While I have a lot of sympathy, the fact is that most people's failure to succeed is through their own choices. Yes, it is partially driven by marketing and corporate greed, but how you respond to it is all on you.
Wealth and poverty are decided by how you live, not by how much money you have. There are people making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year that are on the edge of financial ruin. There are people that make modest incomes that over time become wealthy.
Traditionally, people lived with their families until they saved up enough to venture out on their own. Now, the expected norm is to rack up huge debit on education, move out on your own to a new place, go out and buy a car you can't afford, and try to live the lifestyle that took the previous generation their entire life to build up to. Then blame society when it doesn't work out because it is due to some systemic oppression or wealth inequality rather than their own poor choices.
But what do you do when the "experts" are all giving advice based on fantasy such as government being immune from basic economics? Spending more than you take in somehow doesn't apply to them. Maybe they don't have to abide by gravity either?
When society expects everyone to make poor decisions and blame everyone except the ones making the decisions, you have to go against it. Some people don't have the wherewithal to resist and just go with the flow even if it leading them over a cliff. Even the proverbial lemmings survive only because some didn't follow along.
They don’t make starter homes anymore; they’re enticing Millennials & GenZ into condos - and they’re still expensive!
Even living in high crime areas with low performing schools is expensive!
They don’t make cheap cars anymore.
And back in the 1930’s (& post-WW2 50’s & pre-Managed Decline of the West 70’s), the COL was still calibrated to a single-income household.
Today, it takes both Mom and Dad working f/t to be materially poorer than my Depression Era grandparents were in the late 40’s 😳😳😳, who had real food (we don’t!), and who made lots of babies (we can’t!)
… I’m not arguing from a position of envy, nor grievances, nor despair. I want to make it clear that I’m one of the lucky GenX’ers. I’ve restored myself to a material standard of living comparable to my USA 1970’s & 80’s childhood. Plus, our GenZ children are positioned to grow wealthier (& bodily healthier!) than my GenX wife & I have been (because our kids eat Real Food, cooked from scratch - and because we’ve shielded our kids from Big Pharma).
No, today’s youth of reproductive age are not squandering their access to quality housing, reliable transportation, affordable healthcare, and to reproduction, and decent public schooling on the proverbial avocado toast.
… My best advice to GenZ is to make use of the social welfare benefits system in order to procreate within a woman’s natural brief window of peak fertility:
Get married young, and live in your parents’ basement, attic, or garage 😂 Typically, this is legal (legal zoning) because there’s only one degree of separation by blood.
Be a single income family. Use the husband’s paycheck to buy food & transportation & clothing, the base necessities. Let Medicaid, SNAP, WIC, etc. pick up the rest.
It’s better to live three-generations-under-one-roof, in a nice suburban home, and make 6-12 children, living with Grandma & Grandpa, inherit the house, and then return the favor by keeping your parents at home (instead of relinquishing them to the state).
I don’t blame my Older Boomer parents’ generation for not seeing the writing on the wall, but my own GenX should’ve learned from experience not to encourage their children to follow in the Boomers’ footsteps, because the Boomer working man’s economy & counter-cultural revolution has led society to a place where most of us cannot follow: university education, expensive far flung suburbs utterly dependent on two good-condition automobiles, small family size in overpriced McMansions, an abundance of middle-class job opportunities & job security & retirement portfolios, and affordable access to healthcare, and restaurant dining & etc..
In 2007, age 34, I 100% gave up on that lifestyle, and my wife, 33, & I started cranking out the first of our five children-as-capital-investments/ retirement plan, i.e. placing faith in family instead of placing faith in government/ the System.
We’re steering our sons toward the trades & ultimately self-employment. We’re steering our daughter to homemaking. We’re steering both sexes to marrying young & making lots of babies.
And yes, family-helping-family very well could mean three-generations-under-one-roof till our children can afford their own housing.
But we’re not religious conservatives, just two disillusioned GenX’ers who found ourselves significantly less wealthy in adulthood than we had been in childhood 😡 (like a gazillion of our fellow GenX’ers), so we’ve adopted our grandparents’ generation’s socioeconomic strategy. So far so good. Only regret is that I wish we could’ve had ten children instead of just five 👍🙂
I believe a huge part of the problems stem from the fictionalized version of reality presented by the media. Couple that with easy availability of credit, people foolishly believe that they can have it all from the beginning of their working life.
What was repackaged and labeled as "The American Dream" was actually the previous version of what then became the WEFs "You will own nothing and be happy". Just be content to be a cog in the machine and do your part as a consumer. Let your betters decide your fate.
You must submit to the corporations and they will take care of you. They put out a whole litany of lies:
They will fund your healthcare.
They will fund your retirement.
Maybe they will provide or subsidize a car.
Most of all, they will provide you security.
Then as soon as the lies were no longer profitable, they went out the window.
I think we’re in agreement, saying the same thing but with different words/ a different focus.
I could argue that my Older Boomer parents’ generation did have a higher standard of living immediately upon entering the workforce at 18 or 22 than many of today’s GenZ will ever, ever, e.v.e.r. achieve by retirement age. I can argue this based on the collective rapidly declining standards of living for my GenX & the Millennials. What passes for middle class in the USA today just looks poor to me.
Life was e.a.s.y. for the Boomers (except for the ones whose lives were ruined by Vietnam).
I could argue this - easily argue it - but it’s beside the point.
The point is placing faith in family instead of placing faith in the System, “cog in the machine.”
Only now, at the tail end of their lives, will **many, many** of the Boomer generation pay for their sin of faith-in-the-System: They’ll spend the end-of-life experience in the Medicaid Concentration Camps For Abandoned Seniors. But at least they had a good long orgiastic* run (till they got too old to change their own diapers). It was worth it, right?! 🙄 to live rich while your children & grandchildren live poor 🙄
* By orgiastic, I don’t mean frivolous sexual relationships, but by orgiastic I mean materialism & hedonism is 99% of the socioeconomic illness; frivolous sexual relationships were only 1% of the problem.
It’s not casual sex that did the West in; it’s casual divorce, plus culturally suicidally low reproductive rates.
Finally, the point is that my GenX suffers now & will suffer even more from the Boomer sins of faith-in-the-System instead of faith in motherhood, parenthood, & family, and my GenX has enjoyed less of an orgiastic run. The Millennials, wow, just wait 15 years till they’re 45-60 years old & old enough to take stock of their lives. They’re going to be more remorseful & angrier still than my Gen is.
But poor GenZ, literally they’re are poorer than my Depression Era grandparents (b. 1910’s & 20’s) were upon entering the workforce. Except they don’t have to fight WW2.
… The American Dream was real: that by hard work & keeping your nose clean, you could make a life for yourself. Today’s GenZ is going to have to pull together with their Millennial & GenX parents, and with siblings & extended family (if they have any 🙄). Plus, they’re going to have to hope that Trumpian populism, nationalism, & imperialism checks the globalist “Great Reset” communist agenda in the USA (and hope that, once again, the USA saves the planet from Western European royalty & tyranny 😡😡😡).
I would partially agree on some points but the more recent generations have had so many more pretty baubles to reach for instead of more modest goals.
The previous generations didn't have to pay the expense of constant connection. Phones, computers, internet. They didn't have personally curated entertainment with subscriptions for everything. More affluent families might have had a second television.
The houses were much more modest size and didn't have their climate control, cooktops, and laundry submitting notifications to their phones. Rich people might have had air conditioning but most got by with fans.
Cars had at most a radio, not full blown entertainment systems with internet connectivity, system monitoring, navigation, air bags all over them, lane monitoring and driver assist.
On top of the interest on buying things on credit, the newer generations are relying on extended warranties and product replacement.
Credit was not so readily available. Vacations, destination weddings, jet skis are now just a swipe of a credit card away and nobody is teaching people what they can really afford. The worst offender is the student loan program. It doesn't matter how poor you are, you can sign up for whatever program your fantasy dictates and has no regard for your aptitude or prospects of repayment.
Any behavior that you want to engage in is fine and without expecting any consequences or social stigma.
Almost a summary of Neil Howe's - The 4th Turning Is Here! There are no stable places in the World today - here, there, everywhere is in chaos. Hopefully, the World will get through this 4th Turning without a mushroom cloud.......probability says "not likely" unfortunately.
While I have a lot of sympathy, the fact is that most people's failure to succeed is through their own choices. Yes, it is partially driven by marketing and corporate greed, but how you respond to it is all on you.
Wealth and poverty are decided by how you live, not by how much money you have. There are people making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year that are on the edge of financial ruin. There are people that make modest incomes that over time become wealthy.
Traditionally, people lived with their families until they saved up enough to venture out on their own. Now, the expected norm is to rack up huge debit on education, move out on your own to a new place, go out and buy a car you can't afford, and try to live the lifestyle that took the previous generation their entire life to build up to. Then blame society when it doesn't work out because it is due to some systemic oppression or wealth inequality rather than their own poor choices.
But what do you do when the "experts" are all giving advice based on fantasy such as government being immune from basic economics? Spending more than you take in somehow doesn't apply to them. Maybe they don't have to abide by gravity either?
When society expects everyone to make poor decisions and blame everyone except the ones making the decisions, you have to go against it. Some people don't have the wherewithal to resist and just go with the flow even if it leading them over a cliff. Even the proverbial lemmings survive only because some didn't follow along.
They don’t make starter homes anymore; they’re enticing Millennials & GenZ into condos - and they’re still expensive!
Even living in high crime areas with low performing schools is expensive!
They don’t make cheap cars anymore.
And back in the 1930’s (& post-WW2 50’s & pre-Managed Decline of the West 70’s), the COL was still calibrated to a single-income household.
Today, it takes both Mom and Dad working f/t to be materially poorer than my Depression Era grandparents were in the late 40’s 😳😳😳, who had real food (we don’t!), and who made lots of babies (we can’t!)
… I’m not arguing from a position of envy, nor grievances, nor despair. I want to make it clear that I’m one of the lucky GenX’ers. I’ve restored myself to a material standard of living comparable to my USA 1970’s & 80’s childhood. Plus, our GenZ children are positioned to grow wealthier (& bodily healthier!) than my GenX wife & I have been (because our kids eat Real Food, cooked from scratch - and because we’ve shielded our kids from Big Pharma).
No, today’s youth of reproductive age are not squandering their access to quality housing, reliable transportation, affordable healthcare, and to reproduction, and decent public schooling on the proverbial avocado toast.
… My best advice to GenZ is to make use of the social welfare benefits system in order to procreate within a woman’s natural brief window of peak fertility:
Get married young, and live in your parents’ basement, attic, or garage 😂 Typically, this is legal (legal zoning) because there’s only one degree of separation by blood.
Be a single income family. Use the husband’s paycheck to buy food & transportation & clothing, the base necessities. Let Medicaid, SNAP, WIC, etc. pick up the rest.
It’s better to live three-generations-under-one-roof, in a nice suburban home, and make 6-12 children, living with Grandma & Grandpa, inherit the house, and then return the favor by keeping your parents at home (instead of relinquishing them to the state).
I don’t blame my Older Boomer parents’ generation for not seeing the writing on the wall, but my own GenX should’ve learned from experience not to encourage their children to follow in the Boomers’ footsteps, because the Boomer working man’s economy & counter-cultural revolution has led society to a place where most of us cannot follow: university education, expensive far flung suburbs utterly dependent on two good-condition automobiles, small family size in overpriced McMansions, an abundance of middle-class job opportunities & job security & retirement portfolios, and affordable access to healthcare, and restaurant dining & etc..
In 2007, age 34, I 100% gave up on that lifestyle, and my wife, 33, & I started cranking out the first of our five children-as-capital-investments/ retirement plan, i.e. placing faith in family instead of placing faith in government/ the System.
We’re steering our sons toward the trades & ultimately self-employment. We’re steering our daughter to homemaking. We’re steering both sexes to marrying young & making lots of babies.
And yes, family-helping-family very well could mean three-generations-under-one-roof till our children can afford their own housing.
But we’re not religious conservatives, just two disillusioned GenX’ers who found ourselves significantly less wealthy in adulthood than we had been in childhood 😡 (like a gazillion of our fellow GenX’ers), so we’ve adopted our grandparents’ generation’s socioeconomic strategy. So far so good. Only regret is that I wish we could’ve had ten children instead of just five 👍🙂
I believe a huge part of the problems stem from the fictionalized version of reality presented by the media. Couple that with easy availability of credit, people foolishly believe that they can have it all from the beginning of their working life.
What was repackaged and labeled as "The American Dream" was actually the previous version of what then became the WEFs "You will own nothing and be happy". Just be content to be a cog in the machine and do your part as a consumer. Let your betters decide your fate.
You must submit to the corporations and they will take care of you. They put out a whole litany of lies:
They will fund your healthcare.
They will fund your retirement.
Maybe they will provide or subsidize a car.
Most of all, they will provide you security.
Then as soon as the lies were no longer profitable, they went out the window.
I think we’re in agreement, saying the same thing but with different words/ a different focus.
I could argue that my Older Boomer parents’ generation did have a higher standard of living immediately upon entering the workforce at 18 or 22 than many of today’s GenZ will ever, ever, e.v.e.r. achieve by retirement age. I can argue this based on the collective rapidly declining standards of living for my GenX & the Millennials. What passes for middle class in the USA today just looks poor to me.
Life was e.a.s.y. for the Boomers (except for the ones whose lives were ruined by Vietnam).
I could argue this - easily argue it - but it’s beside the point.
The point is placing faith in family instead of placing faith in the System, “cog in the machine.”
Only now, at the tail end of their lives, will **many, many** of the Boomer generation pay for their sin of faith-in-the-System: They’ll spend the end-of-life experience in the Medicaid Concentration Camps For Abandoned Seniors. But at least they had a good long orgiastic* run (till they got too old to change their own diapers). It was worth it, right?! 🙄 to live rich while your children & grandchildren live poor 🙄
* By orgiastic, I don’t mean frivolous sexual relationships, but by orgiastic I mean materialism & hedonism is 99% of the socioeconomic illness; frivolous sexual relationships were only 1% of the problem.
It’s not casual sex that did the West in; it’s casual divorce, plus culturally suicidally low reproductive rates.
Finally, the point is that my GenX suffers now & will suffer even more from the Boomer sins of faith-in-the-System instead of faith in motherhood, parenthood, & family, and my GenX has enjoyed less of an orgiastic run. The Millennials, wow, just wait 15 years till they’re 45-60 years old & old enough to take stock of their lives. They’re going to be more remorseful & angrier still than my Gen is.
But poor GenZ, literally they’re are poorer than my Depression Era grandparents (b. 1910’s & 20’s) were upon entering the workforce. Except they don’t have to fight WW2.
… The American Dream was real: that by hard work & keeping your nose clean, you could make a life for yourself. Today’s GenZ is going to have to pull together with their Millennial & GenX parents, and with siblings & extended family (if they have any 🙄). Plus, they’re going to have to hope that Trumpian populism, nationalism, & imperialism checks the globalist “Great Reset” communist agenda in the USA (and hope that, once again, the USA saves the planet from Western European royalty & tyranny 😡😡😡).
I would partially agree on some points but the more recent generations have had so many more pretty baubles to reach for instead of more modest goals.
The previous generations didn't have to pay the expense of constant connection. Phones, computers, internet. They didn't have personally curated entertainment with subscriptions for everything. More affluent families might have had a second television.
The houses were much more modest size and didn't have their climate control, cooktops, and laundry submitting notifications to their phones. Rich people might have had air conditioning but most got by with fans.
Cars had at most a radio, not full blown entertainment systems with internet connectivity, system monitoring, navigation, air bags all over them, lane monitoring and driver assist.
On top of the interest on buying things on credit, the newer generations are relying on extended warranties and product replacement.
Credit was not so readily available. Vacations, destination weddings, jet skis are now just a swipe of a credit card away and nobody is teaching people what they can really afford. The worst offender is the student loan program. It doesn't matter how poor you are, you can sign up for whatever program your fantasy dictates and has no regard for your aptitude or prospects of repayment.
Any behavior that you want to engage in is fine and without expecting any consequences or social stigma.
Almost a summary of Neil Howe's - The 4th Turning Is Here! There are no stable places in the World today - here, there, everywhere is in chaos. Hopefully, the World will get through this 4th Turning without a mushroom cloud.......probability says "not likely" unfortunately.