Skyrocketing Rents & Skyrocketing Homelessness: Why Are US Homes for Profit Not for Living In?
The Socialist Program with Brian Becker
The Socialist Program
4.7 • 587 Ratings
🗓️ 16 August 2023
⏱️ 31 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On today's episode Brian Becker and Prof. Richard Wolff discuss the housing crisis in the United States, where some Gen Zers are spending the majority of their income on housing, and homelessness is increasing — at a record rate.
Professor Richard Wolff is an author & co-founder of the organization Democracy at Work. You can find his work at rdwolff.com.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | renters and mortgage payers across the country are being crushed by the high cost of housing. |
| 0:08.6 | And this is perhaps most pronounced among young people. |
| 0:12.0 | A new investigation by the New York Times details how Generation Z is routinely paying the majority. |
| 0:19.5 | Not 30%, not 40%, but the majority of their income in rent. |
| 0:25.6 | And at the same time, homelessness is rapidly increasing according to recent surveys in the |
| 0:32.5 | Wall Street Journal. |
| 0:33.9 | We need a new system. |
| 0:36.1 | We need a new society. |
| 1:12.1 | We need to demand that which may have sounded impossible even a few weeks ago, but we talk about the biggest stories related to the economy, the state of the working class, |
| 1:17.1 | and the crimes of big business. |
| 1:19.1 | I'm your host, Brian Becker. |
| 1:21.1 | The Socialist Program brings you content several days a week thanks to the support of our patrons at patreon.com forward slash the socialist |
| 1:30.4 | program. We appreciate all of your support and encourage you to become a patron today if you enjoy |
| 1:36.7 | listening to this show. Richard Wolfe is the co-founder of the organization Democracy at Work. |
| 1:42.3 | He's the author of many books. The latest being |
| 1:44.6 | The Sickness is the System when capitalism fails to save us from pandemics or itself. |
| 1:50.4 | Be sure to check out all of his work at R.D.Wolf.com. That's R.D.W.O.F.com. |
| 1:58.0 | Richard Wolf, welcome back. Thank you, Brian. I'm very glad to be here. Well, thank you for |
| 2:03.3 | joining us. I'm looking at the New York Times headline, Gen Z can't afford the rent. Pretty |
| 2:09.0 | straightforward. Gen Zers have been elected to Congress. They have upset big dairy. They refuse to |
| 2:14.9 | believe that it's too late to curb the effects of climate change with |
| 2:18.1 | the refrain OK Dumer, a play on OK Boomer. But there's something that many Gen Zers feel is not |
... |
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