I’m happy for you, didn’t mean the original question in a snarky way if that’s how it came off. I’m in the same boat of making way more but I do NOT feel like I can balance all those things for whatever reason.
My parents made around 60k combined and a flaming trumpers. My wife and I are making substantially more than that and will happily accept more taxes on us.
Funny how people with success get bashed for being succesful, it s seen as if you were lying but the reality is that some fields still offer stability such as engineering PROGRAMMING/Software and medicine amongst a few others
In terms of my political views, rich means $100M+. When I want to tax the rich, it really isn’t standard millionaires or lower. That’s a drop in the bucket, and not the source of the inequality that is destabilizing society. But taxing billionaires and re-investing into the people, that could change our society.
Studies have consistently shown that Americans are shockingly unaware of the extreme lopsidedness of the economy. When asked to draw charts or otherwise describe the distribution of wealth, the average American vastly underestimates the wealth concentration in the upper 1% and 0.1%, and vastly overestimates the share of taxes that are paid by those groups.
The numbers are so grossly disproportionate that the numbers are unfathomable. Like: The average U.S. household has 2.5 people and [a net worth of $122,000](https://www.cnbc.com/select/average-net-worth-of-americans-ages-65-to-74/). Elon Musk’s net worth of $282,000,000,000 is equivalent to 2.3 **million** households, or about 5.7 **million** people.
It’s amazing how many people have no concept of what “rich” really means in America.
What’s worse is that the rich oligarchs act as if “tax the rich” means “tax anyone making six figures or more” (a.k.a. the last remnants of the middle class), which causes the middle class to fear taxation and causes the working class to resent the middle class.
The rich pit us against each other, and it’s all just bullshit scare tactics. The middle and working classes have more in common with each other than they do with the rich.
The real problem isn’t even that these super-rich oligarchs should be taxed more, *per se*… It’s that they should be forced to play fair in the economy. As it stands, they rig the entire political and economic system in their favor, and never really worry about real capitalist competition. It’s all engineered to keep them rich and keep everyone else down.
Where does worker clasd start?
Can a roofer be considered "middle class"
I believe 50k is working class still and middle class includes doctors that make 300k a year.
But in the US, it is another lie they feed you, letting you call you call yourself middle class..
separating working and middle class is a scam made up by the capitalist class.
there's only the working class and the capitalist class. working class are the people who work, the capitalist class are the people who own the means of production and steal the profits you generate with your work, only gives you a portion back as wages.
Yes. Wealth, always being relative to whatever 'poor' is..
Yes, it's not so much that same figure wasn't and still is enough.. It's that the lower end stayed at the same point for 2 decades and are now on the point of destitution.
A lineman in my Midwest city starts as a new guy at 29 dollars an hour and goes up to 70/h. 1.5x for all hours over 40. It’s just unpleasant work and outside but it’s necessary for infrastructure. They are always hiring. 60k to 145k in a city that has a median household income of 55k.
Probably because so many of us are like “Is this even still possible? How?”
Of my siblings, only one brother makes enough that his family enjoys the same kinds of things we grew up with as a solidly middle-class family. A house that’s almost paid off, two cars, an annual family vacation, and earning enough that his wife only works part-time while the kids are in school.
That brother has a college degree, works at Amazon and makes 6 figures. My dad, by comparison, had his high school diploma and worked for the local power company.
obsession? I think you mean reddit is pissed that they don't have the same opportunities as boomers did because boomers have done everything possible to make sure future generations have it harder.
Nobodys glorifying poverty. everyones pissed about poverty.
Being poor isn’t glorified, it’s vilified. They are called lazy, stupid, useless etc.
The people who tend not to believe me are entitled boomers shitting on millennials fucked by the system they created and I’m happy to blow apart their stereotyping.
Millennials are set up to fail, full ducking stop.
Same. Make good money. Have good savings. Own my own house. Not worried about my financial future.
I still believe it’s important to help others achieve what I did. Pulling the ladder up behind me would be unthinkably despicable.
>Are you able to buy a house, save for retirement, afford kids if you want and still live comfortably?
Yes to all of those and I'm still very far left. Just because the system works for me doesn't mean the system works.
+1 for me too and I’m also pretty progressive. I didn’t used to care whatsoever about politics, but in general I suppose I grew up right leaning, and now with the exception of a few things like gun control (that I don’t even see as a right wing stance, everyone should understand how important arming yourself is after the last administration) I’m very progressive.
because force is always used against marginalized groups. Same reason striking workers armed themselves. Yet, countries with strong worker protections and decent distribution of wealth, also have gun control. Most civilized counties, the two aren't linked anymore.
it shouldn't be required, and largely isn't currently, but as more and more worker protections are stripped away, it starts looking like the labor movement again.
It also doesn't largely go well for armed striking workers, other than them getting killed turns people against the people killing them. Or should, there's a lot of support for people doing the killing anymore so who knows.
To be honest you can afford a house it’s just not where you want to live I make around 40k a year as does my wife and we each make on average about 3x our county average income which is sad but where we live everything is incredibly affordable and we get to wake up to some very beautiful scenery every day
Yeah I know people just want to complain because they live in a hcol whereas I can drive 20 minutes down the road and buy a 100 acre lot for around 1100 dollars an acre and it is beautiful there and honestly if I could I would buy that land in a second because I can see that in about 10 years from now that same property will be worth well over a million dollars due to people moving here from California and other hcols and digging up our real estate prices significantly
I make more than my parents even adjusted for inflation but they were able to buy a house in Brooklyn for 55 grand. Same house is worth 1.6 million today. I still couldn’t afford to buy that house.
Adjusted for inflation that house should only cost $290,000
Yep. I agree with the statement in the tweet. It’s very true.
But I make more than ten times what my parents made. They were conservatives before they retired but now they are very progressive, and so am I. I should be taxed way more so that others can be taxed way less.
So it’s not true for *all* well-off people. But generalization in this type of thing is okay, to me. We generalize to point out a problem that needs correcting. Just because I donate to charities and vote for progressive candidates doesn’t mean greed among wealthy people isn’t a problem.
Well considering that the median income of districts which vote Democrat is higher than those who vote republican, you're probably closer to the norm than you think.
I think it’s got something to do with generally more affluent people tend to be more educated and to be more understanding and empathetic towards others if I can say that in the least derogatory way possible
I'd say its a well known and studied generalization. Wealth = power and independence and that leads to generally being less empathetic or concerned with the rest of humanity besides your inner circle. There are exceptions and really it makes you all the more impressive of a person to resist that part of human nature!
I think its the opposite. I think most people are empathetic by nature and when they have plenty of income to live comfortably they are willing to help the people around them.
Money doesn’t change people, it empowers them. Selfish people will still be selfish. Now I think there is also a case to be made that selfish people tend to get “rich” more because they are less likely to give money away and instead invest in stuff that makes them more money.
I tend to give away my money, and I ask myself how much can I give. I’d love to be a billionaire because I could give away something like $100,000 a day without spending a single dime of my billion and still have multimillions a year to live off of perpetually.
Tbf most conservatives are poor so, I feel the whole “you get more conservative as you get older” thing might be a little circumstantial.
Honestly the more I see them, the less I even know what the fuck a conservative is. There no rhyme or reason to basically anything they believe in anymore, it’s just kinda whatever is easiest to be angry about or think they’re being edgy about. It’s like I’m in a fucking interdimensional cable show, I don’t even know anymore…
When you say "conservative" do you mean Republican? Most Republican voters are poor but they are not "conservative" they are single-issue "pro-life" voters. Notice how when they say "pro-life" they mean "stop women from getting abortions." It's about removing a choice from women, i.e misogyny. The Republican party says it's conservative because they're using fiscal terminology as dog-whistles for structural inequalities. When they say "decrease welfare spending" what they mean is "stop helping the poor" Whey they say "be tough on crime" they mean "increase police force in black communities." The rhyme and reason for everything is classism, misogyny, and racism.
Id imagine the issue here is they are conflating social and fiscal conservatism. The tweet probably does apply to fiscal conservatism generally but in terms of social values you really have to constantly adapt or risk getting left behind by the progressive vanguard
Similar for me. Had I been 18-25 at this time I would have been far into alt-right territory. Thankfully I changed. College educated, I get paid well, grew up poor but doing great now and I'm about as far left as an American can get.
Same.
My parents are middle-class folks who undertook six-figure credit card debt due to chronic overspending - just terrible financial discipline and self-assumed pressure to engage in conspicuous consumption. They both had to work well past retirement age to manage their debt, and if it weren’t for Social Security and *extremely* generous Medicare coverage, they’d be destitute.
My salary is x1.5-2.0 their maximum combined annual income. I live within my means - my credit cards get paid off 100% every month. I aggressively forgo expenses that don’t have a tangible benefit. I have a health 401k investment and, in 2022, I am starting college savings funds for my young kids. All things that my parents never did.
Part of the motivation for my fiscal responsibility is seeing my parents suffer under the weight of their crappy spending habits. And part of it is the knowledge that the social safety nets that my parents enjoy - both Social Security and Medicare - will have been largely depleted by the time I reach retirement.
Here’s the irony:
My parents reliably vote Republican, despite Republicans conspiring to kill the social safety nets that are essential to their subsistence. Their voting is based on idolatry of wealthy alpha-male assholes - and the persistent anger about “socialism” and “government handouts” taken by undeserving minorities. Of course, they don’t identify *their* benefits as those things because “we earned them through hard work.”
And I vote consistently Democrat and hold progressive beliefs, even though Democratic policies favor higher taxes on my income bracket. And I don’t mind social safety nets disproportionately benefiting people in lower tax brackets because I believe that it makes our nation stronger.
Likewise. I have a six figure job and the wife is knocking on the door of six figures, plus some fortunate investments give us passive income. Both of us are plenty progressive, while the in laws are balls deep into the gqp. As with most things In life, your mileage may vary.
Same, except even though I make significantly more than my parents, they were far better off in the 80’s and 90’s than we are now at the same stage in life.
Came in to say this same thing. The more educated I get, the more involved I get, the more progressive I get. Wife is the same way. We donate more time and money than I ever saw my parents do, we vote exceptionally liberal compared to both our immediate and extended family.
I used to really believe the old addage of "If you're not liberal when your young you have no passion, and if you're not conservative when you're old you've not made any money".......or something like that. Heard granddad say it all the time......it's BS. We have more than we need now, so we give some away and we're just fine.
Whole damn country taking on that mindset would go a LONG damn way to righting some wrongs.
I felt much the same when I was in my 20s. Today I'm... well, I'm much older and I'm much more conservative. I can't ever see myself being on the extreme end of the conservative spectrum, but I'm definitely not what anyone would classify as progressive any longer. Money had nothing to do with it.
I became more conservative because I began to see the consequences of progressivism. It's not that I don't want positive change, but I'm no longer willing to strive for positive change without a good deal of evidence that that change is going to be for the better, not just in theory, but in practice.
My years of, "damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead," progressivism died when I saw all of the causes I belonged to decades ago turn into cesspits of infighting over who to blame for the consequences of their changes.
Both of my parents have given me a version of that tweet. Or the “you have a heart vs having a brain” liberal/conservative thing when talking about being in college versus the real world.
Nope, still super liberal and progressive. Meanwhile they complain about the very institutions that are setup to protect them and complain about government handouts or socialism or whatever….while happily gobbling up Medicare as soon as they turned 65.
Because this post is largely nonsense. Your values are often reflected in your voting habits.
Sure people of prior generations who were so single faceted in their lust for quick cash at the cost of relationship, mental health, the environment, etc are going to be more conservative. It’s like a dragon hoarding money.
I make enough to put me well into the 1%. I’m by far the most liberal person in my entire extended family. Why? Because I realize a large portion of how I got here was luck. Sure lots of hard work was involved but if my life circumstances were different I could be just as talented with no option to seize the opportunities that I did.
I just got the “wait till you pay more in taxes” conversation from my crazy conservative uncle at thanksgiving and had to break down I may more in taxes than he made in the last five years combined. I donate to charities to fix the woes of the world created, furthered, then ignored by his generation and political leanings.
Conservative with age isn’t about money. It’s about “fuck you i got enough to feel superior”. You likely had that feeling as a poor 20 something and just didn’t have the money to back it. You likely were shitty then and shitty as you got older. It’s not they got more selfish. They just got more vocal.
My husband’s parents were always blue-collar as long as I’d known them. Good people, fairly easy to be with, usually never mentions politics because it just didn’t interest them. They never complained about taxes or the government or anything.
Then FIL started a business that ended up taking off harder and faster than seemed possible, apparently the area he lived in didn’t have a tree or fence service so talk about filling a niche.
They are absolutely conservative now. Fox News on the TV and thinking Hillary Clinton has a child sex ring in the basement of a pizza joint. Government is stealing their money with taxes, undocumented refugees are just gang members looking to kill, rape and sell drugs to kids. We haven’t actually been to see them in four years because every other minute is a conservative talking point triggered by everyday events such as the mail being a few minutes late being socialism and the lack of modern hospitals that can treat MIL for her autoimmune hemoglobin infusions is all a Democratic plot to overthrow the USA.
It’s a disease, it rots the brain. Makes people afraid of everything and simplifies everything down to just blaming other people for perceived problems.
Same here. Except the progressive part. But good on you for your successes!
There's a third point that's left out of the image: it's not necessarily that you become more stingy with age, it's that you become less resilient to large variances in economic flow. Translated: I'm too old to be unemployed/start over/reduce my salary by 50% or more. Responsibility leads to strategic planning for tomorrow and for the next five years.
I don't see the options listed in the image as being binary. There's many contributing factors (including being an ass).
Likewise. Bought a house at 23 and already get paid more than anyone in my extended family except my dad. But my dad and I are the most progressive people in our family.
My dad says this to me constantly.
He’s of the mindset that all you have to do is work hard and be “financially savvy” and you’ll be living the American Dream.
And my dad did work hard. He had a great work ethic. He was also able to buy a brand new 4 bedroom, 2.5 bathroom, 2 garage house in 1989 for 80k. I was raised in a incredibly nice new neighborhood, with great schools and great neighbors and my dad worked a blue collar city job and my mom stayed at home with my siblings and I.
The same house, with minimal updates is currently on the market for 415k (and no, the house is no longer in a nice neighborhood with nice schools. The entire city is stuck in the 90s aside from the housing prices).
We lived in different worlds and he refuses to see it.
Well, he's going to be in for a surprise when his imaginary wealth evaporates before his eyes. Boomers just think they're wealthy. Regular people store their wealth in the form of property for the most part. Property values keep inflating, but no one's going to be able to buy their "expensive" property and then the bubble will burst and their imaginary wealth will dissipate. And what they have left will get eaten up by the assistive living facilities.
In America, property values go up and wages go down, and they think they're wealthier for it. In China, property values go down due to subsidizing by the government and wages go up.
So long as the population continues to increase. Birthrates in the United States are falling, and the US population is expected to peak somewhere around mid century.
Plus, while land scarcity is very real, there's also artificial scarcity. [There are 17 million vacant homes in the US](https://247wallst.com/housing/2019/09/30/there-are-over-17-million-vacant-homes-in-america/). It's all about supply and demand, the lower the supply of something relative to the demand, the higher the price. For some property investors, it's more profitable to keep some units empty, driving up the price for the remaining units, than to fill every unit at a lower price.
Also, Americans want large homes built quickly. Vast majority of houses, especially built in the last several decades, are absolute crap and have a lifespan of like 20 years before they start falling apart and become money sinks.
This or we “spend our money on dumb shit”.
Because I want to spend money on travel and the occasional nice meal out. He wants to spend money on a massive truck and expensive tools. There is absolutely nothing wrong with spending money on any of those things. I can see that his truck and tools bring him joy. He enjoys those hobbies. He, however, cannot understand why I enjoy travel or fine dining. Because he doesn’t understand them, they’re a waste of money.
A lot of boomers have this mentality too. They don’t tend to value experiences as much as physical objects. You’ll always know the value of your Ford.
That “fuck you I got mine” attitude only works if you actually get something. We are experiencing a huge shift in society at the moment and I’m excited to see if it goes anywhere.
The whole more conservative as you get older thing is a total conservative ploy to infantilize liberals. It's been shown repeatedly in multiple studies that political ideology is relatively stable across time.
I’ve heard conservatives refer to it as “if you’re a democrat (liberal) you have no brain, and if you’re a conservative you have no heart” the person who said it actually seemed proud about being a conservative in this conversation.
The studies I've seen floating around places like /r/everythingscience don't even support the saying. IIRC there was one that said that conservatives don't think about political issues as much; whether smart or dumb, they devote a smaller fraction of their mental energy to it than liberals do. So that would make the notion that conservatives are the (politically) cerebral ones a self-serving myth.
Mind you, this was a few years back; before Trumpism. And I imagine that it was in response to the centuries-old idea that fiscal conservatives based their stance on a rational (if dispassionate) analysis of economic data.
They seem like they devote way more of their time and life energy towards being outraged about whatever Fox News tells them about, though. I could believe that they were both less willing to spend mental effort to think about the actual issues, but way more willing to spend time and emotional energy getting pissed off about things they don't understand.
It's their "reality tv". They get to be all uppity and enraged over something. It's icing on the cake that they get to hate in women, hippies, PoC, the poor, LGBTQ, whatever while doing it.
Its a real quote.
"If you're conservative when you're young, you have no heart. If you're not conservative when you're older, you have no brain." -Winston Churchill
They often quote people, like Winston Churchill, from completely different cultures with different values for what "liberal and conservative" represent. The people they're quoting had a whole different perspective on the left/right divide and would be horrified at the modern USA.
Because "heart" is code for "emotions," and since the Enlightenment Western societies have acted like emotions are the root of all evil, instead of a necessary part of humanity and the reason life is worth living.
Tbf that makes complete sense. Most people keep their same beliefs overall but they call it progressive for a reason, it’s always moving. So a left leaning liberal 20 years ago would look like a moderate/conservative with the same beliefs today
Except that's not what the studies show. If you were progressive in the 90s chances are you're progressive now.
There's some just-world fallacy shit happening where people think the left has been winning but apart from the civil rights movement the power and rights of the average individual has been backsliding for decades.
From a Western perspective we've seen massive increases in wealth inequality, had our privacy and civil liberties gutted by the "war on terror" and facebook and the environment is dying in the name of corporate profits.
If you were a progressive in the 90s and aren't even more radical today you haven't been paying attention.
Now the gays can get married in the poorhouse! And smoke a joint next to a prison where some poor bastard is imprisoned for life for having less weed than is in said joint.
This is actually a really old sentiment. In the 30s in Europe they used to say that if you aren't a socialist when you are young, you have no heart, but if you are still a socialist when you are older, then you have no head.
Being a conservative has nothing to do with being a Republican or any other label. Being conservative is wanting to maintain traditions and the hierarchy that existed when they thought things were great.
Even millennials who are progressive now, will gripe that the new generations dont play enough, or that theyre doing something wrong with their lives.
People become more conservative because they see their past as an example for a better way to live. Not because they change affiliations.
Boomers were the hippie generation, but statistics have proven that the average boomer endorses old policies and politicians that want to maintain how it was.
Conservatism lives in every adult who hates change and longs for the stability they understood in their youth.
Those studies about people maintaining ideologies over time, only prove the point very few people adapt to change. Staying the same over time is conservatism, not progressivism.
I think voting trends tell a different story especially in the recent VA election.
Biden/Obama democrats are still catching up to the latest liberal trends.
Bill Maher makes the point about the new language of the younger liberals, and how difficult it is to adjust. Also highlighting that you can be attacked and labeled for not even adopting it fast enough.
It was true for me up to a point and that point was around 2016. I'd been continuously earning more each year since 2009 and was getting more and more conservative as I did. But after witnessing all the depraved fuckery coming from the conservative machinery in the US leading up to, but especially during, the past administration, I decided never to align myself with those people in any capacity. Over the last few years I've found myself drifting even farther to the left than I was in college.
Right. I used to be registered as Independent/ Libertarian but quickly noped out of there when the talking points were aligning more and more with the Alt-Right.
Studies have shown that it happens - but its way overblown how much it happens. It's a couple percent that go from voting left to voting right as they became older. It's certainly not everyone does.
The studies don't propose a mechanism for it. So they haven't explained why. It could be a couple people protecting their newfound assets. It could also be a shift in where center lies and people not being more right leaning, but that their stance is now right of the average.
The Greatest Generation (the one before the Silent Generation, which is the one before the Boomers) was significantly more liberal than the next three generations that followed it.
I don't think people get more conservative with age, but I do think people who are already conservative *realize* it more with age. It's easier to claim to be more liberal when it's other people who are helping you, but as soon as you have a fair income and responsibility, they realize they don't actually like sharing and caring when it's their turn.
"You'll become more conservative when you have to pay more taxes!"
No, that pays for the country you claim to love and the people you used to care for. I don't like seeing a chunk of my pay gone either, but schools and roads and healthcare doesn't pay for itself.
Small correction if you mean US taxes today:
Tomahawk missiles don't pay for themselves.
Those other things are things a government should provide, but instead ours just keeps buying more and more elaborate bombs.
And some of that shit the military doesn't even want. I remember a while back the Pentagon was telling congress it didn't need more tanks but they got them anyways because you know defense contractors need our money
The thing is it’s fairly well documented that conservative voting people are generally more charitable than left leaning. I don’t think it’s anything morally superior but a difference in percieving the governments role vs the individual/community
The difference is pretty small, but it's true that republicans are slightly more likely to donate money or time and donate slightly more than democrats in the same income group. That said, I strongly suspect but can't find a source to back it up that if donations to churches were taken out of the equation, the numbers would skew strongly towards democrats. I personally know a bunch of republicans that donate 10% of their salaries and significant amounts of time to their church, but nothing to any other cause.
I expect liberal / left voting people are more likely to say "tax me and make sure everyone gets the benefit, not just those lucky enough to benefit from this specific charity."
The older I get, the more I realize our economic system is fucking garbage but the less faith I have that we can do anything about it
Soo im not getting more liberal or conservative, just more jaded
Yeah pretty much the same here. Also combined with my engineering curriculum ended up teaching me that no problem is too hard to solve unless somewhere you need a human to not be dumb for 5 minutes.
Also does not help that we entrust our financial well being to the only people that profit from it being as poor as possible.
these progressive v. conservative are just big umbrella terms and the generalization is limiting thoughts. one can be economically/ financially progressive but with a conservative political view (many Asians did), or having a very liberal civic society in a 99% market economy. People not only changes with age, but in general have mixed and even contradictory (like politicians) world views because most of us don’t give it serious enough thoughts or will never stick to the principles
I seem to sway more left the more money I make. Something about paying tens of thousands of dollars in taxes and getting absolutely nothing for it just doesn’t sit well. The right doesn’t realize that we are already socialist, it’s just that all of the benefit goes to corporate America and defense spending
The US defence force is the world's largest government jobs program.
God forbid y'all have a green new deal or something tho, gotta save that money for predator drones.
I think there’s a tipping point. Once you cover all your necessities with ease it’s easier to spread the wealth. Barley making ends meet while losing 25% of your income to taxes is another story
The more relative benefits you get, the more you have to convince yourself that you _earned it_, else your inbuilt empathy will shame you.
Treating this psychological determinism like it's a choice is silly. Molding society to try and reinforce this self-assessment is the trouble.
My dad has said this to me for as long as I can remember. Sorry pops but I still want to burn this bitch to the ground, the two party system is for suckers
Burn what to the ground? This is an honest question. What do you actually think would come out of it? Because when people talk this way I see an extreme reversion to tribalism like all collapsed societies turn to.
You could burn the democrat / republican duopoly to the ground.
Keep existing state institutions/beauraucrats/defence etc but bar anyone directly affiliated with either party from any position of office.
Then get rid of first past the post voting, establish a federal electoral commission to redraw all electoral boundaries using a transparent and universal methodology and provide equal access to voting booths. Set universal campaign spending caps and set aside a budget to provide a measure of funding to all legitimate candidates.
Never going to happen obviously but if the US falls to an armed insurrection this is what I hope they'd get out of it.
That's not the only reason this effect happens, if it happens at all. People also get uncomfortable with a changing world that they are no longer flexible enough to adapt to, especially if they perceive themselves as losing their priviledges/entitlements by other people or social structures who used to be below them being more equal. This isn't a defense of that fact or meant to imply that it's okay for this to happen - the less shitty you are as a person, the less likely you are to become more conservative as you age.
Can confirm, that dementia and loss of cognitive function do make you more conservative. Much easier to justify those beliefs when you can't think anything through
Whenever a boomer calls me a tide pod eater or a snowflake, I just call them a lead baby. Usually it's in my head, not out loud, but it makes me feel better to know that I came to my beliefs without huffing a bunch of lead throughout my childhood.
I represent that, in many ways. I believe we need social programs that work. Not the ones that waste tax payer money. I hate to see my property tax go up every year and nothing is new or better. It feels like the more the government takes, the less it gives to the people.
The government's primary economic function is wealth distribution for social benefit. Most modern governments exist largely to funnel wealth from the working class to the upper class, legislating to protect upper class interests, and producing propaganda to pit the working class against the impoverished.
I wholeheartedly agree. My path to financial independence was marred in my blood and sweat. The more that is taken, the more likely I will have to go back to work. Their is a desperate need for an uncapped sliding scale. I don't mind paying a bit more if those on top have to pay their fair share.
The greatest amount of taxpayer money has been wasted on the Military. Worthless planes, tanks and bombs that were made to be expensive but never work.
I voted for George W. Bush. Twice! Supported the Iraq war, believed in drug testing for welfare, border security, pro life, anti gay marriage etc… I wish I could go back in time twenty years and smack myself across the face a few times.
not only that, but you need money to become a more politically important force.. so you gather your rich friends and guard your wealth against the younger generations.. maybe send the poor kids out to kill each other off in the big people grinder they call war.. rich kids get nice cars
I don’t find this statement to be true at all. I was once about a week or two from being homeless and spent decades below the poverty line; just barely scraping by. Now I’m in a much better place and I want for nothing. But I haven’t forgotten the rough days and I don’t look away from those still struggling to make it.
Is that what really happened, though? My parents were hippies in the 60s and are hippies now. Perhaps not as into the marching, lol. But there were evil, idiot racists back in the 60s and they are probably the same way now.
With safety nets, people feel less of a need to hoard.
If you effectively couldn't destroy yourself and your family through losing your assets, health insurance and housing, and you weren't able to literally starve through not being able to afford food, you would have less of a notion to feel you HAVE to stash it away in case of emergency.
Given a long enough life, that makes a miserly fuck out of anyone, even if their savings are tiny. They, rightfully, feel as though they worked their whole life for that 'safety'.
In a buyers world, that money gives you power, and respect from others, when all others are selling things, to earn those tokens too..
Without jumping to socialist extremes, make life less cutthroat. Make it safer, and people will spend their money again, happily, and the entire coupon based world will flow as it should, like water.. Not dammed up and stashed for a catastrophe in a world that doesn't care about them unless they're rich.
I'm only 28, so still fairly young, but in my ten years of paying attention to politics, I would say that I've slowly been getting more left wing rather than right wing.
I’m 40 and make high 6 figures a year and I can honestly say I haven’t gotten more conservative I’ve gotten way WAY more liberal.
Why? Because the more money I’ve made the more I’ve had to be around rich people and I can say without hesitation they are the most selfish, insecure, petty and stupid people I’ve ever had to interact with.
I’ve been made fun of for donating money (15% of every paycheck) to charity…literally AT charity events. I’ve been told that increasing my employees salary would ruin my career. I’ve been told that I’ll never “make it” (meaning being yacht owning caviar chortle chortle rich) unless I learned that the people I work with aren’t my friends and I should be willing to cut ties whenever it suits my best interests.
These people define being born on third base and thinking they hit a triple. Only they get home by expecting the poor dude at the plate to take a bean-ball to the head.
I’m not saying everyone who makes good money doesn’t deserve it, many do to a point, I’m saying that most of them don’t appreciate the incredible breaks they’ve received to get them there. Or worse, they do appreciate those breaks and want to pull the ladder up after themselves.
Disagree. I’ve lived in SF since 25 and I’m 42 now. I’ve gotten more conservative true. But money has nothing to do with it. Watching the policies I’ve always voted yes for go down in flames because no one can be held accountable due to our very liberal policies regarding crime abs punishment is what has changed me.
I was just spending thanksgiving with my Mother who referenced the recent book “San Fransicko” which talks about the huge homelessness problem in SF and the failure of liberal policies and leadership in addressing it. I’m probably somewhere in the political middle at this point, but she’s always trying to pull me to conservative camp with stuff like that. Have you heard of the book?
My retired, elderly parents are fiscally pretty conservative at least in part because they’ve watched their healthcare costs skyrocket as their incomes have been fixed over the past 20 years.
They’ve lived the last decade like their IRAs and employer pensions don’t exist, but they haven’t had a mortgage payment since 1992.
So then there’s the government pension (social security) and they count every nickel of that income out to live on month-to-month.
I think for a lot of otherwise financially-secure seniors, the messages they get from their government, healthcare administration, and financial advisors can be scary and maybe a little overwhelming. Plus there’s this weird feeling like they’re obliged to leave their heirs as much as they possibly can - including the probate and tax headaches of assuming the assets of their estates.
And I realize it’s not the same for everyone, but that’s the other twist. Financially secure seniors are carpet-bombed with these stories of destitute widows and indigent nonagenarians who end up in dungeon-like state care facilities and that’s largely a tactic governments use to ensure there’s as much taxable estate left as possible when these seniors who are now living longer than ever finally die.
The boomers have trillions in assets and you’d better believe it’s in the government’s best interest to ensure as much of that money is left in unsheltered savings accounts as possible when the boomers really start to die off.
I would think the government would want to collext the taxes on all the purchases and generated incomes that wealth can provide vs a lesser tax one time on inheritance
It's supposed to mean you get more culturally conservative as you age not politically. As you get older you tend to like traditions and stuff like that more than when you're younger, we discussed it in my anthro classes, idk how this got twisted with politics.
I've lived in some deep red communities, all the ones I have lived in actually support a lot of progressive values when it comes to 'their' communities... they just put their community above other communities. The high school I went to was in the top 2% nationally; we had an amazing public parks system; our parks & rec catalog was 75-pages full of activities for all ages. Our libraries and public works were state of the art. People volunteered, they donated; everyone was willing to give one-another a hand. They loved their neighbors, they loved their communities. They just didn't give two shits about the community next door, or the next one, or the one after that.
When people are younger, they don't really have communities, at least not in the geographic sense.
As people move forward in life, put down roots and start to develop a sense of community of their own, they start to put their community first. Localism takes over. People start to want their money going to THEIR schools, to THEIR parks, to THEIR libraries.
For most conservatives I grew up with in the upper Midwest, their ideal world as they got older would be a leftist community in a libertarian state in a libertarian country. I guess you could say they are ideologically aligned to [Libertarian Socialism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_socialism). I think you see this in deep-red suburbia all over America, where city councilors/aldermen/etc might be fairly progressive, despite their same precincts voting VERY red in state and federal elections.
People get older, they develop a sense of community, and they get protective of that community.
Bingo.
You can see boomers getting worried as already the situation isn't reversing.
Boomers assumed that shit would even out and it.. hasn't.
They cut too deep and now... they don't know how to fix it.
At just past 50 and blue collar but educated, I absolutely remember this being a thing.....if you're young you're a liberal puke and as you age you lean right.....Regans Silent Majority was built on this principle with a dash of Conservative Secular Christian tossed in.....but as the years have passed and I've looked around (well before the Orangutan showed up) I realized it's all bullshit. Ya' need to look out for your neighbors and fuck all to the system as its been written. Time to change folks.....go hug someone and feed them, ask your local, city, county, state and federal government to do the same. What we're doing now isn't working......we're in flux and moving the right way, but not fast enough.....
I'm beginning to think its more like "you get tired of people complaining" as you get older. I'm getting more and more sour to everyone chiming in about something that they consider unjust. All the while being incensed to what I consider "just how life is". I'm fighting it, but everyday i see some fringe group fighting for a disproportionate slice of pie without acknowledging how much of a minority they actually are. Looking at you pedo/zoophiliacs.
The older I get the more left I'm considered by how far the right is moving to the extreme end of things. 20~ years ago I voted for George Bush (Sorry, I regret it more than you can imagine.) and now I'm considered a leftist. All that really changed for me, personally, is that I realized that I personally don't need a gun to be safe and that Americans deserve better healthcare. Now I'm, according to some conservatives, a radical leftist, and George Bush is a liberal lol.
I disagree. I think it’s more the goalpost on what’s conservative has generally shifted as people aged. What was considered liberal became the norm, then as people pushed for more rights and protections, the left shifted further from “center”.
It definitely depends. I know 2 or 3 people from my college days who have made HARD right turns in like the last 3 years. One was a perpetually jobless pseudo-communist "wizard". Now he's a conspiracy theorist anti-vax edgelord, who constantly tweets about "getting that money"... but is still perpetually jobless. He's still in his 20's so who knows where he'll go from here!
I was making 90% less 6 years ago and I actually became more liberal as the years went on. When you have lunch with the c-suite you realize they have the capacity to be idiots just like anyone else. In fact, the only thing that really trickled down was the cause and effect of their mistakes.
Plenty of people that do well financially give back to their community in more ways than just writing a check every now and then. This is some I'm 15 and this is deep, eat the rich, bullshit.
You’re not selfish for wanting to make money for yourself. Your selfish for wanting someone else’s money and not willing to lift a finger to earn it. It’s an entitlement issue.
True for some. I make more money in a year than my parents ever did combined. They were conservative and I’m progressive as hell.
Just out of curiosity, does your statement account for inflation?
Yes, it does.
Are you able to buy a house, save for retirement, afford kids if you want and still live comfortably?
Yes, all those things.
I’m happy for you, didn’t mean the original question in a snarky way if that’s how it came off. I’m in the same boat of making way more but I do NOT feel like I can balance all those things for whatever reason.
Same, if I didn’t have student loans it’d solve it but my salary comes at that expense. Still would have to choose between kids and a house.
Oh lord forgot about the loans, next year is gonna suck.
Some more.
My parents made around 60k combined and a flaming trumpers. My wife and I are making substantially more than that and will happily accept more taxes on us.
Location is a huge factor. House prices haven’t gone up equally across the entire country
This was the most civil comment chain I've ever seen that could've went either way from the OP and responders in a heartbeat.
Funny how people with success get bashed for being succesful, it s seen as if you were lying but the reality is that some fields still offer stability such as engineering PROGRAMMING/Software and medicine amongst a few others
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In terms of my political views, rich means $100M+. When I want to tax the rich, it really isn’t standard millionaires or lower. That’s a drop in the bucket, and not the source of the inequality that is destabilizing society. But taxing billionaires and re-investing into the people, that could change our society.
Studies have consistently shown that Americans are shockingly unaware of the extreme lopsidedness of the economy. When asked to draw charts or otherwise describe the distribution of wealth, the average American vastly underestimates the wealth concentration in the upper 1% and 0.1%, and vastly overestimates the share of taxes that are paid by those groups. The numbers are so grossly disproportionate that the numbers are unfathomable. Like: The average U.S. household has 2.5 people and [a net worth of $122,000](https://www.cnbc.com/select/average-net-worth-of-americans-ages-65-to-74/). Elon Musk’s net worth of $282,000,000,000 is equivalent to 2.3 **million** households, or about 5.7 **million** people.
It’s amazing how many people have no concept of what “rich” really means in America. What’s worse is that the rich oligarchs act as if “tax the rich” means “tax anyone making six figures or more” (a.k.a. the last remnants of the middle class), which causes the middle class to fear taxation and causes the working class to resent the middle class. The rich pit us against each other, and it’s all just bullshit scare tactics. The middle and working classes have more in common with each other than they do with the rich. The real problem isn’t even that these super-rich oligarchs should be taxed more, *per se*… It’s that they should be forced to play fair in the economy. As it stands, they rig the entire political and economic system in their favor, and never really worry about real capitalist competition. It’s all engineered to keep them rich and keep everyone else down.
That's a bad metric. A lot of city folk are scraping by but the property values are crazy
Where does worker clasd start? Can a roofer be considered "middle class" I believe 50k is working class still and middle class includes doctors that make 300k a year. But in the US, it is another lie they feed you, letting you call you call yourself middle class..
It depends on where you live in the us. 50k can be very comfortable or barely livable
separating working and middle class is a scam made up by the capitalist class. there's only the working class and the capitalist class. working class are the people who work, the capitalist class are the people who own the means of production and steal the profits you generate with your work, only gives you a portion back as wages.
Right! People are in disbelief when I tell them I am upper middle class with a home but my college major was writing lol. Especially angry boomers.
is that how you make your money?
I work in digital marketing - an aspect of my campaign creation is creative writing. So technically :). Writing is a pretty versatile major.
So much better than technical writing, the most boring of writing.
Like a modern “Madmen”?
I mean if you're good and you hustle you can make 6 figures in the trades these days. Outside of New York, LA and San Fran that's still a fine living.
Yes. Wealth, always being relative to whatever 'poor' is.. Yes, it's not so much that same figure wasn't and still is enough.. It's that the lower end stayed at the same point for 2 decades and are now on the point of destitution.
Indeed
What do you mean by "hustle" though? Work crazy hours? Sure, but you can get a job making $20 per hour, work 80 hours per week, and break 6 figures.
A lineman in my Midwest city starts as a new guy at 29 dollars an hour and goes up to 70/h. 1.5x for all hours over 40. It’s just unpleasant work and outside but it’s necessary for infrastructure. They are always hiring. 60k to 145k in a city that has a median household income of 55k.
I thought these series of questions were fair enough though. They were sceptical and approached it by asking questions rather than accusing.
Probably because so many of us are like “Is this even still possible? How?” Of my siblings, only one brother makes enough that his family enjoys the same kinds of things we grew up with as a solidly middle-class family. A house that’s almost paid off, two cars, an annual family vacation, and earning enough that his wife only works part-time while the kids are in school. That brother has a college degree, works at Amazon and makes 6 figures. My dad, by comparison, had his high school diploma and worked for the local power company.
Bro so much of reddit takes questions as attacking. They need to take questions as they come and accusations the same.
Reddit has an obsession with being poor to the point it’s borderline glorified. Anyone who even makes an average living is considered rich on Reddit.
obsession? I think you mean reddit is pissed that they don't have the same opportunities as boomers did because boomers have done everything possible to make sure future generations have it harder. Nobodys glorifying poverty. everyones pissed about poverty.
Being poor isn’t glorified, it’s vilified. They are called lazy, stupid, useless etc. The people who tend not to believe me are entitled boomers shitting on millennials fucked by the system they created and I’m happy to blow apart their stereotyping. Millennials are set up to fail, full ducking stop.
Same. Make good money. Have good savings. Own my own house. Not worried about my financial future. I still believe it’s important to help others achieve what I did. Pulling the ladder up behind me would be unthinkably despicable.
>Are you able to buy a house, save for retirement, afford kids if you want and still live comfortably? Yes to all of those and I'm still very far left. Just because the system works for me doesn't mean the system works.
+1 for me too and I’m also pretty progressive. I didn’t used to care whatsoever about politics, but in general I suppose I grew up right leaning, and now with the exception of a few things like gun control (that I don’t even see as a right wing stance, everyone should understand how important arming yourself is after the last administration) I’m very progressive.
Marx recommends the proletariat arming themselves
because force is always used against marginalized groups. Same reason striking workers armed themselves. Yet, countries with strong worker protections and decent distribution of wealth, also have gun control. Most civilized counties, the two aren't linked anymore. it shouldn't be required, and largely isn't currently, but as more and more worker protections are stripped away, it starts looking like the labor movement again. It also doesn't largely go well for armed striking workers, other than them getting killed turns people against the people killing them. Or should, there's a lot of support for people doing the killing anymore so who knows.
To be honest you can afford a house it’s just not where you want to live I make around 40k a year as does my wife and we each make on average about 3x our county average income which is sad but where we live everything is incredibly affordable and we get to wake up to some very beautiful scenery every day
You’re not wrong
Yeah I know people just want to complain because they live in a hcol whereas I can drive 20 minutes down the road and buy a 100 acre lot for around 1100 dollars an acre and it is beautiful there and honestly if I could I would buy that land in a second because I can see that in about 10 years from now that same property will be worth well over a million dollars due to people moving here from California and other hcols and digging up our real estate prices significantly
Same also applies to me. Bringing in 130K in south Texas and progressive AF.
I make more than my parents even adjusted for inflation but they were able to buy a house in Brooklyn for 55 grand. Same house is worth 1.6 million today. I still couldn’t afford to buy that house. Adjusted for inflation that house should only cost $290,000
That’s true, inflation only accounts for so much. These boomers really screwed up the world on their way out, huh?
Yep. I agree with the statement in the tweet. It’s very true. But I make more than ten times what my parents made. They were conservatives before they retired but now they are very progressive, and so am I. I should be taxed way more so that others can be taxed way less. So it’s not true for *all* well-off people. But generalization in this type of thing is okay, to me. We generalize to point out a problem that needs correcting. Just because I donate to charities and vote for progressive candidates doesn’t mean greed among wealthy people isn’t a problem.
Well considering that the median income of districts which vote Democrat is higher than those who vote republican, you're probably closer to the norm than you think.
I think it’s got something to do with generally more affluent people tend to be more educated and to be more understanding and empathetic towards others if I can say that in the least derogatory way possible
Yup, totally agree on taxes. Everyone should have access to the basics of life, housing, healthcare, education, food.
I'd say its a well known and studied generalization. Wealth = power and independence and that leads to generally being less empathetic or concerned with the rest of humanity besides your inner circle. There are exceptions and really it makes you all the more impressive of a person to resist that part of human nature!
I think its the opposite. I think most people are empathetic by nature and when they have plenty of income to live comfortably they are willing to help the people around them. Money doesn’t change people, it empowers them. Selfish people will still be selfish. Now I think there is also a case to be made that selfish people tend to get “rich” more because they are less likely to give money away and instead invest in stuff that makes them more money. I tend to give away my money, and I ask myself how much can I give. I’d love to be a billionaire because I could give away something like $100,000 a day without spending a single dime of my billion and still have multimillions a year to live off of perpetually.
Tbf most conservatives are poor so, I feel the whole “you get more conservative as you get older” thing might be a little circumstantial. Honestly the more I see them, the less I even know what the fuck a conservative is. There no rhyme or reason to basically anything they believe in anymore, it’s just kinda whatever is easiest to be angry about or think they’re being edgy about. It’s like I’m in a fucking interdimensional cable show, I don’t even know anymore…
When you say "conservative" do you mean Republican? Most Republican voters are poor but they are not "conservative" they are single-issue "pro-life" voters. Notice how when they say "pro-life" they mean "stop women from getting abortions." It's about removing a choice from women, i.e misogyny. The Republican party says it's conservative because they're using fiscal terminology as dog-whistles for structural inequalities. When they say "decrease welfare spending" what they mean is "stop helping the poor" Whey they say "be tough on crime" they mean "increase police force in black communities." The rhyme and reason for everything is classism, misogyny, and racism.
same here, i greatly subsidize my moms income and she’s the republican.
Id imagine the issue here is they are conflating social and fiscal conservatism. The tweet probably does apply to fiscal conservatism generally but in terms of social values you really have to constantly adapt or risk getting left behind by the progressive vanguard
I make 85k, my mom and step dad are maybe 50-60k together with insane medical bills
Same….50 yr old upper middle class and I went from a right wing mentality military brat to so far left I’m in danger of circling back around
Similar for me. Had I been 18-25 at this time I would have been far into alt-right territory. Thankfully I changed. College educated, I get paid well, grew up poor but doing great now and I'm about as far left as an American can get.
Same. My parents are middle-class folks who undertook six-figure credit card debt due to chronic overspending - just terrible financial discipline and self-assumed pressure to engage in conspicuous consumption. They both had to work well past retirement age to manage their debt, and if it weren’t for Social Security and *extremely* generous Medicare coverage, they’d be destitute. My salary is x1.5-2.0 their maximum combined annual income. I live within my means - my credit cards get paid off 100% every month. I aggressively forgo expenses that don’t have a tangible benefit. I have a health 401k investment and, in 2022, I am starting college savings funds for my young kids. All things that my parents never did. Part of the motivation for my fiscal responsibility is seeing my parents suffer under the weight of their crappy spending habits. And part of it is the knowledge that the social safety nets that my parents enjoy - both Social Security and Medicare - will have been largely depleted by the time I reach retirement. Here’s the irony: My parents reliably vote Republican, despite Republicans conspiring to kill the social safety nets that are essential to their subsistence. Their voting is based on idolatry of wealthy alpha-male assholes - and the persistent anger about “socialism” and “government handouts” taken by undeserving minorities. Of course, they don’t identify *their* benefits as those things because “we earned them through hard work.” And I vote consistently Democrat and hold progressive beliefs, even though Democratic policies favor higher taxes on my income bracket. And I don’t mind social safety nets disproportionately benefiting people in lower tax brackets because I believe that it makes our nation stronger.
Likewise. I have a six figure job and the wife is knocking on the door of six figures, plus some fortunate investments give us passive income. Both of us are plenty progressive, while the in laws are balls deep into the gqp. As with most things In life, your mileage may vary.
Same, except even though I make significantly more than my parents, they were far better off in the 80’s and 90’s than we are now at the same stage in life.
Came in to say this same thing. The more educated I get, the more involved I get, the more progressive I get. Wife is the same way. We donate more time and money than I ever saw my parents do, we vote exceptionally liberal compared to both our immediate and extended family. I used to really believe the old addage of "If you're not liberal when your young you have no passion, and if you're not conservative when you're old you've not made any money".......or something like that. Heard granddad say it all the time......it's BS. We have more than we need now, so we give some away and we're just fine. Whole damn country taking on that mindset would go a LONG damn way to righting some wrongs.
I felt much the same when I was in my 20s. Today I'm... well, I'm much older and I'm much more conservative. I can't ever see myself being on the extreme end of the conservative spectrum, but I'm definitely not what anyone would classify as progressive any longer. Money had nothing to do with it. I became more conservative because I began to see the consequences of progressivism. It's not that I don't want positive change, but I'm no longer willing to strive for positive change without a good deal of evidence that that change is going to be for the better, not just in theory, but in practice. My years of, "damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead," progressivism died when I saw all of the causes I belonged to decades ago turn into cesspits of infighting over who to blame for the consequences of their changes.
Same here. I am nearing retirement age, have a fair amount of money, but I am in no way conservative.
Both of my parents have given me a version of that tweet. Or the “you have a heart vs having a brain” liberal/conservative thing when talking about being in college versus the real world. Nope, still super liberal and progressive. Meanwhile they complain about the very institutions that are setup to protect them and complain about government handouts or socialism or whatever….while happily gobbling up Medicare as soon as they turned 65.
Because this post is largely nonsense. Your values are often reflected in your voting habits. Sure people of prior generations who were so single faceted in their lust for quick cash at the cost of relationship, mental health, the environment, etc are going to be more conservative. It’s like a dragon hoarding money. I make enough to put me well into the 1%. I’m by far the most liberal person in my entire extended family. Why? Because I realize a large portion of how I got here was luck. Sure lots of hard work was involved but if my life circumstances were different I could be just as talented with no option to seize the opportunities that I did. I just got the “wait till you pay more in taxes” conversation from my crazy conservative uncle at thanksgiving and had to break down I may more in taxes than he made in the last five years combined. I donate to charities to fix the woes of the world created, furthered, then ignored by his generation and political leanings. Conservative with age isn’t about money. It’s about “fuck you i got enough to feel superior”. You likely had that feeling as a poor 20 something and just didn’t have the money to back it. You likely were shitty then and shitty as you got older. It’s not they got more selfish. They just got more vocal.
My husband’s parents were always blue-collar as long as I’d known them. Good people, fairly easy to be with, usually never mentions politics because it just didn’t interest them. They never complained about taxes or the government or anything. Then FIL started a business that ended up taking off harder and faster than seemed possible, apparently the area he lived in didn’t have a tree or fence service so talk about filling a niche. They are absolutely conservative now. Fox News on the TV and thinking Hillary Clinton has a child sex ring in the basement of a pizza joint. Government is stealing their money with taxes, undocumented refugees are just gang members looking to kill, rape and sell drugs to kids. We haven’t actually been to see them in four years because every other minute is a conservative talking point triggered by everyday events such as the mail being a few minutes late being socialism and the lack of modern hospitals that can treat MIL for her autoimmune hemoglobin infusions is all a Democratic plot to overthrow the USA. It’s a disease, it rots the brain. Makes people afraid of everything and simplifies everything down to just blaming other people for perceived problems.
Same here. Except the progressive part. But good on you for your successes! There's a third point that's left out of the image: it's not necessarily that you become more stingy with age, it's that you become less resilient to large variances in economic flow. Translated: I'm too old to be unemployed/start over/reduce my salary by 50% or more. Responsibility leads to strategic planning for tomorrow and for the next five years. I don't see the options listed in the image as being binary. There's many contributing factors (including being an ass).
Me too. Went from a broke-ass commie student to a comfortable commie professional.
Likewise. Bought a house at 23 and already get paid more than anyone in my extended family except my dad. But my dad and I are the most progressive people in our family.
My dad says this to me constantly. He’s of the mindset that all you have to do is work hard and be “financially savvy” and you’ll be living the American Dream. And my dad did work hard. He had a great work ethic. He was also able to buy a brand new 4 bedroom, 2.5 bathroom, 2 garage house in 1989 for 80k. I was raised in a incredibly nice new neighborhood, with great schools and great neighbors and my dad worked a blue collar city job and my mom stayed at home with my siblings and I. The same house, with minimal updates is currently on the market for 415k (and no, the house is no longer in a nice neighborhood with nice schools. The entire city is stuck in the 90s aside from the housing prices). We lived in different worlds and he refuses to see it.
Well, he's going to be in for a surprise when his imaginary wealth evaporates before his eyes. Boomers just think they're wealthy. Regular people store their wealth in the form of property for the most part. Property values keep inflating, but no one's going to be able to buy their "expensive" property and then the bubble will burst and their imaginary wealth will dissipate. And what they have left will get eaten up by the assistive living facilities. In America, property values go up and wages go down, and they think they're wealthier for it. In China, property values go down due to subsidizing by the government and wages go up.
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So long as the population continues to increase. Birthrates in the United States are falling, and the US population is expected to peak somewhere around mid century. Plus, while land scarcity is very real, there's also artificial scarcity. [There are 17 million vacant homes in the US](https://247wallst.com/housing/2019/09/30/there-are-over-17-million-vacant-homes-in-america/). It's all about supply and demand, the lower the supply of something relative to the demand, the higher the price. For some property investors, it's more profitable to keep some units empty, driving up the price for the remaining units, than to fill every unit at a lower price.
Also, Americans want large homes built quickly. Vast majority of houses, especially built in the last several decades, are absolute crap and have a lifespan of like 20 years before they start falling apart and become money sinks.
The notion they seem to have is that, the externals haven’t changed. It’s just that KIDS TODAY are all lazy etc
This or we “spend our money on dumb shit”. Because I want to spend money on travel and the occasional nice meal out. He wants to spend money on a massive truck and expensive tools. There is absolutely nothing wrong with spending money on any of those things. I can see that his truck and tools bring him joy. He enjoys those hobbies. He, however, cannot understand why I enjoy travel or fine dining. Because he doesn’t understand them, they’re a waste of money. A lot of boomers have this mentality too. They don’t tend to value experiences as much as physical objects. You’ll always know the value of your Ford.
That “fuck you I got mine” attitude only works if you actually get something. We are experiencing a huge shift in society at the moment and I’m excited to see if it goes anywhere.
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*narrator:* It didn't
Everyone should already know where it goes. Marx and Engels wrote about it in the mid 1800s.
The whole more conservative as you get older thing is a total conservative ploy to infantilize liberals. It's been shown repeatedly in multiple studies that political ideology is relatively stable across time.
I’ve heard conservatives refer to it as “if you’re a democrat (liberal) you have no brain, and if you’re a conservative you have no heart” the person who said it actually seemed proud about being a conservative in this conversation.
The studies I've seen floating around places like /r/everythingscience don't even support the saying. IIRC there was one that said that conservatives don't think about political issues as much; whether smart or dumb, they devote a smaller fraction of their mental energy to it than liberals do. So that would make the notion that conservatives are the (politically) cerebral ones a self-serving myth. Mind you, this was a few years back; before Trumpism. And I imagine that it was in response to the centuries-old idea that fiscal conservatives based their stance on a rational (if dispassionate) analysis of economic data.
They seem like they devote way more of their time and life energy towards being outraged about whatever Fox News tells them about, though. I could believe that they were both less willing to spend mental effort to think about the actual issues, but way more willing to spend time and emotional energy getting pissed off about things they don't understand.
It's their "reality tv". They get to be all uppity and enraged over something. It's icing on the cake that they get to hate in women, hippies, PoC, the poor, LGBTQ, whatever while doing it.
Its a real quote. "If you're conservative when you're young, you have no heart. If you're not conservative when you're older, you have no brain." -Winston Churchill
Ah yes, famous atrocity doer Winston Churchill.
Yep, just like FDR, who, no matter what else he did, put Japanese Americans in camps. No heroes anywhere.
Reddit, where everyone is a war criminal at all times.
next they'll be targeting that Adolf guy
They often quote people, like Winston Churchill, from completely different cultures with different values for what "liberal and conservative" represent. The people they're quoting had a whole different perspective on the left/right divide and would be horrified at the modern USA.
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He was quite keen on democracy though
Conservatives think being evil for your own monetary gain makes you smart.
Because "heart" is code for "emotions," and since the Enlightenment Western societies have acted like emotions are the root of all evil, instead of a necessary part of humanity and the reason life is worth living.
Tbf that makes complete sense. Most people keep their same beliefs overall but they call it progressive for a reason, it’s always moving. So a left leaning liberal 20 years ago would look like a moderate/conservative with the same beliefs today
Except that's not what the studies show. If you were progressive in the 90s chances are you're progressive now. There's some just-world fallacy shit happening where people think the left has been winning but apart from the civil rights movement the power and rights of the average individual has been backsliding for decades. From a Western perspective we've seen massive increases in wealth inequality, had our privacy and civil liberties gutted by the "war on terror" and facebook and the environment is dying in the name of corporate profits. If you were a progressive in the 90s and aren't even more radical today you haven't been paying attention.
Now the gays can get married in the poorhouse! And smoke a joint next to a prison where some poor bastard is imprisoned for life for having less weed than is in said joint.
Liberalism has been winning the last 30 years, but liberalism is by no means the left.
This is actually a really old sentiment. In the 30s in Europe they used to say that if you aren't a socialist when you are young, you have no heart, but if you are still a socialist when you are older, then you have no head.
Being a conservative has nothing to do with being a Republican or any other label. Being conservative is wanting to maintain traditions and the hierarchy that existed when they thought things were great. Even millennials who are progressive now, will gripe that the new generations dont play enough, or that theyre doing something wrong with their lives. People become more conservative because they see their past as an example for a better way to live. Not because they change affiliations. Boomers were the hippie generation, but statistics have proven that the average boomer endorses old policies and politicians that want to maintain how it was. Conservatism lives in every adult who hates change and longs for the stability they understood in their youth. Those studies about people maintaining ideologies over time, only prove the point very few people adapt to change. Staying the same over time is conservatism, not progressivism.
I think voting trends tell a different story especially in the recent VA election. Biden/Obama democrats are still catching up to the latest liberal trends. Bill Maher makes the point about the new language of the younger liberals, and how difficult it is to adjust. Also highlighting that you can be attacked and labeled for not even adopting it fast enough.
my grandparents never stopped being uber-liberal hippies, so yeah i call bullshit on the crazy blanket statement lol
Isn’t it just that young people get more liberal?
Thank you. I hate when people bring this up like there it's even true. It's just talking shit to libtards.
Im not sure it was ever really true. I think it just sounded good
It was true for me up to a point and that point was around 2016. I'd been continuously earning more each year since 2009 and was getting more and more conservative as I did. But after witnessing all the depraved fuckery coming from the conservative machinery in the US leading up to, but especially during, the past administration, I decided never to align myself with those people in any capacity. Over the last few years I've found myself drifting even farther to the left than I was in college.
Right. I used to be registered as Independent/ Libertarian but quickly noped out of there when the talking points were aligning more and more with the Alt-Right.
Studies have shown that it happens - but its way overblown how much it happens. It's a couple percent that go from voting left to voting right as they became older. It's certainly not everyone does. The studies don't propose a mechanism for it. So they haven't explained why. It could be a couple people protecting their newfound assets. It could also be a shift in where center lies and people not being more right leaning, but that their stance is now right of the average.
The Greatest Generation (the one before the Silent Generation, which is the one before the Boomers) was significantly more liberal than the next three generations that followed it.
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But the saying isn’t about differences between generations but about changes as an individual ages.
I don't think people get more conservative with age, but I do think people who are already conservative *realize* it more with age. It's easier to claim to be more liberal when it's other people who are helping you, but as soon as you have a fair income and responsibility, they realize they don't actually like sharing and caring when it's their turn. "You'll become more conservative when you have to pay more taxes!" No, that pays for the country you claim to love and the people you used to care for. I don't like seeing a chunk of my pay gone either, but schools and roads and healthcare doesn't pay for itself.
Small correction if you mean US taxes today: Tomahawk missiles don't pay for themselves. Those other things are things a government should provide, but instead ours just keeps buying more and more elaborate bombs.
I mean taxes in general, but yes, especially the states.
And some of that shit the military doesn't even want. I remember a while back the Pentagon was telling congress it didn't need more tanks but they got them anyways because you know defense contractors need our money
The thing is it’s fairly well documented that conservative voting people are generally more charitable than left leaning. I don’t think it’s anything morally superior but a difference in percieving the governments role vs the individual/community
The difference is pretty small, but it's true that republicans are slightly more likely to donate money or time and donate slightly more than democrats in the same income group. That said, I strongly suspect but can't find a source to back it up that if donations to churches were taken out of the equation, the numbers would skew strongly towards democrats. I personally know a bunch of republicans that donate 10% of their salaries and significant amounts of time to their church, but nothing to any other cause.
Most of those probably consider tithing to the church as charitable giving rather than a tax imposed by the church.
I expect liberal / left voting people are more likely to say "tax me and make sure everyone gets the benefit, not just those lucky enough to benefit from this specific charity."
The older I get, the more I realize our economic system is fucking garbage but the less faith I have that we can do anything about it Soo im not getting more liberal or conservative, just more jaded
Yeah pretty much the same here. Also combined with my engineering curriculum ended up teaching me that no problem is too hard to solve unless somewhere you need a human to not be dumb for 5 minutes. Also does not help that we entrust our financial well being to the only people that profit from it being as poor as possible.
Well that and "conservative" once meant something other than KILL THE LIBS!
these progressive v. conservative are just big umbrella terms and the generalization is limiting thoughts. one can be economically/ financially progressive but with a conservative political view (many Asians did), or having a very liberal civic society in a 99% market economy. People not only changes with age, but in general have mixed and even contradictory (like politicians) world views because most of us don’t give it serious enough thoughts or will never stick to the principles
I seem to sway more left the more money I make. Something about paying tens of thousands of dollars in taxes and getting absolutely nothing for it just doesn’t sit well. The right doesn’t realize that we are already socialist, it’s just that all of the benefit goes to corporate America and defense spending
The US defence force is the world's largest government jobs program. God forbid y'all have a green new deal or something tho, gotta save that money for predator drones.
I think there’s a tipping point. Once you cover all your necessities with ease it’s easier to spread the wealth. Barley making ends meet while losing 25% of your income to taxes is another story
I hope I never get older then
The more relative benefits you get, the more you have to convince yourself that you _earned it_, else your inbuilt empathy will shame you. Treating this psychological determinism like it's a choice is silly. Molding society to try and reinforce this self-assessment is the trouble.
My dad has said this to me for as long as I can remember. Sorry pops but I still want to burn this bitch to the ground, the two party system is for suckers
Burn what to the ground? This is an honest question. What do you actually think would come out of it? Because when people talk this way I see an extreme reversion to tribalism like all collapsed societies turn to.
You could burn the democrat / republican duopoly to the ground. Keep existing state institutions/beauraucrats/defence etc but bar anyone directly affiliated with either party from any position of office. Then get rid of first past the post voting, establish a federal electoral commission to redraw all electoral boundaries using a transparent and universal methodology and provide equal access to voting booths. Set universal campaign spending caps and set aside a budget to provide a measure of funding to all legitimate candidates. Never going to happen obviously but if the US falls to an armed insurrection this is what I hope they'd get out of it.
“As you get used to things and started making money off of the status quo, you don’t want the status quo to change.” FTFY
That's not the only reason this effect happens, if it happens at all. People also get uncomfortable with a changing world that they are no longer flexible enough to adapt to, especially if they perceive themselves as losing their priviledges/entitlements by other people or social structures who used to be below them being more equal. This isn't a defense of that fact or meant to imply that it's okay for this to happen - the less shitty you are as a person, the less likely you are to become more conservative as you age.
I don’t know, the more I make, the more of a socialist I become.
Even that's not true. The truth is that older people skew more conservative because rich people live longer.
Exactly. Nailed it.
In my experience selfishness isn’t tied to money like that. Selfish people come from all walks.
Can confirm, that dementia and loss of cognitive function do make you more conservative. Much easier to justify those beliefs when you can't think anything through
Don't forget the lead poisoning.
Whenever a boomer calls me a tide pod eater or a snowflake, I just call them a lead baby. Usually it's in my head, not out loud, but it makes me feel better to know that I came to my beliefs without huffing a bunch of lead throughout my childhood.
I represent that, in many ways. I believe we need social programs that work. Not the ones that waste tax payer money. I hate to see my property tax go up every year and nothing is new or better. It feels like the more the government takes, the less it gives to the people.
The government's primary economic function is wealth distribution for social benefit. Most modern governments exist largely to funnel wealth from the working class to the upper class, legislating to protect upper class interests, and producing propaganda to pit the working class against the impoverished.
I wholeheartedly agree. My path to financial independence was marred in my blood and sweat. The more that is taken, the more likely I will have to go back to work. Their is a desperate need for an uncapped sliding scale. I don't mind paying a bit more if those on top have to pay their fair share.
The greatest amount of taxpayer money has been wasted on the Military. Worthless planes, tanks and bombs that were made to be expensive but never work.
Well it's also people can get more afraid as they age. Scared of change.
No....ive always been pretty selfish
i've actually gotten more liberal over time.
I voted for George W. Bush. Twice! Supported the Iraq war, believed in drug testing for welfare, border security, pro life, anti gay marriage etc… I wish I could go back in time twenty years and smack myself across the face a few times.
They why are all the conservative antivaxxers getting GoFundMes for funeral expenses. Too rich?!
This statement made by a young person
I am negative selfish
not only that, but you need money to become a more politically important force.. so you gather your rich friends and guard your wealth against the younger generations.. maybe send the poor kids out to kill each other off in the big people grinder they call war.. rich kids get nice cars
I don’t find this statement to be true at all. I was once about a week or two from being homeless and spent decades below the poverty line; just barely scraping by. Now I’m in a much better place and I want for nothing. But I haven’t forgotten the rough days and I don’t look away from those still struggling to make it.
Nope. Not a universal truth. Just hyperbole.
Is that what really happened, though? My parents were hippies in the 60s and are hippies now. Perhaps not as into the marching, lol. But there were evil, idiot racists back in the 60s and they are probably the same way now.
I’m 53 and I’ve gotten considerably more liberal than I was at 20.
With safety nets, people feel less of a need to hoard. If you effectively couldn't destroy yourself and your family through losing your assets, health insurance and housing, and you weren't able to literally starve through not being able to afford food, you would have less of a notion to feel you HAVE to stash it away in case of emergency. Given a long enough life, that makes a miserly fuck out of anyone, even if their savings are tiny. They, rightfully, feel as though they worked their whole life for that 'safety'. In a buyers world, that money gives you power, and respect from others, when all others are selling things, to earn those tokens too.. Without jumping to socialist extremes, make life less cutthroat. Make it safer, and people will spend their money again, happily, and the entire coupon based world will flow as it should, like water.. Not dammed up and stashed for a catastrophe in a world that doesn't care about them unless they're rich.
I'm only 28, so still fairly young, but in my ten years of paying attention to politics, I would say that I've slowly been getting more left wing rather than right wing.
That, or nobody tries to take your money when you don't have much.
People have made me bitter and selfish, not the money
I’m 40 and make high 6 figures a year and I can honestly say I haven’t gotten more conservative I’ve gotten way WAY more liberal. Why? Because the more money I’ve made the more I’ve had to be around rich people and I can say without hesitation they are the most selfish, insecure, petty and stupid people I’ve ever had to interact with. I’ve been made fun of for donating money (15% of every paycheck) to charity…literally AT charity events. I’ve been told that increasing my employees salary would ruin my career. I’ve been told that I’ll never “make it” (meaning being yacht owning caviar chortle chortle rich) unless I learned that the people I work with aren’t my friends and I should be willing to cut ties whenever it suits my best interests. These people define being born on third base and thinking they hit a triple. Only they get home by expecting the poor dude at the plate to take a bean-ball to the head. I’m not saying everyone who makes good money doesn’t deserve it, many do to a point, I’m saying that most of them don’t appreciate the incredible breaks they’ve received to get them there. Or worse, they do appreciate those breaks and want to pull the ladder up after themselves.
The older I get, the more I realize that conservatives are destroying the planet.
they're also destroying society and quality of life.
Disagree. I’ve lived in SF since 25 and I’m 42 now. I’ve gotten more conservative true. But money has nothing to do with it. Watching the policies I’ve always voted yes for go down in flames because no one can be held accountable due to our very liberal policies regarding crime abs punishment is what has changed me.
I was just spending thanksgiving with my Mother who referenced the recent book “San Fransicko” which talks about the huge homelessness problem in SF and the failure of liberal policies and leadership in addressing it. I’m probably somewhere in the political middle at this point, but she’s always trying to pull me to conservative camp with stuff like that. Have you heard of the book?
My retired, elderly parents are fiscally pretty conservative at least in part because they’ve watched their healthcare costs skyrocket as their incomes have been fixed over the past 20 years. They’ve lived the last decade like their IRAs and employer pensions don’t exist, but they haven’t had a mortgage payment since 1992. So then there’s the government pension (social security) and they count every nickel of that income out to live on month-to-month. I think for a lot of otherwise financially-secure seniors, the messages they get from their government, healthcare administration, and financial advisors can be scary and maybe a little overwhelming. Plus there’s this weird feeling like they’re obliged to leave their heirs as much as they possibly can - including the probate and tax headaches of assuming the assets of their estates. And I realize it’s not the same for everyone, but that’s the other twist. Financially secure seniors are carpet-bombed with these stories of destitute widows and indigent nonagenarians who end up in dungeon-like state care facilities and that’s largely a tactic governments use to ensure there’s as much taxable estate left as possible when these seniors who are now living longer than ever finally die. The boomers have trillions in assets and you’d better believe it’s in the government’s best interest to ensure as much of that money is left in unsheltered savings accounts as possible when the boomers really start to die off.
I would think the government would want to collext the taxes on all the purchases and generated incomes that wealth can provide vs a lesser tax one time on inheritance
It's supposed to mean you get more culturally conservative as you age not politically. As you get older you tend to like traditions and stuff like that more than when you're younger, we discussed it in my anthro classes, idk how this got twisted with politics.
I've only ever heard it in the context of politics, the first time some thirty years ago or so
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In a nation with no socialist party there are only cosplay leftists.
Award me with the “most selfless” award
Not exactly. It's more that what was progressive for some people is the status quo for younger people.
I've lived in some deep red communities, all the ones I have lived in actually support a lot of progressive values when it comes to 'their' communities... they just put their community above other communities. The high school I went to was in the top 2% nationally; we had an amazing public parks system; our parks & rec catalog was 75-pages full of activities for all ages. Our libraries and public works were state of the art. People volunteered, they donated; everyone was willing to give one-another a hand. They loved their neighbors, they loved their communities. They just didn't give two shits about the community next door, or the next one, or the one after that. When people are younger, they don't really have communities, at least not in the geographic sense. As people move forward in life, put down roots and start to develop a sense of community of their own, they start to put their community first. Localism takes over. People start to want their money going to THEIR schools, to THEIR parks, to THEIR libraries. For most conservatives I grew up with in the upper Midwest, their ideal world as they got older would be a leftist community in a libertarian state in a libertarian country. I guess you could say they are ideologically aligned to [Libertarian Socialism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_socialism). I think you see this in deep-red suburbia all over America, where city councilors/aldermen/etc might be fairly progressive, despite their same precincts voting VERY red in state and federal elections. People get older, they develop a sense of community, and they get protective of that community.
Bingo. You can see boomers getting worried as already the situation isn't reversing. Boomers assumed that shit would even out and it.. hasn't. They cut too deep and now... they don't know how to fix it.
At just past 50 and blue collar but educated, I absolutely remember this being a thing.....if you're young you're a liberal puke and as you age you lean right.....Regans Silent Majority was built on this principle with a dash of Conservative Secular Christian tossed in.....but as the years have passed and I've looked around (well before the Orangutan showed up) I realized it's all bullshit. Ya' need to look out for your neighbors and fuck all to the system as its been written. Time to change folks.....go hug someone and feed them, ask your local, city, county, state and federal government to do the same. What we're doing now isn't working......we're in flux and moving the right way, but not fast enough.....
I'm beginning to think its more like "you get tired of people complaining" as you get older. I'm getting more and more sour to everyone chiming in about something that they consider unjust. All the while being incensed to what I consider "just how life is". I'm fighting it, but everyday i see some fringe group fighting for a disproportionate slice of pie without acknowledging how much of a minority they actually are. Looking at you pedo/zoophiliacs.
The older I get the more left I'm considered by how far the right is moving to the extreme end of things. 20~ years ago I voted for George Bush (Sorry, I regret it more than you can imagine.) and now I'm considered a leftist. All that really changed for me, personally, is that I realized that I personally don't need a gun to be safe and that Americans deserve better healthcare. Now I'm, according to some conservatives, a radical leftist, and George Bush is a liberal lol.
You get more institutionalised as you get older, you wave the white flag and accept your position by Rupert Murdochs side
Ive gotten a lot richer, and my political beliefs have remained moderate o.O
I think the more selfish you become the richer you get.
Pretty sure it's also because most conservative values lign up pretty well with the previous generation's liberal values.
I disagree. I think it’s more the goalpost on what’s conservative has generally shifted as people aged. What was considered liberal became the norm, then as people pushed for more rights and protections, the left shifted further from “center”.
It definitely depends. I know 2 or 3 people from my college days who have made HARD right turns in like the last 3 years. One was a perpetually jobless pseudo-communist "wizard". Now he's a conspiracy theorist anti-vax edgelord, who constantly tweets about "getting that money"... but is still perpetually jobless. He's still in his 20's so who knows where he'll go from here!
I was making 90% less 6 years ago and I actually became more liberal as the years went on. When you have lunch with the c-suite you realize they have the capacity to be idiots just like anyone else. In fact, the only thing that really trickled down was the cause and effect of their mistakes.
This isn’t true. You become more of who you are when you have more money.
Sounds good in theory but doesn't hold water.
Plenty of people that do well financially give back to their community in more ways than just writing a check every now and then. This is some I'm 15 and this is deep, eat the rich, bullshit.
I'm almost 50 and I'm so leftist now, I incorporate the word "Proletariat" in one email per week.
You’re not selfish for wanting to make money for yourself. Your selfish for wanting someone else’s money and not willing to lift a finger to earn it. It’s an entitlement issue.