Says the people who aren't paying attention to the way wealth is concentrated in this country. Baby Boomers are by and large petty bourgeoisie, and are politically committed to staying that way at everyone's expense. They're a generation of reactionaries raised on Cold War propaganda that taught them that any solidarity beyond your immediate (cishet) family is a sign of a Stalinist dictatorship. They voted in Reagan and love neoliberalism. Boomers are an enemy to working class liberation, and to human life in general.

I have been involved in real estate professions full time for over 10 years, and want to help others understand what happened and what to expect. Essentially, the settlement will change the way commissions are paid to agents, specifically sellers will pay their agents and buyers will pay their agents, simple and perfect, right?

Fucking wrong!

When considering a real estate transaction, technically all the money for the sale comes from the buyers, so in a sense they have historically been paying both agent commissions, though it has always been framed as exactly the opposite, since both agents are paid from the seller proceeds. This was a good, fair system with one asterisk: 6% split was generally too high, especially for more expensive homes. The best system would have been maybe 5% on less expensive homes with a sliding downward scale as they got more expensive.

This system ensured buyers would be able to get fair representation with an agent, and not add to the overwhelming costs of buying a home.

Now buyers will have to pay their own agents in most cases, so they will undoubtedly not pay them 2-3% of the home price, and instead will shop for flat fees, hourly rates, or low percentages. They will pay more and have less (and worse) representation. Some will turn to online sites to manage the buying process.

Who wins here? The answer is sellers.

Which is all a long way of getting to my point. Generally speaking, most sellers skew older because they had a lifetime to attain home ownership, and in many cases second homes and investment properties. It's well documented many of these homes have gone up extraordinarily in value. The people buying homes skew younger, such as first time home buyers. For these folks, buying a home will now be even more expensive, and they will be going up against sellers and their agents, in many cases without an agent of their own.

This all happened because sellers complained about "paying the buyer's agent isn't fair!' while neglecting the money comes from the buyers, and neglecting the life-changing wealth they have passively built through appreciation, which is much more 'unfair'. They argue prices will now fall because they don't have to pay higher commissions. Does anyone think they will really accept less money for their homes, or perhaps they might pocket the difference?

TL;DR Boomers win again (in general), at the expense of younger people.

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"Cops are not workers. Unlike a worker, a cop breaking up a strike is not producing value for the capitalist class. Instead, cops are enforcing the structures of labor production themself. This is, in itself, a vastly different relationship of production than that of workers. They are not unrelated, but the labor of the state is the labor which serves to enforce the relations of production which produce class systems."

• The Gender Accelerationist Manifesto

I wanted to vent about how much anxiety I have about the housing situation today. The worst thing I see is rental properties going in everywhere. It doesn't matter if they're affordable or not, the more that these rentals flood the markets, the worse things are getting for us in the working class.

Some back story, I've only ever rented since moving out of my parent's house. And after a decade, I met a girl with one child, we got married, and moved into a townhouse that was a reasonable commute for both of us to work. With two incomes, it was pricy ($1,100 per month), but doable.

A year later she lost her job because of her health, and a year after that she left me. I've been very fortunate because my financial situation has actually been getting better and better, and I could afford to live there on my own... but I was DONE giving a whole paycheck to a landlord. I didn't need 3 bedrooms. And I hit a bump in the road with my health. So I'm back in my parent's guest room with a storage unit for my furniture.

But I was living in an area that was REALLY nice. I really want to move back there some day. A small town that wasn't too far from a reasonably built-up area. The town even has car shows and fun stuff on Main Street now and then.

And what I was watching was every single house that went up for sale... Turned into a RENTAL... The richest people in the area are scooping up every property they can just to rent them out. And then they started building housing developments nearby with tiny 3 bed, 1.5 bath houses going for $500,000+

And in nearby small cities, the old industrial buildings are being gutted and turned into MORE RENTALS.

It's such poison to our generation. They're literally taking our homes. We can live somewhere, but it's not actually ours. They leech our income and get richer and richer. Then when they have enough to renovate their buildings, they jack up rent until a new class of tenants start moving in.

That's what happened to my townhouse. All of my neighbors were 10 years younger than me, driving $100,000+ vehicles. And my landlord started charging for everything, even parking spots. They started handing out 5-day eviction notices for "breach of contract" about every little tiny thing. They once threatened eviction because when they inspected my unit, I had dirty dishes in the sink and dirty laundry in my hamper. And threatened again because I was 1 day late for rent on a holiday weekend and they wanted a $75 late fee. And if it weren't for the laws protecting me against how much they can raise rent, my rent could have been $500 more per month.

Gentrification is pushing us deeper into poverty. My only hope and light at the end of the tunnel is that my parents have a fixed mortgage rate and even helping them pay bills is much cheaper than renting.

This is pretty much just a rant. But I was at the playground with my kids earlier, and some of the conversations from the other parents blew me away. I live in a somewhat rural town, so it should be expected. But of course everyone tries to strike up conversations. It started out as innocent stuff about how old the kids were things like that, but then the group of parents pretty much all but me shifted the conversation towards trans kids, litter boxes in classrooms, and other shit that "made them feel disgusting" as one mom put it. There was no talking sense or reaching across the aisle in an effective way, and they kind of just kept going. Are we really going to be able to work with people like this? Like obviously there has to be a middle ground on these things or some way to get them to understand the litter box thing is complete bullshit, but they weren't having it. I think we've lost people like that, and it's going to take at least another generation to bring them back.

The icing on the cake too was when they wanted to talk about the election and all of them talked about how horrible Trump was, which I definitely agreed with, but then they talked about how they were still going to vote for him because "at least he can string a sentence together." Again, lost. I don't know how you work with that. I am nothing if not compassionate and open-minded, I work with people with differences all the time, but there just doesn't feel like there is a way to effectively communicate with people like this and get them to come to an understanding or meet me halfway.

I see so many jobs that offer a small salary yet demand so much experience and skills. I guess do to mass immigration the labour market is over supplied so employers can be more selective and demanding.

For some reason in a meeting this week the conversation started about cost of living. My VP said younger generations don't have money cause we don't know how to save it. That minimum wage is enough to live off of. One of our newer college graduates on the team said they can't afford to live in the area with her salary hence why she's staying with her parents. The VP disregarded this comment saying when she was younger she didn't get paid as much but could afford to save up.

Clearly my VP has no idea what she's talking about. I was mentally checked out at this point and also thought this conversation was completely inappropriate considering upper management decides pay, mine included. I can barely afford to live in my area on my own being in middle management on minimum salary.

She's part of the problem and it's so sad and infuriating to hear in person. I made a note of this wonderful conversation for my future reference.

Edit: it said I got 250 up votes but I see way less. Who is downvoting this and why? I'm generally curious lol thanks for the laugh too