I’m at least relieved to not have lead poisoning, for my gay brother to be safely out, and for my interracial marriage to not be scorned by the community.
Yet.
Honestly, at this point I’m just waiting for trump to bring back leaded gas.
Kind of shows that time is a circle
I see it more as a muddy hill. Only in the US some people have now shat upon that hill with the greasiest, nastiest shit so the slide is even worse on this length.
Stating the raw value of the house will only make naysayers throw inflation into your face.
The better way of saying that would be,
buy a detached SFH for only 4× annual minimum wage
Like, really drive it home how absolutely unaffordable homes are these days. In my corner of Canada, the median detached SFH is going for 28× minimum wage, and it’s 32× if it’s new construction. My own 1972 split level sold brand-new for only 4× the 1972 minimum wage.
Jesus in today money that’s 60k for a house. For a nice hours our parents bought
A quick way of estimating annual wage for a full-time position is to take hourly, double it, then move the decimal point to the right by three spots.
So for example, the BC minimum wage is $17.40. Double that is $34.80. Annually in a full-time job, that’s about $34,800 before taxes.
And 4× that is $139,200. Current median SFH prices for used homes sit at just under $1M in my podunk tourist town. All detached SFH, $1,200,000. New construction, $1,500,000.
I mean, really - who under 50 can actually afford those prices without intergenerational wealth to give them a leg up in life?
Suburban SFHs should be outrageously expensive. They are an unsustainable model with huge externalities. They were artificially cheaper for previous generations due to the tax shell game they run on us all. They are a part of the reason the current generation is under water.
And it pisses me off that “externality” is STILL not in my spelling dict in 2025.
Also median detached sfh in the 70s was probably closer to 1200 sq ft. No builder is going to do anything less than a McMansion these days
My own home was 2,000ft² when built. In 1972. That was the Canadian average at the time, as most homes built by developers were made with the same 15 (or so) floor plans with slight variations.
You’re thinking of the 50s. Those homes were indeed around 1,200ft², and there is even a pair in my neighbourhood the next block over
And 2000 sq ft is still quaint by building stands from the 00s. Now if you want 2000 sq ft you’re looking at 3 stories of attached townhouse condo
You can throw the inflation right back at them. Boomers were born into the Bretton Woods system, started borrowing from us in the 1970s, and then kept voting for lower taxes on the wealthy.
Old people used to complain about inflation frequently because they experienced a stable dollar for decades… until the Nixon Shock.
Just shows you how low minimum wage is.
It’s not just low minimum wage, although BC’s is currently the third highest in Canada.
No, the problem is also “investors” that buy on spec only to sell at a much higher price just before completion, as well as “investors” that buy up 5, 10, 15 or even more homes for rental income. Both of these goose home values into the stratosphere and massively constrain the supply of homes that are affordable to those wanting to stop being renters.
Were it not for “investors”, homes would likely be half or even less than what they currently are.
Then rent is also twice as expensive as needed.
The supply has to increase. Since politicians won’t organize public housing, renters could organize it on their own.
“single family home” means more than “detached sfh”
Would have been nice if younger folks had voted in their own interests.
Always someone else’s fault, never yours
Why should they vote? No one is actually representing them.
Because they don’t vote…
If your demographic is (correctly) viewed as being made up of nonvoters, then politicians are never going to pander to you no matter how much you whine online.
it’s a hard truth so many fail to realize. small inconvenience to clam your views.
Wonder why that is
Two party system. One party is neoliberal ultracapitalists, the other is racist mysoginist neoliberal ultracapitalists.
What about Korea, Bay of Pigs, Vietnam and the fact that ptsd was treated with electrical shocks or drilling holes in your brain
Also constant threat of global nuclear annihilation
That hasn’t gone anywhere though although the media doesn’t keep drumming about it as much I guess
Also lead in the air
Apparently hurt people also disappoint people
Absolutely. It’s no coincidence that many of the people who committed atrocities in WW2 had lived through the trench wars of WW1.
And then bitch and moan when anything doesn’t go absolutely perfectly in their favor.
I don’t blame old people, they lived the best of times, their lives were comfortable because they were in a boom. They had high hopes, had kids with a bright future in mind for them, but things change, some see it, others are oblivious to it.
I 100% blame them for pulling the ladder up behind them.
If the roles switched we’d probably do the same.
Yeah, no. Speak for yourself please.
I already have so much less opportunity than the average boomer, and I’m still not doing that. Because I’m not a piece of shit. It’s really not difficult.
It’s still fair to blame them. Old people blame young people for everything afterall.
My parents don’t, well not completely. They know the world be screwed up, but they also think there’s a degree of responsibility on my part too. We are all stuck in this shit show together, and old people thought they’d be dead long before it got really really bad, but Trump SA’d the money, and now we all get to suffer.
I’d keep friends and loved ones close.
it’s not “things change” all the current mess was created by them in the decades after the time period of the op tweet
A lot of the world’s problems are generally made by the greed of mankind in general.
I would still take my life over my mom’s. Things were not good for women back then.
Did she starve to death? Because that’s our current timeline
It’s getting comparable… women are being charged with murder for totally natural miscarriages. Imagine ending up in prison for decades for something you had absolutely no control over.
And women are also dying from preventable issues with pregnancy, because it is illegal for doctors to remove fetuses even when they are a direct threat to the mother’s life (ectopic) or even totally dead in the first place.
America is becoming exceedingly hostile to anyone not white, cis, and male.
If it makes you feel any better it still feels pretty hostile to me as well.
I agree that things were bad back then but my point is things are about to become much much worse. We will all be looking back wishing we could go back in time. Our future is bleak and you’ll be lucky to not starve to death in the coming years.
America alone is going to be in immense economic pain starting some time within the next 3-9 months. Shipping into America from China is dropping off a cliff, with a nearly 40% all sources drop in port activity on the west coast at this time. Seattle alone has seen a 60+% drop in Chinese shipping.
2025 is going to be an absolute economic bloodbath for most any American citizen inside America.
Well she was around before birth control was legal or widely available, and before abortion was legal. Yeah I agree the US is getting more hostile but nobody at my work is asking me to get the coffee, or saying women can’t do the job. And she raised 4 kids while doing a dissertation, widowed when the youngest was not even a teen yet.
I don’t think now is great but it’s better in a lot of ways.
There’s a lot of people who resent that things ever changed for women, and have spent every moment since trying to put things back to the way they were. I’ve worked for a lot of them. I’ve definitely been expected to get coffee, been told not to speak to male coworkers unless absolutely necessary, been told that I dressed too well and it was tempting male coworkers to sin, been told there was something mentally wrong with me because I didn’t “take care of myself” by wearing more makeup, been blamed for work conflicts I wasn’t involved in because I should’ve been the peacemaker. All in the last 10 years. But, yeah, I’m glad I can use birth control legally.
Holy crap! That is dreadful. I have not worked anywhere that backwards. “Not to speak to male coworkers?”. Did you work for the Mike Pence campaign or something? What did the other women in the workplace think?
I did get paid less than the guys I worked with in the early 1990s, literally because they were men. But not since. We have female VP of Finance, female Financial Controller, I’d say it’s 75/25 still in the top so not equal, but about half our operational managers are women, and I work in sports, that doesn’t seem a wildly progressive industry.
It was a legal office that was part of a well-known insurance company. The manager was a conservative Catholic. He believed that a man and a woman speaking to each other too much was “basically the same as sex”. He told me it was acceptable to speak to men if I absolutely had to, but I needed to say what was necessary and then stop talking. He accused me of having sexual affairs with multiple coworkers, literally for speaking to them too often, conversations going on for too long, going out for lunch together, etc. Normal coworkerly behavior.
Since interacting with them would be “infidelity”, he ignored the female attorneys in the office. He’d invite all the male attorneys out to a nice restaurant for lunch while all the women ate a bag lunch in their offices, etc. They couldn’t stand him. He was nice to the support staff, but I think in his eyes, they were “good women”: married with kids, Catholic, subservient towards him.
He thought I was horrible because I lived with a boyfriend, didn’t want kids, wasn’t religious, etc. I tried to have an adult conversation about it where I told him I respected his beliefs, but I didn’t share them, and it wasn’t his place as a manager to punish me for not sharing his religious beliefs. But, he insisted it had nothing to do with religion.
The company’s attitude was that he was the manager, so I had to do what he told me to do. 🙄
Things can always backslide
Shoutout to our parents for hitting an absolute timeline sweet-spot. Drop in right after a world war, have a bunch of weird sex before HIV, buy a house for like 20.000€, start a family, retire young and peace out right before the ocean kills us.
They should be called generation G for hitting that sweet spot.
What I like about this is that it doesn’t pretend boomers are uniquely evil, just the generation that got lucky.
Except that’s not really the full truth either. The generation got lucky AND systemically burned every thing down so that they were the only ones left with all the benefits that luck provided.
Any other people would have done that. Boomers are no different than anyone before or since. It is 100% Random Chance and anyone who disagrees is a liability.
I mean, sustainability would have raised all ships
Any other people would have done that.
What a load of bullshit. Major self-report my friend.
Before boomers, every subsequent generation was more well-off than the previous.
Yes, it is a “self report” of me correctly understanding the world and you being too stupid to, which means you are doomed to fuck the world up even further. Congrats on your bottom of the barrel right wing idiocy!
Speaking in absolutes not only makes you a sith, it makes you ignorant too.
It is important to understand why people are the way they are in order to prevent future repeats. In the case of Boomers, I don’t blame them 100% nor am I going to just chalk it up to just random chance.
If you look at the generation as a whole, the predominant qualities they have are entitlement, arrogance, narrow mindedness, and a deep lack of empathy. Those attributes are what lead them to do the things that they did with the benefits that the luck of their circumstances gave them. But where did those attributes come from? I believe again you have to blame the parents.
I believe that the root of the problems come from the Boomers’ parents. After the war, they were so happy to be alive and living in relative peace, that the popped out a bunch of kids and then showered them with all the benefits that the post-war prosperity brought while also not really paying that much attention to them (who has time to work and be fully involved in the lives of 5 kids?). What did that lead to? A generation that was spoiled and had no boundaries set, so they grew up to do a bunch of drugs, have a bunch of sex, and generally think that every thing is owed to them and everyone else is wrong because they are the best.
Boomers are spoiled children.
You’re so close to getting it lmao. It is indeed important to understand why people are the way they are, which is why anyone who misunderstands boomers—such as you—is a liability. Damn, y’all right wing dumbfucks are so close no matter how far.
Yet, you are so far from figuring out what is wrong with yourself or how you interact with others. For instance, I’m am about as left leaning as one can possibly be. Yet somehow you pegged me as right wing nut job. You convinced yourself that only you are right and therefore everyone is wrong and dumbfucks.
Arrogance breeds ignorance.
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The future looks less bleak if the goal is not to live the life of that generation. There is AI, there are mobile phones, there is solar power and many more things.
When things are expensive, it means that few resources are used. This is good for the environment.
The big difference is that communication is free. We can talk to almost anybody in the world. This is still a huge untapped potential. That generation had a good life, but ours can be better.
Fuck LLMs and mainstream phones OSes
Communication is not free. Check your privilege.
Compared to the past it is.
India has shown that access can be provided to almost anybody. Not every country has the same access which I ignored because the topic is the future.
peace out
Spend their retirement calling the cafeteria staff at Luby’s racial slurs and saying trans kids and drag queens are evil.
And voting for people that will make everyone’s life hell and ensure that no one else will ever get to experience the quality of life that they did.
Not to sound ageist, but I firmly believe voting privileges should be revoked when you retire.
I would think that removing the barriers to voting that affect younger voters is the better option, along with getting rid of the electoral college and allowing felons to vote. Taking away voting rights for certain classes of citizens is a slippery slope, especially when the root problem is some votes count more than others and many potential votes never make it to the polls.
they way leaders emerge from certain personalities, and get so corrupted, i think we’d be better off with random selection.
THIS is the way. Make political service be similar to jury duty.
“no taxation without representation”
If you need to wait 18 years to vote you shouldn’t be able to vote once you are 18 years from average life expectancy (as in life expectancy is 80, you can vote until you’re 62, not after).
Imagine how much focus would be put on healthcare if that were the case…
Dumb and arbitrary, just how we like it!
If it works one way it should work the other way as well! You’re too young to be responsible enough to vote? Then you can be too old to care enough about the future to vote!
A quick google says the US is 77 years, add 18 to that and you’re already way too high. 77 is geriatric, just like everyone complained about the last and current US presidents.
Or… did you mean ‘from’ as in below? That would make more sense. Early 60s isn’t too old though.
Yes, I meant 18 years after birth = 18 years before average age of death, so politicians would need to either reduce 18 to something lower or would have to work to increase life expectancy.
I’m not sure about voting but probably about being elected
I wonder if you’ll still firmly believe that when you retire.
I don’t trust anyone with one foot in the grave to make long term decisions that benefit young people more than themselves any more than I trust a small child to make sound logical laws about bedtime.
Well we all vote in our own best interests, as I’m sure you do too. The art of good governance is to provide an environment in which everyone can thrive.
The problem here is not old people who don’t vote in your best interest, it’s the government that aren’t ensuring everyone is catered for.
They didn’t just pull up the ladder behind them, they have a ladder propulsion system that will launch it into space
We’re a 1950’s 91% top-tier tax rate away from the same.
EXACTLY! I found something so defeated and defeatist about this thread UNTIL I read your comment.
This was once a reality!
Why do we not have it now?
Obviously an extremely nuanced question but clearly part of that is that even the obscenely wealthy were forced to realize that obscene wealth destroys more than it builds.
It’s amazing how often this gets mentioned. In truth almost nobody paid that tax rate because it applied only to salaries. Rich people have always gotten most of their income from capital gains (which were taxed at a low rate in the 1950s, just like today).
It applies to income, not salaries, and it applies to corporate income as well as personal income. Nobody needs to pay it for it to achieve its purpose. Indeed, nobody should be paying it, ever.
You have a choice. I’ll give you $900 for you to do anything you want with. Alternatively, I’ll give you $10,000, but you can only spend it on something that you can convince me is something you need for your business.
You can buy $900 of GOOG, or you can spend $10,000 on a bunch of electronics. You can buy $900 of AAPL, or spend $10,000 “entertaining clients” at a strip club.
You can buy $900 worth of stocks, or purchase goods and services produced by workers.
Nobody is taking the $900 here. Everyone is taking the $10,000. Nobody is paying 91% on $10,000 over the line. You can get much more value from your large “business” spending than you can get from your small investment.
Now, if the numbers are $6300 on anything, or $10,000 on business, a lot of people are going to take the $6300. This is a top-tier of 37%.
$7500 on anything, or $10,000 on business, most people are going to take the $7500. This is a top-tier of 25%.
The 91% tax rate isn’t for the government to spend more money. The 91% tax rate is to ensure the richest among us get greater value from hiring workers than they do from buying securities.
You frame it like those are the only two choices. They aren’t. The third choice is capital flight.
People constantly forget that governments don’t have godlike tax enforcement powers. In the real world people avoid taxes via a million different avenues. Absconding with their money for greener pastures is a last resort but it happens constantly.
Take China for example. Taxes are way lower than the US yet capital flight is such a huge problem that the government has enacted Capital controls. Yet capital flight from China continues largely unabated.
So what this means in practice is that if you want to have a 91% top corporate tax rate in the US without a gargantuan capital flight problem you’re going to need a government that is way more powerful and draconian than either the US or China is right now.
Now you might say “what if I just let everyone go and get the money back when they try to sell things to the US?” Well that’s basically what the US under Trump is doing right now, via tariffs. But then you tack on the capital flight beforehand and that means all the big companies, all the great jobs, leave the country before prices skyrocket. This is how you impoverish the US to third world status.
Do you have an alternative suggestion to tackle the issues that such a high tax rate tries to address? I’m just genuinely curious.
If by issues you mean wealth distribution and the existence of an ultra-rich, powerful class, no. I don’t have a solution to that. The fundamental problem is that wealth brings power and the concentration of wealth and power in fewer hands brings other benefits, namely: coordination.
Smaller groups nearly always have an easier time coordinating their efforts than larger groups, so smaller groups tend to have a disadvantage unless they’re on the battlefield (and even then, wealthy well-supplied small groups of soldiers easily defeat large groups of poorly-equipped, poorly-trained peasants).
The big problem with the high-tax approach is that it’s a class warfare strategy. Apart from the communist revolutions of the 20th century, the history of class warfare has not gone well for the non-rich side. I think that moment in history was a unique one and unlikely to be repeated, barring the unforeseen appearance of some new decentralized warfare technology.
So where does that leave us? We can try non-class-warfare strategies. We want to align the interests of everyone, rich and poor, towards a common goal: peace, prosperity, and sustainability. Why would the rich want this? Because life is better that way! It’s much nicer to live in a safe, walkable, integrated, and prosperous community than it is to live in a walled compound surrounded by ghettos.
Because life is better that way! It’s much nicer to live in a safe, walkable, integrated, and prosperous community than it is to live in a walled compound surrounded by ghettos.
💯
Selfish rich people should be properly selfish and make the world better so they don’t have to be grossed out by poors. Or worry about heli skiing becoming impossible one day. Be selfish richies!
Hey economists love VAT I hear?
I’m reminded by the story I once read about Eritrea, a country with wealthy enclaves for the royal family plus foreign petro-engineers. The enclaves have these walls along the road with vast ghettos on the other side.
It’s a miserable place. The engineers tend not to stay long. Just make a lot of money in a short time period and then leave.
You frame it like those are the only two choices. They aren’t.
No, I provided a simplistic, informal explanation, not a conclusive evaluation.
The third choice is capital flight.
Let the parasites leave. That’s the point. They are sucking the working class dry, and we would be better off without them.
Your argument operates under the assumption that a member of the current ownership class needs to be involved for a business to be successful. That is simply untrue. They aren’t the component enabling employment. They are the parasite leeching our productivity.
The reality is that the most prosperous era of American history was made under a 91% tax rate, specifically because such a tax rate drives capital into the control of the working class.
A third choice is capital flight. there are even more choices, including but are not limited to creative accounting to hide revenue and assets, or bribing -er I mean supporting politicians in exchange for writing loopholes into the tax code.
Yes. Capital flight is one of the last resort moves, as I said. Take your money with you and leave the hostile country.
Yeah, my mother was able to earn a bachelor’s degree (iirc? either that or an associates), paying for it by working as a cashier at McDonalds.
The fucking eighties, man.
My anger as I approach my thirties, unable to afford college even when I was working full time (before I lost my job), can not be overstated.
You can still do that if you live in a first world country… Yes, I’m implying what I’m implying.
Lemmy, every 5 seconds:
guys are you aware the united states sucks
guys
guysI don’t think you’re aware
the US sucks
guys
listen
hey
the US sucks
did you know that?
guyssssss
like, yes, I get it, we suck, but also it’s exhausting being unable to emigrate anywhere and being constantly reminded of how much suck I get to endure for the rest of forever.
And dint forget, no matter who you voted for you’re still a dirty American and FUCK YOU for existing at a time when your country sucks more than usual. It doesn’t matter how you voted or what your beliefs are.
And also if you can’t move out of the country it’s your fault for not… Something. I guess.
And also depending on what community you’re in, SUPER FUCK YOU for deciding to leave your country instead of fixing it.
And of course, as we can already see, every single shortcoming of your country is CLEARLY your fault or at the very least you deserve to be punished for your country being shitty in any way, whether it started long before you were born or not.
That’s what happens when your country won’t shut up about how great they are. Or rather, won’t shut up full stop.
“USA! USA! USA! NUMBER ONE!” Is so fucking annoying, of course non-Americans remind you you’re only number one in percentage of the population in prison.
America is a shit country that feeds its population “patriotic” propaganda from the day they are born until the day they die. You literally make a pledge every day at school. That’s cult behaviour.
Lemmy just opens your eyes to the rest of the world, where you’re no longer in the bubble of America. Lemmy isn’t the problem, you’re just finally hearing the voices of those outside the USA, unfiltered.
This is from Scotland, in 1983, the sentiment now hasn’t changed much.
I’m sorry that this comment is so harsh because you’re just tryna live your life and already sound down about being told how shit your country is. But Americans need reminded that we don’t “hate ya cuz we ain’t ya” or jealous or whatever, as a nation you’re just insufferably obnoxious and commit heinous crimes whilst making out you’re the saviour of the world, the good guys, the world police. When you’re institutionally arseholes. You won’t even submit to international criminal courts or uphold most human rights. America is a bully nation that is finally reaping what it’s sown.
If you’re an American reading this and you’re fucking fuming at what I’ve said and want to throw hands, good. Use that anger to create positive change in this world. Organise unions, strike in solidarity, stand up for others, become politically active, change your country for the better. Stop enabling greedy consumerist behaviour and excusing rapists, racists, and murderers. You may just be one person, what can you do? But I’m just some dude on the other side of the planet having a bored rant whilst taking a shit and I’ve managed to get you to read all this. Do something to improve your community, encourage others to do the same, many many incremental changes combined can make a large difference. Finally fucking live up to the tagline “land of the brave”, because you sure as shit don’t deserve it so far.
Tl;Dr you’re just defending the act of kicking people when they’re down
Yeah, most Americans are generally not into the “USA USA USA” cult-like behavior of it all. Most of us are just regular people working shitty jobs to pay for shitty places to live. And all the grandstanding and “Do something!” from your rant is extremely disingenuous to the people are fucking doing something. Just because you don’t hear about it doesn’t mean it’s not happening. And you’re kind of an asshole for generalizing a whole people like that.
Woah. You take very long shits.
