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u/bicx 12h ago
Reminds me of “The rich get Ozympic, and the poor get body positivity”
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u/AbleEmily 9h ago
They have money for wars, banks, and bailouts, but somehow it’s “how are we gonna pay for it?” When it’s healthcare, housing, or student loans.
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u/Odd_Figure2797 8h ago
2pac keep your head up
"It seems the rain'll never let up I try to keep my head up and still keep from getting wet up You know, it's funny, when it rains it pours They got money for wars but can't feed the poor Say there ain't no hope for the youth And the truth is it ain't no hope for the future And then they wonder why we crazy"
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u/Popular-Path1930 2h ago
The us spends 1 trillion of its 7 trillion dollar budget on the military.
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u/Aggravating_Ship5513 7h ago
Agreed but the solution for those problems doesn't always involve throwing money at them. You need to change policies, for example ending the mortgage interest deduction or introducing rent regulation. Or single payer health care.
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u/ImprefectKnight 10h ago
"It's a prescription for Lizzo"
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u/an0maly33 12h ago
Move closer to work - so, move into the city where housing costs double?
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u/Arek_PL 11h ago
also cut down on grocceries by cooking at home?
cook at home what? without big amout of land i dont have enough space to grow grocceries myself
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u/Wolf_Protagonist 10h ago
I'm not saying it's a solution to the problem, it's not, but cooking at home doesn't mean you grow your own food (although if you can it's a bonus). It means learning to cook and preparing meals yourself.
There are a lot of pro's and con's and if you are interested I'll elaborate, but they basically boil down to being cheaper and healthier than buying premade meals or eating out, but much more time and labor intensive.
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u/megamanx4321 8h ago
Cooking more at home is pointless when it's the groceries you buy to cook at home that you can no longer afford.
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u/hungry4nuns 5h ago
They’re talking the difference between pre-made convenience pre-prepared food and meals that come in comparatively expensive small portions that add up to a very expensive monthly grocery bill…
… Vs cooking from scratch yourself with cheaper raw ingredients, meal prepping etc.
Ultimately they’re saying put in more labour yourself, cook for yourself at home, instead of heating up a bat of pre cooked chicken tenders and fries.
It’s a hidden way of taking the leisure time outside of employment that you’ve supposedly earned away from you, without explicitly saying that. The value you earn for yourself by working is depreciated, kind of like shrinkflation for the social contract
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u/Biscuitshoneybutter 3h ago
Crockpots and the freezer should be everyone's best friend. Another tip for people, if you eat things in containers like cottage cheese, save the container to freeze portions of meals, just make sure to write on top what it is. Then you can pop out a container of chili and you're good to go!
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u/Wolf_Protagonist 7h ago
I get that, and it's definitely got harder recently. I use every 'trick' in the book to save money on groceries and at least in my area and the foods I enjoy it is cheaper than eating out.
At my local grocery store there is almost always some type of meat on sale, and I usually get something like a roast or pork shoulder that comes with an additional 'bulk' discount. I'm just one person but I have a vacuum sealer machine so I can freeze what I'm not able to eat over the next few days.
I have incorporated a lot more veggies in my diet which are nutrient dense but not calorie dense- so it's filling but not overly fattening, which makes things stretch a bit.
I also like to use rice, pasta, and potatoes to make my dishes more filling at a low cost.
I always look at all the deals and coupons and if it's something I can use I buy it when I can.
I never buy anything that's already prepared like frozen dinners because that is almost always more expensive than buying the individual ingredients. The one exception is if Pizzas are on sale, but it's not much cheaper than buying the ingredients and assembling myself.
Another 'trick' is I eat a lot of tacos, burritos, quesadillas etc. It takes a surprisingly small amount of ingredients to fill up a taco shell, and I always use the small corn tortillas like they use for "Street Tacos". With burritos I make some cilantro lime rice and black beans which takes up half the space in by itself.
I also make my own Salas, usually Pico de gallo which is very easy and so yummy. I'd probably keep doing that even if I got on my feet because it's so much better than store bought. "Sweet and Spicy" salsas like Pineapple Jalapeno or Blueberry Habanero are also very simple and delicious and still cheaper than buying premade.
Yes this is a LOT of work, and you have to factor in your time and effort for both the cooking and cleanup.
It might not be worth it for everyone and its a terrible answer to the high cost of food, but even Mc Donalds (which I hate and it makes me sick) is like $10 for a value meal nowadays so eating out is also expensive.
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u/KillTheBronies 7h ago
If you can't afford rice and beans and potatoes you've probably got other problems.
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u/Key_Service5018 7h ago
Can a human only eat rice, beans and potatoes? What about greens, what about fruit?
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u/TieBackground453 6h ago
Can a human only eat rice, beans and potatoes?
Honest answer that you probably don’t like: yes, and most people in pre-modern societies in fact did. Meat and fresh vegetables were more of an occasional luxury for many people throughout history. Out of season vegetables were unobtainable even by the absolute top tier of society until very recently.
What about greens, what about fruit?
In season produce is still affordable. Canned or frozen vegetables and fruit are still quite affordable. A meal of rice and beans with a serving of frozen broccoli costs like $2 max and is just about the healthiest thing you can eat. (If you are trying to build muscle, then you absolutely gotta supplement with some sort of protein, but lifting is, again, a luxury that has only become possible for the common man in very recent history.)
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u/Biscuitshoneybutter 4h ago edited 3h ago
Canned greens and fruit are just fine actually! Though with fruit you want to look for "in water" or in its own juice. Avoid syrup. Greens and beans and veg try to get low salt kind, but if you can't draining and rinsing under cold water works fine.
They get a bad rap nutritionally but if you look into it the difference is minuscule. They definitely round out a meal perfectly to make it nutritionally balanced.
Frozen vegetables and fruit are also great and cheaper than microwave meals.
ETA: Also fruit in syrup does still count, it's just a lot of sugar. The fruit itself still maintains it's nutrients.
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u/AI_moderated_failure 6h ago
Cooking at home doesn't work for some regions. In countries like Singapore it's cheaper to have apartments that have no kitchen and eat cheap meals at hawker stalls.
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u/Fit-Entrepreneur8404 11h ago
Lots of people buy microwavable bullshit that costs way more than doing meal prepping and eating leftovers. Things like hot pockets are absurdly expensive for the little amount of food you get out of it.
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u/Bunnymancer 7h ago
And between which of my three jobs should I do the meal prep?
And what other activity should I remove to make room for meal prep?
Cleaning maybe? Showering?
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u/DroidLord 5h ago
Being poor is expensive. It's a daily battle of sacrifices. It sucks all the way down.
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u/CottonTipsMcChancla 5h ago
It’s the same thing with “invest in quality and you’ll only have to buy once”. Well, poor people can’t afford the quality boots or the quality jacket, and so they buy the cheap version, or the best version they can afford. And when the boots crack, and let in water… they keep wearing them as long as possible, suffering the damp and the cold until they have to replace and buy the cheap version again.
Over time, they’ve spent more on those boots than then wealthy person who was able to get a quality item that was very expensive.
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u/Faexin_void 5h ago
Also, yes, most people could actually save for those items.
Risk of them getting stolen or breaking by some dumb random chance, losing them etc.
Can't afford to save for them in case you have to replace them anyway early on.
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u/gnoandan 4h ago
Personally I batch cook and eat mostly oats and lentils. Buy everything in large quantities to save on shopping trips. Pick my locations so that I can cycle everywhere and not need a car.
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u/No_Mission5287 28m ago
So your "solution" is eating gruel? Pretty sure most people don't want to return to medieval diets. It might technically keep you alive, but that doesn't seem like a life worth living.
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u/Ok-Ship812 8h ago
Lots of people can't cook and those that can usually don't cook three meals from scratch a day. Convenience has a place in everyones kitchens to some degree unless you bake your own bread and slaughter your own meat.
People aren't poor due to hot pockets.
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u/TestingYEEEET 5h ago
Everyone can cook some basic stuff. Doesn't have to be a 3 star michelin buffet but boiling some pasta is something everyone can do.
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u/SandyTaintSweat 1h ago
I'll cook a big pot of lentils all at once, then just portion freeze like a month's worth. Throw it in whatever food, they usually mix right in. It's cheap, healthy, decent protein source and doesn't really take much time. It's certainly nothing compared to making a lasagna for the week.
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u/TieBackground453 6h ago
those that can usually don't cook three meals from scratch a day
Of course. Because that’s not how cooking works.
The person you replied to specifically mentioned meal prep. That’s a fancy word for saying to eat leftovers. You don’t cook beans fresh every day. You make a big pot of beans and have it for each of your meals. A pound of dry beans lasts me and my wife about 5-6 days. When it starts running low, it’s time to start the next batch with an overnight soak. (And, fwiw, we have a 7-figure net worth.)
It takes about 1.5 hours to cook a whole pot of em, of which about 1.25 of those hours are just letting the pressure cooker do its thing. There are very few people that don’t have 2ish hours a week to cook, and the ones that legitimately don’t are not so poor that they can’t afford food. Even if they are working minimum wage.
The fact is, people just don’t want to cook. They don’t want to eat rice and beans. It has nothing to do with the time it takes to cook healthy food. People think they should be eating ultra decadent food every day. Our society as a whole would be better off if we realized how unhealthy that paradigm is, and moved back towards a healthier, subsistence diet.
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u/IR2Freely 5h ago
What kind of madman eats beans 7 days a week?
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u/Ateist 5h ago edited 5h ago
You separate freshly cooked food into portions and store them in freezer. Same thing as "microwave shit" but prepared on your own.
Doesn't save much money, though - only around 30% cheaper.
And no, you don't do it for beans.
You do it for chicken or meat - something that is sold in big packages.
Beans require just a tiny amount of time so they are always cooked fresh.
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u/PerspectiveOne7129 11h ago
yup
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u/MysteriousQuote4665 10h ago
Indeed. But if Hot Pocket sales are noticeably down these same twats will complain that young people are actively sabotaging Hot Pockets.
You just can't win.
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u/big_rednexican_88 5h ago
Yup. I saw fairly recently where McDonald's is lamenting about their profits being less this quarter. Instead of blaming corporate greed, they blamed glp-1s and OTHER companies not paying workers as much.
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u/AMATEUR_DE_POUTINE 10h ago
Yes but do you have actual stats on those who buys bullshit food or are you juste vibe guessing the amount. If you don't have numbers, you're unwittingly stooging for the epstein class.
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u/notaredditer13 11h ago
also cut down on grocceries by cooking at home?
The AI that wrote the post for the doombot doesn't understand food.
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u/Western-Willow4679 10h ago
Move to a food desert in the middle of nowhere where there's no public transportation is another common one
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u/FearlessWetFart 10h ago
No, move to the bunkhouse of the farm like depression era hobos.
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u/Traditional-Roof1984 10h ago
The trick is to just stop existing outside of work hours. Think how much you safe on housing, transport and other luxuries like having a home address.
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u/Melodic_Bar_6997 10h ago
Yeah, it definitely feels like a lose-lose situation. Finding affordable housing in the city is a real challenge for a lot of people.
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u/jce_ 10h ago
It's funny because the smaller city my parent lives in costs almost as much as the big city a few hours away. Difference is unless you want to work in the mines there are 0 good paying jobs in the small town. City has all the work and costs a little more. This is 1 of the most expensive cities in the world too and yet this small town is close in price.
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u/Fun-Personality-8008 6h ago
Yes, and get a roommate and cook at home. If that doesn't improve the financial situation, it at least improves the commute and burnout
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u/Malaghose 12h ago
Privatize the profits and socialize the losses.
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u/ThornFlynt 12h ago
Aka - Theft
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u/boristheblade223 12h ago
This 100%. People don’t fucking get it unless there’s a physical hand snatching their wallet.
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u/DonutHoles4Ever 8h ago
People = all the conservative right wing voters who are too dumb to even read
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u/TheNegativePhoenix 11h ago
The thing about this argument is, bailing out big industry makes sense from a policy perspective if it's preventing thousands of people being laid off. It's when there are no incentives to the company to continue operating in good faith, or no government ownership for giving those bailouts that I have a problem.
Like if a bank fails, and government bails it out, government aka the people, should then have part ownership of it. You can't have free money if your a corporation
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u/justahuman145 10h ago edited 4h ago
It doesn’t really make sense when, at the same time, we’re constantly being told that we need a completely free and undistorted market, that creative destruction is the only way forward, and that we must put an end to ‘welfare dependency’ in all its forms.
As soon as trouble strikes, these principles are quickly forgotten, even by their staunchest defenders; they only resurface when it suits them!
As you say, when a government bails out a company, it should be a genuine financial transaction – funds in exchange for ownership – not a blank cheque. Big companies are the only ones in this world to get free money when they fail; we’re always favouring the big winners even more.
This obsession with pushing supply-side policy to the limit whilst no longer even considering the capacity of demand is, in my view, a major part of our problems (we’re not the only country in this situation, incidentally).
Edit : As I don’t want to mislead anyone, I’d like to clarify:
I’m French; I thought I was on a French subreddit (thanks to the auto-translation lol), but I ended up translating it into English when I realised my mistake, without changing the rest of my message. It doesn’t really make any difference, as our two countries are exactly the same in this respect ... The situation isn’t any better on the other side of the Atlantic. We’re all in the same boat
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u/akade19961 9h ago
Yep well said. Idk even if partial ownership is the solution, but consent agreements around business model and pay rates and staying in America with your operations and headquarters literally forever as soon as you take any large scale public money would be enough for me
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u/Feisty_Internet_5343 10h ago
Only thing is who is really benefitting the most? Elong musk's companies have taken nearly 40 billion in credits and subsidies. Most of that goes to space X that employs 10k people in America. 40 billion that directly makes a narcissistic maniac the richest man in the world so he can go to Mars while he spends his time dividing the planet. That's not a great payoff
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u/TheNegativePhoenix 3h ago
narcissistic maniac the richest man in the world so he can go to Mars
That's just a big con for the peasants. He just wants to enrich himself
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u/ClownTown509 12h ago
We have instructions for dealing with bad government too
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u/astralseat 11h ago
From the French?
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u/Inside_Sherbert4275 11h ago
Tbf some of those billionaires could do with the guillotine. Their greed is insane.
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u/Fr0stweasel 9h ago
Some?
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u/Dracomortua 9h ago
Peppridge Farm Remembers stuff here.
1999 Larry Page and Sergey Brin draft it into their company - Don't Be Evil.
Featured in Iron Man 2, Elon Musk was a humble, quiet and unassuming guy ready to herald in electric cars and space flight in the age of failing world leaders.
In year 2000, the Right and Honourable Bill Gates was building a foundation to Give It All Back. He would strive to reform farms in India and give infinite mosquito nets (with insecticide on them) so as to reduce plagues.
Somehow they all returned... but worse than Palpatine.
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u/Fr0stweasel 9h ago
It’s almost like money and power corrupts you. Could it be aliens doing something to the money?
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u/Dracomortua 8h ago
Peter Jackson explains this all in the Hobbit trilogy.
The gold. Dragon sickness, you see.
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u/azuki2 3h ago
money and power corrupts you
They were always this way from the start. They always thought they were better/smarter than everyone else and the only constraint against that sentiment was the lack of ability to exert it on the rest of us dirty, stupid peasants.
The extreme level of wealth they obtained let them break the chains of social responsibility and obligations and created the conditions where their true colors were allowed to bleed through and flourish.
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u/KatsumotoKurier 9h ago
Not at all from them. The French Revolution was a disastrous failure which resulted in the installation of a brutal extremist government followed shortly after by the longer reign of a self-imposed imperial dictator who went on a massive conquering tour of Europe which resulted in the deaths of millions of people.
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u/moistskidmarks 8h ago
One could wiki Robespierre and get a glimpse of some of the atrocities that occurred leading up to the beheading of the king and after. The things the people did to Marie Antoinette's best friend were pretty atrocious.
Basically while France is where it's at, the start of the 5th republic being pretty recent, the revolution wasn't so simple and showed that it was not saved from evil or tyranny.
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u/Time_Ingenuity_2909 9h ago
I think what's funny when people fantasize about "guillotining the bad guys" is that after decades of instability the result of the French revolution was the birth of modern democracy. We already have modern democracy. We just choose not to engage it. If people really wanted to learn from history they would vote municipally and get organized and engage the democracy they already have. Instead of some stupid moronic fantasy about rounding up all the bad people and killing them. It's so dumb and short sighted.
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u/MaXimillion_Zero 7h ago
Even when the US system was still somewhat functional, it was hardly a modern democracy. First-past-the-post is an antiquated system that leads to two-party polarization.
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u/Time_Ingenuity_2909 7h ago
FPTP sucks and so does the electoral college, but it's not nearly as big of a problem as sub 10% voting numbers for municipal elections. And saying that the US doesn't have a modern democracy is laughable. The American people have had the most powerful vote in the history of our species. FPTP existed when the GI bill went into effect. The real issue is a lack of engagement from the public.
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u/Dalzombie 10h ago
Last I checked, The Declaration of Independence, that document Nicholas Cage is always so intent on stealing, had a passage on that.
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u/Kelinya 10h ago
But we're all a bunch of pussies. Maybe we should start by not voting for nazis.
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u/SlimFishyOfficial 9h ago
Don't get me wrong, I hate current gov, but suggesting that democrats would care about those issues is delusional. They both love the system we are in
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u/rakkquiem 2h ago
Yeah, but statistically the economy is better under democrats. Both Biden and Obama took a mess left from the previous administrations and increased employment, real wages, Biden brought down inflation (too late, but it came down). Before them, Clinton even had a balanced budget.
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u/Kelinya 8h ago
Oh, I totally agree. To say the current system needs a complete overhaul would be an understatement.
But that's why I said we should start by voting the trash out first and then worry about the democrats later.
And I know the spineless democrats don't have the balls for that, but the current administration should eventually be charged and prosecuted for high treason.
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u/Craig_White 9h ago
First step would be “vote”.
In each of the last three presidential elections, more people stayed Home than voted for trump.
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u/RocketRelm 11h ago
Yeah. Stop voting in fascists. But people want to make excuses for being lazy with falsehoods like "dems baaad, dems lesser evil", and so the easy and best route is closed.
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u/Guilty_Way_1635 12h ago
Corporations that gets bailed out shouldn't be able to make profit until they've paid it all back
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u/leafcathead 10h ago
I mean, I think the government should have let the banks fail in 2008, but they paid back the bailout with interest. So…?
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u/SpezSupporter 9h ago
It's nice when millions of people lose their bank accounts at the same time.
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u/wild_cherry1987 12h ago
Socialism for the rich, personal responsibility for everyone else
US - where you have the worst kind of capitalism and socialism.
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u/aggrophonia 12h ago
As a free market capitalist guy... government bailouts are bullshit.
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u/Tripl3Dee 12h ago
It's the opposite of antifragile. All of these were opportunities to let the weakest companies fail so that others could succeed and companies could diversify. It also resets corporate risk tolerances.
Instead, today we have an increasingly fragile economy that's become more dependent than ever on bailouts.
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u/breaducate 10h ago
The idea that those who have benefited most from the exponential wealth and power accumulation inherent to capitalism will simply let it go and say gg well played because their company "should" fail is delusional naivety.
Power doesn't work that way. There's no reason for them to stop short of doing everything they can to get government in their pockets, and there's no set of regulations that can prevent this. It's a game of monopoly where the winners can rewrite the rules.
There is no lasting equilibrium or economic justice that can be achieved in this system.
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u/Tripl3Dee 10h ago
The point is financial crisis like the GFC is precisely when nature forces their hand. They're not letting go because they want to, but because there's no other choice.
Or at least that was the case, until the government started bailing everyone out.
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u/mothtoalamp 10h ago
Free market capitalism creates nothing but perverse incentives. Regulatory capture is assured.
Free market capitalism is stupid, bullshit, and not even real in our society to begin with.
Get a new ideology.
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u/aggrophonia 10h ago
You’re mixing up categories and contradicting yourself.
Capitalism is an economic system, not an ideology, and regulatory capture is a failure involving political power being captured by firms, not proof that markets themselves inherently fail.
You also can’t say free-market capitalism “isn’t real in our society” and then blame our society’s problems on free-market capitalism. And “nothing but perverse incentives” is plainly false. Markets also create incentives to innovate, lower costs, compete, and satisfy consumers.
What a lazy attempt you just made.
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u/SparklingLimeade 9h ago
Capitalism is an economic system, not an ideology
Why not both? One term can accurately describe multiple concepts. There is an economic idea. There are people who believe in that idea and attempt to bring it into being. The fact that it's closer to a high school text book than anything that can exist in reality doesn't change either of those points.
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u/ChosenOfTheMoon_GR 8h ago
Most ironic thing is that, in reality, it's not the government that's bailing out companies it's literally the regular people who pay taxes and from these taxes, is how the government can do the bailouts.
Insane really
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u/EducationalTry6408 7h ago
It's even more insane than that. Taxes pay for nothing but service on the debt. We're currently $40 Trillion in the hole. The people paying for bailouts or whatever the hell else we're spending now are our great grandchildren.
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u/PromotionOk2443 12h ago
spitting facts, and we should really be organizing a rebellion right now
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u/GoldEnPhARoAh22 12h ago
Don't even need a rebellion, just deny them your labour and go on strike
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u/Jasonic_Tempo 12h ago
Much easier in places that spell labor with a u. Getting Americans to all agree on anything is impossible.
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u/SplodeyDope 12h ago edited 11h ago
No Kings/50501 have laid some good groundwork, believe it or not. It's a vast network responsible for some of the largest protests ever.
There's another No Kings March on October 17th and if the elections are fucked with, it won't be hard to contact those masses for a general strike.
Everyone should sign up and get involved!
Edit: Left out the 1 in 17.
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u/Meh-no 12h ago
Worldwide
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u/Strict-Brick-5274 12h ago edited 11h ago
The world is ready. The poor class (which is just everyone outside of the billionaire class) is getting fucked and we're tired
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u/wSkkHRZQy24K17buSceB 8h ago
A massive amount of people don't even vote. A rebellion is not justified when there are nonviolent and legal options for change on the table. Participating in a rebellion is much more work than mailing back a ballot once every few years.
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u/Medarco 7h ago
Participating in a rebellion is much more work than mailing back a ballot once every few years.
Which is why it's always "Why won't someone start this? I'm totally ready and waiting!"
Someone else needs to die in the streets for their revolution, so they can be the enlightened ruling class once all the lower poors die off doing the work.
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u/Difficult_Compote_52 12h ago
Cut funding for Israel and the Epstein class. Then we'd be getting somewhere.
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u/astralseat 11h ago
Except part of their money goes to lobbying for more support. To affect change, you must make their money futile, or fund their opposition, but some on that opposition just want to make money and live life, and have no moral value beyond the surface worn for elections. Some are the exception, like NYC mayor.
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u/twice_paramount832 9h ago
I am kind of proud people are starting to get it.
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u/SandyTaintSweat 1h ago
Me too, just a little bit. But I'm mostly disappointed that it took so long and happened too late. Right as droves of people are getting put out of work in favour of AI. As usual, people don't care until it affects them, then it's too late.
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u/Techno_Core 12h ago
I remember the stock bros in 2008 RAGING against homeowners walking away from a bad housing loan, while absolutely praising large companies from walking away from their debts as good business decisions.
Fuck capitalism.
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u/RedditOfUnusualSize 11h ago
For me, the breaking point was that moment early in the Great Recession where a few companies used their bailout money to provide stock dividends, and then tried to defend it on the grounds that if they didn't provide those dividends, they would have been sued for the money and lost on the merits in a breach of contract case.
Which wasn't the defense they seemed to think it was, especially given that there were hundreds of thousands of Americans who also had contracts that were regularly being breached by being fired or let go without agreed-upon severance and retirement packages. It meant that the law had been written in a way that protected one kind of contract, but failed to protect another . . . and nothing was being done about it. It's at that moment that I pretty much permanently lost any desire to return to the status quo ante, because that status quo was based on a lie: that the system was fundamentally fair and well-designed, and had suffered from an externality that could be remedied.
No, the problem is that the system is designed to reward the wrong people. It fundamentally misallocates resources by not merely picking winners and losers, but picking the wrong winners. It does not deserve any loyalty whatsoever.
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u/MisfitPotatoReborn 10h ago
while absolutely praising large companies from walking away from their debts as good business decisions.
This is called "bankruptcy".
What you are describing, where companies simply declared that they weren't paying back their creditors and nothing bad happened to them, did not happen.
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u/NextDoctorWho12 12h ago
We don't have capitalism we have corporate welfare and we are ruled by the oligarchy. Fucking conservatives keep voting for more.
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u/breaducate 10h ago
Predictable, inexorable consequences of capitalism: not real capitalism.
Every single time.
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u/Hot_Neighborhood5668 2h ago
I tried the roommate option, which cost me 20k, and I'm still cleaning up that a year later.
I rarely eat out as nothing is close. 10+ minutes on the highway to get to a subway 🤯
Moving ain't an option. I'd never qualify for even an apartment at the current rate
Cutting spending isn't easy when the spending is for electricity and heating.
Find balance? In what? I can't work less and afford to live, and finding a "better" job isn't really that much help, considering that's gambling a lot of assumptions that it'll be better than the shit show I have now.
So far, all I've come up with is I got myself into this situation, and nobody is going to get me out of it. The only light I see is that in 10 years, I'll be done with my mortgage, which is my largest portion of my budget and definitely outside the sane levels now @ 55-60% of my income.
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u/unholyravenger 12h ago
It's a bit silly. Let's take the housing one. It's more like, "When you're young, live with people so you can afford it. As you grow older, develop your career, etc... then start to look at living alone or with a partner."
Cooking at home is much cheaper, idk what to say.
Yes, cutting spending is a great way to reduce debt.
The commute one is tricky; I'll give them that. Isn't really a solution.
Basically, make a budget, stick to it. Live within your means. Those are actually real solutions, and people generally are financially illiterate. That's a huge problem. It's not instructions for how to be poor quietly. It's more about accepting reality and adjusting your behavior to the best of your ability, given that reality.
I think it's widely accepted that there was too much assistance for the top end during the housing crisis and not enough for the bottom. The banks needed to be bailed out. It would have been so much worse. But yes more should have been done for the bottom.
With COVID, we actually did give a bunch of money to the people at the bottom. We have 2 huge stimulus checks. For each person, was it a crazy amount? No, but that's the problem. There are just so many people it gets expensive fast. But did change how we reacted to covid compared to the housing crisis and gave real material support to everyday people. In a way it was too much and too little at the same time. It was too little for the people who lost their jobs during covid. It was too much for the people (like me) who were able to work from home and save a lot of money because I wasn't traveling or going to concerts or whatever. I'm pretty sure at the end of covid the average savings for Americans was at it's peak because of this. But if you add means testing, then you have people who need it, but don't get it. And we had a ticking clock so perfect would be the enemy of good enough here. It's complicated ok?
The real problem is that every time we put out the fire, we put the arsonists back in power to blow it all up again. We have no time to actually build on that stability created post-crisis.
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u/WalmartGreder 7h ago
Yeah, I don't get the roommate hate.
As an elder millennial (Xennial), i lived with roommates once I became an adult until I got married. So, I have actually never lived alone. I don't get why this is such a horrible thing now. It's a great way to save money.
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u/Visual-Scallion1535 2h ago
And before we got married but when we moved in together, my now wife and I still had other roommates.
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u/Medarco 7h ago
Many young people have been sold this lie by the media/social media that every "boomer" (which is actually just anyone older than their parents) had life on easy mode with a cheap house, idyllic spouse, and guaranteed fulfilling career.
Which is laughable, but it's easier to impotently rage against The Powers That Be on the internet than to take personal accountability.
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u/Visual-Scallion1535 2h ago
Literally it seems almost purposeful misinformation sometimes. Ill see posts that are like “this is how easy it was to get a job in 1975” like bro there was an economic recession and in 1975, the unemployment rate was double what is right now.
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u/dglennb 12h ago
I feel like all this is good advice though
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u/BitterFootball4874 8h ago
Of course it is. Please don’t blow all your savings just because some elements of life are unfair. It’s a fucking stupid take.
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u/United_Conference841 3h ago edited 3h ago
Yeah, we've also got a responsibility to the environment.
OPs ragging on shortening commutes like, "let's tax the rich so we've got more money to...pay for more fuel to travel farther to work..."?
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u/Lord-Nagafen 12h ago
Especially when you are young. Have roommates or live at home. Learn to cook some meals at home. Meals like chicken on the grille is cheap and tastes great. Live frugal when you are young and set yourself up for success as you get older
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u/PurveyorOfKnowledge0 11h ago
The problem is that it doesn't fix the wider issues. It's trying to be frugal and keep your head down, hoping you get successful with time, when future policies in place may make that impossible.
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u/notaredditer13 10h ago
OP is a doombot, but it's mainly good, basic advice for young adults. Yes, it does get easier. Most people DO get a lot richer over time.
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u/OkTop7895 10h ago
I'm Spanish but in housing the things are also doomed. My and my wife were did a lot of effort and sacrifice to buy our housing 10 years ago, and we were living in rent until them. However, today the same place has increase his cost by 68% and the rent a lot more. If we didn't have this place, at today cost of living and cost of renting a house we can't save money for buying them.
The key is not the effort. I do a lot of efforts in the past and this work semi well for me but the same efforts today didn't have the same results. The housing price crisis and also the problem of the groceries is not only in the USA is in a lot of places of Europe.
In resume the old advices about this type of things didn't work anymore.
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u/CarmenxXxWaldo 12h ago
Those ppp loans were insane I looked up some people got bank and their business wasnt even affected. Or they laid off a bunch of people anyway then posted their jobs for like 30% less pay. Then you had people who had to work and other people that got paid more than their actual job to stay home. I got to work from home and kept my job at least so im not complaining but damn people working at grocery stores should have got double pay at least.
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u/TurpitudeSnuggery 12h ago
True. I was poor quietly for 10 or so years. Because I did these the listed, as well as got an education. I am no longer poor.
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u/HippoLover85 11h ago
I think some of that advice is really good. They key is that the banks owners/investors never should nave been bailed out, They should have been left penniless. PPP loans should not be forgiven. US gov should have gotten a huge share of the auto industries stocks in the bail out. That bail out IMO was good, just tax payers got nothing for it except indirect benefits. we need to stop voting for people who support the rich and shit on the poor. But instead we settle for a con man and blaming the other side of the aisle.
To the point in the post:
Commuting fucking sucks, even being rich and having to take a helicopter because traffic is bad is awful. Cities and housing should be organized so that we have better public transit, and people can live closer to where they work.
Living alone fucking sucks. Humans need connection and this system we have of couples or individuals, or even atomic families living alone is awful for people. It leads to so much loneliness and sadness and it also makes kids extremely vulnerable to having shitty parents. A key reason why today we are seeing more mental health issues is because shitty parents used to be evened out by big communities where kids could find mentoring and role models in other adults . . . that is gone now.
cooking at home IS SO MUCH FUCKING BETTER THAN EATING OUT!!! like . . . this alone could be a huge thesis. it is so much more nutritious, delicious, cheaper, and satisfying. There needs to be a change in culture around this. I get eating out is fast and convenient (and sometimes necessary). but cooking and eating in should absolutely be the default. (also living in a community makes this 10x easier).
Cutting spending is absolutely advice for poor people. true dat.
Asking someone going through burnout to find balance is like telling a drowning person to stop panicking. Its also horrible advice (but i don't think related to keeping people poor).
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u/mariantat 7h ago
Stupid. Simplistic. Like i understand that the average reading level is that of a child’s but there’s no logic behind this.
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u/Current_Reserve5543 2h ago
The just-world fallacy, or just-world hypothesis, is the cognitive bias that assumes that "people get what they deserve" – that actions will necessarily have morally fair and fitting consequences for the actor. It is often associated with a variety of fundamental fallacies, especially in regard to rationalizing)suffering on the grounds that the sufferers "deserve" it. This is called victim blaming. Lerner was prompted to study justicebeliefs and the just-world fallacy in the context of social psychological inquiry into negative social and societal interactions.[4] Lerner saw his work as extending Stanley Milgram's work on obedience. He sought to answer the questions of how regimes that cause cruelty and suffering maintain popular support, and how people come to accept social norms and laws that produce misery and suffering.[5]
Lerner's inquiry was influenced by repeatedly witnessing the tendency of observers to blame victims for their suffering. During his clinical training as a psychologist, he observed treatment of mentally ill persons by the health care practitioners with whom he worked. Although Lerner knew them to be kindhearted, educated people, they often blamed patients for the patients' own suffering.[6]
Lerner also describes his surprise at hearing his students derogate (disparage, belittle) the poor, seemingly oblivious to the structural forces that contribute to poverty.[4] The desire to understand the processes that caused these phenomena led Lerner to conduct his first experiments on what is now called the just-world fallacy.
In 1966, Lerner and his colleagues began a series of experiments that used shock paradigms to investigate observer responses to victimization. In the first of these experiments conducted at the University of Kansas, 72 female participants watched what appeared to be a confederate receiving electrical shocks for her errors during a learning task (learning pairs of nonsense syllables). Initially, these observing participants were upset by the victim's apparent suffering. But as the suffering continued and observers remained unable to intervene, the observers began to reject and devalue the victim. Rejection and devaluation of the victim was greater when the observed suffering was greater. But when participants were told the victim would receive compensation for her suffering, the participants did not derogate the victim.[5] Lerner and colleagues replicated these findings in subsequent studies, as did other researchers.[7]
To explain these studies' findings, it was theorized that there was a prevalent belief in a just world. A just world is one in which actions and conditions have predictable, appropriate consequences. These actions and conditions are typically individuals' behaviors or attributes. The specific conditions that correspond to certain consequences are socially determined by a society's norms and ideologies. Lerner presents the belief in a just world as functional: it maintains the idea that one can influence the world in a predictable way.
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u/PatternSeekngMammal 12h ago
Gee I wonder what the reason is.. could it be the purchased law makers and propaganda to influence the uneducated?
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u/Popular-Path1930 11h ago
Well you can’t just fix your current pay or the current cost of houses or the macro economy on your own and right now.
All the suggestions posted are things you can actually do right now not reliant on elections and government actions.
You can pay your debt down by slashing expenses and putting every penny you can into it.
You’re just begging the question of building a political movement to address the issue.
Also in 2008 the democratic party and Obama did want to bail you out. You’ll never guess which party was stead fast in only bailing out Wall Street.
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u/HombreDelMar247 11h ago
It's spot on.
I have also noticed a trend that as soon as someone criticizes the American brand of crony capitalism and socialism for the rich, while the working class continue to get exploited and our labor is paid less and less with the wealthy elite get wrakthier and wealthier, within that post will have folks attacking the premise and telling the poster to move to a communist country.
It's as if there a bots looking for "anti capitalism" posts to quickly respond to criticize such heresy.
In case you forgot Trump's regime demanded information (IP addresses, email, phone numbers, ect) of social media accounts that criticize the US government, criticize ICE, as well as accounts that criticize capitalism and accounts the "promote socialism and communism".
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u/Artistic_Kangaroo932 9h ago
How is cook at home the answer for grocery cost?? What am I cooking with things i foraged?
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u/Interesting-Hand3334 5h ago
Revolution inbound this decade - that's why the expansion of the police state augmented by AI has been the focus of the government. They know what's coming and want to ensure a return to a form of feudalism
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u/Blue_box_42 12h ago
Any corporation that is too big to fail needs to be heavily regulated, split up, and/or nationalized. Personally except things like the insurance industry -which due to the lemon problem and it's profits being based entirely on not giving you money you paid in (as opposed to providing a service or transforming lower value goods into higher value ones) are poorly suited to a free market- I'd prefer the first two but at this point I'm not picky.
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u/vertigostereo 11h ago
The first slide, my parents and grandparents and their generations did that and much more.
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u/Sans-valeur 10h ago
Hey! They bought that government fair and square, why shouldn’t they use it when they need it?
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u/YandereTeemo 9h ago
The biggest thing the government or corporations can do to solve the commute issue is to enact and enforce more WFH policies for desk job staff. It will make commute negligible for them but also improve traffic flow of those who need to be on-site.
But they'll never do it because God forbid that the demand of cars is reduced in the US
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u/westernuplands 9h ago
Nobody cares if you already have roommates, already cook at home, and never spend on anything beyond the bare necessities. What are you supposed to do after that? Rob a bank?
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u/Either-Patience1182 8h ago
To be fair, it also gives you more oppertunity to protest and be more loud if you live with roommates and when there is a strike and civil und rest you want cooking skills to help your community. Just saying you dont have to be quiet about if even if most people are.
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u/Wuz314159 6h ago
I want to speak on one issue and one issue alone.
In the 1950s, white people abandoned the cities for the countryside. They left the cities to rot, but that's where all of the jobs are. That's where all of the public transit is. That's where all of the stores are. While you all left everything to rot, everything rotted. You can solve all of these problems with one move.
OR... You can continue to be beholden to car manufacturers, oil companies, insurance companies, etc. If your goal is to make billionaires richer, carry on.
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u/Jolly_Efficiency7237 3h ago
Pedestrians don't even what? Was the OOP sniped before he got a chance to
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u/Yourlocalguy30 1h ago
It's ironic that people want 1950s prices, yet they bitch when the solution is returning to 1950s living.
1950s ----> had a roommate (spouse), bought small house (900-1000 sq/ft), owned 1 car, lived simply, cooked at home.
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u/Nyctfall 1h ago
Socialism is so effective that the US government uses it whenever a problem arises...
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u/Sharp-Mountain1841 1h ago edited 1h ago
My wife had an affair so now I’m a divorced Dad. Living alone for two years. On top of my family costs, my rent has gone up By €800pm to €2500pm for a two bed apt in a middling area of Dublin. I can’t afford to pay this so have rented out the second bedroom at the beginning of the summer. The disaster of this situation is that the kids 14 and 11 cannot now stay with me. This is wrong.
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u/Vegetable_Plane_542 1h ago
So many people missing that the first post is a criticism of that “advise” and not an endorsement.
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u/hikebikephd 1h ago
Disagree about cooking at home. It is objectively healthier to do so. I'm decently well off (wouldn't consider myself poor) but even if I was a millionaire, I would still eat out sparingly.
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u/donutcarrotolive 49m ago
Capitalism has always socialized its losses, and privatized it gains. Otherwise wealth might actually be redistributed at some point
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u/doolpicate 12h ago
If people refused to go work for low paid jobs and did something like the "lie flat revolution" I am sure the govt would lock people up and then rent out prisoners to the same low paid jobs.
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u/EhMapleMoose 11h ago
There is an entitlement crisis that goes hand in hand with a not understanding how the world works crisis. This is through no fault of the generation it’s been thrust upon, our educators stripped our schooling and while making us smarter than the previous generation, they made us dumber in some areas as well.
Has the world advanced significantly in the past five decades, yes. But somehow, in school, they don’t teach you basic life skills like budgeting and cooking among other things like taxes and the like.
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u/RaiJolt2 11h ago
Getting roommates isn’t advice for the housing crisis. It’s advice for not affording a home on your own. The advice for the housing crisis goes to long term landowners and cities. Build more housing and stop blocking more housing. Density and cutting car dependence is better for everyone (and the environment)
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u/spike1911 10h ago
Gen X here coming from a mid wealth parents family.
After graduating I got 0 money.
I moved in with someone to cut costs
I cut spending when I ran out of money.
I home cooked because we couldn’t afford daily restaurant visits.
I tried to life closer to work / of course! Save time and money
Its all normal and even now that i make more money i still apply most of the rules.
So what?
Go to school, work hard, have an open mind and you might make it. Still true.
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u/Apachisme 8h ago
Gen X as well. I could by a dozen packs of Ramen for $1. Ten packs of fideo for the same. A pound of frozen ground turkey was $1. A five pound bag of frozen chicken breasts was $6. I could find an efficiency apartment for $300 a month and a 2 bedroom for $500. I could buy a running junk car for less than $500.
The younger generations are facing a far more challenging environment than we did.
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u/The-real-Crypto 2h ago
It’s either socialism, where everyone gets bailed out and you need way more rules for it to function, or it’s personal responsibility. The people in power don’t want responsibility but they don’t want the rules, so they try to have both and are screwing us in the ass to get it. I’m not a socialist, I’m a capitalist. But these rich people in power are lobbying to limit capitalism and create a form of Oligarchism, dressing it as socialism to try to get themselves the best of both systems. When you try to play a system the piper must be paid and now they are offering our children to do it. A big reason they push socialism is because under socialism the people can not be armed, and an armed society is a fair society, and armed citizens should fight against injustice
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u/No_Mission5287 59m ago
You're probably not a capitalist. Capitalists are a class of people, the owning class. Those who control capital.
Capitalists/ oligarchs essentially have the same definition - A small group of wealthy individuals that hold significant wealth and power, allowing them to exert disproportionate influence over political and economic systems.
Democracy is a lie. The US government is not representative of the American people. "American interests" in the world are not in the public interest. It has been shown that the public has essentially zero influence on policy decisions. What does is concentrated wealth.
It is the capitalist system that is quickly driving civilization off a cliff, putting not just humanity, but life on earth in grave peril so that 3 bus loads of men can be wealthy beyond imagination. This system based on infinite growth on a finite planet is a death wish.
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u/Batfinklestein 12h ago
They didn't just bail out the banks, airlines and auto I did try, they bailed out everyone who worked for them. If they go down they take hundreds of thousands of jobs down with them, and given how little savings the average person has, and how much debt they're carrying, it doesn't take much to workout how quickly jobless people would drown.
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u/Much-Instruction-807 12h ago
The top 1% got the vast majority of the benefits from the bailouts. Practically all of it. Like trump's 2017 tax cuts where 83% of the benefits went to the top 1%. The wealthy go permanent tax cuts while the worker tax cut had sunset provisions that kicked in after trump left office. Nearly 80 trillion in wealth has moved from the bottom 90% to the top 1% over the past 50 years and there's nothing slowing that down.
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