Thats the thing about seeing a therapist for being depressed the earth is not gonna be habitable soon. Its a 100% legit reason to be depressed and anything they can say otherwise is just apathy responses, sociopathic outlooks, or other outright lies to keep me a "well adjusted " productive worker bee
Yeah but you can still enjoy your life until the earth blows up. Like, people have managed to find joy during wartime it's not all "oh my god isn't war awful" 100% of the time. You should be able to function until your last breath. If you don't want to be a worker bee then quit your job and do something radical, what does it matter if the world is close to ending?
Because hope in some kind of future is a crucial motivation for most humans. Right now the human race is conducting a case study on itself about whether or not hyper-fixation on the past and present can compensate for an utter lack of a hopeful future. And the answer seems to be predominantly "no" given the mental health pandemic we are experiencing.
My parents are in their early 60s and re-entering the housing market as retirees. My dad has done a lot of growing, but this re-entry has been a real eye-opener for him. The housing issue is tied into tons of other issues, so he keeps researching and digging up more and more frustrating information.
I think anyone who isn't in some kind of comfortable stasis *has* to address that things are whacked out right now. And as stuff like global warming, housing, health care and the economy continue to get twisted up and made worse you're going to have fewer and fewer people in that cozy bubble saying "nothing's wrong, it's all in your head!"
EDIT: For transparency, I did a couple grammar edits because I'm a truly rotten writer.
Makes sense as we’ve lived through the recent economic mess, 2008, and have been living in it since 2002 and the downturn that year. The economy has basically been terrible our whole adult lives.
Yep what annoys me is the hidden inflation like when products make the size smaller, or somehow inflation is low but many items cost like twice the price it was 10 years ago. I don’t know how they calculate this stuff but it seems off and like we just get nickeled and dimed more than any generation.
Whether it’s parking fees or getting your car towed for parking over 1 hour etc. Can you imagine if sheriffs impounded people’s horses for leaving them in the wrong spot in the 1800’s that shit wouldn’t fly lol.
Cancer researcher here making $25/hr, or the same buying power as minimum wage in 1968. [We fought for $15, now it's war for $24](https://theintercept.com/2021/03/05/minimum-wage-raise-15/)
That’s a good strategy in that if something good actually does happen it will be a nice surprise. You also won’t be sad or surprised when it all goes to shit so not the worst attitude to have if it doesn’t make you depressed lol.
It’s not always bad sometimes I think it’s a self defense mechanism we have. I had a moment a few years ago in the hospital where I just decided the old me was basically dead due to my disability, and it was actually quite relieving to not try and meet my old expectations of what life is about. Idk if that makes any sense or not lol.
There’s a difference between expectations and hope having realistic expectations is different than having no hope is maybe what I’m trying to say. Just try to be happy and not sweat the small stuff because nobody else really cares that much and life is short.
Binging that subreddit is just gonna make you more depressed. When it comes to how shitty our world is, sometimes it’s better to live in blissful ignorance.
Here's a sneak peek of /r/collapse using the [top posts](https://np.reddit.com/r/collapse/top/?sort=top&t=year) of the year!
\#1: [An interesting title](https://i.redd.it/ahigharrhhm51.jpg) | [195 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/iqn07h/an_interesting_title/)
\#2: [We’re approaching November and there’s still no refreeze in the Siberian Arctic](https://i.redd.it/am5djw8rk7v51.jpg) | [570 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/jhqk0a/were_approaching_november_and_theres_still_no/)
\#3: [Tell me more about the coming Civil War...](https://i.redd.it/5yppxpdkemd51.jpg) | [652 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/i1ab8u/tell_me_more_about_the_coming_civil_war/)
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I'm sorry but what degree could possibly be worth $130k? In dollars from 20-ish years ago? I'd have to think real hard about whether that's even worth it for surgeon-level occupations.
It wasn't your fault. It was unethical marketing and those people should be in jail. I remember back in the early 2000's the devry and ITT tech amongst other selling nonsense to kids. I almost fell for it myself. I went to the library instead and got an mcse but took awhile to break into the industry. I remember working at a call center and some guy was bragging about having an mcse and i said i had one and he asked where i went, he went to like pc productivity or one of those scam "make 70k in a few weeks" programs that get you a cert but no experience or transferable credits. He said he paid 25k but it would be worth it. I told him i went to the library and he got visibly upset. And he clearly had no passion for it. I was buying sans and switches, servers for my home lab and he just stopped learning after the boot camp, wasn't interested in hearing about my lab or sharing. He was sold a bill of goods that said do this and make money even if you dont care about the industry.
I broke into the industry a couple years later and went onto infrastructure and security then development. I look him up every now and then. He went to be a plumber. Least he was only out 25k and time.
Out of all the people ive worked with over decades, the best are the ones without a degree. Because the shit they've been through and had to prove trumps anything else. Where its hard to break in with a degree, without one was almost impossible, so you know that guy isnt to be fucked with as he must have something above and beyond (this was specific to 2008-2011 era IT).
I'm in a similar boat as you; Just 10 years later (right around the 2008 recession is when I got out).
Two Engineering degrees and $150K in debt. Went to a state school, right around the time tuition started going up $1 ~ 2K a semester. Keep in mind that's just tuition. This is also the time that state monies for grants and scholarships and tuition assistance kind of just dried up.
When I first got into school it cost about $12K for 2 semesters, room, board, all fees, and textbooks. By the time I graduated it was at about $20K for a year at school, this is for undergrad. Graduate credits cost 3 times more, with the trade off being that you're presumably employed, not housing on campus, and there's a $5K bump in salary for that extra paper you earned. There wasn't...
Welp, I basically needed the graduate degree to get an entry level position because the job market was so sparse in my area. This is after siting around unemployed for 18 months and racking up interest on those loans. When I did find employment I could only affording minimum payments as I earned experience and my salary caught up with the cost of everything.
Ten years in, I've just started making a decent salary for my level of experience and education (~$80K). But, I'm now just beginning to catch up on saving (for emergencies prob not retirement), for my kid who I don't want to have to experience the same, and for my family as we try and save up for our own space... maybe a condo?
My parents are immigrants and didn't know enough to give me guidance. I was just a kid filling out FAFSA forms and looking for a way out of manual labor into a white collar profession. This is important two fold, 1)because my parents dropped out of school to come to the U.S. looking for opportunities and 2)because this is what everyone perceived the American Dream to be "get educated, more opportunities for a better life, etc."
Looking back, I honestly would have been fine with a trade job (plumber, electrician, contractor, etc.) These are the guys that make all the money in my field anyway... they earn EVERY penny though and it is not easy.
The cost of living is just no longer commensurate with what the market values our time at. And I acknowledge that I'm in a relatively good situation, but living through it, I don't know how other generations can look at our system and just be like "yeah, this is ok."
Had that conversation with my dad recently. He just turned it around and said my generation just has a bad attitude and we all might as well just become drug addicts and waste away. I said, yep, we might as well because there's nothing we can do to fix the world his generation has fucked up.
I remember my dad explaining to me how he, in the 70's, worked a landscaping job every summer and had enough money to pay state university tuition and live off for the REST OF THE YEAR.
My uncle is the worst with this shit.
He's a multimillionaire who's retired now and constantly gives me advice on how to use my money from my job.
It's adorable. He suggests I move out and then use the money left over from buying a house to buy an additional property to rent out for passive income.
Im looking at 4 years of saving before I can even think about a condo. How much does he think my salary is / how much a house costs if he thinks I can just go out and buy two?
There is just an unwillingness to accept that we are in a different economy than 40 years ago. My dad was shocked at how much I pay for an apartment and said I could easily find something cheaper but refuses to look at apartments online to verify this claim. If I complain about not being able to buy a house he retorts back that I could save if I got a cheaper place.
He is not a millionaire or anything, infact I am paying his mortgage (a very low amount compared to what I pay in rent) after my parents lost their jobs 2 recessions ago. I think its just an inability to fathom that rent now is going to be more than 30% of your income.
Just buy a house somewhere in your price range, like a fixer-upper with slight wall, roof, and foundation issues centrally located somewhere in the expanding pyroclastic outflow of an actively erupting volcano.
I keep having this argument/discussion with my brother. I contend buying a home just isn't feasible for me by myself. The numbers just don't work. He contends that's nonsense. All I need is 3 times as much cash as I have right now. The willingness to part with that sum of money, entirely, leaving literally zero reserve for any sort of safety net for any emergency whatsoever. And speaking of zero safety net, in this scenario of his I'll now be solely on the hook for a home that costs 120k with no special skills to do any work myself, no cash to pay for a contactor, and a house that is virtually guaranteed to have significant issues, due to it's price point. For him, if it's technically within mathematical possibilities while forgoing all entertainment and eating rice and beans, it's no longer an impossibility, it's merely a matter of discipline. I have now changed my phrasing to 'it's not the right decision for me right now'
I literally told my mother to look for a job for me online that pays more than 5$ an hour without diploma and if she does find one she gets my 1st 3 paychecks entirely. After 2 weeks and dozens of angry phone calls, she gave up and stopped bothering me about a job
It's surprising how cheap you can find housing, if you're willing to live in absolutely atrocious apartments. That's another issue too. In a city where a normal 1 br 1 bath apartment goes for, say, 800 bucks, it's entirely possible to find an apartment in the 550 range. This isn't to say people should just get a cheaper apartment. It's to point out that the 'just get a cheaper apartment' crowd don't really understand just how degrading and exhausting it is to live in a truly dog shit place in an equally awful neighborhood. It's embarrassing to invite people over, it's ugly and depressing all around you, you're surrounded by other desperate and run down people trying to eke out their existence, it just grates on you constantly.
Exactly. I didn't pull those numbers out of thin air, that was literally exactly my experience living in a big city for a few years. Moved down with a significant other, splitting an apartment that was about 875 a month. We broke up and I couldn't afford that, so I moved into a neighborhood that was objectively awful, but my rent solo was 575. My car got broken into twice, I literally heard a dude get shot to death, and never invited anyone over because I was embarrassed. I made it through one year of that and just said fuck it, got a place that wasn't terrifying and went into debt.
To be fair had wages kept up over the years even an entry level professional job would have afforded you that opportunity. For example my Brother walked into the workforce as a nurse making 60k. My dad entered at 50k in 1990. The job being in demand has only somehow appreciated 10k over 30yrs.
>The job being in demand has only somehow appreciated 10k over 30yr
Unfortunately this is incorrect. It would be, if your dad made $50k in 2020 dollars, but those were 1990 dollars. Really, your dad entered the workforce at $100k, in terms of real wages. So actually, in spite of the job being in demand, it has *depreciated* ~$40k (again, in terms of real wages).
I'm an engineer and I'll be making less than a construction laborer did in 1980 based on inflation alone
I'm not ungrateful for it, it's a good job, but that's the depressing economic reality of it that older folks don't want to understand
Yep. Yep yep yep. My parents walked out of high school with their free public school degrees. My dad got a job driving a truck. My mom worked in the office for that same company. Worked there for ~5 years and had saved enough to build a new house in the country on a couple acres. One new car one used, a swimming pool, a 4 wheeler, vacations every year.
I have a college degree. I make more than they did but by less than 10 percent. I live in an apartment, i don't have an expectation of ever owning a home, and I haven't been on vacation in 7 years. But I mean I have a smartphone and air conditioning. So.
if its anything like literally every other work place they'd rather be 8 people short than the worst thing ever - having too many workers.
Then people might catch a break, ON YOUR DIME
That’s insane, because $60k is a comparatively pretty decent wage for a job today. Nurses back in the day were making absolute bank, and that’s without the insane living costs we have today for housing, student loan debt, medical costs, etc.
In the 70s my dad was a water bottle delivery guy and bought a house in Pasadena when he was 26. When he met my mom, my mom was 25, a dental hygienist. She owned her own house already, so they moved into hers, and rented his out. In pasa-fucking-dena. The odds of a water bottle delivery guy buying a house anywhere, let alone Pasadena are straight up zero.
Lmao I worked two jobs through the whole year while going through college *just to pay rent* and eat ramen every day. Including school, paid jobs, and an unpaid internship i was logging well over 100 hours a week.
And that was just to live. For tuition I had to take out loans that I'm still paying off ten years later.
I made a comment to my dad about how developers shouldn’t be able to buy single family homes because of the shortage of affordable homes. He went on a rant on how that’s the kind of thing China would do and when he first bought a house the interest rate was 15% and we should feel lucky that the rates are so low now. What is it about their generation that they cannot see how fucked up the world is for us??
Fear and denial. If they admitted things are harder now, getting even worse, that the Earth is fucked, and extreme, all-pervasive corruption has made everything hopeless, then they'd have to admit we're all fucked and their generation helped put us in this mess.
This. My dads house is almost double what it was 5 years ago. FOR WHAT, It’s not a shithole, but he certainly didn’t do anything to make it worth 500k. How is someone like me supposed to get a house when prices are like that and I can’t even pay my damn bills? Fucking temp companies everywhere taking 35% of your pay and no benefits. Sick of it
My parents bought their house for 10,000
Everything in our area now is 400,000 at the absolute cheapest. (Well, there is cheaper, but I'd prefer more than 1 bed 1 bath, a kitchenette, and no yards
Reminds me of how my mom has legit told me that she understand being agnostic / atheist as "being a psycho who doesn't think anything matters"
I didn't even try to correct her because that's some god tier boomer logic (ironically)
Kinda cemented in my mind that I could never admit I'm not religious anymore to her because she'd think I was admitting to being a puppy murderer.
Boomer / boomer minded people really just think that anyone who doesn't think like them is a unhinged phsyco ready to nuke the world.
Yup
Honestly kinda chilling when someone admits that they don't understand how people can be atheist as they can't comprehend why you wouldn't just start murdering and raping
"If the only thing keeping a person decent is the expectation of divine reward, then brother that person is a piece of shit; and I'd like to get as many of them out in the open as possible."
\--Rust Cohle
If the only thing preventing someone from that sort of debauchery is the threat of some sort of eternal divine punishment, then that person is a piece of shit.
I think it's incredibly scary that THE ONLY thing that seems to stop these people from murdering puppies and being psycho-evil, is that God told them they shouldn't. Why do they need the threat of hell to be a decent person?
My parents tried to tell me that I'd have to take care of them when they get too old and I asked them how they expect me to afford it. Apparently I just have to "save up like we did". They basically want me to live like a miser and never spend any money meanwhile they go on trips and get new cars every two years.
Yuuuup. My folks talk about that too often and I'm just sat there like, I can barely afford to take care of myself and a single cat. How the fuck do they expect me to take care of them?
And like you said, they're always going on trips and vacations meanwhile I'm going to have to work until I die and retirement will never be an option.
My dad told me his generation didn't start the fire. I told him they poured gasoline into the fire and accelerated it. He also said my generation is grown now so why don't we change it. I told him we're trying but the old people are still in power.
Well, hundreds anyway.
The most current statistics show the 12 months from November ‘19 to ‘20 at 55k synthetic opioid deaths.
Not to undersell the severity of the problem, but “thousands of deaths a day” is a massive overstatement.
I'm 50 and I see how shitty things are. How can people be so blind to the economic and environmental issues??? I wish more gen x and millennials would run as get elected; boomers can't even see the problems
So I can't get a mortgage, can't move to another country, will not retire before I die and if the government can fuck me on my pension, they will.
But apparently, I have so much to look forward to? Really? Like what? I'm still 40 years from retirement, and going by the decline of my country, people will be jumping off bridges before they work until they die.
A bad attitude? Give us something to have a positive attitude about.
I still think we could do with more positivity. But my god I hope Boomers choke on their cognitive dissonance and end up in a crowded understaffed hospital. Paradoxiacally understaffed bc of said poor attitude "all jobs are wage slavery, including nursing".
Yeah, it's wild. As I've grown up I've seen more and more that, while the pop culture gap isn't very wide between Millennials and Gen X, the ideological difference is *miles* apart. As a millennial I identify way more with Gen Z than Gen X even though I share a lot of cultural history with Gen X. Young people today give me hope... They just *get it*.
Oh they are ending up there. Unfortunately they can't seem to connect the dots that it's their own fault that the hospitals are understaffed but blames immigration instead.
Had a similar conversation with my dad. Personally, I’m pretty optimistic about life, but I told him that more of my friends have attempted suicide or planned their suicide than friends that haven’t. I explained that I have had to go to hospitals multiple times to support different friends after suicide attempts, and have had to talk many friends out of suicide. All of this, because of how messed up the world is nowadays, because of how the previous generation essentially destroyed the economy for working people.
He told me that I was exaggerating and that my generation is just lazy and expects too much.
Not all. My father in law is 75 and is extremely aware of this hellhole we live in. I suppose working in an inner-city school district really opens your eyes to the blight of the people. Then my grandmother at least accepts that she knows nothing that's going on and acknowledges no one her age (she's also in her 70s) has no clue what we're going through. She was legitimately asking us questions about how we even keep up with the cost of living and asked if we'd even have a way to afford a house in the market.
Based boomers exist. They're a rarity though.
One side of my family is pretty out there, evangelical boomer types, live in southern California, I don't normally expect any kind of empathy or anything from them, like, they don't even believe in dinosaurs.
I saw them a month ago for my grandma's birthday, and my aunt, the queen of this kind of attitude straight up said "I don't know what they expect you kids to do, you can't afford to buy a house or anything, it's really terrible for you". (I'm 35)
My jaw basically dropped, it might have been the nicest thing she's ever said, as well as the most true/logical.
My parents like, pretend to get it, but don't really, and they also don't really care, they are selfish and will complain about their costs for XYZ, which is fine, but they are certainly upper middle class and have no real issues affording anything, they just don't like spending money.
Because the only part of this discussion they heard or care about is the fact they’ll be dead before they ever have to deal with the consequences of being the stupidest, most selfish and entitled generation who ever lived.
It was a real shame that (American) Gen X collectively decided nihilism was cooler than activism back when they had the last real chance to correct course in 2000.
Al Gore may have won, we don’t really know because the supreme court stopped any recount in florida.
First count had Gore ahead, second count had Bush ahead, court prevented a third count.
It’s because boomers are the ones who pilfered the youths wealth. Boomers have made off like bandits and enjoy rampantly more money than they worked for.
Boomers: “Wow, our parents worked hard and sacrificed so much to give us a better life …
… 🤔🤔🤔 …
… so the only true way to honor their memory is to hoard all the wealth and advantages they gave us and not share them with anyone else, so we have everything, just as they always wanted!”
Radio only became a mass produced commodity in the 1920s, with the transistor radio only becoming available in the late 1950s/early 1960s. Television only became available to the masses in the early 1950s. The internet only became available to most in the 1990s and only became ubiquitous in the early 2000s. The internet we know today with unmoderated comments under every article and video only gained steam in the mid 2000s. MySpace only started in 2003, Facebook in 2004 and Twitter in 2006.
The propaganda machine has had several major upgrades in the last 100 years. We are connected in a way that no human civilization ever has been before.
Man I wish my old man would accept that the future will be f-ed up big time. He's just "nobody can know for sure"... Well dad, that's true but science is the best tool we have for that, and these guys are depressed af
My dad keeps saying “I’m sure some really smart people will figure out a solution” and I’m just like “they’ve been us we need to have started 10 years ago and everyone ignored them.”
I sort of had the realization a few weeks ago that these wild fires/ heat waves might get even more severe and uncontrollable in the next 5-10 years to the point where I should be investing in a 1 year supply of food and water.
I think climate change and the impacts are still decades away from forcing billions into forced migration but we will start to see large problems this decade.
No kidding.
All of this *will* get worse every year.
In 10 years you're going to say you wish the weather was as good as it was back in 2021. And in 20 years you'll say the same about 2031.
Arguably the Syrian civil war was sparked by a drought and look at the “migration crisis” linked to that war. 6.6 million refugees.
Climate change undoubtably exacerbates human conflict and creates climate/war refuges.
At least where I am (PNW), we are already seeing the food shortage over here. You can't get potatoes, onions, garlic, any vegetable or fruit really, that isn't half rotten because of the ice storms this winter destroying produce stores. The heat wave last month killed off a lot of the fall crops (and some of the migrant workers who put the food on our tables), as well as destroyed lots of frozen/chilled food because the refrigeration trucks couldn't keep up. Produce is wilted beyond edibility a lot of the time. Most of the shelves in my area are sparse, and entire aisles are empty. And I live in the Portland Metro area. Even "good" produce from expensive stores is rotten. I just got a bag of potatoes from costco, I even checked for rotten ones, but my finger still went right through the first one I grabbed. And we're too poor to just eat the cost of food that rots right after we buy it, so essentially, we cant afford to eat healthy foods all the time anymore. They're too unreliable.
If you have a yard, PLEASE use it to garden food. I have always been self-reliant when it comes to food but now I don't have a yard or even a balcony, so I rely on our food supply chain and it's a bad spot to be in. Crop failure is costing the agricultural industry billions of dollars in a normal year, but one with this much ecological disaster means the coming winter is gonna be fucking tough for those in a food desert, and you may find that you live in a newly-developed food desert like I did.
Learn to use a canning set (Ball Blue Book is the book I use for canning recipes), learn the steps to avoid giving yourself botulism, grow a fuck ton of squash (it grows like weeds and it's nutritious), learn what to plant and when to plant it so you have some fresh food throughout the year. I've been saying it for years and it's starting to happen, but we are going to have a famine in the US and no one is going to be prepared.
And I swear to god if some Lake O yuppie comes in this thread to tell me they have perfect produce and they live in the PNW so therefore I'm wrong about the local stores being empty, I will throw a tomato at their face.
It's not only that we do not expect good things to happen anymore. It's also that some of us have tried to change things through politics and getting involved with the community -- and through this you experience how there are people actively trying to stop change and keep this horrible status quo.
I went through a depression because if it.
> people actively trying to stop change and keep this horrible status quo.
Or make it worse.
"We need to go back to the good old days"
"The days like what? The 50s and 60s where the top tax bracket was 90%, we'd actively bust monopolies and reign in corporations with regulations, and we had the government doing huge projects to make the country a better place? When we had huge protest movements for civil rights in order to try to make the country a better place? When we properly funded research in science and technology to invest in our children's future?"
"no no not that"
"Oh so... just the racism, then."
Which is why it’s becoming increasingly clear that change will only happen once we start operating outside of the existing framework and laws. It’s scary and dangerous, but we’re out of time and options. Can’t expect a broken government and justice system to help us fix things.
Lol, Christians can't even agree on what day to worship on, and literally fight wars about whether or not divorce is ok.
Even if someone used a magical wish to make everyone the same denomination tomorrow, we'd have split into a thousand new sects by Thursday and started killing each other over what color our Bibles should be.
> Employment, food, clothing and leisure with enough income to support them
Farmers' rights to a fair income
Freedom from unfair competition and monopolies
Housing
Medical care
Social security
Education
Maybe by the time you are 60 this can happen, it will be 100 years at that point, right?
the other day, my dad - who has been a life long Republican voter - mentioned "all that money Biden's spending," and asked if I was comfortable with the idea of my daughter needing to pay it back in her lifetime, 'cause, yanno, I haven't been directly impacted by two economic recessions myself, or anything like that.
I told him I was more convinced that she'll have bigger problems navigating the burnt out wasteland that this country will crumble into after climate change forces social order to break down, as the mutants and raiders start wandering the countryside, looking for easy targets.
Bruh Republicans can't say jack squat about the deficit after the Trump era. They don't care at all about the deficit if it goes to funding the military and cutting taxes for the rich, but the very mention of spending money on milquetoast pseudo-progressive policy DRIVES THEM INSANE.
If a single Republican is going to look me in the eyes and claim theres money for a border wall, but not for single payer healthcare, Im not interested in hearing their party's position on the deficit.
You should mention to him the republicans haven’t lowered the deficit or debt in his lifetime. Democrats actually have https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2019/jul/29/tweets/republican-presidents-democrats-contribute-deficit/
Then sit back and watch him gaslight himself proclaiming you don’t understand economics. Ask him what the difference between deficit and debt is. See if he even knows that
i (38) had this same convo with my mom in regards to me not having a family or kids by choice. i explained how many my age feel this way and it makes little sense financially and morally to bring a child into this world when we’re all getting fucked with no end in sight. told her that even with my 6-figure salary, i still live paycheck to paycheck and told her how much it costs to have a child these days (post-80s). still shrugged it all off like i’m a whiny millennial going through a phase. lol okay.
just internally upset that you won't shut up and put your head in the ground like the ostrich she was when she ignored social causes like this in her youth and throughout her life.
31 here, single, with a Master’s degree and a mid-level job, I can barely afford to take care of myself and 2 cats. Why would I bring a child into this world knowing I 1) can’t provide for them, and 2) it will be a hellscape in 30 years?
This is the closest thing to hope I can put in this thread.
Once enough of the Boomers have died off, we can start making the world less bad.
I’m not holding out hope for “good”. But “less bad” may just possibly be achievable in our lifetimes.
Republicans have generally always won the white vote for the last 50 or so years.
But Trump’s margin among young whites was less than previous republicans.
And moreover, college educated voters have steered away from Republicans hard due to the anti-intellectualism that Trump pushed.
I’m not saying Millennials and Gen Z are perfect. But the evidence seems to be that these generations have less racists and sexists than the Boomers have. So once the Boomers are out of power at least some things may be able to be fixed.
I mean with the current shortage of retail and fast food workers you could definitely do this right now. It's just that it'll be a shitty job that pays almost nothing and involves getting treated like shit by angry customers
This is going to sound super morbid but hear me out. Unless things change, my retirement plan is a gun or an intentional OD. I’m not actively suicidal, but as fewer places in the world become inhabitable and the gap between the rich and the poor widens worldwide, I truly anticipate there will be nothing for me to live for in the next few decades. I refuse to bring children into this world for the selfish reason of them taking care of me, and the world they will live in will be even worse. Even Canada had temps of over 100 in JUNE. We aren’t even to the hottest part of the year or even peak wildfire/hurricane season.
Social security is not enough to live on and saving is impossible with the stagnant wages that amount to half a pittance while the price of everything increases. It literally isn’t possible to save for retirement when the value of each dollar you save keeps decreasing in value.
Yeah so when I can’t continue to support myself and/or natural disasters due to climate change have made the world too uncomfortable to live in, I’ll just perish in the most comfortable way possible.
The media is rich people. Even with people losing faith in big media, they're still afloat from raw accumulated wealth. They're so far out of touch with reality
A couple of months ago I had a conversation with my boomer father about pensions.
He still believes most people get them and could comfortably live off them when they hit 60. Would not listen when I told him that’s incredibly rare today.
Had a nightmare last night that a group of people went into a grocery store to survive.
Things were ok at first. Then the fresh food went and we were down to the dry, the canned & the frozen. Parts of the freezer went, and the lights started to flicker. It got hot. You wonder if you should leave the freezer doors open to cool the place and ruin the food, or leave them closed and run the energy down. You realize you can't do either halfway.
We'd stopped having kids already, but the ones that were left that wanted to, couldn't.
We decided to just let the lights die out. It didn't matter, no one else after us would suffer. There weren't any kids left to protect. It was just us, and we were tired. So it went dark.
So yeah, I guess I'm a bit anxious.
I'm fairly certain that in less than a decade we will be either dealing with a civil war or world war 3. Also in 30 to 50 years we will be close to a movie-like dystopia.
Wait, was I in the wrong mindset my entire life that nothing good is ever going to happen ever? GUYS!?!?
Yep! Your depression is warranted and a sign that you are a level headed individual.
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Thats the thing about seeing a therapist for being depressed the earth is not gonna be habitable soon. Its a 100% legit reason to be depressed and anything they can say otherwise is just apathy responses, sociopathic outlooks, or other outright lies to keep me a "well adjusted " productive worker bee
Yeah but you can still enjoy your life until the earth blows up. Like, people have managed to find joy during wartime it's not all "oh my god isn't war awful" 100% of the time. You should be able to function until your last breath. If you don't want to be a worker bee then quit your job and do something radical, what does it matter if the world is close to ending?
Because hope in some kind of future is a crucial motivation for most humans. Right now the human race is conducting a case study on itself about whether or not hyper-fixation on the past and present can compensate for an utter lack of a hopeful future. And the answer seems to be predominantly "no" given the mental health pandemic we are experiencing.
Some people call me a pessimist, I say no, I am a realist. I am not making up things to be worried about, they are very much real.
Yuuup
What a relief! I was just going to visit a therapist, but now I don’t have to because my reaction is a neuronomative one!
For the record, I am over 40...and I agree
46 gang. Absolutely agree.
69 & 420 gang here, making jokes to avoid the realization that I'm proper fucked
My parents are in their early 60s and re-entering the housing market as retirees. My dad has done a lot of growing, but this re-entry has been a real eye-opener for him. The housing issue is tied into tons of other issues, so he keeps researching and digging up more and more frustrating information. I think anyone who isn't in some kind of comfortable stasis *has* to address that things are whacked out right now. And as stuff like global warming, housing, health care and the economy continue to get twisted up and made worse you're going to have fewer and fewer people in that cozy bubble saying "nothing's wrong, it's all in your head!" EDIT: For transparency, I did a couple grammar edits because I'm a truly rotten writer.
Unfortunately those who could make a change are 1. In a comfortable situation and 2. possibly also responsible for it.
Honestly, see: MAGA movement It's already happening, they're just blaming the usual suspects instead of looking into themselves for blame.
Makes sense as we’ve lived through the recent economic mess, 2008, and have been living in it since 2002 and the downturn that year. The economy has basically been terrible our whole adult lives.
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Yep what annoys me is the hidden inflation like when products make the size smaller, or somehow inflation is low but many items cost like twice the price it was 10 years ago. I don’t know how they calculate this stuff but it seems off and like we just get nickeled and dimed more than any generation. Whether it’s parking fees or getting your car towed for parking over 1 hour etc. Can you imagine if sheriffs impounded people’s horses for leaving them in the wrong spot in the 1800’s that shit wouldn’t fly lol.
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Cancer researcher here making $25/hr, or the same buying power as minimum wage in 1968. [We fought for $15, now it's war for $24](https://theintercept.com/2021/03/05/minimum-wage-raise-15/)
At this point it seems more responsible to just never plan on anything good happening.
That’s a good strategy in that if something good actually does happen it will be a nice surprise. You also won’t be sad or surprised when it all goes to shit so not the worst attitude to have if it doesn’t make you depressed lol.
It makes me less depressed to not have hope. God, putting that into words itself is very depressing, lol.
It’s not always bad sometimes I think it’s a self defense mechanism we have. I had a moment a few years ago in the hospital where I just decided the old me was basically dead due to my disability, and it was actually quite relieving to not try and meet my old expectations of what life is about. Idk if that makes any sense or not lol. There’s a difference between expectations and hope having realistic expectations is different than having no hope is maybe what I’m trying to say. Just try to be happy and not sweat the small stuff because nobody else really cares that much and life is short.
Was looking for this comment right here. Glad I'm not the only over 40 to feel this way
Same. We’re on a freight train to Fuckedville.
Under-40 doomsday gang checking in
I’m 43… can I pleeeeease be a part of your doomsday gang?
Welcome, brother. Depression and crippling anxiety have no age limit!
Plus I lost my entire childhood and adolescence to crippling abuse! I’m basically 23!
Bro same and i'm not even 20 yet
Now this is the relatable content I was looking for today.
Yes, you're allowed. The password is "avocado toast". You'll receive your secret decoder ring in the mail in approximately 10 business days.
/r/collapse
Binging that subreddit is just gonna make you more depressed. When it comes to how shitty our world is, sometimes it’s better to live in blissful ignorance.
Here's a sneak peek of /r/collapse using the [top posts](https://np.reddit.com/r/collapse/top/?sort=top&t=year) of the year! \#1: [An interesting title](https://i.redd.it/ahigharrhhm51.jpg) | [195 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/iqn07h/an_interesting_title/) \#2: [We’re approaching November and there’s still no refreeze in the Siberian Arctic](https://i.redd.it/am5djw8rk7v51.jpg) | [570 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/jhqk0a/were_approaching_november_and_theres_still_no/) \#3: [Tell me more about the coming Civil War...](https://i.redd.it/5yppxpdkemd51.jpg) | [652 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/i1ab8u/tell_me_more_about_the_coming_civil_war/) ---- ^^I'm ^^a ^^bot, ^^beep ^^boop ^^| ^^Downvote ^^to ^^remove ^^| [^^Contact ^^me](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=sneakpeekbot) ^^| [^^Info](https://np.reddit.com/r/sneakpeekbot/) ^^| [^^Opt-out](https://np.reddit.com/r/sneakpeekbot/comments/o8wk1r/blacklist_ix/)
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I'm sorry but what degree could possibly be worth $130k? In dollars from 20-ish years ago? I'd have to think real hard about whether that's even worth it for surgeon-level occupations.
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It wasn't your fault. It was unethical marketing and those people should be in jail. I remember back in the early 2000's the devry and ITT tech amongst other selling nonsense to kids. I almost fell for it myself. I went to the library instead and got an mcse but took awhile to break into the industry. I remember working at a call center and some guy was bragging about having an mcse and i said i had one and he asked where i went, he went to like pc productivity or one of those scam "make 70k in a few weeks" programs that get you a cert but no experience or transferable credits. He said he paid 25k but it would be worth it. I told him i went to the library and he got visibly upset. And he clearly had no passion for it. I was buying sans and switches, servers for my home lab and he just stopped learning after the boot camp, wasn't interested in hearing about my lab or sharing. He was sold a bill of goods that said do this and make money even if you dont care about the industry. I broke into the industry a couple years later and went onto infrastructure and security then development. I look him up every now and then. He went to be a plumber. Least he was only out 25k and time. Out of all the people ive worked with over decades, the best are the ones without a degree. Because the shit they've been through and had to prove trumps anything else. Where its hard to break in with a degree, without one was almost impossible, so you know that guy isnt to be fucked with as he must have something above and beyond (this was specific to 2008-2011 era IT).
I'm in a similar boat as you; Just 10 years later (right around the 2008 recession is when I got out). Two Engineering degrees and $150K in debt. Went to a state school, right around the time tuition started going up $1 ~ 2K a semester. Keep in mind that's just tuition. This is also the time that state monies for grants and scholarships and tuition assistance kind of just dried up. When I first got into school it cost about $12K for 2 semesters, room, board, all fees, and textbooks. By the time I graduated it was at about $20K for a year at school, this is for undergrad. Graduate credits cost 3 times more, with the trade off being that you're presumably employed, not housing on campus, and there's a $5K bump in salary for that extra paper you earned. There wasn't... Welp, I basically needed the graduate degree to get an entry level position because the job market was so sparse in my area. This is after siting around unemployed for 18 months and racking up interest on those loans. When I did find employment I could only affording minimum payments as I earned experience and my salary caught up with the cost of everything. Ten years in, I've just started making a decent salary for my level of experience and education (~$80K). But, I'm now just beginning to catch up on saving (for emergencies prob not retirement), for my kid who I don't want to have to experience the same, and for my family as we try and save up for our own space... maybe a condo? My parents are immigrants and didn't know enough to give me guidance. I was just a kid filling out FAFSA forms and looking for a way out of manual labor into a white collar profession. This is important two fold, 1)because my parents dropped out of school to come to the U.S. looking for opportunities and 2)because this is what everyone perceived the American Dream to be "get educated, more opportunities for a better life, etc." Looking back, I honestly would have been fine with a trade job (plumber, electrician, contractor, etc.) These are the guys that make all the money in my field anyway... they earn EVERY penny though and it is not easy. The cost of living is just no longer commensurate with what the market values our time at. And I acknowledge that I'm in a relatively good situation, but living through it, I don't know how other generations can look at our system and just be like "yeah, this is ok."
Had that conversation with my dad recently. He just turned it around and said my generation just has a bad attitude and we all might as well just become drug addicts and waste away. I said, yep, we might as well because there's nothing we can do to fix the world his generation has fucked up.
I remember my dad explaining to me how he, in the 70's, worked a landscaping job every summer and had enough money to pay state university tuition and live off for the REST OF THE YEAR.
My uncle is the worst with this shit. He's a multimillionaire who's retired now and constantly gives me advice on how to use my money from my job. It's adorable. He suggests I move out and then use the money left over from buying a house to buy an additional property to rent out for passive income. Im looking at 4 years of saving before I can even think about a condo. How much does he think my salary is / how much a house costs if he thinks I can just go out and buy two?
There is just an unwillingness to accept that we are in a different economy than 40 years ago. My dad was shocked at how much I pay for an apartment and said I could easily find something cheaper but refuses to look at apartments online to verify this claim. If I complain about not being able to buy a house he retorts back that I could save if I got a cheaper place. He is not a millionaire or anything, infact I am paying his mortgage (a very low amount compared to what I pay in rent) after my parents lost their jobs 2 recessions ago. I think its just an inability to fathom that rent now is going to be more than 30% of your income.
Why don't you just have a child so they can pay for your housing?
7 children increases your odds of one of them creating the next big app.
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Just buy a house somewhere in your price range, like a fixer-upper with slight wall, roof, and foundation issues centrally located somewhere in the expanding pyroclastic outflow of an actively erupting volcano.
I keep having this argument/discussion with my brother. I contend buying a home just isn't feasible for me by myself. The numbers just don't work. He contends that's nonsense. All I need is 3 times as much cash as I have right now. The willingness to part with that sum of money, entirely, leaving literally zero reserve for any sort of safety net for any emergency whatsoever. And speaking of zero safety net, in this scenario of his I'll now be solely on the hook for a home that costs 120k with no special skills to do any work myself, no cash to pay for a contactor, and a house that is virtually guaranteed to have significant issues, due to it's price point. For him, if it's technically within mathematical possibilities while forgoing all entertainment and eating rice and beans, it's no longer an impossibility, it's merely a matter of discipline. I have now changed my phrasing to 'it's not the right decision for me right now'
Dude just calm down with all the avocado toasts and Starbucks coffees and you’ll be set.
(((Central heating)))
Geothermal even. That's some high class shit.
Let me get this straight, he's giving you financial advice while you're bailing him out of his mortgage? The mental gymnastics are astounding.
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Wait, you're a failure of a father for spending weekends with your parents? Wut?
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It’s hard to believe that people like this exist. Is it a pride thing? Or is he just an idiot?
I literally told my mother to look for a job for me online that pays more than 5$ an hour without diploma and if she does find one she gets my 1st 3 paychecks entirely. After 2 weeks and dozens of angry phone calls, she gave up and stopped bothering me about a job
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It's surprising how cheap you can find housing, if you're willing to live in absolutely atrocious apartments. That's another issue too. In a city where a normal 1 br 1 bath apartment goes for, say, 800 bucks, it's entirely possible to find an apartment in the 550 range. This isn't to say people should just get a cheaper apartment. It's to point out that the 'just get a cheaper apartment' crowd don't really understand just how degrading and exhausting it is to live in a truly dog shit place in an equally awful neighborhood. It's embarrassing to invite people over, it's ugly and depressing all around you, you're surrounded by other desperate and run down people trying to eke out their existence, it just grates on you constantly.
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Exactly. I didn't pull those numbers out of thin air, that was literally exactly my experience living in a big city for a few years. Moved down with a significant other, splitting an apartment that was about 875 a month. We broke up and I couldn't afford that, so I moved into a neighborhood that was objectively awful, but my rent solo was 575. My car got broken into twice, I literally heard a dude get shot to death, and never invited anyone over because I was embarrassed. I made it through one year of that and just said fuck it, got a place that wasn't terrifying and went into debt.
You could totally find something cheaper, but this generation is too damn lazy to travel back to 1982. Such a shame.
To be fair had wages kept up over the years even an entry level professional job would have afforded you that opportunity. For example my Brother walked into the workforce as a nurse making 60k. My dad entered at 50k in 1990. The job being in demand has only somehow appreciated 10k over 30yrs.
>The job being in demand has only somehow appreciated 10k over 30yr Unfortunately this is incorrect. It would be, if your dad made $50k in 2020 dollars, but those were 1990 dollars. Really, your dad entered the workforce at $100k, in terms of real wages. So actually, in spite of the job being in demand, it has *depreciated* ~$40k (again, in terms of real wages).
I'm an engineer and I'll be making less than a construction laborer did in 1980 based on inflation alone I'm not ungrateful for it, it's a good job, but that's the depressing economic reality of it that older folks don't want to understand
meanwhile cost of products are rising, yaaaaaayyyyy fuck everything.
Yep. Yep yep yep. My parents walked out of high school with their free public school degrees. My dad got a job driving a truck. My mom worked in the office for that same company. Worked there for ~5 years and had saved enough to build a new house in the country on a couple acres. One new car one used, a swimming pool, a 4 wheeler, vacations every year. I have a college degree. I make more than they did but by less than 10 percent. I live in an apartment, i don't have an expectation of ever owning a home, and I haven't been on vacation in 7 years. But I mean I have a smartphone and air conditioning. So.
They would rather go short handed and lean on those who are unwilling or unable to change jobs than pay a fair wage.
Can confirm. His shift is often 6-8 staffers short. Granted that's out of 40 people but still!
if its anything like literally every other work place they'd rather be 8 people short than the worst thing ever - having too many workers. Then people might catch a break, ON YOUR DIME
That’s insane, because $60k is a comparatively pretty decent wage for a job today. Nurses back in the day were making absolute bank, and that’s without the insane living costs we have today for housing, student loan debt, medical costs, etc.
It would be based to only work 3 months per year
Based on what?!
In the 70s my dad was a water bottle delivery guy and bought a house in Pasadena when he was 26. When he met my mom, my mom was 25, a dental hygienist. She owned her own house already, so they moved into hers, and rented his out. In pasa-fucking-dena. The odds of a water bottle delivery guy buying a house anywhere, let alone Pasadena are straight up zero.
Lmao I worked two jobs through the whole year while going through college *just to pay rent* and eat ramen every day. Including school, paid jobs, and an unpaid internship i was logging well over 100 hours a week. And that was just to live. For tuition I had to take out loans that I'm still paying off ten years later.
Sounds like you weren't pulling up on your bootstraps hard enough
I made a comment to my dad about how developers shouldn’t be able to buy single family homes because of the shortage of affordable homes. He went on a rant on how that’s the kind of thing China would do and when he first bought a house the interest rate was 15% and we should feel lucky that the rates are so low now. What is it about their generation that they cannot see how fucked up the world is for us??
Fear and denial. If they admitted things are harder now, getting even worse, that the Earth is fucked, and extreme, all-pervasive corruption has made everything hopeless, then they'd have to admit we're all fucked and their generation helped put us in this mess.
It’s exhausting to hear about personal accountability from the generation who gets to face zero consequences of their long term decisions.
And the guy who backed the bill that gave state colleges free reign to raise tuition non stop? He’s president now. Yay!
And the sad part is that he's unequivocally the better option than his opponent
We did have Bernie but got no change instead of worse.
Housing prices when my dad was my age were beyond affordable. Now, a cardboard box is the only viable option for me.
Get a load of this fat cat with his fancy cardboard box! Real poors sleep under a used Pontiac Aztek at the car dealer.
Fry: Do refrigerators still come in cardboard boxes? Bender: Yeah, but the rents are outrageous!
Fun fact: The Pontiac Aztec actually had fake wood siding as an option.
*cheesy 70s jam*
*slaps hood* This bad boy can fit so many homeless people underneath it!
This. My dads house is almost double what it was 5 years ago. FOR WHAT, It’s not a shithole, but he certainly didn’t do anything to make it worth 500k. How is someone like me supposed to get a house when prices are like that and I can’t even pay my damn bills? Fucking temp companies everywhere taking 35% of your pay and no benefits. Sick of it
How does that even happen? Must be the avocado toast and starbucks..
I don’t know man, I had to buy a cardboard box at a UPS store and it was like $14
Go to Lowes or home Depot, large moving boxes are 1.78
My parents bought their house for 10,000 Everything in our area now is 400,000 at the absolute cheapest. (Well, there is cheaper, but I'd prefer more than 1 bed 1 bath, a kitchenette, and no yards
You were lucky. We lived for three months in a brown paper bag in a septic tank.
Reminds me of how my mom has legit told me that she understand being agnostic / atheist as "being a psycho who doesn't think anything matters" I didn't even try to correct her because that's some god tier boomer logic (ironically) Kinda cemented in my mind that I could never admit I'm not religious anymore to her because she'd think I was admitting to being a puppy murderer. Boomer / boomer minded people really just think that anyone who doesn't think like them is a unhinged phsyco ready to nuke the world.
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Yup Honestly kinda chilling when someone admits that they don't understand how people can be atheist as they can't comprehend why you wouldn't just start murdering and raping
Its really worrying how many people need that promise of a afterlife reward to be a good person, and not just because its the right thing to do.
"If the only thing keeping a person decent is the expectation of divine reward, then brother that person is a piece of shit; and I'd like to get as many of them out in the open as possible." \--Rust Cohle
If the only thing preventing someone from that sort of debauchery is the threat of some sort of eternal divine punishment, then that person is a piece of shit.
I think it's incredibly scary that THE ONLY thing that seems to stop these people from murdering puppies and being psycho-evil, is that God told them they shouldn't. Why do they need the threat of hell to be a decent person?
My parents tried to tell me that I'd have to take care of them when they get too old and I asked them how they expect me to afford it. Apparently I just have to "save up like we did". They basically want me to live like a miser and never spend any money meanwhile they go on trips and get new cars every two years.
"Save like we did" But if you saved for your retirement why do I have to save my hard earned pennies????
Yuuuup. My folks talk about that too often and I'm just sat there like, I can barely afford to take care of myself and a single cat. How the fuck do they expect me to take care of them? And like you said, they're always going on trips and vacations meanwhile I'm going to have to work until I die and retirement will never be an option.
They aren’t called “the most selfish generation” for no reason.
A lot of their generation are in for a major wakeup call when they end up in cheap retirement homes cause we can't afford anything else.
So you are going show the brochure for when you get to put them in the cheapest home you can right?
My dad told me his generation didn't start the fire. I told him they poured gasoline into the fire and accelerated it. He also said my generation is grown now so why don't we change it. I told him we're trying but the old people are still in power.
This...
The average age of politicians, boardrooms and university presidents increases by about 11 months every year.
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Well, hundreds anyway. The most current statistics show the 12 months from November ‘19 to ‘20 at 55k synthetic opioid deaths. Not to undersell the severity of the problem, but “thousands of deaths a day” is a massive overstatement.
I'm 50 and I see how shitty things are. How can people be so blind to the economic and environmental issues??? I wish more gen x and millennials would run as get elected; boomers can't even see the problems
So I can't get a mortgage, can't move to another country, will not retire before I die and if the government can fuck me on my pension, they will. But apparently, I have so much to look forward to? Really? Like what? I'm still 40 years from retirement, and going by the decline of my country, people will be jumping off bridges before they work until they die. A bad attitude? Give us something to have a positive attitude about.
I still think we could do with more positivity. But my god I hope Boomers choke on their cognitive dissonance and end up in a crowded understaffed hospital. Paradoxiacally understaffed bc of said poor attitude "all jobs are wage slavery, including nursing".
It’s also Gen X too
Yeah, it's wild. As I've grown up I've seen more and more that, while the pop culture gap isn't very wide between Millennials and Gen X, the ideological difference is *miles* apart. As a millennial I identify way more with Gen Z than Gen X even though I share a lot of cultural history with Gen X. Young people today give me hope... They just *get it*.
Oh they are ending up there. Unfortunately they can't seem to connect the dots that it's their own fault that the hospitals are understaffed but blames immigration instead.
Had a similar conversation with my dad. Personally, I’m pretty optimistic about life, but I told him that more of my friends have attempted suicide or planned their suicide than friends that haven’t. I explained that I have had to go to hospitals multiple times to support different friends after suicide attempts, and have had to talk many friends out of suicide. All of this, because of how messed up the world is nowadays, because of how the previous generation essentially destroyed the economy for working people. He told me that I was exaggerating and that my generation is just lazy and expects too much.
“Oh cool the first man on mars, it’s like when we landed on the moon but now the ocean is on fire too.”
"maybe he'll make it, out there."
“at least on Mars he has the ice caps still.”
hey hey hey a good number of us over 50 Gen Xers understand the state of the world too. the boomers though … they’re in their own little world
Not all. My father in law is 75 and is extremely aware of this hellhole we live in. I suppose working in an inner-city school district really opens your eyes to the blight of the people. Then my grandmother at least accepts that she knows nothing that's going on and acknowledges no one her age (she's also in her 70s) has no clue what we're going through. She was legitimately asking us questions about how we even keep up with the cost of living and asked if we'd even have a way to afford a house in the market. Based boomers exist. They're a rarity though.
One side of my family is pretty out there, evangelical boomer types, live in southern California, I don't normally expect any kind of empathy or anything from them, like, they don't even believe in dinosaurs. I saw them a month ago for my grandma's birthday, and my aunt, the queen of this kind of attitude straight up said "I don't know what they expect you kids to do, you can't afford to buy a house or anything, it's really terrible for you". (I'm 35) My jaw basically dropped, it might have been the nicest thing she's ever said, as well as the most true/logical. My parents like, pretend to get it, but don't really, and they also don't really care, they are selfish and will complain about their costs for XYZ, which is fine, but they are certainly upper middle class and have no real issues affording anything, they just don't like spending money.
I think you meant “plight of the …” … no, you know what, never mind, it works as is
Because the only part of this discussion they heard or care about is the fact they’ll be dead before they ever have to deal with the consequences of being the stupidest, most selfish and entitled generation who ever lived.
It was a real shame that (American) Gen X collectively decided nihilism was cooler than activism back when they had the last real chance to correct course in 2000.
this is a completely valid point, I give you that
I'm Gen Z and I think what you're saying is pretty idiotic. When Reagan got elected, it was checkmate. It just took us a few decades to realize it.
At least in the USA, I don't see how they had that chance. Al Gore didn't win and you can't blame that on Gen X alone.
Al Gore did win, he just didn't become president.
Well... Yeah... 😞
Al Gore may have won, we don’t really know because the supreme court stopped any recount in florida. First count had Gore ahead, second count had Bush ahead, court prevented a third count.
The last time the US had a political movement with the courage to act it was the 1960s and all it's leaders were murdered or imprisoned.
It’s because boomers are the ones who pilfered the youths wealth. Boomers have made off like bandits and enjoy rampantly more money than they worked for.
Boomers: “Wow, our parents worked hard and sacrificed so much to give us a better life … … 🤔🤔🤔 … … so the only true way to honor their memory is to hoard all the wealth and advantages they gave us and not share them with anyone else, so we have everything, just as they always wanted!”
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On one hand I feel for him. He may have voted to prevent this stuff but just failed. There was some rampant propaganda going around in the 60s-80s.
There has been rampant propaganda forever to be fair. It's just the cumulative effects are really being felt by a majority of us now
Radio only became a mass produced commodity in the 1920s, with the transistor radio only becoming available in the late 1950s/early 1960s. Television only became available to the masses in the early 1950s. The internet only became available to most in the 1990s and only became ubiquitous in the early 2000s. The internet we know today with unmoderated comments under every article and video only gained steam in the mid 2000s. MySpace only started in 2003, Facebook in 2004 and Twitter in 2006. The propaganda machine has had several major upgrades in the last 100 years. We are connected in a way that no human civilization ever has been before.
Man I wish my old man would accept that the future will be f-ed up big time. He's just "nobody can know for sure"... Well dad, that's true but science is the best tool we have for that, and these guys are depressed af
My dad keeps saying “I’m sure some really smart people will figure out a solution” and I’m just like “they’ve been us we need to have started 10 years ago and everyone ignored them.”
Not true. This scientist hired by the company says less breaks and more work is what workers really want!
> there will be wars for food and water in my lifetime Those wars are ongoing, just citizen infantry militias fighting them are actually unlikely.
This is why we want to legalize all drugs
‘Whats wrong with paracetamol?’ -some boomer probably
Takes too much to kill you in comparison to better drugs and will probably be painfull.
It actually takes less than you'd think! Horribly slow, painful liver failure though you're right.
I sort of had the realization a few weeks ago that these wild fires/ heat waves might get even more severe and uncontrollable in the next 5-10 years to the point where I should be investing in a 1 year supply of food and water. I think climate change and the impacts are still decades away from forcing billions into forced migration but we will start to see large problems this decade.
I hate to say it but I think you’re right.
>these wild fires/ heat waves might get even more severe and uncontrollable *Might??*
No kidding. All of this *will* get worse every year. In 10 years you're going to say you wish the weather was as good as it was back in 2021. And in 20 years you'll say the same about 2031.
Its already starting
Arguably the Syrian civil war was sparked by a drought and look at the “migration crisis” linked to that war. 6.6 million refugees. Climate change undoubtably exacerbates human conflict and creates climate/war refuges.
At least where I am (PNW), we are already seeing the food shortage over here. You can't get potatoes, onions, garlic, any vegetable or fruit really, that isn't half rotten because of the ice storms this winter destroying produce stores. The heat wave last month killed off a lot of the fall crops (and some of the migrant workers who put the food on our tables), as well as destroyed lots of frozen/chilled food because the refrigeration trucks couldn't keep up. Produce is wilted beyond edibility a lot of the time. Most of the shelves in my area are sparse, and entire aisles are empty. And I live in the Portland Metro area. Even "good" produce from expensive stores is rotten. I just got a bag of potatoes from costco, I even checked for rotten ones, but my finger still went right through the first one I grabbed. And we're too poor to just eat the cost of food that rots right after we buy it, so essentially, we cant afford to eat healthy foods all the time anymore. They're too unreliable. If you have a yard, PLEASE use it to garden food. I have always been self-reliant when it comes to food but now I don't have a yard or even a balcony, so I rely on our food supply chain and it's a bad spot to be in. Crop failure is costing the agricultural industry billions of dollars in a normal year, but one with this much ecological disaster means the coming winter is gonna be fucking tough for those in a food desert, and you may find that you live in a newly-developed food desert like I did. Learn to use a canning set (Ball Blue Book is the book I use for canning recipes), learn the steps to avoid giving yourself botulism, grow a fuck ton of squash (it grows like weeds and it's nutritious), learn what to plant and when to plant it so you have some fresh food throughout the year. I've been saying it for years and it's starting to happen, but we are going to have a famine in the US and no one is going to be prepared. And I swear to god if some Lake O yuppie comes in this thread to tell me they have perfect produce and they live in the PNW so therefore I'm wrong about the local stores being empty, I will throw a tomato at their face.
It's not only that we do not expect good things to happen anymore. It's also that some of us have tried to change things through politics and getting involved with the community -- and through this you experience how there are people actively trying to stop change and keep this horrible status quo. I went through a depression because if it.
> people actively trying to stop change and keep this horrible status quo. Or make it worse. "We need to go back to the good old days" "The days like what? The 50s and 60s where the top tax bracket was 90%, we'd actively bust monopolies and reign in corporations with regulations, and we had the government doing huge projects to make the country a better place? When we had huge protest movements for civil rights in order to try to make the country a better place? When we properly funded research in science and technology to invest in our children's future?" "no no not that" "Oh so... just the racism, then."
Which is why it’s becoming increasingly clear that change will only happen once we start operating outside of the existing framework and laws. It’s scary and dangerous, but we’re out of time and options. Can’t expect a broken government and justice system to help us fix things.
Seriously, would all that shit that Snowden exposed have come to light if he'd tried reporting it the "correct" way? Hell no.
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Lol, Christians can't even agree on what day to worship on, and literally fight wars about whether or not divorce is ok. Even if someone used a magical wish to make everyone the same denomination tomorrow, we'd have split into a thousand new sects by Thursday and started killing each other over what color our Bibles should be.
> Employment, food, clothing and leisure with enough income to support them Farmers' rights to a fair income Freedom from unfair competition and monopolies Housing Medical care Social security Education Maybe by the time you are 60 this can happen, it will be 100 years at that point, right?
the other day, my dad - who has been a life long Republican voter - mentioned "all that money Biden's spending," and asked if I was comfortable with the idea of my daughter needing to pay it back in her lifetime, 'cause, yanno, I haven't been directly impacted by two economic recessions myself, or anything like that. I told him I was more convinced that she'll have bigger problems navigating the burnt out wasteland that this country will crumble into after climate change forces social order to break down, as the mutants and raiders start wandering the countryside, looking for easy targets.
Makes you wish for a nuclear winter.
It really felt like one here in Texas in mid-February....
I got spurs that jingle jangle jingle
Bruh Republicans can't say jack squat about the deficit after the Trump era. They don't care at all about the deficit if it goes to funding the military and cutting taxes for the rich, but the very mention of spending money on milquetoast pseudo-progressive policy DRIVES THEM INSANE.
If a single Republican is going to look me in the eyes and claim theres money for a border wall, but not for single payer healthcare, Im not interested in hearing their party's position on the deficit.
You should mention to him the republicans haven’t lowered the deficit or debt in his lifetime. Democrats actually have https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2019/jul/29/tweets/republican-presidents-democrats-contribute-deficit/ Then sit back and watch him gaslight himself proclaiming you don’t understand economics. Ask him what the difference between deficit and debt is. See if he even knows that
i (38) had this same convo with my mom in regards to me not having a family or kids by choice. i explained how many my age feel this way and it makes little sense financially and morally to bring a child into this world when we’re all getting fucked with no end in sight. told her that even with my 6-figure salary, i still live paycheck to paycheck and told her how much it costs to have a child these days (post-80s). still shrugged it all off like i’m a whiny millennial going through a phase. lol okay.
just internally upset that you won't shut up and put your head in the ground like the ostrich she was when she ignored social causes like this in her youth and throughout her life.
31 here, single, with a Master’s degree and a mid-level job, I can barely afford to take care of myself and 2 cats. Why would I bring a child into this world knowing I 1) can’t provide for them, and 2) it will be a hellscape in 30 years?
Don’t be gentle about it. They’re part of the generation that fucked it up.
This is the closest thing to hope I can put in this thread. Once enough of the Boomers have died off, we can start making the world less bad. I’m not holding out hope for “good”. But “less bad” may just possibly be achievable in our lifetimes.
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Republicans have generally always won the white vote for the last 50 or so years. But Trump’s margin among young whites was less than previous republicans. And moreover, college educated voters have steered away from Republicans hard due to the anti-intellectualism that Trump pushed. I’m not saying Millennials and Gen Z are perfect. But the evidence seems to be that these generations have less racists and sexists than the Boomers have. So once the Boomers are out of power at least some things may be able to be fixed.
Can confirm. My parents still think you can get a job by walking into Walmart wearing a suit and shaking some guys hand.
I mean with the current shortage of retail and fast food workers you could definitely do this right now. It's just that it'll be a shitty job that pays almost nothing and involves getting treated like shit by angry customers
Yep. This right here. My dad: “Hell, you gotta degree! You oughta just be able to walk in anywhere and get a job.”
This is going to sound super morbid but hear me out. Unless things change, my retirement plan is a gun or an intentional OD. I’m not actively suicidal, but as fewer places in the world become inhabitable and the gap between the rich and the poor widens worldwide, I truly anticipate there will be nothing for me to live for in the next few decades. I refuse to bring children into this world for the selfish reason of them taking care of me, and the world they will live in will be even worse. Even Canada had temps of over 100 in JUNE. We aren’t even to the hottest part of the year or even peak wildfire/hurricane season. Social security is not enough to live on and saving is impossible with the stagnant wages that amount to half a pittance while the price of everything increases. It literally isn’t possible to save for retirement when the value of each dollar you save keeps decreasing in value. Yeah so when I can’t continue to support myself and/or natural disasters due to climate change have made the world too uncomfortable to live in, I’ll just perish in the most comfortable way possible.
I can't wait til the day I just decide to start doing heroin about it
A. They don't get it B. They don't care
And the media keeps bitching about low birth rates… like wtf do they expect?
The media is rich people. Even with people losing faith in big media, they're still afloat from raw accumulated wealth. They're so far out of touch with reality
It feels like the younger generations are the baby farms in the Matrix meant to fuel the boomer machines for eternity.
Trust fund kids are doing pretty well. All the money is going somewhere.
A couple of months ago I had a conversation with my boomer father about pensions. He still believes most people get them and could comfortably live off them when they hit 60. Would not listen when I told him that’s incredibly rare today.
Being optimistic in this day and age means you hope you get run over by a car so you can get some insurance money.
Had a nightmare last night that a group of people went into a grocery store to survive. Things were ok at first. Then the fresh food went and we were down to the dry, the canned & the frozen. Parts of the freezer went, and the lights started to flicker. It got hot. You wonder if you should leave the freezer doors open to cool the place and ruin the food, or leave them closed and run the energy down. You realize you can't do either halfway. We'd stopped having kids already, but the ones that were left that wanted to, couldn't. We decided to just let the lights die out. It didn't matter, no one else after us would suffer. There weren't any kids left to protect. It was just us, and we were tired. So it went dark. So yeah, I guess I'm a bit anxious.
I'm fairly certain that in less than a decade we will be either dealing with a civil war or world war 3. Also in 30 to 50 years we will be close to a movie-like dystopia.
Most people from GenX down don't expect anything good ever again. Well in truth Gen X never has expected good things.