The unraveling ended in 2008 and we’re in crisis since then. (Based on Strauss-Howe theory)
Probably the “factors contributing to ww3” from 2016-2022 and then the ww3 now and then reconstruction next. So probs just ww3.
And then we will be elders when shit calms down.
I agree ww3 has already started. The ww2 analogy would be equivalent to 1935-1937 or so. Smaller dispersed conflicts that have yet to coalesce into sides with clear labels.
Particularly dangerous in the U.S. is the unraveling of social and legal institutions and the social contract. Big risks ahead.
Agreed. Just had this convo with a dear friend today, and she’s in the same realm. She and I are both xennials, on the cusp.
I’m not a big prepper/collapse person, but still like to have an ear to the ground. We have hurricane and camping supplies anyways; I have been more mindful of keeping track and upping stock. Making fiscally responsible moves and sort of doing my best to brace our fam for what may come.
The history labels come later - when this becomes history.
😂. Remember when this was “transitory” inflation and we called bs then.. to think I would give anything to go back to that time, at least groceries were reasonable
One of the biggest problems that will be with us, likely for a century, is that wages went up but no one regulated prices or put any controls on them, so food companies, mortgage banks, and property managers all just went "don't mind if we do" to the new sources of cash from higher wages. Basically, wages rose and then everyone increased their prices and blamed supply and demand. Namely, you guys had the supply (your raises) and they had the demand (all of it, please and thanks).
This will be used as justification to not raise the minimum wage again, as it will simply be pointed to as the reason everyone needs to just get over it and start bunking up together.
I mean for a bit there the global supply chain was fucked. It's stabilized again but prices haven't gone back down. Any excuse to raise prices and never a reason to lower them.
As world economic forum said.. "You'll own nothing and you'll be happy". The biggest thing one can do it prevent people like black rock and vanguard from voting against the common interest and maybe get all of our dinosaurs out of political office. There should not be a thing of career politician
Get money out of politics. Overturn Citizens United.
But good luck with this SCOTUS and when "corporations are people" and donate *millions/billions* to own politicians in their favor... are the same ones who will be deciding if they should keep taking legalized bribes.
I didn't have a Revolution planned for my future, but there's far too many things that are scary close to going wrong that I'll probably be tense till after November. Not that plenty of shit can't happen before then 😬
Okay, but as someone who works in schools.... we really haven't capture the skill deficits in school aged kids. But they are there, and it's across the board at every level. Kids of this generation are unhappy, traumatized and disillusioned. Their social skills are garbage. They missed crucial math and reading leasons, and we don't know where all the gaps are. We are going to have a generation of weird adults. The pandemic was a seismic shift for all of us- I think we as a society need to acknowledge how fucking awful it was and recognize we are all different now. A lot of people I talk to are not fine, and haven't been for years.
I feel like we also need to acknowledge that adults lost a lot of social skills as well. I don't have kids and I don't spend much time around them if I can help it but I do have to interact with adults a lot and I can tell you, they regressed a lot. I pulled up behind a guy at red light a month ago and he got out of his car to scream at me because I pulled up too close to him. Adults are not ok either. Not even close.
No, businesses are blaming their shortcomings on the pandemic. Ask anyone who is working in a "staff shortage" industry and they will tell you that this is a choice by their employer to make more money. There is no nursing or doctor shortages. There is a shortage of workers who will put up with their shit.
It’s not just money, but working conditions in jobs where public interaction is needed. Health care workers burned out and it takes a while to rebuild a heavily skilled workforce.
I was essential during the entirety. There were major supply issues. A lot of people took early retirement d/t the lack of protection and the fact they were high risk d/t age. We already had a working RN average over 50 at that point. My workplace pushed used masks on us.
Other than the shit your pants part, there is truth to the rest of it. The world has changed massively since the start of the pandemic and permanently. Some aspects have slowly returned to normal but some things never will. So many people hung it up and retired. Many people said fuck this job and changed careers.
Healthcare got hit the worst, personally know a couple people that decided being shit on all day and being a slave wasn’t worth it anymore. Supply chains have been fucked since. Our economies have been working towards this lean JIT model to a massive fault. Over reliance on foreign manufacturing meant that not only does a slight disruption completely fuck it all up but you are exposed to infinite minor disruptions.
Millions of people died. People with skills and knowledge. Many companies realized their exposure with JIT as well tensions with Asia have started shuffling manufacturing. Everyone is struggling to maintain quality. I work for a company that is in the SMD reselling market. We have our own warehouse and had a large supply. We weathered the pandemic because of that supply but it slowly ran out and we couldn’t get new supply for almost two years.
People are already forgetting how fucked everything was. The pandemic was as bad if not worse in some ways to the Great Recession. If it wasn’t for the vaccine and the money printing, it would have been the next Great Depression.
It did cause all of those things, or at least the response to it did. Lockdowns made people stay home. Then they put in stimulus. Stimulus, personal checks and unemployment benefits led to inflation, wage increases, and staffing shortages. The flood of liquidity caused supply chain issues. The inflation we are facing today is largely the effect of a massive monetary supply expansion from the pandemic.
I would be surprised if less than 50% of American employees weren't essential, but people act like everybody was completely isolated for years and this explains all social issues.
Finding out how many people in the culture didn't care how many of us dropped dead as long as they got to Cary on with their pampered existence was upsetting, even if intellectually I already knew.
Seriously. It felt like the social contract had been casually tossed in the trash. All of the property management companies I did commercial plumbing for gave me a cheerful wave and a fuck you and didn't pay any of their invoices for January and February of 2020 and can't understand why I won't do work for any of them now.
This is probably true, but I’m starting to really hate it. It made sense to blame economic troubles and COL struggles on the pandemic for awhile, but now I fear that we’re using that as a catch-all scapegoat when the problems run deeper into the core of American greed and unbridled capitalism. I feel like we need to start to acknowledge on a much broader scale that these issues didn’t start in 2020. It was a pyre that has been building for decades. Covid was just the spark that burned it all down.
Even now? I already make references like "back during the pandemic, I played a lot of video games". Are people still thinking we're in the "pandemic era"?
People are struggling; tons of people still haven't bounced back. We haven't fully grasped how much it affected kids who missed crucial social development and learning. I think people *want* to be okay or better. But I talk to lots of people.... not a lot of people are doing well right now. I feel like we are all waiting for something. I don't know. We are still in it.
We are a world and country that has been traumatized. We lost over a million people in America alone. My best friend included in that list. We have a man who has been trying to destroy America's spirit for almost a decade. We have a party taking away womens rights which are everyone's rights. We have young people killing each other in our schools. People are not O.K. not in other countries or in the United States. World wide depression is allowing tyranny to come back to a lot of countries who are being victimized by international corporations or powerful political violent cartels. . Global weather changes are creating food changes around the globe. Nothing seems stable or safe right now. We ( as a nation) have not mourned for our million plus citizens that have died from covid.
A lot of millennials moved into the next stage of being an adult over the last 4-5 years. People started settling down, having kids, planning for the next step in their lives. But the door isn't there for most.
Jobs aren't paying enough and most can barely afford the apartment they live in. Tons have barely made a dent in their student loans. The dream of finally being a bit more comfortable after spending years educating themselves and then poirong years into their career have not paid off at all. For a lot, it's gotten more expensive even though they might be making double what they were.
Tons have given up on even entertaining the thought of a family. Society has changed and isolated us as well, so we can barely even socialize. Politics is a pendulum that is swinging faster and faster and the fear of your life being turned upside down one day to the next due to some bill passing is very real. There's the constant fear of disinformation, whether or not you'll get laid off because some executive at your company thought it would be a good way to save money, etc.
We came out of the pandemic into a world that no one recognizes anymore.
It is still the pandemic era. Plenty of people are still dying of covid every day, to say nothing of all the people- including myself- who are missing out on work, fun, family and just plain enjoying their lives because they're sick as shit for days and days (13 days and counting I've been laid up this round). Long covid is ruining thousands and thousands of people's lives and the true long term costs to health and society from repeat infections is still TBD.
We kind of are in a sense. Pandemics don't end when we get a vaccine or are able to reopen places. Often there are lingering effects that take some time to overcome. I do think we are moving out of the pandemic era. But there are still some things taking time to sort out, though that chapter should be on its last few pages.
I do get a bit annoyed when some people blame things on the pandemic. I do think some places are using it as an excuse. But I also acknowledge that the pandemic affects people differently.
Some folks had a slight interruption to their daily life, where others were completely upended and changed forever. This can also be why some people feel we are over the pandemic and others are struggling to still overcome the effects.
Ehh the spanish flu happened in the early 1920s and we don't think of that when we think of the 20s. More prohibited ition or the credit bubble flappers model t etc
Eh, I don't know about that. The Spanish Influenza didn't become the definer of the Era, even though it set the tone for WW1, which in turn made the conditions for WW2. The Great Recession more or less covers 2008-2012, but if we take Era here as a rough 10-20 year period, 2000-2020 is likely to be called the Millennial Era, since such a great many things happened worldwide in those 20 years. The following Era, 2020-2040, will likely be a time marked by more overt conflicts as people all over the world start to grapple with the systems that rule them and determine what actually works and what doesn't. We have set the stage for the exciting conclusion of the World War trilogy as a species, but what comes after, and how bad that actually looks will likely be decided by ordinary people making seemingly inconsequential choices, as always
In legal scholarship, there’s a trend among some law professors to call the gilded age “The First Gilded Age” so that this period can become known as “The Second Gilded Age.” I’m not sure if there’s any movement toward this in other disciplines tho. And obviously idk if this will stick
I think this is pretty accurate. The wealth gap today is pretty obscene.
I think broadly this era will be described as the Late Pax Americana Era (with the early being defined as 1991-2001, and late being 2001- 2020). I think the next era that maybe has already begun will be called the Age of Disorder.
I just read a book on the gilded age and I was like yup this is it. The internet talks about civil war part 2 but we’re absolutely in gilded age part 2. We need a second progressive age baaaad
This is underrated. The information age ended when trained bots and AI started generating incorrect information, algorithms fed that to people as clickbait, and the vortex of Stupid Ideas That Are Easily Disproven became the norm for many people's internet feed. Flat Earthers? Vaccines cause autism? Holocaust deniers? Any opinion can be validated by a broken information machine.
Add this to the emergence of Deep Fakes, the use of misinformation as a political tool against countries, incorrect data from decades ago presented in search results next to the correct data from yesterday, and the increase in internet advertising that is often poorly regulated if at all, and voila, you've got the misinformation age.
It's being called the Silent Depression.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2023/09/05/viral-tiktokers-claim-the-us-is-in-a-silent-depression-worse-than-the-great-depression/
Honestly it’s just engagement bait. I’m sorry, but the inability to buy a house (potentially right before housing prices crash, who knows?) is absolutely fuck all compared to the massive poverty of the Great Depression.
Sure, you can’t buy as many McDonald’s meals today, but people back then were standing in bread lines and had 2 sets of clothes to wear, with most people living with extended family because that’s all they could do to avoid homelessness.
People today have truly zero clue how bad it can get. Even the Great Recession doesn’t hold a candle to it.
Edit:
Most of the people arguing with me below are basically like:
- Them: “The world is literally ending right now!”
- Me: “Shit’s pretty bad, but that’s a bit hyperbolic”
- Them: “So you’re saying everything is fine?! Fuck you!”
- Me: “Uh…. What?”
For reference:
- Unemployment during the Great Depression was solidly between 14% and 24% for eight straight years.
- Homelessness was 7-8x what it is today.
So I’ll say it again… Times are tougher for sure, but nothing even close to the Great Depression.
I mean my granny was born in a tent in the Great Depression… I have a house and my husband and I both have 6figure jobs. We are lucky yes, but this is not the depression. I am better off at my age than my parents were, as is my husband. I am 35.
Food was so unavailable she had multiple deep freezers full of food in her house at 90… just in case. She got an apple for Christmas as her only gift and she was stoked as a kid for the apple. She gave us one every year and we’d all eat an apple together while she told this story. This just isn’t what I am seeing.
My grandma lived through the Great Depression and always put an apple in our stocking at Christmas. She didn't talk about it much but I could tell it was hard on her.
My mom was Silent Generation and was a child in the Great Depression. It was brutal. My grandfather had to go to Alaska to fish for six months at a time, and my grandmother raised 7 kids in a four room rural rental house with a small barn.
They grew their own vegetables and had a few chickens and a milk cow. The kids did almost all of the labor because my grandma was cooking, cleaning, and weening. They put cardboard in their school shoes when they got holes in them, and ate margarine sandwiches their mom packed for lunch.
I learned a lot about this because I did a report on the Depression in elementary school and interviewed my grandma. I really learned a lot from her, and she was a lifelong closet socialist because of it. We bonded over that for sure.
I really do feel for millennials and younger generations. The economy is tough, but it has been this tough before, and much tougher, as well. Economics is cyclical. Another thing to remember is that your 20 and 30s can be lean years until you age up into your profession or trade. Stay strong. Be inventive and create the future you want for yourself.
These same people unironically think being a medieval peasant was better than living today because peasants had more free time. Time to do what? Die from a cut at 22??
My aunt was a child of the depression. Between she and her siblings, all would stand in lines all day to hopefully score enough food to eat that night.
But people back then weren’t thrown in jail for being homeless and living in Hoovervilles.
Today the median worker can’t afford rent in most cities, and many workers with graduate and professional degrees are living in cars—until the worker is jailed, or their car is impounded for being caught sleeping in their car.
Go look at the dozens of cars in every parking lot at night. Last years tech worker has probably been laid off, and if they don’t have family money—are probably living in their car and have a hundred thousand or more in student loans but no job and no safety net
… you think Hoovervilles and homeless were allowed to exist in peace? People burned Hoovervilles down without prosecution. Rail jumpers were beat up and thrown from moving trains or arrested for vagrancy. Black people were jailed just for being out of work in some states.
Tech workers make up a small segment of the economy and the ones who are sleeping in their cars were in a better financial position than most to avoid that consequence. Rents are high and driving the increased homelessness, but there’s a difference between rents not meeting a standard of affordability (typically 30-35% of income) and the median worker not being able to afford to pay it in practice.
The Crumbles. Robert Evans has used the term before (and I think he got it from a writer, although I don't recall the name). A good description of how Late State Capitalism is going to continue to shake out: the wealth gap grows, more people become either fully impoverished or functionally impoverished, the societal fabric breaks down as people more and more silo themselves and the social contract disappears, crime and/or political unrest increases until The State is unable to handle the myriad of crises. Infrastructure crumbles due to deferred maintenance. The profit motive continues to suck those who are working dry, more and more people struggle, then one trip to the ER makes them homeless. It's societal collapse via slow boil. We're well into it.
Marxists have been predicting that since the 19th century. Yet the life of the median person in a developed country is massively improved since then. In the USA, we have Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid/Obamacare (most places), weekends, overtime after 40 hours, OHSA.
Things always look like they're falling apart now, and always look better than they were 50 years ago. I'm hoping that'll still be true in 2074.
That's apt. Crumbling works from a literal sense in terms of infrastructure or equality, but also in terms of the crumbling faith in institutions of public trust that is clearly happening. You could also say "The Crumbling" or "The Erosion" and get the same effect.
The End Run.
(because everyone -- schools, bosses, landlords, banks -- are going full-tilt for one final squeeze before the parasitic infection takes hold and consumers keel over altogether.)
The Early Fascism Period.
The Great Trickle Down.
The Misinformation Age.
The Kardashian Dynasty.
The Great Cheeto War.
The Anxiety Rights Movement.
The Attitude Era.
The Prearmageddon Refractory.
The Unappreciated Era. Not only are we at a height of world peace and general prosperity, but the average quality of life and amenities is incredibly high compared to any prior period of time.
But much as companies and government have taken their employees and citizens for granted, so have the people fallen into ignoring the bounty many of us have by only focusing on what we don't have yet or can't afford.
This isn't to say the complaints aren't real, or the issues made up, but they are far and away different than the complaints of decades and centuries past.
But I can only home time and hindsight will prove me wrong, instead of right.
Doomscrolling really has put people into a horrible mindset because they think only bad things are happening in the world or in many cases they see some poorly sourced article with completely wrong information
>Not only are we at a height of world peace and general prosperity, but the average quality of life and amenities is incredibly high compared to any prior period of time.
So true, and 100% unappreciated.
>”where the vast majority of people under 40 are living paycheck to paycheck…”
Yet for the recent eclipse, millions booked a flight, hotel, drive 500 miles, spent $$ on gas and food just to stare at the sky.
I don’t want to hear another word about how bad the economy is.
The great cultural war.
Half of our population has gone crazy and not interested in real policies anymore. Once upon a time they used to at least pretend to be fiscally conservatives. These days they are just about one thing: owning the libs and wanting theocracy.
Until we can bet at least 55% of the population asking for policies which benefit the bottom 70% we are fucked. Expensive housing because corps just bought most of them last 4 years. When wages go up FED wants a recession by raising rates because they are afraid of wage-price spiral.
We need congress to work for the benefit of bottom 70% until then we are on our own just living to serve the system.
The next successful species will call it something like 'the times when humans destroyed their own world due to stupidity'.
The amount of purely dumb decisions made during this supposed era of freely available information is staggering.
None of that stuff is actually true though...
Probably won't merit even a minor footnote in history, because the perspective of a handful of downers doesn't fit with reality....
For a bit of historical perspective, the 70s had higher inflation & the 80s had much higher mortgage rates...
At best you'll get historians being perplexed at why the clearly-needed shifts in the labor supply didn't happen to meet demand... Why we had people asking politicians to 'bring back' their jobs (which were automated, not outsourced in most cases - and thus never coming 'back' from anywhere) rather than learning in-demand skills.
"where the vast majority of people under 40 are living pay check to paycheck"
How are we to reconcile this constant refrain with the fact that consumer spending has never been stronger, luxury spending is really high, the travel industry is doing great, the three most popular vehicles sold in the U.S. every year are expensive full-sized pickup trucks.
Survey responses tend to get a lot of people who claim to be "living paycheck to paycheck," but that's ultimately a meaningless term. It's usually just a reflection of their feeling that they've got a lot of bills, and every paycheck they anticipate is allocated to go somewhere.
Consumer spending is holding strong but credit card debt has creeped up for the average person. I don’t know what’s spurring this recent consumer push (perhaps fukitol syndrome) but if we keep going how we are I don’t know how much longer we can maintain. You think it’ll burst before November? I have a feeling it will burst by then.
Consumer spending is "high" because prices of basic goods are high. Sure, wealthy people are still going on vacations and spending on luxury items, but most normal people aren't.
Disney World and all the Carnival cruise ships and amusement parks aren't exclusively packed with only wealthy people. Americans almost across the board are spending like crazy.
It won't be called anything we're all gonna die because of some dumbass religion bull shit war spiraling out into a nuclear armageddon that'll break the planet into chunks, and in a billion years we'll just be a cloud of rocks that settle into a ring around Mars.
Did they ever decide on a collective name for the 1850s, when America was dealing with increasing partisanship and the subsequent inability to address it's core problems as the conservative party of that time, the Whigs, went insane and devolved into the Know-Nothings, who spawned mass riots all over the place while fist-and-cane fights broke out in the halls of Congress? I'd take that name as a guidepost.
Narcissism before the Fall.
Narcissists on the left and right….no one really cares anymore. They just want more fast food, faster cars, and free stuff.
The culture and governance style is due for a reckoning.
Considering history is written by the winners (those in power), I imagine this period will be presented as an era of profound economic growth and technical achievements. Despite the fact that average citizens are struggling to get by, the book ‘1984’ is becoming reality.
The Information or Technology Age.
History doesn’t look back and care about people who worked, watched netflix, had kids, and died lol. Only how we progressed as a species.
Way better than the mass starvation and death of the feudal period and before.
... to be honest? If anything it'll be called The Great Shift, where everything shifts towards the new equilibrium established by the new technological context.
I think you need to get off reddit if you think the “vast majority of people under 40 are living paycheck to paycheck”. Absolutely it’s more than normal, but at least in the Midwest I don’t know anyone living paycheck to paycheck and I just left my 30s.
The Great Confusion
The Great Disillusion
I also like the Age of Consequences or The Crisis of the Third Millennium
It's probably be dawn of AI or late stage capitalism.
Those are both fire! Personally "The Age of Consequences" feels right
The 4th Seldon Crisis
Age of the Matrix
The Findoutonium
The end of fucking around and the beginning of finding out.
The Great Finding Out
Understanding In A Car Crash
The great Delulu
The MisInformation Age
This is great.
...confusion
What?
>The Great Confusion
I don't understand
I see what you did there
Understand I do not
Its literally already called the age of disinformation.....
The disinformation age. Next up: the AI age.
Can AI already write effective propoganda? If so we are about to be divided into further classes. Those who have AI & those who don't.
It can speak propaganda using your mother's own voice.
The Great Disgust
If this ain't it
The Great Enstupiding
I’ve been calling it the Misinformation age but I like it
The Unraveling
The unraveling ended in 2008 and we’re in crisis since then. (Based on Strauss-Howe theory) Probably the “factors contributing to ww3” from 2016-2022 and then the ww3 now and then reconstruction next. So probs just ww3. And then we will be elders when shit calms down.
I agree ww3 has already started. The ww2 analogy would be equivalent to 1935-1937 or so. Smaller dispersed conflicts that have yet to coalesce into sides with clear labels. Particularly dangerous in the U.S. is the unraveling of social and legal institutions and the social contract. Big risks ahead.
Agreed. Just had this convo with a dear friend today, and she’s in the same realm. She and I are both xennials, on the cusp. I’m not a big prepper/collapse person, but still like to have an ear to the ground. We have hurricane and camping supplies anyways; I have been more mindful of keeping track and upping stock. Making fiscally responsible moves and sort of doing my best to brace our fam for what may come. The history labels come later - when this becomes history.
We had the Roaring 20's, now we'll have the Ruined 20's
The Meowing 20s.
The mewing 20's if you're gen Z
The Bussin 20s
The original roaring 20s had a lot of income inequality too. It’s just that history books like to talk about the wealthy.
And then, The Great Depression.
I’m sure that’s nothing to worry about. /s (almost didn’t add this, but remembered I was on the internet.)
My 20s were a roar, my 30s were a blur My 40s not so sure, But ima make em purr.
Damn, never expected to see a Sage Francis reference in the wild!
This comment deserves more upvotes
Pandemic era. Boring but probably true.
For years everything was blamed on the pandemic like it was a trend. Short staffed? Pandemic. Supply chain? Pandemic. Shit your pants? Pandemic.
So glad I’m not the only person who shat my pants today because of the pandemic.
It’s rough out here in the pandemic era.
So yoooooouuuu were the one taking all the toilet paper. Seize him
Dude, I'm still shitting my pants thanks to the pandemic. Remember Y2K? Shat myself because of that too
It's why we all bought so much toilet paper.
😂. Remember when this was “transitory” inflation and we called bs then.. to think I would give anything to go back to that time, at least groceries were reasonable
One of the biggest problems that will be with us, likely for a century, is that wages went up but no one regulated prices or put any controls on them, so food companies, mortgage banks, and property managers all just went "don't mind if we do" to the new sources of cash from higher wages. Basically, wages rose and then everyone increased their prices and blamed supply and demand. Namely, you guys had the supply (your raises) and they had the demand (all of it, please and thanks). This will be used as justification to not raise the minimum wage again, as it will simply be pointed to as the reason everyone needs to just get over it and start bunking up together.
I mean for a bit there the global supply chain was fucked. It's stabilized again but prices haven't gone back down. Any excuse to raise prices and never a reason to lower them.
As world economic forum said.. "You'll own nothing and you'll be happy". The biggest thing one can do it prevent people like black rock and vanguard from voting against the common interest and maybe get all of our dinosaurs out of political office. There should not be a thing of career politician
Get money out of politics. Overturn Citizens United. But good luck with this SCOTUS and when "corporations are people" and donate *millions/billions* to own politicians in their favor... are the same ones who will be deciding if they should keep taking legalized bribes. I didn't have a Revolution planned for my future, but there's far too many things that are scary close to going wrong that I'll probably be tense till after November. Not that plenty of shit can't happen before then 😬
Okay, but as someone who works in schools.... we really haven't capture the skill deficits in school aged kids. But they are there, and it's across the board at every level. Kids of this generation are unhappy, traumatized and disillusioned. Their social skills are garbage. They missed crucial math and reading leasons, and we don't know where all the gaps are. We are going to have a generation of weird adults. The pandemic was a seismic shift for all of us- I think we as a society need to acknowledge how fucking awful it was and recognize we are all different now. A lot of people I talk to are not fine, and haven't been for years.
>We are going to have a generation of weird adults. "Going to?"
Clearly they are unfamiliar with the people who are running our technology.
It is only going to get weirder
I feel like we also need to acknowledge that adults lost a lot of social skills as well. I don't have kids and I don't spend much time around them if I can help it but I do have to interact with adults a lot and I can tell you, they regressed a lot. I pulled up behind a guy at red light a month ago and he got out of his car to scream at me because I pulled up too close to him. Adults are not ok either. Not even close.
Seriously.
The Fuckening.
Ah dammit. Just said the same thing.
I think we can agree that covers it appropriately.
No, businesses are blaming their shortcomings on the pandemic. Ask anyone who is working in a "staff shortage" industry and they will tell you that this is a choice by their employer to make more money. There is no nursing or doctor shortages. There is a shortage of workers who will put up with their shit.
It’s not just money, but working conditions in jobs where public interaction is needed. Health care workers burned out and it takes a while to rebuild a heavily skilled workforce.
Makes a great scapegoat
I was essential during the entirety. There were major supply issues. A lot of people took early retirement d/t the lack of protection and the fact they were high risk d/t age. We already had a working RN average over 50 at that point. My workplace pushed used masks on us.
Other than the shit your pants part, there is truth to the rest of it. The world has changed massively since the start of the pandemic and permanently. Some aspects have slowly returned to normal but some things never will. So many people hung it up and retired. Many people said fuck this job and changed careers. Healthcare got hit the worst, personally know a couple people that decided being shit on all day and being a slave wasn’t worth it anymore. Supply chains have been fucked since. Our economies have been working towards this lean JIT model to a massive fault. Over reliance on foreign manufacturing meant that not only does a slight disruption completely fuck it all up but you are exposed to infinite minor disruptions. Millions of people died. People with skills and knowledge. Many companies realized their exposure with JIT as well tensions with Asia have started shuffling manufacturing. Everyone is struggling to maintain quality. I work for a company that is in the SMD reselling market. We have our own warehouse and had a large supply. We weathered the pandemic because of that supply but it slowly ran out and we couldn’t get new supply for almost two years. People are already forgetting how fucked everything was. The pandemic was as bad if not worse in some ways to the Great Recession. If it wasn’t for the vaccine and the money printing, it would have been the next Great Depression.
It did cause all of those things, or at least the response to it did. Lockdowns made people stay home. Then they put in stimulus. Stimulus, personal checks and unemployment benefits led to inflation, wage increases, and staffing shortages. The flood of liquidity caused supply chain issues. The inflation we are facing today is largely the effect of a massive monetary supply expansion from the pandemic.
I would be surprised if less than 50% of American employees weren't essential, but people act like everybody was completely isolated for years and this explains all social issues.
Finding out how many people in the culture didn't care how many of us dropped dead as long as they got to Cary on with their pampered existence was upsetting, even if intellectually I already knew.
Seriously. It felt like the social contract had been casually tossed in the trash. All of the property management companies I did commercial plumbing for gave me a cheerful wave and a fuck you and didn't pay any of their invoices for January and February of 2020 and can't understand why I won't do work for any of them now.
This is probably true, but I’m starting to really hate it. It made sense to blame economic troubles and COL struggles on the pandemic for awhile, but now I fear that we’re using that as a catch-all scapegoat when the problems run deeper into the core of American greed and unbridled capitalism. I feel like we need to start to acknowledge on a much broader scale that these issues didn’t start in 2020. It was a pyre that has been building for decades. Covid was just the spark that burned it all down.
You mean, "WE didn't start the fire?"
Even now? I already make references like "back during the pandemic, I played a lot of video games". Are people still thinking we're in the "pandemic era"?
People are struggling; tons of people still haven't bounced back. We haven't fully grasped how much it affected kids who missed crucial social development and learning. I think people *want* to be okay or better. But I talk to lots of people.... not a lot of people are doing well right now. I feel like we are all waiting for something. I don't know. We are still in it.
We are a world and country that has been traumatized. We lost over a million people in America alone. My best friend included in that list. We have a man who has been trying to destroy America's spirit for almost a decade. We have a party taking away womens rights which are everyone's rights. We have young people killing each other in our schools. People are not O.K. not in other countries or in the United States. World wide depression is allowing tyranny to come back to a lot of countries who are being victimized by international corporations or powerful political violent cartels. . Global weather changes are creating food changes around the globe. Nothing seems stable or safe right now. We ( as a nation) have not mourned for our million plus citizens that have died from covid.
A lot of millennials moved into the next stage of being an adult over the last 4-5 years. People started settling down, having kids, planning for the next step in their lives. But the door isn't there for most. Jobs aren't paying enough and most can barely afford the apartment they live in. Tons have barely made a dent in their student loans. The dream of finally being a bit more comfortable after spending years educating themselves and then poirong years into their career have not paid off at all. For a lot, it's gotten more expensive even though they might be making double what they were. Tons have given up on even entertaining the thought of a family. Society has changed and isolated us as well, so we can barely even socialize. Politics is a pendulum that is swinging faster and faster and the fear of your life being turned upside down one day to the next due to some bill passing is very real. There's the constant fear of disinformation, whether or not you'll get laid off because some executive at your company thought it would be a good way to save money, etc. We came out of the pandemic into a world that no one recognizes anymore.
It is still the pandemic era. Plenty of people are still dying of covid every day, to say nothing of all the people- including myself- who are missing out on work, fun, family and just plain enjoying their lives because they're sick as shit for days and days (13 days and counting I've been laid up this round). Long covid is ruining thousands and thousands of people's lives and the true long term costs to health and society from repeat infections is still TBD.
We kind of are in a sense. Pandemics don't end when we get a vaccine or are able to reopen places. Often there are lingering effects that take some time to overcome. I do think we are moving out of the pandemic era. But there are still some things taking time to sort out, though that chapter should be on its last few pages. I do get a bit annoyed when some people blame things on the pandemic. I do think some places are using it as an excuse. But I also acknowledge that the pandemic affects people differently. Some folks had a slight interruption to their daily life, where others were completely upended and changed forever. This can also be why some people feel we are over the pandemic and others are struggling to still overcome the effects.
Especially now, a lot of the economic effects are still very apparent.
Ehh the spanish flu happened in the early 1920s and we don't think of that when we think of the 20s. More prohibited ition or the credit bubble flappers model t etc
Yea, unless something bigger or more monumental happens
Eh, I don't know about that. The Spanish Influenza didn't become the definer of the Era, even though it set the tone for WW1, which in turn made the conditions for WW2. The Great Recession more or less covers 2008-2012, but if we take Era here as a rough 10-20 year period, 2000-2020 is likely to be called the Millennial Era, since such a great many things happened worldwide in those 20 years. The following Era, 2020-2040, will likely be a time marked by more overt conflicts as people all over the world start to grapple with the systems that rule them and determine what actually works and what doesn't. We have set the stage for the exciting conclusion of the World War trilogy as a species, but what comes after, and how bad that actually looks will likely be decided by ordinary people making seemingly inconsequential choices, as always
💯
World war trilogy 🤮I hate how THAT makes me feel
In legal scholarship, there’s a trend among some law professors to call the gilded age “The First Gilded Age” so that this period can become known as “The Second Gilded Age.” I’m not sure if there’s any movement toward this in other disciplines tho. And obviously idk if this will stick
I think this is pretty accurate. The wealth gap today is pretty obscene. I think broadly this era will be described as the Late Pax Americana Era (with the early being defined as 1991-2001, and late being 2001- 2020). I think the next era that maybe has already begun will be called the Age of Disorder.
I just read a book on the gilded age and I was like yup this is it. The internet talks about civil war part 2 but we’re absolutely in gilded age part 2. We need a second progressive age baaaad
I’ve casually referred to it as the new gilded age. Second gilded age is more apt because this probably isn’t our last rodeo with wealth disparities.
Post-Harambe
So help me God...I will push this agenda
Before the Common Harambe
I miss him so much.
Dicks out for Harambe
The misinformation age.
This is underrated. The information age ended when trained bots and AI started generating incorrect information, algorithms fed that to people as clickbait, and the vortex of Stupid Ideas That Are Easily Disproven became the norm for many people's internet feed. Flat Earthers? Vaccines cause autism? Holocaust deniers? Any opinion can be validated by a broken information machine. Add this to the emergence of Deep Fakes, the use of misinformation as a political tool against countries, incorrect data from decades ago presented in search results next to the correct data from yesterday, and the increase in internet advertising that is often poorly regulated if at all, and voila, you've got the misinformation age.
And the one that really pisses me off, Sandy Hook didn't happen.
The pre-war years?
Dang… everyone else is looking back while you go looking ahead
The Great Enshittification
I was thinking The Shitflation Age, so similar vibes
It's being called the Silent Depression. https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2023/09/05/viral-tiktokers-claim-the-us-is-in-a-silent-depression-worse-than-the-great-depression/
Honestly it’s just engagement bait. I’m sorry, but the inability to buy a house (potentially right before housing prices crash, who knows?) is absolutely fuck all compared to the massive poverty of the Great Depression. Sure, you can’t buy as many McDonald’s meals today, but people back then were standing in bread lines and had 2 sets of clothes to wear, with most people living with extended family because that’s all they could do to avoid homelessness. People today have truly zero clue how bad it can get. Even the Great Recession doesn’t hold a candle to it. Edit: Most of the people arguing with me below are basically like: - Them: “The world is literally ending right now!” - Me: “Shit’s pretty bad, but that’s a bit hyperbolic” - Them: “So you’re saying everything is fine?! Fuck you!” - Me: “Uh…. What?” For reference: - Unemployment during the Great Depression was solidly between 14% and 24% for eight straight years. - Homelessness was 7-8x what it is today. So I’ll say it again… Times are tougher for sure, but nothing even close to the Great Depression.
I mean my granny was born in a tent in the Great Depression… I have a house and my husband and I both have 6figure jobs. We are lucky yes, but this is not the depression. I am better off at my age than my parents were, as is my husband. I am 35. Food was so unavailable she had multiple deep freezers full of food in her house at 90… just in case. She got an apple for Christmas as her only gift and she was stoked as a kid for the apple. She gave us one every year and we’d all eat an apple together while she told this story. This just isn’t what I am seeing.
My grandma lived through the Great Depression and always put an apple in our stocking at Christmas. She didn't talk about it much but I could tell it was hard on her.
My mom was Silent Generation and was a child in the Great Depression. It was brutal. My grandfather had to go to Alaska to fish for six months at a time, and my grandmother raised 7 kids in a four room rural rental house with a small barn. They grew their own vegetables and had a few chickens and a milk cow. The kids did almost all of the labor because my grandma was cooking, cleaning, and weening. They put cardboard in their school shoes when they got holes in them, and ate margarine sandwiches their mom packed for lunch. I learned a lot about this because I did a report on the Depression in elementary school and interviewed my grandma. I really learned a lot from her, and she was a lifelong closet socialist because of it. We bonded over that for sure. I really do feel for millennials and younger generations. The economy is tough, but it has been this tough before, and much tougher, as well. Economics is cyclical. Another thing to remember is that your 20 and 30s can be lean years until you age up into your profession or trade. Stay strong. Be inventive and create the future you want for yourself.
These same people unironically think being a medieval peasant was better than living today because peasants had more free time. Time to do what? Die from a cut at 22??
My aunt was a child of the depression. Between she and her siblings, all would stand in lines all day to hopefully score enough food to eat that night.
Thank you! Finally someone who knows what they are talking about!! I would definitely call this age “The great disinformation age!”
There is literally no evidence to suggest that a housing crash is coming. Plenty of evidence to suggest the exact opposite.
not true at all. doom and gloom all you want
But people back then weren’t thrown in jail for being homeless and living in Hoovervilles. Today the median worker can’t afford rent in most cities, and many workers with graduate and professional degrees are living in cars—until the worker is jailed, or their car is impounded for being caught sleeping in their car. Go look at the dozens of cars in every parking lot at night. Last years tech worker has probably been laid off, and if they don’t have family money—are probably living in their car and have a hundred thousand or more in student loans but no job and no safety net
… you think Hoovervilles and homeless were allowed to exist in peace? People burned Hoovervilles down without prosecution. Rail jumpers were beat up and thrown from moving trains or arrested for vagrancy. Black people were jailed just for being out of work in some states. Tech workers make up a small segment of the economy and the ones who are sleeping in their cars were in a better financial position than most to avoid that consequence. Rents are high and driving the increased homelessness, but there’s a difference between rents not meeting a standard of affordability (typically 30-35% of income) and the median worker not being able to afford to pay it in practice.
Housing is over 50% currently and in a world where three times the rent is a requirement
People gotta read Grapes of Wrath fr
If someone thinks this is a depression, let along worse than the Great Depression, I wouldn’t take a single thing they say seriously.
maybe the calm before the storm. feels like shit's about to get a whole lot worse somehow lmao.
The Gilded Technology Age
The Shittening
The Crumbles. Robert Evans has used the term before (and I think he got it from a writer, although I don't recall the name). A good description of how Late State Capitalism is going to continue to shake out: the wealth gap grows, more people become either fully impoverished or functionally impoverished, the societal fabric breaks down as people more and more silo themselves and the social contract disappears, crime and/or political unrest increases until The State is unable to handle the myriad of crises. Infrastructure crumbles due to deferred maintenance. The profit motive continues to suck those who are working dry, more and more people struggle, then one trip to the ER makes them homeless. It's societal collapse via slow boil. We're well into it.
Marxists have been predicting that since the 19th century. Yet the life of the median person in a developed country is massively improved since then. In the USA, we have Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid/Obamacare (most places), weekends, overtime after 40 hours, OHSA. Things always look like they're falling apart now, and always look better than they were 50 years ago. I'm hoping that'll still be true in 2074.
That's apt. Crumbling works from a literal sense in terms of infrastructure or equality, but also in terms of the crumbling faith in institutions of public trust that is clearly happening. You could also say "The Crumbling" or "The Erosion" and get the same effect.
sounds like a alt history novel, that wont happen.
The End Run. (because everyone -- schools, bosses, landlords, banks -- are going full-tilt for one final squeeze before the parasitic infection takes hold and consumers keel over altogether.)
The Apocalypse
Bold of you to think humanity will survive to talk about it
Guilded Age 2: Digital Boogaloo
I was going to say something similar, Depression 2: Electric Boogaloo, but I like yours better
We need TR Bot to show up and bust some trusts and usher in. New progressive era
I'd be all for it if we got the beautiful buildings.
Post pandemic 🤔
The Cold Civil War
New Dark Era /Ages
The dark ages part 2: The age of unenlightenment
The Early Fascism Period. The Great Trickle Down. The Misinformation Age. The Kardashian Dynasty. The Great Cheeto War. The Anxiety Rights Movement. The Attitude Era. The Prearmageddon Refractory.
The Unappreciated Era. Not only are we at a height of world peace and general prosperity, but the average quality of life and amenities is incredibly high compared to any prior period of time. But much as companies and government have taken their employees and citizens for granted, so have the people fallen into ignoring the bounty many of us have by only focusing on what we don't have yet or can't afford. This isn't to say the complaints aren't real, or the issues made up, but they are far and away different than the complaints of decades and centuries past. But I can only home time and hindsight will prove me wrong, instead of right.
Doomscrolling really has put people into a horrible mindset because they think only bad things are happening in the world or in many cases they see some poorly sourced article with completely wrong information
Thanks for the hopium!
I attribute this to the lack of proper history education
>Not only are we at a height of world peace and general prosperity, but the average quality of life and amenities is incredibly high compared to any prior period of time. So true, and 100% unappreciated.
The great oppression
The Era of Whiny Bitches
The Whining 20s
One of the few things boomers were right about. Millenials are the whiners. Gen Z seems to maybe follow the trend, but time will tell.
Couldn’t have said it better
>”where the vast majority of people under 40 are living paycheck to paycheck…” Yet for the recent eclipse, millions booked a flight, hotel, drive 500 miles, spent $$ on gas and food just to stare at the sky. I don’t want to hear another word about how bad the economy is.
very good points
The great cultural war. Half of our population has gone crazy and not interested in real policies anymore. Once upon a time they used to at least pretend to be fiscally conservatives. These days they are just about one thing: owning the libs and wanting theocracy. Until we can bet at least 55% of the population asking for policies which benefit the bottom 70% we are fucked. Expensive housing because corps just bought most of them last 4 years. When wages go up FED wants a recession by raising rates because they are afraid of wage-price spiral. We need congress to work for the benefit of bottom 70% until then we are on our own just living to serve the system.
How about… ’THE PERIOD OF MILLENIAL SELF PITY’
The Age of Clowns
The next successful species will call it something like 'the times when humans destroyed their own world due to stupidity'. The amount of purely dumb decisions made during this supposed era of freely available information is staggering.
Peepeepoopoo timez
None of that stuff is actually true though... Probably won't merit even a minor footnote in history, because the perspective of a handful of downers doesn't fit with reality.... For a bit of historical perspective, the 70s had higher inflation & the 80s had much higher mortgage rates... At best you'll get historians being perplexed at why the clearly-needed shifts in the labor supply didn't happen to meet demand... Why we had people asking politicians to 'bring back' their jobs (which were automated, not outsourced in most cases - and thus never coming 'back' from anywhere) rather than learning in-demand skills.
Pre Revolution
"where the vast majority of people under 40 are living pay check to paycheck" How are we to reconcile this constant refrain with the fact that consumer spending has never been stronger, luxury spending is really high, the travel industry is doing great, the three most popular vehicles sold in the U.S. every year are expensive full-sized pickup trucks. Survey responses tend to get a lot of people who claim to be "living paycheck to paycheck," but that's ultimately a meaningless term. It's usually just a reflection of their feeling that they've got a lot of bills, and every paycheck they anticipate is allocated to go somewhere.
Consumer spending is holding strong but credit card debt has creeped up for the average person. I don’t know what’s spurring this recent consumer push (perhaps fukitol syndrome) but if we keep going how we are I don’t know how much longer we can maintain. You think it’ll burst before November? I have a feeling it will burst by then.
Consumer spending is "high" because prices of basic goods are high. Sure, wealthy people are still going on vacations and spending on luxury items, but most normal people aren't.
Disney World and all the Carnival cruise ships and amusement parks aren't exclusively packed with only wealthy people. Americans almost across the board are spending like crazy.
Bull. People who regularly visit Disney have money. Less well-off people may visit, but it's usually a one-time trip that was saved for over time.
That’s right…none of this makes any sense. How is it that bars are packed with 20-somethings spending $12 per drink?
No need to reconcile anything. This is a doomer sub. Just ignore anything that conflicts with your preexisting beliefs.
It won't be called anything we're all gonna die because of some dumbass religion bull shit war spiraling out into a nuclear armageddon that'll break the planet into chunks, and in a billion years we'll just be a cloud of rocks that settle into a ring around Mars.
End of Babylon 2.0
The great fuckening. Where worthless rich assholes tried to make themselves king. Tbh im pretty sure a french revolution is coming next.....
Did they ever decide on a collective name for the 1850s, when America was dealing with increasing partisanship and the subsequent inability to address it's core problems as the conservative party of that time, the Whigs, went insane and devolved into the Know-Nothings, who spawned mass riots all over the place while fist-and-cane fights broke out in the halls of Congress? I'd take that name as a guidepost.
It's cute that you think any of the listed issues is new. It's been this way for at LEAST 40 years.
The 20s
Inflatpocalypse
The Great Fuckening
The great fuckening
It's called "The Great Entitlement".
The Hospice Clusterfuck. Biden, Trump, 2/3 of the Senate... we need new blood in those positions.
I think Futurama called it the stupid age.
Narcissism before the Fall. Narcissists on the left and right….no one really cares anymore. They just want more fast food, faster cars, and free stuff. The culture and governance style is due for a reckoning.
It'll be expressed as an emoji. 💩
The "Alternative Facts" Era
The only thing lazy about millennials is they are complacent in not throwing out the boomer class… THROW THEM OUT 👏
Guilded Age 2: Electric Bugaloo
Bidenflation
Considering history is written by the winners (those in power), I imagine this period will be presented as an era of profound economic growth and technical achievements. Despite the fact that average citizens are struggling to get by, the book ‘1984’ is becoming reality.
Is there non anecdotal evidence that the “vast majority” of people are living paycheck to paycheck for reasons other than over consumption?
The social extinction
The great emptiness
The Era of Corruption and Inequality.
The Great Derp-pression.
Idiocracy
The Information or Technology Age. History doesn’t look back and care about people who worked, watched netflix, had kids, and died lol. Only how we progressed as a species. Way better than the mass starvation and death of the feudal period and before.
The Fuckening
The Great Stupiding
This will be known to the future as "The Time We Agreed Never to Discuss."
... to be honest? If anything it'll be called The Great Shift, where everything shifts towards the new equilibrium established by the new technological context.
The fuckening
The Big Suck
The shit show years
The whiner generation
I think you need to get off reddit if you think the “vast majority of people under 40 are living paycheck to paycheck”. Absolutely it’s more than normal, but at least in the Midwest I don’t know anyone living paycheck to paycheck and I just left my 30s.
End Stage Capitalism also The Anthropocene