simply so they can keep a roof over their heads.
That's the insane thing. We have a house but can barely afford bills. We have some savings but don't want to work ourselves ragged just to live. What the actual!
And sucking money out of people to build roads and so on - ugh. We live on the edge of a shire that charges huge taxes and we don't see the money as we aren't in the glamour part.
We really have stuffed up, us humans.
We seem to be on a pretty messed up trajectory... virtually all over the world.
We're looking to sell our place and move somewhere smaller and cheaper in about 18 months. In checking properties in this region, the map stays completely blank until 300,000 USD, when you up to 400,000, a handful of run down shacks start to appear. Until you bump your upper limit to 600,000 USD, you won't see anything you actually want to live in. At that point - unless you have cash - only 5-10% of the population has sufficient income to get a mortgage...
It's about the same here. Average house price in Aussie now is 1m (800 us) - of course cheaper in rural areas where no one wants to live.
We would like to move sideways and sell ours but no way could we get like for like.