It is the perfect storm of the cultural shifts that have come about. First of all is the idea propagated to the world of credit dependence being good and necessary. They have been spreading the idea that there is no reason to save and that things will just take care of themselves. The government will provide for healthcare, retirement, food, and housing.
The narrative has been "You deserve it." Whether it is a vacation, new car, bigger television, a home in a nice place, the fancy clothing and accessories, or whatever. Just attend a college that you can't afford on loans you can't pay and you will get your dream job that will allow you to afford everything that you ever wanted.
Yes, people are traumatized by reality when it hits them. When that happens, it is too late to do anything about it. They are unable to have any money because it is all going to the bank for their car loan and their student loans. It is also going towards the entertainment that they are paying for through subscriptions and things that they have purchased on credit. The destination weddings and vacations.
The bankers and others didn't hold a gun to their heads. They went into it willingly because they believed the fantasy that they were told. They were insulated from the costs by just putting their name on the dotted line on the credit application. It is not a big change that would come from a digital currency. We already have that. There are very few financial transactions that actually involve cash in our modern world. We are just playing with imaginary Monopoly money. Small purchases are just a tap on the card reader. Big purchases are just a signature and an electronic subtraction from one account and an addition to another. If there is not enough money in the account for the transaction, it just gets an automatic loan at a ridiculous interest rate that you never even see. Maybe the payment will just be taken monthly where you pay a penalty every time when there isn't enough money in the account.
I know this because I have lived it. Thankfully, it is all in the past and I recovered from it. It was a very hard lesson though. You have to swim against the current and people think you are crazy for not playing the game that they are playing. You have to learn to do without things for a while. But once you get past the first stages, life becomes much easier.
Ditto. Lived it, first of the Gen X canaries in the coal mine: student loan trap, health insurance racket, housing bubbles, plus just plain ‘n’ simple, there aren’t any Family Man size paychecks anymore (in my USA) for keeping a housewife & children in genuine middle-class comfort.
Ditto, lived it AND recovered from it. It took 25 **long** years from ages 25 to 50 😡, but I finally restored myself & my family to something comparable to my 1970’s childhood material standard of living.
But “trauma”??? No! Because I’m not a self-centered weakling!
Instead, I feel **compassion** for the Millennial & Gen Z generations, who have not & will not get as many second chances at life that we, Gen X canaries-in-the-coal-mine, got before the COL became impossible 😔😔😔
To be fair though, genuine middle class comfort has been redefined as the country has gotten wealthier. Before my generation, most homes didn't have air conditioning. No cell phones in everyone's pocket. The closest thing to a computer was having an electronic calculator. No cable television and people usually had one television in the house if that. There was usually one car in the family that was quite a bit simpler. 1000 sq.ft. was a fairly large sized home for most families. College was much cheaper but most people didn't even go. Medical costs were much lower as the most expensive treatments and diagnosis tools didn't exist. Things were fixed instead of everything being disposable. Babies wore cloth diapers that were washed instead of disposables. Without both parents working, people were not paying through the nose for daycare. People ate what was in season rather than having food shipped from all over the world. They cooked from scratch with very little prepared food being available. Eating out was a rare treat for most people.
OK, so you concede that the US worker is **not** wealthier today than 50 years ago; electronic gadgets & the mandatory 2nd car & the mandatory oversized suburban house are not wealth - small, affordable houses are literally illegal, btw, because of commie zoning & land use laws.
But here you continue the conversation but in a different direction. Yes, I agree in general with the principle that a successful Gen Z marriage & family building begins with ones parents’ support.
I give the exact same advice to Gen Z today: You have to think & act like a desperate 3rd-world immigrant in order to survive. I recommend having those first 2, 3, 4 babies in Mom’s basement, attic, or garage.
Another way to say the same thing is that young people have to think & act like my Depression Era grandparents’ generation (b. 1910’s-20’s).
(Fat chance getting your average 1960’s style 2nd-wave “feminist” woman to agree to these terms of the marital contract 😡)
But still I argue that even if they approach socioeconomic conditions with the wisdom of a 50-year-old and the bodily strength & energy of a 20-year-old, no way, no how can your average Gen Z, today, aspire to my personal level of success. Let me reiterate, they cannot aspire, today, to a 1970’s definition of middle class.
They can **hope**. Hope is good, and despair is wrong, but they can’t realistically aspire to a genuine middle class standard of living in this next decade, at least a decade, even starting off with the financial support of Mom’s basement.
The biggest single wealth killer is student loan debt and that defeats everything else as it is not dischargeable. Medical bills, mortgages, credit cards, auto loans, and all other problems, they can walk away with a credit score spanking.
We have 20-something year old couples that start out from college with a half million dollars in debt between them. Often with career fields that will never make them enough money to pay it off.
They signed up for it willingly. Yes, they were lied to but, ultimately, they are adults making their own decisions. I think it is tragic. Most would have been better off mowing lawns or flipping burgers right out of high school rather than going to college.
Are the current economic conditions or the gamble that they made taking on student loan debt to blame for their plight?
… Those 18-year-old “adults” who trapped themselves in student loan debt are the same 18-year-old “adults” who get killed on the battlefield, the same one who aren’t old enough to drink alcohol, not old enough to rent a car or rent an Air BnB.
Anyway, you haven’t addressed or countered any of the pertinent points.
Very, very, very nfortunately, I’m the one who wins this debate. Gen Z certainly is a victim of circumstances beyond their control.
Yes, they do have money for a one-time IPhone purchase ($1200), but by his own means unaided (Mom’s basement, attic, or garage), an 18-year-old “man” will have to postpone sex & marriage till age 28? Or 32? till he has the money to live in a decent school district, & keep a housewife & children in something **less** than genuine middle-class comfort.
Even then, he’ll still have to come up with $10K cash for each normal hospital childbirth, in addition to the outrageous monthly premiums & annual deductibles. God help him if it’s a complicated birth.
And God help him, at age 28 or 32, to find an 18-year-old or 22-year-old anti-feminist woman who’s willing to marry a much older man, which is totally not our USA culture, plus willing to live modestly, again totally not our USA culture.
Because even a 100K salary in a median COL region like Columbus, Ohio or Tucson, Arizona is not a genuine middle-class standard of living 😳 He’s still kinda poor at 100K pre-tax, pre-health care racket, housewife plus four kids.
$50/ hour paying his own way through life is the **same** kind of “middle class” as $15/ hour and qualifying for SNAP + Medicaid + WIC + utility assistance with housewife & four kids.
Those two men are at the same financial level.
Anyway, I’m convinced that you’re out of touch, David Kirtley, with the workingman’s dilemma nowadays.
I believe that we just have a different samples that we are viewing. In my area, I see many that succeed. It could be the fact that many more go the community college and a lower tier public university and trades route. Most live at home and are not racking up hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loans. It could be the lower priced market for housing. Healthcare is available right across the border in Mexico to those who don't have insurance coverage. We don't have the same drug problems that plague other areas. (In my area they are in the transport, not the consumption end of things.) We also have a lot of people that self build their homes rather than buying new homes. They will buy a lot and put a used trailer on it while they are building or live with family. There are people that are doing migrant agricultural work that each year when they come back, they add to their home and end up having a mortgage free home that is paid off in just a few years. There are lots of stay at home moms and there isn't a stigma against it.
Yes, there are some really poor people as well. You will find those anywhere.
😂 In the 20-oh’s, I sure was bumping into a lot of engineers who had “retooled & retrained” to nursing 😳 because it was the best way they could think of to obtain stable employment & health insurance 😳
At age 30 in ‘03, I was considering both engineering & nursing, plus many other career paths. I went back to school to retool & retrain in science (instead of engineering), and I made it into a PhD program in Organic Chemistry, but I didn’t finish the program. Long story short, eventually I suggested to my wife that we run our own little pastries home business here in Japan.
Apparently you’re not financially invested in any children’s future procreative success in the 2030’s - 2040’s, your own future grandchildren’s future wellbeing: safe neighborhoods, access to health care, functional public utilities & roads & bridges, employment opportunities … basically, in the USA there are no Family Man-size paychecks anymore. The COL has long since been recalibrated to a double median income household - thanks for nuthin’, “feminism” 😡
When Mom has to work, it means you’re poor!, including generation after generation of emotionally impoverished children growing up institutionalized, motherless!, because “middle-class” Mom’s working f/t outside the home.
… I moved my family (5 kids) to my wife’s native Japan in 2015 - because my native USA is just so poor; what passes for middle class nowadays is absurd, ridiculous & deserving of scorn. The “middle class” is not reproducing because our “feminist” way of life has so impoverished the nation, and caused family breakdown.
Here in Japan, the COL remains calibrated to a breadwinner-homemaker marriage. That’s why I moved my family here. A genuine middle class lifestyle is imminently possible here 👍🙂
Long before feminism, the first strike against people in the US was the fixation on everyone being an employee and dependent on an employer. You are always limited as to compensation when you are looking to be an employee. Getting women into the workforce was just phase II of that plan.
The goal was increasing dependence and consumption.
We have a large population that comes from Mexico and other latin american countries here where I am. They have a higher percentage of people who dream of being their own boss and being an employee is a stepping stone rather than the goal.
More of them live at home until marriage and many often living with parents after marriage until they have the resources for their own home. That family structure is a huge aid in building stability. Of course many are losing that drive, connection, and support as they are indoctrinated.
The USA is not wealthier today compared to 50 years ago. A/C & PC’s & cellphones & a 2nd car are not wealth because they’re not optional. They’re not optional, and they’re inexpensive relative to the essentials.
Wealth is stable marriages that grow the population, or at least maintain the population.
Wealth is functional infrastructure: public utilities, roads & bridges, public transportation (not our totally dysfunctional infrastructure).
Wealth is real food (not our denatured & adulterated food supply), plus wealth is a housewife cooking it from scratch. (Our young men today can’t make enough money to support a housewife, even if they’re lucky enough to find one who’s not brainwashed by 1960’s style 2nd-wave “feminism.”)
Wealth is safe neighborhoods, decent public schooling, genuinely affordable health care, and affordable transportation.
Wealth is knowing that if you lose your job, today, there’s another one waiting for you tomorrow.
… I’m old enough to have experienced a genuinely wealthier childhood than my Older Boomer parents’ childhoods, but before my Gen X entered the workforce, the middle class was already shrinking.
It’s a complete lack of compassion/ lack of perspective for today’s young people of marriageable & reproductive age to claim that the USA is wealthier today than for example 50 years ago.
True, “middle class” has indeed been redefined. I say what passes for middle class nowadays is absurd, absurdly poor.
Just because people don't keep it, doesn't mean that the wealth doesn't exist. There are plenty of people that make well over $100K/yr and well beyond that are bankrupt or just barely treading water.
People are paying a ridiculous percentage of their income just on interest because they fell for the version of the "American Dream" that was pushed as empowerment. Women are bringing in a second income and then spending just about their entire salary on daycare. Often as a single parent.
People are paying the equivalent of the price of a house (depending on the market) for college degrees and then working at jobs that don't even pay enough to cover the student loan payments, let alone money to live on.
The last of the Great post-WW2 Middle Class Expansion will disappear as the Younger Boomers chew through social services like a plague of locusts. Of my Gen X, I’m one of the lucky ones. I’ll probably have lots of grandchildren. And I won’t have to die alone in the Medicaid Concentration Camps for Abandoned Seniors.
20 years ago, the mainstream media (msm) blamed the Millennials’ financial problems on $8 avocado toast.
Today, the msm blames Gen Z’s financial problems on the $14 latte.
… I recall a Newsweek (or was it Time?) magazine cover from c. 1990 calling my Gen X whiners for complaining about the job market & COL.
But again, I’m arguing from a position of success, not bitterness. I’m one of the luckiest members of my Gen X because I started off way, way behind (e.g. student loan racket, health insurance racket, & housing bubbles, and the 2nd-wave “feminist” double-income job market & COL).
I started off way, way behind. I should have nothing, but I have it all: 5 kids, rental property, retirement plan, on just a single household income, real healthcare, safe neighborhoods, decent schooling.
I have it all - the American Dream! (even though I choose to live in Japan) - but no way, no how do I think today’s average Gen Z could achieve what I’ve achieved, **even if** he approached life, today, with a 50-year-old’s wisdom & a 20-year-old‘s bodily strength & energy.
So, compassion - I do understand why the young are being seduced by communism nowadays.
But you don’t understand. You blame them.
Boomer? You must’ve had an easy life to remain so blissfully ignorant.
No, not quite a boomer. I am just a survivor that dug myself out of the hole that the "Modern American Dream" led me into. I am definitely not ignorant of their problems. I lived them.
It took me years to pay off the student loans. It took years to get rid of the credit card debt. I wasted a ridiculous amount of money making payments on new cars every few years. I lived most of my life hand to mouth because of it.
I tuned out of the advertisement and and social engineering. I don't have a credit card and never will. I will never take out another loan for any reason. I don't have any subscriptions to anything. I don't have any extended warranties. I cook my own food from scratch. I generally buy my toys used. Last year, I bought my first new computer in 20 years or so because I wanted to use certain software. Usually, I just grab refurbished computers for $200. I still use a flip phone and don't want a "smart phone."
My entertainment costs are minimal. I don't go to movies. I don't even play video games. I don't have cable or streaming services. I don't go out drinking. I don't go out to eat. I don't have many vices to indulge.
I don't feel deprived. I just live well within my means. I retired early to take care of my mother when her health failed and when she passed and I just stayed retired. The funny thing is, when I wasn't paying stupid interest payments and blowing my money on stupid things, I actually had money.
Now, I don't even think about money and I can afford anything that I want. But my wants are simple.
The "trauma" is not necessarily with money but in the distance between what others in your orbit, including parents and teachers but extended to media, advertising, imagery in your media, ads ads ads, and your practical personal reality. It requires a constant active fight against the message that you are not acceptable or successful if you do not own X, Y, and Z. If you spend time meditating on what is necessary to life, first of all, and of meaning in the life you want based on your personally developed values, you can protect yourself from all these pressures. I've been reading (just a little) of Sheldon Wolin about the inversion in which we currently live. What we call democracy and capitalism is actually totalitarianism and rule by corporations in which anyone who doesn't "have enough" is to blame, rather than that poverty is due to the excessive greed and control of huge corporations who succeed largely (as we can see in the so-called "Iran" War) because the entire government's assets, including its military, are used to enable the corporations to control large parts of the economy. The individual consumer cannot possibly win a fight against a corporate entity which is embedded in the government and pressuring the individual to contribute to its dominance in one's lives, AND FORCING HIM/HER TO FINANCE IT. Yet, taking all the consumers together as a group (which it doesn't act as...yet), the consumers actually hold the power. They are only convinced that they are personally responsible for their "poverty", which is patently ridiculous. What is needed is serious and organized cultural resistance which was begun in the 50's (with the Beats) and 60's (Boomers) but stopped in its tracks by corporate pressures which became overwhelming during Thatcher/Reagan. Wolin thinks this all began in the 30's when resistance became named "Communism" and is often called "Socialism" today. Which of course it is not. Our inability to win this war of cultural resistance has resulted in the impoverishment of at least half our society and all these wars by ourselves and by proxies (like Israel) of most of the world. The power is in our hands, not theirs. And it's not in the vote, which has been subverted. The real power is in the culture as we express it. It's right here, on Substack, on the Internet, if we want it to be. And they cannot subvert the culture if we refuse to collaborate with their pressures. In other words, it's just a mind-fuck.
Talk about a trauma-inducing construct, imagine the harm that we all are going to experience if the technocrats are able to activate their tokenized, social credit induced, monetary control system! Yikes, we all will need therapy! Lol.
It’s interesting that the very economic system that the central bankers put into place and got filthy rich off of, enabling them to even contemplate creating the beast system, is now being vilified as trauma based and a source of widespread distress! Hegelian Dialectic, you think? Now all we need is solution!
It is the perfect storm of the cultural shifts that have come about. First of all is the idea propagated to the world of credit dependence being good and necessary. They have been spreading the idea that there is no reason to save and that things will just take care of themselves. The government will provide for healthcare, retirement, food, and housing.
The narrative has been "You deserve it." Whether it is a vacation, new car, bigger television, a home in a nice place, the fancy clothing and accessories, or whatever. Just attend a college that you can't afford on loans you can't pay and you will get your dream job that will allow you to afford everything that you ever wanted.
Yes, people are traumatized by reality when it hits them. When that happens, it is too late to do anything about it. They are unable to have any money because it is all going to the bank for their car loan and their student loans. It is also going towards the entertainment that they are paying for through subscriptions and things that they have purchased on credit. The destination weddings and vacations.
The bankers and others didn't hold a gun to their heads. They went into it willingly because they believed the fantasy that they were told. They were insulated from the costs by just putting their name on the dotted line on the credit application. It is not a big change that would come from a digital currency. We already have that. There are very few financial transactions that actually involve cash in our modern world. We are just playing with imaginary Monopoly money. Small purchases are just a tap on the card reader. Big purchases are just a signature and an electronic subtraction from one account and an addition to another. If there is not enough money in the account for the transaction, it just gets an automatic loan at a ridiculous interest rate that you never even see. Maybe the payment will just be taken monthly where you pay a penalty every time when there isn't enough money in the account.
I know this because I have lived it. Thankfully, it is all in the past and I recovered from it. It was a very hard lesson though. You have to swim against the current and people think you are crazy for not playing the game that they are playing. You have to learn to do without things for a while. But once you get past the first stages, life becomes much easier.
Ditto. Lived it, first of the Gen X canaries in the coal mine: student loan trap, health insurance racket, housing bubbles, plus just plain ‘n’ simple, there aren’t any Family Man size paychecks anymore (in my USA) for keeping a housewife & children in genuine middle-class comfort.
Ditto, lived it AND recovered from it. It took 25 **long** years from ages 25 to 50 😡, but I finally restored myself & my family to something comparable to my 1970’s childhood material standard of living.
But “trauma”??? No! Because I’m not a self-centered weakling!
Instead, I feel **compassion** for the Millennial & Gen Z generations, who have not & will not get as many second chances at life that we, Gen X canaries-in-the-coal-mine, got before the COL became impossible 😔😔😔
To be fair though, genuine middle class comfort has been redefined as the country has gotten wealthier. Before my generation, most homes didn't have air conditioning. No cell phones in everyone's pocket. The closest thing to a computer was having an electronic calculator. No cable television and people usually had one television in the house if that. There was usually one car in the family that was quite a bit simpler. 1000 sq.ft. was a fairly large sized home for most families. College was much cheaper but most people didn't even go. Medical costs were much lower as the most expensive treatments and diagnosis tools didn't exist. Things were fixed instead of everything being disposable. Babies wore cloth diapers that were washed instead of disposables. Without both parents working, people were not paying through the nose for daycare. People ate what was in season rather than having food shipped from all over the world. They cooked from scratch with very little prepared food being available. Eating out was a rare treat for most people.
OK, so you concede that the US worker is **not** wealthier today than 50 years ago; electronic gadgets & the mandatory 2nd car & the mandatory oversized suburban house are not wealth - small, affordable houses are literally illegal, btw, because of commie zoning & land use laws.
But here you continue the conversation but in a different direction. Yes, I agree in general with the principle that a successful Gen Z marriage & family building begins with ones parents’ support.
I give the exact same advice to Gen Z today: You have to think & act like a desperate 3rd-world immigrant in order to survive. I recommend having those first 2, 3, 4 babies in Mom’s basement, attic, or garage.
Another way to say the same thing is that young people have to think & act like my Depression Era grandparents’ generation (b. 1910’s-20’s).
(Fat chance getting your average 1960’s style 2nd-wave “feminist” woman to agree to these terms of the marital contract 😡)
But still I argue that even if they approach socioeconomic conditions with the wisdom of a 50-year-old and the bodily strength & energy of a 20-year-old, no way, no how can your average Gen Z, today, aspire to my personal level of success. Let me reiterate, they cannot aspire, today, to a 1970’s definition of middle class.
They can **hope**. Hope is good, and despair is wrong, but they can’t realistically aspire to a genuine middle class standard of living in this next decade, at least a decade, even starting off with the financial support of Mom’s basement.
The biggest single wealth killer is student loan debt and that defeats everything else as it is not dischargeable. Medical bills, mortgages, credit cards, auto loans, and all other problems, they can walk away with a credit score spanking.
We have 20-something year old couples that start out from college with a half million dollars in debt between them. Often with career fields that will never make them enough money to pay it off.
They signed up for it willingly. Yes, they were lied to but, ultimately, they are adults making their own decisions. I think it is tragic. Most would have been better off mowing lawns or flipping burgers right out of high school rather than going to college.
Are the current economic conditions or the gamble that they made taking on student loan debt to blame for their plight?
We’re talking past each other.
… Those 18-year-old “adults” who trapped themselves in student loan debt are the same 18-year-old “adults” who get killed on the battlefield, the same one who aren’t old enough to drink alcohol, not old enough to rent a car or rent an Air BnB.
Anyway, you haven’t addressed or countered any of the pertinent points.
Very, very, very nfortunately, I’m the one who wins this debate. Gen Z certainly is a victim of circumstances beyond their control.
Yes, they do have money for a one-time IPhone purchase ($1200), but by his own means unaided (Mom’s basement, attic, or garage), an 18-year-old “man” will have to postpone sex & marriage till age 28? Or 32? till he has the money to live in a decent school district, & keep a housewife & children in something **less** than genuine middle-class comfort.
Even then, he’ll still have to come up with $10K cash for each normal hospital childbirth, in addition to the outrageous monthly premiums & annual deductibles. God help him if it’s a complicated birth.
And God help him, at age 28 or 32, to find an 18-year-old or 22-year-old anti-feminist woman who’s willing to marry a much older man, which is totally not our USA culture, plus willing to live modestly, again totally not our USA culture.
Because even a 100K salary in a median COL region like Columbus, Ohio or Tucson, Arizona is not a genuine middle-class standard of living 😳 He’s still kinda poor at 100K pre-tax, pre-health care racket, housewife plus four kids.
$50/ hour paying his own way through life is the **same** kind of “middle class” as $15/ hour and qualifying for SNAP + Medicaid + WIC + utility assistance with housewife & four kids.
Those two men are at the same financial level.
Anyway, I’m convinced that you’re out of touch, David Kirtley, with the workingman’s dilemma nowadays.
I believe that we just have a different samples that we are viewing. In my area, I see many that succeed. It could be the fact that many more go the community college and a lower tier public university and trades route. Most live at home and are not racking up hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loans. It could be the lower priced market for housing. Healthcare is available right across the border in Mexico to those who don't have insurance coverage. We don't have the same drug problems that plague other areas. (In my area they are in the transport, not the consumption end of things.) We also have a lot of people that self build their homes rather than buying new homes. They will buy a lot and put a used trailer on it while they are building or live with family. There are people that are doing migrant agricultural work that each year when they come back, they add to their home and end up having a mortgage free home that is paid off in just a few years. There are lots of stay at home moms and there isn't a stigma against it.
Yes, there are some really poor people as well. You will find those anywhere.
😂 In the 20-oh’s, I sure was bumping into a lot of engineers who had “retooled & retrained” to nursing 😳 because it was the best way they could think of to obtain stable employment & health insurance 😳
At age 30 in ‘03, I was considering both engineering & nursing, plus many other career paths. I went back to school to retool & retrain in science (instead of engineering), and I made it into a PhD program in Organic Chemistry, but I didn’t finish the program. Long story short, eventually I suggested to my wife that we run our own little pastries home business here in Japan.
Apparently you’re not financially invested in any children’s future procreative success in the 2030’s - 2040’s, your own future grandchildren’s future wellbeing: safe neighborhoods, access to health care, functional public utilities & roads & bridges, employment opportunities … basically, in the USA there are no Family Man-size paychecks anymore. The COL has long since been recalibrated to a double median income household - thanks for nuthin’, “feminism” 😡
When Mom has to work, it means you’re poor!, including generation after generation of emotionally impoverished children growing up institutionalized, motherless!, because “middle-class” Mom’s working f/t outside the home.
… I moved my family (5 kids) to my wife’s native Japan in 2015 - because my native USA is just so poor; what passes for middle class nowadays is absurd, ridiculous & deserving of scorn. The “middle class” is not reproducing because our “feminist” way of life has so impoverished the nation, and caused family breakdown.
Here in Japan, the COL remains calibrated to a breadwinner-homemaker marriage. That’s why I moved my family here. A genuine middle class lifestyle is imminently possible here 👍🙂
Long before feminism, the first strike against people in the US was the fixation on everyone being an employee and dependent on an employer. You are always limited as to compensation when you are looking to be an employee. Getting women into the workforce was just phase II of that plan.
The goal was increasing dependence and consumption.
We have a large population that comes from Mexico and other latin american countries here where I am. They have a higher percentage of people who dream of being their own boss and being an employee is a stepping stone rather than the goal.
More of them live at home until marriage and many often living with parents after marriage until they have the resources for their own home. That family structure is a huge aid in building stability. Of course many are losing that drive, connection, and support as they are indoctrinated.
The USA is not wealthier today compared to 50 years ago. A/C & PC’s & cellphones & a 2nd car are not wealth because they’re not optional. They’re not optional, and they’re inexpensive relative to the essentials.
Wealth is stable marriages that grow the population, or at least maintain the population.
Wealth is functional infrastructure: public utilities, roads & bridges, public transportation (not our totally dysfunctional infrastructure).
Wealth is real food (not our denatured & adulterated food supply), plus wealth is a housewife cooking it from scratch. (Our young men today can’t make enough money to support a housewife, even if they’re lucky enough to find one who’s not brainwashed by 1960’s style 2nd-wave “feminism.”)
Wealth is safe neighborhoods, decent public schooling, genuinely affordable health care, and affordable transportation.
Wealth is knowing that if you lose your job, today, there’s another one waiting for you tomorrow.
… I’m old enough to have experienced a genuinely wealthier childhood than my Older Boomer parents’ childhoods, but before my Gen X entered the workforce, the middle class was already shrinking.
It’s a complete lack of compassion/ lack of perspective for today’s young people of marriageable & reproductive age to claim that the USA is wealthier today than for example 50 years ago.
True, “middle class” has indeed been redefined. I say what passes for middle class nowadays is absurd, absurdly poor.
Just because people don't keep it, doesn't mean that the wealth doesn't exist. There are plenty of people that make well over $100K/yr and well beyond that are bankrupt or just barely treading water.
People are paying a ridiculous percentage of their income just on interest because they fell for the version of the "American Dream" that was pushed as empowerment. Women are bringing in a second income and then spending just about their entire salary on daycare. Often as a single parent.
People are paying the equivalent of the price of a house (depending on the market) for college degrees and then working at jobs that don't even pay enough to cover the student loan payments, let alone money to live on.
The last of the Great post-WW2 Middle Class Expansion will disappear as the Younger Boomers chew through social services like a plague of locusts. Of my Gen X, I’m one of the lucky ones. I’ll probably have lots of grandchildren. And I won’t have to die alone in the Medicaid Concentration Camps for Abandoned Seniors.
20 years ago, the mainstream media (msm) blamed the Millennials’ financial problems on $8 avocado toast.
Today, the msm blames Gen Z’s financial problems on the $14 latte.
… I recall a Newsweek (or was it Time?) magazine cover from c. 1990 calling my Gen X whiners for complaining about the job market & COL.
But again, I’m arguing from a position of success, not bitterness. I’m one of the luckiest members of my Gen X because I started off way, way behind (e.g. student loan racket, health insurance racket, & housing bubbles, and the 2nd-wave “feminist” double-income job market & COL).
I started off way, way behind. I should have nothing, but I have it all: 5 kids, rental property, retirement plan, on just a single household income, real healthcare, safe neighborhoods, decent schooling.
I have it all - the American Dream! (even though I choose to live in Japan) - but no way, no how do I think today’s average Gen Z could achieve what I’ve achieved, **even if** he approached life, today, with a 50-year-old’s wisdom & a 20-year-old‘s bodily strength & energy.
So, compassion - I do understand why the young are being seduced by communism nowadays.
But you don’t understand. You blame them.
Boomer? You must’ve had an easy life to remain so blissfully ignorant.
No, not quite a boomer. I am just a survivor that dug myself out of the hole that the "Modern American Dream" led me into. I am definitely not ignorant of their problems. I lived them.
It took me years to pay off the student loans. It took years to get rid of the credit card debt. I wasted a ridiculous amount of money making payments on new cars every few years. I lived most of my life hand to mouth because of it.
I tuned out of the advertisement and and social engineering. I don't have a credit card and never will. I will never take out another loan for any reason. I don't have any subscriptions to anything. I don't have any extended warranties. I cook my own food from scratch. I generally buy my toys used. Last year, I bought my first new computer in 20 years or so because I wanted to use certain software. Usually, I just grab refurbished computers for $200. I still use a flip phone and don't want a "smart phone."
My entertainment costs are minimal. I don't go to movies. I don't even play video games. I don't have cable or streaming services. I don't go out drinking. I don't go out to eat. I don't have many vices to indulge.
I don't feel deprived. I just live well within my means. I retired early to take care of my mother when her health failed and when she passed and I just stayed retired. The funny thing is, when I wasn't paying stupid interest payments and blowing my money on stupid things, I actually had money.
Now, I don't even think about money and I can afford anything that I want. But my wants are simple.
The "trauma" is not necessarily with money but in the distance between what others in your orbit, including parents and teachers but extended to media, advertising, imagery in your media, ads ads ads, and your practical personal reality. It requires a constant active fight against the message that you are not acceptable or successful if you do not own X, Y, and Z. If you spend time meditating on what is necessary to life, first of all, and of meaning in the life you want based on your personally developed values, you can protect yourself from all these pressures. I've been reading (just a little) of Sheldon Wolin about the inversion in which we currently live. What we call democracy and capitalism is actually totalitarianism and rule by corporations in which anyone who doesn't "have enough" is to blame, rather than that poverty is due to the excessive greed and control of huge corporations who succeed largely (as we can see in the so-called "Iran" War) because the entire government's assets, including its military, are used to enable the corporations to control large parts of the economy. The individual consumer cannot possibly win a fight against a corporate entity which is embedded in the government and pressuring the individual to contribute to its dominance in one's lives, AND FORCING HIM/HER TO FINANCE IT. Yet, taking all the consumers together as a group (which it doesn't act as...yet), the consumers actually hold the power. They are only convinced that they are personally responsible for their "poverty", which is patently ridiculous. What is needed is serious and organized cultural resistance which was begun in the 50's (with the Beats) and 60's (Boomers) but stopped in its tracks by corporate pressures which became overwhelming during Thatcher/Reagan. Wolin thinks this all began in the 30's when resistance became named "Communism" and is often called "Socialism" today. Which of course it is not. Our inability to win this war of cultural resistance has resulted in the impoverishment of at least half our society and all these wars by ourselves and by proxies (like Israel) of most of the world. The power is in our hands, not theirs. And it's not in the vote, which has been subverted. The real power is in the culture as we express it. It's right here, on Substack, on the Internet, if we want it to be. And they cannot subvert the culture if we refuse to collaborate with their pressures. In other words, it's just a mind-fuck.
Talk about a trauma-inducing construct, imagine the harm that we all are going to experience if the technocrats are able to activate their tokenized, social credit induced, monetary control system! Yikes, we all will need therapy! Lol.
It’s interesting that the very economic system that the central bankers put into place and got filthy rich off of, enabling them to even contemplate creating the beast system, is now being vilified as trauma based and a source of widespread distress! Hegelian Dialectic, you think? Now all we need is solution!