Luxury bones? In *this* economy.

my parents were born in 1953 & 1954.
i was born in 1984. single income household, father is blue collar worker, mother is housewife.
when i was born, we lived in a big, two-story, full-size single family home in a high cost of living area.
when i was 3 years old (1987), my parents decided they wanted another house, so they bought one and we moved to an even higher cost of living area. they didnt sell the first house to afford a new one, they just bought another one and we had two houses.
what the fuck happened.
- Nobody thought that we will need someplace to live too. They bought up every plot for themselves and now that there are people who need it they want to get rich.
  
  It brings me joy when I hear of a location charging significantly higher tax for houses that are left empty
- People born in the 50s bought properties they didn't need or use and didn't sell them.
- Assuming you're American, your parents basically won the birth jackpot. The united states implemented a mixed economy shortly before the rest of the industrialized world was destroyed in a massive war, while we rapidly increased industrial capacity to aid the war effort.
  Then right as that all slowed down shortly before you were born we began the process of neoliberalization. A process by which we received short term gains in exchange for giving up long term capacity and security. This kept the gravy train going for a while longer but it dropped the floor hard. And so we're paying the price, as the rich refuse to accept any less. Additionally the main fast cash we can squeeze out at this point is through ecological devastation that will cost us multiple times what we get fairly quickly.
- what the fuck happened
  real state speculation.
  
  People speculate with cheap mortgage debt, nobody is spending their own money.
  They could also just as easily be speculating that the currency will inflate and it will debase their debt, as the Fed does QE.

I do own a house (finally got one in my late 30s) but part of what got me here is ignoring dental care (missing 2 teeth)
I would be missing three but I went to Costa Rica once for unrelated reasons and got an implant while I was there. Ruined my trip a little bit because getting an implant sucks but it was $750 vs $5100 in America (with pretty good insurance)
If you’re missing teeth for a long time (I’m pushing 8 years now) the rest of your teeth start moving around. It’s a real problem. Additionally once this happens missing teeth can exacerbate hip and back problems! Your jaw misaligns and then your posture gets fucked up
best country in the world
- Ouuuh I didn't know Costa Rica had cheap dental, might be a good excuse to visit again, I really loved that place.
  I'm European but still in a similar situation, I have the house but getting my teeth fixed here would cost me like 10k€+, fuck that... The usual recommended destinations are Romania, Turkey, some other ones, but since I'm not only too cheap to get them fixed but also really scared of dental work due to the extreme pain I've experienced in the past both in and out of the chair, the idea of going on a trip to a foreign country for it is fucking terrifying. I'm also missing way more than 2 and what's left isn't exactly pristine either...
- I have teeth and a house! I went with never owning a car and just walk/cycle to get around.

Sorry I couldn't read this meme because my eyes are luxury organs
- The greeks couldn't see blue because they didn't have eyes. For most of human history we didn't have eyes.The human eye is a parasite created by a dark wizard in the year 1796. It just happened to be so useful that everyone went along with it. But now the wizard is long dead and the oculi are evolving. They have no master to keep them in check, they just ride us around and have realized that they can only show us what they want us to see. Oh you read a book that says otherwise, did you read it with your eyes??!?
  
  Anyone smart enough to make this comment read differently through text to speech?
  
  I'd read this webcomic

Even with a Thanos snap I bet landlords would double rent.
- Well they did just lose half their tenants…

Saw this meme a year or 2 ago and it gave me a chuckle.
Fast forward to now and I realize it's not actually a joke... 😭

To be fair, teeth are fucking expensive. Like almost as bad as buying a house.
My grandma had to spend 100K on her teeth over the last few years of her life, and she had insurance. Insurance companies just don't really cover teeth because it is expensive and our bodies guarantee that they will start going bad after young adulthood and then really shit the bed towards the last few decades of life.
- It's because the dental industry convinced us that teeth are "purely cosmetic", and only exist to look pretty in your mouth whie smiling, and you're responsible for it by buying expensive dental care products, some of which are either hard to get if you live far away from cities (dental floss mainly), or are ultra-minty because they needed to fool chain smokers of the twenties, and if you can't have your breakfast before you brushing your teeth due to various factors, your breakfast tasting ass is just the "suffering" you have to do for beauty, and at worst some gymbro-brained person will tell you how breakfast was invented by cereal companies (I need breakfast for my meds, or else I'll develop a stomach ulcer on the long run, sentencing me for eating unseasoned food).
  I hope the dental company execs will get their limbs reclassified as something "purely cosmetic" the moment they lose their wealth, and if they either need to sewn back or replacement limbs will be available in the future, they only can get them on massively overinflated prices for their relative costs of treatment/manufacturing, and have to pay the doctor yet another fortune for photoshops of them shaking hands with people, flipping the bird while being angry, kicking the ball into the goalpost in a heated football ("soccer" in imperial units) match, etc.
  ADDENDUM: Sometimes you're also forced to pay an extra on "homeopathic treatments for the potential side effects of getting implants", so they also should be forced to get those.
  
  “purely cosmetic”
  Dental abscesses and infections related to tooth decay were among the leading causes of death before premodern times.
  
  So glad I don't live in the US. Although I fear it's moving in that direction here too.

For real. I lived most of my adulthood (from 24 to 39) with bad teeth and in pain from infections. The only option I had until I landed a good job with good benefits was to have the teeth above the infections pulled to prevent further infections.

I'm in both of these pictures. But my house was the cheapest 1br I could find in a bad part of St. Louis around 1998. I'm in a different house now, still too small for my family, and neither my wife or I have been able to afford to go to the dentist in about 20 years.

So that's why all the food is so soft in the US.

Let me guess what country you are from...
- That's right, the wealthiest nation on Earth.
- Sike! Many developed nations such as Canada, Australia, the UK, Hong Kong, and Singapore all provide little to no support for dental. Although the UK does have dental ln the NHS, finding an NHS dentist is very difficult.
  Many of the residents in these nations end up engaging in dental tourism to nations such as Poland and Thailand, where a dental travel package that includes round trip international air fare + 5 star hotel + dental work is still cheaper than getting dental work done in their home country.
  
  That's what you get from at least a century of dental industry propaganda. The "things you eat with" got reclassified as "things you smile with".

I'm very lucky that my grandma passed a house on to me in her will, skipping her children. Not lucky enough to be able to renovate it to make it livable though, and install a legal heating system, so I continue to live in a 12m^2 and with four flatmates.
- Why not sell it and use that to get a place you can afford?

Ok, to everyone here actually struggling with teeth care, buy yourself a 50$ or less ultrasonic tartare remover on Amazon or something and thank me later. That thing removed 4 years of tartare from my teeth and now my teeth are clean. If you want to do below the gums, buy a regular dental kit and watch a bunch of tutorials on YT by professionals. It's not as hard as they make it out to be, just take your time and go easy on yourself. Go see a dentist when you feel like your cleaning wasn't enough or if you have an emergency, it'll save you money (and teeth health) to take better care of them at home in the long run.
- wtf is an ultrasonic tartare remover first time hearing of one
  
  I don't know why you've been downvoted because this is a legit question. It sounds like something Dr Who would use to remove unwanted tartar sauce from a fish fillet. I know it's obviously not, but still.
  
  It uses ultrasonic waves to melt the tartare off your teeth and is safe to use. It's not strong enough to melt enamel, only to melt tartare (even hard plaque melts with some patience). Just follow instructions or watch a YT video explaining how to use it. It's really not hard. People also use these for pets, as pets are notorious for not being able to stand still very long, but they still need dental care. Just check on Amazon, there's plenty with thousands of reviews. I got mine on Amazon a year ago or so.

The further you get from the gold standard the worse it gets. Because debt needs to grow to pay past debt, and mortgage debt is what we use to boost GDP.
- Debt is not a force of nature. Money is owed to someone.
  
  The bank. Who pops money into existence out of nothing with no reserve requirement.
  You're mortgage isn't borrowed from Bill down the street, its created from the ether.

Optional luxury bone accessories