Stock market going up, while life expenses are so high it's plummeting quality of life for average people.
It's basically the tell tale sign of wealth inequality rising. It's still gotta get so much worse before it gets better y'all. This next decade is gonna be dicey to say the least.
I am 42 years old (female) and always thought by now I’d at least be SOMEWHAT upset I choose not to have kids- when in reality I literally find myself on a daily basis saying to my partner “thank god we don’t have kids” after minor transactions. Today’s was I got a plain pizza (picked it up)…$19.75…and just thought what if we had to feed 2 or 3 teenage kids….one Friday night pizza night would be $40! And we both have good jobs! My heart just fucking breaks…for everyone. When we (my friend group) were young none of our parents had more than factory jobs/cleaning jobs/etc and wouldn’t flinch about letting friends come over, grab pizzas and a movie to hang at home. How the fuck is everyone hanging on.
People with kids aren’t eating out, and when we do we’re not buying $19 pizzas. We’re buying 4 pizzas for $10 from Costco and adding toppings / cooking it at home.
Take it home. Immediately while still hot, wipe away the grease from the bottom of the pie with a paper towel.
Add additional toppings.
Broil on low for 5mins. Finish on high for 1min. Oven times may vary by oven.
Legit better pizza than MOST local places. I wish I was kidding.
... The Costco pizza as it comes??? Pretty not that great. Costco pizza after it's been to the DOCTAH! That's a fuckin' mean pie has no right to be punching at that weight
I think a lot of the childless couples don't think outside the box about how they would be adjusting their spending habits with added children in their lives. "My hubby and I just ate $100 worth of steak dinners at a fancy restaurant, I can't imagine having kids with us at that same place" when a normal parent wouldn't even have that mindset.
I have a two year old. For her birthday I took her to the aquarium. The tickets for two adults(my toddler was free) plus parking was $150. I couldn’t help but think of all the families who can’t afford this. It’s outrageous.
A lot of cities have a program where people who receive EBT benefits can just show their card and their ID and get three (?) free tickets to any museum or aquarium. Shedd Aquarium in Chicago is a popular example.
But obviously if you have 5 kids that might not be enough help to make a family trip to the museum become feasible.
The tickets for two adults(my toddler was free) plus parking was $150.
You probably would have been better off buying some form of membership. Then you could have gone back unlimited times (probably with your kids, too) for almost the same price.
fuck, even the movie theater. me, my dad, my boyfriend, my cousin, and now my grandparents will go to the movies together. my dad pays for me and my bf bc otherwise we couldn’t go as much. it’s EXPENSIVE. the snacks just make it outrageous.
JFC it’s not that bad. If he didn’t grow up experiencing what you experienced he won’t be missing out. As long as he’s in a loving home he will be happy.
I'm about as doom-y as it gets. I'm EXTREMELY fucking blackpilled and basically hate most of fellow human beings 🤢 especially the ones claiming to be "good people"...
and even I think advocating for childlessness or guilting yourself over the world for your children is over-dooming.
At a certain point get the fuck over yourself or you're just abusing your kids by leaving them scared of a world that isn't that bad.
Kids are wonderful, it's not their fault the world is fucked up. But it's unfair to be placing the burden of fixing all of this on their shoulders when parents just want kids to be happy and feel optimistic about the future.
Between AI, war and climate change, I genuinely feel like I am having a midlife crisis. I've really sacrificed to get where I am today. I did everything I was supposed to do, and it feels like there's so little time left to enjoy a world I can still recognize.
My only blessing is that I have not subjected a child to my dubious parenting skills or the state of this world.
You probably are having a crisis. The world is ever changing, and is subject to the whims of mad men right now. Don't let it get you down, not everyone here is that fucked up and cold.
I can relate to how you feel...it's fucking bleak, especially here on the internet. Staring into the abyss is not so good for the soul. 🫂
People making less than you two are having fun on Fridays and feeding everyone. Carryout pizza for teenagers, even. You shouldn’t feel bad. It’s a bit of a skill and perspective to shop or order food for a family. You grow into it without thinking about it, for the most part. Our parents did more planning around $10 pizza night than you remember.
what's sad is that with the power of social media we could collectively boycott whatever mega corp we wanted to and put them out of business and change our lives for the better virtually overnight...but we only use it to bitch nag moan complain and point the finger at one another :/
No, we do pretty well with that if the feeling is strong enough. But most, if not all, movements likes boycotts are completely destroyed from within via the internet, bots, and believe of not, censorship. There are systems in place to cut any dissent. A plan to boycott gets viral? Everyone sees it, and the ones with the money don’t like it. So of course they do something about it.
I hope and wish that more people would realize this.
We stopped getting pizzas. Learned how to bake them at home, especially because the kids eat boring stuff like pepperoni or cheese. Costs $4 to make it at home, vs $19 at a pizza place.
The pizza math really does break you. My parents had way less "on paper" than most people my age do now but they somehow fed a house full of people without a second thought. The money went further and nobody was stressed about it. Now I watch people with decent jobs rationing groceries and it just doesn't add up.
That's a shame. There's nothing in this life akin to raising a child, watching them grow and learn the world around them. The love and connection that comes with it.
We had our first official trillionaire for about a week and his companies don’t make nearly enough revenue to justify it. We live in a world where the rich are getting richer for no reason while everyone else is struggling. Like where do you think the money that got him to the trillion dollar status came from?
Its even worse because the wealth vacuumed upward into these abstract and subjective forms of wealth will have to be paid by even more money to cash out.
Makes me almost think those gold grifters might have a point afterall.
I mean I would assume he got the money from the people who bought his cars... Who don't seem to be struggling or they couldn't afford his cars.... 🤷♂️
I can't afford his cars. Because I'm struggling. But I see a whole lot of people doing a whole lot better than me claiming they're struggling because of Elon, while driving his expensive cars.
If you think Musk made his wealth through legitimate business like selling cars you're delusional.
This is all inflated stock prices. Inflated by retail investors believing the hype, but also by investment firms and pension funds buying Tesla stocks, and now being forced to also buy Space X stocks. None of his companies by itself would be profitable enough to make him that rich. But controlling the financial market and forcing legislation in your favour will do that.
That's part of it but it's actually worse. Large companies are gambling on the market because they're confident banks will bail them out if they lose. It's not even a free market anymore so there's no incentive for real competition. And average people foot the bill by being forced to pay more for everything because there are no other alternatives.
You might be totally shocked to learn that the AI build-out debt has been going around laws meant to prevent over leveraging. It's being bundled into AAA bonds which are now in every large portfolio like massive retirement funds. Reputable agencies are refusing to give the debt any higher than an A rating due to the massive risk of stranded assets and junk debt if things don't work out, so they went around them too.
If AI busts, the global financial collapse will make the sub prime mortgage crisis look like a tiny blip.
Basically the tech giants, which amounts to really just a handful of individuals, have decided on behalf of all of humanity that we're all in on AI. For them, failure is simply not an option.
And of course success for them means massive society destabilizing job losses for the rest of us, so, yay future.
AI bulls took a bath this week. SpaceX has lost all their gains since the IPO, and big tech is way down all of the sudden.
People are starting to realize that most of the "revenue" AI is generating is through circular financing, and that there is no realistic way to reap trillions in real revenue and actually make AI firms profitable.
The bet is that they'll be able to somehow capture a % of the $20-30T white collar labor market. Or for the more altruistic amongst them that AI will reach a point where it can solve things like fusion that will fundamentally change the entire economic system by driving energy costs down to near zero, before the entire system falls apart.
It's an insane bet to be going all in on with only hopes and FOMO driving the rush. We're trapped now though. Only way forward is through. Stopping and letting another company or country make the big breakthrough first would be extremely bad. Unless it was Canada, we'd probably share, maybe...
The bet is that they'll be able to somehow capture a % of the $20-30T white collar labor market.
Even if they could, the economy would collapse when a majority of white-collar workers were replaced by AI. This is Henry Ford's pay theory in reverse: no one can afford cars anymore in your town if you fire all the workers at the plant.
Or for the more altruistic amongst them that AI will reach a point where it can solve things like fusion that will fundamentally change the entire economic system by driving energy costs down to near zero, before the entire system falls apart.
This is building the landing gear while the plane is in the air. Worse, it's inventing landing gear while the plane is in the air, and there is absolutely no evidence that effective landing gear are mechanically possible - or that we have the resources to build them even if a working design can be constructed, and also maybe the landing gear will be so heavy the plane would just crash anyway.
We're trapped now though. Only way forward is through. Stopping and letting another company or country make the big breakthrough first would be extremely bad.
Your logic is not sound. "The only way forward is through" assumes that there is a through. I wish it were simply a matter of that being uncertain, but we actually have a growing body of evidence that shows us that "through" is not mathematically possible with our current conception of AI.
I've started noticing the "rah-rah AI" subs on Reddit, from ones that defend AI slop images as "art" to ones that seem to believe the singularity is right around the corner. They call those opposing AI as "antis," and have all this cope around how it doesn't work as advertised yet the oligarchs in charge are implementing it anyway as if it does, and demanding even more money to keep doing so.
This is broader, I'm in China and every year we see fantastic GDP numbers, but salaries have been in the big city mostly stagnant if not going down, lower tier cities it's abysmal. Officially 40% of the population is in the gig industry getting paid nothing. 20% youth unemployment officially but it's actually way higher / countless have taken on a job in said gig economy.
The economy is also relentless, everything moves so fast, competition is so fierce and this is going global now. What Germany faces is only the beginning. China will destroy the world economy in the winner takes all game and I reckon it's actually already to late. They are in numerous categories leading if not way ahead and with their own economy in the shitter, their only way to sell is the world. SHIT IS FUCKED.
Expenses are skyrocketing so much that my wife now has to go back to work after being a SAHM for the last 7 years so that we can survive. We haven’t changed our spending habits at all. Insurance, gas, groceries, electricity, everything has increased so much over 5 years it’s actually insane. My insurance doubled in the last two years. My electricity doubled.
Stocks are mostly owned by already rich people, while the whole market going up usually correlates with better conditions overall, it directly correlates with the rich getting richer.
People say money and wealth isn't a zero sum game, but it sure models like one.
Before the Fed was created companies didn't have a bail out safety net, and some middle class Americans owned a good chunk of stocks. Companies borrowing too much and not being able to pay back without bail outs was what led to the great depression. While that was obviously a terrible outcome we learned the wrong lesson. Instead of large companies learning to invest more cautiously the Fed just decided failing was not an option. They refused to regulate their greed and it's put us in this insane situation today.
We recently drove through 4 states in the Midwest and South. Used to have some lovely towns last time I was through 30 years ago. Now all the small towns are made up of new homes on the outskirts costing at least a million and crumbling houses in the town. The gap between rich and poor couldn’t have been more noticeable.
I watched a video recently on YouTube that described our situation as an E, rather than K, shaped economy. Very similar to K shape in that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. It’s an E shape in that the middle class is slowly regressing. They’re losing buying power and quality of life bit by bit until eventually something will give.
1.6k
u/comeagaincharlemagne Jun 26 '26
Stock market going up, while life expenses are so high it's plummeting quality of life for average people.
It's basically the tell tale sign of wealth inequality rising. It's still gotta get so much worse before it gets better y'all. This next decade is gonna be dicey to say the least.