It looks like if gen Z’s massive wave of unionization doesn’t work that’ll be the case. Gen A is likely the water war generation unless we clean up our act enough for it to be gen ß

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I have been educating my child on unions and workers’ rights. When he’s old enough, we move on to the proper engineering and maintenance of guillotines.

It is getting to the point that is the only option. Voting doesn’t matter, protesting doesn’t matter, complaining doesn’t matter. Millennials were raised that those are the processes, we have come to realize they don’t work and our kids are being raised with the understanding that that doesn’t work. If they want things to change, and it literally HAS to, that is what needs to happen. Either accept the status quo or forcefully change it. If I understand history, that is the most American thing you can do.

The funny thing is that we have politicians here in Australia that complain about “woke” environmentalists standing up for the environment by sitting down on the road. They’re trying to have them labelled as terrorists for simply sitting down in the street.

Meanwhile in France, Farmers who are angry about stopping of diesel concessions are setting things on fire, blocking streets with tractors and dumping manure and dirt into the street to block public servants responsible into buildings.

The point is two fold, French have always done protests better. And the west conservatives have a massive raging boner for eroding ones rights to protest.

i’d rather complain than be complacent at least

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I’m gonna be honest, I’m a zoomer (ahhh yes I’m a zoomer, I’m a zoomer, yippee! Everyone look at me, I’m the zoomer) and, looking towards the future, my future, I’m already kinda there. I just think we both haven’t quite hit the critical mass where everyone else is at that point, yet, and I think that the narrative about, you know, why things suck, I think that’s been co-opted with a mixed level of success, forcing people to feel “fine” with their circumstances, or, forcing people to feel personally responsible for their circumstances, as the case may be. I also think there’s a good amount of cynicism about standing up to the US government and institutions, since we’ve been fed a shitload of stuff against that, and then, you know, we’re all fucked and have limited resources and whatever. I also think people are probably too nice for their own good, most people just kind of want to chill, even if that means they’re actually not allowed to chill because they have to work 2 jobs and have no energy and one financial emergency could wipe them out instantly.

I dunno, I feel pretty cynical, but I also feel like things will probably get at least a little bit worse, before they get better. I just hope they get worse in the right way, instead of in the whole like, world ending kind of way. Or, localized apocalypse, kind of way, more likely.

Where I’m from, the median house price has risen 600% relative to the median income in the past 50 years.

That means the deposit we pay today is the equivalent of the entire 30 year mortgage of the people calling you lazy.

Without violent pushback there is no reason at all to improve things. Cant afford to live?.. fuck you, we’ll find someone who can. Piss off, peasant.

137 points

What’s a point?

gave the entire country a pay cut

Entire country? Which country? We’re talking about our whole western civilisation.

Inflation isn’t prices growing faster than wages, it’s just prices growing in general. Don’t let anyone tell you that gentle inflation is bad for poor people.

Debtors gain from inflation because they pay their fixed debts with currency worth less. When interest rates are low, refinance or borrow at low fixed rates. When inflation rises, your fixed debt costs go down in real terms.

If you want wages to increase, support a higher minimum wage.

The Market Has Spoken: Get Fucked.

A riveting exploration of the markets and society of the 21st century that will be written in 2200 lol

Europe was reduced to rubble, but my grandfathers, who were children during the war and after, both still managed to build a house, raise two kids each and set money aside; one of my grandmothers worked as a seamstress and those grandparents not only built houses for themselves and each kid, but essentially owned a whole block in our village. The other grandfather was the son of an orphan, still managed to do well.

I had to take a job that requires great effort, stress and skill and keeps me away from home 40% of the time, it pays well but still I couldn’t dream to be able to do the same as they did.

That’s true to a point. However bigger effects were the rise in executive compensation, the loss of labor and corporate regulations, and the resurgence of the shipping industry such that it was cheaper to ship from China than to make it in the US. It’s true that demand for US manufactured goods has fallen, but there’s no reason our current Service economy should struggle like it is.

enlightened bit of context here.

correct me if i’m wrong, but these are the colloquial “golden days” that so many want to return to, right? a period which undoubtedly contributed to the presumption of american exceptionalism in the minds of its citizens.

if only there was a way to build a future out of transparency and sustainable systems instead of perpetuating our collective delusions.

I think attributing the “good years” just to post war production is an incomplete explanation. The real issue is irresponsible private ownership and hobbling the value our economy can create.

Creating true value in our work is possible. Once some types of work are done the output can continue to benefit our society for decades. But a confluence of decisions by private owners have meant often we don’t receive that benefit, and instead it’s siphoned away as profit.

I moved from the US to Italy, where everything is cheaper and better quality, and we get free healthcare, free college, retirement pension and six months paid maternity leave. All this on a 35% tax rate. Public daycare is about $300 a month, housing expenses are about half of what I paid in the US, and while groceries are about the same, they are all local, organic, non GMO and -get this - crops are grown for flavor rather than weight. Houses are smaller here and wages are usually lower, but working hours are less and less intense, and the pace of life is much chiller.

Thankfully we don’t live in the US then, but these same dark times are washing over us in Europe too :-(

Unfortunately, much of that wealth was stolen from the global south via colonization. Redistribution of ownership must be done at a global, international level.

I got ideas…

Oh but they actively took our paychecks too. This wasn’t just government welfare for the wealthy and the stock market. When they fired Janet because they only needed one worker instead of two thanks to new software? They didn’t pay Bob extra. That’s wealth just sucked up into the Executive and Shareholder realm. Then to add salt to the wound of doing two jobs they give Bob a December raise below inflation. (because of course there is still actually more that Bob has to do, the software didn’t fix everything.) So now they get Janet’s pay and the extra revenue they denied Bob, because of course their prices damn sure went up in step with inflation.

This kind of fuckery has resulted in an estimated upwards transfer of around 47 Trillion dollars.

I’m not advocating violence, of course, because that’s illegal both on this platform and in real life.

No it’s not.

1. This platform’s policies do not have the force of law.

2. Advocating for violence in general isn’t illegal; only specific threats are. (Trump, for example, is an idiot-savant at walking that fine line.)

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The only way to avoid this that I have ever been able to imagine would require our global society to somehow abandon the concept of currency. But that’s insane, of course, so we’re probably screwed…

I can’t be sure it’s morally acceptable to bring a new life into the world just to struggle until death.

That has been true for just about everyone throughout history.

the game changes yet again and you get knocked back down to the peg you started on.

People in the developed world not having kids is part of how they ‘win’ the game.

The reason boomers were able to demand so much is because, as the name implies, they’re a big fucking cohort. They were politically influential from the time they could vote. Keeping birthrates depressed and shipping in cheap foreign labour is how those with power keep everyone else powerless.

It’s a weird situation, but the way to improve living standards for future generations is to… have future generations. Even if you don’t feel like you can entirely support them now.

This is a bit unfair. There are lots of circumstances that result in children that weren’t planned. Lots of millennials grew up being told to just pop out the babies and the rest will happen. No the fuck it doesn’t. Not anymore anyway. Maybe that was true at some point but now what happens is they have to work harder than ever while daycare raises their kids. Meanwhile, they have to work a second job to just pay for daycare. When I was a kid I remember my mom getting a lot more gov assistance than seems to ever happen for people now. It was rough but we never had to worry a out keeping a roof over our heads or food on our table. Half those life changing programs are gone now. At least in my area.

Being a millionaire isn’t even enough anymore. You have to be at least a multimillionaire to live off of it.

That’s giving them too much credit. They’re just greedy and trying to manipulate markets to hoard as much wealth as possible and they don’t care what happens to the workers.

I agree with your stance on policy, but honest question here:

I hear lots of theories that the ownership class are trying to limit reproduction of the classes below them.

Why though? Don’t they want a huge population of desperate workers that keep fueling their profits and keeping their well-manicured hands from doing any real work?

I dunno, I wonder sometimes if we apply Hanlon’s Razor and it really is an extreme example of incredibly shortsighted capitalist stupidity: “Yeah we’re running out of workers but that’s not a problem THIS quarter…”

And every single one of them was written to get the worker rats to breed beyond their means and be easier to exploit.