding any public works stop.
Hawaii is the first wave of the American collapse.
As I always say to any leftist. Stay armed and practiced. The current economic model is in active collapse. Intel and Boeing are the most obvious examples.
It's the same story on the East Coast. Cape Cod homes are still going for $200k over asking price, cash in hand, just like they were during the COVID quarantines. Boston's CoL is around the same as LA, and they've basically run out of land to build on.
I grew up in a vacation town, and everybody I've ever talked to who also grew up in one has the same story. Up to 50% of businesses close down after the tourist season, so most of the town is closed (and the jobs are gone) for 8 months out of the year. Drugs and homelessness run rampant while locals can't afford a living, and the rich folks keep shutting down any publicly funded projects to keep the taxes down on their second home.
The current economic model is in active collapse. Intel and Boeing are the most obvious examples.
Hardly. Businesses fail all the time, even large ones. Intel and Boeing are both still $100B companies.
That sucks. I know I want to move to Montana but homes are way out of price vs the wages being paid in the area. This economy can't last long before it pops.
Manhattan Island has entered the chat...
Well yeah but we got that away from the locals like 300 years ago...
Not trying to discount anyone's situation, but if you are in the USA and have the option, move out of the bigger cities and into the countryside. Land is cheap, houses can still be cheap and in some areas there aren't enough people to live in the houses so they are super cheap. Buy a house with the land, work remotely since high speed Internet is everywhere more or less. I live in a super small town that was crushed by NAFTA and only the local hospital keeps the community alive since it brings in a lot of good jobs.
I feel like that is an option for a pretty small subset of the population. You have to be willing to leave your current home where all of your family and friends probably are, able to 100% remote work and guarantee at least for a while you won't be affected by layoffs, and then be willing to make the transition to give up the conveniences of living close to a modern city. For the average Lemmy user, yeah you could probably do it. Average American, no. My job requires me to be onsite and it basically only exists in major cities.
