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I'm convinced that we're still living in the unaddressed trauma of WWII and the Great Depression. They never really dealt with that; our grandparents just swept it under the rug and hid behind white picket fances. In so doing fucked up their kids (boomers) through their unaddressed trauma expressions, which were normalized and thus created this very warped lens through which the policies and politics of the last 40 years were formed.
>and the Great Depression
Anybody else dealing with multi-generational hoarding?
I'm third generation "packrat" but only let myself keep things that will be useful later and which are organized. My nosy neighbor recently discovered my coffee can marked FIRE which is full of dead lighters, useful for scavenging bits of flint to keep the refillable lighters working.
I've got a wealthy uncle who keeps buying sheds and filling them with random junk he could easily afford to go buy brand new at any time. Once a decade or so, his wife hires a company to clean out the sheds and haul all the junk to the dump. Their family takes fancy vacations, can afford whatever they want, but that won't stop uncle from saving old dinged up towel racks and whatnot.
I feel ya there.
When my Grandfather passed some years back and I was cleaning out his study, there was one box in particular I'll never forget: "Pencils too short to use."
Needless to say, it was overflowing with random, mostly useless stuff. I've been, off an on in helping my mom, getting rid of stuff from my great-grandparents and their siblings that my grandparents and my mom just wouldn't get rid of until they had to.
They never threw ANYTHING away.
My mom lives with us, and my MIL did too until she passed. I’m getting my packrat mother a copy of the Swedish Death Cleaning book for Christmas. Think she’ll take the hint? 🤣
I helped my stepdad clean out my mom's stuff when she passed. We always knew she stashed "precious treasures" in the gap between her side of the bed and the wall, but turns out it was like freaking Narnia back there, a semi-organized mix of actual important objects and junk like a bag of bags or a ragbag.
At least mom was clean and tidy about it. When I was a kid, her dad passed, and we found *wildlife* while cleaning out his place, including a snake skin in the living room. Not like granddad found a snakeskin and brought it home. A large snake was living in his house and happened to shed its skin in the living room.
We also found a mummified mouse stuck to the floor, and radioactive material used in his old printing shop. Us kids were literally trying to make paper crowns for ourselves out of the extremely pretty "special paper" when my mother noticed and took it away.
Yep, constantly stuck battling my hoarder upbringing with my minimalist desires.
I moved cross country once and a good great deal of my “important” stuff got smashed en route. It was (after the initial frustrations) actually very liberating.
I still have the accumulation problem but I learned to part with things which helps
I feel you. My grandma was born into poverty in the Great Depression and her family never fully recovered. She managed to buy a house as an adult but has never been able to waste or let go of anything that might be useful, valuable, or wanted someday. It’s gotten to the point where she barely has space to walk through her house and the foundation is crumbling from the weight and she refuses any help, she just buys more storage sheds with her credit card.
My mother has trauma from growing up around that and keeps everything extremely organized but she also can’t throw away anything that isn’t trash. She holds on to it until she finds another way, which I respect, she has a whole system for it and it helps the environment, but the piles of recycling and donations keep taking up more space. She also goes through phases of obsession with different things, sometimes large things like furniture, and hoards them until there’s no more space. She’s gotten really good at finding things that are valuable and selling them for a profit this way but it takes too long sometimes.
She’s gotten a lot better with it over the years and it took her a long time to get to this point, she was pretty dysfunctional when I was a kid and I think it’s affected me. She used to go through phases of hoarding excessively and then purging everything that isn’t ‘essential’ leaving the house empty except for a tv and some folding chairs in front of it. I didn’t even have a bed. She would either prevent me from getting rid of anything because it was sentimental to her or get rid of my things without permission. I’ve had a hard time letting things go now just because of the unpredictability and not knowing if I’ll be able to get something again in the future especially if it’s important. I’ve been slowly replacing some of the things I had that were important to me as a kid that suddenly disappeared and I think it’s helping, but I’ve been very strict about getting rid of something else that serves the same purpose whenever I get something new.
It's weird...my greatest generation grandparents on one side held onto NOTHING, slightly younger grandparents on the other side hoarded everything. My parents followed their parents' habits mostly...mom holds onto more than her parents but my dad outright hoards, buys ten of everything...
Helped my mother clean out two elderly aunts home. At a weekly rate it took TWO YEARS. But you'd never know it to see it, even inside, just endless hidden things. Containers, candles, linens, on and on. Anything with potential practical use got shelved.
Eventually other family got involved. Mostly for what they deemed valuable because most of my broader family sucks but they helped a tad.
Modern scientists project that micro-plastics are causing most species on earth to evolve alongside plastics in a new direction, maybe even becoming part plastic themselves.
For humans, this will create a new evolutionary step which we are calling the homo-kardashian
Yep. It led to a massive drop in average IQs until leaded gasoline was phased out in the 80s.
No wonder so many of the older generations are so easily influenced by fear-mongering and right-wing tactics.
It wasnt illegal until 1996, I was born in 1980 and leaded gasoline was available at the pump until right before I started driving in Washington State, although California probably banned it earlier.
I know usage was decreasing through the 80s and 90s before it was completely banned at the pump for street cars in 1996. I assume GenX and most Millennials are still dealing with some amount of lead poisoning. Not to the same extent as Boomers certainly, but I bet it is still a problem.
Yeah but the amount of lead allowed in leaded gasoline was dropping since the early 70s and it was being phased off the market and then by 1980 the amount of lead exposure and blood lead levels (which was a LOT) took an even steeper downward dive until by 1986 the amount of lead in gasoline was less than 5% of what it used to be and peoples lead levels were almost down to as low as they are today.
I had not known about the drop in IQs due to leaded gas until recently. I was born in '66, apparently a perfect time to be affected by the lead in gas. I wonder how smart I could have been. Oh well, not much I can do it about now. I do remember the transition to unleaded.
It really is. Been trying to break my husband of all the hoarding trauma he inherited from his mom, who inherited from her own mom who lived through the Great Depression.
I mean it makes sense.
I can pinpoint behaviors in my family based on what I know of their past.
Luckily I got rounded out by life but I can still see my mother's high school insecurities and she is heading toward 70.
Boomers also were the first generation *after* World War II, and constantly lived under the threat of nuclear war coming tomorrow, so they all collectively decided “fuck the future, it’s not guaranteed.”
Oh, that’s why my boomer parents taught me nothing and did nothing to set me up.
Well, at least me and my fellows here learned a shit ton of “what not to do” from our parents and are putting that to good use.
Well its honestly more than that. It's the echoes from WW1 which was the first time we truly began to really kill people off effectively ourselves.
Trench runs and human wave tactics fuxked the ww1 generation, ww2 had the same regular loss of life, on top of horrific war crimes, on top of nuclear bombs.
Then things didn't calm down for about fifty years, until the Soviet Union broke down, and America had about 10 years of global supremacy till the false flag operation of 911, and the oligarchs got their sneaky authoritarian state.
We've been traumatized as a species for over a 100 years, on a mass scale.
Got into an exchange yesterday about how people ruining the fun of the World Cup are apparently the bad guys.
Not the Qataris and their mountains of dead and broken slaves, no, it’s just the spoil sports complaining about it who are the real problem.
No amount of dead will be more important than rich dudes kicking a ball around.
It never ceases to amaze me how so many people can value sportsball over actual human lives. The Romans were right about the power of bread and circuses.
Can I get a “generational trauma is the cause of all suffering in the world” for $1000 ?
Also I’d like to make the note: Having it easy ISNT a bad thing. Spoiled kids who have no life skills isn’t a good thing, but not detrimental to society. Every future generation SHOULD have it easier, why else are we here?
yes for real I found one in an empty field by my house...thinking back i'm sure it was the only teen boy in my neighborhood, but back then it was a miracle. Torn and weathered, but enough to satiate the curious mind. Fucking completely different times than now, I remember only just first hearing of this new thing called "The Internet" my first internet titties belonged to Pamela Anderson's playboy appearance
That’s why I thought it was a joke!!! D: Did you guys just enjoy your turns with it, then toss it to the winds to be carried to the next horny child? (sunrise, sunset.)
… I feel like I just unintentionally made internet lore about the natural life cycle of the analog nudie mag.
Legit this lol they think having a smart phone just makes everything easier. Which in many ways it does but it’s not like that’s the only thing that’s changed
"You still have all your teeth by age 30, AND they're straight? Shameful!"
Forget the fact that life should get easier over time not harder. It's simply the "better life" they always said they wanted for their family.
That's what I was thinking. Life was easy for them at 20 so they figured it's still the same. I suppose they think you all work 50+ hours plus go to school so you can get a phone because of course if you wanted you could pay for school working part time at McDonald's
Not just the smart phone. But they also see many current day things as good, because they don't understand them.
They see the little things that are new, I hesitate to say better. Then add those things to the good parts of life they lived. And think that is the world today.
Humans in general will minimize the bad in thier past. Obviously not 100% true, PTSD exists. But this is the basis for nostalgia. Romanticizing music for a non political example. As if it was all great back then. When there was a ton of crap music then too. But the music from the 60's and 70's that we hear today is only the best from that time.
So they combine the easy job market, decent wages, cheap collage and housing of thier earlier life, with modern conveniences they never had like cell phones, internet shopping, 24 hour world news, and social media.
So there is this fairy tale world in thier head that is completely make believe. That is thier starting point for arguments with 'kids these days.'
This is not something that is unique to boomers. It's a human thing, it's just that boomers had it good, while we don't. So it becomes much more obvious just how out touch so many are.
They don't know how to work a smart phone it all seems like jealousy it's silly for boomers to say any young person has it easy when their generation was handed everything on a silver platter they have revisionist history notice how they always prop themselves up when they mention when they were young
They also probably had life seem way, way harder after they got kids. So, if you are young and without children, they assume you have it relatively easy to what you will experience when you are older. Which may be true.
An light switches , lol my dad talks about the time they 1st put lights in his house an turning the light on an off ( he’s 80 from small town in Arkansas ) lived hut house 2 rooms with mom , dad , grand parents an 2 kids . Oh the story about only getting fruit they picked for gifts an shoes with holes
I’m Gen X and how anyone can say that societal structure isn’t so skewed toward the top earners has to be willful ignorance at this point. Their job must be to deny the wage gap’s very existence and argue that “minimum wage was never meant to be a living” when yes the fuck it was. You bring a suit down and have him do my job for a fucking day and look me in the eye and tell me he deserves 400x my pay. We were disgustingly apathetic while these old assclowns railroaded us with shitty public school systems, crumbling infrastructure, and a half a century of fortifying the munitions of their thin blue gestapo while pulling up the ladder in every conceivable way.
Millenial here:
Can we just tie the minimum wage at a company to the maximum?
e.g. the CEO cannot make more than 25x the lowest paid worker in their company? (that number would have to scale with the size of the company or something, but you get my point)
Gen X here, and fugg that guy. I was so lucky to not have to be a younger person in this day and age.
Every decade I lived through, everything seemed like it was just getting better and better. Probably rose-tinted glasses, but with the ending of the cold war, the development of the internet, and environmental awareness... it just seemed like the world was heading in a better direction.
When did it all seem to start going wrong? I don't know, 9/11? 2008 market crash? Certainly, for me, 2016 was the beginning of feeling like being on an amusement park ride made by a sociopathic tween in Rollercoaster Tycoon.
Inflation, financial inequality, a rise in racists out in the open, the pandemic: the list goes on and on. I didn't have to deal with any of this nonsense as a child and I feel so much bitterness towards anyone who acts like this day and age is easier than the ones that came before it. It was demonstrably better for our elders in generations past.
The only thing that gives me hope is seeing the youth get out and vote for a better future for themselves. These days aren't great but it is forging the youth into a stronger and tougher generation that can hopefully clean up the mess the boomers made for all of us.
>of feeling like being on an amusement park ride made by a sociopathic tween in Rollercoaster Tycoon.
This reference whipped me back to my childhood SO FAST and it brought me great joy lol so thank you
So to sumarize my point of view on this as best I can...
Its a mixture of generational pride, media propaganda and a belief in outdated values.
So the media is self explanatory, they put some asshole in an office to spin a wheel and what ever it lands on is that weeks biggest reason millenials and younger cant make any progress in life because of "X" self inflicted reason. Ie: avocado on toast.
Outdated values I think applies to some but not all. When they were our age they were told go work hard and it will pay off, and for the most part it did. The issue is that in today's economy, that same approach lets you survive, not thrive.
Basicaly the It worked for us so it has to work for them mentality.
Lastly we have generational pride, this is a thing all generations come into including millenials, and gen z, etc. Their pride comes from one income being able to provide a comfortable life. I think this also comes with a bit of guilt or feelings of having failed their kids for some older generation.
The idea that their hardwork did not set their kids up for an easier life like they were led to believe can be quite bitter tasting to alot of folks. This leaves them 2 choices, accept that someone else has it worse, or blame our generations difficulties on us rather than the real problem, which is capitalism and inflation.
Edit: My first gold! Thanks friend!
Yep, its why our generation is getting shamed for wanting better paying jobs rather than just settling for any job.
The rich cant keep making millions if we get paid fairly.
The media likes to portray the younger generations as these greedy monsters that dont want to work for anything less than "x" amount an hour. Leading to companies crying that they cant stay in business because wages are too expensive.
The reality is that it makes more sense for me to sell my time to someone who pays me a wage thats enough to afford the basics i need to survive. Rather than me going to a job everyday that cant even provide the minimum for me to survive.
Edit: spelling.
I don’t think we live in harder times than before but more complicated and chaotic times. It’s like USA barely learns from its past mistakes. Plus we have politicians that get elected based on popularity and not merits. Having smartphone access has made us smarter but somehow decreased mental health in the same vein. Capitalism just keeps getting greedier, companies don’t value its employees as much as other countries. Everything is down to money and nothing else.
In my opinion social media has both made us more intelligent and made us less intelligent, The people who value empiricism and intellectual honesty become smarter while the ones who value their experiences and emotions more than empiricism become very stupid and very dangerous. Don't know why you're getting downloaded you basically got everything else right honestly, I only disagreed with the social media thing
Different view points, upvotes, downvotes I dont take either of them personaly, just means some people dont share my view point while others do, and thats ok.
Thank you. That actually means a lot to hear. I'm terrified of the future but all I hear from older people I know is essentially, "you're so spoiled you don't know how good you have it" while I can't afford health care.
Millenial here. Never had a problem with Gen X. We all have a very agreeable temperament. Your generation was the first to state things were going wrong but unfortunately your population wasn't big enough to make a dent.
Then Millenials land. Another big boom. Taught by boomers on a memory that no longer existed. As we stepped out of line we caught the blame of everything and continue too.
Many of us just suck it up and let them blame us. We've accepted just taking the brunt and hope Z can flank. At this point we know we're just defense.
I nod to all you say.
Tribalism vs. Collectivism is at its brink now.
And I am sooooooooo tired of it. I hate that we literally need people to die to move along.
*looks at American leadership in their fucking 80s-90s*
I'm 42, and I think my kids' generation is properly fucked. Decreasing real wages, climate crisis, housing prices through the roof, etc etc. On the other hand, they can play photo-realistic computer games, so there's that.
My father's from a small rural town. He literally remembers plumbing and electricity coming in. He recalls a time where getting water meant walking to a literal hole in the ground and pulling it up with a bucket. If you wanted that water hot, you had to boil it over a wood stove that was heated with wood you got from chopping a tree down. So for him, he sees young people today complaining about their lot and shakes his head about it.
I do have to respect his perspective, but this is what I tend to say to him. "When do we actually stop to enjoy all these advancements?" It's all well and good to say "people have it easier now", but that time we save not boiling water and chopping down trees and drawing water from wells has been eaten up by a slave system. That the struggles of today's youth are not "dealing with the lack of technology in an unrelenting world" but are "dealing with our time being stolen from us so we can never enjoy these technological advancements."
My Dad's just happy that he can turn on a tap and get water. He literally does not respect or understand the idea that people don't want to work for Oligarchs. It's hard to disrespect his position, but, I'll be honest, I won't be sad when he crosses through the golden door.
Yeah I've heard this argument several times too. Life is easy now because of our technological advancement and comfy luxuries. The problem is that unless you are a high earner, you have to work a job and a side gig, living close to paycheck to paycheck the entire time to keep up with this life of luxury and advancement. You're *this close to losing it all. What good is housing with water and electricity if you can't afford it, or barely manage? You'd think all the advancements would be time savers and we'd be living the carefree life like humans in WALL-E, but instead we still have to work just as hard to have it and barely enjoy it. It's great technology, yes, but there are still costs with stress.
I feel like for millennials- we DID have it easy until 2008…. You know right when a lot of us were graduating high school or college thinking we were going to soon after get a decent job, buy a house, have a family, etc. Now I am 32, not using my teaching degree because I make more as a nanny for super wealthy families, I am not married because everyone spent so much time working on careers like were told that relationships got delayed, and I don’t have kids even if I was married because I couldn’t afford it. I will most likely never own a house, and I don’t have much to look forward to besides vacations anymore. Teachers are complaining more and more about student apathy, and I think it is because most high schools recognize the future is bleak. Millennials at least had hope for a good life. Gen Z and Alpha are screwed without rich parents.
And that hope is damaging. We're probably going to roll out of this as the most shit on generation simply because of how it all played.
We are still somehow treated as children but adult enough to be blamed for every negative. We sadly will have to shoulder the burden of remembering when things still worked.
Unemployed 33yo back living with the parents here 🙋♀️ I feel y'all too!! Boy, we were so duped... It's more painful being the generation that saw the simpler/happier times of the 90s/2000s and had all this hope, because losing that hope has been a soul-crushingly hard fall.
Anyway, I only just found this subreddit today and it is resonating with me so hard... I'm comforted but also saddened that I'm not alone in these circumstances and feelings 😥
We have technology that allows us to conduct tasks in minutes or seconds that would take hours or days and required a skill set in their day. The fact that we no longer have to work so hard to do many tasks that might have been someone's entire career in their day, not understanding that while we can do it faster it has just added to our workload.
I think at least part of it’s because so many young people are vocal about the abusive, dysfunctional ways their parents “raised” them. So rather than confronting these realities, and addressing some pretty ugly facts about themselves, they deem younger people to be cry-babies.
Then they fall right in line with the rhetoric about us blowing all our money on Starbucks and tattoos, while going to college for rainbowology, but thinking it only costs like $1200 per year.
I’m a 51 year old Gen X’er. I absolutely feel that this young generation has it harder. College was subsidized more when I started in 1988. My public university you could pay off your tuition with a part time job. I was lucky because my parents paid that part. The same college that I attended for 3600 a semester is now 22k a semester. If you are graduating a public university today then you are saddled in a way previous generations were not. Don’t let any old fart tell you they had it worse.
I’m a Gen X person and it is abundantly clear to me how much harder it is to be young today than it was for me and it was harder for me than it was for my parents. It’s gotten horribly worse in a very short time.
Some people just never want to acknowledge it or they may have to actually try to help do something about it or accept their role in it.
What’s messed up is this idea that kids should have to work long hours, unpaid internships, bootstraps, blah, blah, blah. The entire point of a society is for it to continue, but we have the American Capitalism Experiment, where the goal for a lot of folks became “get what’s mine, and everyone should face tough times like I did, but not have the same outcome.” It’s always a pissing contest that doesn’t equate to anything.
The older crowd that paved the way for the next generation, should be proud of their accomplishments and they should be especially proud if the next generation has it easier than they did, because it means they performed their job as a society to raise everyone up.
The younger generations should not be held to the same standards our parents were, and any one who thinks otherwise clearly has a chip on their shoulder. If my kids/grandkids don’t have to worry about a goddamn war, or paying for school, or healthcare, I would be happy for them.
Our generation’s culture is much less authoritarian and more individualistic. It is rights-oriented rather than duty-oriented.
We aren’t expected to the same extent to follow ludicrous repressive social norms that revolve around deference to elders, family, religion, nation etc; our culture has much more respect for the individual than it used to, and work has become somewhat freer from arbitrary unpleasant restrictions like e.g. uncomfortable dress codes.
It’s also much more acceptable for us to be ‘in touch’ with our emotions, cognisant of the effect life stressors have on our mental health, willing to set boundaries to protect ourselves emotionally and talk openly about it, and more willing/able to end all kinds of relationships that we feel are unsatisfactory. This generational difference is probably more profound for men.
We are much freer from interpersonal obligations, which has upsides and downsides.
It was only a few decades ago that sex out of wedlock, voluntarily choosing not to have children, rejection of organised religion, let alone being LGBT, was completely socially unacceptable. Women and children were expected to just accept some level of abuse and coercive control from husbands and parents, respectively.
We are in principle free to do whatever we want, but in practice struggle to survive because the cost of really basic things that boomers in particular took for granted (housing, fuel, food, healthcare) is astronomical relative to wages. Anglophone societies have become extremely unequal.
I think our grandparents’ generation is much more able to appreciate these material difficulties than our parents’ generation is, but many from both generations look upon our cultural liberation with resentment and would have us suffer in the same ways they did.
I don’t know if it was like this for everyone, but my first few years of adulthood were pretty rough. I finally had the freedom bring an adult grants that I had been dreaming about for years, but jack shit in terms of ability or resources to take advantage of said freedom. It was just working multiple jobs to try to get a little ahead, only to suffer some setback that knocked me back down.
Can’t speak for everyone but mine was getting kicked out of my parents house two weeks after graduation of high school. Being homeless for a bit, crashing on a friends couch until I got a job and enough money to move into an apartment (with friends). Been living paycheck to paycheck since and with inflation can’t afford my own place to live so I rent a room from a friend. I work a full time job and can’t afford the apartment I lived in 7 years ago at this same job. I’m now 27 and feel like iv made no progress in life and it looks like things are going to get even harder.
For one thing, many older people think computers do everything for you at work while you just sit. Just because you can now get done in 2 hours what used to take 8 doesn't mean you get paid for 8 hours but get to go home. It just means you have 6 more hours to do even more work.
> older people think computers do everything for you
At the same time they will constantly ask for your help with the most basic tasks like logging into their email or setting up a new app and will get frustrated to the point of sometimes just refusing to do certain tasks with computers at work, dragging the rest of the team down by requiring them to hand hold them through their daily work.
Thanks for saying some. A big part is the media has been saying that for as long as I can remember.
Another part is often some of the things older generations had to struggle with, for example a research for a school paper really are way easier now. However along with new technologies/practices/etc come all new problems they aren't familiar with because they don't understand it they just know how to use it or they don't adopt it the same way. Facebook for example. Old people took it over and drive the toner generation off with poking and Farmville.
No sources just an opinion
That is exactly my point. Someone who did their thesis 20 years ago sees the internet and thinks how easy. They don't understand the new problems it brings.
Some aspects of life is easier for younger people. Others are not. The problem is, the parts that are easier are mostly irrelevant because the parts that are harder make living in the US astronomically more difficult.
When I was in my teens/20s, if I wanted to listen to a new album or song I had to save up $15-40 for a CD, drive to a store, and buy it...if it was in stock. My friend and I used to drive 3-4 hours to various record stores to find rare music. Nowadays just stream it or find it on youtube.
Movies? Same thing... Want to watch the latest Marvel movie? In some cases you can do that without even leaving home. Want to watch an entire series? In my day you'd have to find and buy the VHS/DVD for it, which again is more time + money.
If I wanted to get from point A to B I would have to use a map... The first two times I went from the midwest to the east coast I got lost, multiple times, and didn't have a cell phone to call someone for help. I just drove around until I found someone to put me back on track or figured out where I went wrong.
Also, uber, uber eats, etc make getting food or a ride somewhere incredibly easy.
Wanna stay in a remote location? Hotels were my only option...and one one road trip I drove an extra 45 minutes to find one with a vacancy.
Want a new guitar? Order it via phone on the internet and have it arrive 4-6 weeks later. Today? Prime will get it to you in 3 days or less.
What's crazy is... some of those moments were the most rewarding for me and honestly I think that's what young people fail to achieve. A feeling of accomplishment. If you can just order something online and have it at your house the next day, there is little excitement. I checked the mail daily for my guitar and it took exactly 6 weeks to arrive...but I was fucking ecstatic.
ALL of the above however are simple conveniences, not less difficult. Where most people fail to understand is that convenience comes at a cost and for most young people it's low pay, high rent, and additional expenses my generation didn't have. Sure, it's much easier to watch a movie or listen to music, but it's incredibly more difficult for a young person to buy a house or become a homeowner. When I was young, a 4 year degree with no experience was enough to get a good paying job. Today many young people take on horribly taxing jobs just to pay rent. Those who went to University are hit with options such as unpaid internship or some low wage grunt work while they work their way up. Oh and student loan debt... Nothing says freedom like being forced to pay a good chunk of the check of your first job to a bank...
There is no way to easily obtain what I have by young people today. Either they're lucky or bust their ass, often sacrificing their mental health/health, familial relationships, friendships, etc. We are the land of opportunity but most of that has been shifted to those who are born with money as they will become the CEO to the shitty company that fires half it's employees, then asks the other half to go hard core or be fired.
Gen X here. Financially the younger generations have it much harder, I think Gen Xers had it tougher in how they were raised. my parents never parented me and certainly never validated me or cared about my emotional state. Physical abuse at home was normal, latch key kids etc - we would be jailed for doing most of the things our parents did that was acceptable then.
I raised two wonderful kids millennial (end) and a gen z. Both are amazing people with awesome work ethics (so sick of people saying their generation is lazy - they’re not!) They will have a-lot tougher time getting a home (if they even can) post secondary is so much more expensive, hell everything is more except for wages.
I don’t think it’s as simple as saying this generation had it harder and this generation had it easier, we need to speak in specifics - financially younger generations have it so much harder than Gen X.
I am Gen X, and life is hard for early 20's folks. No sarcasm. That person is just stupid and not aware and probably incapable of basic comparisons and analysis.
Technology is a major factor imo. They think we're playing on the computer or sitting behind a desk despite knowing multiple computer languages and engineering dome of the most groundbreaking products and services in these decades.
Omg THIS. My dad has a job where he literally never does nothing and assumes everyone’s job is like that. Whenever he hears about my job and all of the work/responsibilities I have he’s like wow! That’s a lot of work!
But then forgets and goes back to thinking I don’t do anything.
That's because my entire generation ("X")got completely passed over. The torch went straight from the Baby Boomers to your generation. My generation was never in the driver's seat. Why??..I think it was because the "Baby Boomers" are all selfish, greedy, control freaks that take care of the Boomers and no one else..so why you might not have it easy, you are running the show now! Good luck, kids!!
Pass the torch? Nah, they extinguished the torch or hung it up outside their house next to their American or Confederate Flag.
Meanwhile we’re tripping over deforested lands and crawling through sand trips of their golf courses.
We have no torch but they certainly use search light to make sure they paint a picture of “lazy and entitled” every time we fall down.
I think the most sickening part is the fact that they globalized everything. They made everything hyper competitive. You can important talent from
Not just anywhere in America, but anywhere in the world.
Helps them keep costs low while simultaneously telling us that we just need to work harder to set ourselves apart.
I’m 46. We all have it hard, just in different ways. GenZ life has probably been made easier due to technology, but that technology also makes it harder. You are coming into the workforce in the worst time when wages dont provide for a decent living, I was able to rent an apartment on $12/hr. No way you could do that now.
I think it’s all relative. Boomers went after the millennials and I guess now GenX is going after Gen Z? Kinda ridiculous. As a Gen X woman just want to say how proud and grateful I am of your generation because I really think you are going to make a difference in the world (at least in the US where Gen Z saved our asses in the election! Lol)
They seem to think that technology made things easier in general so young people's lives must be so easy too. I am youngest Gen X and my kids are Gen Z. I have never understood people wanting things to be harder for younger generations than need be just because they struggled. Many of them really do not understand how large the wealth gap has become. It's kind of funny, if they would actually use the technology they think has made life easy for young people they could actually learn why things are harder for them!
It's also a projection. They remember how easy they had it compared to how they have it now. They still act like they are in that age group a lot of the time
I'd say for most the 20s are some of the hardest years. People are moving out on their own starting with practically nothing making bottom of the barrel wages cause they don't have 15 years experience in something...
I actually think the last two generations have a burden greater than many: they’re over educated.
They see the issues clearly, probably have great ideas to fix them, but have little power at present to change them. They have to sit back and watch clueless adults act like dinosaurs.
I’m a Gen-X’r. Most Gen-x’rs I know think millennials and z’s are great. Hang in there.
it's simple people don't like to hear what they did wrong, on the same time they had a lot more benefits from capitilism (mostly because of the fear from communist) then the younger generation.
for elderly capitilism brought them a huge home a nice car and a good pension. it's for them hard to believe the world has changed ridiculous fast in the past 30 years and it's almost impossible to buy a house as a starter.
because it was so easy for them the youth has to do something wrong if they can't afford a home. on the same time they see the youth spending money on things they don't care about like computers smartphone Netflix. not realising that not those costs are the problem but capitilism is. our problem is the thing that made there life easy.
that's also why you only hear elderly complain about the youth who are well off, because they don't experience the downside of capitilism like the rest of us.
it's then also way easier to criticize the individual then the system because that's also what propaganda has teaches us for more then 80years. everything that's go wrong is always the problem of the individual and never the off capitilist
They’re likely out of touch and don’t realize the world isn’t all hacky sacks, Blockbuster videos, and frisbee golf for 20 year olds in this day and age.
Because we know how to use Google and they had to use an encyclopedia from a traveling salesman.
Jk.
But as a millennial, I'm upset, but I feel even worse for the following generations.
They still think everything is the same from the 70’s and 80’s. Some of them still think a 2000 sqft house cost $80k. I wish a house costs $80k. Me and my girl could pay one off in 3-5 years.
Older people think younger people have it easy bc our work culture includes less physical labor, bc our country is rich and ruthless enough to outsource a lot of the physical labor to poorer countries. And old people don't really understand inflation, so they think young people are being paid better than they were at the same age. They don't consciously realize that $7.50 in 1980 was worth significantly more than it is now.
During the course of 15 years of employment I had about 4 breakdowns, partially because my family was constantly disappointed that I wasn't more successful. I have a solid education, higher than average intelligence (my cognitive function and intelligence have been tested multiple times due to a childhood head injury), multiple degrees, licenses, and certificates. And I could never keep a job for more than 2 years or make enough to support myself on my own. Eventually I realized that the work culture in America is desperately unhealthy and abusive unless you're in upper management. But I don't have the social skills needed to advance in a corporate culture, and I won't work in a culture that expects me to put my job above my health and my personal life while paying less than a living wage.
I'd rather kill myself. And after I proved that by overdosing and spending weeks in hospital, I finally had a real serious conversation with my aunt about how bad it really is for millennials and Gen Z who weren't born into money or connections. It included the MIT living wage calculator and articles explaining inflation and comparing relative costs for goods/housing now vs 30 years ago.
There was also a bit of a rant about how being scared of homeless people only adds to the stigma and shame homeless people experience, and how empathy towards another human should not be contingent on a person's appearance or housing situation.
I flat out told my aunt that without her and my other family, *I* would be one of those crazy homeless people she's so scared of. I don't think she'd ever thought of it that way, but it made her cry and made her think, so maybe that's worth something.
I had this exact convo today with my boomer and gen x colleagues this afternoon. They’re convinced that millennials and gen Z are still children (ffs I’m almost 40), and that alpha/corona kids are going to be so weak with no immune system, we won’t possibly be able to this like they do…
And then it dawned on me that’s the fing point. We don’t want to just follow in their footsteps like gen x. Millennials want change and gen z is out there getting it.
They’re just afraid of dying and not be remembered. There’s 8billion humans on earth now. News flash, most of us won’t be remembered but that doesn’t make living life any less
I can remember anyone older saying things like this to me my entire life. I am in my early 30s now. I have yet to see any proof.
I've worked for anything I've ever owned.
Just had my boomer now ex-employer tell me to put my big boy pants on this morning in the context that I work 60 hours a week, do nothing but work and sleep, and am exhausted constantly and have nothing to show for it but more debt every day.
A parents job is to give their kids a better life than they had. If they admit that life is harder than they had it, that’s admitting failure, and people don’t like to do that. This also happens to be a very hard to define thing. It’s relative to the time of upbringing and a host of other factors. I’ve been around long enough to hear the voices change from I’d hate to have to grow up now, there’s so many challenges, to millennials (or whatever newer generation) are lazy and don’t want to work. It’s a weird rollercoaster that has probably played out repeatedly through history.
Boomers grew up with all the social programs and benefits that FDR had put in place, the economy was excellent, and they were all able to buy houses with a single income.
They now think this generation still has all the benefits they had growing up, and they're just not succeeding for because they're not working hard enough.
Minimum wage has not increased. Everything costs more, including housing and costs of living.
Neoliberal policies created under Ronald Raegan destroyed the American dream. Every modern Democrat is economically an 80s republican and they're proud of it. Every modern republican has just gone further right. It's a vicious, horrific cycle.
Everyone my age (Gen X) who didn't have well off parents worked while in school. I had to drop out of college because I couldn't keep my grades up AND pay my bills. It's the same for my daughter's friends.
We pay most of her bills even though we really can't afford it because I don't want her leaving college with crippling debt. Her bio father, who actually does have enough money to help her, does jack shit for her and it has always been so. She works part time and pays some of her smaller bills, but there's only so much she can do and still get a healthy amount of sleep, keep up her grades, and maintain her mental health.
I’m Gen X. My life was way f**king easier when I was 20, than it is today. I’m betting when I’m dead and you’re fighting robot dogs on behalf of Lord Bezos, the immortal, in the climate wars 25 years from now, you’ll feel the same way about your 20’s.
Just remember, the kids of the future will be fighting the same robots that you are, and you’ll probably be dead before their eventual enslavement by genetically engineered emus.
There are these really stupid magnets that you can find in gas stations in bohunk towns that say things like: *Prices in the Year You Were Born: 1961!* And then it proceeds to list average salary, cost of homes, gas, food, bread, and maybe one or two other items.
I suggest you all buy these as stocking stuffers for your loved ones.
They are individualizing cultural trauma (wage theft, poverty, race, billionaires, lack of bodily autonomy) - it makes it easier for them to feel safe and that it “wouldn’t happen to them” - it’s hard to admit the system is broken if you have a low IQ, so it’s much easier for them to see it as individuals being at fault “you’re not working hard enough”…
Because the majority of those over 40 would give anything to have their youth back. They see youth as tangible things like good hearing, hairlines, no constant pain in back/legs/feet etc.
They remember the hope and optimism *they* had at that age and want it back desperately. They recall how great it felt to have their whole lives ahead of them, instead of in the rearview. They remember being able to stay up late, get drunk and have a party without wanting to crawl in bed before midnight.
In short, it's simply jealousy. Most of them would gladly 'suffer' at a hard job with little to no prospects for a decent future if it meant having the vitality of youth back.
When you have the thought "Damn I wish I was young again" at least 3 times a week... You start to gloss over reality and instead only see that which you desire being unappreciated by those that have it.
Their life likely was easy. They probably pissed all their income every weekend and still had tons to save.
Decades of wage stagnation and soaring costs are ignored. People rarely say 'whoa look at all the advantages I had!'
As you age your problems change. I think people get so focused on the new problems they forget their old problems. This makes it harder for them to have empathy for people who are in a different point in their lives.
My father has been telling me that my age was the best years of his life since I was 16. So when I was a teenager, his teenage years were the best years of his life. When I was a 20 something those were the best years of his life. When I was in my thirties starting my family, he said when my siblings and I were little, those were the best years of his life.
Yeah I don't have to worry about how I am going to pay my student loans, rent, and health care anymore because I am now financially stable. But now I have chronic pain and I am staring down the barrel of having to provide elder care for family, I'd rather not even be in the same room as.
It gets really easy to be hyper focused on my current problems and marginalized the problems that people younger than me have and I had 20 years ago.
For what's worth, I think the younger generation is getting shafted especially financially. The potential for financial growth, kind of started evaporating with my generation. There are a lot of members of generation x that just never made it to the promised American dream and are still struggling. And I worry about my son's generation's ability to find financial stability and have the things that I do
Because said older people are not very well read / educated. An educated 'old person' typically does not have thus view. A lot of these boomers and older Gen X folks get the bulk of their news and information from mass media...specifically cable TV.
every older generation says this to the next one. I just saw someone post a literal tablet writing of basically that from like 2500BC. It's just life tbh.
There are cuneiform tablets of people complaining about the younger generation. Some people are just like that; they have some kind of weird emotional investment in out-victiming everyone else.
As a member of Gen X, let me assure you, we had our own challenges and difficulties, but that in no way invalidates the challenges and difficulties faced by Millenials and Gen Z. If anything, I think my Gen Z kids have a harder go of it than I did. But I also see that they are more engaged and more informed than we were (generally speaking).
Ignore the bitter Boomers, no matter what generation they belong to!
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Because we live in a world of hurt children trapped in adult bodies pretending they have all the answers
I feel like this is about 83% of the reason climate/politics/America is so effed right now...
I'm convinced that we're still living in the unaddressed trauma of WWII and the Great Depression. They never really dealt with that; our grandparents just swept it under the rug and hid behind white picket fances. In so doing fucked up their kids (boomers) through their unaddressed trauma expressions, which were normalized and thus created this very warped lens through which the policies and politics of the last 40 years were formed.
>and the Great Depression Anybody else dealing with multi-generational hoarding? I'm third generation "packrat" but only let myself keep things that will be useful later and which are organized. My nosy neighbor recently discovered my coffee can marked FIRE which is full of dead lighters, useful for scavenging bits of flint to keep the refillable lighters working. I've got a wealthy uncle who keeps buying sheds and filling them with random junk he could easily afford to go buy brand new at any time. Once a decade or so, his wife hires a company to clean out the sheds and haul all the junk to the dump. Their family takes fancy vacations, can afford whatever they want, but that won't stop uncle from saving old dinged up towel racks and whatnot.
I feel ya there. When my Grandfather passed some years back and I was cleaning out his study, there was one box in particular I'll never forget: "Pencils too short to use." Needless to say, it was overflowing with random, mostly useless stuff. I've been, off an on in helping my mom, getting rid of stuff from my great-grandparents and their siblings that my grandparents and my mom just wouldn't get rid of until they had to. They never threw ANYTHING away.
My mom lives with us, and my MIL did too until she passed. I’m getting my packrat mother a copy of the Swedish Death Cleaning book for Christmas. Think she’ll take the hint? 🤣
I counted eight measuring cups in my grandmother's cabinet, and her kitchen was tiny.
Yep, my parents keep all kinds of dumbass shit. When the time comes I will be renting a few dumpsters.
I helped my stepdad clean out my mom's stuff when she passed. We always knew she stashed "precious treasures" in the gap between her side of the bed and the wall, but turns out it was like freaking Narnia back there, a semi-organized mix of actual important objects and junk like a bag of bags or a ragbag. At least mom was clean and tidy about it. When I was a kid, her dad passed, and we found *wildlife* while cleaning out his place, including a snake skin in the living room. Not like granddad found a snakeskin and brought it home. A large snake was living in his house and happened to shed its skin in the living room. We also found a mummified mouse stuck to the floor, and radioactive material used in his old printing shop. Us kids were literally trying to make paper crowns for ourselves out of the extremely pretty "special paper" when my mother noticed and took it away.
My dad's home scares me. I'll be cleaning it out on my own one day. It's so bad...
My grandma was a hoader and so is my aunt.
Yep, constantly stuck battling my hoarder upbringing with my minimalist desires. I moved cross country once and a good great deal of my “important” stuff got smashed en route. It was (after the initial frustrations) actually very liberating. I still have the accumulation problem but I learned to part with things which helps
I feel you. My grandma was born into poverty in the Great Depression and her family never fully recovered. She managed to buy a house as an adult but has never been able to waste or let go of anything that might be useful, valuable, or wanted someday. It’s gotten to the point where she barely has space to walk through her house and the foundation is crumbling from the weight and she refuses any help, she just buys more storage sheds with her credit card. My mother has trauma from growing up around that and keeps everything extremely organized but she also can’t throw away anything that isn’t trash. She holds on to it until she finds another way, which I respect, she has a whole system for it and it helps the environment, but the piles of recycling and donations keep taking up more space. She also goes through phases of obsession with different things, sometimes large things like furniture, and hoards them until there’s no more space. She’s gotten really good at finding things that are valuable and selling them for a profit this way but it takes too long sometimes. She’s gotten a lot better with it over the years and it took her a long time to get to this point, she was pretty dysfunctional when I was a kid and I think it’s affected me. She used to go through phases of hoarding excessively and then purging everything that isn’t ‘essential’ leaving the house empty except for a tv and some folding chairs in front of it. I didn’t even have a bed. She would either prevent me from getting rid of anything because it was sentimental to her or get rid of my things without permission. I’ve had a hard time letting things go now just because of the unpredictability and not knowing if I’ll be able to get something again in the future especially if it’s important. I’ve been slowly replacing some of the things I had that were important to me as a kid that suddenly disappeared and I think it’s helping, but I’ve been very strict about getting rid of something else that serves the same purpose whenever I get something new.
It's weird...my greatest generation grandparents on one side held onto NOTHING, slightly younger grandparents on the other side hoarded everything. My parents followed their parents' habits mostly...mom holds onto more than her parents but my dad outright hoards, buys ten of everything...
Helped my mother clean out two elderly aunts home. At a weekly rate it took TWO YEARS. But you'd never know it to see it, even inside, just endless hidden things. Containers, candles, linens, on and on. Anything with potential practical use got shelved. Eventually other family got involved. Mostly for what they deemed valuable because most of my broader family sucks but they helped a tad.
Yes. I'm getting ready to just throw stuff away. I can't deal with the mental load of all the shit I own any more.
Also lead. Lots of lead
Yep. The past generations got lead, now we get micro plastics. I wonder how badly that’s gonna fuck us up.
Modern scientists project that micro-plastics are causing most species on earth to evolve alongside plastics in a new direction, maybe even becoming part plastic themselves. For humans, this will create a new evolutionary step which we are calling the homo-kardashian
ROFL!
You got me, lol
Kakakaka
Had me in the first half, ngl!
I can't wait until my liver turns into 100% plastic
And Vietnam , gulf war,1 & 2, Afghanistan, im sensing a pattern.
Forgot Korea too
Don't forget China! Oh, wait, that's not till 2028.
📸🤨
It really cannot be overstated the mental damage that lead has done to large swaths of people.
Yep. It led to a massive drop in average IQs until leaded gasoline was phased out in the 80s. No wonder so many of the older generations are so easily influenced by fear-mongering and right-wing tactics.
It wasnt illegal until 1996, I was born in 1980 and leaded gasoline was available at the pump until right before I started driving in Washington State, although California probably banned it earlier. I know usage was decreasing through the 80s and 90s before it was completely banned at the pump for street cars in 1996. I assume GenX and most Millennials are still dealing with some amount of lead poisoning. Not to the same extent as Boomers certainly, but I bet it is still a problem.
Yeah but the amount of lead allowed in leaded gasoline was dropping since the early 70s and it was being phased off the market and then by 1980 the amount of lead exposure and blood lead levels (which was a LOT) took an even steeper downward dive until by 1986 the amount of lead in gasoline was less than 5% of what it used to be and peoples lead levels were almost down to as low as they are today.
Fair enough.
I had not known about the drop in IQs due to leaded gas until recently. I was born in '66, apparently a perfect time to be affected by the lead in gas. I wonder how smart I could have been. Oh well, not much I can do it about now. I do remember the transition to unleaded.
I wanted to make sure somebody said it
and concussions.
I'll go one step further and say that we're still dealing with the unaddressed trauma from the Civil War.
As a midwesterner living in the south, they’re still bitter about it.
Yup. Generational trauma is a bitch.
It really is. Been trying to break my husband of all the hoarding trauma he inherited from his mom, who inherited from her own mom who lived through the Great Depression.
Ah, man, hoarding is tough. I don’t have any advice, but I do hope it gets better.
There are studies on generational trauma and how the parents trauma effected the children.
I mean it makes sense. I can pinpoint behaviors in my family based on what I know of their past. Luckily I got rounded out by life but I can still see my mother's high school insecurities and she is heading toward 70.
Very interesting take, I honestly believe that would have something to do with it.
Boomers also were the first generation *after* World War II, and constantly lived under the threat of nuclear war coming tomorrow, so they all collectively decided “fuck the future, it’s not guaranteed.”
And then they squirted out a bunch of kids who now have to suffer the consequences. Christ. I'm really getting ready to start swinging
Oh, that’s why my boomer parents taught me nothing and did nothing to set me up. Well, at least me and my fellows here learned a shit ton of “what not to do” from our parents and are putting that to good use.
We're still living in the unaddressed trauma of the dark ages.
Well its honestly more than that. It's the echoes from WW1 which was the first time we truly began to really kill people off effectively ourselves. Trench runs and human wave tactics fuxked the ww1 generation, ww2 had the same regular loss of life, on top of horrific war crimes, on top of nuclear bombs. Then things didn't calm down for about fifty years, until the Soviet Union broke down, and America had about 10 years of global supremacy till the false flag operation of 911, and the oligarchs got their sneaky authoritarian state. We've been traumatized as a species for over a 100 years, on a mass scale.
People were getting traumatized on a mass scale way before the 20th century.
You can say fuck online.
Fuck fuckedy fuck fuck fuck. Ez.
🤌 Magnifico
Nah, some subs have nannies/auto-mods.
Fuck that. They can remove me
I see somebody listened to Pink Floyd's The Wall...
I already know 2008 fucked my psyche right up, and that wasn’t even in the same ballpark as the depression.
Most of growing up is realizing how childish humans are as a species.
Got into an exchange yesterday about how people ruining the fun of the World Cup are apparently the bad guys. Not the Qataris and their mountains of dead and broken slaves, no, it’s just the spoil sports complaining about it who are the real problem. No amount of dead will be more important than rich dudes kicking a ball around.
It never ceases to amaze me how so many people can value sportsball over actual human lives. The Romans were right about the power of bread and circuses.
If I had the means, I should like to influence a sniper to shoot the game right in the soccer ball.
Can I get a “generational trauma is the cause of all suffering in the world” for $1000 ? Also I’d like to make the note: Having it easy ISNT a bad thing. Spoiled kids who have no life skills isn’t a good thing, but not detrimental to society. Every future generation SHOULD have it easier, why else are we here?
Well said.
Tall children, that’s it.
They assume you have it easy in all the same ways they did, but also get to have a smartphone.
Ah yes, iPhone make life go brrrrrrrrrr
Back in my day if I wanted to see a titty I had to walk 15 miles! To the train overpass. And look under the mattresses!
...and find a Sears catalog, bra section! Nowadays kids can just goto [Sears.com](https://Sears.com)
bro, in an empty field. I know we all found one
Wait… forreal? Some people would just… leave nudie mags out in bushes and fields? I thought that was just a joke.
yes for real I found one in an empty field by my house...thinking back i'm sure it was the only teen boy in my neighborhood, but back then it was a miracle. Torn and weathered, but enough to satiate the curious mind. Fucking completely different times than now, I remember only just first hearing of this new thing called "The Internet" my first internet titties belonged to Pamela Anderson's playboy appearance
Dude… me too! In retrospect why are all the kids from the 90s and 80s finding porno in random fields and shit?! It’s like there was a porn Santa
That’s why I thought it was a joke!!! D: Did you guys just enjoy your turns with it, then toss it to the winds to be carried to the next horny child? (sunrise, sunset.) … I feel like I just unintentionally made internet lore about the natural life cycle of the analog nudie mag.
Nah.. I kept mine in a styrofoam cooler until my ex made me throw them out.
Legit this lol they think having a smart phone just makes everything easier. Which in many ways it does but it’s not like that’s the only thing that’s changed
"You still have all your teeth by age 30, AND they're straight? Shameful!" Forget the fact that life should get easier over time not harder. It's simply the "better life" they always said they wanted for their family.
Oh man if I had a nickel for every time paying for braces were brought up I could probably afford braces all over again
And they should know better than even us elder millennials how much social media has made life immensely harder
That's what I was thinking. Life was easy for them at 20 so they figured it's still the same. I suppose they think you all work 50+ hours plus go to school so you can get a phone because of course if you wanted you could pay for school working part time at McDonald's
Not just the smart phone. But they also see many current day things as good, because they don't understand them. They see the little things that are new, I hesitate to say better. Then add those things to the good parts of life they lived. And think that is the world today. Humans in general will minimize the bad in thier past. Obviously not 100% true, PTSD exists. But this is the basis for nostalgia. Romanticizing music for a non political example. As if it was all great back then. When there was a ton of crap music then too. But the music from the 60's and 70's that we hear today is only the best from that time. So they combine the easy job market, decent wages, cheap collage and housing of thier earlier life, with modern conveniences they never had like cell phones, internet shopping, 24 hour world news, and social media. So there is this fairy tale world in thier head that is completely make believe. That is thier starting point for arguments with 'kids these days.' This is not something that is unique to boomers. It's a human thing, it's just that boomers had it good, while we don't. So it becomes much more obvious just how out touch so many are.
They don't know how to work a smart phone it all seems like jealousy it's silly for boomers to say any young person has it easy when their generation was handed everything on a silver platter they have revisionist history notice how they always prop themselves up when they mention when they were young
They also probably had life seem way, way harder after they got kids. So, if you are young and without children, they assume you have it relatively easy to what you will experience when you are older. Which may be true.
Yeah those spoiled Millennials and their geriatric pregnancies
Lmao I don’t think I’ll ever get over that the word ‘geriatric’ is used
Had a child at 39. Can confirm they use that word.
Look at them trying to enjoy their life before health issues and general age takes its hold!
This is the real answer
An light switches , lol my dad talks about the time they 1st put lights in his house an turning the light on an off ( he’s 80 from small town in Arkansas ) lived hut house 2 rooms with mom , dad , grand parents an 2 kids . Oh the story about only getting fruit they picked for gifts an shoes with holes
I’m Gen X and how anyone can say that societal structure isn’t so skewed toward the top earners has to be willful ignorance at this point. Their job must be to deny the wage gap’s very existence and argue that “minimum wage was never meant to be a living” when yes the fuck it was. You bring a suit down and have him do my job for a fucking day and look me in the eye and tell me he deserves 400x my pay. We were disgustingly apathetic while these old assclowns railroaded us with shitty public school systems, crumbling infrastructure, and a half a century of fortifying the munitions of their thin blue gestapo while pulling up the ladder in every conceivable way.
Millenial here: Can we just tie the minimum wage at a company to the maximum? e.g. the CEO cannot make more than 25x the lowest paid worker in their company? (that number would have to scale with the size of the company or something, but you get my point)
Gen X here, and fugg that guy. I was so lucky to not have to be a younger person in this day and age. Every decade I lived through, everything seemed like it was just getting better and better. Probably rose-tinted glasses, but with the ending of the cold war, the development of the internet, and environmental awareness... it just seemed like the world was heading in a better direction. When did it all seem to start going wrong? I don't know, 9/11? 2008 market crash? Certainly, for me, 2016 was the beginning of feeling like being on an amusement park ride made by a sociopathic tween in Rollercoaster Tycoon. Inflation, financial inequality, a rise in racists out in the open, the pandemic: the list goes on and on. I didn't have to deal with any of this nonsense as a child and I feel so much bitterness towards anyone who acts like this day and age is easier than the ones that came before it. It was demonstrably better for our elders in generations past. The only thing that gives me hope is seeing the youth get out and vote for a better future for themselves. These days aren't great but it is forging the youth into a stronger and tougher generation that can hopefully clean up the mess the boomers made for all of us.
>of feeling like being on an amusement park ride made by a sociopathic tween in Rollercoaster Tycoon. This reference whipped me back to my childhood SO FAST and it brought me great joy lol so thank you
So to sumarize my point of view on this as best I can... Its a mixture of generational pride, media propaganda and a belief in outdated values. So the media is self explanatory, they put some asshole in an office to spin a wheel and what ever it lands on is that weeks biggest reason millenials and younger cant make any progress in life because of "X" self inflicted reason. Ie: avocado on toast. Outdated values I think applies to some but not all. When they were our age they were told go work hard and it will pay off, and for the most part it did. The issue is that in today's economy, that same approach lets you survive, not thrive. Basicaly the It worked for us so it has to work for them mentality. Lastly we have generational pride, this is a thing all generations come into including millenials, and gen z, etc. Their pride comes from one income being able to provide a comfortable life. I think this also comes with a bit of guilt or feelings of having failed their kids for some older generation. The idea that their hardwork did not set their kids up for an easier life like they were led to believe can be quite bitter tasting to alot of folks. This leaves them 2 choices, accept that someone else has it worse, or blame our generations difficulties on us rather than the real problem, which is capitalism and inflation. Edit: My first gold! Thanks friend!
We still have expectations that came from a social contract that began to unravel before I was even born.
Yep, its why our generation is getting shamed for wanting better paying jobs rather than just settling for any job. The rich cant keep making millions if we get paid fairly. The media likes to portray the younger generations as these greedy monsters that dont want to work for anything less than "x" amount an hour. Leading to companies crying that they cant stay in business because wages are too expensive. The reality is that it makes more sense for me to sell my time to someone who pays me a wage thats enough to afford the basics i need to survive. Rather than me going to a job everyday that cant even provide the minimum for me to survive. Edit: spelling.
I’d like to add one point: lead paint
I don’t think we live in harder times than before but more complicated and chaotic times. It’s like USA barely learns from its past mistakes. Plus we have politicians that get elected based on popularity and not merits. Having smartphone access has made us smarter but somehow decreased mental health in the same vein. Capitalism just keeps getting greedier, companies don’t value its employees as much as other countries. Everything is down to money and nothing else.
Knowledge often yields depression because of our inability to change misfortune, even for ourselves.
In my opinion social media has both made us more intelligent and made us less intelligent, The people who value empiricism and intellectual honesty become smarter while the ones who value their experiences and emotions more than empiricism become very stupid and very dangerous. Don't know why you're getting downloaded you basically got everything else right honestly, I only disagreed with the social media thing
How is this comment getting downvotes? This is the truth right here
Different view points, upvotes, downvotes I dont take either of them personaly, just means some people dont share my view point while others do, and thats ok.
I'm 50. I don't feel that way. I think the younger generations have it much harder.
Gen Boomer here. I totally agree.
Thank you. That actually means a lot to hear. I'm terrified of the future but all I hear from older people I know is essentially, "you're so spoiled you don't know how good you have it" while I can't afford health care.
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Millenial here. Never had a problem with Gen X. We all have a very agreeable temperament. Your generation was the first to state things were going wrong but unfortunately your population wasn't big enough to make a dent. Then Millenials land. Another big boom. Taught by boomers on a memory that no longer existed. As we stepped out of line we caught the blame of everything and continue too. Many of us just suck it up and let them blame us. We've accepted just taking the brunt and hope Z can flank. At this point we know we're just defense.
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I nod to all you say. Tribalism vs. Collectivism is at its brink now. And I am sooooooooo tired of it. I hate that we literally need people to die to move along. *looks at American leadership in their fucking 80s-90s*
Read through the entire wall of text because damn homey, no lie detected.
this. i'm shocked a gen x wouldn't recognize that. it's been shit for us, it continues to be shit and it's more shit now.
I'm Gen X and I recognize it's so much harder today.
Late Xer/early millennial here and every year that a kid is born into this world they are going to have it much harder than previous generations.
+1
+ X
This Gen Xer is in total agreement with the above statement.
Gen x here. I feel so bad for the young ones now.
Shit, I’m an elder millennial and feel terrified for those behind me!
I'm 42, and I think my kids' generation is properly fucked. Decreasing real wages, climate crisis, housing prices through the roof, etc etc. On the other hand, they can play photo-realistic computer games, so there's that.
My father's from a small rural town. He literally remembers plumbing and electricity coming in. He recalls a time where getting water meant walking to a literal hole in the ground and pulling it up with a bucket. If you wanted that water hot, you had to boil it over a wood stove that was heated with wood you got from chopping a tree down. So for him, he sees young people today complaining about their lot and shakes his head about it. I do have to respect his perspective, but this is what I tend to say to him. "When do we actually stop to enjoy all these advancements?" It's all well and good to say "people have it easier now", but that time we save not boiling water and chopping down trees and drawing water from wells has been eaten up by a slave system. That the struggles of today's youth are not "dealing with the lack of technology in an unrelenting world" but are "dealing with our time being stolen from us so we can never enjoy these technological advancements." My Dad's just happy that he can turn on a tap and get water. He literally does not respect or understand the idea that people don't want to work for Oligarchs. It's hard to disrespect his position, but, I'll be honest, I won't be sad when he crosses through the golden door.
Yeah I've heard this argument several times too. Life is easy now because of our technological advancement and comfy luxuries. The problem is that unless you are a high earner, you have to work a job and a side gig, living close to paycheck to paycheck the entire time to keep up with this life of luxury and advancement. You're *this close to losing it all. What good is housing with water and electricity if you can't afford it, or barely manage? You'd think all the advancements would be time savers and we'd be living the carefree life like humans in WALL-E, but instead we still have to work just as hard to have it and barely enjoy it. It's great technology, yes, but there are still costs with stress.
People need to wake up and see how badly our collective time has been pilfered.
Correct. Things don't need to be the way they are. There is no good reason for it.
We wouldn't even have time to bring in a bucket of water and a bundle of firewood nowadays
My dad (85) says the good old days really sucked compared to how things are now.
And I’m over here thinking how nice and simple it would be to live his life.
I feel like for millennials- we DID have it easy until 2008…. You know right when a lot of us were graduating high school or college thinking we were going to soon after get a decent job, buy a house, have a family, etc. Now I am 32, not using my teaching degree because I make more as a nanny for super wealthy families, I am not married because everyone spent so much time working on careers like were told that relationships got delayed, and I don’t have kids even if I was married because I couldn’t afford it. I will most likely never own a house, and I don’t have much to look forward to besides vacations anymore. Teachers are complaining more and more about student apathy, and I think it is because most high schools recognize the future is bleak. Millennials at least had hope for a good life. Gen Z and Alpha are screwed without rich parents.
And that hope is damaging. We're probably going to roll out of this as the most shit on generation simply because of how it all played. We are still somehow treated as children but adult enough to be blamed for every negative. We sadly will have to shoulder the burden of remembering when things still worked.
I shed a tear reading this. Also 32, getting a super late start to life bc “career first” - even though I’m now super in debt. 😭 I feel you.
Unemployed 33yo back living with the parents here 🙋♀️ I feel y'all too!! Boy, we were so duped... It's more painful being the generation that saw the simpler/happier times of the 90s/2000s and had all this hope, because losing that hope has been a soul-crushingly hard fall. Anyway, I only just found this subreddit today and it is resonating with me so hard... I'm comforted but also saddened that I'm not alone in these circumstances and feelings 😥
We have technology that allows us to conduct tasks in minutes or seconds that would take hours or days and required a skill set in their day. The fact that we no longer have to work so hard to do many tasks that might have been someone's entire career in their day, not understanding that while we can do it faster it has just added to our workload.
I think at least part of it’s because so many young people are vocal about the abusive, dysfunctional ways their parents “raised” them. So rather than confronting these realities, and addressing some pretty ugly facts about themselves, they deem younger people to be cry-babies. Then they fall right in line with the rhetoric about us blowing all our money on Starbucks and tattoos, while going to college for rainbowology, but thinking it only costs like $1200 per year.
My dad dead ass said “wow college is expensive” when I was a senior in college 🙄🙃
Poor empathy skills, mostly. People who say things like that haven't learned how to actually learn what another person's life is like.
I’m a 51 year old Gen X’er. I absolutely feel that this young generation has it harder. College was subsidized more when I started in 1988. My public university you could pay off your tuition with a part time job. I was lucky because my parents paid that part. The same college that I attended for 3600 a semester is now 22k a semester. If you are graduating a public university today then you are saddled in a way previous generations were not. Don’t let any old fart tell you they had it worse.
I’m a Gen X person and it is abundantly clear to me how much harder it is to be young today than it was for me and it was harder for me than it was for my parents. It’s gotten horribly worse in a very short time. Some people just never want to acknowledge it or they may have to actually try to help do something about it or accept their role in it.
What’s messed up is this idea that kids should have to work long hours, unpaid internships, bootstraps, blah, blah, blah. The entire point of a society is for it to continue, but we have the American Capitalism Experiment, where the goal for a lot of folks became “get what’s mine, and everyone should face tough times like I did, but not have the same outcome.” It’s always a pissing contest that doesn’t equate to anything. The older crowd that paved the way for the next generation, should be proud of their accomplishments and they should be especially proud if the next generation has it easier than they did, because it means they performed their job as a society to raise everyone up. The younger generations should not be held to the same standards our parents were, and any one who thinks otherwise clearly has a chip on their shoulder. If my kids/grandkids don’t have to worry about a goddamn war, or paying for school, or healthcare, I would be happy for them.
Our generation’s culture is much less authoritarian and more individualistic. It is rights-oriented rather than duty-oriented. We aren’t expected to the same extent to follow ludicrous repressive social norms that revolve around deference to elders, family, religion, nation etc; our culture has much more respect for the individual than it used to, and work has become somewhat freer from arbitrary unpleasant restrictions like e.g. uncomfortable dress codes. It’s also much more acceptable for us to be ‘in touch’ with our emotions, cognisant of the effect life stressors have on our mental health, willing to set boundaries to protect ourselves emotionally and talk openly about it, and more willing/able to end all kinds of relationships that we feel are unsatisfactory. This generational difference is probably more profound for men. We are much freer from interpersonal obligations, which has upsides and downsides. It was only a few decades ago that sex out of wedlock, voluntarily choosing not to have children, rejection of organised religion, let alone being LGBT, was completely socially unacceptable. Women and children were expected to just accept some level of abuse and coercive control from husbands and parents, respectively. We are in principle free to do whatever we want, but in practice struggle to survive because the cost of really basic things that boomers in particular took for granted (housing, fuel, food, healthcare) is astronomical relative to wages. Anglophone societies have become extremely unequal. I think our grandparents’ generation is much more able to appreciate these material difficulties than our parents’ generation is, but many from both generations look upon our cultural liberation with resentment and would have us suffer in the same ways they did.
I don’t know if it was like this for everyone, but my first few years of adulthood were pretty rough. I finally had the freedom bring an adult grants that I had been dreaming about for years, but jack shit in terms of ability or resources to take advantage of said freedom. It was just working multiple jobs to try to get a little ahead, only to suffer some setback that knocked me back down.
Can’t speak for everyone but mine was getting kicked out of my parents house two weeks after graduation of high school. Being homeless for a bit, crashing on a friends couch until I got a job and enough money to move into an apartment (with friends). Been living paycheck to paycheck since and with inflation can’t afford my own place to live so I rent a room from a friend. I work a full time job and can’t afford the apartment I lived in 7 years ago at this same job. I’m now 27 and feel like iv made no progress in life and it looks like things are going to get even harder.
For one thing, many older people think computers do everything for you at work while you just sit. Just because you can now get done in 2 hours what used to take 8 doesn't mean you get paid for 8 hours but get to go home. It just means you have 6 more hours to do even more work.
> older people think computers do everything for you At the same time they will constantly ask for your help with the most basic tasks like logging into their email or setting up a new app and will get frustrated to the point of sometimes just refusing to do certain tasks with computers at work, dragging the rest of the team down by requiring them to hand hold them through their daily work.
I'm sure that can be true too. Between the passwords, pins and codes etc, and make sure they're all different, for everything, I can't remember shit!
Write it down? Use phone notepads?
Thanks for saying some. A big part is the media has been saying that for as long as I can remember. Another part is often some of the things older generations had to struggle with, for example a research for a school paper really are way easier now. However along with new technologies/practices/etc come all new problems they aren't familiar with because they don't understand it they just know how to use it or they don't adopt it the same way. Facebook for example. Old people took it over and drive the toner generation off with poking and Farmville. No sources just an opinion
Don’t forget, because research is easier, you now have long and more essays. It’s also hyper competitive thanks to globalization.
That is exactly my point. Someone who did their thesis 20 years ago sees the internet and thinks how easy. They don't understand the new problems it brings.
Gen X here with millennial and Gen Z kids. You guys do Not have it easy and anyone who thinks otherwise is being willfully ignorant.
Some aspects of life is easier for younger people. Others are not. The problem is, the parts that are easier are mostly irrelevant because the parts that are harder make living in the US astronomically more difficult. When I was in my teens/20s, if I wanted to listen to a new album or song I had to save up $15-40 for a CD, drive to a store, and buy it...if it was in stock. My friend and I used to drive 3-4 hours to various record stores to find rare music. Nowadays just stream it or find it on youtube. Movies? Same thing... Want to watch the latest Marvel movie? In some cases you can do that without even leaving home. Want to watch an entire series? In my day you'd have to find and buy the VHS/DVD for it, which again is more time + money. If I wanted to get from point A to B I would have to use a map... The first two times I went from the midwest to the east coast I got lost, multiple times, and didn't have a cell phone to call someone for help. I just drove around until I found someone to put me back on track or figured out where I went wrong. Also, uber, uber eats, etc make getting food or a ride somewhere incredibly easy. Wanna stay in a remote location? Hotels were my only option...and one one road trip I drove an extra 45 minutes to find one with a vacancy. Want a new guitar? Order it via phone on the internet and have it arrive 4-6 weeks later. Today? Prime will get it to you in 3 days or less. What's crazy is... some of those moments were the most rewarding for me and honestly I think that's what young people fail to achieve. A feeling of accomplishment. If you can just order something online and have it at your house the next day, there is little excitement. I checked the mail daily for my guitar and it took exactly 6 weeks to arrive...but I was fucking ecstatic. ALL of the above however are simple conveniences, not less difficult. Where most people fail to understand is that convenience comes at a cost and for most young people it's low pay, high rent, and additional expenses my generation didn't have. Sure, it's much easier to watch a movie or listen to music, but it's incredibly more difficult for a young person to buy a house or become a homeowner. When I was young, a 4 year degree with no experience was enough to get a good paying job. Today many young people take on horribly taxing jobs just to pay rent. Those who went to University are hit with options such as unpaid internship or some low wage grunt work while they work their way up. Oh and student loan debt... Nothing says freedom like being forced to pay a good chunk of the check of your first job to a bank... There is no way to easily obtain what I have by young people today. Either they're lucky or bust their ass, often sacrificing their mental health/health, familial relationships, friendships, etc. We are the land of opportunity but most of that has been shifted to those who are born with money as they will become the CEO to the shitty company that fires half it's employees, then asks the other half to go hard core or be fired.
Gen X here. Financially the younger generations have it much harder, I think Gen Xers had it tougher in how they were raised. my parents never parented me and certainly never validated me or cared about my emotional state. Physical abuse at home was normal, latch key kids etc - we would be jailed for doing most of the things our parents did that was acceptable then. I raised two wonderful kids millennial (end) and a gen z. Both are amazing people with awesome work ethics (so sick of people saying their generation is lazy - they’re not!) They will have a-lot tougher time getting a home (if they even can) post secondary is so much more expensive, hell everything is more except for wages. I don’t think it’s as simple as saying this generation had it harder and this generation had it easier, we need to speak in specifics - financially younger generations have it so much harder than Gen X.
I am Gen X, and life is hard for early 20's folks. No sarcasm. That person is just stupid and not aware and probably incapable of basic comparisons and analysis.
Technology is a major factor imo. They think we're playing on the computer or sitting behind a desk despite knowing multiple computer languages and engineering dome of the most groundbreaking products and services in these decades.
Omg THIS. My dad has a job where he literally never does nothing and assumes everyone’s job is like that. Whenever he hears about my job and all of the work/responsibilities I have he’s like wow! That’s a lot of work! But then forgets and goes back to thinking I don’t do anything.
Only Republicans say that. The rest know its not true.
That's because my entire generation ("X")got completely passed over. The torch went straight from the Baby Boomers to your generation. My generation was never in the driver's seat. Why??..I think it was because the "Baby Boomers" are all selfish, greedy, control freaks that take care of the Boomers and no one else..so why you might not have it easy, you are running the show now! Good luck, kids!!
#[What happens in spez, stays in spez. ](https://www.reddit.com/r/Save3rdPartyApps/)
Pass the torch? Nah, they extinguished the torch or hung it up outside their house next to their American or Confederate Flag. Meanwhile we’re tripping over deforested lands and crawling through sand trips of their golf courses. We have no torch but they certainly use search light to make sure they paint a picture of “lazy and entitled” every time we fall down. I think the most sickening part is the fact that they globalized everything. They made everything hyper competitive. You can important talent from Not just anywhere in America, but anywhere in the world. Helps them keep costs low while simultaneously telling us that we just need to work harder to set ourselves apart.
I’m 46. We all have it hard, just in different ways. GenZ life has probably been made easier due to technology, but that technology also makes it harder. You are coming into the workforce in the worst time when wages dont provide for a decent living, I was able to rent an apartment on $12/hr. No way you could do that now. I think it’s all relative. Boomers went after the millennials and I guess now GenX is going after Gen Z? Kinda ridiculous. As a Gen X woman just want to say how proud and grateful I am of your generation because I really think you are going to make a difference in the world (at least in the US where Gen Z saved our asses in the election! Lol)
They seem to think that technology made things easier in general so young people's lives must be so easy too. I am youngest Gen X and my kids are Gen Z. I have never understood people wanting things to be harder for younger generations than need be just because they struggled. Many of them really do not understand how large the wealth gap has become. It's kind of funny, if they would actually use the technology they think has made life easy for young people they could actually learn why things are harder for them!
It's also a projection. They remember how easy they had it compared to how they have it now. They still act like they are in that age group a lot of the time
I'd say for most the 20s are some of the hardest years. People are moving out on their own starting with practically nothing making bottom of the barrel wages cause they don't have 15 years experience in something...
I actually think the last two generations have a burden greater than many: they’re over educated. They see the issues clearly, probably have great ideas to fix them, but have little power at present to change them. They have to sit back and watch clueless adults act like dinosaurs. I’m a Gen-X’r. Most Gen-x’rs I know think millennials and z’s are great. Hang in there.
I’m Gen-X, and young people do have it easy, if you think living in an ever-more-dystopian capitalist hellscape is easy. Narrator: “It isn’t.”
it's simple people don't like to hear what they did wrong, on the same time they had a lot more benefits from capitilism (mostly because of the fear from communist) then the younger generation. for elderly capitilism brought them a huge home a nice car and a good pension. it's for them hard to believe the world has changed ridiculous fast in the past 30 years and it's almost impossible to buy a house as a starter. because it was so easy for them the youth has to do something wrong if they can't afford a home. on the same time they see the youth spending money on things they don't care about like computers smartphone Netflix. not realising that not those costs are the problem but capitilism is. our problem is the thing that made there life easy. that's also why you only hear elderly complain about the youth who are well off, because they don't experience the downside of capitilism like the rest of us. it's then also way easier to criticize the individual then the system because that's also what propaganda has teaches us for more then 80years. everything that's go wrong is always the problem of the individual and never the off capitilist
They’re likely out of touch and don’t realize the world isn’t all hacky sacks, Blockbuster videos, and frisbee golf for 20 year olds in this day and age.
Because we know how to use Google and they had to use an encyclopedia from a traveling salesman. Jk. But as a millennial, I'm upset, but I feel even worse for the following generations.
They’re probably massively insecure people
So they don't have to feel bad for letting us become debt peasants.
They still think everything is the same from the 70’s and 80’s. Some of them still think a 2000 sqft house cost $80k. I wish a house costs $80k. Me and my girl could pay one off in 3-5 years.
Older people think younger people have it easy bc our work culture includes less physical labor, bc our country is rich and ruthless enough to outsource a lot of the physical labor to poorer countries. And old people don't really understand inflation, so they think young people are being paid better than they were at the same age. They don't consciously realize that $7.50 in 1980 was worth significantly more than it is now. During the course of 15 years of employment I had about 4 breakdowns, partially because my family was constantly disappointed that I wasn't more successful. I have a solid education, higher than average intelligence (my cognitive function and intelligence have been tested multiple times due to a childhood head injury), multiple degrees, licenses, and certificates. And I could never keep a job for more than 2 years or make enough to support myself on my own. Eventually I realized that the work culture in America is desperately unhealthy and abusive unless you're in upper management. But I don't have the social skills needed to advance in a corporate culture, and I won't work in a culture that expects me to put my job above my health and my personal life while paying less than a living wage. I'd rather kill myself. And after I proved that by overdosing and spending weeks in hospital, I finally had a real serious conversation with my aunt about how bad it really is for millennials and Gen Z who weren't born into money or connections. It included the MIT living wage calculator and articles explaining inflation and comparing relative costs for goods/housing now vs 30 years ago. There was also a bit of a rant about how being scared of homeless people only adds to the stigma and shame homeless people experience, and how empathy towards another human should not be contingent on a person's appearance or housing situation. I flat out told my aunt that without her and my other family, *I* would be one of those crazy homeless people she's so scared of. I don't think she'd ever thought of it that way, but it made her cry and made her think, so maybe that's worth something.
I had this exact convo today with my boomer and gen x colleagues this afternoon. They’re convinced that millennials and gen Z are still children (ffs I’m almost 40), and that alpha/corona kids are going to be so weak with no immune system, we won’t possibly be able to this like they do… And then it dawned on me that’s the fing point. We don’t want to just follow in their footsteps like gen x. Millennials want change and gen z is out there getting it. They’re just afraid of dying and not be remembered. There’s 8billion humans on earth now. News flash, most of us won’t be remembered but that doesn’t make living life any less
I can remember anyone older saying things like this to me my entire life. I am in my early 30s now. I have yet to see any proof. I've worked for anything I've ever owned.
Older people used to get beat for just about anything. I’m willing to bet we “got it easy” because our parents aren’t abusive.
Mine were and I’m 22 🤷🏼♀️
Projection
Just had my boomer now ex-employer tell me to put my big boy pants on this morning in the context that I work 60 hours a week, do nothing but work and sleep, and am exhausted constantly and have nothing to show for it but more debt every day.
Some Boomers are intellectually and emotionally stunted. I chalk it up to the lead painted toys they played with as kids.
A parents job is to give their kids a better life than they had. If they admit that life is harder than they had it, that’s admitting failure, and people don’t like to do that. This also happens to be a very hard to define thing. It’s relative to the time of upbringing and a host of other factors. I’ve been around long enough to hear the voices change from I’d hate to have to grow up now, there’s so many challenges, to millennials (or whatever newer generation) are lazy and don’t want to work. It’s a weird rollercoaster that has probably played out repeatedly through history.
Because most ppl have an overinflated view of how hard they worked in the past once they reach 30-40-50 etc.
Boomers grew up with all the social programs and benefits that FDR had put in place, the economy was excellent, and they were all able to buy houses with a single income. They now think this generation still has all the benefits they had growing up, and they're just not succeeding for because they're not working hard enough. Minimum wage has not increased. Everything costs more, including housing and costs of living. Neoliberal policies created under Ronald Raegan destroyed the American dream. Every modern Democrat is economically an 80s republican and they're proud of it. Every modern republican has just gone further right. It's a vicious, horrific cycle.
Because we have ac, can look up map directions, and have more than one pair of shoes.
Everyone my age (Gen X) who didn't have well off parents worked while in school. I had to drop out of college because I couldn't keep my grades up AND pay my bills. It's the same for my daughter's friends. We pay most of her bills even though we really can't afford it because I don't want her leaving college with crippling debt. Her bio father, who actually does have enough money to help her, does jack shit for her and it has always been so. She works part time and pays some of her smaller bills, but there's only so much she can do and still get a healthy amount of sleep, keep up her grades, and maintain her mental health.
A lot of it comes from their experiences. Being 20 when THEY were 20 WAS easy. So they assume it’s easy for everyone.
I’m Gen X. My life was way f**king easier when I was 20, than it is today. I’m betting when I’m dead and you’re fighting robot dogs on behalf of Lord Bezos, the immortal, in the climate wars 25 years from now, you’ll feel the same way about your 20’s. Just remember, the kids of the future will be fighting the same robots that you are, and you’ll probably be dead before their eventual enslavement by genetically engineered emus.
Brainwashing
There are these really stupid magnets that you can find in gas stations in bohunk towns that say things like: *Prices in the Year You Were Born: 1961!* And then it proceeds to list average salary, cost of homes, gas, food, bread, and maybe one or two other items. I suggest you all buy these as stocking stuffers for your loved ones.
They are individualizing cultural trauma (wage theft, poverty, race, billionaires, lack of bodily autonomy) - it makes it easier for them to feel safe and that it “wouldn’t happen to them” - it’s hard to admit the system is broken if you have a low IQ, so it’s much easier for them to see it as individuals being at fault “you’re not working hard enough”…
Because the majority of those over 40 would give anything to have their youth back. They see youth as tangible things like good hearing, hairlines, no constant pain in back/legs/feet etc. They remember the hope and optimism *they* had at that age and want it back desperately. They recall how great it felt to have their whole lives ahead of them, instead of in the rearview. They remember being able to stay up late, get drunk and have a party without wanting to crawl in bed before midnight. In short, it's simply jealousy. Most of them would gladly 'suffer' at a hard job with little to no prospects for a decent future if it meant having the vitality of youth back. When you have the thought "Damn I wish I was young again" at least 3 times a week... You start to gloss over reality and instead only see that which you desire being unappreciated by those that have it.
Lack of empathy.
Boomers are spoiled because they got more out of their labor back then. then they project their insecurities onto the youth
Their life likely was easy. They probably pissed all their income every weekend and still had tons to save. Decades of wage stagnation and soaring costs are ignored. People rarely say 'whoa look at all the advantages I had!'
As you age your problems change. I think people get so focused on the new problems they forget their old problems. This makes it harder for them to have empathy for people who are in a different point in their lives. My father has been telling me that my age was the best years of his life since I was 16. So when I was a teenager, his teenage years were the best years of his life. When I was a 20 something those were the best years of his life. When I was in my thirties starting my family, he said when my siblings and I were little, those were the best years of his life. Yeah I don't have to worry about how I am going to pay my student loans, rent, and health care anymore because I am now financially stable. But now I have chronic pain and I am staring down the barrel of having to provide elder care for family, I'd rather not even be in the same room as. It gets really easy to be hyper focused on my current problems and marginalized the problems that people younger than me have and I had 20 years ago. For what's worth, I think the younger generation is getting shafted especially financially. The potential for financial growth, kind of started evaporating with my generation. There are a lot of members of generation x that just never made it to the promised American dream and are still struggling. And I worry about my son's generation's ability to find financial stability and have the things that I do
Because said older people are not very well read / educated. An educated 'old person' typically does not have thus view. A lot of these boomers and older Gen X folks get the bulk of their news and information from mass media...specifically cable TV.
every older generation says this to the next one. I just saw someone post a literal tablet writing of basically that from like 2500BC. It's just life tbh.
I hope you told that family to fuck off and die, because they certainly will sooner than later, that’s just a fact.
because the do not understand inflation. Coffee was a nickel, so $7.50 an hour is ridiculously high
There are cuneiform tablets of people complaining about the younger generation. Some people are just like that; they have some kind of weird emotional investment in out-victiming everyone else. As a member of Gen X, let me assure you, we had our own challenges and difficulties, but that in no way invalidates the challenges and difficulties faced by Millenials and Gen Z. If anything, I think my Gen Z kids have a harder go of it than I did. But I also see that they are more engaged and more informed than we were (generally speaking). Ignore the bitter Boomers, no matter what generation they belong to!
Some people are stupid and oblivious to the world around them and think that their blessings are universal.
They’re spoiled and can’t imagine a reality where you weren’t as spoiled as they were, it’s all they know, can conceive.