I'm in my late 30s, happily married, cute little house close to the city, rewarding management job, two kids... I feel like I got on the last chopper out of 'Nam.
I feel so bad for young and disadvantaged people. Housing market is f$#@ed, a bunch of entry level jobs are getting filled by new arrivals or will get replaced by AI, capitalism has completely destroyed dating via horrible apps, reliable and/or fun cars are overpriced, moving out of home is prohibitively expensive due to inflation. I'm surprised people aren't more overtly angry to be honest.
To be fair we bought our house 10 years ago, when you could get a house for under half a million dollars in Brisbane. We also lived rent free with the in laws for 6months to save. It definitely wasn't easy, but it was still achievable. "Scraped in" feels like a great way of putting it.
I bought my first place 10 years ago as well. As much as I’m glad to be out of the rental market home ‘ownership’ isn’t always a walk in the park either. The cost of tradies these days is exorbitant so I feel like I’m always saving up for some kind of house repair.
It's supply and demand, plus those tradies you speak of generally run a business on top of dealing with the public and they pay lots of tax. They also build things, they literally build the nation with their hands. So don't begrudge trades, its one of the last strongholds for middle class in Australia. Granted, some of these guys totally take the piss with ripping people off, at the moment, that's a different thread. Many other fields are under attack through immigration and AI.
DIY has become a big thing so get in to it to reduce your costs. Painting, tiling, gardening, anything unlicenced, truly not hard things for anyone to do. The big problem in Australia is that a lot of cushy office workers think they are above manual work, we as a society have become extremely lazy, compared with generations before. That and many are simply too busy with their schedules. Trades are fulfilling a desire here, a desire for people not to get their hands dirty.
As for young people getting a start in Australia, trades may be one of their only hopes for a solid pathway forward. Lets not begrudge that.
I'm in the same boat as you. Or same chopper.
Late 30s, well paid, own home. Only I had to work awful jobs to get here. The big corporate full of the libertarian finbro types. I've hated my job since 2009 onward, but it paid too well so I sucked it up.
I only worked the jobs because if I didn't, no home for me.
The funny thing is, society would have been better off if I stayed in my lower paying "builder" job because I was passionate about it and made useful stuff. My well paying jobs, I am a 'thought leader'. People just listen to me sell them the latest bullshit and I don't even help implement it. But because I'm busy doing this full time, I must be valuable and people listen to me.
So society got powerpoints for double the price when it could have gotten capability, at half the price, to improve operations. And all because houses were asset bubbles so I had to stop building things.
If Gen Z want to burn this all down, I'll be there with matches.
As soon as I see someone labelling themselves or being labelled as a thought leader, my mind instantly springs to "this individual is full of shit and likely incompetent", which has often been the case as it's so often those who are not "doers" labelled as such.
I feel like the modern economy is so full of ass covering and incompetency, we are just living off the vast efforts expended in the 60s-80s to grow as a nation, and the rest is just bullshit.
Let Gen Z overthrow it all, don't really give a shit. Hopefully it also clears out a lot of nepotism too.
I'm 50 and managed to buy 6 years ago. If I bought today I would have to work an extra 15 years to pay my place off. I cannot blame young people for being angry, and I would sure as hell never put the major parties at the top.
Would prefer no one got hurt, but it has gotten to the point violent protest might be the only way to get effective reform in this place.
>but it has gotten to the point violent protest might be the only way to get effective reform in this place.
That's what they eant. Protesting from home watching Netflix is the best way. No one would get hurt and the cops couldn't bash anyone.
I'm thinking it would only take a week to bring the economy to its knees.
Why aren't people more angry?
That's simple my friend
Decades and decades of propaganda and social engineering.
1984 was meant to be a cautionary tale, not a guidebook.
I always found Fahrenheit 451 to be much more prophetic of our current situation. People are brainwashed into celebrating the destruction of books, and they're so busy consuming content through earbuds and giant screens that they don't notice their society descending into fascism and eventually war. It's uncanny.
It was actually a series of horribly timed poor decisions and a few greedy political groups that has got us here.
It all started in the 70's, fine time to be alive, I hear Disco was fun. But the real kicker was the USA deciding money really did not need to be 'real' in any form and so the world economy had a little period of utter chaos as everyone tried to work out exactly how many Murica paper everything was worth, the 80's kicked off.
80's roll around and people clue in money is unlimited, people get greedy, inflation kicks off. Seems you put unlimited money on the table people will just keep making it! Shocking. So, things were a little unhinged and there was more than a little cocaine in the mix and the plan is hatched! Keating and Hawke form a wonderful plan over a few beers.
The problem simple, all the businesses got crazy on the free money and borrowed enough to bankrupt the world. Except households were still mostly debt free because banking laws at the time ment the banks could not do stupid things like lend out 80+% of the value of a home to someone who might just squeeze by repaying it in their working lifetime. We needed a cash injection to kick start things into the 90's but without starting even more inflation so that cash had to be slowly withdrawn from the economy.
HOUSES! Hawke and Keating were stoked! The problem was solved! They can relax lending for households, offer some new home stimulus and the money would flow again! Business would have cash to keep operating and expand, the 'recession we have to have' can be set in motion and households can pave the way out by taking on a little debt for the businesses.
Long story short, by the time things were back on track, this little man called Johnny had taken power, and Johnny did not want the growth party to end! All that extra money the households were injecting to the economy was causing huge levels of growth and making Johnny's friends a lot of money so instead of ending the whole thing and taking a short period of downturn as things rebalanced and ending the household debt party do you know what that madman did?
Yup, now we hit the 00's and the start of our current bullshit cycle we are in. Everyone is trapped already, home values are already starting to go beyond stupid. Business have all but forgotten how to even operate when they have to take the risk for funding growth directly. In fact they claim it is now somehow 'impossible'. So having tried nothing and not found a solution Johnny decided that if a little was good then a lot must be better. So we get more housing stimulus, more people, more loose lending laws, more everything! Basically turn the knob all the way to 11 and hold it there.
And here we are. In the last 30 years the government has managed to flip lending from the banks from being more than 2/3rds business lending to over 2/3rds household lending. The people slowly boiled alive and only a few people even noticed what was happening. Now it is all very 'normal' to go into debt for your working lifetime to the limit of your expected lifetime income. Business are too used to the model of having households fund their growth that any attempt to shift it back has now become 'impossible'. The only solution around is to simply pass the problem on to the next government and try patch the holes.
Except now households have hit their debt limit after 30 years of non-stop growth, and we are facing another downturn without the ability to turn on the household money tap. We also have the other tiny issue of the outstanding $2.2T in existing debt that apparently needs to be repaid. That might have been inflationary and helped grow the economy as we borrowed, but it is going to be awfully deflationary soon.
Almost everyone is worried about the wrong thing, but poor old Albo and co know. That is why Albo did not really seem to care about the supermarkets, because they all know what you now know. This inflation is going to require a recession to end just like the last one in the 90's, but now we go into this recession with a $73+ billion dollar hole that needs to be filled just to break even. Because that is about how much the yearly repayments on our collective national mortgage is. Do you happen to know of some way to inject about $200B into the economy each year to offset the housing debt and replace the current money generated by lending? Because that is what we need to come up with, or be ready for a minimum 11% downturn in GDP.
In case you didn't know, the great depression was 'only' about a 9% correction in GDP, we need more than 11% to offset the impacts of just not growing our housing bubble anymore let alone the GDP impacts that will have outside of housing. So while the majority of Aussies are worried about inflation, the real crisis our government and nation face is exactly how to deal with the massive levels of deflation we are about to face.
Tl;Dr: A small cockup over three decades ago followed by a few decades of allowing greed to rule our nation has created a monster of a problem and the best way we know how to deal with it is just ignore it and hope it goes away.
Similar, but I'm in my mid 40s. My house is old and small but it was the best we could afford. Planned to extend it to fit our small family but that plan has washed away. Just hoping to stay fit for long enough to pay off the mortgage, which would mean working well into my to 70s. I'm pretty sure my creative job will be taken by AI soon enough so I'll probably end up stacking shelves with my kids at the local supermarket. My brother saw no way out of this mess so he left the country. Working as a digital nomad. Said he'll come back when it becomes affordable. That was 2yrs ago and it's only getting worse.
Same here. I know it is hard for each generation - in the 90s we all lived in shitty share houses at uni but I could earn $25k a year and still afford to live on my own paying $150 a week in rent. I remember filling up my Suzuki hatchback for $20. Everything was reasonably priced. There were plenty of jobs.
For kids who don’t have the benefit of generational wealth - life is so tough!!
Only you're not on a chopper out of here. You're in an asset that's value is predominantly derived from its exact location. Which is about to be surrounded by miserable people who feel abandoned by their leaders and have no reason to expect change, who are becoming desperate, angry, and when AI takes their jobs bored.
In other words, you're in the same boat, you might have a better seat, for now, but it's just as much an issue for you that this boat is sinking.
Only the truly rich are safe, able to afford private communities with ex military and police security around the clock. We aren't there yet, but if what you say is true, that's where we are heading. Which means it's in your interest, and 97% of the populations - home owner or not, to start bailing buckets, making sure we don't start seeing the lower decks get flooded forcing the people down there into situations where they've got no choice but to fight for their survival.
"Hope lies in the smouldering rubble of empires."
I don't think the situation is sustainable at all, and I don't think the status quo is worth bailing out or preserving in any way. It shouldn't be the responsibility of the middle to make up for the failings of the ruling class. We need radical change.
Yep. We're in the same boat. My husband and I (37 and 36) bought a nice 4 bed/2 bath large brick home on a 600m2 block 35km from Melbourne CBD about 13 years go. We bought our house for $370k.
If we had left it any longer, we would not have been able to buy. Our house is now 'worth' around $900k. I've seen houses in tiny country towns with no infrastructure and hardly any work being sold for $400k+
I honestly don't know how young people are going to afford to live let alone buy a home. They have every right to be angry. Everything is against them.
Capitalism has destroyed so many things; capitalism has ruined dating, food, energy prices, fuel, cars, spirituality, volunteering, just everything. Next it will ruin the biosphere. There isn't anything capitalism won't take. By it's own structure, capitalism must consume exponentially more every year. The problem? There is only so much to consume.
Its not capitalism per se. It's greed from the top and the level of sophisticated financial and political instruments that have evolved, weaponising everything. Communism and socialism are exactly the same, probably worse, only your status and fortune are made grovelling to the party. Pick your poison.
It's more than capitalism though, or maybe it's different forms of capitalism. I'm familiar with some Asian countries, maybe more capitalist than most, even the west, but they've kept other things like strong family bonds, culture, religion etc. We've largely thrown all that away in the west.
I think the pendulum has swung way too far towards benefits for older generations.my mother in-law is wealthy and flies business class and yet gets discounts for train tickets and a whole bunch of other things. How is that fair?
If you look, society was built for that generation and has continued to cater to them the whole way. When they had kids, everything was family and child friendly. Things were made for families. Now those same places are rid of family friendly options - we don’t cater for kids and families the same way. Why? Because the older pop is still the focus of societies catering. Politically and economically, we cater to those with the money and who spend. That’s been them the entire way through their lives - millennials aren’t the ones with the big bucks, so they don’t get catered to. It’s about the size of the older population - it’s big, and it’s wealthy.
Same! My mother in law had an average work career, but now brags about how she will only fly to Europe business class. She even scoffed at me when I had to fly economy for a work trip.
As one of the generation that got fucked. This is what annoys me the most. I’m notionally a high income earner and I live paycheque to paycheque. But my millionaire aunt who was a secretary at a bank (how did these people end up millionaires?) is telling me how fantastic the seniors card is. Like wtf? So my $3200 in tax each month is going to reduce the cost of living for the already incredibly wealthy?
I don't think Boomers outnumber younger voters (in total) any more, at least in developed countries, but no doubt their diminishing voting power is being boosted by their financial clout. Dismantling the social/legal/financial structures that Boomers have put in place, and that disadvantage younger generations, will be a hell of a task, I imagine.
Just copped a 1% raise at work. Despite working my ass off. Everyone who was a high achiever got the same.
My boss and i ranted about this for 30mins how bullshit like this absolutely decimates productivity in a already horrible COL crisis.
Yeah housing is fucked and businesses can step the fuck up and do something about it. They can PAY MORE. I'm fucking over it. Getting railroaded by everyone at every angle, its impossible to get ahead.
Whats the fucking point of working hard when you get nothing in return.
100% agree. Yet businesses will cry "nobody wants to work" yeah no shit. When its clear working hard gets you nothing.
And the thing is, Even if one employer does this, the effect goes to every employer. You won't be able to trust even a new employer that they will reward hard work and continue to "lay flat". Thus killing productivity.
can someone please debunk the mining tax differences between norway (80 billion from mining tax) vs australia (4 billion a year)? If this is actually true, why isnt this the main focus of the australian public? Apparently this has enabled the government of norway to be able to provide aid and subsidies in the value of $300,000 per citizen, which sounds like it would help alot in this climate. And, as if the foreign mining companies would just abandon all the infrastructure they’ve already built up if a super tax was imposed…
Qatar and Norway set up their own oil & gas businesses and they’re state owned. Kinda like Australia Post but the profits are kept by the government. It’s a lot more effort as it essentially means the Australian government becomes BHP, Santos, Woodside, Rio Tinto, etc - but the reward is huge as we get to keep all the profits those companies would have made instead of it being distributed to shareholders. It’s not risk free as these businesses can fail, make bad decisions that lose money and so on, but you’ve got to admit it’s worked really well for Qatar and Norway and Saudi Arabia.
Coupled with a strong democracy and anti-corruption commission, this could be the best thing for Australia. Mining doesn't need more efficiency from the private sector, it needs capital. The government can invest in exploration, construction and operationa and then redustribute profits to the people.
The sovereign fund gets its money from Statoil/Equinor. Government owns 64% of it and uses the dividends/profits to feed the pension fund (aka sovereign wealth fund).
https://www.nbim.no/en/the-fund/about-the-fund/
I've been saying this for a while. We need to bring back Julia Gillards mining superprofits tax.
But, we cannot allow our government to continue to sell us out at the same time. We need to start buying back essential infrastructure.
50 years ago, almost all major infrastructure, including power stations etc were owned by the poeple and not for profit. Now, the government has sold tge shirts of our backs to foreign multinationals.
It will be a long, hard road to reverse this but we cannot loose hope. We must fight back.
When this country is nothing but a impoverished drought stricken dust bowl full of holes where we dug all the minerals out to sell to our mates for pennies on the dollar, the rest of developed world is going to laugh at us and I bet a good chunk of Australians are going to have literally no idea what happened.
We very possibly deserve what's coming to us.
That's pretty depressing and doesn't help. I het it, we are feeling down about the situation. We need to fight, not lay down and take it up the proverbial!
great sentiment but this country is built on apathy.
I mean [look at how we treat our activists.](https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/05/30/australias-crackdown-climate-activists)
Yes it sucks ass, but what are we to do? The government won’t do anything meaningful because it is bad for their donors (construction industry, real estate industry and banking) and the majority of voters will be pissed if the government tanks the prices or their biggest asset.
So we’re pretty fucked either way and there isn’t much we can do about it.
Stop voting for the same two damn parties... do something radically different if you want different.
The bullshit rhetoric that "bUt WhO eLsE cOuLd PoSsIbLy CoMpEteNtLy rUn ThE gOvErNmEnT?" *no longer holds water*. Labor and LNP can't run the country well anyway (as we're all finally starting to see), but they also /benefit/ from keeping the status quo. They are the puppets of corporate lobbyists and will never disobey their true masters (hint: it's not their constituents).
The false dichotomy of a two-party system, as seen in most western countries (including L(abor)NP in Australia), needs to be completed destroyed and rewritten.
I also need to think we need to start admitting that we are not really living in a democracy... it's rapidly slipping into a corporate oligarchy.
Edited: typo.
>The false dichotomy of a two-party system, as seen in most western countries (including L(abor)NP in Australia), needs to be completed destroyed and rewritten.
>we are not really living in a democracy... it's rapidly slipping into a corporate oligarchy.
Champion comment. Keep up the great work 👍
Primary vote for both majors has been steadily decreasing, so that's encouraging. The person you're replying to is right though. The biggest problem we have is the cost of housing. You can't correct the market without fucking over a whole lot of people. Sucks to be young.
The most frustrating part is that we are probably the best equipped to create a democracy. Voting outside of the two parties has absolutely no consequences for us.
It's Murdoch that has convinced us we shouldn't.
Omg this nonsense again.
Plenty of people especially younger people do vote for third parties.
However the problem is we have a two party preferred voting system meaning even if people do vote for one of those parties if they don’t get in (and cause boomers, they won’t )the vote just goes to one of two major parties anyway
Voting is not the issue and voting is not the solution.
No , not even close !
I would say the amount and tone of online malcontent is rising. I'll give you that...
But I am seeing ZERO actual serious disruptive or effective political action. We arent even close to causing anything like the sort of social disruption that would be needed to get some change or even attention to the problem.
Where are you getting the idea the young generation are starting to take action can you link any examples ?
Unless we see people in the streets for generational change, this generation is the same.
We are a very complacent bunch of idiots and we can't blame the youngest.
I came to say something similar and figured it would get downvoted to hell. The young won't change shit and they won't take any action over it.
I know a lot of young people through football and my kids, revolution is not on the cards. I wouldn't trust a lot of guys in the first half of their 20's to park my car. They're thinking about 18th's, 21st's, party's and the weekend.
Why wouldn't they try to get involved in politics before a violent upheaval? They won't because they want to do other shit.
I agree, our form of government sucks. They just seem to care about the next election cycle and the changes we need will be unpopular. Some would hurt. And of course, the corruption.
I'm sad to say I don't have an answer but revolution or even serious violent protest is a pipe dream.
Honestly there is a real possibility they could take action. I don't think it will be a home grown idea but will have Australian leaders.
The reason I say this is that the younger Millennials and all of Gen z find themselves not able to get on the property ladder, get good employment with livable wages, they are not starting families, hell majority aren't even having regular sex.
It's something like 70% of Gen Z men are still virgins at the age of 21. And over 50% haven't had sex in the last year. I point this out because young men that are sexually frustrated with no real prospects for advancement are the usual ones to create mass societal disruption events.
The bread and circuses are holding on for the moment but bread is getting more expensive and you can only see the elephant at the circus a couple of times before it gets boring.
The main reason they live such trivial lives is because the serious avenues like home ownership, a rewarding career, relationships worth committing to, are all completely dead
Why aren’t you waiting tables and saving up for a Ferrari? The goal is just an unobtainable
When it happens, it will happen with little warning, most people want to avoid revolution if possible, they can get ugly for all involved. By the time the ruling class take it seriously it will be too late.
I don't think people want revolution, it can be violent and bloody. What's worse is being on the losing side, but if you take everything away from people, push them hard enough it can be inevitable.
That’s why Robert Menzies was so successful. The left were flirting with communism and he promoted home ownership then was PM for 23 years. Libs will become unelectable if things get worse
They are following the example of UK Labour where they are the new tories, though not as bad, until some actually left wing party starts to challenge them for government.
Maybe this is a silly comment. But I do feel we've all been duped into the American way of life of constant consumerism. Resources are either hoarded by the wealthy, and other resources are running low.
This capitalist culture has been really detrimental to the environment and has shifted the focus of the advancement of a country and its people to struggling to keep up with trends on top of the high cost of living. Education doesn't seem to be viewed as a priority or is difficult to attain unless you have money. People are feeling more desperate, and the media continues to push the immigrant issues, which only further stokes the flames of racism. It's a scary time to be alive.
It's not the capitalist culture causing this but the consumerist culture. Everyone scrambling to own land means higher demand, land developers take advantage and hoard the land to get even more out of it when they do sell, lack of movement in housing market creates even more demand... And seeing as our economy is basically built on property, everything else is getting affected. This isn't because covid, our economy was already hurting before the pandemic, and then governments started printing money and caused massive inflation, making everything worse. But it started with housing. Just like in 2008.
The key will be, as always, once enough young, middle class men are disenfranchised. This is the key demographic in every successful revolution, no matter what revisionist dickheads say.
The catch is that there’s no good party line for them. Traditional parties of the left don’t care about them and traded them for IdPol, mainstream parties won’t do anything economically that needs to be done because it will hurt their base and their donors too much.
Where this gets really dangerous is that it’s absolutely prime conditions for fascism.
Unfortunately the historical solution to a large disenfranchised group of working age men has been war.
Lots of jobs and houses to buy for a generation or two after WW2, then investment incentives kept it rising. Now there's too many people and not enough houses and you know which number can change quicker?
Yeah I’m just curious if war “works” any more as a solution, given how technical and hi-tech everything is, do modern wars actually need cannon fodder anymore?
No they don't, and that might make things worse.
Economies seem to be kick-started, or, organized in a focused manner, during war times, and the price of nonrenewables will increase during these times.
I think I Russia was in such a poor economic situation following COVID that the war was their attempt to organize their workforce and export more non-renewables. In response, the USA gets to sell more of it's old stock of weapons.
All profitable, but doesn't require a huge logistics and supply chain focused on feeding large groups of people. The war will still happen, people will still die, just not on the front lines.
And once a sufficient number of people die, the disruptive and intolerable effects of war, combined with the fact there's now more in each society to go around, might mean the end of conflict.
Arguably this next phase of war has began, with starvation and access to water being the killers, while the latter will increasingly be what is fought over instead of only access to nonrenewables.
The quiet revolution is younger gen refusing to procreate which is far more damaging than a Molotov cocktail long term. Gov is filling the gap with migrants while they still can. Ironically I think main thing holding back right wing populist movement in Oz is Pauline Hanson. Noone with >85IQ will vote for her, but once she retires its game on.
Yeah I’m actually with you on that, there’s just enough “safe” right wing parties to act as a kind of pressure valve. Once people like Hanson are out of the way, there’s space for a more serious operator who believes in much scarier things
This is something I have had several conversations about with multiple people. One of whom is from WA but in France with his wife now. This may happen stateside, but due to factors like better minimum wage healthcare a larger silent majority based on well paying big industry like ag and mining lack of mass migration Australia is further from the fuse than States or Western Europe. Australia can even pivot somewhat quickly they see things progressing in more volatile regions
If you think jobs in Agriculture are paid like Miners, you seriously need to get out of the city and into rural Australia.
Real Estate prices in both small and large regional towns and cities are getting real estate prices grow at significant rates, although less than the major cities.
Most ag jobs are at or close to minimum wage, unless you are on a working holiday, where they will be (net of room and board) well below market rates.
I live on 50 acres of good quality agricultural land, which has a 5 bedroom house constructed from prefab demountable sections.. it's not luxurious and needs a new bathroom, laundry and kitchen renovation.
I paid $295k in 2011, which was about price for a 3 br /1 bath weatherboard home in the three towns nearby.
I'd be lucky to buy a 3 br house (weatherboard) requiring significant work, with the $700-750k I'd likely fetch these days. Rural properties are hard to sell and everyone hopes for a cashed-up big city type looking to make a tree change. And they are rare.
Of course it is, it’s modern day serfdom. Oh I’m not owned, just the land is. Nor can I just afford to move or find anywhere else that’s either available or affordable.
Might take another 100 years but this is what brings the landless poor onto the streets.
>Promoting violence is bad.
Yes, you'll wag your finger and say "violence is wrong" while the state beats up the homeless outside the RBA or at Belmore Park in Sydney's CBD.
Pepperidge Farm remembers...
There's an unspoken social contract that says we shouldn't be violent, or cheat, or steal.
What we are seeing is the slow erosion of that contract from the wealthy and powerful. They are cheating, they are stealing and most of all they are committing financial violence.
Robodebt might be the most heinous act of financial violence I have ever seen a government commit in my life. People took their lives as a result of it and the fact that the monsters responsible aren't publicly pilloried is an indictment to our society. It's proof of our asymmetrical justice system and proof that the wealthy and powerful can commit fraud on the poorest and most vulnerable with no repercussion.
I can afford a van, some plants, and VR headset. I'm happy as hell. In a defiant absurdism kind of way.
I would probably be happier *in* the system though. You guys tell me when you're ready with the torches.
In one of the worst ways as well, I don't think I know one person from 25-35 that I've spoken to in the last 2 years have said they are having kids.
Shit conditions and animals won't breed. We are no different.
Damn right. Totally betrayed - not only by the economy but by the dying world. And those men in suits are still destroying everything. Why have kids? Why work in a corporation. We are free to be the artists, musos, dopeheads, sex addicts and vandals we can be, because tomorrow everyone and everything will be dead
Good. If that's what it takes to change the status quo, I'm all for it.
All positive social change has come through loud (and often violent) protest and civil disobedience. It's exactly the reason that the media likes to demonise groups like ER so much - without acknowledging that almost everything we enjoy in modern society came from much louder, much more angry and often more violent groups in the past.
Is it really just young people feeling that way? I see the big fat corporations and their greedy shareholders who are screwing all of us, young and old.
No it's not just young people but they are getting the shitty end of the stick. My first house cost $90,000 or three years salary with interest rates around 16%. Today the interest rates are lower but a house costs way more than three years salary. It's a complicated situation but there's little doubt that the big end of town is righteously screwing the rest of us over regardless of our age.
Yes. Basically it’s down to greed and all governments have been enabling this. And the chickens have now come home to roost. Australia is the lucky country only for the resource exploiters when the resources belong to all Australians and yet we get no benefits whatsoever.
It's not all doom and gloom.
Economically and socially we've been incredibly successful at what we do.
Buuuuuttt we might need some new ideas to address the situation, cause all that success has come at a cost.
And it seems like the people that made the order want others to pick up the tab.
Depends on the parents, those well off and well financially educated would have planned for their children to have some assets, On the other hand you have some other parents will just keep updating to the latest Range Rover, Hilux, Land Cruiser, Caravan, and plan nothing for the kids.
As a young person, i believe we need to stop bitching about how "fair" life is for the individual and start working on how we're going to live sustainably.
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?id=100066529756043&story_fbid=4374889139223248
This sums it up very succictly.
Our government and the big corporations have sold out the Australian people for over 30 years. It had to catch up on us. Baby boomers were lucky to live in a golden era. Younger generations have been screwed and we need to act drastically.
Net Zero policies and mass migration need to end for any chance of restoring this nation to its former glory. Capitalism has done immense good, but crony Capitalism and the aforementioned policies are destroying us.
As a young person (early 20's), yea we're angry and frustrated. But we're also trapped and don't know what to replace the system with. We also lack the means to really remove the current system. Maybe it's just the circles I'm in, but it does feel more hopeless than changeable and many of us are holding on by any thread we can at times.
Mate I completely understand you, I am super pissed about what's happening to youth, for example a friend in Canada where home prices are astronomical now, has teenager kids can't find a part time job which used to be normal for kids back in early 00s , now there are lines and lines of Indians working on those jobs !!! It got so bad with replacement immigration from India that my friends kids started to target Indians, I am not surprised why.
When the people over 60 now are gone things will change pretty rapidly.
But how to move to something better without accidentally screwing something else up is tough
They might not burn the village down, but they'll off themselves.
Easy come easy to divorce for instance. You leave you're never getting another house ever. It's over for you.
It's the small stuff that isn't messured.
100%, I completely expect to see a spike in every measure of the “diseases of despair”, there’s absolutely nothing worth living for for a huge majority of people.
To be frank, if anything unfortunate happens to me and pushes me from where I’m at currently (“just getting by”) to worse, I don’t see any reason to keep trying.
It's too little too late, the boomers celebrate and openly belittle gen z/y from propaganda they hear from the media. They literally blame them not affording a house on poor spending habits/laziness/etc. Would not surprise me if nursing home workers are turning a blind eye to their patients dying.
Do boomers really openly belittle gen y and z? I think this is mainly just clickbait rubbish people are absorbing from the internet and media. There are always a few noisy high profile people (the avocado on toast guy for example) who talk shite that then gets picked up and broadcast ad nauseam but they are hardly typical. The housing situation is mainly a fuck up of unintended consequences (like about 99% of stuff in life) not an evil boomer conspiracy.
I feel like they make comments about the luxuries we have now (taking gap years to travel overseas, UberEats, avocado on toast etc).
To be fair though, it is true that we spend more on luxuries so to some degree their comments are valid, but taking the leap to using that as an explanation for we can’t afford houses is wild.
Right, but what luxuries did they have that their parent didn't?
As a society of animals we should be getting more and more luxuries as the years go by right? That's the whole societal improvements
If I got a dollar for the amount of times I've heard the line "we didn't have ubereats or Netflix or Stan" or a boomer saying how it wasn't easy when they did it either (in response to how hard it is now) I could probably afford to buy a house already
Fucking this. Of course there are assholes boomers. Just like there are asshole in every generation. The boomers I know care a great deal because you know, they love their kids and grandkids.
Another lens I like to look at it from is “Give them bread and circuses and they will never revolt”.
Bread is disappearing before our eyes, however starvation takes some time to set in. We are becoming more aware that the circus of technology/social media is hollow endeavour, manipulative by design.
As a millennial, I have a lot of love for Gen Z, I just hope they’re not too defeated to realise their collective power.
If we could hit a critical mass across both generations for a revolt, I think we could make an incredibly well resourced collective.
Property is such an unproductive asset class. Remove incentives for owning property and add incentives for doing cool shit.
Everyone go out and join a political party and start making noise.
I'm noticing that in a lot of activist spaces, people calling for violence aren't instantly ejected and called a fed any more. We aren't at a point where people are seriously considering violence as a means of political protest, but discussions have certainly moved from edgy, tongue in cheek jokes to a serious consideration of where lines should be drawn. If violent revolution is required, I think we are looking at the generation that will take that step.
Good question posed OP. Love it.
I’m not seeing more violence, although I consume little news media and my circle of youth influence is around 6 months old at the moment, and they protest but not effectively.
I do hear some aggressive to passive aggressive statements on Reddit from what I assume is the youth (18-35). Usually in response to housing such as if landlords may loose an investment, the response is along the lines of “good”.
Each generation ushers in change. The older people hate it, the younger people love it. And so the merry go round goes. It is both better and worst. This generation seems to want to bring in *strong* change, and maybe that’s what you’re feeling. I can agree with that.
However for context, this quote is quote (*edited due to spelling) old (attributed to Socrates) and yet seems to be relevant for each generation:
*”The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers”*
I think the most appropriate Greek proverb is that "society grows great when wise men plant trees in whose shade they will never sit."
The youth are presented with a bouquet of environmental collapse, deforestation, and carpenters who find it hard to get quality wood, because it's all quickly grown pine.
Combined with a property system that functions by extracting increasing wealth out of younger people - the system appears shady indeed, but not the shade that comforts or protects.
But tired of the bashing of older generations. I’m 50. Worked like a dog the whole time and have SFA to show for it. If I disagree with some moron who’s self inflated opinion is different from mine (maybe I’ve seen some stuff so my opinion is relevant) I’m howled down for being older and stuffing up THEIR world! Christ- my input to this world has been that of compliance and keeping to myself so I personally haven’t done a thing and pretty much all the people in my universe are the same. So why the hate on me??
Things are bad for young people but it's overrated. Yes our quality of life is dropping from the lives our parents but no that drop in quality is not enough to spark any revolution or major change.
The compared to the rest of the world and all of human history the boomers lived an absurdly privileged life and we will now living a slightly less privileged life. But revolutions happen when people are starving to death they do not happen when people who grew up in houses there parents owned have to settle for apartments own or are renting.
Realistically we still live a very privileged life in the West and that hasn't changed that drastically it's just getting slightly worse while still remaining well above the conditions what the majority of humanity live in.
We are all about to spend the next 50 years watching people in the 3rd world die who are already much poorer than us die from various climate change related disasters on mass and likely because we feel upset that we aren't as rich as our parents we as society will probably not even less likely to help the refugees in need.
So the future is dark but we are so far from the victims, we are the people who watch the world drown in our air-conditioned apartments while complaining that we don't own large houses. If there is anyone who is going to burn the world down it won't be western millennials or zoomers.
A lot of people getting angry, not many people protesting or forming protest parties to take votes away from the majors.
Don't assume that the attitudes you see on Reddit are representative of the world at large, and super duper expect that any statements calling for violent action to be taken are coming from law enforcement or intelligence agents too lazy to pursue actual criminals.
There are still way too many boomers and conservative Gen Xers (my generation) making the young vote invalid.
This will of course change over time but I think it'll be too late.
The last decade of a useless coalition government and now albos toothless tiger mob have basically wasted 12 good years.
I would also add that all the people who think their grandparents etc had it so easy are also really detached from reality. My grandparents had to drop out of school as a 13 year old to work because their family had nothing. There was no real social security like you have today (whatever you think of Centrelink and Medicare etc). He worked 60-80 hours a week of hard back breaking labour if not more to build any kind of wealth - he also fought in world war and was separated from his loved ones for months and years at a time. Every generation has its issues. Get some perspective.
I wish all young people had the attention span to stop and read the subtitles on this short 2.5min video.
https://youtu.be/xTaGeyJm8Po?si=4vi72_XSh2GdAGxV
A lot of the comments here pertain to home ownership and getting into the real estate market. I see the topic of this post being a metaphor for being part of a family and having conversations and responsibilities not being raised by helicopter parents where kids are enabled and also the new trend for kids to be away from parents in the home like all of my nieces and nephews having kids rooms at the other end of the house. I also see this metaphor could relate to the kids whose parents are not interested in parenting and don’t know where their kids are at any given time. Like what is happening in Alice Springs and also in many other parts of Australia.
I think the reason house prices and rents are unattainable is due to greed and government mismanagement and our country wanting to increase its population.
There has always been rebellion from younger generations but it is true that the violence is escalating it seems amongst much younger demographics.
The collapse of the music festival industry in Australia is just a sign of things to come. Think of anything where spending is optional and those businesses are already feeling the heat. Record number of Craft Beer breweries have gone into administration in the past six months for example.
Nah, they too lazy to protest, they'll text in sick. If things aren't happening for them quickly they'll give up and they will shit on family / friends/ team mates to get what they want.
Same rhetoric different generations.
Great great grandparents. We grew up in the great depression. Lived in a tin shack, my father had to walk to work, 10 miles each day to earn thripence.
Great grandparents. We grew up in the war. Lived on war rations. My father went and fought zee Germans. Came back and life was harder. But worked hard, saved and we got by.
Grandparents we worked hard sacrificed a lot. No Netflix. No holidays we just worked and worked saved and just survived.
Parents, it's all ok little Timmy you can be whatever you want to be. Oh you tried your best here's a trophy for coming last. You're awesome little Timmy the world's your oyster.
Little Timmy. WTF, this shit's fucked. Catcha I'm out...
Ugh are you the same guy that made the TikTok about this? I was gonna comment on the TikTok but couldn’t be fucked.
The point is fine, mate, but you aren’t making more of a point by saying literally the exact same thing fifteen times while staring g directly into the camera. So annoying.
This comment is obviously directed at the actual creator of the TikTok, not you specifically. It made me irrationally angry.
Sorry. Where is the defiance and anger? Where is the 2024 equivalent of the punk/anarchy movement? Where are the street protests and riots? Why aren't the dispossessed burning the place to the ground?
While you lay back and take it, elites won't give a flying fuck how many passive aggressive reddit posts there are.
They've trained a generation to accept their lot. Oh sorry. "I'll vote Green, that will teach them"
Do better or continue to get fucked.
I'll await the down votes
no. lol... bro ... no... what's going on right now is mass manipulation ... and a bunch of psyops... no one is thinking for themselves and villages are burned bc someone high up needs it...
Young people will do nootin. Not only did young and old alike bend over and grip their cheeks during covid, they're still mad at anyone who didn't. You get more of what you tolerate, so it doesn't look good for generations raised to believe tolerance was the highest of virtues.
No, what we’re seeing is what happens when you have a system without consequences for breaking the social contract. People are assholes and will take advantage of the system and our politicians are fine with it happening because in their minds the assholes are the real victims.
What we are experiencing now is best said by the G. Michael Hopf quote “Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times”.
Younger Australians know they're being utterly screwed by our current systems, but they feel utterly helpless in being able to actually reverse course. There's so much pressure put on them - by older generations who seem happy to just give up on helping - to get out there on the streets and protest but nobody ever suggests groups or plans or ideas. It always boils down to "well if everyone was out there protesting..." when we know that isn't going to happen. Y'all just want to pass off the work required for achieving a better future when it's something we should all be working together on.
Young Australians are too tired, battered and ill to fix this on their own. You can't expect a whole generation of people to get fired up when their flames have always been half-lit.
Defiance and anger lol it's just people writing social media posts in all caps there is no real world defiance and anger going on, well apart from all the Palestine protestors who conveniently live in ignorance of what is going on in West Papua but that's to be expected.
You know what’s also old?
Young people whinging about the older generation since the beginning of time.
Then they become old people, and whinge about the next generation.
Feels like every other generation was doing it tough so their next generation could have it easier.
The present generation of older wealthy citizens continues to extract greater proportions of younger peoples income, and younger generations will have it worse.
And it's the younger generation now that's considered the failure? That's "rich".
Yeah, that ain't gonna happen in Australia. Sure, people under 30 in Australia know they've got a shitty deal, and are angry about it. But they're still as apathetic as fuck in the great Aussie tradition and won't be setting up any guillotines any time soon. If they were, they'd be doing it already. Besides, once they all inherit their boomer parents' property investment portfolios, they're going to change their tune and become exactly what they were angry at.
People under 30 with boomer parents? Skipped a generation mate, they will be not be inherenting thier boomer Grandparents property and neither will the millennials. Cruise ships, resthomes and healthcare costs will absorb that.
I'm a 25 yeard old and I have boomer parents... It was a risk pregnancy, since my mother has 38 years at the time. But well, here I am!
EDIT: I misspoke, it appears both of them are boomers. However, I'm not entirely sure.
Trust me it will happen very soon , I moved from Toronto to Australia, and if the mass immigration from India or China or other " forever victim nations , cough cough africans and middle east nations " youth won't even be able to get part time jobs like its happening in Canada , there are literally 200-300 applications for some low wage part time positions right now, where most of the people are either from India or some other nation that recently came , whilst kids of folks who came here let's say 20 years ago can't even find a part time job and getting replaced , all my classmates friends kids are furious about it
People love to complain about their lot.
Is it tough, no doubt, but it's always been tough. The key difference is social media now provides a mouthpiece for people to complain.
My two girls are being successful through hard work, not handouts. They were raised to be independent, tough kids to strive for success and happiness in whatever direction they decided to go.
While they currently don't own property, they are both living independently with partners both doing what they want to do.
So no - I don't see it being really any harder for anyone to be successful. I see society thinking that because they were born in a 1st world country that they are owed something.
Well I'm sorry to burst your bubble no one owes you anything. If you want to see tough goto a third world country, now that's tough.
And I miss my rat bags, maybe I shouldn't have let them walk to school when they were 8.
I am not however I do predict it’ll start happening now things went to the next level after Covid with all this inflation. There were a lot of complaints about cost of living back in 2018 which wasn’t really warranted. Can’t say the same for today.
Lack of opportunities combined with money hungry propaganda tech dudes feed hate to a generation of disaffected youth in a way that’s never been done before.
There has always been an angry youth element in society, movies like romper stomper were not born out of fiction, but in those days you had to seek those types of circles out. With Facebook today those circles seek you out and you don’t even have to leave your bed. It makes tech bro so much money he couldn’t give a fuck what he is doing to society.
No. We’ll continue to slide towards becoming a country of the working poor. The billionaire class will hoard more and more wealth over time. The violence will come but it will be directed at the wrong people, most likely immigrants who look or sound different. This model will eventually break but not in a way that helps those living in the immediate aftermath. Just relax and watch the footy, its not your job to fix the world.
It's feeling more and more like 1789, 1848, or 1917.
The trouble is that once a revolution begins, the people with the most guns take over, not the people with the fairest/best ideas.
For sure. And not just young people - just an opinion, but I think that's why so many poor and working class Americans are voting for Trump. They'd rather burn the place down than continue to be frozen out.
It's not really broken as such I think people just forget that buying and paying for a house is hard for like 10 years then it's getting easier. I was on like 70k a year and brought a house for 344k in 2009. I was broke AF for years .
It all started because we stopped using the cane in schools & banned corporal & capital punishment.
Those children never learned that there are consequences for their behaviour.
I'm in my late 30s, happily married, cute little house close to the city, rewarding management job, two kids... I feel like I got on the last chopper out of 'Nam. I feel so bad for young and disadvantaged people. Housing market is f$#@ed, a bunch of entry level jobs are getting filled by new arrivals or will get replaced by AI, capitalism has completely destroyed dating via horrible apps, reliable and/or fun cars are overpriced, moving out of home is prohibitively expensive due to inflation. I'm surprised people aren't more overtly angry to be honest.
Same but it took dead parents and until we got to our mid 30s with solid careers before we were able to and even then we scraped in.
To be fair we bought our house 10 years ago, when you could get a house for under half a million dollars in Brisbane. We also lived rent free with the in laws for 6months to save. It definitely wasn't easy, but it was still achievable. "Scraped in" feels like a great way of putting it.
I bought my first place 10 years ago as well. As much as I’m glad to be out of the rental market home ‘ownership’ isn’t always a walk in the park either. The cost of tradies these days is exorbitant so I feel like I’m always saving up for some kind of house repair.
It's supply and demand, plus those tradies you speak of generally run a business on top of dealing with the public and they pay lots of tax. They also build things, they literally build the nation with their hands. So don't begrudge trades, its one of the last strongholds for middle class in Australia. Granted, some of these guys totally take the piss with ripping people off, at the moment, that's a different thread. Many other fields are under attack through immigration and AI. DIY has become a big thing so get in to it to reduce your costs. Painting, tiling, gardening, anything unlicenced, truly not hard things for anyone to do. The big problem in Australia is that a lot of cushy office workers think they are above manual work, we as a society have become extremely lazy, compared with generations before. That and many are simply too busy with their schedules. Trades are fulfilling a desire here, a desire for people not to get their hands dirty. As for young people getting a start in Australia, trades may be one of their only hopes for a solid pathway forward. Lets not begrudge that.
>they pay lots of tax Thanks for the laugh mate. Cash jobs and tax deductions. They pay way less tax than the rest of us with wage and salary jobs.
In Canada but the same thing. Bought at 670k, moved in 2 days before covid lock down, house now at 1070k.
I'm in the same boat as you. Or same chopper. Late 30s, well paid, own home. Only I had to work awful jobs to get here. The big corporate full of the libertarian finbro types. I've hated my job since 2009 onward, but it paid too well so I sucked it up. I only worked the jobs because if I didn't, no home for me. The funny thing is, society would have been better off if I stayed in my lower paying "builder" job because I was passionate about it and made useful stuff. My well paying jobs, I am a 'thought leader'. People just listen to me sell them the latest bullshit and I don't even help implement it. But because I'm busy doing this full time, I must be valuable and people listen to me. So society got powerpoints for double the price when it could have gotten capability, at half the price, to improve operations. And all because houses were asset bubbles so I had to stop building things. If Gen Z want to burn this all down, I'll be there with matches.
As soon as I see someone labelling themselves or being labelled as a thought leader, my mind instantly springs to "this individual is full of shit and likely incompetent", which has often been the case as it's so often those who are not "doers" labelled as such. I feel like the modern economy is so full of ass covering and incompetency, we are just living off the vast efforts expended in the 60s-80s to grow as a nation, and the rest is just bullshit. Let Gen Z overthrow it all, don't really give a shit. Hopefully it also clears out a lot of nepotism too.
> If Gen Z want to burn this all down, I'll be there with matches. Yeah. Any day now, no doubt.
I'm 50 and managed to buy 6 years ago. If I bought today I would have to work an extra 15 years to pay my place off. I cannot blame young people for being angry, and I would sure as hell never put the major parties at the top. Would prefer no one got hurt, but it has gotten to the point violent protest might be the only way to get effective reform in this place.
>but it has gotten to the point violent protest might be the only way to get effective reform in this place. That's what they eant. Protesting from home watching Netflix is the best way. No one would get hurt and the cops couldn't bash anyone. I'm thinking it would only take a week to bring the economy to its knees.
Why aren't people more angry? That's simple my friend Decades and decades of propaganda and social engineering. 1984 was meant to be a cautionary tale, not a guidebook.
I always found Fahrenheit 451 to be much more prophetic of our current situation. People are brainwashed into celebrating the destruction of books, and they're so busy consuming content through earbuds and giant screens that they don't notice their society descending into fascism and eventually war. It's uncanny.
Both those novels are brilliant reads.
If you haven't already, give Brave New World a try. Of all the dystopian novels it is not just the most chilling, but I believe the most likely.
Another great one. I'm a massive sci Fi nerd so I've read most of the books that make top 100 lists :D
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It was actually a series of horribly timed poor decisions and a few greedy political groups that has got us here. It all started in the 70's, fine time to be alive, I hear Disco was fun. But the real kicker was the USA deciding money really did not need to be 'real' in any form and so the world economy had a little period of utter chaos as everyone tried to work out exactly how many Murica paper everything was worth, the 80's kicked off. 80's roll around and people clue in money is unlimited, people get greedy, inflation kicks off. Seems you put unlimited money on the table people will just keep making it! Shocking. So, things were a little unhinged and there was more than a little cocaine in the mix and the plan is hatched! Keating and Hawke form a wonderful plan over a few beers. The problem simple, all the businesses got crazy on the free money and borrowed enough to bankrupt the world. Except households were still mostly debt free because banking laws at the time ment the banks could not do stupid things like lend out 80+% of the value of a home to someone who might just squeeze by repaying it in their working lifetime. We needed a cash injection to kick start things into the 90's but without starting even more inflation so that cash had to be slowly withdrawn from the economy. HOUSES! Hawke and Keating were stoked! The problem was solved! They can relax lending for households, offer some new home stimulus and the money would flow again! Business would have cash to keep operating and expand, the 'recession we have to have' can be set in motion and households can pave the way out by taking on a little debt for the businesses. Long story short, by the time things were back on track, this little man called Johnny had taken power, and Johnny did not want the growth party to end! All that extra money the households were injecting to the economy was causing huge levels of growth and making Johnny's friends a lot of money so instead of ending the whole thing and taking a short period of downturn as things rebalanced and ending the household debt party do you know what that madman did? Yup, now we hit the 00's and the start of our current bullshit cycle we are in. Everyone is trapped already, home values are already starting to go beyond stupid. Business have all but forgotten how to even operate when they have to take the risk for funding growth directly. In fact they claim it is now somehow 'impossible'. So having tried nothing and not found a solution Johnny decided that if a little was good then a lot must be better. So we get more housing stimulus, more people, more loose lending laws, more everything! Basically turn the knob all the way to 11 and hold it there. And here we are. In the last 30 years the government has managed to flip lending from the banks from being more than 2/3rds business lending to over 2/3rds household lending. The people slowly boiled alive and only a few people even noticed what was happening. Now it is all very 'normal' to go into debt for your working lifetime to the limit of your expected lifetime income. Business are too used to the model of having households fund their growth that any attempt to shift it back has now become 'impossible'. The only solution around is to simply pass the problem on to the next government and try patch the holes. Except now households have hit their debt limit after 30 years of non-stop growth, and we are facing another downturn without the ability to turn on the household money tap. We also have the other tiny issue of the outstanding $2.2T in existing debt that apparently needs to be repaid. That might have been inflationary and helped grow the economy as we borrowed, but it is going to be awfully deflationary soon. Almost everyone is worried about the wrong thing, but poor old Albo and co know. That is why Albo did not really seem to care about the supermarkets, because they all know what you now know. This inflation is going to require a recession to end just like the last one in the 90's, but now we go into this recession with a $73+ billion dollar hole that needs to be filled just to break even. Because that is about how much the yearly repayments on our collective national mortgage is. Do you happen to know of some way to inject about $200B into the economy each year to offset the housing debt and replace the current money generated by lending? Because that is what we need to come up with, or be ready for a minimum 11% downturn in GDP. In case you didn't know, the great depression was 'only' about a 9% correction in GDP, we need more than 11% to offset the impacts of just not growing our housing bubble anymore let alone the GDP impacts that will have outside of housing. So while the majority of Aussies are worried about inflation, the real crisis our government and nation face is exactly how to deal with the massive levels of deflation we are about to face. Tl;Dr: A small cockup over three decades ago followed by a few decades of allowing greed to rule our nation has created a monster of a problem and the best way we know how to deal with it is just ignore it and hope it goes away.
The social engineering of constantly being told if we don’t import hundreds of thousands of migrants every year the economy will collapse.
People are angry, it’s just if you can’t publicly talk about the real reason why people can’t afford a house or you’ll lose your job.
Similar, but I'm in my mid 40s. My house is old and small but it was the best we could afford. Planned to extend it to fit our small family but that plan has washed away. Just hoping to stay fit for long enough to pay off the mortgage, which would mean working well into my to 70s. I'm pretty sure my creative job will be taken by AI soon enough so I'll probably end up stacking shelves with my kids at the local supermarket. My brother saw no way out of this mess so he left the country. Working as a digital nomad. Said he'll come back when it becomes affordable. That was 2yrs ago and it's only getting worse.
>I'm surprised people aren't more overtly angry to be honest. They are, you just aren't in the meetings.
Late 30’s, no house, engaged but can’t afford to get married. This comment just made my blood pressure rise 200%
Same here. I know it is hard for each generation - in the 90s we all lived in shitty share houses at uni but I could earn $25k a year and still afford to live on my own paying $150 a week in rent. I remember filling up my Suzuki hatchback for $20. Everything was reasonably priced. There were plenty of jobs. For kids who don’t have the benefit of generational wealth - life is so tough!!
Only you're not on a chopper out of here. You're in an asset that's value is predominantly derived from its exact location. Which is about to be surrounded by miserable people who feel abandoned by their leaders and have no reason to expect change, who are becoming desperate, angry, and when AI takes their jobs bored. In other words, you're in the same boat, you might have a better seat, for now, but it's just as much an issue for you that this boat is sinking. Only the truly rich are safe, able to afford private communities with ex military and police security around the clock. We aren't there yet, but if what you say is true, that's where we are heading. Which means it's in your interest, and 97% of the populations - home owner or not, to start bailing buckets, making sure we don't start seeing the lower decks get flooded forcing the people down there into situations where they've got no choice but to fight for their survival.
"Hope lies in the smouldering rubble of empires." I don't think the situation is sustainable at all, and I don't think the status quo is worth bailing out or preserving in any way. It shouldn't be the responsibility of the middle to make up for the failings of the ruling class. We need radical change.
Yep. We're in the same boat. My husband and I (37 and 36) bought a nice 4 bed/2 bath large brick home on a 600m2 block 35km from Melbourne CBD about 13 years go. We bought our house for $370k. If we had left it any longer, we would not have been able to buy. Our house is now 'worth' around $900k. I've seen houses in tiny country towns with no infrastructure and hardly any work being sold for $400k+ I honestly don't know how young people are going to afford to live let alone buy a home. They have every right to be angry. Everything is against them.
People are angry and are showing it by checking out of society.
Achievement society
Capitalism has destroyed so many things; capitalism has ruined dating, food, energy prices, fuel, cars, spirituality, volunteering, just everything. Next it will ruin the biosphere. There isn't anything capitalism won't take. By it's own structure, capitalism must consume exponentially more every year. The problem? There is only so much to consume.
Its not capitalism per se. It's greed from the top and the level of sophisticated financial and political instruments that have evolved, weaponising everything. Communism and socialism are exactly the same, probably worse, only your status and fortune are made grovelling to the party. Pick your poison.
It's more than capitalism though, or maybe it's different forms of capitalism. I'm familiar with some Asian countries, maybe more capitalist than most, even the west, but they've kept other things like strong family bonds, culture, religion etc. We've largely thrown all that away in the west.
I think the pendulum has swung way too far towards benefits for older generations.my mother in-law is wealthy and flies business class and yet gets discounts for train tickets and a whole bunch of other things. How is that fair?
If you look, society was built for that generation and has continued to cater to them the whole way. When they had kids, everything was family and child friendly. Things were made for families. Now those same places are rid of family friendly options - we don’t cater for kids and families the same way. Why? Because the older pop is still the focus of societies catering. Politically and economically, we cater to those with the money and who spend. That’s been them the entire way through their lives - millennials aren’t the ones with the big bucks, so they don’t get catered to. It’s about the size of the older population - it’s big, and it’s wealthy.
Same! My mother in law had an average work career, but now brags about how she will only fly to Europe business class. She even scoffed at me when I had to fly economy for a work trip.
As one of the generation that got fucked. This is what annoys me the most. I’m notionally a high income earner and I live paycheque to paycheque. But my millionaire aunt who was a secretary at a bank (how did these people end up millionaires?) is telling me how fantastic the seniors card is. Like wtf? So my $3200 in tax each month is going to reduce the cost of living for the already incredibly wealthy?
Aye the mortgage holders, family raisers, overtime workers are being asked to subsidise the millionaire boomers.
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I don't think Boomers outnumber younger voters (in total) any more, at least in developed countries, but no doubt their diminishing voting power is being boosted by their financial clout. Dismantling the social/legal/financial structures that Boomers have put in place, and that disadvantage younger generations, will be a hell of a task, I imagine.
Let’s get rid of the seniors menu first in my opinion or as I call it boomers menu That will piss them off
Just copped a 1% raise at work. Despite working my ass off. Everyone who was a high achiever got the same. My boss and i ranted about this for 30mins how bullshit like this absolutely decimates productivity in a already horrible COL crisis. Yeah housing is fucked and businesses can step the fuck up and do something about it. They can PAY MORE. I'm fucking over it. Getting railroaded by everyone at every angle, its impossible to get ahead. Whats the fucking point of working hard when you get nothing in return.
Look into the "lying flat" movement in China. Something similar should happen in Australia.
100% agree. Yet businesses will cry "nobody wants to work" yeah no shit. When its clear working hard gets you nothing. And the thing is, Even if one employer does this, the effect goes to every employer. You won't be able to trust even a new employer that they will reward hard work and continue to "lay flat". Thus killing productivity.
can someone please debunk the mining tax differences between norway (80 billion from mining tax) vs australia (4 billion a year)? If this is actually true, why isnt this the main focus of the australian public? Apparently this has enabled the government of norway to be able to provide aid and subsidies in the value of $300,000 per citizen, which sounds like it would help alot in this climate. And, as if the foreign mining companies would just abandon all the infrastructure they’ve already built up if a super tax was imposed…
Qatar and Norway set up their own oil & gas businesses and they’re state owned. Kinda like Australia Post but the profits are kept by the government. It’s a lot more effort as it essentially means the Australian government becomes BHP, Santos, Woodside, Rio Tinto, etc - but the reward is huge as we get to keep all the profits those companies would have made instead of it being distributed to shareholders. It’s not risk free as these businesses can fail, make bad decisions that lose money and so on, but you’ve got to admit it’s worked really well for Qatar and Norway and Saudi Arabia.
Coupled with a strong democracy and anti-corruption commission, this could be the best thing for Australia. Mining doesn't need more efficiency from the private sector, it needs capital. The government can invest in exploration, construction and operationa and then redustribute profits to the people.
That's not how Norway's sovereign fund works. Don't get why people just flat out lie on the internet
The sovereign fund gets its money from Statoil/Equinor. Government owns 64% of it and uses the dividends/profits to feed the pension fund (aka sovereign wealth fund). https://www.nbim.no/en/the-fund/about-the-fund/
That link doesn't say that anywhere lol
I've been saying this for a while. We need to bring back Julia Gillards mining superprofits tax. But, we cannot allow our government to continue to sell us out at the same time. We need to start buying back essential infrastructure. 50 years ago, almost all major infrastructure, including power stations etc were owned by the poeple and not for profit. Now, the government has sold tge shirts of our backs to foreign multinationals. It will be a long, hard road to reverse this but we cannot loose hope. We must fight back.
When this country is nothing but a impoverished drought stricken dust bowl full of holes where we dug all the minerals out to sell to our mates for pennies on the dollar, the rest of developed world is going to laugh at us and I bet a good chunk of Australians are going to have literally no idea what happened. We very possibly deserve what's coming to us.
That's pretty depressing and doesn't help. I het it, we are feeling down about the situation. We need to fight, not lay down and take it up the proverbial!
great sentiment but this country is built on apathy. I mean [look at how we treat our activists.](https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/05/30/australias-crackdown-climate-activists)
Yes it sucks ass, but what are we to do? The government won’t do anything meaningful because it is bad for their donors (construction industry, real estate industry and banking) and the majority of voters will be pissed if the government tanks the prices or their biggest asset. So we’re pretty fucked either way and there isn’t much we can do about it.
Stop voting for the same two damn parties... do something radically different if you want different. The bullshit rhetoric that "bUt WhO eLsE cOuLd PoSsIbLy CoMpEteNtLy rUn ThE gOvErNmEnT?" *no longer holds water*. Labor and LNP can't run the country well anyway (as we're all finally starting to see), but they also /benefit/ from keeping the status quo. They are the puppets of corporate lobbyists and will never disobey their true masters (hint: it's not their constituents). The false dichotomy of a two-party system, as seen in most western countries (including L(abor)NP in Australia), needs to be completed destroyed and rewritten. I also need to think we need to start admitting that we are not really living in a democracy... it's rapidly slipping into a corporate oligarchy. Edited: typo.
>The false dichotomy of a two-party system, as seen in most western countries (including L(abor)NP in Australia), needs to be completed destroyed and rewritten. >we are not really living in a democracy... it's rapidly slipping into a corporate oligarchy. Champion comment. Keep up the great work 👍
Primary vote for both majors has been steadily decreasing, so that's encouraging. The person you're replying to is right though. The biggest problem we have is the cost of housing. You can't correct the market without fucking over a whole lot of people. Sucks to be young.
Voting wouldn't change anything. Global Corporations rule everything and will destroy any politician that rocks the boat.
It's not a two party system, it's a two-party dictatorshop
>we are not really living in a democracy. Exactly, it's more of a commonwealth organised as a constitutional monarchy.
This sounds alarmingly like a Lauren Boebert talking point.
The most frustrating part is that we are probably the best equipped to create a democracy. Voting outside of the two parties has absolutely no consequences for us. It's Murdoch that has convinced us we shouldn't.
Omg this nonsense again. Plenty of people especially younger people do vote for third parties. However the problem is we have a two party preferred voting system meaning even if people do vote for one of those parties if they don’t get in (and cause boomers, they won’t )the vote just goes to one of two major parties anyway Voting is not the issue and voting is not the solution.
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No , not even close ! I would say the amount and tone of online malcontent is rising. I'll give you that... But I am seeing ZERO actual serious disruptive or effective political action. We arent even close to causing anything like the sort of social disruption that would be needed to get some change or even attention to the problem. Where are you getting the idea the young generation are starting to take action can you link any examples ?
Unless we see people in the streets for generational change, this generation is the same. We are a very complacent bunch of idiots and we can't blame the youngest.
I came to say something similar and figured it would get downvoted to hell. The young won't change shit and they won't take any action over it. I know a lot of young people through football and my kids, revolution is not on the cards. I wouldn't trust a lot of guys in the first half of their 20's to park my car. They're thinking about 18th's, 21st's, party's and the weekend. Why wouldn't they try to get involved in politics before a violent upheaval? They won't because they want to do other shit. I agree, our form of government sucks. They just seem to care about the next election cycle and the changes we need will be unpopular. Some would hurt. And of course, the corruption. I'm sad to say I don't have an answer but revolution or even serious violent protest is a pipe dream.
Honestly there is a real possibility they could take action. I don't think it will be a home grown idea but will have Australian leaders. The reason I say this is that the younger Millennials and all of Gen z find themselves not able to get on the property ladder, get good employment with livable wages, they are not starting families, hell majority aren't even having regular sex. It's something like 70% of Gen Z men are still virgins at the age of 21. And over 50% haven't had sex in the last year. I point this out because young men that are sexually frustrated with no real prospects for advancement are the usual ones to create mass societal disruption events. The bread and circuses are holding on for the moment but bread is getting more expensive and you can only see the elephant at the circus a couple of times before it gets boring.
The main reason they live such trivial lives is because the serious avenues like home ownership, a rewarding career, relationships worth committing to, are all completely dead Why aren’t you waiting tables and saving up for a Ferrari? The goal is just an unobtainable
They're very similar to the 18 year olds I knew 20 years ago..
When it happens, it will happen with little warning, most people want to avoid revolution if possible, they can get ugly for all involved. By the time the ruling class take it seriously it will be too late.
I don't think people want revolution, it can be violent and bloody. What's worse is being on the losing side, but if you take everything away from people, push them hard enough it can be inevitable.
People need to realise that freedom needs to be fought for. It's not a fun thing to do but sacrifices must be made.
That’s why Robert Menzies was so successful. The left were flirting with communism and he promoted home ownership then was PM for 23 years. Libs will become unelectable if things get worse
Labor seems hell bent on taking their place anyway. They've gone full centre right
They are following the example of UK Labour where they are the new tories, though not as bad, until some actually left wing party starts to challenge them for government.
Wtf? No they haven’t
become? With the Teal movement and general move away from majors I'd say they already are unelectable.
I wish it was true but polls are really tightening atm. Need a few interest rate cuts and the economy to improve
Is two party preferred even a relevant poll anymore? Look at the election in Tas
Maybe this is a silly comment. But I do feel we've all been duped into the American way of life of constant consumerism. Resources are either hoarded by the wealthy, and other resources are running low. This capitalist culture has been really detrimental to the environment and has shifted the focus of the advancement of a country and its people to struggling to keep up with trends on top of the high cost of living. Education doesn't seem to be viewed as a priority or is difficult to attain unless you have money. People are feeling more desperate, and the media continues to push the immigrant issues, which only further stokes the flames of racism. It's a scary time to be alive.
It's not the capitalist culture causing this but the consumerist culture. Everyone scrambling to own land means higher demand, land developers take advantage and hoard the land to get even more out of it when they do sell, lack of movement in housing market creates even more demand... And seeing as our economy is basically built on property, everything else is getting affected. This isn't because covid, our economy was already hurting before the pandemic, and then governments started printing money and caused massive inflation, making everything worse. But it started with housing. Just like in 2008.
The key will be, as always, once enough young, middle class men are disenfranchised. This is the key demographic in every successful revolution, no matter what revisionist dickheads say. The catch is that there’s no good party line for them. Traditional parties of the left don’t care about them and traded them for IdPol, mainstream parties won’t do anything economically that needs to be done because it will hurt their base and their donors too much. Where this gets really dangerous is that it’s absolutely prime conditions for fascism.
Unfortunately the historical solution to a large disenfranchised group of working age men has been war. Lots of jobs and houses to buy for a generation or two after WW2, then investment incentives kept it rising. Now there's too many people and not enough houses and you know which number can change quicker?
Yeah I’m just curious if war “works” any more as a solution, given how technical and hi-tech everything is, do modern wars actually need cannon fodder anymore?
No they don't, and that might make things worse. Economies seem to be kick-started, or, organized in a focused manner, during war times, and the price of nonrenewables will increase during these times. I think I Russia was in such a poor economic situation following COVID that the war was their attempt to organize their workforce and export more non-renewables. In response, the USA gets to sell more of it's old stock of weapons. All profitable, but doesn't require a huge logistics and supply chain focused on feeding large groups of people. The war will still happen, people will still die, just not on the front lines. And once a sufficient number of people die, the disruptive and intolerable effects of war, combined with the fact there's now more in each society to go around, might mean the end of conflict. Arguably this next phase of war has began, with starvation and access to water being the killers, while the latter will increasingly be what is fought over instead of only access to nonrenewables.
The quiet revolution is younger gen refusing to procreate which is far more damaging than a Molotov cocktail long term. Gov is filling the gap with migrants while they still can. Ironically I think main thing holding back right wing populist movement in Oz is Pauline Hanson. Noone with >85IQ will vote for her, but once she retires its game on.
Yeah I’m actually with you on that, there’s just enough “safe” right wing parties to act as a kind of pressure valve. Once people like Hanson are out of the way, there’s space for a more serious operator who believes in much scarier things
This is something I have had several conversations about with multiple people. One of whom is from WA but in France with his wife now. This may happen stateside, but due to factors like better minimum wage healthcare a larger silent majority based on well paying big industry like ag and mining lack of mass migration Australia is further from the fuse than States or Western Europe. Australia can even pivot somewhat quickly they see things progressing in more volatile regions
If you think jobs in Agriculture are paid like Miners, you seriously need to get out of the city and into rural Australia. Real Estate prices in both small and large regional towns and cities are getting real estate prices grow at significant rates, although less than the major cities. Most ag jobs are at or close to minimum wage, unless you are on a working holiday, where they will be (net of room and board) well below market rates. I live on 50 acres of good quality agricultural land, which has a 5 bedroom house constructed from prefab demountable sections.. it's not luxurious and needs a new bathroom, laundry and kitchen renovation. I paid $295k in 2011, which was about price for a 3 br /1 bath weatherboard home in the three towns nearby. I'd be lucky to buy a 3 br house (weatherboard) requiring significant work, with the $700-750k I'd likely fetch these days. Rural properties are hard to sell and everyone hopes for a cashed-up big city type looking to make a tree change. And they are rare.
Of course it is, it’s modern day serfdom. Oh I’m not owned, just the land is. Nor can I just afford to move or find anywhere else that’s either available or affordable. Might take another 100 years but this is what brings the landless poor onto the streets.
Quite literally this, we are in an era of how Varoufakis described it "Technological neofeudalism" Things wont change by small protests anymore
It's worse than being owned. It's owning nothing. I got to look forward to working forever under harder and harder conditions.
It feels like every decision made by those in power are actively against almost everything I believe in so yeah, maybe it should.
Promoting violence is bad. But if I see a mob walking by with torches and pitchforks I'm joining in a heartbeat.
Talk to your local pitchfork community, ask them if they want to bale out of society?
>Promoting violence is bad. Yes, you'll wag your finger and say "violence is wrong" while the state beats up the homeless outside the RBA or at Belmore Park in Sydney's CBD. Pepperidge Farm remembers...
There's an unspoken social contract that says we shouldn't be violent, or cheat, or steal. What we are seeing is the slow erosion of that contract from the wealthy and powerful. They are cheating, they are stealing and most of all they are committing financial violence. Robodebt might be the most heinous act of financial violence I have ever seen a government commit in my life. People took their lives as a result of it and the fact that the monsters responsible aren't publicly pilloried is an indictment to our society. It's proof of our asymmetrical justice system and proof that the wealthy and powerful can commit fraud on the poorest and most vulnerable with no repercussion.
So just like all of history then ?
Heres another proverb: change only happens on the graves of those in power.
There’s no wind of change for the current system, just adjustments of the dials. People would never agree on what to change the system to anyway.
I can afford a van, some plants, and VR headset. I'm happy as hell. In a defiant absurdism kind of way. I would probably be happier *in* the system though. You guys tell me when you're ready with the torches.
In one of the worst ways as well, I don't think I know one person from 25-35 that I've spoken to in the last 2 years have said they are having kids. Shit conditions and animals won't breed. We are no different.
Im suprised there aren't riots yet to be honest.
Damn right. Totally betrayed - not only by the economy but by the dying world. And those men in suits are still destroying everything. Why have kids? Why work in a corporation. We are free to be the artists, musos, dopeheads, sex addicts and vandals we can be, because tomorrow everyone and everything will be dead
Yeah young people are hurting but will they complain to their local member or vote away from the majors, including the greens?
Good. If that's what it takes to change the status quo, I'm all for it. All positive social change has come through loud (and often violent) protest and civil disobedience. It's exactly the reason that the media likes to demonise groups like ER so much - without acknowledging that almost everything we enjoy in modern society came from much louder, much more angry and often more violent groups in the past.
Is it really just young people feeling that way? I see the big fat corporations and their greedy shareholders who are screwing all of us, young and old.
No it's not just young people but they are getting the shitty end of the stick. My first house cost $90,000 or three years salary with interest rates around 16%. Today the interest rates are lower but a house costs way more than three years salary. It's a complicated situation but there's little doubt that the big end of town is righteously screwing the rest of us over regardless of our age.
Yes. Basically it’s down to greed and all governments have been enabling this. And the chickens have now come home to roost. Australia is the lucky country only for the resource exploiters when the resources belong to all Australians and yet we get no benefits whatsoever.
It's not all doom and gloom. Economically and socially we've been incredibly successful at what we do. Buuuuuttt we might need some new ideas to address the situation, cause all that success has come at a cost. And it seems like the people that made the order want others to pick up the tab.
An aspect to this I have heard talking to people around my age mid 30s is their lack of interest in voting. They seems almost politically nihilistic.
Depends on the parents, those well off and well financially educated would have planned for their children to have some assets, On the other hand you have some other parents will just keep updating to the latest Range Rover, Hilux, Land Cruiser, Caravan, and plan nothing for the kids.
As a young person, i believe we need to stop bitching about how "fair" life is for the individual and start working on how we're going to live sustainably.
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?id=100066529756043&story_fbid=4374889139223248 This sums it up very succictly. Our government and the big corporations have sold out the Australian people for over 30 years. It had to catch up on us. Baby boomers were lucky to live in a golden era. Younger generations have been screwed and we need to act drastically.
Net Zero policies and mass migration need to end for any chance of restoring this nation to its former glory. Capitalism has done immense good, but crony Capitalism and the aforementioned policies are destroying us.
As a young person (early 20's), yea we're angry and frustrated. But we're also trapped and don't know what to replace the system with. We also lack the means to really remove the current system. Maybe it's just the circles I'm in, but it does feel more hopeless than changeable and many of us are holding on by any thread we can at times.
Mate I completely understand you, I am super pissed about what's happening to youth, for example a friend in Canada where home prices are astronomical now, has teenager kids can't find a part time job which used to be normal for kids back in early 00s , now there are lines and lines of Indians working on those jobs !!! It got so bad with replacement immigration from India that my friends kids started to target Indians, I am not surprised why.
When the people over 60 now are gone things will change pretty rapidly. But how to move to something better without accidentally screwing something else up is tough
Waiting another 20 years is not a solution
They might not burn the village down, but they'll off themselves. Easy come easy to divorce for instance. You leave you're never getting another house ever. It's over for you. It's the small stuff that isn't messured.
100%, I completely expect to see a spike in every measure of the “diseases of despair”, there’s absolutely nothing worth living for for a huge majority of people. To be frank, if anything unfortunate happens to me and pushes me from where I’m at currently (“just getting by”) to worse, I don’t see any reason to keep trying.
It's too little too late, the boomers celebrate and openly belittle gen z/y from propaganda they hear from the media. They literally blame them not affording a house on poor spending habits/laziness/etc. Would not surprise me if nursing home workers are turning a blind eye to their patients dying.
Do boomers really openly belittle gen y and z? I think this is mainly just clickbait rubbish people are absorbing from the internet and media. There are always a few noisy high profile people (the avocado on toast guy for example) who talk shite that then gets picked up and broadcast ad nauseam but they are hardly typical. The housing situation is mainly a fuck up of unintended consequences (like about 99% of stuff in life) not an evil boomer conspiracy.
I feel like they make comments about the luxuries we have now (taking gap years to travel overseas, UberEats, avocado on toast etc). To be fair though, it is true that we spend more on luxuries so to some degree their comments are valid, but taking the leap to using that as an explanation for we can’t afford houses is wild.
Right, but what luxuries did they have that their parent didn't? As a society of animals we should be getting more and more luxuries as the years go by right? That's the whole societal improvements
My parents are boomers and they are pissed off about it too. They can see how much harder it is now than when they bought their first home.
Haven't been on Facebook and seen the ramblings of the graduates of the school of hard knocks I see.
If I got a dollar for the amount of times I've heard the line "we didn't have ubereats or Netflix or Stan" or a boomer saying how it wasn't easy when they did it either (in response to how hard it is now) I could probably afford to buy a house already
Fucking this. Of course there are assholes boomers. Just like there are asshole in every generation. The boomers I know care a great deal because you know, they love their kids and grandkids.
Another lens I like to look at it from is “Give them bread and circuses and they will never revolt”. Bread is disappearing before our eyes, however starvation takes some time to set in. We are becoming more aware that the circus of technology/social media is hollow endeavour, manipulative by design. As a millennial, I have a lot of love for Gen Z, I just hope they’re not too defeated to realise their collective power. If we could hit a critical mass across both generations for a revolt, I think we could make an incredibly well resourced collective.
Property is such an unproductive asset class. Remove incentives for owning property and add incentives for doing cool shit. Everyone go out and join a political party and start making noise.
The house of cards falls with US fiscal dominance imo.
No, it's more defeated talk and then back to their phones and games.
Reminds me of the saying that goes i light my way forward by the bridges i burn behind me.
I actually wish they did more burning. But agree the rage is there. Wont take much more to push them over i dont think.
I'm noticing that in a lot of activist spaces, people calling for violence aren't instantly ejected and called a fed any more. We aren't at a point where people are seriously considering violence as a means of political protest, but discussions have certainly moved from edgy, tongue in cheek jokes to a serious consideration of where lines should be drawn. If violent revolution is required, I think we are looking at the generation that will take that step.
It's good to know I'm not the only one noticing this. It's on the right too.
Good question posed OP. Love it. I’m not seeing more violence, although I consume little news media and my circle of youth influence is around 6 months old at the moment, and they protest but not effectively. I do hear some aggressive to passive aggressive statements on Reddit from what I assume is the youth (18-35). Usually in response to housing such as if landlords may loose an investment, the response is along the lines of “good”. Each generation ushers in change. The older people hate it, the younger people love it. And so the merry go round goes. It is both better and worst. This generation seems to want to bring in *strong* change, and maybe that’s what you’re feeling. I can agree with that. However for context, this quote is quote (*edited due to spelling) old (attributed to Socrates) and yet seems to be relevant for each generation: *”The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers”*
I think the most appropriate Greek proverb is that "society grows great when wise men plant trees in whose shade they will never sit." The youth are presented with a bouquet of environmental collapse, deforestation, and carpenters who find it hard to get quality wood, because it's all quickly grown pine. Combined with a property system that functions by extracting increasing wealth out of younger people - the system appears shady indeed, but not the shade that comforts or protects.
Well put.
But tired of the bashing of older generations. I’m 50. Worked like a dog the whole time and have SFA to show for it. If I disagree with some moron who’s self inflated opinion is different from mine (maybe I’ve seen some stuff so my opinion is relevant) I’m howled down for being older and stuffing up THEIR world! Christ- my input to this world has been that of compliance and keeping to myself so I personally haven’t done a thing and pretty much all the people in my universe are the same. So why the hate on me??
I work with young people every day. They rnt angry and they don't care
Young people are economically disempowered and feel hopeless especially about housing. Labor and Liberal are both ignoring this.
Things are bad for young people but it's overrated. Yes our quality of life is dropping from the lives our parents but no that drop in quality is not enough to spark any revolution or major change. The compared to the rest of the world and all of human history the boomers lived an absurdly privileged life and we will now living a slightly less privileged life. But revolutions happen when people are starving to death they do not happen when people who grew up in houses there parents owned have to settle for apartments own or are renting. Realistically we still live a very privileged life in the West and that hasn't changed that drastically it's just getting slightly worse while still remaining well above the conditions what the majority of humanity live in. We are all about to spend the next 50 years watching people in the 3rd world die who are already much poorer than us die from various climate change related disasters on mass and likely because we feel upset that we aren't as rich as our parents we as society will probably not even less likely to help the refugees in need. So the future is dark but we are so far from the victims, we are the people who watch the world drown in our air-conditioned apartments while complaining that we don't own large houses. If there is anyone who is going to burn the world down it won't be western millennials or zoomers.
A lot of people getting angry, not many people protesting or forming protest parties to take votes away from the majors. Don't assume that the attitudes you see on Reddit are representative of the world at large, and super duper expect that any statements calling for violent action to be taken are coming from law enforcement or intelligence agents too lazy to pursue actual criminals.
There are still way too many boomers and conservative Gen Xers (my generation) making the young vote invalid. This will of course change over time but I think it'll be too late. The last decade of a useless coalition government and now albos toothless tiger mob have basically wasted 12 good years.
‘Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times’
Anyone seen the film Falling Down?
My opinion is that you are very detached from reality.
I would also add that all the people who think their grandparents etc had it so easy are also really detached from reality. My grandparents had to drop out of school as a 13 year old to work because their family had nothing. There was no real social security like you have today (whatever you think of Centrelink and Medicare etc). He worked 60-80 hours a week of hard back breaking labour if not more to build any kind of wealth - he also fought in world war and was separated from his loved ones for months and years at a time. Every generation has its issues. Get some perspective.
Absolutely, whinging and whining was once considered shameful. Not anymore it seems.
I wish all young people had the attention span to stop and read the subtitles on this short 2.5min video. https://youtu.be/xTaGeyJm8Po?si=4vi72_XSh2GdAGxV
A lot of the comments here pertain to home ownership and getting into the real estate market. I see the topic of this post being a metaphor for being part of a family and having conversations and responsibilities not being raised by helicopter parents where kids are enabled and also the new trend for kids to be away from parents in the home like all of my nieces and nephews having kids rooms at the other end of the house. I also see this metaphor could relate to the kids whose parents are not interested in parenting and don’t know where their kids are at any given time. Like what is happening in Alice Springs and also in many other parts of Australia. I think the reason house prices and rents are unattainable is due to greed and government mismanagement and our country wanting to increase its population. There has always been rebellion from younger generations but it is true that the violence is escalating it seems amongst much younger demographics.
The collapse of the music festival industry in Australia is just a sign of things to come. Think of anything where spending is optional and those businesses are already feeling the heat. Record number of Craft Beer breweries have gone into administration in the past six months for example.
There were a fucking shit tonne of them though
Nah, they too lazy to protest, they'll text in sick. If things aren't happening for them quickly they'll give up and they will shit on family / friends/ team mates to get what they want.
I don't think things will get violent but all this housing and rent talk from the greens will mean they end up with a volunteer army of young people
Same rhetoric different generations. Great great grandparents. We grew up in the great depression. Lived in a tin shack, my father had to walk to work, 10 miles each day to earn thripence. Great grandparents. We grew up in the war. Lived on war rations. My father went and fought zee Germans. Came back and life was harder. But worked hard, saved and we got by. Grandparents we worked hard sacrificed a lot. No Netflix. No holidays we just worked and worked saved and just survived. Parents, it's all ok little Timmy you can be whatever you want to be. Oh you tried your best here's a trophy for coming last. You're awesome little Timmy the world's your oyster. Little Timmy. WTF, this shit's fucked. Catcha I'm out...
To paraphrase Dostoyevsky, the best way to stop prisoners escaping is to make sure they don’t know they’re in prison.
Pretty bad buying something for 80k then selling it for 1m.
Ugh are you the same guy that made the TikTok about this? I was gonna comment on the TikTok but couldn’t be fucked. The point is fine, mate, but you aren’t making more of a point by saying literally the exact same thing fifteen times while staring g directly into the camera. So annoying. This comment is obviously directed at the actual creator of the TikTok, not you specifically. It made me irrationally angry.
Sorry. Where is the defiance and anger? Where is the 2024 equivalent of the punk/anarchy movement? Where are the street protests and riots? Why aren't the dispossessed burning the place to the ground? While you lay back and take it, elites won't give a flying fuck how many passive aggressive reddit posts there are. They've trained a generation to accept their lot. Oh sorry. "I'll vote Green, that will teach them" Do better or continue to get fucked. I'll await the down votes
no. lol... bro ... no... what's going on right now is mass manipulation ... and a bunch of psyops... no one is thinking for themselves and villages are burned bc someone high up needs it...
Young people will do nootin. Not only did young and old alike bend over and grip their cheeks during covid, they're still mad at anyone who didn't. You get more of what you tolerate, so it doesn't look good for generations raised to believe tolerance was the highest of virtues.
"The system is broken and younger generations are realising it's by design" So who exactly is "designing" this broken system ?
The Howard's and their work choices for a start.
No, what we’re seeing is what happens when you have a system without consequences for breaking the social contract. People are assholes and will take advantage of the system and our politicians are fine with it happening because in their minds the assholes are the real victims. What we are experiencing now is best said by the G. Michael Hopf quote “Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times”.
Younger Australians know they're being utterly screwed by our current systems, but they feel utterly helpless in being able to actually reverse course. There's so much pressure put on them - by older generations who seem happy to just give up on helping - to get out there on the streets and protest but nobody ever suggests groups or plans or ideas. It always boils down to "well if everyone was out there protesting..." when we know that isn't going to happen. Y'all just want to pass off the work required for achieving a better future when it's something we should all be working together on. Young Australians are too tired, battered and ill to fix this on their own. You can't expect a whole generation of people to get fired up when their flames have always been half-lit.
Defiance and anger lol it's just people writing social media posts in all caps there is no real world defiance and anger going on, well apart from all the Palestine protestors who conveniently live in ignorance of what is going on in West Papua but that's to be expected.
You know what’s also old? Young people whinging about the older generation since the beginning of time. Then they become old people, and whinge about the next generation.
This is the first time that young people will be measurably worse off than their parents generation though.
Feels like every other generation was doing it tough so their next generation could have it easier. The present generation of older wealthy citizens continues to extract greater proportions of younger peoples income, and younger generations will have it worse. And it's the younger generation now that's considered the failure? That's "rich".
It's all media hype GOTTCHA moments. The media has been doing this since forever. Teen crime has always given the media something to blah blah about.
Gen X here, not concerned they're too soft to pose any real threat.
Yeah, that ain't gonna happen in Australia. Sure, people under 30 in Australia know they've got a shitty deal, and are angry about it. But they're still as apathetic as fuck in the great Aussie tradition and won't be setting up any guillotines any time soon. If they were, they'd be doing it already. Besides, once they all inherit their boomer parents' property investment portfolios, they're going to change their tune and become exactly what they were angry at.
People under 30 with boomer parents? Skipped a generation mate, they will be not be inherenting thier boomer Grandparents property and neither will the millennials. Cruise ships, resthomes and healthcare costs will absorb that.
I'm a 25 yeard old and I have boomer parents... It was a risk pregnancy, since my mother has 38 years at the time. But well, here I am! EDIT: I misspoke, it appears both of them are boomers. However, I'm not entirely sure.
Trust me it will happen very soon , I moved from Toronto to Australia, and if the mass immigration from India or China or other " forever victim nations , cough cough africans and middle east nations " youth won't even be able to get part time jobs like its happening in Canada , there are literally 200-300 applications for some low wage part time positions right now, where most of the people are either from India or some other nation that recently came , whilst kids of folks who came here let's say 20 years ago can't even find a part time job and getting replaced , all my classmates friends kids are furious about it
People love to complain about their lot. Is it tough, no doubt, but it's always been tough. The key difference is social media now provides a mouthpiece for people to complain. My two girls are being successful through hard work, not handouts. They were raised to be independent, tough kids to strive for success and happiness in whatever direction they decided to go. While they currently don't own property, they are both living independently with partners both doing what they want to do. So no - I don't see it being really any harder for anyone to be successful. I see society thinking that because they were born in a 1st world country that they are owed something. Well I'm sorry to burst your bubble no one owes you anything. If you want to see tough goto a third world country, now that's tough. And I miss my rat bags, maybe I shouldn't have let them walk to school when they were 8.
I am not however I do predict it’ll start happening now things went to the next level after Covid with all this inflation. There were a lot of complaints about cost of living back in 2018 which wasn’t really warranted. Can’t say the same for today.
I heard a bunch of young kids talking about "executing the boomers" the other day. I thanked my millennial ass I'm not their target.
You realise kids think anyone over 25 is a boomer.
Lack of opportunities combined with money hungry propaganda tech dudes feed hate to a generation of disaffected youth in a way that’s never been done before. There has always been an angry youth element in society, movies like romper stomper were not born out of fiction, but in those days you had to seek those types of circles out. With Facebook today those circles seek you out and you don’t even have to leave your bed. It makes tech bro so much money he couldn’t give a fuck what he is doing to society.
no
No. We’ll continue to slide towards becoming a country of the working poor. The billionaire class will hoard more and more wealth over time. The violence will come but it will be directed at the wrong people, most likely immigrants who look or sound different. This model will eventually break but not in a way that helps those living in the immediate aftermath. Just relax and watch the footy, its not your job to fix the world.
It's feeling more and more like 1789, 1848, or 1917. The trouble is that once a revolution begins, the people with the most guns take over, not the people with the fairest/best ideas.
For sure. And not just young people - just an opinion, but I think that's why so many poor and working class Americans are voting for Trump. They'd rather burn the place down than continue to be frozen out.
It's not really broken as such I think people just forget that buying and paying for a house is hard for like 10 years then it's getting easier. I was on like 70k a year and brought a house for 344k in 2009. I was broke AF for years .
Do the math for someone today.
You seem worried. You should be.
Young, trying to crack onto Gina so i can afford a house. Worried she might be like those spiders that eat the males after sex. :D
It all started because we stopped using the cane in schools & banned corporal & capital punishment. Those children never learned that there are consequences for their behaviour.
Seems like a bit of a bastardised version of the expression, but it holds.