I think Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki is partially to blame for the 2022 nationwide housing crisis.

Unless you've been living under a rock, there's a housing crisis just about everywhere in this country. It's particularly acute here in the Salt Lake area, where the price of a median family home (average) is now at $550,000. You essentially have to make $80.00 an hour at a job to be able to afford the payments on that. Additionally, rent for a two bedroom is around the $2000.00 mark. There are a ton of people who are getting squeezed really badly by this, because they don't work at jobs that provide $6,000 a month. There are lots of theories as to why and how we got here. As for myself, I wonder if it is all because of one book. Before you scoff at me that a single book could have this much power, I just want you to remember the Bible, and how much power that single book has in the world. Or the Koran (sp?) for that matter. So follow me down this particular rabbit hole and indulge me for a while, won't you?

Back in the 90's Robert Kiyosaki wrote a book called Rich Dad, Poor Dad. As far as books go, this thing was just capitalist trash that in its set up, shamed a poor dad for being poor and not being able to afford nice things for his family. The rich dad on the other hand was to be respected by all. How did he get there? Simple: invest in real estate. This is the first time that I remember someone explaining this whole idea of passive income. But what it really is for the untrained masses is planting the seed that housing (which is a thing that everyone needs) should be an investment. It should be in investment portfolios, it should be in your personal portfolio, and it is the path to a wealthy lifestyle. Let the poor dad work his ass off for wages. The Rich dad is going to make other people do the work and then they will fund his lifestyle. Sounds like a great gig, right? This is the crux of exploitation, and it was marketed, sold, and served as a kind of blueprint for a whole shift in the decades to come where people just poured their savings into real estate. The only problem is that when everyone does "a thing," then shit just doesn't work right. The fact of the matter is...not everyone can be a winner. Someone has to lose. That's why all the privileged people could telework during covid, and "essential workers" had to go to their broke-ass jobs and catch covid and die. Those were "the losers." Society needed them though...so they couldn't insult them. Not to their face at least.

But I digress. People listened to the specious wisdom of Rich Dad, Poor Dad. They said, "FU, I'm not going to be a loser like my dad," and they got into real estate. This pushed the price of real estate up. Then investment banks and corporations who also listened to Kiyosaki, poured their billions into real estate and the price went up further. And then along came Airbnb and the Silicon Valley "disruption," which convinced people who owned rentals that they could get more money by kicking long-term renters to the curb in favor of charging $250 a night for desirable apartments. And yes, I know plenty of people personally in the valley I live in who are making $5,000 a month off a single Airbnb, and their rentals (as far as they concerned) will never go to house anyone ever again.

Short-term is where the profit is at. So...bam...boom...bam...people are making money, the housing crisis is worsening because rentals are in short supply thanks to airbnb, the prices on real estate keep rising, and people who want boob jobs and vacations and $5,000 a night stays at Disney World hotels are raising the rent over and over and over. They have to, because everything else is just getting more expensive because everyone is charging everyone else exorbitant amounts of money just to live (a repair visit on my air conditioner unit to replace one part was $1300.00). And all in the back...a voice screams from the 1990's...it is the voice of Robert Kiyosaki...yelling, "That's the spirit! Everyone can be the rich dad!" Only this isn't what is happening. Instead we have a capitalist dystopia where business cannot afford to pay workers enough wages to actually live anywhere, because the median price of a home requires a wage of $80 per hour! So people are living like sardines, and everyone has got their hand out, and we now have tip jars at fast food, and those electronic screens that automatically ask you if you want to give a tip to someone that just served you a frickin' ice cream cone. The world today just seems insane to me.

So I'm here to posit a hypothesis. Robert Kiyosaki and his book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad shares a huge part of the blame for unaffordable housing nationwide. He got a bunch of people to realize that (with no government restrictions on real estate) one could exploit the heck out of people who are just looking for a place to live. You could (in fact) essentially turn an entire caste of people into indentured servants by selling them a lie and convincing everyone that a thing that is necessary for life to flourish (as necessary as air and clean water) should be an investment instead of a liability. And thus, the house and home became ground zero for greed, and a zip code became a barometer for how successful your children would be in the world. It all just seems so upside down. But now we're stuck with this model. Unless you want to be poor, you'd better hustle and get some real estate and passive income and get around to screwing someone else who is late to the party. Capitalism is such bullshit sometimes.