All slack has been removed from society. All pricing has been maximized. Every interaction capitalized. Every point of extraction extracted from.
People living in these situations now live from crisis to crisis. Not paying rent/dealing with the consequences is just another on the list. At some point people just become numb. Modern society at the peripherals is not sustainable. There will always be people in the peripherals, but society is now structured to require middle class type stability as the bottom baseline for an individual to survive.
and the middle class is being destroyed
Has been. You could've said that 10 years ago, but it's completely gone now. People you think are middle class are probably just upper lower class.
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2025/11/on...
And yes, it's inflation adjusted