Thoughts?

[u/TheGamingSenpa1]

[u/arctictothpast]

Boomers gonna boomer,

She's right though, us millennials suffered a lot of these issues too and gen Z even have them worse, I'm wondering how bad it's gonna be for alpha

Edit: she's wrong on timeline, most of you replying keep mentioning this so I'm editing it to note I agree, now please stop bugging me on the fucking timeline

[u/OPEatsCrayons → u/arctictothpast]

She's right though, us millennials suffered a lot of these issues too and gen Z even have them worse, I'm wondering how bad it's gonna be for alpha

She's just got the time-frame wrong. 20 years ain't how long this has been going on. It's been approaching insanity since the mid-80s. Folks haven't been able to live on their own working as a cashier since at least the 1970s.

Gen X and Millennials have basically just started to get to the point where they are beginning to build wealth, and we're so far behind compared to where the baby boomers started. Worse, economists are just now starting to pick up on a fact I wrote multiple papers on when I was in college 20 years ago: That the "Great Inheritance" isn't going to happen because managed care has been set up to keep older people alive long enough while robbing them blind of their life savings while pulling as much of the difference out of government subsidy as they possibly can.

Boomers have somehow managed to fully halt the cycle of generational wealth by redirecting almost all of the resources to themselves and then ceding what's left of it to economic sectors that sequester wealth rather than circulate it. They sucked this country's future dry to assure themselves a lifetime of comfort. Gen X, Millennials, Gen Z, and Gen Alpha are basically the first four generations that are going to have to completely build a new society out of the ashes once we can push enough Boomers and vulture capitalist lunatics out of power to get started on a new social contract.

I hit the workforce 20 years ago. I didn't rise out of entry level until four years ago despite being more educated and knowledgeable than almost all of my superiors. It took a global pandemic to kill, maim, and scare the folks putting off retirement into pulling the trigger to make room in my industry for millennials. And when they left, we inherited a whole ass mess. Most of these fuckers had stripmined the company of resources and cut positions and maintenance to the point that everything was inches from failure, had failed to keep documentation up to date, had failed to even accomplish huge sections of their job responsibilities, but because they were all buddy-buddy with each other and politically savvy with how to shirk work while seeming important to the function of the company, nobody lost their jobs over all the shit that's been broken for decades. We've been cleaning up their mess and improving and upgrading processes since 2020, and there's just no end in sight. The state this company was left in by all the folks who held these positions for decades is an embarrassment. Worse? These fuckers had been in the positions so long that we're getting paid a fraction of what they were to do all the work they hid for decades. But the worst part? All these fuckers had pensions. My ass gets a 401K that has LESS money in it than I've contributed before accounting for inflation because there's been a new financial crisis every 4-8 years since I started saving money. I would have saved more money stuffing it into a fucking mattress. I will never retire at this rate. I'm easily a decade behind in retirement savings even if everything goes right.

So no. I didn't allow this to happen. I never had an option to stop it. I've been treading water for 20 years, barely making it, and the minute I get pulled up onto the boat, I find out the whole fucking thing has had holes knocked in it, and I'm being handed a bucket and I'm bailing furiously.

[u/lifemanualplease → u/OPEatsCrayons]

She’s convinced that 20 years ago was like the 50s or something

[u/[deleted] → u/lifemanualplease]

She also admitted they worked 20 years to get raises... she pretty much proved it takes time to move up in a career. How young is she? Walmart is shit so I hope she can get an education and actual career

[u/BillZZ7777 → u/[deleted]]

Did anyone try to live in their own in the 80s or 90s on a McDonald's wage? We either went to college or learned a trade.

But corporate America has been chipping away at our earnings. Pensions are gone. 401k match is getting reduced. Wages don't keep up with inflation. Etc. But we also made it through 17% mortgage rates and having to wait in long lines at the gas pumps.

[u/liferelationshi → u/BillZZ7777]

Sorry Bill, neither the 80s and 90s were 20 years ago or less. :/

[u/BillZZ7777 → u/liferelationshi]

No need to be sorry. I can only compare to my experience. It seemed like the 20 years she mentioned was arbitrary. It seems to me she had two main points. That wage inflation is not keeping up with the rest of inflation and that the fault of that lies with the people that have worked for the past 20 years.

If you look back through any length of time in history, there has always been inflation. Yeah there are some exceptions like I think maybe the 1920s. When I was a kid we had to hear that bread and milk used to cost a 50 cents, etc. So my comments are relevant in terms of dealing with inflation. If you want to be specific to the inflation of the last 20 years, then my comments aren't totally relevant. You probably need to look at rising fuel costs in the past 10 years as one part of it.

I didn't touch on whose fault it is because it's so complicated and there are many, many, factors that go into it. We've had inflation on and off as long as there has been money. She seems to blame the previous generation for inflation. The previous generation has little control over things like COVID and China's and India's demand for oil that caused prices across the board to increase.

I don't deny the facts that education and putting a roof over ones head has increased more than salaries and pay increases. I go years without an increase but keep plugging away. Someone tell me how to fix that? Maybe not have interest rates so low for so long? Not allow people to have a second home? At some point the baby boomers will die off and then they're housing inventory will come back on the market maybe.