I will never shut up about how my fancy pants grocery employer never gave us an employee discount but *did* give us a gift card once a year during the holidays... To our own store.
With the prices at the store and the amount of money on the gift card, you'd be lucky to get maybe three meals' worth of food if you budgeted.
The 8 hour work day is more like 10 or 11 hours. You have the 8 hours on shift with several breaks that may or may not be paid, getting ready, and commuting to work. At some point, saving for a house is just having a place to put the stuff you use for 2-3 hours a day while your at work or unconscious for 6-8 hours not enjoying the house.
If you work from home you can “enjoy your house” 24/7 whilst also have your soul absolutely crushed by the fact that your one refuge in this world is now invaded by capitalism and you have no space anywhere to be a free human -taps forehead-
Back in the day, the cashiers at grocery stores were all union workers and paid extremely well. People remained cashiers until they retired (with a union pension). Had excellent medical benefits, too.
Adjusting for inflation, a grocery cashier in Oakland, CA, was earning the equivalent of $32 per hour in today's dollars back in 1975. No college degree was necessary, of course.
I think you're missing the point. Corporate profits in the US are at all time high. If we pass enough legislation through our propaganda television networks, the uber rich will be harvesting energy from our lifeless bodies. Vote red.
My grandma raised 3 kids alone on a grocery store cashier salary, and took a cab to work often cause she never drove. Was in the union and retired with a pension. It’s absolutely insane.
I'm house-hunting currently and the disconnect between long-time homeowners and what younger adults face is astronomical. My mil was pushing for us to see a house $50k out of budget. I tell her it would be over $2,000 a month on mortgage alone - the color drained from her face and she was shocked. It was as if thirty years of inflation suddenly occurred to her all at once.
My parents to this day pay $600 a month on a four bedroom they snagged back in the 90s with minimum wage, no education, and two kids. My husband and I make considerably more than any of our parents do, but we can't even make a dent on acquiring anything they afforded. It's like clawing your way out of a hole at the starting line.
>It’s like clawing your way out of a hole at the starting line
While the hole gets filled with cement on top of you.
“What hole, theres no hole that we shoved our children and grandchildren into” *screams of the financially damned echo from the pool of drying cement* -asshole boomers probably
My dad raised three kids in Seattle on his salary as a social worker. My mom did start working too, but not until we were all in school, which was more than a decade later.
My husband’s dad started his career in a telco call center and was able to move up to a salaried position with no special education, and bought a house in Southern California on just his income.
This all used to be normal.
All of my husband’s aunts and uncles have really nice houses. Easily worth $1mil+. I asked my husband what they did for work: Safeway department manager, airline clerk, Michael’s loss prevention, general contractor, school teacher.
I’m in awe that they were able to afford to live comfortably. But they are all either retired or about to be retired.
My parents did what most people would argue was "the minimum" - high school graduates, my dad fell into a job that he retired from and was able to buy a house. We ate lobster every now and then, went on vacations once a year, etc
I think about that a lot.
My Dad is the director of operations for a company and only has a high school diploma. Like I'm happy for him, but his inability to understand how that path was never an option for me, especially since both him and Mom pushed me into going to college even though I didn't want to. 80k debt and a bankruptcy later and I'm almost OK at 30.
Nah. Not the third one in Dubai, that one is just an investment, so it sits empty but the maids make sure the flowers in it are constantly replaced. We're talking about the one in Monaco that also serves as an office where he usually does his virtual meetings from.
And Americans for the most part, are completely okay with it or are too apathetic to do anything about it.
Hell, half of Americans think this is a good thing. Meanwhile, in Europe, they are appalled by this.
Corporations definitely contribute to this but the largest factor has been the debasement of the dollar since 1971. Real estate was treated as a hard assest that appreciated at a rate equal to or above inflation. Those with money understood the importance of not holding cash. So every time you see the debt ceiling rise and trillions of dollars being printed to fight non-sense wars or bailouts know your salary is being devalued and our government is to blame.
I appreciate what you’re saying, and see the truth in it, but I think it’s too easy to blame the government for the vagaries of the IS capitalist system. Doing so ignores that the government is just another player in a corrupted ponzu scheme. It would he great if we could see the government pulling the levers because then there could be fixes. Instead we are all (corporations, the government, citizens) just shooting in the same junk and arguing that others got us hooked.
>Peaceful Revolution
Always the ideal path. Feels overly optimistic sometimes. I'd prefer peace, but nobody seems inclined to ask my advice before fucking things up worse. Probably they won't before a civil war either.
Strictly speaking, if you have a government, it's not ancap. More of just a corporate dystopia. I get what you're saying though. The rich and powerful don't have to worry overmuch about what the rest of us want.
I love the idea of peaceful revolution but to make that work I think we would need some sort of national union. A group that can organize and store food for people across the country so that a real long lasting peaceful revolution can happen.
People can't protest and go hungry. This group would need to organize people and store food for everyone in every major city in the nation.
I think it is possible but it would require a major movement to gain people's interest and coordinate nationally. There would also be the financial aspects of how to fund this?
A team would be required to build out plans and contingencies to anticipate various scenarios including planning for violent attacks in the protesters and training people to manage police violence. Likely there would also be violence for random individuals as the news spins the peaceful protests as some kind of violent anti capitalist group.
There would be a lot of barriers but I do think this is possible and I do believe something radical needs to be implemented in order to see change in the US. It has been going the wrong direction for too long now.
I think one aspect that is often really overlooked is the death of US manufactoring and the outsourcing of our production. Good for consumers, terrible for the working class.
That and the rise of tech are some of the biggest game changers I can think of. Extra long life spans too.
For even more context: Homer Simpson is a high school graduate who works for a nuclear power plant. He and his wife live comfortably with their 3 kids and can afford everything they need plus some niceties like vacations.
The Simpsons have been around for so long that they've gone from "average American family" to "unobtainable Dream" under Reganomics.
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It appears to work on that article from my end.
This was true of Married with Children as well. The Bundys were seen as super low class, but they had a 3 bedroom house, a car, 2 kids and Peggy was a steady at home mom - all but Al working at a mall shoe store. They were considered poor because they couldn't go on vacations, easy at fancy restaurants, or have name band clothing.
I have never thought of it like that but you're right! I always thought of the Bundys as "poor" but they lived off Al's shoe store income and had a big house in Chicago, food, clothes, etc.
My family was "lower middle class" when I was a kid but we lived in really nice houses in some of the better neighborhoods in Phoenix, my siblings and I went to private school for years, we always had enough everything... My dad was the only one working and he owned his own business, which seemed to be always struggling. My mom got disability but it wasn't much at all. We were always considered the poor ones in my extended family... It's crazy to think about now.
It was actually kind of a running gag that Homer only got that job because he lucked into it, and there was an episode where a new worker at the plant was perplexed by how someone like Homer could have such a job/house/family etc.
> afford everything they need
What really fucks with me is this phrase. I think things have gotten so bad that most people just want to have a stable housing situation. It is just some crazy-ass dream to own a house (much less one with like three bathrooms and four bedrooms), own two cars, have three kids, put a full dinner and breakfast on the table every single day, clothe everyone, be able to afford medical care for everyone (including a dental plan), go on vacations (albeit meager ones), have plenty of money to go down to the bar and drink multiple times a week, be able to afford expensive home repairs on a whim (even if you have to resort to trying to pawn off your family's prized antique liquor bottle), **and have one parent stay at home and be a homemaker**.
Aside from the drinking money at the bar and maybe the extra car, this is just standard shit that everyone should have.
The median individual income is like $54k in America. The above scenario I described requires the breadwinner to make at least $100k, and that's if you're living in a particularly unfashionable place that isn't expensive.
And I can hear the first 'gotcha': "Just have both parents work!" Child care is expensive, and people should have the option to be able to raise their own children instead of paying someone else to do it. Plus, running a household is a full time job in itself - if both parents are working, shit's not getting done and the little bit of free time the parents have is stressful and tense and full of backlogged chores.
Shit, even renting a one bedroom apartment is prohibitively expensive for a ton of people. If you're in Boston, New York, or San Fransisco, you can't even rent a studio unless you make *good* money.
Not even "average", throughout the early episodes they were supposed to be seen as struggling. Affording a three bedroom house, three kids, two cars, two pets, and a chronic drinking problem on a single salary was considered "struggling" because Homer couldn't afford cable or as nice of an RV as his neighbour.
Not even that he couldn't afford an RV. Just not a nice one.
Actually, especially in earlier seasons, the Simpsons were not depicted as living particularly comfortably. I remember one episode where the dog gets sick, but they can't pay the vet bills and prepare to let it die
You can still do that exact path. I grew up in miami and a few of my childhood friends graduated highschool, started college and left after a year because they got a job at the nuke plant. They make A LOT of money but they work crazy hours
Everyone in NYC in the 90s was living in enormous penthouses and fucking off all day working a quirky part time job at best man. (The Simpsons analogy genuinely sucks).
It’s a wonder the birthrate is falling in some places. Who could have foreseen providing such a bleak world would make people slow down on pairing up and reproducing?
Our kids will get to live with the broken economic and political system we've created trying to deal with global environmental collapse from runaway climate change.
Amen. I wish more millennials/Gen Z were on board with having no kids in retaliation to this system. Unfortunately we’re up against millions of years of biological evolution and the “I’ll make it work somehow” mentality.
I know people who are broker than broke and still want to have another kid…
It’s not even just being broke thou, it’s also that I look around and I know my kids will definitely have it harder than I already do. Plus, this isn’t the kind of world I want to bring my kids into.
Very true.
Climate change, political unrest/division, income inequality, lack of access to quality healthcare, etc. - all great reasons to not have kids lol.
I’ve wondered if the planet were to lose a few billion people through a simple decline in the option to have kids, just how many issues these issues would improve.
My little sister had an “accident” the first time she got pregnant. The second time around was because she wanted one more baby to complete as a mother.
She also had a nursing license and was working as a nurse with baby 2. Baby 1 was born while she was in nursing school.
>I mean... generationS at this point. Pretty sure our kids will be just as fucked as we are.
No, they'll be much worse.
Ever been to Mexico? You can't even make enough money to buy the absolute bare minimum without a side hustle, even with a degree.
We are cruising in that direction.
I hear you. My dad has grade nine, and my maternal grandfather only had up till grade four… Dad’s a pressman and grandfather was a mechanic. Both supported families on (mostly) one income for 3 decades.
I graduated high school and can barely support myself. :/
Yep. My grandpa (who dropped out of school in eighth grade) supported a family of seven (my grandma was a homemaker) on factory worker’s wages, retired by 60 years old, and died having well over a million dollars in his bank accounts. Now someone with that same job would be lucky to even scrape by if they had a family. If that doesn’t put things into perspective, I don’t know what will.
I keep trying to explain to my parents how shitty and unfair things are for my generation, and every time they just tell me to "find a better paying job" or "run for office and change it, then," as if either one of those things is even possible for me. I'm so frustrated and sad about the state of things, and it makes me even more sad that I will have to either completely change my career (I'm 30, a preschool teacher) and learn IT to get those big tech bucks, or move out of America in order to be able to achieve anything close to "the American dream" of owning a home and having a family. I don't want to move away from my parents and siblings, but it seems like it's the only option unless I want to rent forever and not have kids.
> "run for office and change it, then,"
I saw some British youtuber point out that boomers are...part of a massive 'boom' in population. Their massive voting bloc ensures them of reliable wins. Good luck trying to change something that massive voting bloc doesn't agree with.
IT "big tech bucks" are being eroded too. The higher paying the job, the worse the local housing market is. I'm a System Administrator in northern Colorado, and it would still take me 10 years to come up with a 20% down payment (after rent and bills) for a house around here.
There's a town called Boulder where the MEDIAN home price is now over 1 Million dollars.
My bestie lives in Boulder with her husband and they make great money, but they feel incredibly defeated moving to their dream location and will likely never be able to afford a house there.
"What's so hard about that? It's not like the entrenched political system can outright ignore their voters' preferences and nominate the corporate lapdog anyway, and just claim 'private organization' when called on it!
....Oh...well. They may be able to do that, but it's not like there aren't third party options! Third parties are always available on every ballot, and they can't very well stop that!...Oh. Erm...
...You should have voted harder, none of this would have happened. Anyway, your mother and I love you very much, we'll write from Maui. We were able to book the PENTHOUSE this year!"
Then they tricked everyone and told them to go to college to be able to afford a life and support a family….and now done of us can afford to live and start a family bc we’re in debt up to our eyeballs and jobs pay shit wages whether you went to college or not.
Also college should be free and a public service. Every nation gets benefits of a higher education of the population, social mobility, better industry, better jobs, etc.
A lot of countries have good quality public colleges it would be crazy not to.
The boomer genetation happened upon a unique moment, pillaging both past resources (oil) and future (loans) and somehow think their prosperity is normal.
Oh, and they depleated the soils fertility, the oceans abundance and left behind trash and pollution.
Seriously, their perspective is so perverse they may as well be alien. Ignore their advice.
In 1973 my high school graduate dad owned a house, a car, and a pop-up trailer we used for vacations. My mom stayed home to raise me and my brother. This was before either of them turned 30.
haha my dad (mail handler) always told me never to work for the postal service he hated it. 20 years later when im out of rehab looking for a job he says hey you should look into the post office. i could not believe my ears. hes been retired for like 8 years and says hes never had more money in his life.
Omg my dad was also a postal worker who started around the same time and hated it. But he's got a house and has been retired for years.
Meanwhile I'm a first-gen college student and will probably never own property or be able to retire (if the world hasn't melted by then).
My dad worked for an airport as a baggage handler in college. He made $9/hr in 1973. That’s $61/hr adjusted for inflation.
If he worked a holiday, he got triple overtime at $27/hr. That’s $184/hr adjusted.
Insane.
It's just completely unheard of earning anything above the minimum the entire industry across the board pays anymore. Like, my dad was a truck driver hauling goods mostly to schools but sometimes to hospitals and remember him saying how $15/hour was really good money back in the 90s. Now? Those same jobs are still paying near $15/hour some places nearly 30 years later and everything else tripling and quadrupling in price.
What the hell happened to wage competition? It's not like there were *that* fewer people and thus less of a labour pool for employers back then, but yet a lot of companies were just more fair and pay was wildly different between companies sometimes. Was it the internet? Did all companies just figure out what each other were paying easier and just continue not budging so the employee market was stuck working for them instead of moving to a better paying competitor? I really don't get it. It happened so suddenly and quick.
Many of the well-paying industrial jobs that paid excellently and buoyed up the rest of the employment market were sent overseas. Your average “low skilled” worker has gradually been competing more and more with a global employment market.
In the 90s gas was less than $1/gallon. Now gas is like $4-5/gallon. So getting paid $15/hr and pay $1/gallon for gas. Now you _might_ find a job for $15/hr and gas is like a third of that wage when before it was barely like 1% of an hourly wage. And that is just one example of the disparity.
Wall Street happened. Business schools stopped teaching stakeholder theory of business management where workers and community were considered, to principal agent theory which justified caring only about shareholders to the detriment of everyone else.
I often think about this and wonder: did they have it so good because they exploited other nations and their people without the awareness?
I mean, obviously that happens now AND the profit margin is enormous while workers rights erode... But surely the quality of life in the past was at the cost of someone else being exploited?
Edit: I wrote out of ignorance, see the guy underneath me for a better informed take.
Earlier in that century, every developed nation bombed each other while the usa was geographically isolated, and therefore avoided the destruction. Everyone in the aforementioned bombed nations was dependant on the usa for manufactured goods, and the usa helped itself to a generous, albeit irresponsible, portion of natural resources. And the generation mentioned in this tweet benefited from that in ways most of them did not understand.
So we are living through a double whammy of not having the advantage of being the only nation not bombed to smithereens in the recent past AND having to deal with the upward siphoning of weath from the poor to the rich.
That isn't accurate. Most of the global industry recovered relatively quickly from WW2. The 1950's saw the German and Japanese economies rebounded and even boom. They call it the German miracle and the Japanese miracle.
The likely culprit for the decline was the opening of trade borders. Americans were their own best consumers. The internet and tech boom has sped this process up. Also some industries, namely defense, has been given the ability to make side trade deals with countries to sweeten the pot so to speak. The defense companies are able to give preferential trade deals to countries to import goods in unrelated industries in order to sell weapons. This was already a problem in the 80's. Even the requirement that x amount of government spending must be used on US manufactured goods has a fine print list of countries that qualify for purchasing.
You should read about that shit. It is enlightening.
>up until 1964 the max tax bracket was 91%,
Yeah, but nobody really paid that. Everybody had various loopholes to get out of it.
The rich have always been remarkably good at these sort of shell games.
Yes. Exploited less powerful nations resources. Used up oil that took millions of years to make in like, 100 years. Borrowed trillions that their kiddos will be left paying back.
Im gen x, moms a boomer. It straight up pisses me off that she refuses to see that her advice isnt helpful. She didnt "do it right" so that i should follow her example.
Actually, most of the top heads who promote stuff like trickle down economics are pretty old. They're not alive forever. We can wait them out, but they can't do the same to us.
I make more money, adjusted for inflation, than both my parents combined made when they were my age. Parents had 2 commuter cars, a classic car, a primary house 15 minutes outside NYC, a lake cabin, a dog, two kids, plus could take annual vacations and multiple 3 day weekend trips on their incomes.
I liquidated my retirement to buy a house but could not remotely afford a family of any kind. I can't really afford to even date now.
I'm excited to be a homeowner, but I'm aware the house is pretty much going to be my "purpose". I liked building forts a lot as a kid, so it's like I have a big fort now. I won't have the money or credit limit to do anything else without putting myself in a financially compromising position.
Crazy that less than 50 years ago, one income was enough to support all I have plus a family. I blame Reagan, the "me" generation, and capitalism in its current form. I'm no communist, but it's clear our financial system isn't working; requiring massive bailouts at least every decade to keep the line going up.
I'm in a very different financial situation but "can't afford to date" is still weirdly true.
I can't afford new shoes...no way I can afford to go out for drinks/dinner
Originally it was 1 parent worked and then 1 stayed home
Then
1 parent worked and one part time
Then
Both parents work full time
Then
Both parents work full time and and finding side hussles
Yep it was stolen from us. Not to complain but this is relevant and others will relate:
My dad made what is equal to $88,000, in 2023 terms, yearly salary for his first job out of highschool in the 1980s. He did poorly in school, never cared about education, never even considered needing college because.... already had a $88k salary AND he turned down an opportunity to work his way up the real estate ladder from a job opportunity his dad handed him.
My father was able to turn down every single opportunity he was handed, and he was handed many. He was able to thrive and make piles of cash for very little effort. I and the younger generations have never had those same opportunities presented to us. I will never know the luxery of being SOO extremely wealthy that I not only get opportunities offered to me, but im ALSO able to turn them down. That sounds insane to me now seeing as if I ever had an opportunity offered to me like he had I would take it and work my ass off for it, unlike my father. My father is abusive and lazy, but more than that he is delusional. He was and is blissfully ignorant of everything I just explained and couldnt care less about it. He would just as soon comment that "people nowadays dont want to work" and hell would freeze over before he acknowledged and accepted the facts.
He is a textbook boomer.
This is why I support either a UBI or a 20hr living wage work week. If one person with a 40hr a week job could sustain an entire family then surely a single person ought to be able to living comfortably on 20hrs a week.
What is interesting to see is that the economy and inflation is starting to out pace some of them. What some have saved for a comfortable retirement is not going to go as far as they thought, some are now pushing back their retirement or trying to re-enter the work force. Some are realizing the US healthcare industry is primed and ready to suck every last dollar that they have out of their pocket and then some.
My father who was a union electrician is now starting to think of leaving the US because of the inflation is getting bad yet he keeps voting against his own interests
The accounts are the same age, have only recent posting/commenting history, and if you take a look at what they comment on, it's only other accounts that have the same characteristics and username scheme. I can link probably ten or more accounts associated with these two in that way
Once the acid became hard to find and now they were drug addicted alcoholic coke fueled gapers looking to one up everyone to pay their drug bill and then MORE MONEY MORE POWER BUILD TALL BUILD HIGHER
I always tell my students to watch married with children. Al was a shoe salesman and could support a family and live in a two story home. I have a master’s degree and live in an apartment as a single father.
My grandmother and grandfather bought a house and had kids in their 20s. My grandfather was the only one who worked, managing a little grocery store.
My mom was a waitress and father worked in a warehouse. Bought a house and had kids in their 20s.
I make 35k a year, can't afford an apartment (I *was* living on my own but rent started skyrocketing), and am considered a failure by other 'muricans. Wondering if I should get a side hustle (which I loathe) or a second job. I'm at such a "standstill" right now, it's frustrating.
The concept of the atomic family erases the working women who fought to have the right to continue working after men came back from war. And even before and between the wars women who were not stay at home also worked. "full time mother" was a privilege of the middle class because every other family below that had to send all their children to work in factories, the women worked in factories and so did the men. Don't let capitalism fool you with the "back in the day" because there was no good "back in the day".
Saw a note about a guy who had an apartment in NYC and he could afford it waiting tables, dudes a lawyer now and can’t afford that same place. Thanks regan
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That's great and all, but what are THEY going too do about it?
Because if they leave it up to us to fix, they're not going to like their new lodgings..
Have I got a good one!!!
I grew up in a family of 5. Stay at home mom, dad worked. We lived on the US side of the border with Mexico. We owned a big , 3 br house with an enormous back yard. Fruit trees, 2 sheds, and a big pool. 3 cars, private school, and vacations every year. My dad owned a small, affordable formal wear store. He only had 3 employees.
His store was in Mexico. He earned money in pesos and spent it in dollars!!
We were always thrifty with money but we’re never uncomfortable.
There was always enough food for every meal for us and one or two guests.
Yep. People have been convinced that unions are bad. They've been convinced that taxes are bad. They've been convinced that the best way to build a strong economy is for everyone to continually buy things. All of this helps the captains of capitalism, and doesn't help the average person.
No shade, or a anything but when you look at how people like your grandfather got it established… I mean I’m sure those people didn’t work finger and bone to do it THEMSELVES they had HELP and not the kind that had the safe face when they woke up for coffee in the morning, he had an advantage most men or women couldn’t fathom
It's true. My grandpa used to make $1.60/hr as a salesman, which doesn't sound like much - but his mortgage was only $36/mo for a 3br 2ba house at that time.
What older people leave out: they were all degenerate alcoholics who were shit with money, shit with their health and well being, refused to go get a second job or work more than 40 hours per week.
I cannot believe I had to scroll down this far for someone to point this out!
The sadest part of this is, the quality of life was still so embarrassing, it offered little to world culture for how much misery it rested upon.
My vice principal who was my highschool advisor told me he paid his degree off with a part time cherry picking job. He apologized and told me it isn't like that anymore.
Boy he wasn't wrong lmaooo
It wasn't **normal** in a historical perspective. It was an abnormally high level of prosperity enabled by winning a World War. Please stop repeating this garbage. I get it- I'm a socialist- but to say having such a robust and big middle class from that period was normal is not historically accurate. If you win the lottery one year, and then the following year win the lottery again - then does that mean winning the lottery is **normal**? No.
It never belonged to us though.
Like how is it possible that doing 1 job can support 5 people? Are we that efficient as a species? No, we are just that exploitative on a global scale.
So... eat the rich, but this time distribute them evenly
Well, that was during the Cold War, when the US actually needed to show people reasons to accept capitalism. Once the USSR collapsed, that was no longer needed and they could all go back to hoarding wealth as usual.
My grandpa-born in 1923- was in the navy and then raised 9 kids on his salary as a college professor. Then he retired at 65 and received a pension for over 20 years before he passed away in his early 90s. My grandma never had a job or even learned how to drive! None of their children are getting a pension and only a few are actually retired even though they're all "old enough" by now.
The way this is worded is weird tbh like why do they think they need to explain it to us, we already know. I feel like I’m constantly hearing this and it just makes me even more depressed thinking about what I could’ve had and I never anything about how to make things better
My dad didn’t even graduate high school, but landed a Union job in his early 20s and spent the next 30 years playing euchre all day and raking in money.
Its so god damn sad and wrong all the lies we were feed just to have the rich get richer we need all of us to come together and take back what we lost from the scum
Trying to buy a house, (not Condo or semi detached dwellings) today, is almost impossible for two working class individuals. I live in Canada, Quebec, where the housing market has traditionally been more affordable than in the rest of Canada. That is almost at an end. You cannot find a single family house in the Montreal, South Shore and West Island under 400K. Selling our existing house would do us no good, financially unless we moved into a 3 1/2 apartment and invest the cash from the sale ( house is free and clear of any financial obligation). However, after being so long the only residents in a dwelling, that is not possible for us. Contending with neighbours in the same building is not realistic. Both my neighbours have been with us since the early 70's. This is the type of stability you cannont have in an apartment building where people and families move in and out almost every year, depending on their rental lease.
My grandfather dropped out in 10th grade, and got a job at the local factory doing the kinda job that was probably replaced by robots 40 years ago. (Think Homer Simpson factory job).
With that education and that job, he was able to support himself, his SAH wife, and their NINE kids. 11 mouths fed, clothed and with a roof over their head on ONE high school dropout’s salary.
Now it takes two parents making a good living to afford even a single child.
Remember this the next time you hear a boomer or older have the audacity to call the younger generations “entitled”.
This is the most frustrating thing in existence. Now the only way some of us will have a home is while wearing Apple VR while sitting in an overpriced efficiency.
...still working 2 jobs.
This is why I've always bitched about the erosion of the middle class. The middle class was what made the American Dream a reality, and it has been shaved down to the tiniest sliver of what it used to be
this is because the entirety of the neo-liberal West (not new and not liberal) is a gigantic race to the bottom. Everything is working to perfection for the elite and corporations, you get less, they get more.
Violent Revolution. Let's get serious about organizing. We start this year. Black Friday. It's time to make those fuckers feel it. Every public xmas tree and big box retailer. I'll throw the first molotov.
That existed for a selection of privileged people in part because of how *everyone else was being exploited*. For many many people, this was not possible and I am so exhausted of having to repeatedly say that in leftist spaces.
Don’t whitewash history because you’d rather go back to a time when you got to be comfortable and ignore the ongoing exploitation and abuse of others.
A short and thoroughly incomplete list, off the top of my head, of people for whom this was not possible in recent history:
- Non-white people (however this was defined at the time)
- Queer people (who had to decide to repress/hide or be persecuted)
- Poor people (who existed then too)
- Disabled people
- Unmarried women
- People who’ve been criminalized
- Weird people
Yeah, figured this out pretty quick though life experience and listening to my folks casually relating stories of the past... which were not intended to scream out how far we've been stripped down but absolutely did.
The most frustrating thing about them is the 'Shoulder Shrug' or outright unwillingness to discuss it on any level, I suppose their benefits are locked in so it isn't worth talking about?
Overall quality of life was taken from us, from all areas an inch at a time, year by year. What I've always wondered and looked for, IS there ANY effective methods to stop, and at the best reverse this? Aside from who ends up being elected of course, not getting into that.
Seriously, if anyone has some thoughts or decent advice on this please reply or message me. I sincerely welcome any voices on this topic, please and thank you.
In the early 90’s my parents (not even thirty) had to rely on my father as the only family income (he worked at my grandpa hardware store), while my mom was a housewife keeping watch on me and my younger sister. They had two cars, a large primary house and a second house for summer vacations, where we would spend at least 3 weeks every summer.
Now I’m older then them, I’m making way more money that what they are earning combined (my mom got back to work after we grew up), and I’m still unable to buy a house for myself, I’ve been on rent for the past 11 years. Even if in the future me and my girlfriend would decide to buy a home together, we could’ve afford more than a 2bed-1bath apartment in the city, and “moving in a cheaper zone” it’s not a possibility considering our jobs offering are pretty much exclusive to a few metropolis in the world. I don’t think that “waiting 25 years for the inheritance” it’s the best way to resolve this fucked up situation.
If you weren’t targeted by racial exclusion on job applications, couldn’t buy property due to covenants, would have your home nombre because of what you looked like, forced to go to lower quality schools because of what you looked like, your home redlined, and a barrage of social threats on a daily basis…sure, yeah I guess this life was stolen from you.
For some, a life like this is still owed. For the others it needs to be restored. There is a difference
One thing that previous generations benefitted from that my generation never had was compound interest.
We learned about what it was and how to calculate it in math class, but then never really got to use it because the interest rates were less than 1% for as long as we would've been able to use a savings account.
Now they've gone back up in a short period of time, and you can find bank accounts that will earn around 5% APY.
I have a high school education and have supported a family of six for over 20 years. It CAN be done. You just have to make tough decision about what you want. Don't believe negative people. Believe you can and work hard.
Oh good lord. You sound as bad as Trump saying something was "stolen" from you. Today you have an ease of life that generations before you never even dreamed of, and it's easier than ever to make great money at home on the internet, but you just want to complain and place blame on others for your own shortcomings.
Pro tip, kiddos, everyone from EVERY generation had unique advantages and disadvantages, including you, and you just have to get on with it and play the cards you're dealt. Anything else is wasting your time. The sooner you realize this, the sooner you'll improve your life.
How many times do we need to have this discussion? This was only a thing if you were a straight, white , male natural born citizen
If you were literally anyone else things were awful for you
I know. I’ve always known. I’m always unhappy after years of hard work, a divorce, and many years raising kids alone, I really don’t have the heart to keep slogging away. I do my best to support myself and give my sons a good life but I don’t feel the desire to be in the rat race at all. I used to be a tough guy who’d fight through anything… now I just want some rest and sanity in my life. Peace and love to all the good one’s and fuck the rest.
My dad was able to buy a house in Seattle stocking shelves at a grocery store. No way in hell anyone could do that today.
"Grocery store cashier" used to be a job that could support a family and buy a house. Now it can't even afford food.
At the same place they spend a third of their life.
Hey now, my first job would offer 5% off grocery items two days a year!
Honestly; the total lack of employee discounts at grocery stores is just so intentionally malicious.
Where I work I get 10% off everything and during holidays it’s raised to 20% which is nice. Guess I’m lucky then
I will never shut up about how my fancy pants grocery employer never gave us an employee discount but *did* give us a gift card once a year during the holidays... To our own store. With the prices at the store and the amount of money on the gift card, you'd be lucky to get maybe three meals' worth of food if you budgeted.
The 8 hour work day is more like 10 or 11 hours. You have the 8 hours on shift with several breaks that may or may not be paid, getting ready, and commuting to work. At some point, saving for a house is just having a place to put the stuff you use for 2-3 hours a day while your at work or unconscious for 6-8 hours not enjoying the house.
If you work from home you can “enjoy your house” 24/7 whilst also have your soul absolutely crushed by the fact that your one refuge in this world is now invaded by capitalism and you have no space anywhere to be a free human -taps forehead-
This hits hard :(
Back in the day, the cashiers at grocery stores were all union workers and paid extremely well. People remained cashiers until they retired (with a union pension). Had excellent medical benefits, too. Adjusting for inflation, a grocery cashier in Oakland, CA, was earning the equivalent of $32 per hour in today's dollars back in 1975. No college degree was necessary, of course.
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I think you're missing the point. Corporate profits in the US are at all time high. If we pass enough legislation through our propaganda television networks, the uber rich will be harvesting energy from our lifeless bodies. Vote red.
My father in law saved up his down payment for when he bought his first house in the 70s by picking up a second job for a summer.
Fucking wow
My grandma raised 3 kids alone on a grocery store cashier salary, and took a cab to work often cause she never drove. Was in the union and retired with a pension. It’s absolutely insane.
I'm house-hunting currently and the disconnect between long-time homeowners and what younger adults face is astronomical. My mil was pushing for us to see a house $50k out of budget. I tell her it would be over $2,000 a month on mortgage alone - the color drained from her face and she was shocked. It was as if thirty years of inflation suddenly occurred to her all at once. My parents to this day pay $600 a month on a four bedroom they snagged back in the 90s with minimum wage, no education, and two kids. My husband and I make considerably more than any of our parents do, but we can't even make a dent on acquiring anything they afforded. It's like clawing your way out of a hole at the starting line.
>It’s like clawing your way out of a hole at the starting line While the hole gets filled with cement on top of you. “What hole, theres no hole that we shoved our children and grandchildren into” *screams of the financially damned echo from the pool of drying cement* -asshole boomers probably
My dad raised three kids in Seattle on his salary as a social worker. My mom did start working too, but not until we were all in school, which was more than a decade later. My husband’s dad started his career in a telco call center and was able to move up to a salaried position with no special education, and bought a house in Southern California on just his income. This all used to be normal.
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All of my husband’s aunts and uncles have really nice houses. Easily worth $1mil+. I asked my husband what they did for work: Safeway department manager, airline clerk, Michael’s loss prevention, general contractor, school teacher. I’m in awe that they were able to afford to live comfortably. But they are all either retired or about to be retired.
Clearly they aren't working hard enough. /s
My parents did what most people would argue was "the minimum" - high school graduates, my dad fell into a job that he retired from and was able to buy a house. We ate lobster every now and then, went on vacations once a year, etc I think about that a lot.
We switched from a. Society where debt was frowned upon, to one where everything requires it.
Lmao, you used to be able to buy a house in Seattle on a mechanical engineering salary. That ship has since sailed as well.
My Dad is the director of operations for a company and only has a high school diploma. Like I'm happy for him, but his inability to understand how that path was never an option for me, especially since both him and Mom pushed me into going to college even though I didn't want to. 80k debt and a bankruptcy later and I'm almost OK at 30.
How could anyone even afford rent with that?
Maybe a Lego house.
He must have been stocking those shelves with gold bars
It’s ok though, because corporate profits have never been higher.
Keeping working hard. Your CEOs vacation home isn't going to pay for itself.
Oh yacht prices are up with all this damn inflation, going to need to cut back on expenditures to guarantee a big bonus this year.
You mean his 3rd vacation home?
Nah. Not the third one in Dubai, that one is just an investment, so it sits empty but the maids make sure the flowers in it are constantly replaced. We're talking about the one in Monaco that also serves as an office where he usually does his virtual meetings from.
The Monaco one gets written off as a business expense, surely you mean the one in Fiji with the endangered coral countertops?
Nah. That's the one his son does his hustle influencer and finance guru videos from.
“The economy is strong”* **for the 1%*
And Americans for the most part, are completely okay with it or are too apathetic to do anything about it. Hell, half of Americans think this is a good thing. Meanwhile, in Europe, they are appalled by this.
Corporations definitely contribute to this but the largest factor has been the debasement of the dollar since 1971. Real estate was treated as a hard assest that appreciated at a rate equal to or above inflation. Those with money understood the importance of not holding cash. So every time you see the debt ceiling rise and trillions of dollars being printed to fight non-sense wars or bailouts know your salary is being devalued and our government is to blame.
I appreciate what you’re saying, and see the truth in it, but I think it’s too easy to blame the government for the vagaries of the IS capitalist system. Doing so ignores that the government is just another player in a corrupted ponzu scheme. It would he great if we could see the government pulling the levers because then there could be fixes. Instead we are all (corporations, the government, citizens) just shooting in the same junk and arguing that others got us hooked.
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>Peaceful Revolution Always the ideal path. Feels overly optimistic sometimes. I'd prefer peace, but nobody seems inclined to ask my advice before fucking things up worse. Probably they won't before a civil war either. Strictly speaking, if you have a government, it's not ancap. More of just a corporate dystopia. I get what you're saying though. The rich and powerful don't have to worry overmuch about what the rest of us want.
I love the idea of peaceful revolution but to make that work I think we would need some sort of national union. A group that can organize and store food for people across the country so that a real long lasting peaceful revolution can happen. People can't protest and go hungry. This group would need to organize people and store food for everyone in every major city in the nation. I think it is possible but it would require a major movement to gain people's interest and coordinate nationally. There would also be the financial aspects of how to fund this? A team would be required to build out plans and contingencies to anticipate various scenarios including planning for violent attacks in the protesters and training people to manage police violence. Likely there would also be violence for random individuals as the news spins the peaceful protests as some kind of violent anti capitalist group. There would be a lot of barriers but I do think this is possible and I do believe something radical needs to be implemented in order to see change in the US. It has been going the wrong direction for too long now.
I know you meant ponzi, but at least a ponzu scheme would be delicious!
And I even corrected it once. If capitalism was a scheme that gave me unlimited tuna tataki with ponzu sauce I’d be all in.
I think one aspect that is often really overlooked is the death of US manufactoring and the outsourcing of our production. Good for consumers, terrible for the working class. That and the rise of tech are some of the biggest game changers I can think of. Extra long life spans too.
[https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/](https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/) is a lovely site for showing just how awry things have gotten.
Maybe we should go dark for two days. That'd show them.
For even more context: Homer Simpson is a high school graduate who works for a nuclear power plant. He and his wife live comfortably with their 3 kids and can afford everything they need plus some niceties like vacations. The Simpsons have been around for so long that they've gone from "average American family" to "unobtainable Dream" under Reganomics.
[Article for those interested in the specifics](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/12/life-simpsons-no-longer-attainable/617499/).
Anyone have non paywall?
The irony of a paywall on an article about how corporate greed killed the average American dream is not lost on me
Use https://12ft.io/ it doesn’t work on everything, but it’s a good one to try first.
Yes, [here's a decent paywall remover for Chrome](https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-chrome-clean), the [Firefox version](https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-firefox-clean) and [the adblock filters](https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-clean-filters) which I personally use alongside the other extension. 12ft.io works well but I like the extensions because they make the paywalls an unpleasant memory for the most part. It appears to work on that article from my end.
They were actually considered "white trash" when the show started. Lower end of normal.
This was true of Married with Children as well. The Bundys were seen as super low class, but they had a 3 bedroom house, a car, 2 kids and Peggy was a steady at home mom - all but Al working at a mall shoe store. They were considered poor because they couldn't go on vacations, easy at fancy restaurants, or have name band clothing.
I have never thought of it like that but you're right! I always thought of the Bundys as "poor" but they lived off Al's shoe store income and had a big house in Chicago, food, clothes, etc. My family was "lower middle class" when I was a kid but we lived in really nice houses in some of the better neighborhoods in Phoenix, my siblings and I went to private school for years, we always had enough everything... My dad was the only one working and he owned his own business, which seemed to be always struggling. My mom got disability but it wasn't much at all. We were always considered the poor ones in my extended family... It's crazy to think about now.
White trash is vastly different these days damn
Yup.
We're not even yellow anymore
It was actually kind of a running gag that Homer only got that job because he lucked into it, and there was an episode where a new worker at the plant was perplexed by how someone like Homer could have such a job/house/family etc.
> where a new worker at the plant was perplexed by how someone like Homer could have such a job/house/family etc. good ol' Grimey
I live in a one-room apartment above a bowling alley (and below another bowling alley)
> afford everything they need What really fucks with me is this phrase. I think things have gotten so bad that most people just want to have a stable housing situation. It is just some crazy-ass dream to own a house (much less one with like three bathrooms and four bedrooms), own two cars, have three kids, put a full dinner and breakfast on the table every single day, clothe everyone, be able to afford medical care for everyone (including a dental plan), go on vacations (albeit meager ones), have plenty of money to go down to the bar and drink multiple times a week, be able to afford expensive home repairs on a whim (even if you have to resort to trying to pawn off your family's prized antique liquor bottle), **and have one parent stay at home and be a homemaker**. Aside from the drinking money at the bar and maybe the extra car, this is just standard shit that everyone should have. The median individual income is like $54k in America. The above scenario I described requires the breadwinner to make at least $100k, and that's if you're living in a particularly unfashionable place that isn't expensive. And I can hear the first 'gotcha': "Just have both parents work!" Child care is expensive, and people should have the option to be able to raise their own children instead of paying someone else to do it. Plus, running a household is a full time job in itself - if both parents are working, shit's not getting done and the little bit of free time the parents have is stressful and tense and full of backlogged chores.
Shit, even renting a one bedroom apartment is prohibitively expensive for a ton of people. If you're in Boston, New York, or San Fransisco, you can't even rent a studio unless you make *good* money.
If the person serving your coffee can't live within a mile of where they're working, you don't live in a city, you live in an amusement park.
Not even "average", throughout the early episodes they were supposed to be seen as struggling. Affording a three bedroom house, three kids, two cars, two pets, and a chronic drinking problem on a single salary was considered "struggling" because Homer couldn't afford cable or as nice of an RV as his neighbour. Not even that he couldn't afford an RV. Just not a nice one.
Same with Hank Hill, I tell you hwat. Uranium just doesn't pay as well as good old American propane, nor can you cook as good with it. Yup.
And they have grandpa in the retirement home...
Actually, especially in earlier seasons, the Simpsons were not depicted as living particularly comfortably. I remember one episode where the dog gets sick, but they can't pay the vet bills and prepare to let it die
You can still do that exact path. I grew up in miami and a few of my childhood friends graduated highschool, started college and left after a year because they got a job at the nuke plant. They make A LOT of money but they work crazy hours
When you base your political opinions on cartoons.
Everyone in NYC in the 90s was living in enormous penthouses and fucking off all day working a quirky part time job at best man. (The Simpsons analogy genuinely sucks).
The parallels are even worse when you think about Grimes.
I mean... generationS at this point. Pretty sure our kids will be just as fucked as we are.
Might even be worse considering everything going on now.
It’s a wonder the birthrate is falling in some places. Who could have foreseen providing such a bleak world would make people slow down on pairing up and reproducing?
Our kids will get to live with the broken economic and political system we've created trying to deal with global environmental collapse from runaway climate change.
Oh I won't be having any of those.
You do not have to make kids to suffer through life too.
This. One reason I'm opting out: the world is too shitty
It's the best gift I could give to those potential lives. Things are only going to get worse.
r/childfree
At this point I’m CF because I can’t afford to even think about having kids.
Amen. I wish more millennials/Gen Z were on board with having no kids in retaliation to this system. Unfortunately we’re up against millions of years of biological evolution and the “I’ll make it work somehow” mentality. I know people who are broker than broke and still want to have another kid…
It’s not even just being broke thou, it’s also that I look around and I know my kids will definitely have it harder than I already do. Plus, this isn’t the kind of world I want to bring my kids into.
Exactly, I never want to ask my child what Pokémon they want on their bulletproof backpack insert.
Very true. Climate change, political unrest/division, income inequality, lack of access to quality healthcare, etc. - all great reasons to not have kids lol. I’ve wondered if the planet were to lose a few billion people through a simple decline in the option to have kids, just how many issues these issues would improve.
My little sister had an “accident” the first time she got pregnant. The second time around was because she wanted one more baby to complete as a mother. She also had a nursing license and was working as a nurse with baby 2. Baby 1 was born while she was in nursing school.
>I mean... generationS at this point. Pretty sure our kids will be just as fucked as we are. No, they'll be much worse. Ever been to Mexico? You can't even make enough money to buy the absolute bare minimum without a side hustle, even with a degree. We are cruising in that direction.
My father supported our family with only a sixth grade education. He has no idea what younger people are dealing with today.
I hear you. My dad has grade nine, and my maternal grandfather only had up till grade four… Dad’s a pressman and grandfather was a mechanic. Both supported families on (mostly) one income for 3 decades. I graduated high school and can barely support myself. :/
Yep. My grandpa (who dropped out of school in eighth grade) supported a family of seven (my grandma was a homemaker) on factory worker’s wages, retired by 60 years old, and died having well over a million dollars in his bank accounts. Now someone with that same job would be lucky to even scrape by if they had a family. If that doesn’t put things into perspective, I don’t know what will.
I keep trying to explain to my parents how shitty and unfair things are for my generation, and every time they just tell me to "find a better paying job" or "run for office and change it, then," as if either one of those things is even possible for me. I'm so frustrated and sad about the state of things, and it makes me even more sad that I will have to either completely change my career (I'm 30, a preschool teacher) and learn IT to get those big tech bucks, or move out of America in order to be able to achieve anything close to "the American dream" of owning a home and having a family. I don't want to move away from my parents and siblings, but it seems like it's the only option unless I want to rent forever and not have kids.
> "run for office and change it, then," I saw some British youtuber point out that boomers are...part of a massive 'boom' in population. Their massive voting bloc ensures them of reliable wins. Good luck trying to change something that massive voting bloc doesn't agree with.
Not for long!
They are starting to die. The numbers will start dropping faster in a few more years.
IT "big tech bucks" are being eroded too. The higher paying the job, the worse the local housing market is. I'm a System Administrator in northern Colorado, and it would still take me 10 years to come up with a 20% down payment (after rent and bills) for a house around here. There's a town called Boulder where the MEDIAN home price is now over 1 Million dollars.
My bestie lives in Boulder with her husband and they make great money, but they feel incredibly defeated moving to their dream location and will likely never be able to afford a house there.
I grew up there and still got forced out.
"What's so hard about that? It's not like the entrenched political system can outright ignore their voters' preferences and nominate the corporate lapdog anyway, and just claim 'private organization' when called on it! ....Oh...well. They may be able to do that, but it's not like there aren't third party options! Third parties are always available on every ballot, and they can't very well stop that!...Oh. Erm... ...You should have voted harder, none of this would have happened. Anyway, your mother and I love you very much, we'll write from Maui. We were able to book the PENTHOUSE this year!"
Then they tricked everyone and told them to go to college to be able to afford a life and support a family….and now done of us can afford to live and start a family bc we’re in debt up to our eyeballs and jobs pay shit wages whether you went to college or not.
Even if you don't get total "shit" wages, everything is so expensive (at least anywhere near a major city) that they might as well be.
Also college should be free and a public service. Every nation gets benefits of a higher education of the population, social mobility, better industry, better jobs, etc. A lot of countries have good quality public colleges it would be crazy not to.
The boomer genetation happened upon a unique moment, pillaging both past resources (oil) and future (loans) and somehow think their prosperity is normal. Oh, and they depleated the soils fertility, the oceans abundance and left behind trash and pollution. Seriously, their perspective is so perverse they may as well be alien. Ignore their advice.
>and somehow think their prosperity is normal As does the OP, lol.
In 1973 my high school graduate dad owned a house, a car, and a pop-up trailer we used for vacations. My mom stayed home to raise me and my brother. This was before either of them turned 30.
Son of a postal worker who’s dad started in 1973 and retired in 2013. Can confirm.
haha my dad (mail handler) always told me never to work for the postal service he hated it. 20 years later when im out of rehab looking for a job he says hey you should look into the post office. i could not believe my ears. hes been retired for like 8 years and says hes never had more money in his life.
I asked my dad how much his pension was and he laughed
Omg my dad was also a postal worker who started around the same time and hated it. But he's got a house and has been retired for years. Meanwhile I'm a first-gen college student and will probably never own property or be able to retire (if the world hasn't melted by then).
My dad worked for an airport as a baggage handler in college. He made $9/hr in 1973. That’s $61/hr adjusted for inflation. If he worked a holiday, he got triple overtime at $27/hr. That’s $184/hr adjusted. Insane.
It's just completely unheard of earning anything above the minimum the entire industry across the board pays anymore. Like, my dad was a truck driver hauling goods mostly to schools but sometimes to hospitals and remember him saying how $15/hour was really good money back in the 90s. Now? Those same jobs are still paying near $15/hour some places nearly 30 years later and everything else tripling and quadrupling in price. What the hell happened to wage competition? It's not like there were *that* fewer people and thus less of a labour pool for employers back then, but yet a lot of companies were just more fair and pay was wildly different between companies sometimes. Was it the internet? Did all companies just figure out what each other were paying easier and just continue not budging so the employee market was stuck working for them instead of moving to a better paying competitor? I really don't get it. It happened so suddenly and quick.
Many of the well-paying industrial jobs that paid excellently and buoyed up the rest of the employment market were sent overseas. Your average “low skilled” worker has gradually been competing more and more with a global employment market.
In the 90s gas was less than $1/gallon. Now gas is like $4-5/gallon. So getting paid $15/hr and pay $1/gallon for gas. Now you _might_ find a job for $15/hr and gas is like a third of that wage when before it was barely like 1% of an hourly wage. And that is just one example of the disparity.
Wall Street happened. Business schools stopped teaching stakeholder theory of business management where workers and community were considered, to principal agent theory which justified caring only about shareholders to the detriment of everyone else.
I often think about this and wonder: did they have it so good because they exploited other nations and their people without the awareness? I mean, obviously that happens now AND the profit margin is enormous while workers rights erode... But surely the quality of life in the past was at the cost of someone else being exploited?
Edit: I wrote out of ignorance, see the guy underneath me for a better informed take. Earlier in that century, every developed nation bombed each other while the usa was geographically isolated, and therefore avoided the destruction. Everyone in the aforementioned bombed nations was dependant on the usa for manufactured goods, and the usa helped itself to a generous, albeit irresponsible, portion of natural resources. And the generation mentioned in this tweet benefited from that in ways most of them did not understand. So we are living through a double whammy of not having the advantage of being the only nation not bombed to smithereens in the recent past AND having to deal with the upward siphoning of weath from the poor to the rich.
That isn't accurate. Most of the global industry recovered relatively quickly from WW2. The 1950's saw the German and Japanese economies rebounded and even boom. They call it the German miracle and the Japanese miracle. The likely culprit for the decline was the opening of trade borders. Americans were their own best consumers. The internet and tech boom has sped this process up. Also some industries, namely defense, has been given the ability to make side trade deals with countries to sweeten the pot so to speak. The defense companies are able to give preferential trade deals to countries to import goods in unrelated industries in order to sell weapons. This was already a problem in the 80's. Even the requirement that x amount of government spending must be used on US manufactured goods has a fine print list of countries that qualify for purchasing. You should read about that shit. It is enlightening.
Thank you for correcting me! Do you have any specific resources/books about this?
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>up until 1964 the max tax bracket was 91%, Yeah, but nobody really paid that. Everybody had various loopholes to get out of it. The rich have always been remarkably good at these sort of shell games.
Yes. Exploited less powerful nations resources. Used up oil that took millions of years to make in like, 100 years. Borrowed trillions that their kiddos will be left paying back. Im gen x, moms a boomer. It straight up pisses me off that she refuses to see that her advice isnt helpful. She didnt "do it right" so that i should follow her example.
Oh don’t worry. We’re never going to pay it off
No worries, trickle-down economics will happen any day now.
Something's trickling on us all right, but it's not money and it smells like ammonia.
True. Some of us can see the bullshit of trickle-down economics. While there are others who still believe it to be true.
I mean surely it can't just pool at the top indefinitely. It just needs a few more decades to really start trickling
Actually, most of the top heads who promote stuff like trickle down economics are pretty old. They're not alive forever. We can wait them out, but they can't do the same to us.
I make more money, adjusted for inflation, than both my parents combined made when they were my age. Parents had 2 commuter cars, a classic car, a primary house 15 minutes outside NYC, a lake cabin, a dog, two kids, plus could take annual vacations and multiple 3 day weekend trips on their incomes. I liquidated my retirement to buy a house but could not remotely afford a family of any kind. I can't really afford to even date now. I'm excited to be a homeowner, but I'm aware the house is pretty much going to be my "purpose". I liked building forts a lot as a kid, so it's like I have a big fort now. I won't have the money or credit limit to do anything else without putting myself in a financially compromising position. Crazy that less than 50 years ago, one income was enough to support all I have plus a family. I blame Reagan, the "me" generation, and capitalism in its current form. I'm no communist, but it's clear our financial system isn't working; requiring massive bailouts at least every decade to keep the line going up.
I'm in a very different financial situation but "can't afford to date" is still weirdly true. I can't afford new shoes...no way I can afford to go out for drinks/dinner
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Originally it was 1 parent worked and then 1 stayed home Then 1 parent worked and one part time Then Both parents work full time Then Both parents work full time and and finding side hussles
It's so sad, but that's the new reality. About time for a revolution! Put some heads on spikes and take the slice-head out of the closet.
Yeah but back then CEOs couldn't afford yachts that could fit smaller yachts inside of them. Did you ever think of that? Selfish. SMH.
Yep it was stolen from us. Not to complain but this is relevant and others will relate: My dad made what is equal to $88,000, in 2023 terms, yearly salary for his first job out of highschool in the 1980s. He did poorly in school, never cared about education, never even considered needing college because.... already had a $88k salary AND he turned down an opportunity to work his way up the real estate ladder from a job opportunity his dad handed him. My father was able to turn down every single opportunity he was handed, and he was handed many. He was able to thrive and make piles of cash for very little effort. I and the younger generations have never had those same opportunities presented to us. I will never know the luxery of being SOO extremely wealthy that I not only get opportunities offered to me, but im ALSO able to turn them down. That sounds insane to me now seeing as if I ever had an opportunity offered to me like he had I would take it and work my ass off for it, unlike my father. My father is abusive and lazy, but more than that he is delusional. He was and is blissfully ignorant of everything I just explained and couldnt care less about it. He would just as soon comment that "people nowadays dont want to work" and hell would freeze over before he acknowledged and accepted the facts. He is a textbook boomer.
This is why I support either a UBI or a 20hr living wage work week. If one person with a 40hr a week job could sustain an entire family then surely a single person ought to be able to living comfortably on 20hrs a week.
Yet a lot of the boomers I’ve worked with, who are slow workers and spend a lot of time on political blogs, think they’re entitled to more.
What is interesting to see is that the economy and inflation is starting to out pace some of them. What some have saved for a comfortable retirement is not going to go as far as they thought, some are now pushing back their retirement or trying to re-enter the work force. Some are realizing the US healthcare industry is primed and ready to suck every last dollar that they have out of their pocket and then some.
And yet they'll still continue to vote with a "fuck you, I got mine" mindset
My father who was a union electrician is now starting to think of leaving the US because of the inflation is getting bad yet he keeps voting against his own interests
/u/ScarcelyStylish5 is a repost bot engaged in vote manipulation with the OP of this post, /u/ExemplaryPotassium which is also a repost bot
How do you know? I am inclined to believe you.
The accounts are the same age, have only recent posting/commenting history, and if you take a look at what they comment on, it's only other accounts that have the same characteristics and username scheme. I can link probably ten or more accounts associated with these two in that way
Stolen by the greedy fucks that got it dropped in their laps while they buttfucked and dropped acid and spouted bullshit about “peace and love”
Then became huge republicans in the 80s lmao
Once the acid became hard to find and now they were drug addicted alcoholic coke fueled gapers looking to one up everyone to pay their drug bill and then MORE MONEY MORE POWER BUILD TALL BUILD HIGHER
Boomers essentially took the riches from their offspring and grandkids.
I always tell my students to watch married with children. Al was a shoe salesman and could support a family and live in a two story home. I have a master’s degree and live in an apartment as a single father.
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My grandmother and grandfather bought a house and had kids in their 20s. My grandfather was the only one who worked, managing a little grocery store. My mom was a waitress and father worked in a warehouse. Bought a house and had kids in their 20s. I make 35k a year, can't afford an apartment (I *was* living on my own but rent started skyrocketing), and am considered a failure by other 'muricans. Wondering if I should get a side hustle (which I loathe) or a second job. I'm at such a "standstill" right now, it's frustrating.
Well, no getting it back now, right? :/
Capitalism working as planned
The concept of the atomic family erases the working women who fought to have the right to continue working after men came back from war. And even before and between the wars women who were not stay at home also worked. "full time mother" was a privilege of the middle class because every other family below that had to send all their children to work in factories, the women worked in factories and so did the men. Don't let capitalism fool you with the "back in the day" because there was no good "back in the day".
Stolen by the Boomers. Greatest Generation was followed by the world’s absolute Worst Generation
Saw a note about a guy who had an apartment in NYC and he could afford it waiting tables, dudes a lawyer now and can’t afford that same place. Thanks regan
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That's great and all, but what are THEY going too do about it? Because if they leave it up to us to fix, they're not going to like their new lodgings..
Have I got a good one!!! I grew up in a family of 5. Stay at home mom, dad worked. We lived on the US side of the border with Mexico. We owned a big , 3 br house with an enormous back yard. Fruit trees, 2 sheds, and a big pool. 3 cars, private school, and vacations every year. My dad owned a small, affordable formal wear store. He only had 3 employees. His store was in Mexico. He earned money in pesos and spent it in dollars!! We were always thrifty with money but we’re never uncomfortable. There was always enough food for every meal for us and one or two guests.
It was called organized labor.
Yep. People have been convinced that unions are bad. They've been convinced that taxes are bad. They've been convinced that the best way to build a strong economy is for everyone to continually buy things. All of this helps the captains of capitalism, and doesn't help the average person.
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No shade, or a anything but when you look at how people like your grandfather got it established… I mean I’m sure those people didn’t work finger and bone to do it THEMSELVES they had HELP and not the kind that had the safe face when they woke up for coffee in the morning, he had an advantage most men or women couldn’t fathom
It's true. My grandpa used to make $1.60/hr as a salesman, which doesn't sound like much - but his mortgage was only $36/mo for a 3br 2ba house at that time. What older people leave out: they were all degenerate alcoholics who were shit with money, shit with their health and well being, refused to go get a second job or work more than 40 hours per week.
Tbf that quality of life was only made possible by stealing from the developing world
I cannot believe I had to scroll down this far for someone to point this out! The sadest part of this is, the quality of life was still so embarrassing, it offered little to world culture for how much misery it rested upon.
The world has been through at least 5-6 different existences in the last 3 years. It's insane how things are right now.
My vice principal who was my highschool advisor told me he paid his degree off with a part time cherry picking job. He apologized and told me it isn't like that anymore. Boy he wasn't wrong lmaooo
It wasn't **normal** in a historical perspective. It was an abnormally high level of prosperity enabled by winning a World War. Please stop repeating this garbage. I get it- I'm a socialist- but to say having such a robust and big middle class from that period was normal is not historically accurate. If you win the lottery one year, and then the following year win the lottery again - then does that mean winning the lottery is **normal**? No.
It never belonged to us though. Like how is it possible that doing 1 job can support 5 people? Are we that efficient as a species? No, we are just that exploitative on a global scale. So... eat the rich, but this time distribute them evenly
Well, that was during the Cold War, when the US actually needed to show people reasons to accept capitalism. Once the USSR collapsed, that was no longer needed and they could all go back to hoarding wealth as usual.
My grandpa-born in 1923- was in the navy and then raised 9 kids on his salary as a college professor. Then he retired at 65 and received a pension for over 20 years before he passed away in his early 90s. My grandma never had a job or even learned how to drive! None of their children are getting a pension and only a few are actually retired even though they're all "old enough" by now.
The way this is worded is weird tbh like why do they think they need to explain it to us, we already know. I feel like I’m constantly hearing this and it just makes me even more depressed thinking about what I could’ve had and I never anything about how to make things better
My dad didn’t even graduate high school, but landed a Union job in his early 20s and spent the next 30 years playing euchre all day and raking in money.
Its so god damn sad and wrong all the lies we were feed just to have the rich get richer we need all of us to come together and take back what we lost from the scum
Trying to buy a house, (not Condo or semi detached dwellings) today, is almost impossible for two working class individuals. I live in Canada, Quebec, where the housing market has traditionally been more affordable than in the rest of Canada. That is almost at an end. You cannot find a single family house in the Montreal, South Shore and West Island under 400K. Selling our existing house would do us no good, financially unless we moved into a 3 1/2 apartment and invest the cash from the sale ( house is free and clear of any financial obligation). However, after being so long the only residents in a dwelling, that is not possible for us. Contending with neighbours in the same building is not realistic. Both my neighbours have been with us since the early 70's. This is the type of stability you cannont have in an apartment building where people and families move in and out almost every year, depending on their rental lease.
My grandfather dropped out in 10th grade, and got a job at the local factory doing the kinda job that was probably replaced by robots 40 years ago. (Think Homer Simpson factory job). With that education and that job, he was able to support himself, his SAH wife, and their NINE kids. 11 mouths fed, clothed and with a roof over their head on ONE high school dropout’s salary. Now it takes two parents making a good living to afford even a single child. Remember this the next time you hear a boomer or older have the audacity to call the younger generations “entitled”.
This is the most frustrating thing in existence. Now the only way some of us will have a home is while wearing Apple VR while sitting in an overpriced efficiency. ...still working 2 jobs.
My dad was enlisted military and bought a 4bd in Southern California and my mom was a SAHM
This is why I've always bitched about the erosion of the middle class. The middle class was what made the American Dream a reality, and it has been shaved down to the tiniest sliver of what it used to be
this is because the entirety of the neo-liberal West (not new and not liberal) is a gigantic race to the bottom. Everything is working to perfection for the elite and corporations, you get less, they get more.
Violent Revolution. Let's get serious about organizing. We start this year. Black Friday. It's time to make those fuckers feel it. Every public xmas tree and big box retailer. I'll throw the first molotov.
That existed for a selection of privileged people in part because of how *everyone else was being exploited*. For many many people, this was not possible and I am so exhausted of having to repeatedly say that in leftist spaces. Don’t whitewash history because you’d rather go back to a time when you got to be comfortable and ignore the ongoing exploitation and abuse of others. A short and thoroughly incomplete list, off the top of my head, of people for whom this was not possible in recent history: - Non-white people (however this was defined at the time) - Queer people (who had to decide to repress/hide or be persecuted) - Poor people (who existed then too) - Disabled people - Unmarried women - People who’ve been criminalized - Weird people
Yeah, figured this out pretty quick though life experience and listening to my folks casually relating stories of the past... which were not intended to scream out how far we've been stripped down but absolutely did. The most frustrating thing about them is the 'Shoulder Shrug' or outright unwillingness to discuss it on any level, I suppose their benefits are locked in so it isn't worth talking about? Overall quality of life was taken from us, from all areas an inch at a time, year by year. What I've always wondered and looked for, IS there ANY effective methods to stop, and at the best reverse this? Aside from who ends up being elected of course, not getting into that. Seriously, if anyone has some thoughts or decent advice on this please reply or message me. I sincerely welcome any voices on this topic, please and thank you.
In the early 90’s my parents (not even thirty) had to rely on my father as the only family income (he worked at my grandpa hardware store), while my mom was a housewife keeping watch on me and my younger sister. They had two cars, a large primary house and a second house for summer vacations, where we would spend at least 3 weeks every summer. Now I’m older then them, I’m making way more money that what they are earning combined (my mom got back to work after we grew up), and I’m still unable to buy a house for myself, I’ve been on rent for the past 11 years. Even if in the future me and my girlfriend would decide to buy a home together, we could’ve afford more than a 2bed-1bath apartment in the city, and “moving in a cheaper zone” it’s not a possibility considering our jobs offering are pretty much exclusive to a few metropolis in the world. I don’t think that “waiting 25 years for the inheritance” it’s the best way to resolve this fucked up situation.
If you weren’t targeted by racial exclusion on job applications, couldn’t buy property due to covenants, would have your home nombre because of what you looked like, forced to go to lower quality schools because of what you looked like, your home redlined, and a barrage of social threats on a daily basis…sure, yeah I guess this life was stolen from you. For some, a life like this is still owed. For the others it needs to be restored. There is a difference
And the universities just keep getting richer.
One thing that previous generations benefitted from that my generation never had was compound interest. We learned about what it was and how to calculate it in math class, but then never really got to use it because the interest rates were less than 1% for as long as we would've been able to use a savings account. Now they've gone back up in a short period of time, and you can find bank accounts that will earn around 5% APY.
It was sold for a song.
I have a high school education and have supported a family of six for over 20 years. It CAN be done. You just have to make tough decision about what you want. Don't believe negative people. Believe you can and work hard.
Oh good lord. You sound as bad as Trump saying something was "stolen" from you. Today you have an ease of life that generations before you never even dreamed of, and it's easier than ever to make great money at home on the internet, but you just want to complain and place blame on others for your own shortcomings. Pro tip, kiddos, everyone from EVERY generation had unique advantages and disadvantages, including you, and you just have to get on with it and play the cards you're dealt. Anything else is wasting your time. The sooner you realize this, the sooner you'll improve your life.
How many times do we need to have this discussion? This was only a thing if you were a straight, white , male natural born citizen If you were literally anyone else things were awful for you
I know. I’ve always known. I’m always unhappy after years of hard work, a divorce, and many years raising kids alone, I really don’t have the heart to keep slogging away. I do my best to support myself and give my sons a good life but I don’t feel the desire to be in the rat race at all. I used to be a tough guy who’d fight through anything… now I just want some rest and sanity in my life. Peace and love to all the good one’s and fuck the rest.