>>79659255Rent costs were 1/9th of median income in the USA in 1970, at 1300 dollars for a studio with median income of 38,000 in 2024 (estimated), this means you would have to pay more than half of your post-tax income in rent. And because rental rules usually require you to make 3 times the rent to actually rent, you would have to make more like 48,000 to actually get an apartment, but many jobs outside the tech sector are very shy when it comes to offering people pay greater than 20/hr. This creates situations where more than 50% of 30yos still live with their parents, because the boom-bust-boom cycle made it difficult to advance in their careers and earn enough to move out, while american parents have a "where are my grandkids, you need to pull overtime shifts and somehow spontaneously manifest grandkids, no I will not give you a little help financially, me ME ME ME ME" attitude. This creates endless resentment against an elder generation that devalued real wages in order to pump their asset values- in essence the high cost of rent is correlated 1:1 with every boomer bragging "I bought my house in 1988 for 30,000 and nwo it's worth 500,000!" as the cost of housing has dramatically outstripped wage growth.
So once gigi won the lottery in this economy, where being insanely lucky one time is what you need because simply working really hard will not get you much with currency devaluation, she took the opportunity to ditch her parents.
