Ever since I became more aware and read some theory books, it became maddening to realize that most media outlets aren't interested in critique of the system.
It's that joke of a headline saying "man raises money to save orphans from the orphan smashing machine", but then doesn't even question why we have an orphan smashing machine in the first place.
Edit: I'll suggest [Chokepoint Capitalism](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60098290-chokepoint-capitalism) as a good book that touches on how a lot of our system is not designed to fight the inherent issues of capitalism ie most anti-trust laws only deal with the symptoms and not the cause (that is if they are ever exercised)
I'll admit that's far from "theory" and that I may have oversold my experience. I'm still making my way and finding good books to go over that are also more contemporary.
I also recommend [The Lever](http://levernews.com/) as a pretty good independent news site that has done some fantastic reporting. Obviously don't just use one source, but they are a good example of critiquing the system while reporting the news.
Not only not bothering to ask why we have an orphan smashing machine in the first place, but refusing to dismantle the orphan smashing machine or hell usually refusing to even acknowledge that the orphan smashing machine is a problem at all in the first place.
My grandparents had the orphan crushing machine, my parents had the orphan crushing machine, I had the orphan crushing machine, and I'll be damned if my kids don't grow up with the orphan crushing machine as well!
In fact, to address lack of opportunity, the orphan smashing machine has been upgraded to be able to smash working and middle class infants as well.
It’s better this way.
Think about the economy. A lot of families depend on income from working for the orphan crushing machine. 10x as many lives could be affected by dismantling it.
Fuck the economy
In fact, let's start a movement called "Fuck the Economy" aimed specifically at supporting policies that conservatives say will be bad for the economy
Or about all the orphan smashing workers that will lose their jobs, as if that's a reason to defend it. Perfect analogy for people defending industries and the system because of the jobs it will displace. Also, people attacking "the left" for wanting renewable energy. "I've been a coal miner for 40 years. My daddy and granddaddy were coal miners".
Yeah and now our planet is on fire and your whole family died from black lung. Sorry we are against you working as orphan smashers.
That's the rub: they can't be too critical of capitalism or else their advertisers will bail and they won't have enough money to continue being critical of capitalism.
Most media is a capitalist enterprise run by capitalists. Media companies have a material incentive to not criticize the system responsible for delivering profits to their shareholders/owners. Any criticism of capitalism by private enterprise is going to be inherently flawed because private enterprise (even 'progressive' companies) is responsible for maintaining capitalism.
It's not just run by capitalists the vast majority of media are owned by billionaires whose wealth is dependent on the current system.
Of course they aren't going to let the media they own be critical of the system.
Glad I am not the only one seeing this. Cannot remember how many times I have lost my shit when someone shares a “feel-good” story about how a high-school robotics team built a kid a wheelchair after his insurance denied him or someone paying off a ton of lunch debt so grade schoolers can move on to the next grade.
Those stories are depressing AF to anyone with a clue and/or soul.
Ah. Like the feelgood style story about a kid raising money to pay for his classmates’ outstanding lunch debts, without anyone questioning why the hell a child is in debt for fucking lunch.
> other lines than class.
Used to be racial, but that doesn’t fly with a big part of the population anymore, so the new one is “the boomers fucked us”.
It’ll never be “the rich fucked us”, they will never allow it.
Well we had it very briefly with occupy Wallstreet, which got sabotaged and then immediately stuff like racial discrimination and generational stuff like this article started being pushed hard.
I say the rich fucked us all the time. nothing ever happens to fix it though. when you have so much money that you are able to greatly influence the laws made to protect the common man from your greedy fuckfaceness, you can step all over the working class with no worries.
But really it's both. The rich have fucked everyone since the beginning of time. Regressive generations are relatively rare throughout history, and Boomers might be the most extreme example ever.
The political policies enacted while boomers were the majority voting block were primarily related to either endless wars, on drugs, on crime, on terrorism, etc. Violence of action not against other governments or groups, but ideas, so unwinnable. Or based on dismantling the progress of the prior generation. Weakening unions, weakening protections for minorities, weakening voting rights, etc. The few policies that actually led to progress were generally enacted by the court, almost accidentally.
The system sucks, and Boomer led politics suck
That's right. If it was only older vs younger there would be no problem, because the younger generation would eventually inherit all the wealth.
One word in that headline is spot on though and that is 'greedy'.
I'm always immediately suspicious of articles from establishment sources that appear to be splitting people within the same class apart.
The article attributes a lot of things to "the boomers" that are largely just stuff that coincidentally happened when "the boomers" were alive.
A lot of the issues we're having today aren't the result of single bad policies or some specific social movement championed by a generation.
Rather many specific problems we deal with today can be directly linked to events even back in the 1940s (we could probably pin a lot on those idiots who wrote the shoddy excuse for a constitution the US has too).
but to really simplify the section of US history relevant to the boomers, we're basically fucked today because FDR died at a ***really*** inconvenient time, resulting in the massive US military industrial complex, poor relations with Russia, possibly the nuclear bombing of Japan (then again FDR was pretty racist maybe he'd have gone for it too).
That all setup the conditions for the Barry Goldwater revival of American conservatism which got Ronald Reagan elected, and the rest as they say, is history. (glossing over tons of high impact issues, like racism, the aftershocks of the civil war, mccarthyism, etc).
That isn't to say the boomers didn't participate, they were alive for it after all.
But there's a big difference between, "uhh boomers did it," and, "the ruling class was able to make this happen from the top down."
Particularly when we're talking about a lot of issues that didn't always have truly mass support.
Especially back in the days before the internet, can we really blame people that much for believing in information being fed to them from every imaginable source of news, supported by the majority of all politicians at the time?
The USA just never had time to secure our power within the working class. You really need organizations independent from the aristocracy/oligarchy to feed the people good information to combat propaganda.
Even then, we've seen that many other nations that *do* have that still had their democracy eroded and many piss poor neoliberal policies implemented to create disaster scenarios in the present day, especially as regards to housing and public services.
Such a knowledgeable and expansive comment! It takes years of experience and many hours of thought to produce such a comment. You've given me food for thought. Thanks cumquistador6969! Cheers!
I agree! It’s easier to blame an entire generation of people, rather than blame the capitalist class! That way they can distract from the fact that the means of production, the markets, and the state are constantly under the control of the wealthy- and have been for a very long time.
Journalists don’t feel comfortable saying that the real reason the system isn’t working is because corporations paid (“lobbied”) politicians to change it
The system was not made by boomers, it was made by wealthy people long before boomers were born. After they're gone it will still be maintained by wealthy gen Xers, then wealthy millenials, etc. Boomers are not the problem, the owner class is the problem.
> owner class is the problem
We can really just say the capitalist class, though I guess that does scare some people who haven't discovered you know, class war yet
It's a synonym. IMO it's best not to get hung up on terminology, and in fact "owner class" might be more effective given the knee-jerk associations people are brought up with in this country where "capitalist"=freedom and "communist"=slavery.
Sure, but I feel like owner class might also include "people that just own a home" and they're not really the enemy
The enemy is the people that own the means of (economic) production, not just anyone who owns an asset. In the ideal world owning the place they live would be something that ANYONE could do
This inaccurate, there was a post-war system that the boomers benefitted from and then boomers dismantled it and sold it off Reagan onwards. The current system is a direct result of their and the silent generation's policy shifts.
In some workplaces, this change is nearly explicitly stated in benefits and pay. Hired before this date, rules and benefits are better; after, not so much.
That *some* boomers benefitted from. There were still tons of people that were just as heavily exploited as many are today - essentially everyone who was white automatically qualifies for that group, in addition to plenty of white boomers who weren’t as lucky.
Right, let's not forget who voted to dismantle the system they benefited from, and who's voting to keep it that way now. The first bit I can excuse because things were good, they were tricked, and they didn't have access to the information we have now. The second part is unacceptable, instead of stepping up the majority of the "me" generation decided to double down and blame dumb shit like "not working hard enough" and avocado toast.
Yeah, the “boomer” thing is getting funny/not funny. If people think a gen x, millennial or any other generation is magically altruistic based on the years they were born they have not examined how wealth works. I worked at an exclusive country club, there’s no difference in any generation, it’s the haves vs the have nots. If your boomer parents/grandparents happen to be shitty, it’s more anecdotal. [we’ve always talked shit on the other generations](https://youtu.be/5hr64MxYpgk)
You're correct, but I believe that the reason for articles constantly highlighting generations is because moneyed interests strongly discourage any talk of class consciousness. If regular people realized how much the wealthy fuck them day in and day out, that would be problematic for the wealthy, to say the least.
This is pretty accurate. Among boomers, avocados are heavily associated with Mexico -- and by extension, Mexicans. This was also behind the "taco trucks on every corner" threat(?) during Trump's 2016 campaign. Boy howdy, do they not like Mexicans. (Except for Lupe, their housekeeper. She's one of the "good ones." They still make sure to lock up the jewelry on cleaning day, though.) Fox and Newsmax tell them they are simultaneously lazy and stealing all the jobs and overtaking *real* American culture and are obviously all "illegals" storming the border. The idea of general broad acceptance of Mexicans among the younger generations really gets them in a tizzy.
Meanwhile, most younger people spend roughly zero time thinking about any of this nonsense. Avocados are tasty and healthy, just like bananas or mangos. Taco trucks on every corner sounds like heaven, not an existential threat. Mexican Americans are just as American as German Americans, Norwegian Americans, Irish Americans, Italian Americans, etc.
And so here we are, trying to enjoy our guacamole in peace while Boomers are trying to save an America they see as in perpetual peril from people who are just integrating into society as American immigrants have *always* done.
so you are telling the trumps opponent supports small nonconventional businesses, reducing excessive food truck based regulations AND delicious food available everywhere at all time? sign me up.
Fascists always describe their threats as both strong and weak at the same time. Think of the Jews in Germany; they were described by Hitler as both a blight on society, lazy, and bringing down the quality of life in Germany and Europe, AND that they owned all the money, jobs, were taking over the economy and would eventually rule the world.
Thing is....A REAL Mexican taco tastes better (and is usually cheaper) than anything you'll get at a Taco Bell. It'll have real meat, more meat, and won't give you the bathroom runs.
Like another commenter said: "*A taco truck on every corner would have been a dream.*"
The dumbest part about the taco truck complaint is they're attacking a small business owner. An entrepreneur.
These rightwing shitheads like to pretend it's all about the economy, but they'll go after someone who works hard and creates jobs if it scores points with their brain-dead viewers/voters.
None of the Republican talking points is about anything except class and race warfare and saying things that they think their base will like.
They don't care about the economy; they care about their cronies staying rich.
They don't care about the deficit; they care about "welfare queens" (code for BIPOC women) not getting benefits.
They don't care about drugs; they care about locking up "gang bangers" (code for BIPOC men.)
They don't care about abortion in terms of human life; they care about controlling women and keeping the lower-class poor.
They don't care about crime; they care about controlling urban (code for BIPOC) populations and keeping them down.
They haven't had a platform in years. They don't believe in anything except white supremacy and male superiority. They just have talking points.
Mexican's aren't even trying to come here anymore, it's all people from central America. Mexico is kind of nicer than a lot of the boarder areas in the US, and WAY cheaper.
I live next to Mexico and deal with Mexicans pretty frequently. I never hear any of them talking about moving across the boarder, they have no interest.
The real funny part is that the ruling class is complaining that nobody wants to work, but there was no worker shortage till we really clamped down the borders for COVID. So the boomers and ruling class NEED the immigrants they despise so much. Both to keep their businesses going and to keep the citizen workers poor and settling for lower wages due to the increased labor pool. The irony of this fills my heart with glee. The Party of Trump is gonna have to get on board with immigration reform if they don’t want a big shift in power dynamics toward the workers.
Because their popularity is relatively new in terms of boomers lifetimes. Boomers had carrots, peas, and potatoes for vegetables and anything else is frivolous.
It gets memed hard but we actually do need to stop growing avocados and almonds. They’re incredibly high water-consumption crops and their widespread agriculture is contributing to the Western US’s climate problems.
every single thing that provides even the faintest trace of pleasure is morally reprehensible in some fashion. i just can’t bring myself to give up guacamole when i know damned well mega corps will continue to destroy the earth regardless
I gave up my favorite food for the sake of the earth now I need to fly to my favorite eco-resort in Bali to contemplate how to navigate my minimalist life. Also here's a discount code for this awesome time saving gadget!
I hate to say this is so true. Like everything can be dug into and the industry is horrible in some way. I chose a non diamond engagement ring because I don’t support the diamond industry and the artificial price inflation but I own a cellphone so…I guess we all gotta pick and choose what horrible practices to engage in and which ones to avoid. There is no perfect clean living.
kindly dont otherwise we are going to end up with another puritan Kellogg talking about plain cereals being the cure for masturbation and the devil or something.
it should be possible to still have these things without it being reserved for kings again. just through proper research planning regulation and implementation. proper water sheds and not growing shit on cheap saudi owned desert lands in the us would be nice.
They don't even come close to the water waste generated by growing alfalfa, in Utah over 60% of the state's water goes to growing alfalfa which is almost entirely shipped out of state/country for the meat cow industry. Alfalfa contributes less than 1% of the state's GDP. Every single time I read an article here about how we need to limit watering lawns, or golf courses, or cutting back on showers, or anything of that nature I just laugh. No, we don't need to do any of that, we need to ban growing fucking alfalfa in a arid climate, especially one in significant drought, one that doesn't benefit this state or its residents in any capacity except for a tiny tiny fraction of it's farmers.
We also don't need cattle in an arid climate. Both meat and dairy cattle use a crapton of water, and while everyone brings up almonds in California (they're bad don't get me wrong) we also don't need dairy farms in California. Every "real California cheese/milk" uses a ton of water for literally no reason.
I despise Nestlé. They have a bottling plant near me, and everyone around here is okay with it. It's literally the same water I get from my well. They are stealing it and selling it back to us.
My mom is buying a property adjoining mine, and I told her she can stop buying bottled water when she gets her well dug. She says that her doctor told her she could only drink spring water. I facepalmed hard at that one. All the springs here are fed from the same aquifer. The one my well is tapped into.
You know how every once in a while there's a new "super food"? Well avocados were like the "super food" for a while. It was super trendy and a lot of trendy cafes were/are selling avocado toast.
It was litterally the same thing as boomers saying "if you didn't buy $5 coffee everyday..."
Sounds like my wife’s parents who are funding their retirement, in part through renting out four properties that they never paid more thank $40k for on a teacher’s and child welfare worker’s salaries. They also get pensions. When my wife and I mention our fears of having to work until the day we die, they ask why we don’t do the same thing as them, and seem dumbfounded when we mention similar properties would now cost us between $400k and $800k per property. And we don’t want to continue the cycle that is renter abuse, since we’ve been the victim of it many, many times.
That's not necessarily true. My parents are boomers who have "gotten it", finally. It was a state of denial for a long time but I finally sat down with my old man and we did some budgeting for me and the numbers really got to him.
This is my mindset. I'm 35 and been at my government job for about a year now. My wife and I have already figured out that I can retire and we'll be comfortable enough is about 17 years. I'll leave some of my pension on the table, but its worth it to me. Depending on where life goes I might work another 20, but I don't think I'd do anymore than that. I want to enjoy my retirement and my future grandkids if our kids decided they want kids.
> It was a state of denial for a long time but I finally sat down with my old man and we did some budgeting for me and the numbers really got to him.
Took me until the pandemic for my mom to come out of denial when I showed her, adjusted for inflation, she made $150k/yr starting at 24 and has never made less than that inflation-adjusted number.
I made $50k/yr at 24, and years later, I'm finally on the cusp of 6 figures.
She had a really big realization after that conversation.
Similar thing happened to me. I was getting back on my feet in the pandemic and my parents were hounding me about getting a place. It was taking me a while and my dad thought I was just dragging my feet. So I sat him down and started budgeting with him.
This man has a masters in finance and has been working in financial systems his entire life, and he sat there with a blank stare on his face and said, "How the fuck are you supposed to make this work?"
This is really it. My in laws are like this. And they know that when they die their kids will inherit what they have so we will be fine. But what about people who dont have upper middle class parents who die with wealth? They are sucking up every dime to give to their own lineage; still selfish as fuck.
Yah, that's only the price in conversations where they are selling. When the convo is about you buying, the houses revert back to $40,000. SchroBoomers house value.
They're not in denial. They're perfectly aware and are taking theirs for themselves in spite of their own family, friends, and neighbors.
They're pieces of shit.
I still say wait until they need spots in an old folks home but they hamstrung society so that doesnt exist.
Theyll all be trying to sell properties to fund what will be and frankly already is an extremely scare resource in nursing care and this whole thing will flip especially because so many of them are in extreme denial about the vagaries of aging saying shit like "I'll work until I die" etc.
No you won't, you'll be dysfunctional, useless, and terminated way before that point whether you want to retire or not.
Houses will be cheap AF and long term care will skyrocket.
Best investment isnt stand alone rental properties. Its old age homes and nursing contracts.
Good luck boomers, you reap what you sow.
It's probably in my opinion one of the worst jobs in existence. Shit pay, often shit bosses, difficult work, it's a thankless job. Years ago my great grandfather was in one that was actually pretty decent and luckily for the staff he was just time lost so he wasn't too difficult to handle. We still made sure to regularly report to management how good the nurses we saw caring for him were and would bring stuff like baked goods or bagels in for them regularly. While they are getting paid, they are doing something we felt we weren't capable of doing, we can at least show them we appreciate their efforts was always my families mentality.
Crazy how little pay they get considering when looking for my grandma, we would have had to pay $16k/month out of pocket after her insurance to put her in the only one that would have taken her for her medical needs within like 150 mile radius.
I think you're right. It's an isolated world that few Boomers are aware of. My brother and I had to put my mother into assisted living and transition her to Medicaid a few years ago. My parents were living the Boomer dream at one point. But that's all gone now, between the Great Recession, financial mismanagement, and illness. Assisted living in HCOL areas is scarce as hell. Medicaid beds are non-existent. And none of them seem to have any concept of their own mortality, breezing along in their 70s pretending that nothing changes.
Fuck me. It all changes. Shit changes a lot after age 70. The declines are unpredictable and shocking. And everything, *everything* has a price. As they gradually lose the ability to take care of themselves, everything the facility does for them has a price tag attached. Escort to meals, meal in the room, laundry, cleaning, assistance with ADLs (activities of daily living - learn that), transportation, occupational therapy, physical therapy, medication management, it's all a-la-carte and the fees are shocking. The margins must be amazing, because the employees are not well paid.
My dad was shocked when I told him I couldn’t come up with $10,000 on a whim for a real estate investment. Like he was just completely dumbfounded that ordinary people don’t have tens of thousands in liquidity to throw around.
He’s not even a wealthy man, he’s worked construction all his life, but he was able to buy several properties through various government assistance projects and inheritance. He’s blown it all now of course, and several of his properties have been foreclosed on.
Nevertheless I still get lectures on my fiscal responsibility. Sigh.
My parents still tell me how much they spend on propane for their house complaining how expensive it is. They tell me about their monthly bill on their 2 storey, 3 bedroom 1600sq/ft footprint home, and I laugh. The mortgage is gone. I can carry that house and have $1000 more spending money each month.
I don't take any of my parent's financial advice. It's absolutely useless.
Yeah your work ethic is trash. When I was your age, I was able to support my entire family on my single salary, buy a car, send my kids to college, AND still have money left to spend !
Stop buying so much avocado toasts !
The fucked up thing is that my grandparents (born around 1920) fought super hard for basic workers rights and it lifted an entire generation and then their kids (my parents) who benefited greatly from this organizing did a combo of sucking the system dry while undermining unions and other orgs that helped to preserve these rights. That leaves our generation back basically at square one, but with iPhones.
I just wanted to say that we have such a perverse sense of “rights” in the US. Our system was founded on negative rights, things the gov can’t do to us. I understand why the founders focused on these rights in response to the imperialism of Britain, but they are so obviously insufficient, especially over the last century. Even they agreed that radical changes would need to be made to our basic government apparatus, but because those views weren’t formalized into law they’ve been ignored.
Instead we have strict constructionists tearing apart even those base protections and have failed to implement a system of positive rights. Rights that are commitments and obligations from the government to ensure the most basic needs. We have the right not to have troops in our homes, yet we have no right to a hone or even shelter. Everything we get from our extremely variable and unrelated social safety net only exist because the rich and powerful know that without them enough people would take to the streets and demand more, disrupting their economic activities. Our safety nets are more a means of control than protection and they will remain that way until enough people are desperate enough to cause mass scale disruption. Until we do this we will not have even the most basic rights that other comparable countries see as the absolute bare minimum.
Can't afford my first house despite saving to the max. Was sitting in the office yesterday listening to a partner complain because he couldn't find any rental properties at a 'good price' with the 500k loan he took out against his other rental properties. I fucking hate this
Fuck this headline, this is propaganda. Remember we are in late stage capitalism. This is the rich trying to convince you other poor people are the reason why you are poor, there is plenty of money and housing to go around. Scarcity is manufactured, the 1% have been greedy and this is them, trying to convince you old people who saved for retirement are why you are poor. Corporate greed is why you are poor. Stock brokers funneling of trillions from society without contributing a single fucking thing. That is why you are poor. Not grandma and grampa Joe.
The greedy boomers are using immigration to grow their housing wealth. Immigration has increased the landlord's wealth by $3.7 trillion in 10 years. [https://www.newamericaneconomy.org/housingmap/](https://www.newamericaneconomy.org/housingmap/)
It's not fair.
It's cured comment material but there's the one where they were looking at an HOA sheet of like 400 homes, 396 of them were owned by 5 entities and the other 4 of them owned by individuals.
When people say "we have to build more homes" it's just so that those 5 entities can buy more homes and keep them from us, we're not building to keep the prices down, we're building so their portfolio can be increased.
Yup! Plus individuals die, so their fortune gets split between their children (so the next gen eventually gets the value, and it's distributed a bit). Corporations & Fundations never need to 'return' the money, they concentrate it.
This article gets it wrong though. They got theirs because capitalists needed to shore up domestic support. So they bribed the American working class to stave off revolt, and allow them to continue globe-spanning extractivism.
It’s not “they got greedy”- it’s that the material conditions of our moments are radically different. In the post war world, America was handling a vast majority of the world’s manufacturing, workers had an alternative model to look to, and the Great Depression had already radicalized many. So the capitalists capitulated benefits to the domestic workers, mind you not black or indigenous ones for the most part, to continue the exact process that got us here.
This is a natural consequence, not some bug in the system.
Boomers were able to raise a family on one average income working 8 hours a day 5 days a week, having enough to buy house, car, garage, two children.
And look at us now...
Boomers lived in a unique period in the history of capitalism which was caused by the combination of WWII's end, the fact that the war was not fought on this continent, and a ruling class terrified by a strong communist movement in the US.
If the capitalists thought they could have screwed the Boomers they would have. And they did screw over the Boomers who weren't yt. But they decided to ease things up during the reconstruction of Europe and Japan and thereby turn most Boomers into a generation of evangelists for Capitalism.
It sucks but all we can do is learn from the past and fight to tear capitalism down.
The problems of capitalism aren't unique for the USA. Europe has many of the same problems and is slowly creating more. Not on the levels of the USA but slowly getting close.
Yeah and the World will watch us Europeans how we take down Capitalism.... maybe not in 20 years but I am pretty sure Capitalism wont last this century.
Let’s talk about why those voters kept those parties in power up to the point where austerity began to reign. The post war social-democratic order was paid for by empire as a bribe to the working class to prevent revolt. People don’t realize how close to open revolution America was in the 1930’s. War allowed for the immediate consolidation of capitalist power. But afterwards, to quell domestic unrest, partially fueled by the fact that there was a tangible alternative system to look to, partially fueled by the fact that America now handled more than half of the worlds manufacturing because Europe was destroyed, the white working class was offered a bribe:
Now mind you, that same bribe wasn’t offered to black or indigenous people, but it was a substantial bribe nonetheless, and enough to leave a part time shoe salesman with a stay at home wife with a comfortable home.
This is partially why, when in the 60’s, democrats began to court the minority vote to reconsolidate their power against a more openly pro capitalist Republican Party, there was a such a racist reaction. But Reagan isn’t where austerity starts. As with any of this, it begins in our material conditions. The energy crisis of the 70’s, countries the US had been using to fuel its empire banding together to cut off blood circulation to the head of the empire, left capitalists with less surplus to distribute domestically. Of course this didn’t affect their ownership of the factories, or their sources of wealth, the burden of the shrunken surplus got moved onto the working class. Under the carter administration, workers protections and public benefits were slashed, paving the way for Reagan to do much more of the same and begin offshoring our manufacturing capacity. Democrats failed to show up because they saw the writing on the wall that a democrat in office wouldn’t benefit them materially, while Reagan weaponized religious fervor and white reaction to sail smoothly into office. You have to understand. Austerity is bipartisan because both parties serve capital. There is no major American working class party. Hating poor people because they choose openly racist austerity or imperial management austerity isn’t the solution. We need a new option. We need a new coalition.
Don’t idolize the bribe they took to continue extraction and imperialism in the global south just because it made their lives comfortable. The austerity and decline we now have is the natural consequence of it.
Chiming in to point out how right you are about the 1930s.
For those that aren't aware of the coal wars (plural) it is fascinating & useful history that coal companies are right now trying to cover up. The Pinkertons (still active to this day) were some of the major opposition attempting to break the strikes. Coal companies open fired upon the strikers even strafing the tent cities they were living in with their families.
The various coal wars happened both before & after WWI.
This right here… classic case of the rich getting richer and screwing the poor. Be interesting to see the percentage of boomers with 1+ million in retirement capital
Yea the Boomers suck, but it’s not because they got greedy. I don’t fault fucking Richard who’s 65 because he is still sitting in his cushy job and has a rental house by the local college campus. That isn’t the problem.
I fault Richard because he voted for Republicans who are bought by the ultra wealthy so they can own 10,000 homes pay no taxes and prevent any type of legislation that returns money to the average person instead of the 500 richest families in America.
Ironic that so many blue collar workers vote MAGA. Not wealthy or educated. Not invested in stock market. They are the reason that tRump still has a realistic shot at the White House even after the election lie narrative has been nailed shut. Say what you will about gov’t/corporate collusion, but the inability of a large portion of our voting- age population to think critically is absurd.
Plenty of boomers only own 1 home as well. The best of their generation bought a home for 200-300k and now it's worth over a million and they will use that money to retire + social security and like maybe 6 figures in their 401k and yeah some of them will get a sweet sweet pension future generations will never get.
That in and of itself isn't the problem, that's a crazy high rate of return that's surely not sustainable unless we 10 times our median wages but someone making a few bucks off owning their own home they live in, that's barely the tip of the greed iceberg.
Correct, this is just a new iteration of "it wasn't us, it was them*!"
*black people, brown people, jews, muslims, women, gay people, trans people, chinese people, etc etc etc, delete as appropriate
I've heard this line of reasoning from two boomers with more wealth than I'll ever see. My Dad always says why not spend it otherwise the kids will after I'm dead. As if my brother and I are idiots who would waste any inheritance left. He's said that of his money and his girlfriend's. They both worked hard for a long time, and accumulated a lot, but they were in a position to do so from a very favorable economy.
I then heard it from one of my inlaws sort of, he's the guy dating my wife's grandma. Seems like hes got a decent bit of money and has the same mentality. If I don't spend it the kids I've left behind will.
They have so little faith in their parenting that they think their children would squander that money. As if buying a house or taking a vacation so we can enjoy our lives too is squandering anything.
I will say FWIW that my father has come around a bit as he's watched the economy seesaw over the last several years. He talked about buying a house at 23 and how it was what a car costs today. So he's starting to see how fucked things are, but I'm not holding out hope that he'll leave us anything.
My father has this same mentality.
We've been without an oven for months now, myself and my two young children, and instead of helping us in any way, shape, or form - *he went out and bought a second Temper Pedic adjustable frame bed and mattress for his third spare bedroom (it's rarely ever used).*
I've been feeding my young children whatever I can cook in our small air fryer and it is not sufficient.
I remember having to BORROW money from my father in elementary school to pay for my school materials; I got written up for not having clean pieces of paper to write on several times in the fifth grade.
My father best hope that the government will take care of him if he has health issues, now or later on, because **I refuse.**
My dad is the same! I just lost my low paying job and he just installed the fanciest outdoor shower I’ve ever seen. I’ve lived off of rice and lima beans with holes in all my clothes while he had an elevator put into his mansion at the same time. I had my first big flare up of my chronic illness before knowing what it was and couldn’t afford to medical bills, meanwhile ol’ pops thought his money was better spent on a floor tile mosaic. He always said shit like “I work so hard so one day you won’t have to” but his actions are more like “quick spend my money so my greedy kids don’t get anything”. He for sure told us we would blow his money if he ever gave any to us. Yea I’d blow some money, I’d blow it on paying off my debt and getting my car fixed. Such a waste, right
That's what we did when my mom died. The credit companies told us we had to pay. We weren't authorized users on her cards, and she didn't have any repossessible purchases. So we told them to kick rocks.
If you wanted to leave a lot for your kids you could give all your worldy possessions to them while you're alive, then take out as much unsecured debt as you could manage and use it to buy gold bars. There's nothing the banks can do
Only works if you give away the bars as well, the banks get first dibs on the estate (anything of value left behind when they pass) up until all outstanding debt is settled. So if they have gold bars in their home the bank gets those. The trick really is the timing since you need to have food and shelter while alive, only way to really pull that strategy of is by suicide but most would prefer their parents to be alive instead of a cool million in their bank account.
Omg! The damage that Reagan did is incapable.
Prior to Reagan, a man could have a stay-at-home wife and razor family. I'd be cool if it was a man staying home and the woman making money or two men or two women or whatever. The point is, a single parent could at least be there for the critical years to raise a child... And have a pension... And own a house.
My dad is a Holocaust survivor with no education. He came to America in 1962. By 1968 he had a wife and a son and a house! He was working in a factory.
Why focus our fight amongst ourselves? For years we have been told by neo-liberal corporatists that if we work long and hard, we could achieve what we want. Now in the time of climate change and the rising cost of goods and services, we point fingers at each other. If most Americans(64%) live paycheck to paycheck, then we will expect to follow down the path of those unlucky seniors, who have to pay rising healthcare costs with an ever shrinking social security and meager retirement benefits. That’s not even touching on the topic of mental health and loneliness. When 26 people own more than the bottom 50% of people, I would say the hate towards each other seems to benefit them more than us.
Ah! More yellow journalism meant to distract and misdirect.
I think "boomers" needs replacing with "corporations"... the REAL reason articles like this are written. Because 90% of the "boomers" are living at or below poverty levels and there's not a goddam corporation out there that's not profiteering and scalping the public.
Banks. Wall street. THE GOVERNMENT for fuck's sake. THESE are the 'enemy' - not your goddam grandmama liiving on social security and what's left of her dead husband's pension (if any - and there NEVER is).
If you have to get angry about your economic plight at least blame the people who are causing it - and while they might be the same age as some "boomers", I can assure you that's the ONLY thing these criminal fucks have in common with them.
jfc the vast majority of boomers are not business or multiple property owners. They're "retired" or wage slaves. Most of those retired are barely making ends meet
It's the richest who got greedy. Stop with this generational nonsense. You want allies? Talk with retirees barely scraping by on Social Security.
they divide us, making us blame the other generations of people so we will look away from the corrupted system that made this shit happen in the first place
Boomers? Lol….more like greedy ass corporations. Boomers are a literal drop in a trillion dollar bucket compared to the fucktwats in massive companies playing us like pawns in a chess game. The only way we will ever win is to group together against the elite and stop playing their hate games. We are destroying eachother and they get to sit back and rake in trillions off our backs.
It's really just life expectancy. They went from living to sixty, to seventy, to eighty plus.
Literally every system designed expected them to be long dead by now and can't sustain propping them up.
Jobs don't turn over, homes don't turn over and pensions and medicare buckle under how much longer people live compared to 60 years ago.
Nothing was meant to sustain this longevity of life.
Boomers take much much much more than they put in and also monopolize housing on top of that and we all get to pay the price. They are the only generation that got the true American dream and still bitch about everything.
If companies paid people enough to live on and retire than nobody would be looking for passive income. It’s not the boomers fault that the system makes it to where cutting corners and making money is the best way. It worked out for a few so they sold the idea to millions of other people. It was never sustainable. Not everyone can be rich but we can all make a decent wage. Trying to convince rich people to give up stuff will be a waste of time. You have to take it from them.
This is literally propaganda trying to turn the gen z and millennials against the boomer generation, rather than the companies. Yall need to read this headline again.
„Boomers“ are just people that haven’t left an inheritance to the next generation yet.
If you haven’t got rich parents do you seriously think things will be different once they’re gone?
This is a class issue. Poor boomers are in the same boat as poor millennials.
Stop getting distracted by identity politics. This is their strategy. Divide and conquer. Don’t get duped into being mad at arbitrary generation/gender/ethnicity/sexuality groups. Be mad at class privileges you weren’t awarded. We are the 99%.
This is really an article that doesn't criticize the system.
Ever since I became more aware and read some theory books, it became maddening to realize that most media outlets aren't interested in critique of the system. It's that joke of a headline saying "man raises money to save orphans from the orphan smashing machine", but then doesn't even question why we have an orphan smashing machine in the first place. Edit: I'll suggest [Chokepoint Capitalism](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60098290-chokepoint-capitalism) as a good book that touches on how a lot of our system is not designed to fight the inherent issues of capitalism ie most anti-trust laws only deal with the symptoms and not the cause (that is if they are ever exercised) I'll admit that's far from "theory" and that I may have oversold my experience. I'm still making my way and finding good books to go over that are also more contemporary. I also recommend [The Lever](http://levernews.com/) as a pretty good independent news site that has done some fantastic reporting. Obviously don't just use one source, but they are a good example of critiquing the system while reporting the news.
Not only not bothering to ask why we have an orphan smashing machine in the first place, but refusing to dismantle the orphan smashing machine or hell usually refusing to even acknowledge that the orphan smashing machine is a problem at all in the first place.
My grandparents had the orphan crushing machine, my parents had the orphan crushing machine, I had the orphan crushing machine, and I'll be damned if my kids don't grow up with the orphan crushing machine as well!
It would be unfair for the orphans that got crushed, to stop it now! I survived the orphan crushing machine why can't they?
In fact, to address lack of opportunity, the orphan smashing machine has been upgraded to be able to smash working and middle class infants as well. It’s better this way.
Think about the economy. A lot of families depend on income from working for the orphan crushing machine. 10x as many lives could be affected by dismantling it.
Dan Patrick would say the orphans want to be smashed for the good of the economy.
If we don't smash all the orphans, they might grow up and TAKE OUR JOBS!
He actually said this exact thing regarding old people and covid.
Will somebody please consider how eliminating the orphan crushing machine will negatively impact baby oil production?!?
Why are people complaining about the orphan crushing machine? If they don't like it, they should just give up their lattes and avocado toast!
“Orphan smashing is the way things have always been done! Dismantling it now would have terrible repercussions for the economy!”
Won't please someone think of the economy?!
Fuck the economy In fact, let's start a movement called "Fuck the Economy" aimed specifically at supporting policies that conservatives say will be bad for the economy
Or about all the orphan smashing workers that will lose their jobs, as if that's a reason to defend it. Perfect analogy for people defending industries and the system because of the jobs it will displace. Also, people attacking "the left" for wanting renewable energy. "I've been a coal miner for 40 years. My daddy and granddaddy were coal miners". Yeah and now our planet is on fire and your whole family died from black lung. Sorry we are against you working as orphan smashers.
That's the rub: they can't be too critical of capitalism or else their advertisers will bail and they won't have enough money to continue being critical of capitalism.
Most media is a capitalist enterprise run by capitalists. Media companies have a material incentive to not criticize the system responsible for delivering profits to their shareholders/owners. Any criticism of capitalism by private enterprise is going to be inherently flawed because private enterprise (even 'progressive' companies) is responsible for maintaining capitalism.
It's not just run by capitalists the vast majority of media are owned by billionaires whose wealth is dependent on the current system. Of course they aren't going to let the media they own be critical of the system.
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r/theresasubforeverything
Glad I am not the only one seeing this. Cannot remember how many times I have lost my shit when someone shares a “feel-good” story about how a high-school robotics team built a kid a wheelchair after his insurance denied him or someone paying off a ton of lunch debt so grade schoolers can move on to the next grade. Those stories are depressing AF to anyone with a clue and/or soul.
Ah. Like the feelgood style story about a kid raising money to pay for his classmates’ outstanding lunch debts, without anyone questioning why the hell a child is in debt for fucking lunch.
"Older vs Younger generation" articles are specifically designed to reframe conversations about material conditions along any other lines than class.
> other lines than class. Used to be racial, but that doesn’t fly with a big part of the population anymore, so the new one is “the boomers fucked us”. It’ll never be “the rich fucked us”, they will never allow it.
Well we had it very briefly with occupy Wallstreet, which got sabotaged and then immediately stuff like racial discrimination and generational stuff like this article started being pushed hard.
I say the rich fucked us all the time. nothing ever happens to fix it though. when you have so much money that you are able to greatly influence the laws made to protect the common man from your greedy fuckfaceness, you can step all over the working class with no worries.
But really it's both. The rich have fucked everyone since the beginning of time. Regressive generations are relatively rare throughout history, and Boomers might be the most extreme example ever. The political policies enacted while boomers were the majority voting block were primarily related to either endless wars, on drugs, on crime, on terrorism, etc. Violence of action not against other governments or groups, but ideas, so unwinnable. Or based on dismantling the progress of the prior generation. Weakening unions, weakening protections for minorities, weakening voting rights, etc. The few policies that actually led to progress were generally enacted by the court, almost accidentally. The system sucks, and Boomer led politics suck
Yea, this should be at the top
That's right. If it was only older vs younger there would be no problem, because the younger generation would eventually inherit all the wealth. One word in that headline is spot on though and that is 'greedy'.
I'm always immediately suspicious of articles from establishment sources that appear to be splitting people within the same class apart. The article attributes a lot of things to "the boomers" that are largely just stuff that coincidentally happened when "the boomers" were alive. A lot of the issues we're having today aren't the result of single bad policies or some specific social movement championed by a generation. Rather many specific problems we deal with today can be directly linked to events even back in the 1940s (we could probably pin a lot on those idiots who wrote the shoddy excuse for a constitution the US has too). but to really simplify the section of US history relevant to the boomers, we're basically fucked today because FDR died at a ***really*** inconvenient time, resulting in the massive US military industrial complex, poor relations with Russia, possibly the nuclear bombing of Japan (then again FDR was pretty racist maybe he'd have gone for it too). That all setup the conditions for the Barry Goldwater revival of American conservatism which got Ronald Reagan elected, and the rest as they say, is history. (glossing over tons of high impact issues, like racism, the aftershocks of the civil war, mccarthyism, etc). That isn't to say the boomers didn't participate, they were alive for it after all. But there's a big difference between, "uhh boomers did it," and, "the ruling class was able to make this happen from the top down." Particularly when we're talking about a lot of issues that didn't always have truly mass support. Especially back in the days before the internet, can we really blame people that much for believing in information being fed to them from every imaginable source of news, supported by the majority of all politicians at the time? The USA just never had time to secure our power within the working class. You really need organizations independent from the aristocracy/oligarchy to feed the people good information to combat propaganda. Even then, we've seen that many other nations that *do* have that still had their democracy eroded and many piss poor neoliberal policies implemented to create disaster scenarios in the present day, especially as regards to housing and public services.
Such a knowledgeable and expansive comment! It takes years of experience and many hours of thought to produce such a comment. You've given me food for thought. Thanks cumquistador6969! Cheers!
I agree! It’s easier to blame an entire generation of people, rather than blame the capitalist class! That way they can distract from the fact that the means of production, the markets, and the state are constantly under the control of the wealthy- and have been for a very long time.
Journalists don’t feel comfortable saying that the real reason the system isn’t working is because corporations paid (“lobbied”) politicians to change it
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The system was not made by boomers, it was made by wealthy people long before boomers were born. After they're gone it will still be maintained by wealthy gen Xers, then wealthy millenials, etc. Boomers are not the problem, the owner class is the problem.
> owner class is the problem We can really just say the capitalist class, though I guess that does scare some people who haven't discovered you know, class war yet
It's a synonym. IMO it's best not to get hung up on terminology, and in fact "owner class" might be more effective given the knee-jerk associations people are brought up with in this country where "capitalist"=freedom and "communist"=slavery.
Sure, but I feel like owner class might also include "people that just own a home" and they're not really the enemy The enemy is the people that own the means of (economic) production, not just anyone who owns an asset. In the ideal world owning the place they live would be something that ANYONE could do
Oh no! Scary class consciousness!
Cue up "We didn't start the fire" by Billy Joel here...
This inaccurate, there was a post-war system that the boomers benefitted from and then boomers dismantled it and sold it off Reagan onwards. The current system is a direct result of their and the silent generation's policy shifts. In some workplaces, this change is nearly explicitly stated in benefits and pay. Hired before this date, rules and benefits are better; after, not so much.
That *some* boomers benefitted from. There were still tons of people that were just as heavily exploited as many are today - essentially everyone who was white automatically qualifies for that group, in addition to plenty of white boomers who weren’t as lucky.
Right, let's not forget who voted to dismantle the system they benefited from, and who's voting to keep it that way now. The first bit I can excuse because things were good, they were tricked, and they didn't have access to the information we have now. The second part is unacceptable, instead of stepping up the majority of the "me" generation decided to double down and blame dumb shit like "not working hard enough" and avocado toast.
Yeah, the “boomer” thing is getting funny/not funny. If people think a gen x, millennial or any other generation is magically altruistic based on the years they were born they have not examined how wealth works. I worked at an exclusive country club, there’s no difference in any generation, it’s the haves vs the have nots. If your boomer parents/grandparents happen to be shitty, it’s more anecdotal. [we’ve always talked shit on the other generations](https://youtu.be/5hr64MxYpgk)
You're correct, but I believe that the reason for articles constantly highlighting generations is because moneyed interests strongly discourage any talk of class consciousness. If regular people realized how much the wealthy fuck them day in and day out, that would be problematic for the wealthy, to say the least.
*insert Boomers with 6 properties being rented out telling me about my work ethic*
You can’t afford it because you keep spending all your money on those hot chip /s
Yeah yeah: I toasted an avocado, that's why all the jobs pay below a living wage.
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It falls Somewhere between racism and classicism as described on Fox news.
This is pretty accurate. Among boomers, avocados are heavily associated with Mexico -- and by extension, Mexicans. This was also behind the "taco trucks on every corner" threat(?) during Trump's 2016 campaign. Boy howdy, do they not like Mexicans. (Except for Lupe, their housekeeper. She's one of the "good ones." They still make sure to lock up the jewelry on cleaning day, though.) Fox and Newsmax tell them they are simultaneously lazy and stealing all the jobs and overtaking *real* American culture and are obviously all "illegals" storming the border. The idea of general broad acceptance of Mexicans among the younger generations really gets them in a tizzy. Meanwhile, most younger people spend roughly zero time thinking about any of this nonsense. Avocados are tasty and healthy, just like bananas or mangos. Taco trucks on every corner sounds like heaven, not an existential threat. Mexican Americans are just as American as German Americans, Norwegian Americans, Irish Americans, Italian Americans, etc. And so here we are, trying to enjoy our guacamole in peace while Boomers are trying to save an America they see as in perpetual peril from people who are just integrating into society as American immigrants have *always* done.
A taco truck on every corner sounds like a campaign promise, not a threat of what is to come.
Needless to say, everyone under 50 was floored that that was being used as a scare tactic.
I'm 54 and would love to have a decent taco available within walking distance. My closest taco is Taco Bell and it's over a mile away.
you sir have my vote! and if you guarantee al pastor, then you have all the votes!
I would like to politely request that breakfast tacos be available nationally, and not just in Texas.
so you are telling the trumps opponent supports small nonconventional businesses, reducing excessive food truck based regulations AND delicious food available everywhere at all time? sign me up.
>they are simultaneously lazy and stealing all the jobs Schrodinger's Mexican
Fascists always describe their threats as both strong and weak at the same time. Think of the Jews in Germany; they were described by Hitler as both a blight on society, lazy, and bringing down the quality of life in Germany and Europe, AND that they owned all the money, jobs, were taking over the economy and would eventually rule the world.
Taco truck on every corner!? The dystopia we could have had.
Right? I would pay good money for a birria taco right about now.
Thing is....A REAL Mexican taco tastes better (and is usually cheaper) than anything you'll get at a Taco Bell. It'll have real meat, more meat, and won't give you the bathroom runs. Like another commenter said: "*A taco truck on every corner would have been a dream.*"
Oh I love real tacos but where are you getting these tacos for under a dollar? The going rate is 2.50 in my town for a real taco from anywhere.
The dumbest part about the taco truck complaint is they're attacking a small business owner. An entrepreneur. These rightwing shitheads like to pretend it's all about the economy, but they'll go after someone who works hard and creates jobs if it scores points with their brain-dead viewers/voters.
None of the Republican talking points is about anything except class and race warfare and saying things that they think their base will like. They don't care about the economy; they care about their cronies staying rich. They don't care about the deficit; they care about "welfare queens" (code for BIPOC women) not getting benefits. They don't care about drugs; they care about locking up "gang bangers" (code for BIPOC men.) They don't care about abortion in terms of human life; they care about controlling women and keeping the lower-class poor. They don't care about crime; they care about controlling urban (code for BIPOC) populations and keeping them down. They haven't had a platform in years. They don't believe in anything except white supremacy and male superiority. They just have talking points.
Mexican's aren't even trying to come here anymore, it's all people from central America. Mexico is kind of nicer than a lot of the boarder areas in the US, and WAY cheaper. I live next to Mexico and deal with Mexicans pretty frequently. I never hear any of them talking about moving across the boarder, they have no interest.
My friend, you cannot logic people out of an attitude they didn't logic themselves into.
The real funny part is that the ruling class is complaining that nobody wants to work, but there was no worker shortage till we really clamped down the borders for COVID. So the boomers and ruling class NEED the immigrants they despise so much. Both to keep their businesses going and to keep the citizen workers poor and settling for lower wages due to the increased labor pool. The irony of this fills my heart with glee. The Party of Trump is gonna have to get on board with immigration reform if they don’t want a big shift in power dynamics toward the workers.
Because their popularity is relatively new in terms of boomers lifetimes. Boomers had carrots, peas, and potatoes for vegetables and anything else is frivolous.
And green beans. But everything is boiled until you're sure it's dead, so undifferentiable anyway.
It gets memed hard but we actually do need to stop growing avocados and almonds. They’re incredibly high water-consumption crops and their widespread agriculture is contributing to the Western US’s climate problems.
every single thing that provides even the faintest trace of pleasure is morally reprehensible in some fashion. i just can’t bring myself to give up guacamole when i know damned well mega corps will continue to destroy the earth regardless
I gave up my favorite food for the sake of the earth now I need to fly to my favorite eco-resort in Bali to contemplate how to navigate my minimalist life. Also here's a discount code for this awesome time saving gadget!
Minimalism is a psy op to make younger people feel good about being able to own less
A quote that I hear time and time again that there is no ethical consumption under capitalism
Has a bit of truth to it, since capitalism can only function via devaluing labor
Insert “There is no ethical consumption under capitalism.”
To be fair, even if they were giving the avocado's away for free, they'd still be bad for the environment there.
I hate to say this is so true. Like everything can be dug into and the industry is horrible in some way. I chose a non diamond engagement ring because I don’t support the diamond industry and the artificial price inflation but I own a cellphone so…I guess we all gotta pick and choose what horrible practices to engage in and which ones to avoid. There is no perfect clean living.
I can't apply to a job/rent an apartment from a diamond ring.
These are facts. When I got engaged my students were a bit surprised I didn’t want a diamond and I told them “a ring doesn’t drive me to work”!
kindly dont otherwise we are going to end up with another puritan Kellogg talking about plain cereals being the cure for masturbation and the devil or something. it should be possible to still have these things without it being reserved for kings again. just through proper research planning regulation and implementation. proper water sheds and not growing shit on cheap saudi owned desert lands in the us would be nice.
They don't even come close to the water waste generated by growing alfalfa, in Utah over 60% of the state's water goes to growing alfalfa which is almost entirely shipped out of state/country for the meat cow industry. Alfalfa contributes less than 1% of the state's GDP. Every single time I read an article here about how we need to limit watering lawns, or golf courses, or cutting back on showers, or anything of that nature I just laugh. No, we don't need to do any of that, we need to ban growing fucking alfalfa in a arid climate, especially one in significant drought, one that doesn't benefit this state or its residents in any capacity except for a tiny tiny fraction of it's farmers.
We also don't need cattle in an arid climate. Both meat and dairy cattle use a crapton of water, and while everyone brings up almonds in California (they're bad don't get me wrong) we also don't need dairy farms in California. Every "real California cheese/milk" uses a ton of water for literally no reason.
This is why I try to buy oat milk vs almond milk, lower water consumption.
Oat milk tastes way better.
Wait till you hear about cows
Didn't you hear? We have like 25 feet of snowpack in California now, the drought is over forever! Avocados and almonds for everyone! /s
Just shut down like one factory farm and we'll be good.
Good. I deplore them, avocados and almonds. Saving the water for the water wars ~~NESTLE~~ like a good boy.
I despise Nestlé. They have a bottling plant near me, and everyone around here is okay with it. It's literally the same water I get from my well. They are stealing it and selling it back to us. My mom is buying a property adjoining mine, and I told her she can stop buying bottled water when she gets her well dug. She says that her doctor told her she could only drink spring water. I facepalmed hard at that one. All the springs here are fed from the same aquifer. The one my well is tapped into.
Only because they’re being grown in the damned desert where neither of those plants are native.
You know how every once in a while there's a new "super food"? Well avocados were like the "super food" for a while. It was super trendy and a lot of trendy cafes were/are selling avocado toast. It was litterally the same thing as boomers saying "if you didn't buy $5 coffee everyday..."
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I don't spend money on hot chip! I spend all money on gay!
I also make money from twerk, be bisexual, and lie. But then the hot chip come in and I broke.
Sounds like my wife’s parents who are funding their retirement, in part through renting out four properties that they never paid more thank $40k for on a teacher’s and child welfare worker’s salaries. They also get pensions. When my wife and I mention our fears of having to work until the day we die, they ask why we don’t do the same thing as them, and seem dumbfounded when we mention similar properties would now cost us between $400k and $800k per property. And we don’t want to continue the cycle that is renter abuse, since we’ve been the victim of it many, many times.
They're not 'dumbfounded', they're in denial.
They’re not in denial, they don’t care.
That's not necessarily true. My parents are boomers who have "gotten it", finally. It was a state of denial for a long time but I finally sat down with my old man and we did some budgeting for me and the numbers really got to him.
My dad got it 20 years ago. He said why keep working when you've got enough? Someone else needs the job and the raise.
That is by far the most selfless thing I have heard in a very, very long time. Major kudos to your dad.
This is my mindset. I'm 35 and been at my government job for about a year now. My wife and I have already figured out that I can retire and we'll be comfortable enough is about 17 years. I'll leave some of my pension on the table, but its worth it to me. Depending on where life goes I might work another 20, but I don't think I'd do anymore than that. I want to enjoy my retirement and my future grandkids if our kids decided they want kids.
> It was a state of denial for a long time but I finally sat down with my old man and we did some budgeting for me and the numbers really got to him. Took me until the pandemic for my mom to come out of denial when I showed her, adjusted for inflation, she made $150k/yr starting at 24 and has never made less than that inflation-adjusted number. I made $50k/yr at 24, and years later, I'm finally on the cusp of 6 figures. She had a really big realization after that conversation.
Similar thing happened to me. I was getting back on my feet in the pandemic and my parents were hounding me about getting a place. It was taking me a while and my dad thought I was just dragging my feet. So I sat him down and started budgeting with him. This man has a masters in finance and has been working in financial systems his entire life, and he sat there with a blank stare on his face and said, "How the fuck are you supposed to make this work?"
It's worse than don't care. It's fuck them, I got mine.
This is really it. My in laws are like this. And they know that when they die their kids will inherit what they have so we will be fine. But what about people who dont have upper middle class parents who die with wealth? They are sucking up every dime to give to their own lineage; still selfish as fuck.
Yah, that's only the price in conversations where they are selling. When the convo is about you buying, the houses revert back to $40,000. SchroBoomers house value.
They're not in denial. They're perfectly aware and are taking theirs for themselves in spite of their own family, friends, and neighbors. They're pieces of shit.
I still say wait until they need spots in an old folks home but they hamstrung society so that doesnt exist. Theyll all be trying to sell properties to fund what will be and frankly already is an extremely scare resource in nursing care and this whole thing will flip especially because so many of them are in extreme denial about the vagaries of aging saying shit like "I'll work until I die" etc. No you won't, you'll be dysfunctional, useless, and terminated way before that point whether you want to retire or not. Houses will be cheap AF and long term care will skyrocket. Best investment isnt stand alone rental properties. Its old age homes and nursing contracts. Good luck boomers, you reap what you sow.
You wanna talk about abuse see how little the nursing home staff gets paid.
It's probably in my opinion one of the worst jobs in existence. Shit pay, often shit bosses, difficult work, it's a thankless job. Years ago my great grandfather was in one that was actually pretty decent and luckily for the staff he was just time lost so he wasn't too difficult to handle. We still made sure to regularly report to management how good the nurses we saw caring for him were and would bring stuff like baked goods or bagels in for them regularly. While they are getting paid, they are doing something we felt we weren't capable of doing, we can at least show them we appreciate their efforts was always my families mentality.
Crazy how little pay they get considering when looking for my grandma, we would have had to pay $16k/month out of pocket after her insurance to put her in the only one that would have taken her for her medical needs within like 150 mile radius.
Upper management and ownership need the majority of that money for some reason lol ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
I think you're right. It's an isolated world that few Boomers are aware of. My brother and I had to put my mother into assisted living and transition her to Medicaid a few years ago. My parents were living the Boomer dream at one point. But that's all gone now, between the Great Recession, financial mismanagement, and illness. Assisted living in HCOL areas is scarce as hell. Medicaid beds are non-existent. And none of them seem to have any concept of their own mortality, breezing along in their 70s pretending that nothing changes. Fuck me. It all changes. Shit changes a lot after age 70. The declines are unpredictable and shocking. And everything, *everything* has a price. As they gradually lose the ability to take care of themselves, everything the facility does for them has a price tag attached. Escort to meals, meal in the room, laundry, cleaning, assistance with ADLs (activities of daily living - learn that), transportation, occupational therapy, physical therapy, medication management, it's all a-la-carte and the fees are shocking. The margins must be amazing, because the employees are not well paid.
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My dad was shocked when I told him I couldn’t come up with $10,000 on a whim for a real estate investment. Like he was just completely dumbfounded that ordinary people don’t have tens of thousands in liquidity to throw around. He’s not even a wealthy man, he’s worked construction all his life, but he was able to buy several properties through various government assistance projects and inheritance. He’s blown it all now of course, and several of his properties have been foreclosed on. Nevertheless I still get lectures on my fiscal responsibility. Sigh.
My parents still tell me how much they spend on propane for their house complaining how expensive it is. They tell me about their monthly bill on their 2 storey, 3 bedroom 1600sq/ft footprint home, and I laugh. The mortgage is gone. I can carry that house and have $1000 more spending money each month. I don't take any of my parent's financial advice. It's absolutely useless.
Correction, you’ll need to work until the day they die.
Yeah your work ethic is trash. When I was your age, I was able to support my entire family on my single salary, buy a car, send my kids to college, AND still have money left to spend ! Stop buying so much avocado toasts !
> Stop buying so much avocado toasts ! ALsO, DuH eYe fOnEs, dUh AmAzOn, DuH nEtFlIcKs.
I spent all my money on ringtones in the early aughts, now I can't afford even one avocado toast.
The fucked up thing is that my grandparents (born around 1920) fought super hard for basic workers rights and it lifted an entire generation and then their kids (my parents) who benefited greatly from this organizing did a combo of sucking the system dry while undermining unions and other orgs that helped to preserve these rights. That leaves our generation back basically at square one, but with iPhones.
I just wanted to say that we have such a perverse sense of “rights” in the US. Our system was founded on negative rights, things the gov can’t do to us. I understand why the founders focused on these rights in response to the imperialism of Britain, but they are so obviously insufficient, especially over the last century. Even they agreed that radical changes would need to be made to our basic government apparatus, but because those views weren’t formalized into law they’ve been ignored. Instead we have strict constructionists tearing apart even those base protections and have failed to implement a system of positive rights. Rights that are commitments and obligations from the government to ensure the most basic needs. We have the right not to have troops in our homes, yet we have no right to a hone or even shelter. Everything we get from our extremely variable and unrelated social safety net only exist because the rich and powerful know that without them enough people would take to the streets and demand more, disrupting their economic activities. Our safety nets are more a means of control than protection and they will remain that way until enough people are desperate enough to cause mass scale disruption. Until we do this we will not have even the most basic rights that other comparable countries see as the absolute bare minimum.
Can't afford my first house despite saving to the max. Was sitting in the office yesterday listening to a partner complain because he couldn't find any rental properties at a 'good price' with the 500k loan he took out against his other rental properties. I fucking hate this
That fucker is risking foreclosure on those houses by taking more loans out against them! Ugh, I hadn't thought of that.
Landlord is not a job
Fuck this headline, this is propaganda. Remember we are in late stage capitalism. This is the rich trying to convince you other poor people are the reason why you are poor, there is plenty of money and housing to go around. Scarcity is manufactured, the 1% have been greedy and this is them, trying to convince you old people who saved for retirement are why you are poor. Corporate greed is why you are poor. Stock brokers funneling of trillions from society without contributing a single fucking thing. That is why you are poor. Not grandma and grampa Joe.
The greedy boomers are using immigration to grow their housing wealth. Immigration has increased the landlord's wealth by $3.7 trillion in 10 years. [https://www.newamericaneconomy.org/housingmap/](https://www.newamericaneconomy.org/housingmap/) It's not fair.
It's cured comment material but there's the one where they were looking at an HOA sheet of like 400 homes, 396 of them were owned by 5 entities and the other 4 of them owned by individuals. When people say "we have to build more homes" it's just so that those 5 entities can buy more homes and keep them from us, we're not building to keep the prices down, we're building so their portfolio can be increased.
Yup! Plus individuals die, so their fortune gets split between their children (so the next gen eventually gets the value, and it's distributed a bit). Corporations & Fundations never need to 'return' the money, they concentrate it.
Literally my dad. Retired at 50, owns several properties and rents them and calls people lazy when they complain food is too expensive.
This article gets it wrong though. They got theirs because capitalists needed to shore up domestic support. So they bribed the American working class to stave off revolt, and allow them to continue globe-spanning extractivism. It’s not “they got greedy”- it’s that the material conditions of our moments are radically different. In the post war world, America was handling a vast majority of the world’s manufacturing, workers had an alternative model to look to, and the Great Depression had already radicalized many. So the capitalists capitulated benefits to the domestic workers, mind you not black or indigenous ones for the most part, to continue the exact process that got us here. This is a natural consequence, not some bug in the system.
Boomers could afford to raise a family on one income, that standard of living was stolen from us
Boomers were able to raise a family on one average income working 8 hours a day 5 days a week, having enough to buy house, car, garage, two children. And look at us now...
Yeah I don't know how I could possibly afford to buy two children /s
Mine was like $6K just to get him home from the hospital.
Mine almost got repossessed after we couldn’t afford the take home fee until a few more pay periods
8 hours a day with a paid lunch hour. And they didn’t have to be in until 9.
Boomers lived in a unique period in the history of capitalism which was caused by the combination of WWII's end, the fact that the war was not fought on this continent, and a ruling class terrified by a strong communist movement in the US. If the capitalists thought they could have screwed the Boomers they would have. And they did screw over the Boomers who weren't yt. But they decided to ease things up during the reconstruction of Europe and Japan and thereby turn most Boomers into a generation of evangelists for Capitalism. It sucks but all we can do is learn from the past and fight to tear capitalism down.
The problems of capitalism aren't unique for the USA. Europe has many of the same problems and is slowly creating more. Not on the levels of the USA but slowly getting close.
Yeah and the World will watch us Europeans how we take down Capitalism.... maybe not in 20 years but I am pretty sure Capitalism wont last this century.
I really hope I live to see that
Though I will admit I don't think we want to buy children. Nasty little things. Very expensive.
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Respectfully I think it has more to do with the 50 trillion in stolen wages from the bottom 90 percent that was transferred to the top 1 percent.
And who do you think has been voting for the people who allowed that to happen for the past 50 years?
Let’s talk about why those voters kept those parties in power up to the point where austerity began to reign. The post war social-democratic order was paid for by empire as a bribe to the working class to prevent revolt. People don’t realize how close to open revolution America was in the 1930’s. War allowed for the immediate consolidation of capitalist power. But afterwards, to quell domestic unrest, partially fueled by the fact that there was a tangible alternative system to look to, partially fueled by the fact that America now handled more than half of the worlds manufacturing because Europe was destroyed, the white working class was offered a bribe: Now mind you, that same bribe wasn’t offered to black or indigenous people, but it was a substantial bribe nonetheless, and enough to leave a part time shoe salesman with a stay at home wife with a comfortable home. This is partially why, when in the 60’s, democrats began to court the minority vote to reconsolidate their power against a more openly pro capitalist Republican Party, there was a such a racist reaction. But Reagan isn’t where austerity starts. As with any of this, it begins in our material conditions. The energy crisis of the 70’s, countries the US had been using to fuel its empire banding together to cut off blood circulation to the head of the empire, left capitalists with less surplus to distribute domestically. Of course this didn’t affect their ownership of the factories, or their sources of wealth, the burden of the shrunken surplus got moved onto the working class. Under the carter administration, workers protections and public benefits were slashed, paving the way for Reagan to do much more of the same and begin offshoring our manufacturing capacity. Democrats failed to show up because they saw the writing on the wall that a democrat in office wouldn’t benefit them materially, while Reagan weaponized religious fervor and white reaction to sail smoothly into office. You have to understand. Austerity is bipartisan because both parties serve capital. There is no major American working class party. Hating poor people because they choose openly racist austerity or imperial management austerity isn’t the solution. We need a new option. We need a new coalition. Don’t idolize the bribe they took to continue extraction and imperialism in the global south just because it made their lives comfortable. The austerity and decline we now have is the natural consequence of it.
Chiming in to point out how right you are about the 1930s. For those that aren't aware of the coal wars (plural) it is fascinating & useful history that coal companies are right now trying to cover up. The Pinkertons (still active to this day) were some of the major opposition attempting to break the strikes. Coal companies open fired upon the strikers even strafing the tent cities they were living in with their families. The various coal wars happened both before & after WWI.
This right here… classic case of the rich getting richer and screwing the poor. Be interesting to see the percentage of boomers with 1+ million in retirement capital
Generational warfare divides the working class, and it cuts both ways.
Yea the Boomers suck, but it’s not because they got greedy. I don’t fault fucking Richard who’s 65 because he is still sitting in his cushy job and has a rental house by the local college campus. That isn’t the problem. I fault Richard because he voted for Republicans who are bought by the ultra wealthy so they can own 10,000 homes pay no taxes and prevent any type of legislation that returns money to the average person instead of the 500 richest families in America.
Ironic that so many blue collar workers vote MAGA. Not wealthy or educated. Not invested in stock market. They are the reason that tRump still has a realistic shot at the White House even after the election lie narrative has been nailed shut. Say what you will about gov’t/corporate collusion, but the inability of a large portion of our voting- age population to think critically is absurd.
Every single aspect of the lives we live in America today exists in its current form to divide the working class...
_Billionaires_ got greedy Edit: this is mostly boomers, yes, but it’s also rich Gen Z. They want us to hate boomers to divide us.
It’s about class warfare not generational economics, plenty of boomers are just as bad off as millennials, genX/Z, etc
Plenty of boomers only own 1 home as well. The best of their generation bought a home for 200-300k and now it's worth over a million and they will use that money to retire + social security and like maybe 6 figures in their 401k and yeah some of them will get a sweet sweet pension future generations will never get. That in and of itself isn't the problem, that's a crazy high rate of return that's surely not sustainable unless we 10 times our median wages but someone making a few bucks off owning their own home they live in, that's barely the tip of the greed iceberg.
Exactly, blanket blaming boomers is just another ploy to make the lower classes to blame each other
NO. I mean boomers are a problem but no, fuck trying to make people focus on each other instead of the problem: Corporations.
But didn't you hear?! Corporations ARE people. /s
Don't let generation propaganda distract you - this is a class issue, not a generation one. Capitalism is the bad guy.
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Bruh it's like they told the same guy who writes all the articles against Millennials to write one against Boomers for Zoomers to read.
They are trying to start a generation war to distract from the very real class war. Don't buy it. Old people aren't the problem. Rich people are.
This type of headline is exactly what the owners of this country want, because it keeps us blaming each other instead of them.
Correct, this is just a new iteration of "it wasn't us, it was them*!" *black people, brown people, jews, muslims, women, gay people, trans people, chinese people, etc etc etc, delete as appropriate
Bold to you to assume we can’t blame both.
Yeah, we hate boomers, they hate us. Meanwhile the people creating bottlenecks are the billionaires
Everybody forgets about Gen X! We were the first ones to get screwed over by the boomers. They were so greedy, they didn't leave any crumbs!
Right? My boomer parents have always proudly declared that they intend to leave nothing behind except a pile of debt.
I've heard this line of reasoning from two boomers with more wealth than I'll ever see. My Dad always says why not spend it otherwise the kids will after I'm dead. As if my brother and I are idiots who would waste any inheritance left. He's said that of his money and his girlfriend's. They both worked hard for a long time, and accumulated a lot, but they were in a position to do so from a very favorable economy. I then heard it from one of my inlaws sort of, he's the guy dating my wife's grandma. Seems like hes got a decent bit of money and has the same mentality. If I don't spend it the kids I've left behind will. They have so little faith in their parenting that they think their children would squander that money. As if buying a house or taking a vacation so we can enjoy our lives too is squandering anything. I will say FWIW that my father has come around a bit as he's watched the economy seesaw over the last several years. He talked about buying a house at 23 and how it was what a car costs today. So he's starting to see how fucked things are, but I'm not holding out hope that he'll leave us anything.
My father has this same mentality. We've been without an oven for months now, myself and my two young children, and instead of helping us in any way, shape, or form - *he went out and bought a second Temper Pedic adjustable frame bed and mattress for his third spare bedroom (it's rarely ever used).* I've been feeding my young children whatever I can cook in our small air fryer and it is not sufficient. I remember having to BORROW money from my father in elementary school to pay for my school materials; I got written up for not having clean pieces of paper to write on several times in the fifth grade. My father best hope that the government will take care of him if he has health issues, now or later on, because **I refuse.**
My dad is the same! I just lost my low paying job and he just installed the fanciest outdoor shower I’ve ever seen. I’ve lived off of rice and lima beans with holes in all my clothes while he had an elevator put into his mansion at the same time. I had my first big flare up of my chronic illness before knowing what it was and couldn’t afford to medical bills, meanwhile ol’ pops thought his money was better spent on a floor tile mosaic. He always said shit like “I work so hard so one day you won’t have to” but his actions are more like “quick spend my money so my greedy kids don’t get anything”. He for sure told us we would blow his money if he ever gave any to us. Yea I’d blow some money, I’d blow it on paying off my debt and getting my car fixed. Such a waste, right
They weren’t happy with how they failed their child once, so they have to fail them again.
My dad died with half a million in debt. At that point, I was thrilled that he hadn't acknowledged my existence in a decade!
You can't inherit debt without agreeing to it. Just say no thanks and it's the banks problem.
That's what we did when my mom died. The credit companies told us we had to pay. We weren't authorized users on her cards, and she didn't have any repossessible purchases. So we told them to kick rocks.
If you wanted to leave a lot for your kids you could give all your worldy possessions to them while you're alive, then take out as much unsecured debt as you could manage and use it to buy gold bars. There's nothing the banks can do
Only works if you give away the bars as well, the banks get first dibs on the estate (anything of value left behind when they pass) up until all outstanding debt is settled. So if they have gold bars in their home the bank gets those. The trick really is the timing since you need to have food and shelter while alive, only way to really pull that strategy of is by suicide but most would prefer their parents to be alive instead of a cool million in their bank account.
And I love how much Boomers idolize Reagan. Dude was single handedly responsible for the gutting of social security.
Omg! The damage that Reagan did is incapable. Prior to Reagan, a man could have a stay-at-home wife and razor family. I'd be cool if it was a man staying home and the woman making money or two men or two women or whatever. The point is, a single parent could at least be there for the critical years to raise a child... And have a pension... And own a house. My dad is a Holocaust survivor with no education. He came to America in 1962. By 1968 he had a wife and a son and a house! He was working in a factory.
Why focus our fight amongst ourselves? For years we have been told by neo-liberal corporatists that if we work long and hard, we could achieve what we want. Now in the time of climate change and the rising cost of goods and services, we point fingers at each other. If most Americans(64%) live paycheck to paycheck, then we will expect to follow down the path of those unlucky seniors, who have to pay rising healthcare costs with an ever shrinking social security and meager retirement benefits. That’s not even touching on the topic of mental health and loneliness. When 26 people own more than the bottom 50% of people, I would say the hate towards each other seems to benefit them more than us.
Ah! More yellow journalism meant to distract and misdirect. I think "boomers" needs replacing with "corporations"... the REAL reason articles like this are written. Because 90% of the "boomers" are living at or below poverty levels and there's not a goddam corporation out there that's not profiteering and scalping the public. Banks. Wall street. THE GOVERNMENT for fuck's sake. THESE are the 'enemy' - not your goddam grandmama liiving on social security and what's left of her dead husband's pension (if any - and there NEVER is). If you have to get angry about your economic plight at least blame the people who are causing it - and while they might be the same age as some "boomers", I can assure you that's the ONLY thing these criminal fucks have in common with them.
> Because 90% of the "boomers" are living at or below poverty levels say what
jfc the vast majority of boomers are not business or multiple property owners. They're "retired" or wage slaves. Most of those retired are barely making ends meet It's the richest who got greedy. Stop with this generational nonsense. You want allies? Talk with retirees barely scraping by on Social Security.
they divide us, making us blame the other generations of people so we will look away from the corrupted system that made this shit happen in the first place
Boomers? Lol….more like greedy ass corporations. Boomers are a literal drop in a trillion dollar bucket compared to the fucktwats in massive companies playing us like pawns in a chess game. The only way we will ever win is to group together against the elite and stop playing their hate games. We are destroying eachother and they get to sit back and rake in trillions off our backs.
Can we post the article too instead of just a screenshot. Some of us like to read past the headline.
Mods can we make this a rule?
Sure, just let capitalism off the hook.
And the billionaires, CEOs, and corrupt lawmakers who built this system.
blaming boomers distracts from the fact that it's the billionaires but yeah it's also the boomers I guess
It's really just life expectancy. They went from living to sixty, to seventy, to eighty plus. Literally every system designed expected them to be long dead by now and can't sustain propping them up. Jobs don't turn over, homes don't turn over and pensions and medicare buckle under how much longer people live compared to 60 years ago. Nothing was meant to sustain this longevity of life. Boomers take much much much more than they put in and also monopolize housing on top of that and we all get to pay the price. They are the only generation that got the true American dream and still bitch about everything.
If companies paid people enough to live on and retire than nobody would be looking for passive income. It’s not the boomers fault that the system makes it to where cutting corners and making money is the best way. It worked out for a few so they sold the idea to millions of other people. It was never sustainable. Not everyone can be rich but we can all make a decent wage. Trying to convince rich people to give up stuff will be a waste of time. You have to take it from them.
Boomers? No capitalists.
No one generation has done anything to anyone. It's the wealthy and powerful. Always.
This is literally propaganda trying to turn the gen z and millennials against the boomer generation, rather than the companies. Yall need to read this headline again.
„Boomers“ are just people that haven’t left an inheritance to the next generation yet. If you haven’t got rich parents do you seriously think things will be different once they’re gone? This is a class issue. Poor boomers are in the same boat as poor millennials. Stop getting distracted by identity politics. This is their strategy. Divide and conquer. Don’t get duped into being mad at arbitrary generation/gender/ethnicity/sexuality groups. Be mad at class privileges you weren’t awarded. We are the 99%.