Let’s get over the idea that it’s a generation war and not a class war. Thinking all boomers are rich and own houses is like thinking all gen z are lazy. Neither is true by a long shot, but this is what the oligarchs and corporations want us to think about each other so we get distracted and don’t notice that they are the ones buying up all the housing so we can’t and they can rent to us at whatever price they want. Let’s stick together against them instead.
edit to add: And BTW don’t forget the next gens are growing up in an even worse situation and will face the effects of living under an autocracy and the effects of unaddressed climate change, while you get old and boomers are gone. Who do you think they’re going to blame? You, that’s who, while those in power laugh at all of us.
Something else: even boomers who own houses can still be poor and struggle to make ends meet.
“Oh, why don’t you just sell your house then!” 'cause then they and their family have no place to live. “But you could rent!” Yeah, that will work for a while and then they’ll be poor again.
Preaching to the choir but I’m singing Amen right back at you.
its not the 40 hour work week thats the issue.
Its how much productivity is demanded in that 40 hours. and the compensation for it.
and theres a LOT more productivity demanded from workers today, than there was in 1950.
Because all the technologies that were supposed to make life easier… didnt. They just increased the amount of things we can/have to do in a day.
People working today are doing more labor, producing more effort per hour than 70 years ago, but are being paid less in purchasing power for it… and if thats not a recipe for violent upheaval i dont know what is.
Back before the clock was invented, agricultural workers had about 160 days of the year to themselves. (Admittedly, to do intensive chores.) Also, employers gave free breakfast and lunch, with a bit of beer. Workers might also do as low as 4 hours of work IIRC, depending on the day and season. Below is a video on the subject. Civilis also covers topics, such as the fall of the Roman republic…which feels awfully relevant, nowadays.
I love Historia Civilis. I wish he’d also discuss the Roman leaders that came after Gaius Julius Augustus. A lot of historians and books stop there after the fall of the Republic, but from what I understand a lot happened within the Roman empire since then. It would be nice to learn more about it all.
The amount of time that corporations feel entitled to is ridiculous. I’ve quit my last two positions because these billion dollar companies feel that they own you for every second when you’re on the clock. It feels exploitative and gives you the sense that you’re just some beast of burden. We’re humans, not machines to push production to the maximum. But all the higher-ups see is bottom line pushers.
What, are not grateful that they trickle down a tiny bit of money from what is left after the shareholders and CEO take their hard earned cut? Just because you did all the work and earned all of the money? How gready can you be? I mean they graciously let you be sick 6 days a year, and let you frolic for another 10. Don’t you realize how much effort they had to put in worrying that the small smidgen of their enormous wealth that they had inherited and invested in your company was not earning them greater wealth at a rate that was grossly unhealthy for the company or the economy?
I’ve gotta say i admire Zoomers a lot. Im a 1990 millenial and most of my generation simply put their heads down and pushed through and tried to emulate their boomers parents while not living their boomer parents reality, destroying themselves in the process. It seems that almost collectively your generation has said FUCK THIS SHIT and made moves to end it.
Its really impressive.
I don’t know about that. I’m a 1990 millennial and the vast majority of ppl my age collectively said fuck giving the extra effort for no return. I remember reading in my 20s that millennials pretty much gave up on retirement and started traveling.
Literally the poorest condition house would cost 100% of 8 years of take-home pay of my engineer salary where I live. That’s before accounting for loan interest on 20% down payment (I have 5%) which would push it up to 18 full years of my labor.
A single-family house is simply not worth 15+ years of my life, and I’m actively looking into cheaper options.
I don’t know any millennials like that. You sure they aren’t Gen-X?
Please stop falling for efforts to divide the working class.
Amy such efforts should immediately be viewed as suspicious. The divide is not old vs young, or white vs black, or even rich vs poor. It is the capital class versus the labor class.
Boomers grew up in a very tiny slice of global history where the working class actually got improvements in their material conditions, so it is hard for them to understand the struggles of people before or after… but they are being ground down by capitalism the same as the rest of us.
Your comrades at work may not understand the importance of unions or collective action, but they are still your comrades. Your grandmother may not realize that all of her extra productivity went to make billionaires richer, but she is still your comrade.
All my coworkers voted R. It’s really, really hard to consider them allies in any sense.
And men under 30 voted for Trump by 16 points[1]. This is NOT old vs. young.
It is genuinely difficult not to hate them for it. But you need to keep telling yourself that they’re victims to propaganda from media and their upbringing. It’s hard to overcome that.
There’s a quote from a Heinlein book where he talks about how Communists can only exist in places where there are real, not imagined, ills that are not being addressed, and I feel like something similar applies for Trumpists. Their lives have gone wrong somehow, likely driven by forces beyond their control, and they’ve been promised easy answers by a vile con game. I don’t appreciate that they got hoodwinked, but I can understand how it happened.
isn’t it fucking weird? I’ve been so disassociated for weeks now, getting some things done but it’s very hard.
or even rich vs poor. It is the capital class versus the labor class
Just another fancy way of saying rich vs poor. The difference is the poors don’t realize they are in a war.
There are plenty of people that don’t consider themselves poor or who most people would not consider poor who are still in the labor class. If you produce value more than extract value from ownership then you are labor class.
Most poor people don’t consider themselves poor because it is considered a terrible thing to be poor.
There are plenty of people that don’t consider themselves poor
That doesn’t make them right. That just makes them less poor than those that are dirt poor.
If you’re not floating around on a yacht then you’re comparatively poor. They can afford things these so called rich people you talk about could never afford.
Just because theyre not “right” doesn’t mean this person doesn’t have a point; when you use the word poor, lots of people can’t or wont identify that way.
I’m in agreement with you generally, and I have made the same argument as you before. But people wont get this, they wont hear your argument because theyre too busy feeling like youre ridiculous for calling them poor. The sheer magnitude of wealth disparity is not well understood by your average joe.
The other commenter is offering more precise wording thats less likely to be understood wrong.
If I want to teach you to cook, but we can’t move on from whether its called a “spatula” or a “flipper”, nobody is learning anything.
My grandparents aren’t comrades. They’re dead.
Ever wonder how “work ethic” became a trait that defines the quality of an individual? You can probably guess. Religion. Which of course needed people to work hard so they could donate more money to them.
My dad worked two full time jobs for a while to help the family get ahead while we were little. I think spending time with his young children would have been time better spent for everyone. He did stop when we got to school age. And he did spend a lot of time with us. Was a scout master, tball coach, all that. So I know he probably would have rather been with us than working that extra job. But from a young age it was drilled into him that work came first.
Now with younger people less into religion. We see more and more who realize that working hard for someone else doesn’t need to be a defining characterist of a person’s quality.
I think they see the boomers doing nothing, but having everything, and the dream of having a house, two cars, and 2.5 kids was not something they were ever told they could have. They grew up with depressed millennials close enough in age to still be friends, who tell them “I’m fucked, so you don’t have a chance in hell!” And they’re right. With prices going up and wages stagnant or going down, they don’t ever get to save anything. And why should they? At the rate houses are climbing, that down payment keeps running away from them. And still, the only thing they will ever be able to pay for is a dump in a shitty part of town.
Until we bring back hope for the future, we will keep seeing people give fewer fucks.
Maybe his motivation wasn’t so much “work ethic” as it was “taking responsibility to care for one’s family”, since he did stop the extra job when he could and spent time with you. He sounds like a great dad!
I mean part of it was good financial sense. Money saved early has longer to grow. But I don’t think they “needed” the money that bad. Two full time jobs is nuts. And there were plenty more instances where he clearly communicated that work ethic was equal to a persons value. But yeah, he was a good Dad.
Watch out the propaganda of government and ruling class trying to divide the public and turn people against each others. Boomers are idiots but owning a house is peanuts compared to billionares expenses or the money being spent on military weapons.
Hey throw millenials in this too please.
And GenX. I bet a lot of them feel it too unless dementia has already set in.
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What exactly do you think we aren’t doing? I’ve worked for years except when I was a stay-at-home parent. I even owned my own company and employed others for a while. I try to spend at least two hours of my time a week on political action. What else do I have to do for you to think people should care that I exist? Come up with more fresh memes?
Okay Gen Skibidi toilet, peak humor…
that was gen alpha that popularized that one, and im pretty sure the creator of the series is either late gen z or millenial, so maybe get your facts in chronological order before you make fun of the wrong person
Watch out, they might “prank” you by tormenting a homeless person or something
Thats Alpha tho…
Skibidi represents every generation raised in the brain rot of the algorithm so Gen Z onwards.
Skibidi Toilet’s audience is predominantly Generation Alpha, those born since the early 2010s. While the series does not appear on YouTube Kids, an app designed for children under 13, it is popular among elementary school students. Kim Kardashian’s 11-year-old daughter gave her a necklace reading “Skibidi Toilet”. Some members of older generations have called the show “brain rot”, while other internet users argue Generation Z had its share of bizarre memes.
Skibidi is brain rot, but brain rot is not Skibidi
eat my bum worms
i think im good on tha one cheif
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Me and my fiancee both work full time to just barely survive each month with no savings because the CoL is so fucking high it’s unmaintainable. And if you reply with “just move”, first: I’m in the midwest, it’s not AS bad out here, and second: Moving is a privilege, it’s expensive, time consuming, and often times you end up in a worse spot than you were before
Don’t worry. All that work you’re doing will pay off… your landlord’s fifth mortgage.
In my case I’m subleasing so I’m paying off my Landlords’ Landlord’s fifth mortgage
Landlords all the way down.
Landlords are parasites.
You just need to put in some extra effort or get a side hustle like we did. /S elder millennial.
::strangles the shit out of them with their own bootstraps::
Exactly! Same boat, I am too poor to move! Due to missed payments on mortgage, credit cards, and medical bills, our credit score is abysmal. There is no way we can get a new mortgage or pass credit checks for an apartment. On top of that I don’t have the time or money to invest into the house so there are many things that need to be fixed, some of these absolutely need to before selling it so I also can’t just sell either. 3rd, you’re right. Wherever I do end up moving (if somehow we did get approved), it’s probably going to cost more due to higher interest rates, and it will most likely cost more. We are praying to make it a few more years until stupid daycare is done so we can finally make ends meet a little…
I never thought I would be in this bad of a situation in my life, but here I am and I just want to survive each day. Thinking about money every day for years now is tiring and stressful. They have a name for it, its called poverty brain.
I had a basic but nice first house, but I sold it to move for a new job. I even was lucky enough to still make a bit of a profit. But not enough, and now I’m stuck back with renting again, can’t really afford to buy a new house with interest rates, prices, inflation eroding my income in other areas, and poor availability. I think back to my parents buying their first house and how nice it was by comparison, for a fraction of the price even adjusted for inflation and it gives me a really unfortunate sense of perspective, much less hearing stories like yours or from friends I know who are in a bad situations. I’m not struggling, but prospects for improving things aren’t great either, and that seems to be the case for everyone I know.
I can install some pull handles on your bootstraps for a small monthly subscription fee. No, you won’t own them.
I’d love to know your version of “just barely” is you have two adults working full time in a 2 person household.
Maybe your mortgage is far higher then I’m imagining.
I live in an apartment, but it’s overpriced, and it’s just me. This world is designed to be a 2 person household.
So I have to imagine you’re living beyond your means. I’m living beyond my means too, but I also don’t have a decent wage either. So living at all is living beyond my means.
You should add up your whole house income, divide that number by 4, and THAT number should be what your mortgage shouldn’t be higher than.
I suspect your mortgage is probably much higher than that number.
Either that or we have different definitions of “just getting by”.
Lets use WA as an example. Average house costs 588k interest rate is about 7% now. So you’ll be paying $4300 per month. So man that’s rough but surely there are some cheaper that average units out there! If you want to be anywhere near where the majority of the jobs are even a lot drive away you are going to have a hard time getting below 450k or 3300 per month.
Well maybe you can rent cheaper right? 2BR 1.5 bath where again most of the jobs are can easily run you $2000-2500 which seems like a very nice savings however whereas your fixed rate mortgage is you know fixed your rent will probably exceed the payment on your mortgage within 10-12 years and since you have no equity you have no cushion to fall back on if you ever experience a downturn you could find yourself a bum on the street. Hell if you aren’t able to save anything you will definitely be heading for bum status when you get old enough that you can’t work. Holding on to being able to own something is an investment in not descending into desperate poverty later.
I think its weird how people don’t believe people can actually be struggling in America without also somehow being the source of their own problems. It’s like people like you have broken brains.
Hell if you aren’t able to save anything you will definitely be heading for bum status when you get old enough that you can’t work. Holding on to being able to own something is an investment in not descending into desperate poverty later.
I picked this out because it illustrates how utterly fucked up our system is, because we need housing to be:
-
Expensive, because it’s the default retirement investment vehicle for the working classes.
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Cheap, so that young people just starting out can buy it.
See a problem?
-
I think its weird how people don’t believe people can actually be struggling in America without also somehow being the source of their own problems. It’s like people like you have broken brains.
Decades of “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” Republican propaganda will do that. So many Americans have been convinced that if you aren’t wealthy, you only have yourself to blame. And if you’re poor, you are inherently flawed as a human.
You are lucky. Do not assume everyone else is as lucky as you.
That formula hasn’t been valid for like, 20 years?
Yeah that inital response gave me the impression that they live in a completely different situation than what I, and most of the people I know IRL are experiencing. Typical rent prices out here are 120% the sum of 2 weeks of minimum wage pay, not including utilities
≥ Mortgage You lost me there, renting is much more expensive than paying a mortgage off
Yep if you rent for 60 years you’ll have nothing and spend more by far than the cost of the mortgage.
My rent is around 1800 euro, if I’d buy this apartment, my mortgage would be around 3000. That’s for more than half a mil. After 30 years I’d have paid off more than a mil.
The company I rent from just got their financing much earlier, and in very big quantities. (Eg it has 100s to 1000s apartments and houses.)
Every year I make more money, every year the place I live is more difficult to buy.
One key difference between renting and buying is that you can then sell the apartment or house. You can’t claw back rent after being a good tenant for 30 years.
True true, I try to invest most of the difference, hopefully that will be worth something too when I need it.
Depends where and how you live. My rent is $800 a month, but some mortgages are thousands of dollars.
Where the fuck do you live with $800 rent? Middle of Montana? Dead center of Death Valley? Gtfo.
800 if split 5 ways probably
Ikr, just saw an ad for a nearby apartment wanting 1,200$ a month for a studio apartment… in Nebraska
Lakewood, a suburb of Cleveland. It’s overpriced as hell.
You pay $500 less than the average American for rent. I think you may be lacking the perspective necessary to engage productively with this topic.
My rent is $500 less than whatever metric you’re using, but our local ecconomy is also lowers than yours.
Average wage here is 10/hr for a factory job. I’ve heard some places like Seattle make $20/hr just working at starbucks.
And keep in mind my rent is basically 1 room.
$800 Rent is cheap in this economy
Yeah, but I’m not in your economy. Average wage around here is lkke $10/hr.
Again, the “how you live” thing again, in your opinion, what is the “correct” way to live?
😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆
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Moving is a privilege,
Poor people move all the time. It’s a fucking wild take to call moving a privilege. Though I do agree with the last bit about sometimes (or maybe even often) being in a worse position than before
Poor people move all the time.
Yes, that’s why all the inner city projects are devoid of people. They’ve all moved somewhere else because it’s so easy for them.
Look at this guy he knows all the poor people.
I read something in The Atlantic about how people used to move about every three years and that sounds insane to me.
And also, the phrase “I just read something thing in The Atlantic” makes me feel even older than my gout and shingles.
You’re going to have to rename yourself to Boomer Humor Doomergod. (Sorry about the gout and shingles.)
As soon as I’m on my Good Screen tm I’ll do it
Edit: Done
When I was young we averaged moving every 4.5 years, but for reasons, I got very accustomed to changing environments every year or so, and as an adult I’ve struggled to stay in one place for the clean start it offers, but moving is so expensive now, and I don’t like driving anywhere near enough to be a nomad van dweller type.
I can maybe do it one more time in the near future, assuming money and housing values don’t tank first, but that’s probably it for the rest of my days. I hope it really scratches the anxious itch for change, cuz if not…
I have a feeling the poors don’t move to different cities/states that often.
Among all my friends, there are two clear common denominators between those who rent and those who own houses. The ones renting have office jobs and live in the capital, while the ones who own houses live in smaller cities or the countryside and work in manual labor.
I’m not saying correlation is causation, but it’s an interesting observation - and so far, it applies to 100% of my friends.
Or have office jobs and commute a bit longer.
People say I’m crazy for commuting 1,5 hours (one way). But I get to go home to my own property. Especially now with hybrid working still being a thing, I only go to the office once or twice a week.
I must agree with the people saying you’re crazy for having that long commute. That’s over a month spent getting to and from work every year. Time is the most valuable asset in the entire world. By working we’re trading time for money but for the time spent commuting you’re not even getting paid. I would seriously consider trying to find an alternative solution to this.
If they go to the office twice a week with an hour and a half commute each way that’s six hours a week driving. So 52 weeks a year that’s 312 hours or 13 days. Still not great but my commute is about 30min one way. I work five days a week so five hours a week, which would still be about 10 2/3 days a year. They also said they only have to commute once OR twice a week so they still probably drive less then the 13 days a year.
I’m just saying, sounds like a good deal
I’m located in The Netherlands, the housing market here is fucked. An alternative solution would be to find something to rent closer to work, but I would pay 1,5 times as much in rent, for a small apartment in a neighborhood where I don’t want to live. Yes, I’m spending more time on my commute, but I also have more disposable income each month that I can save and invest. If all goes to plan, I can retire earlier and live mortgage free within 20 years. In essence, I’m trading a bit of time now, to have more spare time and a better financial position in the near future. I’m taking it.
ted to get the fuck out of here when she said: a lot of people wanted the lawnmower, but she doesn’t sell it to anyone (she mant she didn’t sell it to immigrants). And: “no offence to you, but your generation
do you drive, or take public transport? Americans will assume you drive, and then it is a pure waste of time. On the other hand, spending 3 hours on a train, one can sleep, work, watch a movie, read, whatever.
Well that should be easy to fix. Just have a world war with a general draft and all for about 5 years. Then another one soon after in an arbitrary place. That sort of thing really brings people together, and also kills many of them, all contributing to a healthy housing market!
My parents holding fast with “well, it’s always been like that” made me realize how big this generational divide is.
There are good boomers who get it, yes. There are also some really dumb ones who have literally no clue what kind of world they helped create. Full stop.
And there are some Nazi gen z. We have to pull together the good ones from every generation and become helpers together. We can’t bitch about the ones that are shit, there are shit people in every generation, so it’s a waste of time and a distraction.
Yes, 100% this. There are plenty of boomers that got reamed by various elitist schemes, too. People right on the cusp of retirement only to have everything wiped out by something like an Enron or the real-estate bubble and they get to keep working another 10+ years…I think people have rose-colored glasses when it comes to the things boomers faced, too. It was not all sunshine and roses for everyone in that age bracket. It is lunacy to suggest that it was/is.
There may be some boomers doing nefarious things like Blackstone, driving up the cost of living for everyone, but I bet there are some very, very young people in schemes like that, too, making lots of money. Or individuals like fElon’s boyz - I don’t think the Dogebags are boomers. And fElon himself is Gen X…
Then there are headlines that I see like this that run counter to virtually everything you’d hear about Gen Y in recent years:
https://www.newsnationnow.com/business/your-money/millennials-financially-baby-boomers/
Lastly when the bullshit inter-generational warfare is whipped up, I remember this…
fElon
You call him like that every time. Please stop. It feels like Russian propaganda bot is talking. It’s bad and not funny to distort people’s names/surnames
lol imagine getting triggered by this. Just say it. You’re an Elon fan boy.
Fuck that. This “high road” shit is what led us here in the first place. He dead names constantly. He’s a “big, stwong alpha,” he can take it.
If Elon can’t respect people’s names and allows deadnaming on Twitter, I think it’s only fair to not respect his name.
This is some whataboutism. If he did this, it doesn’t mean that it should be acceptable.
Respect is earned. And generally mutual. You don’t respect people, I won’t respect you. I see no reason to respect anything about that Nazi.
In this case *they just call them by their surname, as they do with strangers, and you’ll look like adequate person
Lighten up, Francis.
Hey Gen Z, first time being gaslit by boomers? Heh, yyeeeaaaahhhhhhh…they do that. Now imagine having them as your parent, and you’re 5, and you have to just live with their bullshit.
~Sincerely, Gen X and the older millenials.
As shitty as my parents were, I’m suddenly grateful that they were pre-boomer. Still had to deal with stuff like listening to their bigotry, but having a dad that grew up during the Depression, and his own dad was out of work for much of it, meant that he never gave me shit for not being as successful as him.
“it’ll all make sense when you’re an adult”
well. i’m an adult now. some would even say old or middle aged. it still doesn’t make sense
However, I’m old enough to remember watching the boomers getting gaslit by the “Greatest Generation”.
But yeah, as an Xer, it seems like we got the short straw. The boomers sucked all the air out of the room for so very long, that if the (mostly boomer- and Greatest Generation- led) media stopped giving them all the attention for a moment, it was to only label us the “slacker generation”.
By the time the boomer narcissism’s grip was loosened, the focus was mostly on to Gen Y, and if we are being honest here, due to their numbers, the media narcissism around Gen Y reminds me very much of the boomers, with Gen Z quickly catching up.
I suspect that’s very much due to a numbers game - if advertising dollars figure they can center a particular group enough, they can scoop up all those $$$ by selling a certain age range a story about themselves…
My parents were Gen X but they faithfully followed the boomer mindset
I know many people in their 50s who are Boomer as fuck.
40s as well for me
The real Boomers were the assholes we met along the way.
I’m so glad as I’m close to my 40s I know so many fellow millinials who still thinks utter bullshit.
Unfortunately, a lot of Gen X went that way.
Nuance is hard. It’s all just binary, isn’t it?
Never said it was?
my parents were silent generation.
These boomers them selves could not afford to move out. Trust me no one can! Thanks Biden!
I hate this idea that people need to work themselves to death to survive. We have such a surplus of resources today that people should barely have to work. I don’t know what it was that pulled the mask off this farce of a system we have, but it sure as shit isn’t worth it to bust my ass for 45 years so the CEO of FuCKYou Incorporated can get another bigger yacht.
I don’t know what it was that pulled the mask off this farce of a system we have
Greed
Sociopathic greed is the root; Covid 19 pulled the mask off when people collectively had a few months to exit the rat race and discover life apart from being constantly ground to dust for some shareholders’ profits.
Probably this, but it had been bubbling under the surface for a while.
Of course. American prosperity fell off a cliff around 1980, so the last 40 years or so have just been inertia and grinding the middle class into dust.
Which is roughly where we are now.
Not true! The 90s were great! We signed NAFTA and shipped all our manufacturing jobs overseas!
*Cue Josh Lyman parading through West Wing gloating about globalization
We have tons of excess. The problem is it’s hoarded by a small tyrannical group of psychopaths bent on increasing their wealth at the cost of everyone else.
I feel like these two comments really should be at the top.
I personally am capable of working any boomer in their prime into exhausting while I’m still pushing for hours more. The whole “millenials are lazy” is corporate bullshit designed to make parents think their kids are just lazy and not being ripped off by the system they demand exists.
Pull a 16hr shift working network engineering during an outage, then come back to work in 8hrs for another full day on a Monday, then when the boomer stops having their mental break down they can apologize in person to every millennial they talked shit about.
Oh, and because you’re an engineer, NO OVERTIME! YOU SALARY BITCH! THOSE HOURS ARE INCLUDED!
Ok that’s fine I’ll just be leaving that much earlier on friday
I’ve got three meetings and an unscheduled emergency requiring 90% of the IT staff to sit on a conference call that says you’ll be staying late Friday, too.
Ok that’s fine I just won’t be coming in at all on monday then.
And if it’s going to keep happening like this we’re gonna have a conversation about renegotiating my employment, because this is not what we agreed to.
When you signed your employment contract one of the stipulations was that the company maintains the right to change the conditions of the contact at anytime without your knowledge or consent. So your choices are, arrive on time to work Monday morning or the company will presume that you have abandoned your position without notice and that you have forfeitted any potential severance agreement and any expectation of future a reference. We understand that we’re on crunch time but we are doing everything in our power to scale our workforce to our dynamic needs and we appreciate your continued patience and professionalism.
“We’ve got one that knows their worth! Stuff 'em in the oubliette before they infect the others! Ya want unions? This is how ya get unions!!1!¡!”
Ah, not a team player I see.
Good!
Yeah that sounds healthy in the long run
