We got handed a shit sandwich.
this post was submitted on 26 Jan 2024
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I live with my grandparents. My 80 year old grandmother who never had to work offers me daily career advice. They bought many 3 bedroom brick homes in the late 80's for 15k and now rent them out for close to 1k per month. I love them dearly, but they've contributed to holding back an entire generation from homeownership. They got to enjoy life on easy mode and now wonder why I can't get my shit together. They wonder why I'm not buying a 350k house on a $15 an hour income, or getting married and starting a family.
Because you took everything and won't give it up. Because you used all the easy to reach resources. Because you fucked up pensions and healthcare and education and housing and every other facet of society and now don't care that I'm living in the shitstorm you created. Fucking hell.
Please let me know where I can rent a 3-bedroom brick home for 1k per month and sign me up with your grandma's rental business.
They aren't super nice houses or anything. They're just small brick homes, maybe 1,200 Sq ft. They're what used to be considered starter homes, and now they're probably worth around 140k. The problem is there are no job opportunities in a small rural town other than fast food and grocery stores. No young person can afford to buy these old "starter homes" when they make $12-14 an hour. It would be irresponsible even for a 2 income household to finance something like these houses, and they are the cheapest in town.
New developments are going up because the older generations sell off their family land for insane prices. The new houses go for 350k. It's killing small towns because the young people leave. I don't know what the answer is, but I daydream about living simply in small villages and truly having a life vs whatever the fuck this is.
Ask them for a house and see what happens.
Someone's getting used bootstraps for Xmas!!!
At least they'll be nice and tight instead of all stretched out. Those grandparents' bootstraps were never pulled.
Young people could set up conditions to make a lot more money if they would all vote but the rich have convinced people that tax cuts for the wealthy are more important.
if they would all vote
I'm sick of this fucking victim blaming. There's a reason why the DNC doesn't release demographic information for the primary elections. It's because the Boomers are dominating the primaries and enabling the DNC to continue running the same procorporate trash they've always run. If you're going to shame younger people for not voting then in the same sentence you should be calling out Boomers for being selfish pieces of shit and electing the worst possible options and fucking over everybody else.
In 1960, minimum wage in the US was $1.00/hour and the price of the average house was $11,000.00 That was before Nixon decided to drop millions of tons of bombs on Vietnam and pay for it with paper money. Reagan came along and paid for his tax giveaways by printing even more money. In 1960, $1 million was considered a vast fortune that could buy a dozen luxury homes. Now it's what a rich guy pays for a party.
GOP polices destroyed the middle class.
What you are describing is inflation. It was a thing before Nixon, and will continue to be a thing in the future.
You're funny. Yes, inflation existed before Nixon, and warfare existed before nuclear weapons. Just because something exists, that doesn't mean it can't be made worse.
unless we on mass decide to ditch the confetti money and go to a real money such as gold or silver like we used to
I'll do you one better. Let's just stop using money altogether. It's kind of dumb.
How would we trade resources through cows or would you just shoot people and take theirs? Because money represents an easy way of trading resources back and forth. And it's a standard because cows don't weigh the same, etc.
See, we already rely on the government to establish our currency and distribute it to begin with. It really just seems like a middle man with extra steps.
Capitalists really seem to hate the idea of governmental control Over commodities, but that's literally all a government does even with money at the helm. The very money they produce.
Then you deal with debasement though?
This isnt quite a caveman take but close.
We should separate money and state completely and have a money that the state cannot ever control. And my vote is physical gold and silver or monero
Just as designed. This generation is going to be the most educated in history and that's horrifying to those in power, because between that and the free flow of information on the internet (until the tech industry walls it off) means the same line of bullshit they've perpetuated for over a century won't fool this generation.
Good on you all! Keep educating yourselves, asking questions and when they dismiss you be loud until they have to answer.
I bet they're just lazy. They should just buy less machiatos and avocados. They could fix their economy if they bought this new cheap and fantastic product called "Gruel". You can also get the lunch variety, "Scop". Only available through company credits.
As a guy who almost exclusively "eats" Soylent, I feel targeted lol. I know your post is supposed to be dystopian satire, but... Unironically though, I'm the healthiest I've ever been (375lbs -> 225lbs), and my monthly food expenses are less than a quarter of what it used to be. Been doing this almost 8 years now and while I recognize it's not for everyone, some people could use a little gruel.
Very similar. I am on two bottles of Soylent a day to lose weight. It is working but I can't wait until I get to normal weight and not have to drink soy juice anymore.
There is something so wrong with everything when I am working at my desk, my 12:00 alarms beeps, I spend two minutes drinking my lunch, and now I can just go back to work. Like what the fuck. My ancestors toiled for a 100,000 years for this?
Do you have a plan for not rebounding? The thing about weight is it's simple, not easy. Simple as in calories in <= calories out. Not easy as in willpower to maintain the net equation. If you get down to a weight and immediately go back to what you were doing, you'll just gain the weight right back. Your lifestyle shift doesn't need to be bottles of goup for 2 meals a day but you do need to find a sustainable way to have <= 400kcal breakfasts and lunches forever.
My solution was to just keep drinking the goup lol
You honestly piss me off because I have a mystery disease and have not eaten solid food for five months. I live on Ensure and Gatorade. The fact that you can choose to eat want you wanted but don't?
And sure, I've lost weight too. And I was overweight. I'm now within 10 pounds of my ideal weight according to my BMI. I don't get to go to the Mayo Clinic until the end of March. I will be underweight by then. Possibly significantly- my weight loss amount tends to fluctuate, but it can be over a pound a day sometimes. Hoo-fucking-ray. Oh yeah, also I'm not spending much on food BECAUSE I CAN'T FUCKING EAT IT.
(Please no medical advice. If I'm going to the Mayo Clinic, you don't have the answer.)
I'm far from alone even with people who don't have mystery diseases. There are plenty of people on severe dietary restrictions because of their health who would love to do nothing more than eat a large pizza or a burger, something they will never be able do to again for the rest of their lives.
Go eat some real food. Because you can.
I haven't been so annoyed in a while.
I upset you because... I found a sustainable way to eat better without breaking the bank, and I'm now healthy for it? I'm sorry that you have to deal with whatever you're dealing with; nobody deserves to live in a universe where their body rejects common foods. I'm not a doctor don't worry; I have no medical advice for you. I do have some philosophical advice though. You should look within to figure out why you're mad at me; I'm not your enemy.
You upset me because you could eat whatever you want and instead live on nutrition shakes when, not just me, but a huge number of people wish they had the choice you did. And wouldn't brag about it.
I cannot "eat whatever I want". Eating whatever I wanted lead me to be 375lbs. Since I cannot eat whatever I want, I choose to eat something convenient, easy to count, and inexpensive to obtain. I live a life closer to yours than you think, constantly wishing I could eat whatever I desired and remain healthy. I brag about it because for me it's hard to choose to do the right thing, and I make the right choice every day, multiple times a day.
An alcoholic should be proud to brag about being 8 years sober, shouldn't they?
Okay, you're right. I apologize.
We're all in this world together dude/dudette/dudelse, I truly wish you the best and hope you get whatever you've got figured out. I'm glad we found some common ground; that's what this place (is? should be?) all about!
The problem is it should be optional. A family of 4, a single parent, or a college grad working 60hrs a week shouldn't only be able to afford gruel.
If you watch old educational and industrial movies from the 1950s (yes, some of us here on Lemmy are, amazingly, weird), you find out that people living on a single income of a father working at a service station could afford a house and a decent dinner for their family.
That may not be 100% accurate, but the fact that they even show it as plausible would be seen as utter nonsense today.
Even going back to the 1980s- Both Roseanne and Dan in Roseanne have trouble holding down a job, but they can still afford a house for their large family and they don't go hungry. Even on Married With Children, they are poor, but they have a house for their four-person family and don't go hungry on a single shoe salesman's salary and no one thought, "how ridiculous! A shoe salesman? With a house?" at the time.
You do have to factor in race, that a lot of what you see on tv was idealised even at the time, and that we now also have unimaginable luxuries that we take for granted. Proper insulation, phones, computers, unlimited music, etc.
In 1950 you could buy a median US house for $20k. A fridge/freezer cost $400, a tv cost $300 and a washer and dryer would cost $500.
Now a median house costs $400k. If the cost of household appliances and electronics had risen as much as houses had, a freezer would cost $8000, a tv would cost $6000 and a washer + dryer would set you back $10000.
It's also worth noting the quality of the items you were receiving. Those washers and dryers never broke, and if they did, they were easily repairable.
You can still buy commercial grade fridges and washing machines for half the price.
I dont know a single person who wouldn't be happy to buy a 8k freezer, a 6k tv and a 10k washer+dryer if it meant they could buy a 20k house.
Obviously it was idealized, but no one looked at it and thought "this is absolutely ridiculous and unachievable." And definitely race is a factor, since all the families I mentioned were white, and in the 1950s also benefited from the whites only G.I. Bill, but the idea that it was achievable for anyone on a low income as plausible rather than so idealized as to be impossible shows that it wasn't as ridiculous as it is today.
I mean you also had poor families, both white and black, on TV- The Honeymooners and Good Times both come to mind. But even there, they did mostly okay. And Good Times took place in the projects.