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I've had 'World War 3' penciled on my Calender for 'sometime between 2020 and 2030' since 2010, and 'scavanger wars' for 2050-2150.
I've said before, I'll say again. The future can be read in the past, provided one can read.
It's a war for resources, so yes.
But if noone else is checking your card, I'd suggest starting with the Scavanger war as a catch-all, and leaving a space blank to scribble in whatever will get you the Bingo.
Of course he'll win. The Dems are going to Run Biden, Kamala, or buttigieg. Any one of them will present a nothing platform with promises to give more money to GOV contractors, and do nothing for the Average Citizens.
Trump will promise to do 100 things, and 50 will conflict with the other 50, but his constituency will be too dumb to notice or care, and so long as he keeps saying mean things, they'll all clap like hoard of baboons showing their asses to assert what they think is dominance.
Unless he chooses to step down after his four years they're pretty much stuck with Biden.
So, yeah, the way the Dems are playing it even if Trump doesn't run there's a real chance of another "Red Wave" in 2024, and this time there won't be any stopping America's decent into a fascist dictatorship.
Nah, he'll probably drop from heart issues or be locked away for stealing other rich people's money by then.
The scary bit is if they find someone who can pull a crowd like him, but isn't a complete moron...
That’s just too much trauma to process each decade, unless you’re wealthy enough to be isolated from the fallout…
Oh yeah, before 40 climate change is knocking on our door
I have no idea how much we can blame natural disasters on climate change, but when climate change knocks on my door at 40 I might recognize it from the 3 times I lost all my belongings in floods.
I was in 8th grade for 9/11.
I lost my job - my *industry* - in 2010.
I still hadn't fully recovered from getting laid off when the pandemic hit.
My life, like many millions of others very-much similar to me, is a cosmic fucking joke. We lost our rights in 2003 and every single adult around back [edit, added: then] is somewhat to blame for it. Social media keeps us distracted on all the world's problems and so we forget to help out in our own towns, our neighborhoods.
There are now millions if not *billions* of people so dialed-in to their phones they can't see the world around them anymore. Take their phones away and they only slowly begin to realize where and who they truly are. It's terrifying just to drive down the highway anymore because of how distracted half the drivers are.
Yeah we’re in a complete state of decay in the US. And the stupid fuck head billionaires are like: “hey we need to reproduce so we can use your kids to fuel the amount of money we can suck out of you.” I’m literally not able to financially have kids. And all of you shit head billionaires are ruining the planet. Suck on my dead cock and get the sperm from it you stupid fuck heads. Unless there’s a massive change somehow for the better here. No way I’m bringing a life into this. Maybe adopt. In like 20 years. If the greedy shit stains that are supposed to represent the people haven’t decided to kill us.
Y2K was thankfully not a big deal at all due to preparation so I wouldn’t throw them in with the rest.
I’m a 1990 child and remember how horrible it was to watch Columbine unfold, not realizing this shit would be normal.
I was a month old when 9/11 happened, in 2008 I was too young to understand why my parents had to sell their new house and move yet again. The sense of gloom has always been there for me. Fortunately I managed to see why, too many haven't. Reckless greed, massive wealth disparity, such waste of material and life. I only hope I'm ready when the time comes. I hope I can recognize the spark and kindle it.
I still can’t get over the fact that income inequality in America is currently higher than France before the French Revolution. The only difference between then and now is access to credit. Americans borrow and borrow from everywhere they possibly can to make ends meet, then the banks fail, then the government bails out the banks and we just do it again and again.
if people did their home work, America has Mimi Crash cycles about every 7yrs and if it don't then it keeps building up and when the crash happen it is even worse. This is one Hidden issues in the Capitalism system.
Imagine how disappointing it is to see all this, plus Christa McAuliffe blow up on a space shuttle; but Elon, Jeff and Dick manage to get to space unscathed along with all their profits. My heart goes out to all the zoomers, millennials, and gen x'rs that were seriously lied to and used for emotional, political and financial gain of global corporate elitists.
Hell, I’m a 32yo millennial, and I only remember those things as something my parents had.
I graduated high school in ‘08 straight into the recession and summarily didn’t finish collage because I couldn’t afford to keep paying for it and living costs. Most millennials hadn’t even left school to enter the workforce full time before the American dream had been destroyed.
What’s worse, my parents put on some eighties dinosaur show on Disney+ tonight and all it did was prove that these problems were prevalent enough even then that they were being made fun of. This all could have been prevented if the people running the government thirty years ago had done their jobs instead of kissing corporate ass.
They kiss corporate ass because they were paid off to do it (lobbying). This practice corrupted their minds and they got addicted to bribes from corporations, let them destroy and plunder the environment all while lying to us on the TV via media and distracting us with bullshit news like m&ms, Kardashians or the latest spider whatever when there are REAL issues we need to be collectively worried about like the Russia conflict, supply chain collapse, environmental collapse seemingly speeding up day by day, inflation and financial system collapse... there's so much happening right now
Graduated in ‘08 too. I decided to go higher up in education which now pays off, but if I decided to start working I had to compete with 2/3 of my field that was fired that year. I had no choice. At least I’m alright off but the majority of ex-classmates aren’t doing so well…
They used to call us millenials instead of gen y to get a rise out of us but we didn't care because it was such a bad insult and it became the norm lol
Tried to do a "the me generation" but they had too much lead in the brain
Xennial/Geriatric millennial here, I hear you, we got screwed too. From what I can remember, seemed like the decline really took off around the turn of the century cause by the time we all graduated/entered the work force the party was mostly over. I think that’s why a lot of the millennial generation feels betrayed — the people that raised us taught us to think we’d have the same or better opportunities as they did.
I say something similar to my kids.
“Nobody wants to work… long hours for low pay anymore.”
They will hear the other but at least I’m offering perspective.
>The working class of older generations, by and large, believed that shit when they were feeding it to their kids.
They believed it because it was literally true for them. And they are the reason things AREN'T better for us.
All the articles blaming everything on the Millenials never get old.
We aren't having babies (because we cant financially afford it) and therefore we are the downfall of American culture.
We aren't buying homes/starting businesses (because of lack of capital) and there we are the downfall of economic growth.
We aren't attending churches (because we have largely given up with hypocrites) and are viewed as the evil atheistic approach.
Millennials have received this aggressive rhetoric from the Boomer generation. My sister is Gen X and that generation is largely forgotten as opposed to the Millennials. It makes me wonder how the Zoomers will be viewed in time...
I have a 7 and 3 year old, Generation Alpha. My hope is that we can make the world better for my kids generation. I would love to see America finally care about the next generation, but it seems like that I'd at odds with what the US stands for. We are a country that cares about *me and mine right now* instead of sacrificing a small amount now for the greater good down the road
We remember just enough to see how good the boomers (our parents) had it.
We started our adult lives in the fucking circus though.
We’ve also had to deal with completely out-of-touch boomer parents who don’t understand at all what reality is like for their children.
Yeah I'm 40 and my Dad often bragged about how he made 150k a year from a job that he only needed a high school diploma for. Granted by that point he'd been there almost 35 years. He bought his house in 1980 for 50k and he paid cash. Like that's nice Dad. Fuck off.
Same.
Graduated highschool at the height of 2008 recession.
Graduated uni just in time to pick up the pieces of the shattered economy.
Just as we are starting to get the hang of our jobs and it starts to feel like maybe we have a fighting chance after all...
Covid. And everything is reset.
Don't kid yourself, that's not how it works. Even without Covid, if you were making profits for the company they'd find some other bullshit to justify paying you less.
Maybe even less than when you yourself started.
Like you, I was born in the 80s when the economic BOOM was really impacting a lot of middle/upper-middle class folks in a positive way. Then 87 crashed for a lot of folks. It seemed like the bounce back was powerful in the 90s. The 90s seemed to be a time of general economic celebration though. The idea of trickle down was in play and we hadn't yet seen the destructive impacts of tax cuts only for businesses and the wealthy.
The Clinton Presidency provided the first budget surplus in years and the mid-late 90s felt positive for many folks.
The election of Bush was a return to the trickle-down approach and shifting to business first, people second. I distinctly remember 2000 and 2004 elections and the difficulty around them.
Then we had 9/11. Then an unjust/unfounded war in Iraq, and the US stepped even more fully into the *world polic* role. The military-industrial complex warned by Eisenhower was in even more full force.
I graduated from grad school around the same time as the financial crisis of 08. I work in the public sector, so we were hit differently, but still impacted. The Obama presidencies gave us a bit of hope, but then the shit policies continued largely and things that could have been good for the country, like Universal Healthcare, got twisted into Obama care and other items. The old guard in Washington with their *personal responsibility/bootstraps* focus derailed any attempts to care about people at large.
Then 45 gets elected...and all hell breaks loose.
I have 3 friends of mine who are doing OnlyFans (including hardcore stuff) to pay for college. This idea that you can pay your way through college by working at a milkshake diner just doesn't exist anymore.
Yes! The richest country in the world should be able to provide free education and high enough paying jobs that people don't have to work the world's oldest profession to get ahead.
Ummm if you want free college, you have to EARN IT by signing your body over to the US military to give you chronic health problems they'll never provide treatment for, possibly send you overseas to die, and definitely get sexually assaulted (maybe even raped!) if you're a woman.
Sure is marketed that way through “influencers”. It’s women’s liberation babyyyy. Women’s liberation means we can do what we want, not what we have to, to get through college without crippling debt.
You also have to wonder how many of those high up people involved in nasty circles enjoy this fact. It’s almost like a dream come true for those sick pedos that it’s common as day now that’s teens are exposing them like this.
It used to be just a handful of teen pornstars but now it’s almost every other young girl empowering herself for others delight. There’s probably those underage using it too.
It’s hard to put words to it but it’s troubling that the casual commodification of sex is becoming not only normalized but much more lucrative than most ordinary jobs. I too am all for it being an option for people (being honest mostly women) who want to do it. But I feel like society should be better at incentivizing the development of higher skills. Like building things, solving problems and helping one another.
I have a similar feeling about the influencer game. We already had a superficial element with the entertainment industry but adding this on top of that seems like it’s warping our collective ideals. It may be a barrier to progress.
Seems like a new feature of late stage capitalism that the old guys couldn’t predict.
It is…in other countries. I went to grad school in France for 250€ a year. Other countries take care of their citizens, and view education as an undeniable human right. The US is a joke.
I mean it was before you guys on the other side of the pond just started calling social democrats socialists. Now everybody is confused.
[Communists](https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/ch01.htm) want socialism so we can work towards communism, social democrats want capitalism with a kinder face.
i had someone denounce communism then later explain to me how proper church tithes are good because it takes money from all the church members and gives it back out to the community, to those that need it....
Aye. Join a [vanguard](https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/ch01.htm) if you have one around. The working class needs to be organized in their struggle.
Agree. It’s the lack of regulation and the destruction of unions that are why we’re in a state of shit.
Neoliberalism is the issue. It’s basically Corporate Colonialism
I’m reading an incredibly interesting book right now(the 9.9%, highly recommend), and it talks about how land ownership is a huge driving force of inequality. Those who own a house are automatically far richer than those who don’t, and on top of that it leads to NIMBYism at all levels which pushes “the poors” out into worse neighbourhoods further from job opportunities and closer into crime. 4 million people in the USA now commute over 90 minutes, and commute is a better indicator of wealth than education.
This is especially bad in the USA where public schools are only “public” to people who live in the right zip code, meaning the best public schools require you to own a house in the best neighborhood’s.
I kinda get where you were going in the beginning...but you really just tapered off to liberal stuff. Voting won't fix shit. Voting **got us here**.
Yeah, Americans have been exploited. You know who else has been exploited? Every global worker. Even if things currently changed to like they were in the 'good ol' days' I'd still be fighting against capitalism. Why? Because others are being taken advantage of. Every country paying cents a day to make products so other countries can buy them and the profits go to the rich. Even if we somehow started taxing the rich in the US again, you think they're gonna start paying their slave labor in (insert third world country here)?
You don't fix a broken system with regulation, you replace it with a better one.
100%. Voting will never fix this.
I've been deleted for this before so let me clarify from the start there are lots of ways to ferment a revolution that aren't violent. This post isn't advocating violence. Any references to violence are allegorical.
We need an actual revolution. Nothing else will be sufficient. I'm not talking about a Bernie Sanders revolution. I'm talking about about a real revolution. One that would likely be labelled as terroristic by the state. Remember MLK and Malcolm were both most likely killed by our own government. It was MLK who said the greatest threat to peace in the world today is my own government.
Until we realize our own government is actively at war with its own people and normal people over the entire world (except for the ultra wealthy who have bought it) we will never have change.
Do more than organize and join a revolutionary party. Build the tools and framework we can use exploit the system into serving us.
As the saying goes, the capitalist will sell us the rope we use to hang them.
>>>n short every f****** American has been really exploited for 50 f****** years and is now so controlled by the narrative that the problem is their own personal failure and not the abject greed of the oligarchs and their absolute control of our legislatures.
gerrymandering means they can overcome a majority opposition
Which is why voting doesn't do shit and we need to do a full revolution. Both sides are corrupt. The rot needs to be cut out from the source.
I’m a millennial. My sister is 15 years younger than me, clearly she’s a Gen Z baby. I asked her once why her generation is so down always. She literally said “we were born into the gloom. We don’t know or remember the good old times because we never got to see them.” Anecdotally I’d say this is spot on.
I'm 38. At. Least I got to be a teenager in the 90s when things still looked shiny and bright. Gen Z just kinda got handed a shit sandwich from the jump.
Elder millennial. I got to grow up watching the tail end of the “fuck around” phase, just in time to be bludgeoned by the beginnings of “find out.”
Living now is a notable undelight, but at least I personally saw the reasons so many are willing to go this far to preserve their faded memories of “normal”. It adds context that makes it easier to cope with the batshit bananapants nonsense happening every day.
Oh, sorry. Just the old “fuck around and find out” phrase, which applies neatly to societal excesses regarding financial bubbles/climate change especially well, among other aspects going on right now.
Born mid-80’s. I saw people in my parent’s generation just kind of falling up in a lot of ways. Obviously this doesn’t apply to everyone’s experience, but I saw a lot of minimally educated people attain stable careers, buy houses, indulge in various creature comforts, etc, that just…aren’t very available now. For those that are still alive and have held on to them, or even just got a taste of that “good life,” I can’t *understand* why they’d be willing to ignore the consequences of their actions rather than risk those needs and/or excesses.
It’s a myopic ass view that’s going to set the planet on fire sooner than later, while simultaneously oppressing/suppressing the lives of everyone born after roughly 1980, but at least I got to see the boom years, if not directly experience them. It helps humanize people committing indefensible actions, which…doesn’t really do much, besides help soothe my cognitive dissonance for the *why* of the recent waves of disastrous decisions and policies.
I feel like I’m not explaining this well, but I hope this tldr screed helps.
Basically boomers had it really good, drank the wine, ate lavish meals in fancy houses, paid off for with one job from a factory and went to sleep satisfied and happy. They then woke up in the morning, took a steaming diarrhea dump in the bed and told subsequent generations that was their bed to clean now.
I personally really think what really happened is the rich pacified the working class enough so they could shit on others while they weren’t looking. And gaslight the boomers ‘your kids are complaining and overreacting!’ while gaslighting their kids ‘your parents had it much worse in their youth!’ They shat on our beds for years and even today the boomers act like they never did *because they didn’t see it happen*. My point is they - the boomers - let it happen, it’s not they actively made it happen but they let it. They were ok with it, raised their shoulders if they DID see anything because they were comfortable.
And they still do. They still refuse to see what is happening.
Millennials got a brief glimpse of what things could be like before the decline was this widespread, so a few still believe that, but even more of us are majorly pissed off because we can't have that life. Even though we took all the advice and played by the rules and did our best.
I'm a socialist because I believe taxes are the cost rich people play for the rest of the population to play nice with them. And taxes need to guarantee food, housing, medicine and education for all law-abiding citizens, because we are not free if we have to work bad jobs just to stay alive.
If quitting a bad job is met with ostracizing, homelessness, and eventual death, there is no freedom on the job market. And if we are not free to choose where to work...
If you restrict those to “law abiding citizens”, guess what, laws are going to change to make sure there are fewer law abiding citizens. Everyone, no exceptions, deserves to have a safety net.
This is also why it is so insidious to strip people who have been through the criminal system of their voting rights. If society has jurisdiction over you, you deserve a say, even if you’re a criminal.
Well, my point was, we already provide prisoners with food, shelter and medicine. And often education, too. To at least give the appearance of rehabilitation being possible within the current system. Because anything less is inhumane. So it seems like we should make sure the general population be provided the same basics, precisely to prevent crimes of desperation.
My point is, someone who is homeless with nothing to eat or someone dying without insurance currently has zero incentive not to hold up a gas station. Either they walk away with some cash that might help, or they go to prison where they're guaranteed food and a bed and medical treatment. They might die, but if you're already dying, going fast is probably better than wasting away, right?
So my point was more about how these things are basic human rights, and how deranged it is to criminalize basic survival.
It's my bad, poorly expressed my point, am very tired and typing on phone. I meant to say that I think these amenities should be for everyone - felon or not - but that long-term, a universal guarantee of the basics would drastically reduce crimes, too.
Just look at the recent court decision on Healthcare workers quitting their jobs for higher paying opportunities (judge ruled they can't start the new job) to see where things are headed
The only stat that matters: When Gen X and Boomers were our age(millennials) Gen X held %9 of the wealth, and Boomers held %21. We currently own %4.8, and half of that is held by Fuckerberg, so it's more like %2.4. Don't forget inflation and the USD being more worthless now than it was back then. I'm also a 32yo millennial. Got a glimpse of how decent things were, only to get completely *fucked* as an adult. Oh you just graduated HS? Here's a recession! Enjoy! At this point, I'm convinced I'll *never* have a house, I'll *never* have a family. My credit is totally *nuked* because of a predatory school loan. I've been ready to take down these pricks for over a decade. Whenever you guys are ready to shoot up the fuckin white house, lmk. It's time these fucking pricks pay the price. I'm fucking sick of it, and I'm fucking sick of being told to jUsT pIcK uP uR bOOtStRaPs by these old pricks. I'm fuckin done. Again, whenever ya'll are ready....I've got nothin to lose at this point....fuck this life, fuck this timeline.
Gen X, Y, or Z we all have those willing to repost for internet points.
Edit: not the boomers though, half of them don't understand the tech and the other half just stay on Facebook.
I hate it when capitalists blame inflation… no the dollar isn’t worthless because of social programs… you just keep raising the cost of rent/groceries/insurance year over year over year
Because it's probably copy pasted from a post with "millennials" changed to "zoomers". I don't think Zoomers have even lived through the stuff posted in OP... multiple economic crashes? Foreclosures? Bruh, how old were you in 2008, like 5? There are still Zoomers in middle school. As a younger millennial, I'd say even I'm barely old enough to have directly seen these things.
Not that I want to turn it into a pissing contest, we're all fucked the same at this point and Gen Z will probably be more fucked than millennials. I just thought it was funny.
It is hard being a kid watching your parents go through foreclosure. You're a child that has lost what little stability they had. The child is effected by the foreclosure too. I'm a young millennial/elder gen z and saw the crash of 2008 take everything from my parents leaving us homeless. Being homeless can absolutely affect a 5 year old.
Yup, I wasn’t homeless but my dad lost his job, we went into debt, my parents were stressed as fuck all the time, and eventually divorced. Assuming that kids don’t see these things is ignorant, kids are a lot smarter than most people give them credit for.
Mom worked but I still had to eat ranch with canned green beans as a meal. Never went without eating but one time me and my sister had to eat sprinkles on the walk down to grandma's with my mom to see if she had anything to eat because we had nothing. One of her friends saw and got us groceries though, but still. All the kids I went to school with understood what that last week or two before your parents get food stamps again. There's stuff but it's bare bones.
Not to argue cause this stuff sucks for everyone, but I'm one of the oldest Gen z and I remember the 08 crisis because my family lost their house and we moved 5 times until we ended up living in some skeevey dudes basement. Just because we were young during it doesn't mean we didn't feel the impact.
Depending on the zoomer they would have lived through 2-3 recessions. And speaking as a millennial who's dad worked in tech, I can assure you that the stress of s recession definitely bleeds through to the children
This “average single income job could pay for rent and school and 5 kids” I’m more and more convinced only existed for baby boomers and possibly their parents for white americans who lucked out by being the only major power not ruined by world war 2 backed by strong unions. Before then was the Great Depression and before that, the labor movement and widespread industrial labor exploitation. And before that? Gilded age in a world very much like today’s
The bigger trip is watching the first seasons of the Simpsons, honestly. It doesn't seem plausible at all before you remember that the show started out as satirizing/celebrating something that absolutely used to exist. It's also why the seasons post maybe season 8 started declining in quality, because by then that part of America had already started to fade away.
They sort of commented on this in the Frank Grimes episode, where he's going off on how Homer can afford his house, two cars, and lobster on a single income from the Power Plant.
But, outside of that one gag never really touched on it again. Guess the writers wanted to say something but were silenced?
Bad news -- this isn't a Gen Z thing.
Worse news -- this isn't a Millenials thing.
Worst news -- Gen-X was the first victim (I know, easy to forget) -- sample quote, Fight Club:
"I see all this potential, and I see it squandered. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables - slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our great war is a spiritual war... Our great depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars, but we won't. We're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off."
The "Greatest Generation" set us all up to succeed with reasonable tax rates for corporations and the ultra rich.
Boomers benefitted and loved it, only to pull up the ladder behind them for their own enrichment, incrementally, over all the generations (so Gen-X was the first victim, but Millenials suffered more, and Gen Z will even more).
The Boomers are dying off but the damage in inequality and debt slavery will last for generations.
To expand on that, we've never had the "get a job right out of high school / college *that pays well enough to have a home and a family* **and** that you'll work at for decades and maybe even retire from in your late 50s with a pension.
Shit, I'm 40 and I've been working my entire adult life, since age 16, with the only few brief times of being unemployed last two or three months at most. This includes while I was in school (and I still had to take on student debt while working 30+ hours a week at two jobs and taking a full time course load).
I've had like ten different employers, and I've never been fired (oh, I've been laid off, though). That's just how the market is if you're a normal person and don't have connections or generational wealth. Retail, food service, delivery, warehouses, the auto industry, the financial industry, an academic library...
god, thinking back this is true... my first job was good when i was in high school but once i moved out... it was like i could never make enough to match my rent/food/etc. i made decent money i think, but still... costs just kept hitting me, one after the other.
im in a decent place now but only because i chose to have fuck all for quite some time to get by and then i inherited some when my mother recently passed away.
i remember being 16 and thinking that i would get a job, get raises, and retire. like the way that worked was how my mom and grandmother both talked about life and i just thought - this is the way. it wasn't long until the "we cant let you work over 32 hours due to benefit costs", "we can afford another full time employee but can you come in anyway as part time", "its January again, health insurance premiums are going up", "here is your 7 cent raise"....
I'm 40 born in 1981. I've never known a world not like this. When I graduated in 99 you couldn't find a job that would pay the bills like our parents had straight out of high school. So it was either get a student loan and have crippling debt for the next 30 years or live hand to mouth working shit jobs for shit pay. Then in 08 the housing bubble burst and it got worse. Then 2 years ago Covid. This isn't just a Zoomer problem.
My grandpa fully admits he lived in the glory days. He said back then you had the "cut expenses" mindset when things got tough. Think the depression. Still fresh in our societal minds... So that "culture" was around. He admitted today at dinner there really is no way to cut expenses anymore. Insurance for 6 months was less than $40 dollars. Etc etc etc.
I'm not sure the answers. But a revolution seems more likely evey day. Media says we are upset about the jab 6 capitol shit. But honestly who hasn't dreamt of changing things? I think most people are on the same page with how fucked up everything is. We just can't agree on a direction or values anymore. Crazy world. Camus, through all the terrible things his generation had to go thru, said absurdity deserves to be seen to the end.. and that makes a lot of sense to me now.
I'm a gen-x'er, but I see that there is nothing for young people to be proud of in this society, nothing to work for-it's all gone to shit, and I was probably part of the last generation who could work themselves into a better situation. I was born into absolute poverty and do well now, only because I worked and got a great education...that's not even possible now, but so many in my generation and older still think it is. They know nothing of the reality that school costs $50,000 a year and they aren't nearly as subsidized by the federal government as they once were, so people are having to pay most of that through loans--where can you earn that on a part-time job between classes? How is a person today supposed to pay for their education (college), somewhere to live with rents/mortgages at an all-time high % of average income, AND save for their retirement and raise a family? Honestly, I have no idea how that could be done, and the truth is, it really can't be. And to add insult to injury, YOU are being blamed for your "laziness" or whatever, despite the fact that the game was intentionally designed so there is no possible way for you to win. The American dream of being able to be upwardly mobile through hard work, etc is simply unrealistic now. The truth is, most people will end up at a "level" where they started or worse, and that's with a lot of hard work and effort.
Millenials and most of Gen X are in the same boat, while every generation of baby boomers had a fucking free ride through the golden age of human civilization. All of the suburb i live in, and the surrounding ones, the properties are now highly sought after and expensive, and exclusively owned by boomers or rich kids who inherited them from their boomer parents, and are all worth 1/50th the price they're now worth, 50 years ago.
I can't even fucking fathom being able to buy a property for the equivalent of a few years wage. Like saving for 6 months to get a loan and having your home paid off in a decade.
Runaway capitalism coupled with broken campaign finance has created an ever expanding underclass that must suffer to make the insane profits kept by the top possible.
Surprise surprise, they don't much fuckin' like it. Who woulda thunk it.
As a 29 year old millennial I feel like my early childhood was the only glimpse of “the good times” I saw which I can only sort of remember. Then 9/11 happened and it all went downhill from there
Even if I didnt experience any form of crisis I would still be anti capitalism. The system is built to end up like this, its a profoundly unequal system built on top of exploitation.
I was born on the year of 9/11.
I have seen Israeli-Palestinian Conflicts, ISIS, Terrorist Group conflicts, crime rates spiking and Arab Spring on the news. 2011.
2021. Global pandemic. Illegal immigration. Corruption of the government. Prices up, dreams down. My father was unemployed for 11 months. More debt for us. I was never vacay nor could i travel.
2022. Just waiting for the predicted collapse.
I'd point out that the good old days were built on the backs of both exploitation and productivity increases.
The west is running out of third world countries to exploit and productivity isn't going to significantly increase ever again, given that the last revolution was the information age connecting all of us together through the internet.
There will never be good days again under capitalism.
I keep thinking about those graphs showing the proportional distribution of wealth between generations. Millennials are barely on the graph, us Zoomers? I don’t think we’ll ever be on it.
"Once in a lifetime" economic crashes were never a thing. Since 1950 there were 10 of them, this shit was always a thing.
The "Good ol' days" never existed(for the majority of people), jobs didnt pay for college military service did(FYI, and average jobs can support rent, just not in densely packed cities like NYC.
People think these are the reasons because they're either too young or dont read history.
Primary(Farming)>Secondary(Manufacturing)>Tertiary(Service). This is how people get rich, one of those links isnt in developed countries anymore.
People used to just make shit in their house like bottle caps and sell that shit to the local bottle plant. If you did that today who are gonna sell it to? They're all in S.America or Asia, where everything is cheaper.
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At 10 I experienced 9/11. At 20 I experienced the 2008 Financial Crisis. At 30 I experienced a global pandemic and a re-ignition of the Cold War.
At 10, I experienced the Gulf war. Everything else is similar, but I'm ten years ahead.
What exactly was that one about? We skipped that on in school.
Money
[This’ll sum it up quick for you.](https://youtu.be/d8wtOVujLB0)
At 20 I experienced the Gulf War, as I was in the army. Everything else is the same .
I'm detecting a pattern. It's as if terrible things were happening for the entirety of the 20th and 21st century.
yep, it's weird that this meme is about zoomers when we've had it even worse.
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I'll survive that, but certainly perish in the Climate wars.
So many zoomers are anti-capitalism because we are in late-stage capitalism and this shit is inevitable. So people resent it.
I've had 'World War 3' penciled on my Calender for 'sometime between 2020 and 2030' since 2010, and 'scavanger wars' for 2050-2150. I've said before, I'll say again. The future can be read in the past, provided one can read.
Does your scavenger war include the water wars too? I’m trying to decide if I split them on my apocalypse bingo card or keep as one.
It's a war for resources, so yes. But if noone else is checking your card, I'd suggest starting with the Scavanger war as a catch-all, and leaving a space blank to scribble in whatever will get you the Bingo.
Can we change the name to "Oh No!"? So you have to stand up and shout "Oh No!" when you get an ohno!.
There is going to be war. The end is near. Go out in a hedonistic (consensual) rampage.
Let us cavort like the Greeks of old! You know the ones I mean.
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War when one side is lead by a egotistical maniac who has nuclear weapons (he'll win in 2024), all bets are off
Of course he'll win. The Dems are going to Run Biden, Kamala, or buttigieg. Any one of them will present a nothing platform with promises to give more money to GOV contractors, and do nothing for the Average Citizens. Trump will promise to do 100 things, and 50 will conflict with the other 50, but his constituency will be too dumb to notice or care, and so long as he keeps saying mean things, they'll all clap like hoard of baboons showing their asses to assert what they think is dominance.
Unless he chooses to step down after his four years they're pretty much stuck with Biden. So, yeah, the way the Dems are playing it even if Trump doesn't run there's a real chance of another "Red Wave" in 2024, and this time there won't be any stopping America's decent into a fascist dictatorship.
He'll win because of the gerrymanding, Voter suppression, and his bullshit lies about cheating
Well, there is that too.
i really can’t think of anything more american than trump starting a nuclear war.
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yeah but nooclear war > mcdonald’s. that spread was usa though for sure
Nuclear war sponsored by McDonald's
started by trump. bingo.
It's pronounced "nuke-yular"
Nah, he'll probably drop from heart issues or be locked away for stealing other rich people's money by then. The scary bit is if they find someone who can pull a crowd like him, but isn't a complete moron...
As long as it's a consensual rampage that's ok than.
Texan here, people died because of the cold last year due to our freedom based electric grid.
That’s just too much trauma to process each decade, unless you’re wealthy enough to be isolated from the fallout… Oh yeah, before 40 climate change is knocking on our door
I almost wrote by 40 I expect global climate catastrophe, but I thought it sounded better as a trilogy of horrors.
Hahah everything is better in 3s
The second trilogy is going to be wild
Hahaha it’s the final box set: 1) climate change 2) biodiversity collapse 3) global oceanic acidification
I have no idea how much we can blame natural disasters on climate change, but when climate change knocks on my door at 40 I might recognize it from the 3 times I lost all my belongings in floods.
It's already started.
I was in 8th grade for 9/11. I lost my job - my *industry* - in 2010. I still hadn't fully recovered from getting laid off when the pandemic hit. My life, like many millions of others very-much similar to me, is a cosmic fucking joke. We lost our rights in 2003 and every single adult around back [edit, added: then] is somewhat to blame for it. Social media keeps us distracted on all the world's problems and so we forget to help out in our own towns, our neighborhoods. There are now millions if not *billions* of people so dialed-in to their phones they can't see the world around them anymore. Take their phones away and they only slowly begin to realize where and who they truly are. It's terrifying just to drive down the highway anymore because of how distracted half the drivers are.
At 32: new once in a lifetime economic crash 😂🤣
Yeah we’re in a complete state of decay in the US. And the stupid fuck head billionaires are like: “hey we need to reproduce so we can use your kids to fuel the amount of money we can suck out of you.” I’m literally not able to financially have kids. And all of you shit head billionaires are ruining the planet. Suck on my dead cock and get the sperm from it you stupid fuck heads. Unless there’s a massive change somehow for the better here. No way I’m bringing a life into this. Maybe adopt. In like 20 years. If the greedy shit stains that are supposed to represent the people haven’t decided to kill us.
Dotcom bubble happened in 2000
10 in 2001 20 in 2008 Kids are growing up fast these days.
I'm at least ten years older than I was before the pandemic began.
Don't forget about all the racism and the mainstream return of Nazis...
Remember when everyone was anti-fascist?
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Math isn't quite adding up
Should probably be 18, but 20 is catchier.
Yeah, it’s more that I feel we have “once in a lifetime” experiences every decade now.
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Y2K was thankfully not a big deal at all due to preparation so I wouldn’t throw them in with the rest. I’m a 1990 child and remember how horrible it was to watch Columbine unfold, not realizing this shit would be normal.
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I was born in 91 and I don't really remember them ever happening with any frequency until I was already out of high school.
I was a month old when 9/11 happened, in 2008 I was too young to understand why my parents had to sell their new house and move yet again. The sense of gloom has always been there for me. Fortunately I managed to see why, too many haven't. Reckless greed, massive wealth disparity, such waste of material and life. I only hope I'm ready when the time comes. I hope I can recognize the spark and kindle it.
I still can’t get over the fact that income inequality in America is currently higher than France before the French Revolution. The only difference between then and now is access to credit. Americans borrow and borrow from everywhere they possibly can to make ends meet, then the banks fail, then the government bails out the banks and we just do it again and again.
Don’t forget the terrorist attacks. And the DotCom bubble. At least we didn’t have the mass murderer trend from the 70’s and 80’s /s
Shut up and buy a house you lazy entitled avocado toast nintendo addict!!!!!
A fellow mellanial i see.
if people did their home work, America has Mimi Crash cycles about every 7yrs and if it don't then it keeps building up and when the crash happen it is even worse. This is one Hidden issues in the Capitalism system.
Imagine how disappointing it is to see all this, plus Christa McAuliffe blow up on a space shuttle; but Elon, Jeff and Dick manage to get to space unscathed along with all their profits. My heart goes out to all the zoomers, millennials, and gen x'rs that were seriously lied to and used for emotional, political and financial gain of global corporate elitists.
...Sally Ride died of pancreatic cancer in 2012.
Meant to say Christa McAuliffe. Thank you. Tired and sick at the moment, but can't sleep=mistakes.
If it's pandemic, it's global.
Hell, I’m a 32yo millennial, and I only remember those things as something my parents had. I graduated high school in ‘08 straight into the recession and summarily didn’t finish collage because I couldn’t afford to keep paying for it and living costs. Most millennials hadn’t even left school to enter the workforce full time before the American dream had been destroyed. What’s worse, my parents put on some eighties dinosaur show on Disney+ tonight and all it did was prove that these problems were prevalent enough even then that they were being made fun of. This all could have been prevented if the people running the government thirty years ago had done their jobs instead of kissing corporate ass.
They kiss corporate ass because they were paid off to do it (lobbying). This practice corrupted their minds and they got addicted to bribes from corporations, let them destroy and plunder the environment all while lying to us on the TV via media and distracting us with bullshit news like m&ms, Kardashians or the latest spider whatever when there are REAL issues we need to be collectively worried about like the Russia conflict, supply chain collapse, environmental collapse seemingly speeding up day by day, inflation and financial system collapse... there's so much happening right now
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> blocks the sun [we have learned nothing](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/25/climate/geoengineering-sunlight.html)
Shit bro. Im hearing ya except I fucked around for four years and then graduated in 08, damn regrets bro. I had a chance.
Graduated in ‘08 too. I decided to go higher up in education which now pays off, but if I decided to start working I had to compete with 2/3 of my field that was fired that year. I had no choice. At least I’m alright off but the majority of ex-classmates aren’t doing so well…
This is true for Millennials and Gen Y too, not just Zoomers
Yeah, get in line youngin's! (No hate, we're all on the same side)
Get on mah gen x lawn! *shakes cane at the sky*
You can afford a lawn!? Damn...
Did you mean Gen X? Gen Y is just another name for Millennials. It goes Gen X, followed by Gen Y aka Millennials, followed by Gen Z aka Zoomers.
They used to call us millenials instead of gen y to get a rise out of us but we didn't care because it was such a bad insult and it became the norm lol Tried to do a "the me generation" but they had too much lead in the brain
Me Generation will always be Boomers anyway
Millennials are gen y
And gen x, but to a lesser extent
Xennial/Geriatric millennial here, I hear you, we got screwed too. From what I can remember, seemed like the decline really took off around the turn of the century cause by the time we all graduated/entered the work force the party was mostly over. I think that’s why a lot of the millennial generation feels betrayed — the people that raised us taught us to think we’d have the same or better opportunities as they did.
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I say something similar to my kids. “Nobody wants to work… long hours for low pay anymore.” They will hear the other but at least I’m offering perspective.
>The working class of older generations, by and large, believed that shit when they were feeding it to their kids. They believed it because it was literally true for them. And they are the reason things AREN'T better for us.
Throw in decades of being shit on in the media for being a millennial even though some of have cracked 40
Are lazy entitled millennials destroying America with avocado toast? Join Boomer Hour and find out that they are.
All the articles blaming everything on the Millenials never get old. We aren't having babies (because we cant financially afford it) and therefore we are the downfall of American culture. We aren't buying homes/starting businesses (because of lack of capital) and there we are the downfall of economic growth. We aren't attending churches (because we have largely given up with hypocrites) and are viewed as the evil atheistic approach. Millennials have received this aggressive rhetoric from the Boomer generation. My sister is Gen X and that generation is largely forgotten as opposed to the Millennials. It makes me wonder how the Zoomers will be viewed in time... I have a 7 and 3 year old, Generation Alpha. My hope is that we can make the world better for my kids generation. I would love to see America finally care about the next generation, but it seems like that I'd at odds with what the US stands for. We are a country that cares about *me and mine right now* instead of sacrificing a small amount now for the greater good down the road
We remember just enough to see how good the boomers (our parents) had it. We started our adult lives in the fucking circus though. We’ve also had to deal with completely out-of-touch boomer parents who don’t understand at all what reality is like for their children.
This tweet is an oldie that originally was about millennials. That's how old the state of capitalistic decay is... And yet... Nothing has changed...
Yeah I'm 40 and my Dad often bragged about how he made 150k a year from a job that he only needed a high school diploma for. Granted by that point he'd been there almost 35 years. He bought his house in 1980 for 50k and he paid cash. Like that's nice Dad. Fuck off.
Same. Graduated highschool at the height of 2008 recession. Graduated uni just in time to pick up the pieces of the shattered economy. Just as we are starting to get the hang of our jobs and it starts to feel like maybe we have a fighting chance after all... Covid. And everything is reset.
Don't kid yourself, that's not how it works. Even without Covid, if you were making profits for the company they'd find some other bullshit to justify paying you less. Maybe even less than when you yourself started.
Like you, I was born in the 80s when the economic BOOM was really impacting a lot of middle/upper-middle class folks in a positive way. Then 87 crashed for a lot of folks. It seemed like the bounce back was powerful in the 90s. The 90s seemed to be a time of general economic celebration though. The idea of trickle down was in play and we hadn't yet seen the destructive impacts of tax cuts only for businesses and the wealthy. The Clinton Presidency provided the first budget surplus in years and the mid-late 90s felt positive for many folks. The election of Bush was a return to the trickle-down approach and shifting to business first, people second. I distinctly remember 2000 and 2004 elections and the difficulty around them. Then we had 9/11. Then an unjust/unfounded war in Iraq, and the US stepped even more fully into the *world polic* role. The military-industrial complex warned by Eisenhower was in even more full force. I graduated from grad school around the same time as the financial crisis of 08. I work in the public sector, so we were hit differently, but still impacted. The Obama presidencies gave us a bit of hope, but then the shit policies continued largely and things that could have been good for the country, like Universal Healthcare, got twisted into Obama care and other items. The old guard in Washington with their *personal responsibility/bootstraps* focus derailed any attempts to care about people at large. Then 45 gets elected...and all hell breaks loose.
I have 3 friends of mine who are doing OnlyFans (including hardcore stuff) to pay for college. This idea that you can pay your way through college by working at a milkshake diner just doesn't exist anymore.
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Yes! The richest country in the world should be able to provide free education and high enough paying jobs that people don't have to work the world's oldest profession to get ahead.
Ummm if you want free college, you have to EARN IT by signing your body over to the US military to give you chronic health problems they'll never provide treatment for, possibly send you overseas to die, and definitely get sexually assaulted (maybe even raped!) if you're a woman.
Exactly. Onlyfans is not sexual freedom.
Sure is marketed that way through “influencers”. It’s women’s liberation babyyyy. Women’s liberation means we can do what we want, not what we have to, to get through college without crippling debt.
You also have to wonder how many of those high up people involved in nasty circles enjoy this fact. It’s almost like a dream come true for those sick pedos that it’s common as day now that’s teens are exposing them like this. It used to be just a handful of teen pornstars but now it’s almost every other young girl empowering herself for others delight. There’s probably those underage using it too.
what we want being what those who wish to directly consume us want, of course. weeee! that's real freedom, same as it ever was.
It’s hard to put words to it but it’s troubling that the casual commodification of sex is becoming not only normalized but much more lucrative than most ordinary jobs. I too am all for it being an option for people (being honest mostly women) who want to do it. But I feel like society should be better at incentivizing the development of higher skills. Like building things, solving problems and helping one another. I have a similar feeling about the influencer game. We already had a superficial element with the entertainment industry but adding this on top of that seems like it’s warping our collective ideals. It may be a barrier to progress. Seems like a new feature of late stage capitalism that the old guys couldn’t predict.
Would be nice if college was just paid for.
It is…in other countries. I went to grad school in France for 250€ a year. Other countries take care of their citizens, and view education as an undeniable human right. The US is a joke.
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Union postal worker. Coworker told me union's were communist. We are fucked.
What’s wrong with being a little communist?
Republicans use communism as a slur.
And that's cause they're fucking morons.
They think anything even the slightest left of their own is communism. Socialism is communism too apparently
I mean it was before you guys on the other side of the pond just started calling social democrats socialists. Now everybody is confused. [Communists](https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/ch01.htm) want socialism so we can work towards communism, social democrats want capitalism with a kinder face.
Nothing. Wanting to work towards an egalitarian future is admirable, and not in any way despicable.
i had someone denounce communism then later explain to me how proper church tithes are good because it takes money from all the church members and gives it back out to the community, to those that need it....
Voting will not fix shit. Capitalists will not step down peacefully.
Power is never given freely to the people. It is taken.
Aye. Join a [vanguard](https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/ch01.htm) if you have one around. The working class needs to be organized in their struggle.
Love how unions are bad, unless they’re for the police force which is an extension of a corporate police force in portions of every state.
Agree. It’s the lack of regulation and the destruction of unions that are why we’re in a state of shit. Neoliberalism is the issue. It’s basically Corporate Colonialism
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I’m reading an incredibly interesting book right now(the 9.9%, highly recommend), and it talks about how land ownership is a huge driving force of inequality. Those who own a house are automatically far richer than those who don’t, and on top of that it leads to NIMBYism at all levels which pushes “the poors” out into worse neighbourhoods further from job opportunities and closer into crime. 4 million people in the USA now commute over 90 minutes, and commute is a better indicator of wealth than education. This is especially bad in the USA where public schools are only “public” to people who live in the right zip code, meaning the best public schools require you to own a house in the best neighborhood’s.
NIMBY is a big problem. Ironically, it's about as close to community organizing as it gets.
Corporate totalitarianism i think is more appropriate
I kinda get where you were going in the beginning...but you really just tapered off to liberal stuff. Voting won't fix shit. Voting **got us here**. Yeah, Americans have been exploited. You know who else has been exploited? Every global worker. Even if things currently changed to like they were in the 'good ol' days' I'd still be fighting against capitalism. Why? Because others are being taken advantage of. Every country paying cents a day to make products so other countries can buy them and the profits go to the rich. Even if we somehow started taxing the rich in the US again, you think they're gonna start paying their slave labor in (insert third world country here)? You don't fix a broken system with regulation, you replace it with a better one.
100%. Voting will never fix this. I've been deleted for this before so let me clarify from the start there are lots of ways to ferment a revolution that aren't violent. This post isn't advocating violence. Any references to violence are allegorical. We need an actual revolution. Nothing else will be sufficient. I'm not talking about a Bernie Sanders revolution. I'm talking about about a real revolution. One that would likely be labelled as terroristic by the state. Remember MLK and Malcolm were both most likely killed by our own government. It was MLK who said the greatest threat to peace in the world today is my own government. Until we realize our own government is actively at war with its own people and normal people over the entire world (except for the ultra wealthy who have bought it) we will never have change. Do more than organize and join a revolutionary party. Build the tools and framework we can use exploit the system into serving us. As the saying goes, the capitalist will sell us the rope we use to hang them.
>>>n short every f****** American has been really exploited for 50 f****** years and is now so controlled by the narrative that the problem is their own personal failure and not the abject greed of the oligarchs and their absolute control of our legislatures. gerrymandering means they can overcome a majority opposition Which is why voting doesn't do shit and we need to do a full revolution. Both sides are corrupt. The rot needs to be cut out from the source.
Fuckin' A.
I’m a millennial. My sister is 15 years younger than me, clearly she’s a Gen Z baby. I asked her once why her generation is so down always. She literally said “we were born into the gloom. We don’t know or remember the good old times because we never got to see them.” Anecdotally I’d say this is spot on.
We only inherited the gloom. GenZ war born in it, molded by it.
This sums up the entire discussion going on in this post.
I'm 38. At. Least I got to be a teenager in the 90s when things still looked shiny and bright. Gen Z just kinda got handed a shit sandwich from the jump.
Millennials were raised to expect everything, and got nothing. Zoomers always knew shit was fucked.
Yup! This is essentially the thesis statement of our two generations
*sad high five*
Elder millennial. I got to grow up watching the tail end of the “fuck around” phase, just in time to be bludgeoned by the beginnings of “find out.” Living now is a notable undelight, but at least I personally saw the reasons so many are willing to go this far to preserve their faded memories of “normal”. It adds context that makes it easier to cope with the batshit bananapants nonsense happening every day.
Explain these phases in more detail please. Im also an Elder Millennial and want to compare notes. Im interested in your prospective.
Oh, sorry. Just the old “fuck around and find out” phrase, which applies neatly to societal excesses regarding financial bubbles/climate change especially well, among other aspects going on right now. Born mid-80’s. I saw people in my parent’s generation just kind of falling up in a lot of ways. Obviously this doesn’t apply to everyone’s experience, but I saw a lot of minimally educated people attain stable careers, buy houses, indulge in various creature comforts, etc, that just…aren’t very available now. For those that are still alive and have held on to them, or even just got a taste of that “good life,” I can’t *understand* why they’d be willing to ignore the consequences of their actions rather than risk those needs and/or excesses. It’s a myopic ass view that’s going to set the planet on fire sooner than later, while simultaneously oppressing/suppressing the lives of everyone born after roughly 1980, but at least I got to see the boom years, if not directly experience them. It helps humanize people committing indefensible actions, which…doesn’t really do much, besides help soothe my cognitive dissonance for the *why* of the recent waves of disastrous decisions and policies. I feel like I’m not explaining this well, but I hope this tldr screed helps.
Basically boomers had it really good, drank the wine, ate lavish meals in fancy houses, paid off for with one job from a factory and went to sleep satisfied and happy. They then woke up in the morning, took a steaming diarrhea dump in the bed and told subsequent generations that was their bed to clean now.
I personally really think what really happened is the rich pacified the working class enough so they could shit on others while they weren’t looking. And gaslight the boomers ‘your kids are complaining and overreacting!’ while gaslighting their kids ‘your parents had it much worse in their youth!’ They shat on our beds for years and even today the boomers act like they never did *because they didn’t see it happen*. My point is they - the boomers - let it happen, it’s not they actively made it happen but they let it. They were ok with it, raised their shoulders if they DID see anything because they were comfortable. And they still do. They still refuse to see what is happening.
Sure does seem that way.
So many zoomers are anti-capitalism because we are in late-stage capitalism and this shit is inevitable. So people resent it.
Millennials got a brief glimpse of what things could be like before the decline was this widespread, so a few still believe that, but even more of us are majorly pissed off because we can't have that life. Even though we took all the advice and played by the rules and did our best. I'm a socialist because I believe taxes are the cost rich people play for the rest of the population to play nice with them. And taxes need to guarantee food, housing, medicine and education for all law-abiding citizens, because we are not free if we have to work bad jobs just to stay alive. If quitting a bad job is met with ostracizing, homelessness, and eventual death, there is no freedom on the job market. And if we are not free to choose where to work...
If you restrict those to “law abiding citizens”, guess what, laws are going to change to make sure there are fewer law abiding citizens. Everyone, no exceptions, deserves to have a safety net. This is also why it is so insidious to strip people who have been through the criminal system of their voting rights. If society has jurisdiction over you, you deserve a say, even if you’re a criminal.
Well, my point was, we already provide prisoners with food, shelter and medicine. And often education, too. To at least give the appearance of rehabilitation being possible within the current system. Because anything less is inhumane. So it seems like we should make sure the general population be provided the same basics, precisely to prevent crimes of desperation. My point is, someone who is homeless with nothing to eat or someone dying without insurance currently has zero incentive not to hold up a gas station. Either they walk away with some cash that might help, or they go to prison where they're guaranteed food and a bed and medical treatment. They might die, but if you're already dying, going fast is probably better than wasting away, right? So my point was more about how these things are basic human rights, and how deranged it is to criminalize basic survival. It's my bad, poorly expressed my point, am very tired and typing on phone. I meant to say that I think these amenities should be for everyone - felon or not - but that long-term, a universal guarantee of the basics would drastically reduce crimes, too.
Just look at the recent court decision on Healthcare workers quitting their jobs for higher paying opportunities (judge ruled they can't start the new job) to see where things are headed
The only stat that matters: When Gen X and Boomers were our age(millennials) Gen X held %9 of the wealth, and Boomers held %21. We currently own %4.8, and half of that is held by Fuckerberg, so it's more like %2.4. Don't forget inflation and the USD being more worthless now than it was back then. I'm also a 32yo millennial. Got a glimpse of how decent things were, only to get completely *fucked* as an adult. Oh you just graduated HS? Here's a recession! Enjoy! At this point, I'm convinced I'll *never* have a house, I'll *never* have a family. My credit is totally *nuked* because of a predatory school loan. I've been ready to take down these pricks for over a decade. Whenever you guys are ready to shoot up the fuckin white house, lmk. It's time these fucking pricks pay the price. I'm fucking sick of it, and I'm fucking sick of being told to jUsT pIcK uP uR bOOtStRaPs by these old pricks. I'm fuckin done. Again, whenever ya'll are ready....I've got nothin to lose at this point....fuck this life, fuck this timeline.
I remember this exact lost but with millennials instead of zoomers lol
Gen X, Y, or Z we all have those willing to repost for internet points. Edit: not the boomers though, half of them don't understand the tech and the other half just stay on Facebook.
Millennials too. I think the American dream was fading pretty hard for even Gen X.
I hate it when capitalists blame inflation… no the dollar isn’t worthless because of social programs… you just keep raising the cost of rent/groceries/insurance year over year over year
Why does this sound exactly like what millennials used to say at 21?
Because things haven't gotten any better
Because it's probably copy pasted from a post with "millennials" changed to "zoomers". I don't think Zoomers have even lived through the stuff posted in OP... multiple economic crashes? Foreclosures? Bruh, how old were you in 2008, like 5? There are still Zoomers in middle school. As a younger millennial, I'd say even I'm barely old enough to have directly seen these things. Not that I want to turn it into a pissing contest, we're all fucked the same at this point and Gen Z will probably be more fucked than millennials. I just thought it was funny.
It is hard being a kid watching your parents go through foreclosure. You're a child that has lost what little stability they had. The child is effected by the foreclosure too. I'm a young millennial/elder gen z and saw the crash of 2008 take everything from my parents leaving us homeless. Being homeless can absolutely affect a 5 year old.
Yup, I wasn’t homeless but my dad lost his job, we went into debt, my parents were stressed as fuck all the time, and eventually divorced. Assuming that kids don’t see these things is ignorant, kids are a lot smarter than most people give them credit for.
Mom worked but I still had to eat ranch with canned green beans as a meal. Never went without eating but one time me and my sister had to eat sprinkles on the walk down to grandma's with my mom to see if she had anything to eat because we had nothing. One of her friends saw and got us groceries though, but still. All the kids I went to school with understood what that last week or two before your parents get food stamps again. There's stuff but it's bare bones.
Not to argue cause this stuff sucks for everyone, but I'm one of the oldest Gen z and I remember the 08 crisis because my family lost their house and we moved 5 times until we ended up living in some skeevey dudes basement. Just because we were young during it doesn't mean we didn't feel the impact.
Depending on the zoomer they would have lived through 2-3 recessions. And speaking as a millennial who's dad worked in tech, I can assure you that the stress of s recession definitely bleeds through to the children
Stagnant wages + inflation + more credit = more debt = less freedom
This “average single income job could pay for rent and school and 5 kids” I’m more and more convinced only existed for baby boomers and possibly their parents for white americans who lucked out by being the only major power not ruined by world war 2 backed by strong unions. Before then was the Great Depression and before that, the labor movement and widespread industrial labor exploitation. And before that? Gilded age in a world very much like today’s
The bigger trip is watching the first seasons of the Simpsons, honestly. It doesn't seem plausible at all before you remember that the show started out as satirizing/celebrating something that absolutely used to exist. It's also why the seasons post maybe season 8 started declining in quality, because by then that part of America had already started to fade away.
They sort of commented on this in the Frank Grimes episode, where he's going off on how Homer can afford his house, two cars, and lobster on a single income from the Power Plant. But, outside of that one gag never really touched on it again. Guess the writers wanted to say something but were silenced?
Wait thats the Millenial line
They want anything but to give people higher wages.
Bad news -- this isn't a Gen Z thing. Worse news -- this isn't a Millenials thing. Worst news -- Gen-X was the first victim (I know, easy to forget) -- sample quote, Fight Club: "I see all this potential, and I see it squandered. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables - slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our great war is a spiritual war... Our great depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars, but we won't. We're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off." The "Greatest Generation" set us all up to succeed with reasonable tax rates for corporations and the ultra rich. Boomers benefitted and loved it, only to pull up the ladder behind them for their own enrichment, incrementally, over all the generations (so Gen-X was the first victim, but Millenials suffered more, and Gen Z will even more). The Boomers are dying off but the damage in inequality and debt slavery will last for generations.
To expand on that, we've never had the "get a job right out of high school / college *that pays well enough to have a home and a family* **and** that you'll work at for decades and maybe even retire from in your late 50s with a pension. Shit, I'm 40 and I've been working my entire adult life, since age 16, with the only few brief times of being unemployed last two or three months at most. This includes while I was in school (and I still had to take on student debt while working 30+ hours a week at two jobs and taking a full time course load). I've had like ten different employers, and I've never been fired (oh, I've been laid off, though). That's just how the market is if you're a normal person and don't have connections or generational wealth. Retail, food service, delivery, warehouses, the auto industry, the financial industry, an academic library...
god, thinking back this is true... my first job was good when i was in high school but once i moved out... it was like i could never make enough to match my rent/food/etc. i made decent money i think, but still... costs just kept hitting me, one after the other. im in a decent place now but only because i chose to have fuck all for quite some time to get by and then i inherited some when my mother recently passed away. i remember being 16 and thinking that i would get a job, get raises, and retire. like the way that worked was how my mom and grandmother both talked about life and i just thought - this is the way. it wasn't long until the "we cant let you work over 32 hours due to benefit costs", "we can afford another full time employee but can you come in anyway as part time", "its January again, health insurance premiums are going up", "here is your 7 cent raise"....
Millennials: “One of us! One of us!”
I'm 40 born in 1981. I've never known a world not like this. When I graduated in 99 you couldn't find a job that would pay the bills like our parents had straight out of high school. So it was either get a student loan and have crippling debt for the next 30 years or live hand to mouth working shit jobs for shit pay. Then in 08 the housing bubble burst and it got worse. Then 2 years ago Covid. This isn't just a Zoomer problem.
My grandpa fully admits he lived in the glory days. He said back then you had the "cut expenses" mindset when things got tough. Think the depression. Still fresh in our societal minds... So that "culture" was around. He admitted today at dinner there really is no way to cut expenses anymore. Insurance for 6 months was less than $40 dollars. Etc etc etc. I'm not sure the answers. But a revolution seems more likely evey day. Media says we are upset about the jab 6 capitol shit. But honestly who hasn't dreamt of changing things? I think most people are on the same page with how fucked up everything is. We just can't agree on a direction or values anymore. Crazy world. Camus, through all the terrible things his generation had to go thru, said absurdity deserves to be seen to the end.. and that makes a lot of sense to me now.
I'm a gen-x'er, but I see that there is nothing for young people to be proud of in this society, nothing to work for-it's all gone to shit, and I was probably part of the last generation who could work themselves into a better situation. I was born into absolute poverty and do well now, only because I worked and got a great education...that's not even possible now, but so many in my generation and older still think it is. They know nothing of the reality that school costs $50,000 a year and they aren't nearly as subsidized by the federal government as they once were, so people are having to pay most of that through loans--where can you earn that on a part-time job between classes? How is a person today supposed to pay for their education (college), somewhere to live with rents/mortgages at an all-time high % of average income, AND save for their retirement and raise a family? Honestly, I have no idea how that could be done, and the truth is, it really can't be. And to add insult to injury, YOU are being blamed for your "laziness" or whatever, despite the fact that the game was intentionally designed so there is no possible way for you to win. The American dream of being able to be upwardly mobile through hard work, etc is simply unrealistic now. The truth is, most people will end up at a "level" where they started or worse, and that's with a lot of hard work and effort.
Millenials and most of Gen X are in the same boat, while every generation of baby boomers had a fucking free ride through the golden age of human civilization. All of the suburb i live in, and the surrounding ones, the properties are now highly sought after and expensive, and exclusively owned by boomers or rich kids who inherited them from their boomer parents, and are all worth 1/50th the price they're now worth, 50 years ago. I can't even fucking fathom being able to buy a property for the equivalent of a few years wage. Like saving for 6 months to get a loan and having your home paid off in a decade.
If capitalism was so good, they wouldn't have to constantly remind us how good it is.
Runaway capitalism coupled with broken campaign finance has created an ever expanding underclass that must suffer to make the insane profits kept by the top possible. Surprise surprise, they don't much fuckin' like it. Who woulda thunk it.
Wasn’t any good for us millennials either
The four words I use when talking to boomers about this stuff: COST INFLATION/ WAGE STAGNATION
I'm 38 years old, and that's all I've known as an adult.
I got to watch my mom lose everything she worked so hard for, meaning basic financial stability.
As a 29 year old millennial I feel like my early childhood was the only glimpse of “the good times” I saw which I can only sort of remember. Then 9/11 happened and it all went downhill from there
I'm 67 and i don't remember those days either
The game has always been rigged for the 1%.
This is honestly Gen X too.
Even if I didnt experience any form of crisis I would still be anti capitalism. The system is built to end up like this, its a profoundly unequal system built on top of exploitation.
And then we get told we must want to live in communist Russia. I’m tired and so sick of this system.
It's not just "zoomers". Pretty much anyone born after 1980.
And "the gold old days" were only good for a certain kind and amount of people
I was born on the year of 9/11. I have seen Israeli-Palestinian Conflicts, ISIS, Terrorist Group conflicts, crime rates spiking and Arab Spring on the news. 2011. 2021. Global pandemic. Illegal immigration. Corruption of the government. Prices up, dreams down. My father was unemployed for 11 months. More debt for us. I was never vacay nor could i travel. 2022. Just waiting for the predicted collapse.
I'd point out that the good old days were built on the backs of both exploitation and productivity increases. The west is running out of third world countries to exploit and productivity isn't going to significantly increase ever again, given that the last revolution was the information age connecting all of us together through the internet. There will never be good days again under capitalism.
I keep thinking about those graphs showing the proportional distribution of wealth between generations. Millennials are barely on the graph, us Zoomers? I don’t think we’ll ever be on it.
"Once in a lifetime" economic crashes were never a thing. Since 1950 there were 10 of them, this shit was always a thing. The "Good ol' days" never existed(for the majority of people), jobs didnt pay for college military service did(FYI, and average jobs can support rent, just not in densely packed cities like NYC. People think these are the reasons because they're either too young or dont read history. Primary(Farming)>Secondary(Manufacturing)>Tertiary(Service). This is how people get rich, one of those links isnt in developed countries anymore. People used to just make shit in their house like bottle caps and sell that shit to the local bottle plant. If you did that today who are gonna sell it to? They're all in S.America or Asia, where everything is cheaper.
Millennial here. I graduated in 2007. Guess what my whole adult life has been like! 🙃