Fuck this shithole of a country and fuck the wealthy in my parents generation who threw away my future. Damn right young people are miserable.
I will never forgive the Baby Boomers for gleefully throwing every successive generation off a cliff while Boomers failed upwards through life.
yeah, people always come at me with “don’t blame generations, it is a distraction meant to divide us and besides there are plenty of older people who got screwed too”…
…and yes, this is vitally important to recognize, especially as a leftist that at least claims to be focused on building solidarity and refocusing the conversation on wealth inequality…
…however damn, if you meet wealthy baby-boomers or even “temporarily embarassed” wealthy baby-boomers who aren’t even rich just made it more than their peers… it makes it DAMN HARD not to hate baby-boomers sometimes.
This isn’t a generational thing, this isn’t even new, but the shear AMOUNT of narcissistic completely ideologically lobotomized wealthy baby-boomers there are actively strangling their kids futures in the US is fucking disgusting and it makes it hard not to hate the whole fucking generation.
I don’t, there are plenty of good people in the baby-boomer generation, but baby-boomers dont make it easy not to hate their fucking guts sometimes like holy shit.
I disagree. I think it IS a generational thing.
It is only ok to think of it this way though if you immediately qualify that with it is a problem with a specific subsection of a generation within colonial powers who are or believe they are middle-class, upper-middle class or wealthy.
I guess that can seem like a pedantic qualification, but it actually isn’t because all of the energy in people’s agitation just siphons off into hating old people from a perspective that doesn’t illuminate anything, and it REALLY isolates older people who weren’t included in that collective selfish foreclosure of our future. All the seniors who are forced to work, living in poverty or alone. Even if they have shitty politics, when we just talk about it as a generational problem we deny their agency and potential as individual human beings.
We also feed into an unspoken centering of the experience of people in colonial powers and ignore the colonized who have been excluded categorically.
At the same time I also bristle when people get upset at people exclaiming shit like “gahh man, fuck boomers” without an acknolwedgement that… yeah I mean fuck boomers kinda…
It is like if someone says “fuck men” in exasperation nearby me, yeah well I am a man and in my heart I try to be a good person and I know there are good men who are loving and mature… but like… I join in with the vibes because I know they aren’t talking about me (or if they are maybe I need to take a step back, breathe, and listen?). I don’t say “not all men!!!” and I think there is a tiny bit of that in the response people have to shutting down people exasperated with boomers because the truth is complicated.
TL;DR Vent, be wary of people who snap at you the moment you vent about something understandable, but also be wary of narratives simplifying to a hurtful point
Ok there’s a point when you get so obsessed about shoving colonialism into EVERY conversation it just gets funny. It’s like you’re a fresh faced college kid who just learned a New Thing and it blew your mind so now you have to talk about it all the time.
Ok there’s a point when you get so obsessed about shoving colonialism into EVERY conversation it just gets funny.
aw thank you, that is a very sincere compliment, as cynical as I can be sometimes it feels good to know I haven’t lost a youthful perspective : )
Does Britannia, when she sleeps, dream? Is America her dream?-- in which all that cannot pass in the metropolitan Wakefulness is allow’d Expression away in the restless Slumber of these Provinces, and on West-ward, wherever 'tis not yet mapp’d, nor written down, nor ever, by the majority of Mankind, seen,-- serving as a very Rubbish-Tip for subjunctive Hopes, for all that may yet be true,-- Earthly Paradise, Fountain of Youth, Realms of Prester John, Christ’s Kingdom, ever behind the sunset, safe til the next Territory to the West be seen and recorded, measur’d and tied in, back into the Net-Work of Points already known, that slowly triangulates its Way into the Continent, changing all from subjunctive to declarative, reducing Possibilities to Simplicities that serve the ends of Governments,-- winning away from the realm of the Sacred, its Borderlands one by one, and assuming them unto the bare mortal World that is our home, and our Despair.
to be fair, there were good boomers.
they just didn’t live long enough for you to meet them.
I’m over 30 and still unhappy
I certainly hope the younger generation Americans examine Denmark and copy their system.
I think one thing we’re all going to have to remember, is that living in unprecedented times means we’re going to have to start holding ourselves to unprecedented standards. We should all be very angry and demanding better as a society, but it’s important to give ourselves grace as individuals, remember it’s up to us to try and avoid the things that make us unhappy as much as we can, and be proud of ourselves when we do manage to find glimmers of happiness while living in a dystopian society.
I say that to remind myself as much as to give advice to anyone else. I remember dreading 30 as it approached, and feeling like I was nowhere near where I was supposed to be. It felt like I had done everything I was supposed to do, but just never saw the payout for doing it. I had gotten a college degree, then a graduate degree. This allowed me to get a 9-5 job that I dreaded going to everyday. I was under a mountain of college loan debt. I barely made enough to cover my rent, let alone ever consider buying a house. I felt like I was going nowhere fast, and when I looked at social media, it felt like I was way behind all of my peers.
That was also around the time I decided that if I couldn’t obtain the material things that were supposed to make me feel happy and successful, I would focus on maximizing the activities and relationships that made me happy while slowly (and sometimes painfully) cutting out the things that only made me more miserable.
Flashforward a decade as I begin to approach 40, and I wish I could tell you that the material things eventually all worked themselves out, but pretty sure you already know they didn’t.
Financially I’m in basically the same situation I was then, except now I have a child to take care of, so obviously that means less money. Even with cost of living and merit based raises over the years, with inflation and an even worse housing market, it just never seemed to work out to making much of a difference. I’m still buried under the mountain of student debt and barely make rent each month. I also found out this past week that I’m losing my job soon, and as a federally funded researcher, the prospects of me finding one to replace it aren’t great to say the least.
However, even though the stakes are more dire than ever, and hard times are only forecast to get harder, I don’t feel quite as pessimistic as I did when I was approaching 30. I actually feel a bit of comradery with the majority of Americans, because I think most of us are in a pretty similar boat. As far as my personal relationships and family, I’m happier than I’ve ever been.
Maybe it’s just a part of mellowing out with age, but I feel it’s also in part due to being very happy with my personal relationships, and the people that are in my life now vs a decade ago. I’ve gotten involved in community work in my free time, and as of 2025 I feel a drive to embrace that kind of work more than ever. In a lot of ways starting from scratch at almost 40 is scary, but in some ways it’s actually somewhat of a relief. The last of a mirage that was keeping me in my stable career has been destroyed, and it would feel a bit more delusional for me to jump ship to a similar job knowing it will eventually just meet the same fate.
Again, I want to stress I don’t say this as a way to get people to be docile and just accept what’s happening, but to channel your anger and frustration into something that gives you a sense of accomplishment. If anyone in your life is making you think that being unhappy with the current situation is strictly a you problem, and not a reflection of reality, that’s a good sign you should probably lessen your ties to them for now. If they want to do some self reflection and try to come back later, that’s always an option.
Finding others in your community that feel the same way, and working together locally to keep people informed and prepared for policy changes before they happen, is one of the easiest ways you can improve your immediate surroundings and feel some power in a situation where we’re all pretty powerless.
Most of the senators and representatives we’ve elected to look out for our interests are failing hard. It’s important to keep in mind that everything happening at a federal level is going to start happening at state levels. In many red states it has already begun. DOGE inspired taskforces are popping up all over the country. I’ve been keeping a list of them, but even since my most recent update a few weeks ago, more have been announced.
Here is the list so far if anyone is interested: https://pimento-mori.ghost.io/state-level-doge-inspired-task-forces-pop-up-across-u-s-promoted-by-republican-governors-love-of-small-government/
Regardless of where they’re located, all of these DOGE task forces have a common goal. Make up a dollar amount to show how much they’re saving tax payers, find excuses to cut money for social programs (and in some cases even cuts to government safety programs that help prepare for natural disasters like hurricanes and tornadoes) in order to make that dollars saves number a reality. Citizens suffer, their lives are made worse, and governors and their wealthy friends become even wealthier, all in the name of trimming wasteful spending and getting rid of bureaucracy.
It’s easy to get stuck in a mindset where you let the reality of yesterday influence the way you view your present, but it’s a mental trap. I haven’t used any form of social media that isn’t anonymous in almost a decade. No Facebook or Instagram. I don’t scroll by pictures of a lifestyle that never even came close to matching my reality. I think it’s no coincidence that I no longer feel left out among my peers, when I’m not acknowledging false public images people attempt to shape for themselves online. Instead, I feel more connected to a bigger chunk of America than ever before, and it’s helped me to realize how much we all have in common regardless of political identity.
Thank you for the perspective and positivity.
We view the late 40s through the 70s as a golden age for the American middle class. People raising families off a single income. Yearly vacations. Affordable higher education.
Know why?
We taxed the ever-loving fuck out of the wealthy back then.
Then the wealthy bought the politicians and stopped that from happening.
And now we’re all sad.
DO. NOT. VOTE. FOR. ANYONE. THAT. DOESN’T. RUN. ON. TAXING. THE. WEALTHY. MORE.
DO. NOT. VOTE. FOR. ANYONE. THAT. DOESN’T. RUN. ON. TAXING. THE. WEALTHY. MORE.
👏
Fuck everyone who voted for hillary clinton in the 2016 primary.
We need to point many fingers at them and give them the blame they so rightfully deserve.
It’s their fault, and they need to be reminded of it constantly.
There’s plenty of Kamala supporters that don’t see her as just a Hillary 2.0, democrats and MAGA both agree not to go after the rich people robbing them blind.
Is absurd that we essentially have a regressive income tax. I also wouldn’t ignore the global environment during that period.
During those decades, the US was effectively the only industrialized nation in the world. Everyone else either never had factories to begin with, or had smoldering piles of rubble where their factories used to be.
I found it astonishing that there isn’t even a 0% tax bracket anymore federally. It starts at 10% when you make your first fucking dollar. We’ve gone batshit backwards in this country to the point where we’re trying to get every last dime from poor people so we can almost afford to have buy-borrow-die oligarchs that never pay a penny in federal taxes.
Technically the standard deduction is the zero tax bracket.
Yep understood but there’s a reason they made the switch and that reason is so they can keep the shit they took out of checks of those who don’t file.
I’m sure they did the math on it, they’re sneaky assholes through and through.
Sales tax as well as VAT are also, by design, regressive taxes.
We turned the planet into a human labour farm.
The pay gap between CEO and ordinary worker was the smallest back there, not because the taxes, there were less taxes back then, but because those CEO were decent people, not predatory like right now. Todays C-Suite are predatory people, they’re not humans, they’re money machines that need every penny. There should be law that don’t allow pay gap between CEO and ordinary worker to be greater than 100k USD or any other currency in other countries. Those who pursue luxury would say that’s very low. Yes it’s very low because everyone who works in successfull company deserve success. Not only small group on top. That is main difference between companies from 40s and 70s and companies right now.
This is also why (white) Boomers struggle to understand how it got so bad. They literally lived in a period where you could often count on and trust your boss.
Nah
Don’t vote for anyone, got it
It gets my vote!
DO. NOT. VOTE. FOR. ANYONE. THAT. DOESN’T. RUN. ON. TAXING. THE. WEALTHY. MORE.
Another liberal telling us to vote for Kamala just because her tax plan looks nice. Disgusting.
Uhh, Kamala didn’t run on a platform of taxing the wealthy either, that would break the contract she has with her corporate sponsors.
https://apps.urban.org/features/2024-candidates-tax-policy/
Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party nominee, has proposed several policies that build on President Joe Biden’s recent budget plans. These include higher taxes on the wealthy and corporations and more generous tax breaks for lower-income workers, families, and small businesses.
https://itep.org/a-distributional-analysis-of-kamala-harris-tax-plan/
Taken together, the tax changes proposed by Vice President Kamala Harris would raise taxes on the richest 1 percent of Americans while cutting taxes on all other income groups.
If these proposals were in effect in 2026, the richest 1 percent of Americans would receive an average tax increase equal to 4.1 percent of their income. Other income groups would receive tax cuts, including an average tax cut equal to 2.7 percent of income for the middle fifth of Americans and an average tax cut equal to 7 percent of income for the poorest fifth of Americans.
Regardless of all of this data, Kamala is still a filthy liberal and you shouldn’t vote for her.
Comrade, the present situation ain’t bringing us closer to socialism.
Sir that ship sailed months ago, what are you talking about?
Hello dumb shit or rich person. STFU
Seeing alot of (for good reason) depressed folks here. I think we need to build community, in real life or online if there’s no other way.
Or we can just emigrate to a better country. I’m going back to Korea after I save some more money at $job
If you have the means to, sure go for it. In the end I think you’ll need some form of community as well in any new country you go to.
No shit, we’re being taken over by literal nazis. This place sucks.
To be fair, a non-insignificant amount of the men under thirty think things are so bad because the Nazis aren’t taking over fast enough.
Yeah, ladies under 30, please adopt a never-fuck mindset toward any conservative. Those things tanked the country and deserve 0 pussy.
Edit: Should blanket just be any Trump voter. Knowing who you’re fucking is as important as using STD and pregnancy protection.
Honestly I’m surprised anyone would even want to sleep with a trumper. Like, what’s the appeal? It’s not like they treat women (or anyone, really) well
Usually religious brainwash
All six women on lemmy agree.
That’s funny about you because you assume if they don’t say they’re a woman they must be a man
Please don’t let that reddit mindset take off here.
To clarify Im talking about assuming everyone is a man if not stated otherwise.
As do a significant amount of the women. Like yeah, there’s a slight gender gap in trump voters, but it’s not nearly as big as you’d think or hope.
Democrats need to stop being controlled opposition to nazis.
They need to start being the good guys. We need to stop voting for people like hillary clinton and joe biden in primaries.\
Shame everyone who has supported either candidate in the primary.
I’m over 30 and I’m pretty fuckin’ miserable, too!
But I guess I was actually paying attention to how fucked things have been politically since I was able to start voting pushing nearly 30 years ago now.
In regards to the actual article:
The researchers say they were able to pick up on the distrust by asking whether or not people believed someone would return a lost wallet. Compared to the Nordic countries, people in the U.S. were more likely to underestimate the kindness of others.
“It requires that strangers are to be trusted, that they will go beyond the call of duty and be kind and try and get it back to the rightful owner, or drop it with the police, which means you need to trust the police,” De Neve says. “That single item of the wallet drop is very powerful.”
There’s literally, literally a flip side to this “lost wallet” equation in the US as well. Have you ever been the person who was kind enough to return a lost wallet? Have you also ever been the person who was accused by the person you returned it to of stealing a bunch of things (like cash) out of the wallet? It’s actually a fairly common occurence in the the US. So not only is there distrust in whether or not others will return a wallet, there is a valid distrust by people who find lost wallets that the wallet owner won’t lie about the original contents of the wallet and accuse them of theft anyway. At what point does it just become pointless to bother with returning a wallet at all if you’re going to be accused of a crime because you did the right thing?
Apologies for (slight retch) a reddit link:
https://old.reddit.com/r/mildlyinfuriating/comments/1j1yqt9/found_a_wallet_with_200_and_i_returned_it_to_its/Bottom line: The US is filled with selfish untrustworthy fucking maniacs.
This lack of trust is literally the main goal of mass media, especially right wing media. When everyone else is your enemy, you won’t work together with them for your own benefit. Instead, you’ll trust the strongman to keep you safe from all the fake danger.
Social media accelerated this by an incredible amount. Today’s America feels like a completely different society from the one I grew up in the 90s.
The only time I found a wallet I returned it to the owner. The owner was suspicious as fuck towards me and treated me like I had stolen it even though everything was still in it. I literally picked it up off the ground, looked at the drivers license, and headed inside the store to see if they could page him and ran into him on the way in. The people I told about it were all pissed towards me for actually returning it and not just stealing the money… It was basically unanimous that I was wrong for doing this and some of these people were friends I thought were good people up until that point. It really fucked up my faith in other people. Next time I’ll just leave it be.
When I find a wallet with no money in it, I put $20 in and give it back. Fuck em.
There was a time when I was a student that I spent a lot of time near a particular coffee shop, and more than you would typically expect for just studying and the like, since it turned into the place where my friend group basically hung out most of the time.
In any case, it was a decently high traffic area and since I was there a lot I found two wallets and a cellphone over the time I was there a lot.One wallet had an emergency contact I was able to call, think it was their mother, and that I’d be at the coffee shop for a bit. They brought me cookies, and I was thrilled.
Next person just had their phone number, and they acted like I was a creep for saying I had their wallet and would like to give it back to them, so I told them I was leaving it with the cashier and left it at that and was a bit sad, since being told off for trying to be nice is a bummer.
Cellphone was the worst. I called their most recent number and told them what was up (this was clearly before ubiquitous lock screens). Owner called me back in the same number and threatened to call the cops on me so I hung up, powered off the phone and put it back where I found it. Felt sad.Given how it seems like everyone has lost their minds now, I’m not sure I would risk letting someone know I found their stuff. I’d still try to return it because that’s the right thing to do, but I’m not sure if I’d be willing to use my own phone number or anything.
If people will shoot you for using their driveway to turn around I can only imagine what they’d do for a bus pass, student ID and a loyalty punch card for a bakery.Wow, how dumb and shitty can people be? Crazy.
You seem like a good person and I’m sorry those assholes treated you like that.
The one time I’ve found a dropped wallet, it had ID for like 5 different people in it. I dropped that off at the local police station and walked away.
My partner lost wallet at a bus stop. It got buried under snow for a season and when the snow melted a month later it was turned in to the police station, who called partner. All his (by then cancelled) cards were still in the wallet, plus what felt like the right amount of cash.
And the part with dropping a found wallet with the police. We all know they’re going to do fuck all to find the owner.
Have you ever been the person who was kind enough to return a lost wallet? Have you also ever been the person who was accused by the person you returned it to of stealing a bunch of things (like cash) out of the wallet?
You’re saying something. I’ve heard first hand stories about angry wallet owners “shooting the messanger” so to speak. I’m from Germany but the saying “No good deed goes unpunished” rings true in most parts of the world, I think. That’s why you throw a lost wallet into the next letter box and don’t bother any further. At least that’s what you’re supposed to do where I’m from and I doubt any of those wallets ever arrived with their full content but that’s not my problem.
Some years back i was leaving the gym (I live in the US by the by) and I found a debit card. Now the only identifying info on it was the bank associated and the name and such. I wasnt going to take it home and try and track down the person who owned it. So I took it to the associated bank, grabbed a deposit slip and wrote a note on it and dropped in the deposit box. I assume it was returned, but I honestly don’t know. Felt this was the best approach given the circumstances.
On that topic, Japan is 100% reliable for returning a dropped wallet.
It pisses me off so much because the goddamn problem is RIGHT IN FRONT of everyone’s eyes and yet so much energy is spent on bullshitting the masses…I want off this ride
How else make line go up?
Is it that clear? What is the problem and what would be your aproach to a solution?
The problem is the entrenchment of authoritarian techno-feudalism combined with the hubris of “might makes right”. The solution is wildcat strikes.
I’d say the solution is a cultural shift.
We need to value different things.
- Stop thinking those who have more deserve more (shut up, most of you do it.)
- Stop thinking those who have less deserve less.
- Stop thinking products are priced according to what they cost to bring to market. They are priced according to what our dumbasses are willing to pay.
- Stop spending money on things you can be getting for free.
- Stop praising people for what they spend their money on.
- Stop expecting praise for what you spend your money on.
- Start praising people for what they do, not what they buy (notice there’s a lot less praise to go around now.)
- Value modesty. Consume less. Spend less. Do more.
Pretty much all the hippie-psychedelic counterculture that was snuffed out in the 80s was correct. Grow your hair out, guys. You’ve been conditioned to keep it short, and it looks like shit.
I think you may be correct in the sense that a great cultural change needs to occur for people to even contemplate that a wildcat strike as an option exists and is viable in halting the mechanisms of oppression/repression.
I’m 50 and miserable. Everyone who isn’t well off is miserable, and that’s like 75% of the country.
I’m 41 and I’ve been miserable since elementary school.
“but look how much technology you’ve gotten to see as it evolved every 3 years.”
Tech can fuck off. All these technological advances have served some Capitalist at the expense of imploding the middle class, or distracting the masses with some shiny bauble while shareholders extort more flesh each quarter.
If tech advances don’t create a rising tide, they’re just a tool for exploitation.
anyone paying attention in the US should be
this country has been fucked since at least 9/11 and citizens united
so starting collegish for you but all the younger generations
Definitely, I remember being a senior in high school the day 9/11 happened and even then I felt that the world was going to change and not change for the better.
Its me, hi, im the problem it’s me
I think you should identify as a problem instead of identifying as the problem if possible. The former attitude has more ‘spunk’ as the yanks say.
Are you me?
They’re me too. Hello, us!
Could be, we’re are these voices coming from?
What was it your rapist conman pedo president said? Shithole country, that’s it.
Wouldn’t it be funny if that broken spirit is by intention because the possibilities of the internet are big enough that a motivated youth could change everything?
I mean, they would have to value different things if they want things to change.
For some reason, this generation is proud to be a follower rather than a leader.
It’s like they enjoy being foot-soldiers of the people who keep them in their destitute positions. Rather than fight the ruling class, they envy them.
I love your perspective.
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When asked how miserable millennials are, the response was overwhelmingly unchanged, in-fact the generation regards itself as having the shittiest life experience marked by late-stage capitalism, and the adoption of a boring cyberpunk dystopia. US millennials largely see retirement as something impossible, as many cannot afford homes, cars, or healthcare.
See, that’s why they just mention under 30s, because it’s far worse for the rest of us.
I remember a post where people were asking millennials what their retirement plans were.
Vast majority of it was either suicide or hoping work would let them clock out before they dropped dead.
I am in my mid 20s and Gen Z. Most under 30s are Gen Z now.
Yes, I know, thats why in my made up quote I talked about millennials.
We’ve been suffering for a hell of a long time. A lot of us were young children when we watched the planes slam into the world trade center on the morning news before going to school and acting like we didn’t see the most horrific thing in the world.
Right after Columbine of course. And can’t forget about the Oklahoma bombing. It’s… Been rough
At least the 90s were somewhat stable I guess? I was only two when 9/11 happened but I remember Hurricane Katrina and the Recession vividly. America has always been one disaster away from ruining your life. Lately tornados have been happening all around me and there ain’t a damn thing I can do about it.
Not sure where you are, but I grew up in tornado alley. After a while, you just get used to it.
Like, I distinctly remember being in a car dealership (think massive plate glass walls) when a tornado siren went off, and most of the sales drones were basically nose on the glass looking out at the green sky. I was very amused when the manager walked out and gave the professional equivalent of ‘dudes, what the actual fuck are you doing?’
It’s one of those things you learned the danger of. If it was raining hard, you didn’t fuck around.
The siren always goes off once the rotation is detected by radar. You got a little bit of time to dick around because unless it’s EF3 or above it’s unlikely to start damage that quickly.
Plus if it’s an EF3, you’ll find out pretty quick. EF4s you’re gonna need luck on your side and EF5s? Well. Just hope it isn’t an EF5.
