Not difficult to understand.
Why bother?
There’s very little hope for a decent life. It’s not rocket surgery. Unless you get lucky being born into wealth, success in entertainment industry, stock market stuff, something else that gets you enough money to be financially independent… is rare and unlikely.
The rest have to work jobs we hate. Rising cost of living. Own a home… Ha! Then you work your shit job and when you retire at 70 it’s mostly just time to die, having wasted life working to prop up some billionaires enjoying yachts and diddling kids.
People are realizing there’s not much hope for a large number of us.
Tax the rich or bring back guillotines, or both.
That’s where I’m at. I graduated college at 22, got an engineering job right out of college that put me in the top 0.5% of income earners for my age, then did that for 5 years. At no point was I even close to being able to afford a down-payment on even a shitty condo where I lived. Now im unemployed, smoke weed all day, and im basically waiting to either participate in a revolution or run out of money and die. I am strictly unwilling to participate in capitalism anymore, I’ve got enough blood on my hands for a lifetime and nothing to show for it other than than the experience needed to realize how much of what I grew up believing was nothing more than cynical propaganda.
What kind of engineering? Are you not able to find a job or just not trying? Just looking to understand other people’s stories a bit more.
A weird combination of electric, radar, computer, and hardware test. I used to do technique development and operational testing for radar jamming equipment on a strategic bomber for the airforce. I tried going back to school for a bit, but I learned that academia is run by pathetic cowards who can and will build weapons for fascists in exchange for funding. I came to the conclusion that the only thing I was changing was how likely I was to have to see the piles of corpses I was helping create. Now im just not looking anymore. I still get a daily deluge of emails from war profiteers looking for somebody willing to be a principal engineer in shithole towns like Huntsville or Abilene
Fair enough. Here’s hoping you find whatever happiness you’re looking for in life.
Appreciate it, but I stopped looking a long time ago. I was raised in a military family to be an attack dog for fascists, and i realized that everybody i ever looked up to or trusted would rather support fascism than accept even a mote of discomfort in their personal lives. I dont trust another soul in the world and honestly im not sure i have the capacity to; ive only ever experienced cynical monsters of human beings vying for dominance, and I got extremely good at that game. If there even is anything worth living for in this faustian existence, the weight of my sins is such that I don’t deserve to experience it
Well said, I sympathize and we have very similar backgrounds based on what you’ve said. Are your sins and blood on your hands due to working for defense contractors or military or related? If so I feel that to my core. I tried saying “at least I’m not making bombs or missiles”, but even if you’re supporting them in other ways it’s still part of the machine where poor people end up dead or impoverished, all because of billionaires war games. And they get richer along the way.
We’re not special. We’re primates. The greatest smartest ape on the planet. But it’s still just a more advanced and complex form of what chimps do in the wild. The animalistic competition and domination is fucking stupid when you start to recognize it. We’re the only fucking species intelligent enough to transcend that shit, yet look at us?
Take what I say with a very fine grain of salt. And I would never presume know what’s best for people or try to tell anyone what to do. But if you want to be effective in the one in a billion chance there’s a revolution or anything remotely like it, maybe prepare? Health wise and whatever else you might think. I’d like to smoke and drink every day too, but what about just in case? Personally I’m ready to pull the trigger if an opportunity arises, but I would want it to count. Yeah, I’m kinda saying don’t give up just yet. They way you think, we need people like you.
I don’t think people like you and I are alone. I think it’s possible more people are/will grow to feel and think this way, given the way things are going.
Yeah, I was a defense contractor. I grew up periodically wondering if this was finally the deployment my dad wouldn’t come home from, and getting the chance to work in radar jamming to keep american aviators alive felt like a dream come true at first.
I am afraid to try to change the world again. I already know that I have the capability to change things in the world, I spent plenty of time doing it. I also know that I developed my values and morality while being raised as a white supremacist, and that I am gullible enough to be misled into doing evil. I dont remotely trust my own judgement on what would make the world a better place, and I trust anybody telling me what I should do even less. I’ve already had to see and smell the consequences of trusting other people who justify violence to me.
The answer is for future generations to stop having kids. Fewer consumers for billionaires to leech off of and turn into corporate slaves. More houses to go around once older generations die off. Less competition. Corporations will probably raise prices like crazy and turn people into super-consumers and of course some people will still have kids and we all saw idiocracy.
In capitalism, there is no going back. You have to beat least year’s profits no matter what.
There is plenty of housing currently in Western countries, it’s just not being made available to those in need. That won’t change with lower birthrate, it will stay not available to them. It can only change with system change where no one can hoard insane billion amounts of $ € ¥ numbers on their screen or have thousands of homes as their belongings.
Definitely a lot of corporations turning homes to rentals but if there are fewer people to rent those houses, it’s not as lucrative an investment and with a surplus of homes, there’s more opportunity for people to buy them. I get what you’re saying tho. They have all the power to turn any situation in their favor.
In some situations they’ll rather have empty houses than rent it out to the poorest people for lower prices. Or actively destroy (“upgrade”) affordable housing to keep prices of the rest up. And if the prices do really go down a lot it’s still poors with mortgages but suddenly no more enough income selling their places for bargain prices to the ultra rich for whom even in a real estate crisis with crashed prices it’s all still just a game situation, not a food on the table one. They use it to gobble up even more.
You won me over with “rocket surgery” <3
I like how seemingly no one here is reading the article because of the paywall, which no millennials (including me) are going to pay to get past, which is emblematic of why no one is going to pay attention to the findings of these (at a quick look) millennial-age-bracket-looking researchers instead of raging into Facebook algos or whatever most folks do. There are so many layers of irony.
The information pipe to steer us outa this is so busted. It’s unreal.
And yes, I know I can find the archive link…
This one was actually easy. If you use Firefox, click reader view, and the entire article is available. It’s rare, but sometimes it works.
Millennials are killing the living industry.
My wife and I are older millennials, born in the 80s. I’m morbidly obese and she’s an alcoholic and a smoker. We’re doing our part.
Does it have something to do with wealth inequality and quality of life being so inextricable from personal wealth? That would be my guess, but I don’t know for sure bc paywall… Oh well.
I’m sure some of it is wealth distribution and some is access to healthcare. Culture also has an effect of course. But from the chart I saw in one these comments shows 22-44 year olds being 2.5 times more likely to die than other high income countries. That sounds absurd. (As in bad, not unbelievable)
Definitely but quality of life is tied to healthcare, and in the U.S. access to healthcare is sadly tied to wealth.
If you compare economic realities for millennials in the US compared to other wealthy nations what does it look like? Genuine question, but these type of demographic problems frequently have economic underpinnings such as less access to health care, financial stability and quality food along with increased exposure to environmental toxins, access to guns, drugs and alcohol combined with a culture that requires driving to live except in very specific places.
Speaking of mental health, I am outside the specified range listed here (by just a few years) but my mental health declined significantly during and following the pandemic and for a variety of reasons, but I can absolutely see older millennials struggling with hitting middle-age with few assets to their name due to the massive transfer of wealth upwards which accelerated just as they were entering the job market. Who can blame them for wanting to give up when they were left out in the cold waiting for a chance at a future that was stolen years ago? Every year it seems more evident that our society has failed and we’re just watching it slowly crumble around us.
Cant afford health insurance, much less insurance, co pay, second opinions, more co pay, appointments spread over months so max deductible isnt hit. Its a fuckin joke and if i have something wrong with me i’ll just die from it.
I blame the boomers for being way too selfish. They’re ruining it for everyone else
i told my mother (boomer generation) that now that she’s 70 she should think about planting a tree she will never see grow.
she looked at me like i told her to go fuck herself and told me that was dumb.
the boomer problem is an everyone problem.
Not all boomers.
Also, I don’t see all that much difference in boomer attitudes than some of the ones I see/saw in the Silent Generation and the “Greatest” Generation when it comes to at least a subset of them being very conservative and selfish in older age.
No, but enough of them to remove most of the ladder rungs for anyone after the.
Yeah… it’s s vast majority
Ever since I can remember, I’d hear those from the boomer generation say similar things about older generations, both in TV/movies, and IRL.
What will be different about Gen Y once they become the wealthiest generation in history? Is there some latent difference there which will be unleashed that will reverse the extreme wealth inequality that has been ramping up throughout the decades?
Time will tell, I guess.
What will be different about Gen Y once they become the wealthiest generation in history?
😂
Not sure if you are laughing because you expect it to be no different than prior generations or if you didn’t know they are set to become the richest generation in history?
Well, they can’t take it with them.
The Great Wealth Transfer is under way, and I’ve read that Gen Y is poised to become the wealthiest generation in history. Will they be any different than the boomers or the Silent Generation or the Greatest Generation? (I’m Gen X; we are used to being ignored and sidelined at nearly every turn, lol) What will they do with all that wealth? Do they, by dint of being born between two arbitrary years, have some magical property other generations don’t?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Wealth_Transfer
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/03/01/economy/millennials-richest-generation-in-history/index.html
This is such bullshit. Many will never see this wealth transfer, either because they have no intergenerational wealth in their family, or because the real enemy is looking to prevent it from passing down. Many states have laws that’ll make mortgage rates and taxes increase when that wealth gets passed down, causing many people to sell that capital for short term income, further driving the younger generations into fiefdom for the wealthy feudal lords. It’s a self reinforcing cycle that makes a middle class statistically impossible. No bourgeoisie; only nobility.
There is no winning at this late stage capitalism, because we no longer live in a system where people can save, aquire wealth, and retire. One bad day is all it takes for almost anyone to lose everything, and those bad days are engineered to be so frequent that it’s all but guaranteed eventually. The only wealth transfer is into the pockets of those who already have extreme wealth, and you will not be one of those people.
They didn’t even read their own links. From the Wikipedia page they linked (emphasis mine) :
Inheritance has become more common among households, with 60% of surveyed households in 2022 having received, expecting to receive, or planning to leave inheritances. Wealthy individuals make up 1.5% of all households but constitute 42% of the expected transfers through 2045, approximately $35.8 trillion. The wealthiest 10% of households will give and receive the vast majority of the wealth, with the top 1% holding about as much wealth as the bottom 90%
First off, the background is based on surveys, not hard data of any type. Expecting an inheritance doesn’t mean being guaranteed to receive one. Where’s the actual data? Second, it’s painfully clear that this “great wealth transfer” is going to miss the vast majority of us. How OP could’ve read this and interpreted it to mean that Gen Y/Millennials are somehow, as a cohort, supposed to become super wealthy? I have no idea.
Then their CNN link, from its very first paragraph (again, emphasis mine) :
However, over the next twenty years, Millennials are poised to inherit some $90 trillion of assets and become the richest generation in history – but only the ones who already come from affluent families, potentially deepening wealth inequality further.
It’s just rich people doing rich people things. This inter-generational phrasing is propaganda to distract us from the real opposition, the ultra wealthy, who are holding all of us down regardless of our age.
There is no war but class war.
I’m sure they did read the content in the links. The point they are making is exactly your final line. There’s this refrain of “Boomers are ruining everything!” but the reality is it’s a small number of people with a lot of money using that money to do what they please at everyone else’s expense.
When the last “boomer” dies, the problem will remain. If we collectively fail to address it, then it’s just going to change up to “Dang GenYs ruining everything!”
I did indeed read both links. You seem to be missing the point.
The article makes points about the distribution and that Gen Y, along with being the wealthiest generation in history, will likely have even more inequality than prior generations.
I guess we’ll see if Gen Y does something different than any generation prior.
For suicide -
In the states, being suicidal gets you institutionalized in a place that will not help. These places are straight out of One Flew Out of the Coockoos Nest. There is no regulation. There is no oversight.
Imagine wanting to die and being punished for it. There’s a reason suicide rates increase after inpatient hospitalization.
The places I’ve seen in Europe actually seem to try to help their patients. I’ve seen TikTok videos from people staying inpatient in places in the UK - they’re allowed to have their phones there.
Getting help with ideation is impossible, because if you cross that line and admit to much you get treated like a fucking criminal.
The government owns your body and gets upset when you try to damage their property.
It’s the only reason the system is set up how it is.
It’s so goddamned fucking frustrating.
Being under toxic stress and realizing there is no help. That seeking out help only makes the problem worse. Trying to talk to people about it and “have you tried therapy?”
Yeah, I paid thousands of dollars for someone to throw worksheets at me. I was stupid enough to go inpatient and lost my job, so now I can’t even pay for the fucking worksheets.
I literally have no idea what to fucking do.
Have you thought about not being poor?
I’ve thought about soaking myself in gasoline and lighting myself on the steps of the capital, yes.
I’ve had suicide plans before, and if I am ever serious I will never tell a soul. Mental institutions are bleak places.
It sounds like the US is just a dangerous place to live in a variety of ways, it’s interesting that traffic fatalities are one of the reasons behind their high rate of premature death.
Still others highlight America’s permissive gun laws
While I don’t have numbers broken out by age range, over half of all gun deaths in America each year are suicides. Source: https://gunviolencearchive.org/
Instead of banning guns and calling it done, maybe we should help those people to want to be alive. That way, so-called permissive gun laws simply wouldn’t be relevant.
Add it to the pile…
…?
are you still with us, boydster?? WAKE UP!!!
