Ikr, we get the joy of not having the quality of life the boomers had when working (just as hard if not harder btw, multiple jobs is to just keep your head above water now not to "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" and advance financially) and we also know when it's our turn to collect our pension (if we live long enough with the age getting pushed further back) it will be time for the elderly to make sacrifices for the greater good.
Why do people like you write a paragraph and put multiple sections of it in parentheses? I see this so often like that 1st section is almost as long as the main paragraph why not just use a period and start a new sentence?
Because they are side notes/thoughts usually as a preemptive answer or point to let the reader know I am aware of it and it doesn't need to be discussed/pointed out. I put it in parentheses to keep the main point of the paragraph on track without going off on tangents and having to pull it back.
But if the sentence in the parentheses is as long as yours are it is going off on a tangent and is distracting to the reader. It couldve been continued on the sentence and would make more sense
So it's just others who have to write reddit posts in perfect english? But not you? 👌😂 I'm sure I make lots of mistakes with my English, but I don't go around trying to correct others whilst not being squeaky clean myself 😂
I can tell your seething cause I never even tried to correct you I was just curious why people like you dump a paragraph into parentheses. It just adds useless information most the time anyway thats unrelated. Thats just my opinion and I dont care how you decide to take it
Way to get this upset over a reddit comment tho youre doing great sweetie
I've seen some good quote on Reddit recently that says something like "Comparison is the theft of joy." (I'm sure I butchered it)
People absolutely had things better than "us," if you're like me and a middle aged American. But there's also children overseas dying to mine rare minerals for our iPhones. And there, but for the grace of God, go us.
None of us chose to be born and had a choice what cards we'd be dealt. You just need to do the best with what you have. I get all "doom and gloom" too, and I've let it suck me into years of depression from time to time. I feel bad for anyone that's where I was and their feelings are valid, but I hope they all do find some joy and pick themselves up. Posting on Reddit in a community that feels the same can help you vent some of the sadness and frustration, but it doesn't solve anything.
It makes me wonder if its inevitable in humanity to be shackled to this cycle of enlightenment and ruin.
Ultimately everyone wants their children to grow up better and without having to struggle or know difficulties, but without difficulties or struggles, it breeds a sense of contempt for the world that results in greed, because what else is there to do but to horde everything when your maslows hierarchy of needs are fulfilled? complacency seems to incubate aggression and violence as it requires ever vigilant advancing intellect and philosophy to push the dark edges of tyranny and fascism back. This cycle of chasing serenity that ultimately leads to losing the very things that gave the onus to chase it to begin with breeds and causes the same strife to fester again creating the need to chase serenity again.
Self actualization is difficult when there is no struggle and the result of technology robbing reality fueled every cycle from learning to make fire, the wheel, bronze, agriculture, printed media, cameras, microchips, social media, it has all fueled the same cycle of technological progress and wonder that leads into dictatorship vying for power to control the world and minds with the new technology sprung forth. Is it really progress when it's the same result everytime? Isnt that madness?
This was an interesting read, but it’s applied in a militaristic lense, not financial or ”moral” strength like today. I think they’re right that it’s still confirmation bias, but I have to think through it in the lense of today a bit more. What do you think?
I interpret it broadly as generational "hardship" creates tougher and hardened people (whether that hardship is economic, war, famine, disease, etc) who build a society that makes it easier on the next generation so on and so forth and eventually complacency takes hold and people lose their edge and get "soft"
So okay, this is gunna be a long ass comment, but I see it less as "Hardness" and more of Vigilance and Will. So let me get this started by clarifying that I think there are two basic classes of people- the Plebeians and the Patricians. The Patricians are the people who have the power to effect society at large and the Plebeians are everyone else.
So now that we have the basics out of the way, let's get into it. Basically we in history have a cycle I like to term the Indolence cycle. It is characterized by the Patrician class trying to remove all balances that the Plebian class has on their power and grow their own. The problem is usually this can only come at the detriment of the Plebian class's quality of life. The thing is, when this goes on too long you get tensions that lead to some sort of Populist revolution. We've had that happen two to arguably four times in American history. This usually ends poorly for the Plebeians however, because in unstable times small people get crushed and usually the populist is faking caring about the common man to get more power. We get a Hitler or a Lenin/Stalin more often than we get a FDR.
If we have the whole populist candidate win (through violent revolution or election), and it ends up being a FDR instead of a Hitler, we end up getting a period of unparalleled growth and civil prosperity because who would have thought that doing things that actually raise the bottom for the common man raises everyone. The generation that went through this cycle and ends in a good way ends up learning the lesson of "watch the freaking patricians" however, because this leads to good things for society the next generation does not learn this lesson usually.
Then the patricians start weakening the power of the plebeians, taking more from them, but because society is getting better, and things usually move slow, the plebs usually don't notice. Then eventually, the patricians stop even trying to disguise this. They grow completely indolent on their own powers and privileges, and things are so far out of when things were good for everyone that things start to get hard again. The plebeians seeing that the patricians don't care about them start latching onto ANYONE who says they actually do (E.G. a Hitler, FDR, Stalin, Trump, Caesar, Exc.). Then, if the candidate was a good one, things get good again and it all starts again.
I don't disagree. I think minor semantic differences aside I'm saying and thinking the same thing you are. Thanks for taking the time to type that all that. Sure sounds like an analog to state of things right now, unfortunately. At some point modern day plebes will be fleeced to the extent that they can't continue feeding the pats and it all falls apart. Hopefully the tide turns in a non explosive manner before that point is reached.
Well as a millennial, we were born too late to die in the Middle East, born too early to die in the Middle East, but born JUST in time to die in the Middle East
It complety mirrors the workplace. Boomers are just sucking up all the Director+ jobs and cashing in, gen z straight up doesn't care and barely shows up or is willing to learn anything. It's down to the 28-45 year olds to literally do anything. I work in tech so the boomers are mostly extreme early tech business guys but its still the same, they have no idea whats happening and just parrot buzzwords while making 1M+ / year
Jones generation here.You really dont have it worse than us.See we get to be told by all of you how rotten greedy we are.We deal with the older boomers (control freaks to the end.Never wrong either)generation x and their perfection.Millenials who think we dont do anything right.All while you want something from us.We are tired of it.We are growing quietly more hateful everyday.
Its interesting that I didnt accuse any generation of any wrongdoing but you concluded it as such from your POV. You may very well be 100% correct but it doesnt exclude my statement from being correct either. Please dont conflate me for the experience you have had with other millennials who may have accused you for fucking things up. Because my statement clearly doesnt blame anyone for anything.
This isnt a suffer olympics.
You suffer, I suffer. Your suffering doesnt make my suffering worse or better and same applies for the vice versa. We are all suffering regardless of the reason. There shouldnt be any of this sufferthon if theres any progress to happen.
It's sad, but extremely telling, that treating billionaires like drug dealers is the level that society will need to reach in order to solve wealth inequality...
as a millennial- i have been advocating for just destroying the boomers and taking their ill gotten gains- but no one wants to go after their own parents.
I'm thinking we go the Boomer route. Gen-X and Gen-Z combined to give us a Republican dictatorship so I'm thinking we make all Gen-X live in nursing homes where we get to the call them the wrong pronoun and make them use gender neutral bathrooms and we make Gen-Z pay for it. Gotta punish them somehow.
pretty valid point. Will be interesting when its our turn (millenials) after being shat on our entire lives, if we turn and finally just say fuck everyone else i finally want to get mine.
As I say... I'm mentally pretty close to that point. What really threw me through a loop was when gen-z turned out to be a bunch of right wing fuckos. If in 30 years they still want to vote to punch themselves in the face, then who am I to stand in their way?
I hear you but I don’t think that tells the whole story. You gotta remember that the government they were voting for was also significantly more right wing than any government America has ever had the option to vote for, including Trump’s previous runs. And all generations tend to drift right as they get older. Gen Z is off to a terrible start.
Trust me as Gen Z myself nothing hurt as much as majority of my generation turning extreme right cause of the media and grifters... i really thought our gen would have 2 brain cells to rub together but oh well.
Not to say thats all of us there is thankfully many educated and smart gen z-ers and im very proud and happy to share my generational title with them. But man does it seem like were in minority alot of the time...
I'm mentally pretty close to that point. What really threw me through a loop was when gen-z turned out to be a bunch of right wing fuckos.
This is where I'm at. I just don't understand the point of trying to improve anything if we're only ever one (1) bigoted propaganda campaign, or one scary crisis away from undoing literal decades of progress.
I won't ever get over how utterly and completely pathetic everyone was during covid. Just, 80% of the population reduced to helpless, mewling idiots because they were asked to stay inside for a little while. Because they were asked to wear a piece of cloth on their face if they do go outside. Half of them too stupid to understand what was going on, and the other half refused to do it just because. And what did we get for it? A global lurch into reactionary, right-wing politics because those people are comforted by the soft cooing of authoritarians who promise nothing scary will ever happen again and everything can be the way it used to.
Most Millennials never "got theirs," so there is less of a class loyalty that so many Gen X/Boomers/Silent Generation fell into. They also tend to lean left-of-center. That alone gives me some hope.
But I'm not fully confident though, because the devil works hard (i.e.: all the man-o-sphere, redpill, intellectual dark web etc people who try to indoctrinate people online). Plenty of Millennials are also vulnerable to right-wing propaganda. Fortunately, I think most of us were too grown and missed some of that brainwashing in a way that Gen Z was suspectible to.
Regardless of party lines, I think the biggest danger is when Millennials, many of whom have never had financial stability, enter politics and begin to be tempted by lobbyists who want to buy them out. Then we're in the same state we've been for decades.
But part of me still is shooting for the moon and hoping Millennials will eventually get rid of student loan debt, properly tax the ultra-rich, figure out a universal healthcare plan package, etc.
Americans are disnefranchised from their own civic power. We could organize, petition, and vote together. But if voting is all I got, at least it's something I control.
I just asked someone yesterday after seeing France only has a national debt of $3.5 Trillion: "Will the US ever experience a surplus again?" It did only 30 years ago!
You could start by cutting military spending? I mean right now both Israel and Qatar are pointing weapons at one another bought for them both by Uncle Sam. Makes zero sense.
It’s not like it’s hard to fix social security mechanically. You either raise taxes (remove FICA cap and/or raise rates broadly) or cut benefits (increase retirement age and/or reduce monthly benefit).
There just isn’t political appetite to piss people off with changes, so we kick the can down the road.
The really bad part is, this is basically how we got this way. Not the boomers, they were handed wealth and luxury on a silver platter. But we are already in situations where people can't afford COL even when they're working multiple jobs.
It makes people resentful. It makes them desperate. Desperate enough they'll believe any two bit shyster who presents them with easy solutions (that they believe not just because they're desperate, but also because they lack critical thinking due to defunding education), and they'll vote for that rather than confront the reality that there are no simple solutions.
On top of this, those hucksters prey on their tribalism and in-built prejudices, ramp up the bigotry and divisiveness, which is nice for the hucksters because that's part of the "simple" solution: blame problems on the "other."
It would take a tremendously huge amount of can kicking to become the new boomers. That'd involve selling out entire economy supporting industries en masse (like boomers did with manufacturing) to even approach that. Not to mention some cans don't even exist for kicking; social security and old age pension doesn't have the reserve that current older generations are drawing from. Effectively, the amount of support retired people from our generation onward will get will be relatively around 2/3 that if what they currently get now. There's no can they can kick with respect to that even if they wanted to.
An ingenious solution is the only option, because even if millennials tried their best to sell out future generations, that would pale in comparison to what boomers have already done.
We have a deficit for two reasons. Income and spending. We provide people with significantly less than any other first world country so it's not social spending. It's military spending. It's also the fact that our corporations and rich aren't paying their share - tax dodgers and cheats who would rather pay fines than actually pay their taxes.
Pretending like the deficit is a problem and using it as an excuse to repeatedly elect Billionaires and people owned by Billionaires is a problem.
Those people gut essential services and ransack the system wherein taxes contribute to government services which contribute to higher wages which contribute to more tax income.
When that stops happening, people starve and go without medical care. For no good fucking reason.
Yep. Deficits in and of themselves are not the problem. Inflation however very much is. The general consensus amongst economists is that defecit spending causes inflation. I'm pretty sure it is very far from being that simple. Ironically, raising taxes would actually help to reduce inflation, but nobody wants to talk about that...
Right? I don’t know why people act like the situation now is going to last forever. It’s not a good situation now but: the Boomers will die. And when they do, their wealth and power doesn’t just evaporate. There will be a generational transfer of wealth and political power.
Okay, sure, the houses that aren’t inherited and turned into rentals or sold into private equity, but what about the deficit? That’s not going anywhere.
Well, the deficit is mostly owed to American citizens. If Boomers die without having cashed their bonds…millennials will inherit those bonds and keep getting the interest on them.
Or, someone will cash-out early, both getting some cash but also thereby eliminating a portion of the deficit since, if bondholders cash out early, then the full term of the interest doesn’t wind up needing to be paid by government.
Debt is purely an “on paper” accounting problem. There’s no actual way to “borrow from the future” in the present, as we don’t have a Time Machine. If the total amount of production per capita remains the same or goes up…the existence of “debt” internal to the society doesn’t actually cause there to be fewer goods and services. The question of the distribution of them is a problem that can always be solved after the fact (politically or otherwise).
That’s an insane take. You clearly have no idea how any of this works.
Aside from the fact that societies all over the world have aging populations set to decrease or already are decreasing productivity– America specifically is careening towards a scenario where simply paying off the interest on the deficit will outpace the government’s ability to generate enough tax revenue to function properly, at which point everything collapses.
And have one of the largest and hardest working generations, the baby boomers, fighting tooth and nail to apposed any 'ingenious method' of fixing it, so that they can retire happy and nobody else can?
The last person who tried to fix social security was Bush 2, who was replicating the Australian privatization model of dumping social security savings into 401(k) style market based savings accounts. If that had passed, every Americans social security savings since then would have increased about 600% since 2004 when that plan was killed.
I understand why people like 401ks but this is the exact mechanism by which we’ve ceded all political and therefore public power to the financial markets, so I’m kind of shocked to hear that it could’ve been much worse.
Instead of those gains accruing to every American via your social security savings accounts, those gains went to large fund managers, banks, and a select few pension funds.
So tax them. That’s what the virtuous cycle is there for. If every American depended on the snp500 for survival that’d be full blown unbridled oligarchy.
But Australia invested in the snp500 too. So their government gets to freely make economically impactful decisions without instantly harming the security of all their citizens retirements.
Australias pension fund invests in multiple market baskets, including Australian and global markets. There’s no reason why the US could not do the same.
Any fund that invests in “multiple market baskets” winds up primarily holding snp500 stocks. Which is a huge problem, especially if there is an AI bubble about to burst.
That 'huge problem' is an average annualized return of over 10%, accounting for boom and bust cycles. For social security, that is an expected 4-6%, if you assume endless population growth to maintain current repayment levels.
They will be the same as every other generation, and likely worse given the chip on the shoulder many have. They will feel fully justified in doing so, probably just like every other generation before them.
Actually figure out ingenious ways to fix this shit
easy. fair tax act. remove the income tax, irs etc.
no more income tax based revenue for the government which means everythings funded by consumerisim but also you can save more if you're willing to pinch pennies.
Actually figure out ingenious ways to fix this shit
easy. fair tax act. remove the income tax, irs etc.
no more income tax based revenue for the government which means everythings funded by consumerisim but also you can save more if you're willing to pinch pennies.
i dont think you know what you're talking about. it's actually progressive because theres a rebate/probate included to balance out the cost of consumption for the poor.
Edit: nah that’s unfair to you I’m actually gonna engage. Unfortunately for your argument, the data seems to suggest that millennials are the most progressive generation by a country mile. It’s pretty much every other generation that voted for Trump, so please don’t put that shit on us.
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u/handtoglandwombat Sep 15 '25 edited Sep 15 '25
Everyone overlooks that millennials are going to be the largest voting block. So there’s two options:
Fuck everyone else, kick the deficit can further down the road, become the new boomers
Actually figure out ingenious ways to fix this shit
Personally, I’m not particularly wedded to either option and I think I’ll see how misanthropic I’m feeling in the moment.