Wall Street Journal Lauds America’s ‘Extreme Renters Who Own Nothing,’ Including Their Own Clothes
More than one in four Americans say they rent or lease their car, clothing, electronics or furniture, according to a new survey commissioned by the personal-finance firm Credit Karma.
The following report was first published on August 25th, 2024, on winepressnews.com.
With everything becoming so expensive and inflated in the United States and western nations, combined with a severe home affordability crisis, and companies shifting their models to reflect subscription, renting and leasing services, more and more people are becoming forever renters “who own nothing;” to the extreme end where some no longer even own basics such as the shirts off their backs, utensils, and other common items that normally would be owned.
The World Economic Forum has prophesized that this would be exactly the case by 2030. In 2015, the WEF published an essay that expressed what life would probably be like in 2030. The result was many people living in smart cities, living in shared, communal buildings that no one owned; and every single item one could think of was rented, shared, and delivered by drone. This since deleted essay partly reads:
Welcome to the year 2030. Welcome to my city – or should I say, “our city”. I don’t own anything. I don’t own a car. I don’t own a house. I don’t own any appliances or any clothes.
It might seem odd to you, but it makes perfect sense for us in this city. Everything you considered a product, has now become a service. We have access to transportation, accommodation, food and all the things we need in our daily lives. One by one all these things became free, so it ended up not making sense for us to own much.
[…] It made no sense for us to own cars anymore, because we could call a driverless vehicle or a flying car for longer journeys within minutes.
In our city we don’t pay any rent, because someone else is using our free space whenever we do not need it. My living room is used for business meetings when I am not there.
Once in awhile, I will choose to cook for myself. It is easy – the necessary kitchen equipment is delivered at my door within minutes. Since transport became free, we stopped having all those things stuffed into our home. Why keep a pasta-maker and a crepe cooker crammed into our cupboards? We can just order them when we need them.
This also made the breakthrough of the circular economy easier. When products are turned into services, no one has an interest in things with a short life span. Everything is designed for durability, repairability and recyclability. The materials are flowing more quickly in our economy and can be transformed to new products pretty easily.
Shopping? I can’t really remember what that is. For most of us, it has been turned into choosing things to use. Sometimes I find this fun, and sometimes I just want the algorithm to do it for me. It knows my taste better than I do by now.
It would appear that these predictions are coming to pass and are on pace to be more fully realized in the next six or so years.
Earlier this month, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) published a report titled, “The Extreme Renters Who Own Nothing, Not Even Their Jeans; It’s not just leasing your car. Christmas trees, camping gear and even caskets are up for rent” – which documents how some young Americans are doing exactly what the WEF wrote about.
The article documents the lives of a handful of young couples who are embracing this forever renting mentality for a variety of different reasons: ease of access and the added mobility to travel more freely, recognizing the depreciation of equipment and hardware tools needed for business, avoiding the high price tags upfront, or simply not needing certain articles of clothing and other items for more than a few times.
Some couples interviewed do own a few items, such as their used vehicles, but practically everything else is rented or leased; such as Brittany Catucci (27) and Eric Markley, who live in a three-story townhouse in Emeryville, California, and also ‘rent their queen-size bed, Catucci’s work clothes and repair tools from Home Depot or AutoZone,’ the WSJ reported.
The WSJ further detailed this new economic shift and what it entails:
Americans are embracing a rent-first lifestyle, preferring to try things out rather than committing to ownership. More than one in four Americans say they rent or lease their car, clothing, electronics or furniture, according to a new survey commissioned by the personal-finance firm Credit Karma.
Some extreme renters say they can save money by not owning their high heels, hand drill or sofa. With prices for so many things much higher than they were a few years ago, it can feel like a cost saver to pay for maternity clothes for a few months or camping equipment for a weekend instead of buying them outright.
A lot of people say they just prefer the flexibility—even if they end up spending more money over time. After all, it is a lot easier to pick up and move if you don’t have to take the kitchen table with you.
The rent-it-all ecosphere isn’t limited to daily necessities. Baby equipment, art pieces and even caskets are available. Potted Christmas trees are also up for rent; they are returned to a forest nursery when the holiday season is over.
The agreements range from standard leases, such as a two-year plan for a rented iPhone, to short-term deals such as monthlong ownership of a sweater. Many funeral homes now offer casket rentals, through which the casket is used for the viewing and funeral service. Then the deceased is placed into another container for cremation.
A super-expensive housing market has changed the way that many Americans think about all types of ownership, especially young Americans. Members of the Greatest Generation might have burned the mortgage note when they paid off their houses; lots of Gen-Zers feel as though they will never be able to buy.
However, the WSJ listed only one con to this lifestyle. “While the types of items for rent have multiplied, they all have the same obvious drawback: You are making payments for something you don’t get to own,” the WSJ wrote.
Read/download the entire report here.
AUTHOR COMMENTARY
The WSJ wrote this in a manner that presents this with rose-colored glasses, and only listed one “drawback” of infinitely paying into something you’ll never own. This is called SLAVERY.
Proverbs 22:7 The rich ruleth over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender. [26] Be not thou one of them that strike hands, or of them that are sureties for debts. [27] If thou hast nothing to pay, why should he take away thy bed from under thee?
These people interviewed have not the foggiest clue about the value of money and what it means to actually own something; but this is what happens when you propagandize a people into believing that money and owning things are just a philosophical concept;
And squeezing every last drop of blood out of the turnip in the economy by our corporatist oligarchs and central bankers, whilst at the same time redistributing wealth and taxing us to death to make sure it is extremely hard to rise-up, while still selling the fairy tale “American dream” and middle-class mirage;
While stripping away any real incentive to work hard because the wages and the cost of everything is astronomical; all while convincing the population they are equals in everything and are entitled to everything, even though we know that’s not true at all; and so on and so forth.
In my view, as I have articulated a number of times before, that I’m not sure what economic model we have these days, but I perceive that it is some sort of fusion of neo-fascism-communism; where the corporatists, private interests, bankers and exchangers control the money supply and have monopolized the economy, squeezing out the little guy; while at the same time taxing us to death with a progressive tax (something ripped straight from the pages of Marx’ Communist Manifesto), salary caps, a myriad of social benefits and hyper-unionization paid for by the tax-payers, open-border policies and subsidizing aliens, laws against animal and plant husbandry, and so forth;
And this will only get worse as the world moves towards CBDCs and a tokenized economy, digital IDs, universal basic income and social credit scores; as more businesses get crushed and the central banks consolidate more power, as the indebted masses get shoved into these 15-minute cities.
Ecclesiastes 5:11 When goods increase, they are increased that eat them: and what good is there to the owners thereof, saving the beholding of them with their eyes? [12] The sleep of a labouring man is sweet, whether he eat little or much: but the abundance of the rich will not suffer him to sleep. [13] There is a sore evil which I have seen under the sun, namely, riches kept for the owners thereof to their hurt. [14] But those riches perish by evil travail: and he begetteth a son, and there is nothing in his hand. [15] As he came forth of his mother’s womb, naked shall he return to go as he came, and shall take nothing of his labour, which he may carry away in his hand. [16] And this also is a sore evil, that in all points as he came, so shall he go: and what profit hath he that hath laboured for the wind?
[7] Who goeth a warfare any time at his own charges? who planteth a vineyard, and eateth not of the fruit thereof? or who feedeth a flock, and eateth not of the milk of the flock? [8] Say I these things as a man? or saith not the law the same also? [9] For it is written in the law of Moses, Thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn. Doth God take care for oxen? [10] Or saith he it altogether for our sakes? For our sakes, no doubt, this is written: that he that ploweth should plow in hope; and that he that thresheth in hope should be partaker of his hope. (1 Corinthians 9:7-10).
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Trump just signed an executive order to throw out blackstone and blackrock and return their real estate holdings to the public