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> CPI inflation would suggest that the current cost ought to be about $692.
Rent alone will probably blow that. I live in a burnt out rust belt shithole city and I’m struggling to understand how rent is this high. I pay a good bit more than $692 to live in a slum just outside the ghetto right now and I have to feel gracious for that. It’s closer to what I paid in a decent middle class neighborhood in Florida. That was only 5-6 years ago.
This is in a city where the best people can say about it is: “well it’s cheaper”.
Hell when I lived in South Carolina from 2017-2019. My apartment there was closer to the stated inflation figure, but this was for a place that regularly flooded the downstairs neighbors and left me for weeks without AC in the peak of summer because of careless management.
Still not as bad as business rents. I’ve seen downtown business close because they’re being made to be $7000 for a shitty 100 year old property surrounded by condemned properties.
Let me suggest the problem: CPI inflation suggests a rough doubling of basic living costs. How many jobs can you point to that are paying 2x in 2026 what they were paying in 2000?
There are some. But the data seems to suggest that the majority do not.
After the big corrections entry level jobs had to do during and after COVID, I think it's probably more than you think. As an example, the BLS says in 2000 the mean hourly wage for "Food preparation and serving related" jobs was $7.72 / hour [1]. As of May 2025, they list the median hourly wage (yes median and mean aren't the same, but for this purpose, I don't think the differences would affect the overall point that much) at $16.85 / hour [2]
Likewise for "Building and grounds cleaning and maintenance", we went from $9.41/hour to $18.12 / hour.
Though admittedly not every field saw such gains. "Sales and related" didn't do quite as well, going from $13.46 to just $18.52. "Office and Administrative" did a bit better going from $12.64 to $22.81, but that's still a bit under the 2x mark. "Construction and extraction" also missed the 2x mark by a bit, going from $16.56 to $28.63.
Still the numbers I think aren't quite as dire as the vibes make it feel right now.
This posted while I was still in the middle of my other rant, but when I was doing the four guys in one apartment thing putting myself through community college, my job was overnight janitor at Knott's Berry Farm and paid $6.50 an hour. Minimum wage in California is now $16.90, so that at least is more than double.
I’ve certainly seen trust fund kids who’s success is anchored on “daddy gave me a sweet job at his company” and others who’d be dead or in prison if it wasn’t for the constant money poured into the legal system by their parents.
There’s a huge spectrum. I’m mid 40s and my wife grew up much wealthier than I did. We have done quite well, but I I’m a bit frugal, like to save, despise waste and excess, and therefore don’t like traveling like they do. I like traveling but all the fancy upgraded experiences at every turn is what I refuse to spend money on. But we don’t go without, we “rely” on my in laws to upgrade our travel (or that’s how my wife has structured the relationship with them, they pay for everything and we cover the drinks is basically how it works out). I’m not a huge fan of it but they don’t care and it keeps my wife off my back lol, so whatever. We travel with them a lot but even when we don’t I think my wife uses their card to pay for it. It’s between them is what I say, I don’t want to be a part of it as it feels like we’re taking advantage of them but apparently they’re fine with it. Is this fitting the definition of “rely” because it’s nonessential
Probably not, just against my nature to let people spoil me. So I have some internal conflict about it but let it occur. There may be a better word for it but that's kind of how I feel when we, they, spend more annually that the median household income on our travel.
> Expecting to own a high end house in a dense metro are on its own, is a pretty insane expectation.
High salaries and an industry boom over the last decade created a sort of whiny arrogance amongst software developers, and particularly those of Silicon Valley. They desperately want to see themselves as the elite.
Of course the elite get their mansion where they want. They are entitled to it.
I may have ended up that way if I hadn’t gotten into software as a teenager. Luckily a did and the timing was right for me to make some sort of decent career out of it.
I did live independently prior to going into software, but it sucked and was fragile and likely would have fallen apart long term. I also doubt I could find a similar living situation as a young man with no credit or much money to his name. Even the mom and pop landlords use management companies that run you through a black box for approval/rejection with little room for negotiation.
> Even the mom and pop landlords use management companies that run you through a black box for approval/rejection with little room for negotiation.
Rental approvals are ridiculous. We're renting an apartment while we remodel our house.
We've taken out mortgages, refi'd mortgages, and (by now) taken out 3 HELOCs in a row (2 of them subsequently closed as we needed to re-file for more $). While there's a lot of paperwork involved, it feels pretty easy. "Promise to pay us back? Cool!"
Filling out apartment rentals was awful. The rejections, the tiny paper forms asking you about creditors and bank accounts, how much money you owe each of them every month, personal references, "supervisor's phone number", have you ever been to jail, ever failed to pay rent for any reason, previous landlords' contact info. Look, I get that rent is an unsecured obligation (vs a mortgage), but every step of it was gross and accusatory.
> We're probably just a few short years away from the current generation of right-wing populists
Right wing populists are nearly as useless as left wing populists now. The people they put into power and now betraying them for monied interests and they’re powerless to stop them. Fools thought they were the harbinger but in reality they were just the vessel.
It’s why major populist characters like MTG and Massie are giving up and getting slaughtered by puppets in a suits in primaries. It’s why Trump has been friendlier to the neocons that spent years insulting him than populists that helped propel him to power.
The real ghouls on the right that need to be stopped are the neo-reactionaries. I knew we were headed for strange times when the Silicon Valley elites simultaneously opened their pockets for the second term. It was purely a power play and it’s seemingly been effective.
I suspect the populists, right and left will care no more for the world they envision than they would for the status-quo even.
Left-wing populists haven't got anyone elected, but right-wing populists got to be the most powerful person in the world, so that doesn't seem that useless.
> Personally I think data centers should pay a 100% fossil fuel tax. Markets respond to incentives.
Yes, by changing the incentives to align with their desires.
I guarantee if a politician had a serious chance of introducing something like this that record breaking amounts of money would be poured into even a primary election these days to stop them.
Likely futile though. The way to get jobs now is through network and connections. If OP doesn’t have those already, it’s unlikely they’ll be able to “catch up” in a reasonable amount of time.
I’ve been in a bit of creative/intellectual rut the last few years, but before that there were a handful of things that intrigued me in the last 5-10 years.
Most recently, I became interested in the field of photonics/optics, particularly in the field of novel optical communications research.
I’ve had mild interests in things like
Biology and History since I was a child. The latter particularly hooked me a few years back.
Neuroscience is a pretty cool one as well. The human brain is of course one of the most fascinating pieces of hardware in existence and understanding it (to whatever level we currently can) is incredibly interesting to me.
At one point I thought about going into security research, but now that everyone and their mother is headed that direction, it’s become less feasible.
Unfortunately I don’t even have a bachelors degree, and most of the fields are research heavy and not very accessible to hobbyists, so my actual interaction with these things remains relegated to reading papers/pop sci articles/etc.
Don't forget the study of neuroscience is much larger than just the human brain. Many other target organisms are studied e.g. fruit fly and are much more thoroughly understood on a fundamental level.
Respectfully, when people want to understand the human brain they usually intend to study sociology or psychology rather than neuroscience. Although, of course, neuroscience is applicable to human brains as well.
Every neuron in the fly brain has been mapped recently. It is an amazing model system to work with. A couple weeks generation time (imagine implications for crossing and growing up mutants). Not just in neuro either. Better than working on mice too. IRB doesn't care about how you decapitate your flies.
Oh dear, someone call the ACLU, we have a new category of oppressed victim to milk!
The solution is simple: stop being a retarded sperg.
> I am getting this bullshit on every social media. It is a disease.
Hmm, if everyone else around you is an asshole…