Demand for human labor is declining, and as a result, wages are declining.
Which is precisely why wages shouldn’t be decided through market mechanisms
Or maybe we get rid of the “wages = living” bit.
We could all negotiate for the full value of our labor a lot better if we didn’t have a noose around our neck forcing us to work.
I have nothing in principle against people earning a living through dignified, honest, collective labor, with the basics being guaranteed such as housing, healthcare, education, nutrition, energy and a few others.
But that’s socialism!
Yes, I’m what you would call a communist. Or a tankie, depending on your mood!
Filthy communist wanting healthcare, security, and better society. Think about the billionaires’ children, how will they become neop babies?
Um, life was maybe easy-ish for some boomers. Plenty of them got reamed by the many boom/bust cycles. Boomers lived through stagflation, two oil embargoes, Vietnam, the 80s fad of downsizing/rightsizing, many losing farms in the 80s, the 90s rush to offshore and outsource everything, the deskilling of Americans and the export of most manufacturing, NAFTA reordering things, the rise of big box retailers and further deskilling, the disintegration of unions, the Wall Street crash of 1987, the dot-com bubble burst in early 00s, the real-estate crash in 2008, etc. Gen X and millennials suffered some of these later ones, too, or dealt with the fallout from their parents having these struggles.
The ageist shit is just a distraction. Generations are not really a thing; it’s more of a marketing strategy and also a way for the elites to further atomize Americans. Don’t fall for it.
It is more about how policies were set at the national level. Those policies have benefited them throughout their lifetimes. Boomers going to college. College is affordable. Boomers buying house make family. House good and affordable on one wage. Boomers working hard providing for wife and 2.5 kiddos. Jobs pay good and has pension. Family affordable one wage. Boomers retiring???
Not to mention their wholesale willingness, as a cohort, to pull up the ladders that they used to raise themselves, assuring that subsequent generations would have it much harder, and would likely fail to achieve the same cornerstone successes of prosperity.
At the same time, Boomers have a penchant for constantly gaslighting any opinion or statement that might pierce the insulating lies in whatever trumped up mockery they call an identity.
It’s why Boomers are always regaling the world with anecdotes of how hard they worked and how much they deserve their stations in life, when anyone with the ability to parse history can see that Baby Boomers objectively had the easiest, most rewarding slice of American prosperity in the history of the country. In the richest nation on Earth.
For sure. I found it impressive they learned nothing from Vietnam and went right ahead with Afghanistan and Iraq. I guess at least with the next war we’ll get Gaza Resort by Trump.
Yeah anyone is capable of taking their situation for granted.
Are people under the impression everyone who had a 40 hour a week job had their own house?
Everyone? No. Far, far more people than now? Absolutely.
In 1990 my mom stayed home and raised us. My dad worked a measly construction job and we lived in a two story, 5 bedroom house (which they lost after the 2008 collapse, I took it over and lost in 2012).
My mom was also able to borrow against that house over and over again for cars.
Around 1996 my dad got his CDLs and drove a coal truck.
We bought that house for 30k.
My aunt bought a huge colonial house with 8 bedrooms for roughly 60k in 1979-80. She never worked. Her husband was a coal miner.
When it burned down in 1996, she bought a beautiful brick home in a wonderful neighborhood for 100k. She sold that same house recently for 600k.
The difference is absurd.
A “measly construction job” is a good paying one. A person working at a McDonald’s for 40 hours a week at that time would not be able to afford an apartment let alone a house. When your aunt bought her house interest rates were in the teens, today they are 7% and that’s a record high. My parents bought a house in 1976 for $28,000 dad worked full time at a city job plus always had a second job or side hustle. Our family would strip copper to make ends meet. Mom cooked every meal, eating out was a rare treat. Never once did we even order pizza, Mom make it with powder dough. We didn’t have cable. Got by on two junker cars sometimes one.
Every generation has it’s challenges. This is the first to have a public circle jerk/pity party
Every generation has it’s challenges
And the younger ones have an objective, mathematically proven worse version of the challenges than the earlier ones did
Nobody claimed it was ever perfect, only that it’s worse now, which it is
Haha I love it when kids tell me what my life was like.
Back to my original point. No, not everyone who worked 40 hours a week could afford a house.
You can wrap yourself in self pity or you can be resourceful, your choice.
love it when kids tell me what my life was like
Didn’t happen, I said what it was like now by comparison
No, not everyone who worked 40 hours a week could afford a house.
And no body ever claimed that
You can wrap yourself in self pity or you can be resourceful, your choice
Lol, you have no idea what you’re talking about
Mate, a smaller percentage of our generation has houses. Wrap ya head around that. No one’s arguing every other generation had a house, that would be idiotic.
So self pity it is
Yours.
My dad’s construction job was working for my mom’s brother for next to minimum wage. Not that it matters.
A minimun wage construction job? Someone is lying to you. Dad was probably working the glory hole at kwik-e-mart. No bank is going to give a house loan to someone making minimum wage.
100%
My mom worked at Sizzlers in the early 90s and her husband, a no-degree “engineer” were able to buy a 4 bedroom house with a huge yard and 2 car garage in the DC suburbs (MD side), with two cars. A few years later, they upgraded to an even bigger house in an even nicer part of the county.
Objectively poor people had houses that they owned, in places people wanted to live. None of that has been possible for at least a decade or more. Millennials are now in our 40s and have more education and experience than Boomers ever did, yet the ROI and QOL differentials are staggering.
Don’t let Boomers gaslight you; they collectively played this game on the easiest mode.
Hey throw millenials in this too please.
And GenX. I bet a lot of them feel it too unless dementia has already set in.
nah yall are cringe and unfunny, pick up some humor first and we’ll include yall.
Maybe gen x could like, do something, for once. Maybe then people would care about them.
alright that’s enough of my generational slander quota for the day. Have a good day random internet people :)
Okay Gen Skibidi toilet, peak humor…
Thats Alpha tho…
Skibidi represents every generation raised in the brain rot of the algorithm so Gen Z onwards.
Skibidi Toilet’s audience is predominantly Generation Alpha, those born since the early 2010s. While the series does not appear on YouTube Kids, an app designed for children under 13, it is popular among elementary school students. Kim Kardashian’s 11-year-old daughter gave her a necklace reading “Skibidi Toilet”. Some members of older generations have called the show “brain rot”, while other internet users argue Generation Z had its share of bizarre memes.
Skibidi is brain rot, but brain rot is not Skibidi
Watch out, they might “prank” you by tormenting a homeless person or something
eat my bum worms
What exactly do you think we aren’t doing? I’ve worked for years except when I was a stay-at-home parent. I even owned my own company and employed others for a while. I try to spend at least two hours of my time a week on political action. What else do I have to do for you to think people should care that I exist? Come up with more fresh memes?
Fuck off and die.
Watch out the propaganda of government and ruling class trying to divide the public and turn people against each others. Boomers are idiots but owning a house is peanuts compared to billionares expenses or the money being spent on military weapons.
I’ve gotta say i admire Zoomers a lot. Im a 1990 millenial and most of my generation simply put their heads down and pushed through and tried to emulate their boomers parents while not living their boomer parents reality, destroying themselves in the process. It seems that almost collectively your generation has said FUCK THIS SHIT and made moves to end it.
Its really impressive.
I don’t know any millennials like that. You sure they aren’t Gen-X?
I don’t know about that. I’m a 1990 millennial and the vast majority of ppl my age collectively said fuck giving the extra effort for no return. I remember reading in my 20s that millennials pretty much gave up on retirement and started traveling.
Literally the poorest condition house would cost 100% of 8 years of take-home pay of my engineer salary where I live. That’s before accounting for loan interest on 20% down payment (I have 5%) which would push it up to 18 full years of my labor.
A single-family house is simply not worth 15+ years of my life, and I’m actively looking into cheaper options.
I personally am capable of working any boomer in their prime into exhausting while I’m still pushing for hours more. The whole “millenials are lazy” is corporate bullshit designed to make parents think their kids are just lazy and not being ripped off by the system they demand exists.
Pull a 16hr shift working network engineering during an outage, then come back to work in 8hrs for another full day on a Monday, then when the boomer stops having their mental break down they can apologize in person to every millennial they talked shit about.
Oh, and because you’re an engineer, NO OVERTIME! YOU SALARY BITCH! THOSE HOURS ARE INCLUDED!
Ok that’s fine I’ll just be leaving that much earlier on friday
I’ve got three meetings and an unscheduled emergency requiring 90% of the IT staff to sit on a conference call that says you’ll be staying late Friday, too.
Ok that’s fine I just won’t be coming in at all on monday then.
And if it’s going to keep happening like this we’re gonna have a conversation about renegotiating my employment, because this is not what we agreed to.
Ah, not a team player I see.
Good!
“We’ve got one that knows their worth! Stuff 'em in the oubliette before they infect the others! Ya want unions? This is how ya get unions!!1!¡!”
When you signed your employment contract one of the stipulations was that the company maintains the right to change the conditions of the contact at anytime without your knowledge or consent. So your choices are, arrive on time to work Monday morning or the company will presume that you have abandoned your position without notice and that you have forfeitted any potential severance agreement and any expectation of future a reference. We understand that we’re on crunch time but we are doing everything in our power to scale our workforce to our dynamic needs and we appreciate your continued patience and professionalism.
Yeah that sounds healthy in the long run
Hey Gen Z, first time being gaslit by boomers? Heh, yyeeeaaaahhhhhhh…they do that. Now imagine having them as your parent, and you’re 5, and you have to just live with their bullshit.
~Sincerely, Gen X and the older millenials.
As shitty as my parents were, I’m suddenly grateful that they were pre-boomer. Still had to deal with stuff like listening to their bigotry, but having a dad that grew up during the Depression, and his own dad was out of work for much of it, meant that he never gave me shit for not being as successful as him.
“it’ll all make sense when you’re an adult”
well. i’m an adult now. some would even say old or middle aged. it still doesn’t make sense
my parents were silent generation.
My parents were Gen X but they faithfully followed the boomer mindset
I’m so glad as I’m close to my 40s I know so many fellow millinials who still thinks utter bullshit.
I know many people in their 50s who are Boomer as fuck.
40s as well for me
The real Boomers were the assholes we met along the way.
Unfortunately, a lot of Gen X went that way.
Nuance is hard. It’s all just binary, isn’t it?
Never said it was?
That’s because pidgeonholing people into “generations” has always been stupid. The common thread is an absolute lack of empathy. Let’s just call them “late boomers”. And if there are decent boomers, just call them “early Xers” or “late silent” accordingly.
However, I’m old enough to remember watching the boomers getting gaslit by the “Greatest Generation”.
But yeah, as an Xer, it seems like we got the short straw. The boomers sucked all the air out of the room for so very long, that if the (mostly boomer- and Greatest Generation- led) media stopped giving them all the attention for a moment, it was to only label us the “slacker generation”.
By the time the boomer narcissism’s grip was loosened, the focus was mostly on to Gen Y, and if we are being honest here, due to their numbers, the media narcissism around Gen Y reminds me very much of the boomers, with Gen Z quickly catching up.
I suspect that’s very much due to a numbers game - if advertising dollars figure they can center a particular group enough, they can scoop up all those $$$ by selling a certain age range a story about themselves…
Me and my fiancee both work full time to just barely survive each month with no savings because the CoL is so fucking high it’s unmaintainable. And if you reply with “just move”, first: I’m in the midwest, it’s not AS bad out here, and second: Moving is a privilege, it’s expensive, time consuming, and often times you end up in a worse spot than you were before
I’d love to know your version of “just barely” is you have two adults working full time in a 2 person household.
Maybe your mortgage is far higher then I’m imagining.
I live in an apartment, but it’s overpriced, and it’s just me. This world is designed to be a 2 person household.
So I have to imagine you’re living beyond your means. I’m living beyond my means too, but I also don’t have a decent wage either. So living at all is living beyond my means.
You should add up your whole house income, divide that number by 4, and THAT number should be what your mortgage shouldn’t be higher than.
I suspect your mortgage is probably much higher than that number.
Either that or we have different definitions of “just getting by”.
Lets use WA as an example. Average house costs 588k interest rate is about 7% now. So you’ll be paying $4300 per month. So man that’s rough but surely there are some cheaper that average units out there! If you want to be anywhere near where the majority of the jobs are even a lot drive away you are going to have a hard time getting below 450k or 3300 per month.
Well maybe you can rent cheaper right? 2BR 1.5 bath where again most of the jobs are can easily run you $2000-2500 which seems like a very nice savings however whereas your fixed rate mortgage is you know fixed your rent will probably exceed the payment on your mortgage within 10-12 years and since you have no equity you have no cushion to fall back on if you ever experience a downturn you could find yourself a bum on the street. Hell if you aren’t able to save anything you will definitely be heading for bum status when you get old enough that you can’t work. Holding on to being able to own something is an investment in not descending into desperate poverty later.
I think its weird how people don’t believe people can actually be struggling in America without also somehow being the source of their own problems. It’s like people like you have broken brains.
I think its weird how people don’t believe people can actually be struggling in America without also somehow being the source of their own problems. It’s like people like you have broken brains.
Decades of “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” Republican propaganda will do that. So many Americans have been convinced that if you aren’t wealthy, you only have yourself to blame. And if you’re poor, you are inherently flawed as a human.
Hell if you aren’t able to save anything you will definitely be heading for bum status when you get old enough that you can’t work. Holding on to being able to own something is an investment in not descending into desperate poverty later.
I picked this out because it illustrates how utterly fucked up our system is, because we need housing to be:
-
Expensive, because it’s the default retirement investment vehicle for the working classes.
-
Cheap, so that young people just starting out can buy it.
See a problem?
-
That formula hasn’t been valid for like, 20 years?
Yeah that inital response gave me the impression that they live in a completely different situation than what I, and most of the people I know IRL are experiencing. Typical rent prices out here are 120% the sum of 2 weeks of minimum wage pay, not including utilities
≥ Mortgage You lost me there, renting is much more expensive than paying a mortgage off
Yep if you rent for 60 years you’ll have nothing and spend more by far than the cost of the mortgage.
My rent is around 1800 euro, if I’d buy this apartment, my mortgage would be around 3000. That’s for more than half a mil. After 30 years I’d have paid off more than a mil.
The company I rent from just got their financing much earlier, and in very big quantities. (Eg it has 100s to 1000s apartments and houses.)
Every year I make more money, every year the place I live is more difficult to buy.
If you lived in America your rent would be 3000 and your mortgage 3000. 10 years from now you would be paying 4000 whilst they continue to pay 3000 or 2000 even if they bought during any of the 4 crashes we have had in the last 20 years.
One key difference between renting and buying is that you can then sell the apartment or house. You can’t claw back rent after being a good tenant for 30 years.
True true, I try to invest most of the difference, hopefully that will be worth something too when I need it.
Depends where and how you live. My rent is $800 a month, but some mortgages are thousands of dollars.
Where the fuck do you live with $800 rent? Middle of Montana? Dead center of Death Valley? Gtfo.
Ikr, just saw an ad for a nearby apartment wanting 1,200$ a month for a studio apartment… in Nebraska
800 if split 5 ways probably
Lakewood, a suburb of Cleveland. It’s overpriced as hell.
$800 Rent is cheap in this economy
Yeah, but I’m not in your economy. Average wage around here is lkke $10/hr.
You pay $500 less than the average American for rent. I think you may be lacking the perspective necessary to engage productively with this topic.
My rent is $500 less than whatever metric you’re using, but our local ecconomy is also lowers than yours.
Average wage here is 10/hr for a factory job. I’ve heard some places like Seattle make $20/hr just working at starbucks.
And keep in mind my rent is basically 1 room.
Again, the “how you live” thing again, in your opinion, what is the “correct” way to live?
You are lucky. Do not assume everyone else is as lucky as you.
You are a piece of shit
😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆
You just need to put in some extra effort or get a side hustle like we did. /S elder millennial.
I had to work construction 60+ hours a week and sell drugs at the fucking mid level just to afford my 30 thousand dollar down payment on my house, and it still took me till I was 25 to do it. It was bullshit ten years ago and it’s just gotten worse since then.
::strangles the shit out of them with their own bootstraps::
Don’t worry. All that work you’re doing will pay off… your landlord’s fifth mortgage.
In my case I’m subleasing so I’m paying off my Landlords’ Landlord’s fifth mortgage
Landlords all the way down.
Landlords are parasites.
Moving is a privilege,
Poor people move all the time. It’s a fucking wild take to call moving a privilege. Though I do agree with the last bit about sometimes (or maybe even often) being in a worse position than before
I read something in The Atlantic about how people used to move about every three years and that sounds insane to me.
And also, the phrase “I just read something thing in The Atlantic” makes me feel even older than my gout and shingles.
You’re going to have to rename yourself to Boomer Humor Doomergod. (Sorry about the gout and shingles.)
As soon as I’m on my Good Screen tm I’ll do it
When I was young we averaged moving every 4.5 years, but for reasons, I got very accustomed to changing environments every year or so, and as an adult I’ve struggled to stay in one place for the clean start it offers, but moving is so expensive now, and I don’t like driving anywhere near enough to be a nomad van dweller type.
I can maybe do it one more time in the near future, assuming money and housing values don’t tank first, but that’s probably it for the rest of my days. I hope it really scratches the anxious itch for change, cuz if not…
I have a feeling the poors don’t move to different cities/states that often.
Look at this guy he knows all the poor people.
Poor people move all the time.
Yes, that’s why all the inner city projects are devoid of people. They’ve all moved somewhere else because it’s so easy for them.
I can install some pull handles on your bootstraps for a small monthly subscription fee. No, you won’t own them.
Exactly! Same boat, I am too poor to move! Due to missed payments on mortgage, credit cards, and medical bills, our credit score is abysmal. There is no way we can get a new mortgage or pass credit checks for an apartment. On top of that I don’t have the time or money to invest into the house so there are many things that need to be fixed, some of these absolutely need to before selling it so I also can’t just sell either. 3rd, you’re right. Wherever I do end up moving (if somehow we did get approved), it’s probably going to cost more due to higher interest rates, and it will most likely cost more. We are praying to make it a few more years until stupid daycare is done so we can finally make ends meet a little…
I never thought I would be in this bad of a situation in my life, but here I am and I just want to survive each day. Thinking about money every day for years now is tiring and stressful. They have a name for it, its called poverty brain.
I had a basic but nice first house, but I sold it to move for a new job. I even was lucky enough to still make a bit of a profit. But not enough, and now I’m stuck back with renting again, can’t really afford to buy a new house with interest rates, prices, inflation eroding my income in other areas, and poor availability. I think back to my parents buying their first house and how nice it was by comparison, for a fraction of the price even adjusted for inflation and it gives me a really unfortunate sense of perspective, much less hearing stories like yours or from friends I know who are in a bad situations. I’m not struggling, but prospects for improving things aren’t great either, and that seems to be the case for everyone I know.
The US requiring credit cards is part of the problem why people have money troubles. It’s a lot less transparent than just using bankcards (or cash). The whole credit system mostly benefits older people and richer people than starters. It should be that if you don’t have debt your need to pay monthly on you should be able to take a mortgage for the max amount. In the end if I can spend 1000$ a month for a mortgage and I have zero other monthly loan payments I should be able to get a loan which requires a payment of 1000$.
Edit: budgeting using a free tool like Actual Budget can help you give some more headspace
Well that should be easy to fix. Just have a world war with a general draft and all for about 5 years. Then another one soon after in an arbitrary place. That sort of thing really brings people together, and also kills many of them, all contributing to a healthy housing market!
Many in GenX does, though.
https://www.redfin.com/news/homeownership-rate-by-generation-2023/
I mean not really that far of from boomers.
78.8% vs 26%?
GenX is 72% according to that site.
Cripes…
26% of adult Gen Zers owned a home in 2023, little changed from 2022. Meanwhile, the homeownership rate for millennials rose to 55% from 52%, and the rate for Gen X climbed to 72% from 70%.
Among all my friends, there are two clear common denominators between those who rent and those who own houses. The ones renting have office jobs and live in the capital, while the ones who own houses live in smaller cities or the countryside and work in manual labor.
I’m not saying correlation is causation, but it’s an interesting observation - and so far, it applies to 100% of my friends.
Or have office jobs and commute a bit longer.
People say I’m crazy for commuting 1,5 hours (one way). But I get to go home to my own property. Especially now with hybrid working still being a thing, I only go to the office once or twice a week.
I must agree with the people saying you’re crazy for having that long commute. That’s over a month spent getting to and from work every year. Time is the most valuable asset in the entire world. By working we’re trading time for money but for the time spent commuting you’re not even getting paid. I would seriously consider trying to find an alternative solution to this.
If they go to the office twice a week with an hour and a half commute each way that’s six hours a week driving. So 52 weeks a year that’s 312 hours or 13 days. Still not great but my commute is about 30min one way. I work five days a week so five hours a week, which would still be about 10 2/3 days a year. They also said they only have to commute once OR twice a week so they still probably drive less then the 13 days a year.
I’m just saying, sounds like a good deal
I’m located in The Netherlands, the housing market here is fucked. An alternative solution would be to find something to rent closer to work, but I would pay 1,5 times as much in rent, for a small apartment in a neighborhood where I don’t want to live. Yes, I’m spending more time on my commute, but I also have more disposable income each month that I can save and invest. If all goes to plan, I can retire earlier and live mortgage free within 20 years. In essence, I’m trading a bit of time now, to have more spare time and a better financial position in the near future. I’m taking it.
ted to get the fuck out of here when she said: a lot of people wanted the lawnmower, but she doesn’t sell it to anyone (she mant she didn’t sell it to immigrants). And: “no offence to you, but your generation
do you drive, or take public transport? Americans will assume you drive, and then it is a pure waste of time. On the other hand, spending 3 hours on a train, one can sleep, work, watch a movie, read, whatever.
I drive, public transport in The Netherlands is horrible outside of the major cities. Even in the major cities it’s “meh” to be honest. The PR department of The Netherlands does a great job at portraying our country as some sort of engineering marvel / paradise. The truth is that mobility in The Netherlands is expensive and in case of public transport, it lacks proper connection to regions outside of the cities. The only reason why we “love” riding our bicycle around, is that it’s the only affordable mobility option.
Many people that cover longer distances, like myself, have a company leasing car. So it doesn’t hit my wallet as much.
I suspect you have much higher standards than Americans. Just curious, how much time/money would it cost for you to take public transport to work? (for Americans, something 70-80 miles away is literally an impossible commute without a car, except for a few exceptions along the NYC, Philadelphia, DC axis.
It would cost me about 75 euro’s (return) for a 4 hr commute (one way) with public transport to cover a distance of 150km (one way). This is a mixture of transportation modes, including bus and train.
Comparison with the car is quite difficult, but using a car cost calculator website, it says that for my car the average price per kilometer would be ~0,20 euro. So that would mean that the round trip would cost me roughly 60 euro’s by car. As for time, a one way commute to the office is about 1,5h to 2h by car, depending on traffic. So, twice as fast and 1/4th cheaper.
My company covers car expenses in the company leasing contract. All I have to pay is taxes to use the car privately, which in The Netherlands is quite high (compared to for example Belgium). So I pay 350 euro (net) a month to use the car privately. The mobility budget for the leasing car represents about 1000 euro gross a month. But of course if I were to take public transport, my company would reimburse that, but I would have to give up the car.
To be fair, the situation here in The Netherlands is not much different than you describe, outside the larger cities that is. Most people commuting to these cities from the smaller towns and villages are still heavily car dependent. Even within my own town, public transport is just a sham. If I were to take the bus to get groceries, I would have to wait 2 hours for the next bus that takes me back home. Ain’t nobody got time for that.
Most boomers don’t know what it’s like to work 40+ hours a week. Their parents made the system better, and they assume they didn’t fuck it up.
I’d say that they don’t remember. They probably did when they first started out. Their first starting out phase was much shorter though.
I used to work in a consulting firm for import/export driven businesses. Almost every single client was a Boomer who inherited the business from their parents, knew fuckall about business, and spent their time mainlining Fox News and lamenting the laziness of their workers and their general dissatisfaction with trends in America.
The uniform dearth of awareness and irony of their entire existence was astounding. Most, if not all, would be otherwise unemployable personalities, in any other scenario.
That’s a class issue, not a generational one. Nepo babies are a thing for all age brackets.
I think that’s splitting hairs. Both things are valid.
My parents holding fast with “well, it’s always been like that” made me realize how big this generational divide is.
There are good boomers who get it, yes. There are also some really dumb ones who have literally no clue what kind of world they helped create. Full stop.
And there are some Nazi gen z. We have to pull together the good ones from every generation and become helpers together. We can’t bitch about the ones that are shit, there are shit people in every generation, so it’s a waste of time and a distraction.
Yes, 100% this. There are plenty of boomers that got reamed by various elitist schemes, too. People right on the cusp of retirement only to have everything wiped out by something like an Enron or the real-estate bubble and they get to keep working another 10+ years…I think people have rose-colored glasses when it comes to the things boomers faced, too. It was not all sunshine and roses for everyone in that age bracket. It is lunacy to suggest that it was/is.
There may be some boomers doing nefarious things like Blackstone, driving up the cost of living for everyone, but I bet there are some very, very young people in schemes like that, too, making lots of money. Or individuals like fElon’s boyz - I don’t think the Dogebags are boomers. And fElon himself is Gen X…
Then there are headlines that I see like this that run counter to virtually everything you’d hear about Gen Y in recent years:
https://www.newsnationnow.com/business/your-money/millennials-financially-baby-boomers/
Lastly when the bullshit inter-generational warfare is whipped up, I remember this…
fElon
You call him like that every time. Please stop. It feels like Russian propaganda bot is talking. It’s bad and not funny to distort people’s names/surnames
Lighten up, Francis.
Fuck that. This “high road” shit is what led us here in the first place. He dead names constantly. He’s a “big, stwong alpha,” he can take it.
lol imagine getting triggered by this. Just say it. You’re an Elon fan boy.
If Elon can’t respect people’s names and allows deadnaming on Twitter, I think it’s only fair to not respect his name.
This is some whataboutism. If he did this, it doesn’t mean that it should be acceptable.
Respect is earned. And generally mutual. You don’t respect people, I won’t respect you. I see no reason to respect anything about that Nazi.
In this case you can just call them by their surname, as they do with strangers
Ever wonder how “work ethic” became a trait that defines the quality of an individual? You can probably guess. Religion. Which of course needed people to work hard so they could donate more money to them.
My dad worked two full time jobs for a while to help the family get ahead while we were little. I think spending time with his young children would have been time better spent for everyone. He did stop when we got to school age. And he did spend a lot of time with us. Was a scout master, tball coach, all that. So I know he probably would have rather been with us than working that extra job. But from a young age it was drilled into him that work came first.
Now with younger people less into religion. We see more and more who realize that working hard for someone else doesn’t need to be a defining characterist of a person’s quality.
Maybe his motivation wasn’t so much “work ethic” as it was “taking responsibility to care for one’s family”, since he did stop the extra job when he could and spent time with you. He sounds like a great dad!
I mean part of it was good financial sense. Money saved early has longer to grow. But I don’t think they “needed” the money that bad. Two full time jobs is nuts. And there were plenty more instances where he clearly communicated that work ethic was equal to a persons value. But yeah, he was a good Dad.
I think they see the boomers doing nothing, but having everything, and the dream of having a house, two cars, and 2.5 kids was not something they were ever told they could have. They grew up with depressed millennials close enough in age to still be friends, who tell them “I’m fucked, so you don’t have a chance in hell!” And they’re right. With prices going up and wages stagnant or going down, they don’t ever get to save anything. And why should they? At the rate houses are climbing, that down payment keeps running away from them. And still, the only thing they will ever be able to pay for is a dump in a shitty part of town.
Until we bring back hope for the future, we will keep seeing people give fewer fucks.
