It's amazing to see the ads on NY1 advocating for increasing rent for those lucky people with rent-stabilized apartments.  It's particularly ironic that I suspect many of those protesting probably align with the tea party idiots, complaining about "taxed enough already," yet support administration policies that support organizations like the board that wants to raise their rents.  Conservatives (or neo-cons) are the ones that tend to advocate for raising taxes on the common worker rather than the "job-creators," giving lip service to the problem of income inequality while pushing for policies that will perpetuate the problem.

I know political and other social pendulums have to swing over time to both extremes, but I'm tired of seeing the common person exploited.  Maybe it's worse because I'm one of the youngest at my job where I've never seen the positive side of a truly worker-rewarding, pre-2001 job where you are not just a commodity. I only hear about it from my older co-workers, and when I explain that in my working lifetime I've never had the experience of a properly compensated workplace they take a minute to reflect on how things used to be.

In addition to work issues, rent stabilization is something I had to waive in order to get my apartment.  In between I had a 0% raise in 2012, I got something in 2013 but not enough to keep up with my rent.  Buying anything is completely off the table despite being rather well off for my age.  All of my older colleagues own or have recently bought places with the money saved from the 1990s when the economy was pre-offshoring. The rest of us just subsist.

Apparently I was born into the wrong decade, of course something I have no control over, but for Gen X (which I do count myself part of since I was born pre-1980), we're taking the body hit of the pendulum.  Even those who are promoted from my generation at the banker level are struggling, and I hear the same sounds of disappointment, resignation, and apathy, even at their higher compensation levels.

So when I see ads explaining how increasing rents for those who can probably afford it much more than I can, and how those increases pays for repairs, property taxes, etc, I'm left with the question of how much profit these companies have gotten by waiving the rent stabilization agreement like mine. There are the other stories where property companies withheld repairs or basic maintenance to try and drive out those who are legacy rent stabilized tenants. It happens, although some property companies are better than others, but like so many issues nowadays the hammer falls on those who can afford it the least.  I want a new paradigm, but am powerless to change it.  I think that sums up my generation on a lot of issues.