The rich have been able to concentrate wealth over the past few decades and they have used this money to corrupt many of the things ordinary people used to love.
From concerts to Instagram, people took to Reddit to share what they think rich people have ruined in this country. You’re not going to believe some of the things that have been ruined
The Price of Housing
u/Disastrous_Aerie_53: “The real estate speculators and multi billion dollar investment firms/real estate groups owned by billionaires driving everyone out until there is only renters that pay half their income to rent is much better than having the government(the people) do this same thing while only making it 10% of income.”
u/NoJobsForever “The view that housing is an investment has priced people out of home ownership and rents are extortionate as to ensure landlords maintain a sufficient ROI.
Having a roof over your head should be a basic human right. Being a landlord isn’t a real job.”
Concerts
u/edtoal:” Yes. In the late ‘80s $500 was enough for my wife and I to see a whole Grateful Dead tour. 16 shows with motel rooms for about half of them. This coming summer $500 doesn’t cover two general admission tickets plus camping at the Gorge.
I get inflation, but people willing to spend thousands for a concert ticket, plus legal scalping aka StubHub etc. equals rich people ruining the concert scene.”
Renting
u/Far-Gain-3081: “The over abundance of air bnbs and $2000 studio apartments in rural/suburban places is outrageous and ruining the possibility for low income and working class people to have a roof over their heads.
I live in New York State, and ever since covid all these city richies are buying up all the cheap places in the country to try and make a profit – as if they need any more money!”
Theme Parks
u/Lumber_Dan: “Gone are the days when everyone was equal and you all had to queue, regardless of your income. And even until recently some theme parks gave fast passes periodically throughout the day.
Now if you’ve got deep pockets you can queue jump, making your day a little better and everyone else’s a little worse.”
Cheap foods
u/jkbrock: “The inflation of chicken wings kills me. Chicken wings used to be 25¢/piece on regular nights and 10¢/piece on special, slathered in buffalo sauce, and served a dozen at a time. They were the part no one else wanted, and were an amazing feature of blue collar pubs and restaurants all around the Great Lakes.
Somehow they got popular, and now they’re more than $1/piece at national fast-food chains and nearly $2/piece at other places.”
Thrift Stores
u/SnooEpiphanies3336: “They’ve been ruined by ultra-fast fashion. I didn’t visit an op shop for about a year during covid and when I revisited my old favourite shops most were overstocked with overpriced Shein crap because the old ladies who volunteer to sort clothes don’t know just how cheap and shitty it is.
So people are buying plastic clothes made by people who are almost certainly being exploited, having those clothes shipped across the planet just to try them on and realise they don’t fit right (they’ll never fit right, well-fitting clothes take time and money) and then they drop them off to the op shop which probably makes them feel like they’re doing something good but all they’re doing is making someone else get rid of their trash.”
The Middle Class
u/coleosis1414: “Every president in the last 40 years has been a fiscal conservative by any definition of the word. Even the most socialist programs passed in that period have had free market compromises out the ass until they’re rendered worthless.
The erosion of the middle class is not the fault of republicans, it’s the fault of American culture. It runs deeeeep.”
Bourbon
u/W0rk3rB: “it used to be the most expensive bourbon you could find was like $100. Now, with everyone “collecting” the prices have sky rocketed. The secondary market is completely insane.”
u/SoCal_Val: “I remember a couple of years ago you could walk in a BevMo and just pick up a bottle of Blantons walk home make your mint julep and it’s all good. Nowadays, it’s like Blantons is some Shangri-La of bourbon.”
Sailboats
u/JoeMorgue: “Used to be you could on a working man’s salary get a decent day sailing boat that you could go out with for the day with enough cabin space and amenities to live aboard for a long weekend, maybe a week. Like the MacGregor 26.
But nobody makes mere sailboats anymore, they make… YACHTS. Expensive, over designed yachts.”
Austin, TX
u/rapalosaur: “My entire life I grew up in San Antonio and used to come up to Austin with 4 friends with $100 each and have ourselves a rowdy day and night and the sober one to drive us home. Moved her a while back and that $100 is gone before you’ve gone anywhere.
Uber is expensive. Parking is expensive. Food is expensive. Everything is fucking expensive.”
Collecting
u/NoBenefit5977: “In the past few years the price of little collectibles and things of that sort have gone insanely high. Cards, action figures, you name it, just look up any sub for a hobby and you’ll see people dropping your entire salary in 1 day”
u/Bkafrogurl: “When it first launched we were content to post grainy pics of our average looking sandwich that we made ourselves. Or a mundane selfie. The background and the angle didn’t matter.
Studies show that since the wealthy started sharing their lives on IG, our collective standard of living changed. And it’s trickled down to our influencers mimicking wealth down to average users. We’re exposed to yacht parties. expertly organized and color-coded walk-in closets, high-end facials and party-planned gender reveals. We’re benchmarking our posts with professional photographers and videographers, elevating our expectations for everything.”
Internet
u/bennitori: “Internet was the one I was going to go with. Back when the internet was just losers who had no other place in society everything was cool. You knew the only people online were people who genuinely wanted to be part of the community and subculture.
Then the rich people found out about it, and now it’s nothing but ads, subscriptions fees, data gathering, and rich people pretending to be hip.”
Burning Man
u/jessek: “Was the first thing I thought of. When Mark Zuckerberg is helicoptering in to stay in a billionaire camp with air conditioned mobile homes, Burning Man has lost whatever counterculture standing it had.”
u/train_spotting: “Yea this one is weird. This used to be exclusive to people that really did embrace the underworld and “counter culture”.
Then one day, you couldn’t if you didn’t have money.”
Nerd Paraphernalia
u/eddy_talon: “Nerd paraphernalia like Star Wars or Marvel/DC stuff (action figures, comic books, etc). Used to be just a fun hobby for kids and kids-at-heart, now it’s almost totally purchased by richer, dedicated speculators solely for profit.”
u/lynn-doesnt-reddit: “I feel like this is driving up the price of LEGOs too, with the rise of more “expert” designer sets and whatnot. It makes me very sad, I loved LEGOs as a kid but now I’d only be able to afford the buckets of stuff. the creativity buckets are nice but I love the sets. I want to be able to build a harry potter set but they’re all so damn overpriced.”
Trucks
u/Shulk_X: “So many things, but I’ll say trucks. Once upon a time, a humble working class vehicle for people who need to be able to do things themselves, now they’re all luxury vehicles with massive margins, unaffordable to anyone who needs them to do real work.”
Rural Living
u/MontyMontridge: “Where do I start…rural living. They keep migrating like locusts and devouring all the woods and land. How many yogurt shops and fancy neighborhoods do theese ***** need?!
I liked it better back in the day when it wasn’t fancy, aisles narrow, and other poor or frugal people were shopping.”
Public Parks
u/nottherealneal: “There used to be a really nice big park in the center of the city where I live.
Everyone would go there, it was a nice open space, take your kids, take your dogs, enjoy the fresh air.
Then some people from the rich part of town along the edges of the park decided they didn’t like the noise coming from the park and pulled some bullshit to buy it out and walled it off so you couldn’t go to the park unless you lived in that specific neighborhood anymore.“
Sporting Tickets
u/maninthemoonpie: “I stopped going to professional sports because I can only afford shitty seats. Not worth the effort any more.”
u/xXSpaceturdXx: “For a fun day out with you and a friend at an NFL game will run you around 500 bucks. Or you could watch it on your big screen TV at home which has better play-by-play and angles than being at the game where you end up watching Half of it on a monitor anyway. Unless I get tickets for free I don’t even bother going to sporting events anymore.”
