by spwa4 | 2025-08-14 07:08:08+00:00
> If only house prices would fall.

Nope, you don't want that. You want a house, and that's not dependent on price, though I understand why everyone feels it is. House availability is a function of supply and demand. That doesn't change with price. However, the actual amount is a function of what people can pay. What will happen is the government will cause a serious reduction in what people can pay, which will drop house prices.

But without building housing or reduction in people (or at least people being willing to live together again) affordability won't change. Only price.

> And which cheap services do you mean?

Services is simply anything you have/acquire that isn't a physical good. Like the internet. Your parents probably also couldn't afford a meal in a restaurant, more than, say, once a month. Or buying food near work (except in a factory restaurant). Maybe you're old enough to remember the necessity of buying food at a farm, or market, with very minimal middlemen, and to buy whatever is available (you know, the seasonal foods), so another (VERY) cheap service you have is supermarkets. Oh and you'd be walking or biking to the farm, so whether it's public transport or a car (or an uber) is another one of those services. You also "get" more and more management (and if you think it's bad at your private sector job, try working at the EU ...), and every company is further expanding it, mostly due to legal requirements, like dedicates psychological support personnel, which you also "get".

The reduction in prices will probably be masked by large inflation. Well, inflation without rising wages, and certainly without rising benefits. That would allow governments to pretend to avoid the completely unconscionable: live within their means ... In other words: governments sold you pension plans when THEY got money. Now that governments don't get money from it anymore ... "we must raise pension age", "we can't do inflation adjustments for benefits", "we can't ...". But of course, they ESPECIALLY can't reduce their own size. That isn't even being discussed.

> Maybe Brussels knows where that overspending is happening?

Wait you're not aware of this? Pensions. Governments promised pensions with total disregard for cost. People in the EU don't work from ages 0 to 20. And they don't work from 59 to 79. (59 due to the many times government has paid for earlier retirement). So working career from 59-20 is 29 years of working. You are dependent on services for 40 years. So the tax necessary to pay for only pensions without constant growth ... is more than half of your wage.

Second is medical expenses. I don't mean treatment. Actually making people better, at a doctor or a hospital is not the big deal. "Long term illness", between quotes because some 10% of the total active workforce has long term illness without being actually disabled (burn-out, psychological difficulties, ...). Great that we allow that, but it needs to be paid for. The problem, of course, is that medical insurance is about 10%, and the money is entirely eaten by people long term ill.

> Younger generations of workers won't be liking this rug-/ladder-pull. And guess who they'll vote for to vent their frustrations that they've been strewed over? Another Austrian painter type of character. It's inevitable.

Sure, and you can bet your firstborn that they will blame "rich Jewish bankers" again, rather than reasoning along the lines of: we, as a group, don't get labor-intensive services ... we also work less and less ... I wonder if there could be a connection. No no no, it's those rich bastards (the ones that match existing racist stereotypes) keeping us down.