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Being born and raised in America, I didn’t really understand how the real-life American monopoly game was played. Growing up as an American kid, I enjoyed playing the board game during family fun times as I am sure most American kids did. In recent years however, I have seen that playing the board game and being part of the elite’s real-life American monopoly game are two different stories. I will tell you, being on the losing side of the elite’s real-life American monopoly game is no fun. Inflation in housing can bring a lot of sadness, heartache, and distress to those living out a life of poverty, while those winning the game get to experience all that the American dream has to offer to them.
Times Have Changed Due to the Real-Life American Monopoly Game
Times have changed quite a bit since when I was younger growing up here. In America, we used to have a high quality of standards by being taught that all people have rights and deserve to be treated with dignity and respect. Sadly, what I have witnessed the last several years makes me feel that America is lost. I have seen people’s rights being trampled on, including my own rights as well as my family’s rights. People’s dignity has not been preserved in this nation, and many leaders do not show brotherly love to their neighbors. I have experienced first-hand how previous generations felt when they did not own property in this country. I have witnessed how property owners and elite rich landlords are treated well, but American renters that are unable to afford property due to housing inflation have been treated inhumanely. There was a time not too long ago when the American people had enough wealth to afford to buy a home. Wealth is being stolen through asset price inflation, and we the people have less ability to afford assets like homes. Wealth is concentrated to the top, as the top 1% holds nearly as much wealth as the bottom 90% combined. A billionaire or trillionaire can buy all of the real estate in the country and rent it back to us, and that is what they have been doing which is sad. It is no wonder the middle class is dwindling, and the middle class no longer has extra money to spend outside of basic necessities. The America I once knew as a child growing up has changed.
Government Risky Bailouts in the Real-Life American Monopoly Game
Capitalism has become dysfunctional, as we have a government that intervenes to save risky investments when there is a downturn in the economy. When there is a downturn in the economy, government officials look to economists to help them out of messes even though some of those economists helped contribute to the economic mess. I have heard some people mention the term with no risk there is no reward, but what risk is there when the government intervenes to bail out risky investments with taxpayer money? To me that sounds like take out a risky investment and you are guaranteed to receive reward which is not really how investments are supposed to work. Rather than having a free market economy, we have an economy of monopolies that stifle out their competition. Does that sound like a free market economy to you? The loosening of monetary policy has contributed to the affordable housing crisis that we face today. Artificial growth on magic money trees is an illusion that causes housing inflation, is not real growth for all people that live in this country and mainly enriches those that already hold a lot of assets like housing. Government officials are elected to represent all of the people that live in the country including low income and middle-class people, not just the wealthy people. If you are reading this blog, it is likely that you have been examining the economy. There are interesting movies that address why the Great Recession happened that I watched while back. Through the following links, you can purchase the Monopoly board game I enjoyed growing up, and movies for your movie library that I watched that helped me to understand how the real-life American monopoly game is played.
Monopoly Board Game, Inside Job to rent or to buy, The Big Short to rent or to buy, and Margin Call to rent or to buy.
The Nation as a Whole Lost Due to the Real-Life American Monopoly Game
Since the Great Recession, banks, private equity firms, corporations, pensions, universities, house flippers, build to rent investors, rent to own investors, tech real estate market companies, property management software companies, online marketplace for vacation rental companies, and others have been buying up value properties to rent to the people just so they can win as individuals. The thing they don’t realize is that even though they have won as individuals, the nation as a whole has lost through this great American tragedy. These entities convert single family homes into rentals that have inflated the entire housing market. Not only are we dealing with high rents in apartments, but we are also not able to buy a house either because those costs have been inflated which is a disturbing trend. High monied interests can get lower-interest-rate loans than the average consumer, so they go into bidding wars over a single-family home with the average consumer with no true loss of money to them. They have created a frenzied demand for single family homes by outbidding average American citizens for single family homes in some cases by hundreds of thousands of dollars with all cash offers. In turn, common American citizens followed their same casino-like gambling behavior by raising each other in higher bids, tactics, frenzies, and inflated the housing market higher. The supply of homes that people can buy has been decreased through their heinous acts, as many of their rentals sit empty collecting dust because their houses are too inflated. It is no wonder why the American people feel that buying a home today is only possible by taking a chance at playing the lotto and luckily winning a gambling casino game. The years of being able to purchase a home by earning honest wages through hard work and determination is slipping away quickly.
On top of all of this, Wall Street turns around and places those single-family homes on the stock market for investors to make more money off of the great American tragedy. Single-family homes should be used for the purpose of shelter, not to be placed on the stock market for speculation and passive income. There are other ways to earn a passive income, and housing should not be one of them. The elite are having a shared celebration as they leap forward flipping single family homes from being an owned property that once created wealth for the American people into being a rented property that steals wealth from the American people. This act has taken away freedom from the American people that don’t own a home yet, and steals wealth from future generations. The people of America that would have normally been able to buy a home to create a legacy of wealth and stability turn into renters to the monopoly of greed.
What the Losing Side is Like in the Real-Life American Monopoly Game
Living in the real-life American monopoly game, I have seen what the losing side of the elite’s game feels like. I have lived in apartments in many years past and have never seen the kind of treatment from the landlords that I have seen in recent years. It is scary being a renter these days, as the elite landlords have not been treating their tenants with respect or kindness as they used to. I will give you a personal example of what I have been through as a renter for the last four years. After my divorce, I moved into a townhouse apartment from the largest apartment landlord in America. At first, I thought it was a nice place to live, but over time the property’s quality and standards went downhill. The landlord did not maintain the property very well, was not trustworthy, and drew up shady contracts to sign that took away my legal rights. Maintenance did come quickly when I put in work orders but were not trustworthy and would come to the apartment without notifying me first even when I requested it in which I felt was an invasion of privacy. The gates to the apartment complex were left open because they were broken, and when they were working they gave codes that did not work to open the gates. The garage door to my apartment broke a few times and opened randomly as well. The property was not secure, and I felt unsafe living there.
The landlord charged monthly for pest control, but they didn’t come out monthly. Even when I requested for pest control, they would sometimes take a week or longer to come. The apartments were infested with mice, centipedes, ants, flies, spiders, cockroaches, and bugs I couldn’t identify. I had to pass by dead rodents and birds on walks outside. One time on my patio, there was a large tarantula in which they told me they could not help me with. The apartment had a mold problem, in which two mushrooms grew out from under the flooring in the bathroom. I tested underneath the flooring where the mushrooms were for mold with an at home kit, and it came back positive for Penicillium spp. species which is a mold that was dangerous to my family’s health. I addressed the health concerns of the apartment with the management, and they didn’t respond back. The landlord wanted to charge me large fines for trash valet for not having a bag tied. I paid for a monthly trash valet service that I didn’t use because I was afraid to be fined by the landlord. Plus, the timeframes for the service were during hours that were inconvenient for me, so to me the service was useless. The dumpster at the apartment overflowed with trash, smelled, and was not maintained by the staff.
The property had foundation damage as there were cracks on the ceiling. I asked for certain areas of my apartment and the wood on the patio outside that was rotting to be painted, and they told me to paint it myself. The apartment land flooded during the 2024 storm, but the landlord did not do any flood prevention to the property. During the 2021 ice storm, the pipes burst in the apartment building I lived in, and all of the residents were without running water for a week. Every Monday, the leave blowers spent hours with disturbing loud machines blowing around leaves, but the fallen leaves still remained on the property so in essence they disturbed everyone for nothing.
During my time living at the apartment, they did two major projects and hired people that had poor standards. They replaced the roof, but the people that did the project left nails all over the driveway that could have gone into my car tires. After the roof was replaced, the roof leaked at the front door when it rained. They did a tree trimming project and left branches all over the yard for days. On both projects, they ripped out the screen from the window. I went to the front office to tell them of what happened, and the office staff offered no empathy, and told me that they are not giving me special treatment. I told them I am not asking for special treatment, but to be treated humanely with decency and respect by them in which they did not want to offer to me. The office staff response to me was to move, which made me feel that they are not going to try to improve or make things better. It was like one bad thing after another at that place.
When I approached the office staff in regard to my concerns they dismissed and ignored my concerns. The management turned over frequently while I lived at the apartment, and after the management flipped, they started to increase my rent by 20% per year. When they raised my rent by 20% the first time, I tried to negotiate with them which did not work. I think they were pushing me out to get a new resident in. I told the landlord I was a single mom living off of one income, and that the yearly rent increases were more than my yearly wage increases at my job. They told me they didn’t care and could get a new resident that would pay “market rate” for the apartment. The next year they raised my rent by 20% again. In all my years of living in an apartment, rents have never increased like this. My rent went from being affordable at $1730/month in 2020 to unaffordable at $2570/month in 2024, which was a 48% increase over a 4-year timeframe; plus, an additional $130/month for services I didn’t use. I feel that our local governments should have imposed some type of rent control, but they didn’t as they allowed the landlord to be socially irresponsible by making living conditions worse rather than better for me and my family. The property should have been in pristine condition with all of the high costs, but instead the landlord pocketed the large profits for their own benefit rather than investing it back into the property to make it better for the residents that lived there. Landlords like this are bad landlords and are not socially responsible, as they make living conditions worse rather than better for people.
Apartment and single-family home private equity landlords along with American property software companies are unethical and dishonest as they work together as a tag team to inflate the American people’s rents which benefits them to make more money. Private equities go into high debt and need to make up that debt by inflating rents and not maintaining the property very well. Because of their contributions in creating a rigged system that mainly benefits landlords, they have forced people into being renters that don’t want to be renters. They have created less choice rather than more choice, as the housing prices are too inflated. Families are being pushed into tiny communal apartments and houses with communal corporate landlords in control of our living situation. Rather than dreams they offer nightmares; that is the legacy they leave behind. I felt pushed out of the apartment by the landlords excessive rent increases, and for all of the mean things they did to me while I lived there. Over time I realized this is a really bad landlord, and it was time to go.
Something Has to Give as the Real-Life American Monopoly Game is Not Working for Many People
Living in the elite’s real life monopoly game has been challenging to say the least. Housing inflation has taken many of my freedoms away, as well as people in similar situations as me. Investors have made housing so expensive that the people are indebted to work a lifetime for corporations to pay for a single-family home. I feel that prioritizing corporations is important as a leader of this country, but our country has grown corporate monopolies that allow the investors to overshadow the people’s chance to attain a better life. Due to these acts, the government has taken away rights granted to the people in the Declaration of Independence. Written in the Declaration of Independence is “We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness”. By not being paid enough by corporations, people are given a lower chance of survival as they have difficulty in affording inflated housing, food, clothing, healthcare, and a higher education which goes against the foundation of our country. People can no longer afford to live in this country which goes against the Declaration of Independence. Monopolies and oligarchies have a lot of wealth and power to instill fear in us if we speak up against the broken economy, which is in part why our democracy is diminishing. The idea of America has been a dream of what a country could be. A country of ideals, hopes, and dreams. A country of possibilities and not peril. The question to ask ourselves is will we be able to govern through a democracy or allow the small group of elite oligarchs to continue to enrich themselves at the expense of their own citizenry.
I hope you will be able to see that something needs to give as this is an unsustainable path and is not working for many people that live in this country. My hope in writing this blog is to make America a better place to live, and more affordable again. I have written a post last week that titled Home Prices are Inflating Faster than Incomes in America in which I would encourage you to read, a Resource page to help people in need, as well as a Basic Bills Tracker and Budget Planner in which you can find directly on my blog Shop page and on Etsy.
