TIL that Gen Z live only in USA or experts are not experts.
“When I was young we just had the kids even though we didn’t have the space or money. We just figured it out and made it work”
“Yes we were able to buy our own house at the age of 12. No, my kids don’t talk to me anymore, why do you ask?”
No fucking shit. I both do and do not get why it takes “experts” to say this shit. Everything is fucked, what do you expect? Yeah, yeah, having an expert say something notifies people not connected to the affected people, but come fucking on.
This shit makes me so angry because it feels like there are a bunch of people with their heads up their ass that just came out for their once a decade deep breath only to realize something fucking changed while they were napping in their colon. Can’t fucking deal with this shit.
They need an expert to write it in such a way to make it seem like Gen Z is making a choice about these things that “hurt” all the CEOs, instead of, you know, having all of their choices stripped away from them to force them into finally becoming a commodity instead of a person.
Best thing you can do is to participate in as little of the mainstream economy as possible.
We are witnessing something very fascinating happening. Big companies fat on their earlier success are shedding workforce. At the same time AI has made people productive enough to need less staff than before. This is culminating into high unemployment.
Necessity is the mother of invention. There will be new, smaller businesses. Spend your money there if you have it. Just accept that some thing won’t be as good as what a big company produces.
I have been seeing Bartir coming back a bit. It’s really encouraging. I love to see it.
What the fuck is mainstream economy?
The normie economy. The economy everyone got into because everyone else got into it.
I (superior) prefer this other, more niche economy. Well, for now until more Normie’s get involved.
- Economic hipster
My wife and I decided that we didn’t want to put children into this world. I did the snip snip recently. It just feels way too bleak. Can’t imagine putting a child through that.
Well yeah, millennials also severely delayed and fuck all has been done to improve things. Add in a few pandemic school years on top of it
Maybe the point is that Gen Z can’t really delay any more and still do it. Specifically, as a millennial, maybe 1/3 of the millennials I know delayed having kids until they were in the vicinity of 40 years old. But Gen Z can’t really push child beating and further to the right since there’s a biological limit.
Just Gen Z? I’m an elder Millennial and I feel like I’m doing this right now.
Hell Yeah 36 years old, still no kids, because life was a fucking survival
Meanwhile the Epstein class is wondering why the emaciated cow won’t produce any milk.
Are they actually surprised?
Even the previous generation were delaying and skipping milestones.
Pikachu face: late stage capitalism.Just rhyming verses in the same song of decay.
I’m firmly in the millennial camp in my mid thirties and I have two pairs of couple friends who’ve had kids. It could absolutely be my friends circle, but most of us are in the trades or have advanced degrees (most of the people who went the college route also have more than a bachelor’s, because that alone wasn’t enough to get a job) and we just can’t make it work. Many of them want kids, but they want to be able to provide for them first, so they’re just waiting
I was in the waiting camp so long I expired. Technically I could still have a kid(?) - but don’t want to be 60+ at a graduation party.
Just make sure you won’t regret of the decision / indecision and you will be okay.That’s the thing: if you really want kids, you’ll regret not having them. If you really want kids and have them without being able to afford feeding and clothing them, you’ll regret that even more.
I see so many people with kids - if they can make it work…
The point is for children you will sacrifice your current lifestyle. No leisure time, double shifts, insane expenses.We all want the ideal: you work 8 hours go home and be with the family, while the other parental unit took care of everything - then you go to a move; every weekend you watch a ball game - go out to dinner every once a while, get new clothes once a while, take vacations every year.
But it won’t happen.There is a reason why most romantic fiction shows one party as independently wealthy. No one wants to see the overtime shifts and gig economy - and being one paycheck away from being homeless, doesn’t create romantic feelings.
We’re already working double shifts without leisure time, so there’s no slack to cut. That’s the problem. People who really want kids know that kids require sacrifice, that’s the one thing everyone talks about with kids. If you don’t have any more holes in the belt, trying to tighten it won’t help.
Do those people with kids make it work, or are they doing their children a disservice by being emotionally and literally unavailable to them because they’re trying to make sure they don’t starve? I hope most of them make it work, but I know it’s not all of them. Unfortunately, crossing your fingers and hoping you’ll make it work doesn’t seem like a responsible choice to many of us when failure would so greatly impact an innocent person.
I think catering to family life is a non goal of european governments since they smell clankers could generate wealth for the few.
AI can’t really generate wealth in the long run. Automation of all types generates temporary advantages in pricing, but other groups catch up eventually. This lowers the rate at which labor is exploited as a ratio of production, which lowers the actual source of profit. Absolute profits rise, while rates of profit fall.
While this is the correct analysis of automation in terms of exchange values, this misses the fact that automation also reduces the socially necessary labor-time to produce the same commodity. Overall it probably still benefits the capitalist despite the falling rate of profit, because the use value of that profit rises proportionally to the fall in its exchange value, while the exposure to risks associated with employing labor decreases.
I highly doubt this significantly changes the calculus on AI though. It improves productivity somewhat in a few white-collar fields. It will not replace most blue-collar workers any time soon, even with the technological advancements in robotics we see in China. I think the more likely explanation for the phenomena in OC is the combination of increasingly relying on exploiting immigrants and workers of the global south, and AI fits in there as a tool for surveillance of the working class.
For sure, automation represents an incredible opportunity for workers, presuming workers actually are the ones directing the development of society. It does reduce the inputs required to produce goods, which frees up time for redirection and reduction of labor overall. I was more trying to combat the idea that AI will be a magic bullet for capitalists, when really we’ve already seen the impacts of automation before. It comes in a new form, with new particularities, but it’s not fundamentally different.
Not surprised. My wife and I make more money than we ever have and I feel like everything is out of reach. Inflation is through the roof. And wages haven’t come close to keeping up. We’re fortunate both of us make mid $20 an hour.
For someone starting out I have no idea how they could manage. If I was starting out today straight from highschool I’d most likely be homeless
My wife and I are fortunate and make substantial salaries. We still can’t afford a home. We make enough to have hope of one day owning one, which is more than I can say for many people.
It’s completely crazy
You know you read things like this and you don’t have to spend much time working out what’s wrong
I was earning mid twenties in warehouses in the 1990s
According to a inflation calculator, $25 an hour in the 1990s would be almost $64 an hour in 2026.
Yeah night shift warehousing where I am now pays around 40-45 an hour
I give up
This is why everything is fucked. Wage stagnation and extreme price hikes is leading us back to indentured servitude and slavery via arresting poor people for the crime of being poor (homeless).
Meanwhile food is 3x and housing is 10x
eyup. feel I got to some milestones about 10 years after it should be and now unemployed about 15 years before retirement just hemoraging savings.
I’ll never know retirement.
im pretty sure you will like me. it will be retirement but what it will really be is poverty.
I’m exactly on the same page. Huge leaps in wage, but my life is moving backwards.
The use of the term “milestone” or “goal” when the article talks about how these are neither for a growing percentage of the population is interesting.
I mean, an unachievable goal is still a goal.
Clearly you’ve never taken a management class.
A goal is something you seek to achieve. Looks like a lot of people are no longer seeking to achieve the things previous generations have attempted to convince them to chase.
It can be very hard to disentangle the cause and effect of ‘not wanted so it doesn’t count as a failure to not get it,’ vs ‘can’t do it, so won’t say I want it,’ vs ‘might want to do it but everyone and everything is getting fucked so hard these days and I don’t want to watch my kid get fucked, so not going to bother having one.’
Why assume everyone wants a house, a marriage, and children to begin with?
Because by and large most people do? People are essentially hardwired for the second and third, and almost nobody rents because they want to rent.
Sounds like you haven’t met much variety in people, tbh.
Also sounds like you have a pretty set idea of what life should look like. I wonder who set it?
They’re not seeking to achieve them* in the same way a homeless person who’s been homeless for years might give up on not being homeless. They’re not attaining enlightenment and abandoning their mortal coil here; they’re being priced out of things they want to do.
*Says you, at least. That’s not what the article says; that’s what you seem to want it to say.
Correct, says me. I am combining concepts in novel ways and reasoning through the implications.
Ya know, thinking.
Or maybe just questioning if there’s any point in achieving them at all.
I feel this so often these days. Too many older people I’ve known over the years have gotten fucked over even after putting in all the work to make it… why even try when you’ll fail anyway.
Tell me about it. It’s like I learned so many skills and I can’t keep up with the curve. Programming, web design, animation, 3D design, audio, video, photography, pretty much every physical art like painting, electrical engineering, the list goes on. I think I’m stuck repairing things and being a career college student for the rest of my life since by the time I finish a degree, some wanker ruins the job market. Someone always needs to have something fixed but I’m tired, my hands and back are toast and I haven’t even gotten to 40.
It was funny when one of my professors told me if you’re going to want to be a news journalist photographer, I shadowed him a bit in college, you better learn how to use a video camera and edit as well. He had a pretty good point, that’s basically a prediction of what more or less streamers and content creators are, well except the content is usually not very good.
I’m Gen x. I don’t have kids, a home, or any of these so-called milestones. Probably never will. We’re all fucked.
It certainly feels like it. I try to stay positive but then I read the onion, wait I mean the news. And yeah this last year has felt so long.
I’m questioning my life choices so hard rn. I miraculously got to buy a house, but now the foundation and bottom floor is fucked from a tornado that spawned essentially on top of me and it’ll cost half the cost of the whole house to fix. If my home insurance won’t cover it, I won’t be able to fix it
Wow that’s quite a shitty situation. I hope it works out for you. Houses shouldn’t be that expensive sigh
Thank you! I’m devastated over it but I have quite a few people who are helping me prove to the insurance company that the damage came from the tornado. It messed up a lot of my property, but I’m only truly worried about the foundation. I worked so hard to get this place and I don’t want to have to leave. I have options if I have to leave, but I don’t want to. I love my tiny, shitty lil house lol
Hah I’m the same way. I have been thinking about just getting an RV lately though. I always like traveling.
fingers crossed, I hope that the insurance will cover it
As a kid I heard people talk about how Japanese culture was being destroyed because they’re overworked, and how they didn’t really have a way out of it politically. I always thought that would be us eventually. I didn’t know how true that was until now. The only way out of this mess is through it, and people with money completely understand this.
The only way out is revolution, which begins with the people, mass class consciousness, and organized leadership that can help steer the movement in a positive direction. This is why grassroots organizations of disciplined workers are so critical, they can help us accomplish the tasks of educating, agitating, and organizing.
It’s not just labor organizing, although that’s super important. Minorities, small communities, friend circles are all forming with the understanding we’re stronger in numbers. I run a gay men’s group that meets at least weekly, we’ve had about 200 guys join, gotten media coverage, gotten the attention of civil rights leaders and lawmakers already. I’m just a guy with some crude leadership skills, little time, and no money. But there are lots of people like me out there, pulling people together. Faith communities are leaning in so we can organize their people.
You don’t have to sit on the sidelines doomscrolling your life away. You can act, even if that’s finding a community and joining it.
Yep, that’s why I said it’s important to join an organization. Education, agitation, and organization!
You must have missed the 2nd half of their comment.
This is why grassroots organizations of disciplined workers are so critical, they can help us accomplish the tasks of educating, agitating, and organizing.
Trump was a grass roots movement, of idiots sure, but they pulled it off while people were still mad about Obama. I’d love to see it pulled off In the other direction, and we’re all trying. However, I’m not convinced Americans are going to turn blue once we cut back on all the niceties we take for granted.
I know too many blue voters that would turn tail the moment Starbucks and Bread Co become too expensive to have almost every day. The overall amount of infantilism that’s been baked in only seems to benefit the party that promises to maintain it at any cost.
Trump represents one wing of the capitalist class, that’s why it worked. Any blue shift would also serve a wing of the capitalist class. That’s why any actual positive, lasting movement must also be revolutionary.
i think it was more a manufactured movement by corporate America than grassroots, that stoked discontent by feeding exceptionalism and institutionalised racism (among other things).
Wherever it came from it worked. The invisible hand of capital definitely played it’s part.
Gen Z, ripping off millenials again.
Ten years ago, the average home, at the average mortgage rate, and with a 20-percent down payment would’ve cost $1,952.04 per month. Today, that monthly cost is $3,470.95, according to mortgage data site Mortgage Calculator.
The real barrier people rarely talk about is down payment.
Apartment rent and small house mortgage aren’t that different, and mortgage stays mostly the same. The only part that changes is property value keeps going up so taxes and insurance keep going up.
If it wasn’t for that, first and last payment would be exactly the same. It’s even a frequent complaint of boomers with paid off mortgages, because you never stop paying those things.
Even people with paid off mortgages would benefit from lower housing costs.
