Comments by "alex smith" (@alexsmith-ob3lu) on "ColdFusion" channel.

If you live in Canada or the USA, you also have to factor in the mass immigration that has over saturated entire white collar and blue collar jobs. In Canada, average wages have gone down over the last 10 years thanks to Justin Trudeau disastrous immigration policy. We also have a housing crisis thanks to so many immigrants flooding in and home construction not being able to keep up. Most Canadian employers have forgotten what it means to compete for labor. I mean, why bother? When you’ve got so many immigrants arriving and not enough jobs/housing; they can take advantage of this influx to increase personal profits at the expense of everyone else.
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@thaneros Sounds like you don’t live in North America. In areas where there are jobs, there isn’t any affordable housing options. In other areas of the U.S, where there are affordable housing options; there are no jobs. And if you factor in car dependency and high fuel prices; no individual young person can survive alone. What most folks are missing is community.
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Strong Towns is a wonderful organization and has brought to light many great ideas. However, there are many other key info that most folks don’t understand. At the end of the day, building more railroad towns, streetcar suburbs, triplex rentals etc. won’t fix our underlying financial/economic problems. The price of homes are not going up. It’s the value of the dollar that is decreasing. Since 1913, the American dollar has lost 95% of its purchasing power. It won’t take long for the dollar to lose its remaining 5% purchasing power. In 1900, trades people were everywhere. These days, we’re running thin on the ground. Our decline in technical-creative skillsets means we cannot rapidly build more housing, jobs, transit etc. to meet growing demand.
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@bw9382 I don’t know about white collar unions, but certain blue collar unions like plumbers are going strong in these turbulent times.
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@clray123 “I don’t understand why kids are so lazy these days. I bought my first house for 50k at age 22, and then paid off the mortgage in 5 years time. By age 25, I was already married and this was just working 40 hours per week at an ordinary job. Kids these days just don’t have work ethics anymore.”
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@StylizedKitsune Good on you. I use my plumbing license to work self-employed; looking for various work opportunities while also working 45 hours per week. There’s nothing wrong with “entrepreneurship”, but what many folks don’t realize is the significant decline of American society. The America that our parents were born into is no longer the one we’re living in right now.
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@dsmbilly3690 High skilled and low skilled jobs are over saturated right now. It’s the “middle skilled” jobs that are in high demand with good pay and benefits. Professionals working in IT/software have to compete against AI, hundreds of millions of other computer employees around the globe, and certifications. To me, it just looks like “race to the bottom.” Meanwhile, you’ve got elevator/escalator technicians who earn $100k with lots of benefits and overtime work thanks to their local union.
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@thaneros Yes, but New Orleans is economically poor right now and there aren’t many jobs there either. California is a whole other fiasco thanks to their policies.
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@mcfloridaman2192 Gen Z is having a hard time because they’re a much smaller cohort compared to boomers and Gen X. As birth rates continue to decline, and many more people “tune out of society.” Once important institutions (such as churches) will simply disappear.
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@thaneros At the end of the day, folks gotta do their own research.
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@ Exactly! Too many people blindly following this or that advice without stopping to think for themselves anymore.
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