I think there’s 2 factors at play. 1) they grew up with technology rather than having it introduced later in life and 2) they grew up with a version that is arguably quite negative.
For e.g millennials, we didn’t have internet until our teens, and the early years of the internet looked very different from the ad-infested hellscape that it is today.
Those younger generation are in a really dark place right now. In many cities they will never be able to afford a house; and on top of that AI labs are now saying they will never have a job.
One of main reason i postpone having kid. I definitely don't want to bring my child to this current world. Unless i see some better future, i don't think i will change my plan anytime soon.
Given a choice, a vast majority of children (and people in general) would choose to have a life, even with arguably uncertain future prospects, over not getting to live at all.
The real reason you're postponing parenthood is probably that you choose to prioritize your comfort and financial independence at this moment. And there is nothing wrong with it, but I do miss honesty.
And on top of that they'll have to deal with crumbling infrastructure, aging population and global warming. They've already had COVID. I hope they don't have a catastrophic AI bubble pop.
Effectively, they will never have a true life. They will just meander around here and there, making money whatever ways they can, surviving, and ultimately pass away from something they can’t afford to fix.
That, or become violent. I'm not saying that in a supportive way, moreso thinking of uprisings historically arising from people with no other option. Although, that was before facial recognition technology...
They didn't need facial recognition technology because they were physically in one place and the cops could just arrest everyone in that place - if there were enough cops which there never were.
In like five cities in the USA. I live in a top 10 city by population in the USA (so it's not "flyover"), and the median home price is 288–319, while median HHI is 89. That's easily in the recommended home loan range of 3*HHI.
Look, I'm sorry you can only be happy living in SV, but there's plenty of jobs in the boring parts of America, and the homes are affordable.
All that being said, homeownership is largely a scam, financially. Use your downpayment as a market investment and rent. You'll end up with more money when you retire, and as a bonus, you aren't tied to one geographic location if you lose your job.
The only reason apartments can even exist is because of economies of scale. If you have one rental property, it's virtually impossible to make money (certainly not in a way that outpaces index funds) because you don't have the economies of scale at your disposal.
Your entire premise is one that's missing important context. Based on the numbers you provide, you're probably in Chicago or Dallas, maybe Austin, but that's pushing more like 400K.
Homes in the median are generally not viable unless you don't have a family or don't care about quality schools. In my city (90K), two houses that are identical but divided by the school district boundary between rank #1 and rank #265 out of 359 is a difference of $300K. One would be within the median and the other well above.
And let me be clear: ALL HOUSING IS A SCAM FINANCIALLY. Rent screws you one way and housing screws you another.
Right, but the opportunity cost of the down payment is what gets you. You're forgetting that if you rent, you have a large chunk of cash that you could invest in higher yielding assets.
This isn't controversial. This is what anyone with finance expertise will tell you.
I hired a few contractors out of the bay area to another state where their salary was 1/3 a nice permanent home and they ended up scattering to other parts of the country. One even went back to the Bay Area. Yes there are nice places to live besides the bay area.
Do we really want people to have no association with their city, and encourage them to be interchangeable cogs for whatever business deigns them worthy of a job in some remote part of America, so they can be ready to take whatever’s offered like that’s a good thing?
Most people like putting down roots, knowing the town and people, having a local community, would like to have family and friends nearby.
Remember how we were all going to “surf the information superhighway” and we’d all become smarter because we had access to all the worlds experts and books?
Debatable. Maybe they were less informed in the sense of not having access to as much so called news or content. But what about the quality? Being strictly less informed by emotionalized info shots could very well mean being less misinformed.
Nor you though and not me. Best among us are dead or isolated from cancers of the world. Ambition, how disgusting a trait the only thing the ambitious deserve is suffering.
For e.g millennials, we didn’t have internet until our teens, and the early years of the internet looked very different from the ad-infested hellscape that it is today.