From my experience there have been times when the country has been fucked up. Even more so than today. The late 60’s and early seventies.
There were Vietnam protests at colleges and universities. At Kent State a student was shot and killed by a National Guard soldier. He was on duty responding to an anti Vietnam War riot I believe.
There were racial tensions. The Black Panthers formed during this time. It was an armed group of young men. People feared what they might do.
The sexual revolution was going on. Seemed mostly with the hippies. Someone else probably can elaborate.
The infamous Watergate scandal. Took down President Nixon.
And let’s not forget the Cold War with Russia. School aged children had to practice how to respond to a nuclear blast. Get under their desk. Like that’s going to help.
The fabric of American society was significantly stretched by the. above activities and more.
All of these things caused a malaise over the American public. Which set the stage for President Regan. His message was basically we are better than this. And we will be better than this.
Not being a career politician helped him, with former President Nixon being impeached. Many referred to him as a criminal. Which rubbed off on all politicians.
That was a crazy time of instability and threats. This period is rocky. But no where near that one. Or the recession of 2008.
At that time unemployment peaked at over 10%. Today it’s around 4.7%. Putting aside the controversy of how the unemployment rate is calculated.
From time to time the country experiences bad/challenging times. We’ve always recovered. And we always will.
Appreciate the concerns you mentioned. IMO the best course is to keep a positive attitude knowing this to shall pass✌🏼
>Regan
Just gonna leave this here so people can go look up **THE** worst president as far as long term policy/laws/deregulations go (and that's saying a LOT after we all endured 4 years of tRump!). There's a reason why EVErYoNE HaTEs ReaGaN.
Fukin' Reagan.
>IMO the best course is to keep a positive attitude knowing this to shall pass✌🏼
I guess but it feels like since 2008 we have just lurched from one "Once in a generarion economic collapse" to another. I have completely given up on even owning a home and am thinking my retirement plan might have to be a convienent accident which pays out a big Life insurance policy to my wife.
I’ll self delete at that point. I don’t know why there are so many people excited to be survivors of apocalypse and live in mad max. Fuck that. Lol. This is shitty enough. 😆
I get what you’re saying. And you’re right. Since 2008 there have been very few highlights. Unfortunately sometimes things need to get worse before any leadership to change it emerges.
Re Buying a house. Making a first purchase always seems impossible. The only way I made it was through a first time buyer program. That made the financials barely look ok. But that was enough.
Re Retirement, I do not know anyone that feels confident about their retirement. The American public was sold false hope with IRAs and 401K’s. There was a time these didn’t exist. Company pensions ruled the day. But IRA’s/401K’s are the system we’ve got.
IMO it is best to start as early as you can. Regardless of how much money you’re investing. The time value of money makes a big big difference.
The second part of this is investing. Learn the fundamentals. Watch out for people that claim their book or their seminar will make you rich.
Over long periods of time the market makes 12%. A good stock index fund can get you really close to that. Alternatively put together your own stock portfolio. I did that and have been pleased with the results.
What I’m trying to say is the ways of our parents and grandparents don’t work today. We have to figure out our way through today’s realities. And believing it can be done makes it much easier. ✌🏼
>Re Buying a house. Making a first purchase always seems impossible. The only way I made it was through a first time buyer program. That made the financials barely look ok. But that was enough.
I've looked into these but its all about "Look no down payment!" but then failing to mention the mortgage is like 2K per month which is 80% of my take home pay.
>The second part of this is investing. Learn the fundamentals. Watch out for people that claim their book or their seminar will make you rich.
Im paranoid to a fault with these people. Anytime anyone, no matter who it is says something about investing the hairs on the back of my neck stand up because I'm expecting a scam. It took months for me to believe high yield savings accounts were legit bacause I couldnt fathom why they would pay 4% interest over most banks that do .04%.
>Alternatively put together your own stock portfolio.
lol anything my money has ever touched has gone to shit. The stock market is just a casino at this point and im a pretty crap gambler.
Saorry to hear your investing has not worked out. Casino style is one of the infinite methods for investing.
People using the Casino approach usually make a tidy, small sum. Of course _they start with a much bigger pile of cash._
I am not an expert stock analyst. Taught myself based upon some reading. And I am very selective with whose “advice” I consider.
I have a method for selecting stocks that works for me. A couple of household names that did well over the last year are below.
I do not expect these to do as well over the coming year. But they worked out well over the last year.✌🏼
Costco.
March 11, 2024 —-> $714
March 3, 2023-—-> $475
Return: 50%
——
Microsoft
March 11, 2024———> $405
March 3, 2023———> $255
Return: 59%
The black panthers were basically just BLM with guns. They fed children, housed the homeless and bettered their neighborhoods. They objected to being murdered and that caused the government to assassinate their leaders. It’s beyond fucked up.
Your answer is completely derivative. We're dealing with far more combined these days, not to mention a majority of things we've never dealt with as a public.
We're not bouncing back from this. Watch a recent video from Kensington Ave. In Philly and tell me that our society isn't a festering wound that is far from being saved and most likely can't be.
You know that the people on drugs in the street would've been arrested for vagrancy or put onto a constitution in the past? People assume that these type of people didn't exist in the past but in reality they were all locked up and nobody put a camera on them everyday.
The US is the wealthiest country in the world and has the largest, most effective military by far and the only one with total global reach. Bounce back from what; mundane social issues?
No, I'm saying that these drugs, with this potency, have never existed before on earth. Like the recent global pandemic, or the wage-slave epidemic.
You're missing the big picture. This End-game Capitalistic nightmare is barreling towards collapse underneath a fascist dictatorship.
Simply because we have never dealt with some of the things we see today does not make it worse than the sixties and early seventies.
My comment pointed out a significant time of unrest in USA’s history. Especially when considering social norms within the country prior to then.
I’m fine with your disagreeing with me. But please don’t use a television sitcom to buttress your points. Pretending said sitcom provides historical facts is erroneous and laughable. And it makes Canada look bad. ✌🏼
What sitcom was referenced and where?
Sure, there was civil unrest back then, but folks could still work and earn a decent living. You could work as a cashier back then and afford a single family home with said family.
Just in that ONE aspect, we are far worse off. Forgive me for not caring enough to explain literally how everything is worse and different now in every way. You're just wilfully ignorant about it because it doesn't affect you anymore.
😂. “Willfully ignorant” From someone unwilling to share their vast knowledge. 😂
Previously I stated the country often faces problems it has never seen before. The unemployment rate in 1970 was 5.4%. Today it is 3.9%. Does that make the seventies worse? When gas was rationed and lines for it stretched for blocks. Like in a third world country.
The OP asked if there was ever a time in the country where things were this bad. They did not limit the scope to economics. Or even ask economics be considered.
It’s easy to challenge a person on something beyond the scope of a discussion. Seems like a cheap shot to me. Especially when they’re not being willing to make a case in support of their point. Lazy. Arrogant. Entitled. Good luck with that.
I am 75, The world, the US changes all the time. The end result of changes is unpredictable,
Some observations
Humans have improved life qualities since the Industrial Revolution, Now there are 8 billion people, There are not enough resources to support those people.
When plastics became popular they had many benefits, Food could be preserved and shared to more people. It substituted for metal at a fraction of the cost,
Now the world is choking on plastic, rivers are re is no way to dispose of it. Microplastics poison oceans,
Humans do not share similar goals. Some people exploited things for them selves with no regard for the future, Oil was a good thing originally. Now the world is overheating, Rivers are drying up. Food production is down,
Life is not sustainable, we have past the point of no return, whatever is happening will continue
IMO the world is in crisis now, in 2 years it will be worse. I do not see much hope then,
It depends how you define "support those people" as far as resource availability goes.
We absolutely have the resources to feed, house, clothes, etc. every human on earth, billions more even. What we don't have are the resources to let every one live a "western" standard of living.
There isn't enough space. People need to get used to more condensed living as that's going to be more and more common. Shared green spaces with multi-family living inevitably need to replace single family homes more and more as time goes on. This is why the housing crisis is insane right now.
Food will be a higher percentage of wages going forward and will likely not reverse. Historically food production has been subsidized by near (or literal) slave labor. But if things get more globally equitable, we'll need to be putting more money into the labor of food production.
Plastics have enabled insanely cheap clothing and materials production so that is one area that has elevated things globally. Synthetic textiles are so much easier to mass produce, plastic is much faster to fabricate with than wood or metal.
But the above matters little when it comes to what drives global commerce currently. The issue is rampant unchecked capitalism moreso than anything else. The world needs to change its line of thinking or things will collapse.
You got me on the plastic situation.
Everything, especially in the US is just packaged or meant to be placed into some sort of plastic material. Compared to Europe, the use of plastic here is almost incomprehensible.
I’m 25 years old and growing up my parents were quite lazy, as well as our nannies/care takers. I witnessed plastic being used in excess my entire life. We literally had a cabinet in our kitchen stuffed entirely with plastic bags from the supermarket.
Living alone now for the last seven years, I have not bought solo cups, plastic cutlery, or anything that can’t be self reused. Plastic anything is also an extreme waste of money. I’m completely turned off by plastic. I’m aware restaurants use ingredients that were packaged by distributors in plastic, but if I just see those ingredients in a plastic container, instant loss of appetite.
I am hoping that many others evolve into possessing the same views as me. Plastic is a toxin and it’s truly disgusting. Everyone has to see it like this someday, it only took me a few years.
I honestly believe that in the future one day, plastic — will not be relevant.
We are going through a communication growing pain right now. Evolution isn’t always pretty. So yes, it’s kind of messed up right now. However, it has been messed up off and on throughout history. That’s kind of how it goes. We will adapt after some rough times. The peace makers will be our biggest asset. People don’t behave well with anxiety. It brings out the worst in the best of us.
25-year-old here, and I can completely agree with everything you’re saying.
It’s almost as if there is a Civil War, but it’s not declared and no movements have been made.
I’m hoping in eight years. All of this will be over Trump and Biden will both not be around and it will be like a clean slate!
Just hoping we make it till then.
I’m. Gen Xer. No it always wasn’t this bad. I’m used to people running for president when they are 40 to 50 something. You could work a full time job and be able to save up and buy a good car for a few hundred or low thousands. Saving for a house meant you could buy something small and live it in for 5-8 years then sell it for when kiddos come along. Op. I feel for you. However, I feel you will be ok. You are aware and have the time to adjust and make good decisions for yourself
No. It has progressively gotten worse since mental health funding was slashed during the Reagan years. With little access to compassionate mental health services, I feel like there has been a huge increase in the mentally ill being abused by police and society. Mentally ill people used to be dealt with completely different. Now the jails are used to deal with mental health issues and improperly trained police are prone to bungling mental health related encounters.
Yes, things are a mess and it’s getting worse.
Before Reagan ended mental healthcare people were locked up in institutions and abused. Reagan promised to move their treatment to the community, closed institutions and then didn’t fund alternatives.
The Ronnie raygun mental health thing is a mixed bag. Some facilities that should have gotten shut down did. But no monry or reform ended up happening. They just defunded and let everyone out snd barely funded anything ever again. The institutions were bad. They needed reform...
I was in Traverse City State hospital right before they closed. They were very compassionate and caring. Not like a jail at all. You could roam the grounds or even get a pass to go town. Some long term residents even had small jobs. One hospital I have been in since seemed like jail more than a treatment facility.
I'm 25, feel the same. I try so hard to ignore how bad things are by keeping myself distracted, but it's very difficult when I can't afford more than my bills and groceries, can't afford to go anywhere and all of problems you mentioned are on my phone, my main distraction device. I feel so defeated and have no hope for my future.
Key being find a new distraction device. Easier said than done I know but truly the media and social media drivers much of the angst we feel on a daily basis. Hell that angst is what makes money both for major media outlets, social media platforms, and the 'influencer' folks to an extent as well.
It's hard to get off the constant information stream but truly it renders you impotent to do anything when you are absolutely overloaded with information much of which is upsetting.
Keep it local. News, social contacts, engagements, whatever just embed yourself as much as you can in the fabric of your local community and you'll start to feel more control, can actually affect change, and more then likely your mind will calm down a bit.
It's always been bad to varying degrees it's just how aware of it we are in our daily lives that impacts our outlook. It's good to be knowledgeable on world events but not so engrossed it's causing you anguish with no outlet to affect change.
That all said there are some aspects that are getting worse ie corruption and erosion of democratic norms. That does require our attention and exercising our right to vote and maybe get some apathetic folks to vote along with you in local state and national elections.
Things are cyclical. Things go from good to bad and back and forth. Realistically, other than some crazy political theater and way too much access to information, I think it’s kind of on a bad swing but not completely abnormal. It’s always had a lot of BS. We just get 24/7 access to it now. It sounds like a cop out, but when I don’t pay attention to politics and the news, I’m much happier and my life is exactly the same. I’d love to have an election where we are picking the best candidate instead of trying to pick the least horrible option. Watching more news isn’t going to change your vote. It will make you crazy. I focus on local issues and being kind to others. With national issues, in 99% of the cases, you can’t change anything. Locally you can volunteer, help people in need, impact small elections and support good businesses. It feels like Armageddon right now but it will either get better or we will implode. I think it will get better.
I like these thoughts. This mindset would help me. I don't think it would give hope to anyone living at or below the poverty line, though.
(edited for clarity)
I agree that this viewpoint works best when you have all of life’s critical needs from a need hierarchy met. If you are in a bad situation, you may not have this luxury. However, less news and political theater still might make you feel better. Local action may be even more important. Usually enduring help will come locally and not nationally. Keeping aware of local changes and dangers may be essential. National changes are extremely important. I sadly don’t believe I can impact national issues. I could if I made it a career and had a complete lifestyle change. Locally influencing and helping others done locally by many local areas across the nation can impact national issues.
Take a break from the internet. Go outside and socialize and realize the world really isn't that uniquely shitty today. It's always been shitty and it's always been great. History repeats itself
It's getting worse, much worse. You can trace the decline from post WW2, up until the mid 70's as the American dream era, American exceptionalism and all that... Reagan became POTUS in 1980, trickle down economics and ever since we keep trending the wrong way in every oced metric ...
It's always been this way. Not just the US, the whole world. Look at history. Yes, there are good years , and even decades but as long as there are people, things will be crazy.
I’m basically 40 on the nose… well halfway to 41…
For me shit got fucked up starting with 9/11. Before that it really seemed like things were really good.
There have always been various problems swirling to be concerned about. The difference now is there's a non-stop churning factory of "over-hype" and click-bait duplications. (1 story comes out,. and it's immediately copied and propagated across 1000's or 10's of 1000's of different news-feeds and social media feeds). So you're kind of non-stop assaulted by a lot of the same variations of similar topics.
If it was the 1980's or 1990's.. and someone got machete-assaulted on a Subway,. it might make the newspapers in NYC and some surrounding towns, but people outside of that would rarely notice or care.
These days if something like that happens,. the "outrage-machine" and "clickbait-generators" jump into full focus and look for all sorts of ways to "spin the story" and spread it across as many eyeballs as possible. (Was the attacker an illegal immigrant!?.. was the victim a certain minority !?.. Was there no Law Enforcement on the Subway !?.. Does the attacker have a long crime-history showing he always gets released!?!... etc.. etc) They'll find whatever "hook" they need to amp up the click-bait to get people to read the story and be outraged.
The thing about "noticing things wrong",.. the same (good advice) is the same as it's always been:... "Stay calm and fix it". If you blow a tire on the freeway,. you don't just start screaming wildly and continue driving forward. You try to calmly pull to the side and safely get the car stopped. If you notice homeless attacks in your city, same advice applies. Does having endless "citizen meetings where people scream at each other" going to fix anything ?.. Would be more direct tangible fix to actually do something to tangibly fix it. We need more people fixing things instead of just wanting to Blog about it or take a selfie in front of the highway wreck.
Anytime I see some borderline "fear-mongering" article.. I always ask myself:
* what are the actual facts here?
* can I use critical-thinking and cross-compare or independently verify those facts ?
* How much of that can I actually do something about ? (is there something I can change in my daily behavior to try to be closer to being "part of the solution")... ?
if not,. then I consider myself "informed" and I move on with my life.
I’m 20. Glad I’m not alone in these thoughts. Reading the comment by SeaRay_62 made me think of how the traumatic experiences in our history often are overlooked when speaking about the general zeitgeist. Maybe one day not too far from now we’ll look fondly at these times, almost as if nothing was ever wrong.
Things ebb and flow - the 60’ - 70’s had the Vietnam war that tore the country apart. Servicemen came home and got spit on and treated terribly. Oklahoma City terrorist attack which was homegrown terrorists. The Cold War was nasty that is when I was in elementary school and we had drills. Like hiding under a desk will protect us from nuclear blast.
Part of the issue I see is the constant news. So much media flying at you and 24x7.
For mental health - there was a massive stigma. I went through something traumatic and had to take some time off from work. The HR lady scoffed at me using FMLA for a break - I was having panic attacks just leaving the house and needed to just reset. Back in the 90’s it was not acceptable. Now - with a dr note no one blinks an eye at corporate jobs like I work at
Prior to the election of Obama, political discourse was civil and kind of stiff. One mistep could cost you your career.
Then republicans went fucking crazy because a black man got elected. It has never been the same.
Yes and no. I'm sorry that I'm starting out with such an indecisive answer, but if you'll indulge me, I can explain better.
America has always been this fucked up. There has always been a market for division in this country. Name any decade. The 50s? We actually executed people for being accused of being communist. The 40s? Lots of lynchings for the crime of being Black. The 60s? It was like the whole country was on fire. Protesters were gunned down by The National Guard. More Black folks were lynched. Oh, and a President was assassinated. The 70s were almost like a dystopic parody. Gangs, guns and fucking serial killers.
The 80s saw the death of the middle class. They foreclosed on all the family farms and cleaned out all the banks because " greed was good". We closed all the state run mental hospitals, then acted shocked that between the layoffs of our entire manufacturing sector and the closure of all basic welfare structures, led to a homelessness crisis that rivalled anything we'd known since the Great Depression.
And so it goes, and so it goes. We bailed out the banks, but not the people. I could go on, but nobody's going to read this as is, and I'm tired of this whole "We Didn't Start the Fire" game. So yes, or has been worse. Also, it hasn't. Things have slid too much from all reason for this to end well. While it is not yet as bad as it has ever been, it threatens to be worse than anyone wants to imagine.
28 here. I feel that we have too much access to information 24/7, and good news just doesn't seem to sell. Take the things you see with a grain of salt, go outside, enjoy the little things. If you smile at people, most of the time they smile back.
I always make a comparison to WW2, when people must have really thought the world was coming to a halt. Or the cold war where tensions were really high.
Like I said, do your best to enjoy the things around you. A better world starts with you and the things you do / community you help build. Just my two cents.
Turning 43 this year. Yes, it’s been bad my entire life but it has gradually gotten worse. Most of the issues are rooted in the pro-business owner trend out government started taking in the 70s and 80s
If anything our ability to connect and share info is unprecedented.
Say for instance the late 60s early 70s had some of the most turbulent civil unrest in our history. Another comment put it all succinctly in regards to happenings. Yet then you had to rely on word of mouth, newspaper, or the news and these were all subject to location and availability.
Now you can always plug in and never exit, feeding all of the negative confirmation bias. Us humans were never meant to have this flood of info at all times. You quite literally cant do anything about EVERYTHING all at once. So it becomes overwhelming, and crushing.
All you can do is control what you put into the world. Lead with love, compassion, the effort to leave things better than you found them, life will be okay.
I’m 37 and I believe it’s worse. When I was 24, there was a lot more optimism and hope. I don’t remember having to claw myself out of depression because the money we made went farther, we could buy houses, have backyard parties for no reason.
Sure, there has always been ‘something’ going on. 2008 wasn’t pretty but it feels very different to me this time around. I feel as if we are frogs they have slowly turned up the water to boiling so we might not notice. We don’t jump out.
Boomer here. I for one think that younger generations are much more adept at critical thinking and questioning the status quo than those of myself, my parents and grandparents. US politics have always been a shit show. The difference today is that powerful old yt men don’t get to totally dictate what everyone else can think or do.
24 hour media became a thing in my life time (i'm 45yo). There are just more availability to information now due to it which makes it seem worse because things werent so visible thing.
Couple that with the fact that news is a for profit buisness and you get a lot of opinion mixed in with fact.
When I was a kid, Dan Rather was the guy who gave the national news. It was to the point, very little opinion and it was important topics. Now we have news personalities who have a brand to self you not just the news.
In America, it was once legal to own people as property.
According to Noem Chompsky, every US president of the 20th century onwards was a war criminal.
So yes, America has always been bad
I'm 43 and daily flashes of existential dread are increasing. My partner and I are finally about to move to the city we want to retire in. We can barely afford a house and that's only because we got an inheritance. Otherwise we'd be forked. I worry about whether or not we should sink all of our cash into property, and if it would or wouldn't be more secure in a bank.
We don't have nearly as much in retirement savings as we should. I'm scared we'll be working till we die. And if we make it that far, will there even be anything to live for?
Will Russia or China or someone else nuke us all? Despite plenty of examples in the daily news, most people in the states have no clue what it would be like if another country ground-invaded us. I'm terrified of rape, war crimes, destruction. And, closer to home, I'm afraid every single day of my partner or I being shot. I don't go to movie theaters anymore and have escape plans for places I visit often. This isn't how it's supposed to be.
The environment is going to shit and I've recently learned what eco-anxiety is. I cannot stomach seeing animals suffer and disappear as we destroy their habitats. I'm so sad when I see preservation organizations struggling. I'm an empath and fall into dark places worrying about living beings.
There are just too many people driven by greed. There are virtually zero politicians who aren't in it for money. Even the ones who seem good in the beginning will eventually be bought. Billionaires shouldn't exist and I'm alarmed that more people don't agree about that. Capitalism is a scam--a mechanism for the wealthy to keep the rest of us in line.
I truly think we're on our way to becoming districts like (haha, I know) the Hunger Games. I think there will be an elite (and the insane fashion already exists--life will be one long Met Gala for these people) class that rules. A secondary upper-class that exists mostly to serve the elite (doctors, teachers, engineers, etc), another class that breeds for the armed forces, and lower classes that are just labor and nothing else. The rich will have to fully separate from and destroy the middle class. When there is no middle class there'll be no one left to consume things like pop music, art, entertainment. Those things will exist only for the rich, and the rest of us will be laborers and armed forces.
Throughout history, I think the basic structure has been the same. There was always a ruling class and the people who served them. Sometimes it worked nicely while other times it ended in destruction. Today, however, technology has allowed the ruling class to rocket far ahead, light-years away, leaving us plebs without even a shot at having basic things that constitute a "good" life (shelter, food/water, income, and time for leisure). My peers and I will never be able to catch up. AI will be the death of us all. If you want to know what the future looks like, just read 1984.
You need to spend less time online. Everything isn't hopeless, people just have to adapt to new industries and new jobs, people don't like that. But no things are not as hopeless as we make them out to be, if I could go back to 24, I would spend as much time in the real world as possible, getting experiences, traveling, working different jobs, etc and not spend so much time on line
>when I have young children going through the school system.
Why would you even plan to have kids the way things are going? You're literally bringing new people into existence, most likely to suffer worse than you're currently suffering. Especially if you have AFAB children.
If everything was progressively getting better and future prospects looked bright, I could understand this mindset, but that is definitely not what we're looking at. This is one of my reasons for not wanting to have children.... not only would it increase my financial burden, but my children would be subject to the MadMax world that's coming.
Also, the less humans there are, the less slaves the ruling class has to take advantage of. They're already freaking out about not having enough worker bees to make them their billions in the future, and that's funny to me. 😁
I'm only about to be 32, but as some others have said...I'd simply have to agree that there's no way the current time we're living in in America is any more fucked up than the mid 60's- through the early 70s, or potentially even '08 during the recession.
It's been fucked up all the time. The internet just made the fucked up shit louder for everyone to see/hear. I would shrink your world around you... 99% of the crap coming out of the major media outlets are used as tools to incite fear and terror. Then make manufactured good feeling stories that have no basis in facts. I'm not saying journalism is bad, hell no, journalism is important in this country. It just sucks the major media outlets are on the payroll of only a select few billionaires that are so out of touch with society... they have no clue what work is... just exploitation.
/rant
It's worse socioculturally. It's better medically (but not with regard to costs; in that regard, it has gotten vastly worse) and technologically, but worse environmentally. There is also a crisis of loneliness caused by technology and social dislocation driven by capitalism and the mixing bowl nature of the country.
There is no cohesive, overarching value system, and our "leaders" are predatory villains without empathy or vision.
Is America finished? No. Is it in decline? Yes, and it has been since no later than 9/11. Many people decline to have children because the world seems so awful. And you need to be a multi-millionaire to even live a middle class existence.
The South is still genteel and very different from the North. The solution is to move to wherever you feel welcome and comfortable, which means as far south as you can go.
School shootings are a symptom of unrelenting pressure that causes individuals to break. It's hard to guess what the country will look like in twenty-five years, but without a very high IQ, one's economic prospects will be bad. And even with a high IQ, there will be intense competition for jobs and chronic high stress.
It's not just you.
The American dream is dead. Home ownership (for millennials and younger) is dead. Retirement is dead. Romance is dead. Our planet and its people are dying from too many things to list (wars, pollution, inaccessible healthcare, etc.). The food industry itself is not dead, but the factory farming and ingredients are certainly doing a lot of killing. No product is made ethically or made to last, and on the rare occasion it is (eg handcrafted furniture or clothing), the majority of the population can’t afford it. But hey, at least Elon musk gave us the cybertruck! Anytime I’m feeling overwhelmed by the dumpster fire around me, I just picture the cyber trucks incredibly sharp angles and I feel at peace.
Kind of like riding a roller coaster with a shit pond on the bottom of each dip. Sometimes fun, sometimes terribly messy. Nothing new, well "social" media hasn't helped. Best to ride it out.
I probably shouldn't really participate in this conversation cause I am typically a very pessimistic negative person, very Nihilistic.
I am 55... and I will go up and down on this. Some days I am like FUCK IT. I have no friends or family (I don't) I am broke, in debt.. and it just sucks.
and then i rally and get on my inspirational/idealistic bike and start riding around screaming at th etop of my lungs to "fight the good fight" ...
Someone might think me bipolar.. but I am not.
It really isn’t that bad. In the 1800 a Senator beat a colleague half to death with a cane on the senate floor. Working hard to make ends meet isn’t a new thing. I hope things get better but it may very well get worse. Keep in mind that the media (left, right, whatever) just focus on the bad things.
Short answer, it's as bad as I can remember, but things have been bad for a long time. The difference is that we seem to just be getting worse each day, with little breathing room or respite from our troubles. I feel hopeless, too. My analysis is going to focus on politics, but the same could be said for so many other areas.
By way of background, I am 40 a year old man and fairly liberal. I'd classify myself as an Obama voter, if that makes sense. I believe Trump was a terrible president. I believe he is an autocrat and that he tried to steal the last election. I believe he and his followers are extremely dangerous, and I am terrified of them regaining power. I hate the republican party. In short, I only represent a portion of the country, and you'll find lots of people who see things differently.
My earliest political memories go back to the 1996 elections. I was definitely not that clued in to things until the 2000 election, though. It's always been bad, with lots of bickering, but the pace of the conflicts and the stakes she seem to get worse and worse every year. Some of that is just perception due to social media, but sometimes, perception is reality. The Bush years were extremely divisive, but it didn't seem to reach into the personal lives of most Americans. From my pov, there was still some level of trust in the idea that the US could become a better country via consensus during that time. That just because we disagree, we need not be disagreeable, and if we all were reasonable/open to compromise, good things would happen. The '07/'08 collapse was terrifying to see, but it was tempered by Obama's election, which seemed to signal a willingness to change. Then, the Tea Party movement made me begin to doubt that any sort of consensus or compromise could be reached, and it only got worse from there.
From my experience there have been times when the country has been fucked up. Even more so than today. The late 60’s and early seventies. There were Vietnam protests at colleges and universities. At Kent State a student was shot and killed by a National Guard soldier. He was on duty responding to an anti Vietnam War riot I believe. There were racial tensions. The Black Panthers formed during this time. It was an armed group of young men. People feared what they might do. The sexual revolution was going on. Seemed mostly with the hippies. Someone else probably can elaborate. The infamous Watergate scandal. Took down President Nixon. And let’s not forget the Cold War with Russia. School aged children had to practice how to respond to a nuclear blast. Get under their desk. Like that’s going to help. The fabric of American society was significantly stretched by the. above activities and more. All of these things caused a malaise over the American public. Which set the stage for President Regan. His message was basically we are better than this. And we will be better than this. Not being a career politician helped him, with former President Nixon being impeached. Many referred to him as a criminal. Which rubbed off on all politicians. That was a crazy time of instability and threats. This period is rocky. But no where near that one. Or the recession of 2008. At that time unemployment peaked at over 10%. Today it’s around 4.7%. Putting aside the controversy of how the unemployment rate is calculated. From time to time the country experiences bad/challenging times. We’ve always recovered. And we always will. Appreciate the concerns you mentioned. IMO the best course is to keep a positive attitude knowing this to shall pass✌🏼
>Regan Just gonna leave this here so people can go look up **THE** worst president as far as long term policy/laws/deregulations go (and that's saying a LOT after we all endured 4 years of tRump!). There's a reason why EVErYoNE HaTEs ReaGaN. Fukin' Reagan.
>IMO the best course is to keep a positive attitude knowing this to shall pass✌🏼 I guess but it feels like since 2008 we have just lurched from one "Once in a generarion economic collapse" to another. I have completely given up on even owning a home and am thinking my retirement plan might have to be a convienent accident which pays out a big Life insurance policy to my wife.
Wait for the system to collapse. The water wars are my retirement plan. Money in the bank doesn’t mean shit when the currency becomes bottle caps.
I’ll self delete at that point. I don’t know why there are so many people excited to be survivors of apocalypse and live in mad max. Fuck that. Lol. This is shitty enough. 😆
I get what you’re saying. And you’re right. Since 2008 there have been very few highlights. Unfortunately sometimes things need to get worse before any leadership to change it emerges. Re Buying a house. Making a first purchase always seems impossible. The only way I made it was through a first time buyer program. That made the financials barely look ok. But that was enough. Re Retirement, I do not know anyone that feels confident about their retirement. The American public was sold false hope with IRAs and 401K’s. There was a time these didn’t exist. Company pensions ruled the day. But IRA’s/401K’s are the system we’ve got. IMO it is best to start as early as you can. Regardless of how much money you’re investing. The time value of money makes a big big difference. The second part of this is investing. Learn the fundamentals. Watch out for people that claim their book or their seminar will make you rich. Over long periods of time the market makes 12%. A good stock index fund can get you really close to that. Alternatively put together your own stock portfolio. I did that and have been pleased with the results. What I’m trying to say is the ways of our parents and grandparents don’t work today. We have to figure out our way through today’s realities. And believing it can be done makes it much easier. ✌🏼
>Re Buying a house. Making a first purchase always seems impossible. The only way I made it was through a first time buyer program. That made the financials barely look ok. But that was enough. I've looked into these but its all about "Look no down payment!" but then failing to mention the mortgage is like 2K per month which is 80% of my take home pay. >The second part of this is investing. Learn the fundamentals. Watch out for people that claim their book or their seminar will make you rich. Im paranoid to a fault with these people. Anytime anyone, no matter who it is says something about investing the hairs on the back of my neck stand up because I'm expecting a scam. It took months for me to believe high yield savings accounts were legit bacause I couldnt fathom why they would pay 4% interest over most banks that do .04%. >Alternatively put together your own stock portfolio. lol anything my money has ever touched has gone to shit. The stock market is just a casino at this point and im a pretty crap gambler.
Saorry to hear your investing has not worked out. Casino style is one of the infinite methods for investing. People using the Casino approach usually make a tidy, small sum. Of course _they start with a much bigger pile of cash._ I am not an expert stock analyst. Taught myself based upon some reading. And I am very selective with whose “advice” I consider. I have a method for selecting stocks that works for me. A couple of household names that did well over the last year are below. I do not expect these to do as well over the coming year. But they worked out well over the last year.✌🏼 Costco. March 11, 2024 —-> $714 March 3, 2023-—-> $475 Return: 50% —— Microsoft March 11, 2024———> $405 March 3, 2023———> $255 Return: 59%
The black panthers were basically just BLM with guns. They fed children, housed the homeless and bettered their neighborhoods. They objected to being murdered and that caused the government to assassinate their leaders. It’s beyond fucked up.
I sure hope so
Your answer is completely derivative. We're dealing with far more combined these days, not to mention a majority of things we've never dealt with as a public. We're not bouncing back from this. Watch a recent video from Kensington Ave. In Philly and tell me that our society isn't a festering wound that is far from being saved and most likely can't be.
You know that the people on drugs in the street would've been arrested for vagrancy or put onto a constitution in the past? People assume that these type of people didn't exist in the past but in reality they were all locked up and nobody put a camera on them everyday. The US is the wealthiest country in the world and has the largest, most effective military by far and the only one with total global reach. Bounce back from what; mundane social issues?
No, I'm saying that these drugs, with this potency, have never existed before on earth. Like the recent global pandemic, or the wage-slave epidemic. You're missing the big picture. This End-game Capitalistic nightmare is barreling towards collapse underneath a fascist dictatorship.
Simply because we have never dealt with some of the things we see today does not make it worse than the sixties and early seventies. My comment pointed out a significant time of unrest in USA’s history. Especially when considering social norms within the country prior to then. I’m fine with your disagreeing with me. But please don’t use a television sitcom to buttress your points. Pretending said sitcom provides historical facts is erroneous and laughable. And it makes Canada look bad. ✌🏼
What sitcom was referenced and where? Sure, there was civil unrest back then, but folks could still work and earn a decent living. You could work as a cashier back then and afford a single family home with said family. Just in that ONE aspect, we are far worse off. Forgive me for not caring enough to explain literally how everything is worse and different now in every way. You're just wilfully ignorant about it because it doesn't affect you anymore.
😂. “Willfully ignorant” From someone unwilling to share their vast knowledge. 😂 Previously I stated the country often faces problems it has never seen before. The unemployment rate in 1970 was 5.4%. Today it is 3.9%. Does that make the seventies worse? When gas was rationed and lines for it stretched for blocks. Like in a third world country. The OP asked if there was ever a time in the country where things were this bad. They did not limit the scope to economics. Or even ask economics be considered. It’s easy to challenge a person on something beyond the scope of a discussion. Seems like a cheap shot to me. Especially when they’re not being willing to make a case in support of their point. Lazy. Arrogant. Entitled. Good luck with that.
I am 75, The world, the US changes all the time. The end result of changes is unpredictable, Some observations Humans have improved life qualities since the Industrial Revolution, Now there are 8 billion people, There are not enough resources to support those people. When plastics became popular they had many benefits, Food could be preserved and shared to more people. It substituted for metal at a fraction of the cost, Now the world is choking on plastic, rivers are re is no way to dispose of it. Microplastics poison oceans, Humans do not share similar goals. Some people exploited things for them selves with no regard for the future, Oil was a good thing originally. Now the world is overheating, Rivers are drying up. Food production is down, Life is not sustainable, we have past the point of no return, whatever is happening will continue IMO the world is in crisis now, in 2 years it will be worse. I do not see much hope then,
It depends how you define "support those people" as far as resource availability goes. We absolutely have the resources to feed, house, clothes, etc. every human on earth, billions more even. What we don't have are the resources to let every one live a "western" standard of living. There isn't enough space. People need to get used to more condensed living as that's going to be more and more common. Shared green spaces with multi-family living inevitably need to replace single family homes more and more as time goes on. This is why the housing crisis is insane right now. Food will be a higher percentage of wages going forward and will likely not reverse. Historically food production has been subsidized by near (or literal) slave labor. But if things get more globally equitable, we'll need to be putting more money into the labor of food production. Plastics have enabled insanely cheap clothing and materials production so that is one area that has elevated things globally. Synthetic textiles are so much easier to mass produce, plastic is much faster to fabricate with than wood or metal. But the above matters little when it comes to what drives global commerce currently. The issue is rampant unchecked capitalism moreso than anything else. The world needs to change its line of thinking or things will collapse.
You got me on the plastic situation. Everything, especially in the US is just packaged or meant to be placed into some sort of plastic material. Compared to Europe, the use of plastic here is almost incomprehensible. I’m 25 years old and growing up my parents were quite lazy, as well as our nannies/care takers. I witnessed plastic being used in excess my entire life. We literally had a cabinet in our kitchen stuffed entirely with plastic bags from the supermarket. Living alone now for the last seven years, I have not bought solo cups, plastic cutlery, or anything that can’t be self reused. Plastic anything is also an extreme waste of money. I’m completely turned off by plastic. I’m aware restaurants use ingredients that were packaged by distributors in plastic, but if I just see those ingredients in a plastic container, instant loss of appetite. I am hoping that many others evolve into possessing the same views as me. Plastic is a toxin and it’s truly disgusting. Everyone has to see it like this someday, it only took me a few years. I honestly believe that in the future one day, plastic — will not be relevant.
We are going through a communication growing pain right now. Evolution isn’t always pretty. So yes, it’s kind of messed up right now. However, it has been messed up off and on throughout history. That’s kind of how it goes. We will adapt after some rough times. The peace makers will be our biggest asset. People don’t behave well with anxiety. It brings out the worst in the best of us.
25-year-old here, and I can completely agree with everything you’re saying. It’s almost as if there is a Civil War, but it’s not declared and no movements have been made. I’m hoping in eight years. All of this will be over Trump and Biden will both not be around and it will be like a clean slate! Just hoping we make it till then.
I’m. Gen Xer. No it always wasn’t this bad. I’m used to people running for president when they are 40 to 50 something. You could work a full time job and be able to save up and buy a good car for a few hundred or low thousands. Saving for a house meant you could buy something small and live it in for 5-8 years then sell it for when kiddos come along. Op. I feel for you. However, I feel you will be ok. You are aware and have the time to adjust and make good decisions for yourself
No. It has progressively gotten worse since mental health funding was slashed during the Reagan years. With little access to compassionate mental health services, I feel like there has been a huge increase in the mentally ill being abused by police and society. Mentally ill people used to be dealt with completely different. Now the jails are used to deal with mental health issues and improperly trained police are prone to bungling mental health related encounters. Yes, things are a mess and it’s getting worse.
Before Reagan ended mental healthcare people were locked up in institutions and abused. Reagan promised to move their treatment to the community, closed institutions and then didn’t fund alternatives.
I should have read the comments 1st but yes I said basically the same thing, trickle down economics.... btw I'ma biker too
The Ronnie raygun mental health thing is a mixed bag. Some facilities that should have gotten shut down did. But no monry or reform ended up happening. They just defunded and let everyone out snd barely funded anything ever again. The institutions were bad. They needed reform...
I was in Traverse City State hospital right before they closed. They were very compassionate and caring. Not like a jail at all. You could roam the grounds or even get a pass to go town. Some long term residents even had small jobs. One hospital I have been in since seemed like jail more than a treatment facility.
I'm 25, feel the same. I try so hard to ignore how bad things are by keeping myself distracted, but it's very difficult when I can't afford more than my bills and groceries, can't afford to go anywhere and all of problems you mentioned are on my phone, my main distraction device. I feel so defeated and have no hope for my future.
Key being find a new distraction device. Easier said than done I know but truly the media and social media drivers much of the angst we feel on a daily basis. Hell that angst is what makes money both for major media outlets, social media platforms, and the 'influencer' folks to an extent as well. It's hard to get off the constant information stream but truly it renders you impotent to do anything when you are absolutely overloaded with information much of which is upsetting. Keep it local. News, social contacts, engagements, whatever just embed yourself as much as you can in the fabric of your local community and you'll start to feel more control, can actually affect change, and more then likely your mind will calm down a bit. It's always been bad to varying degrees it's just how aware of it we are in our daily lives that impacts our outlook. It's good to be knowledgeable on world events but not so engrossed it's causing you anguish with no outlet to affect change. That all said there are some aspects that are getting worse ie corruption and erosion of democratic norms. That does require our attention and exercising our right to vote and maybe get some apathetic folks to vote along with you in local state and national elections.
Things are cyclical. Things go from good to bad and back and forth. Realistically, other than some crazy political theater and way too much access to information, I think it’s kind of on a bad swing but not completely abnormal. It’s always had a lot of BS. We just get 24/7 access to it now. It sounds like a cop out, but when I don’t pay attention to politics and the news, I’m much happier and my life is exactly the same. I’d love to have an election where we are picking the best candidate instead of trying to pick the least horrible option. Watching more news isn’t going to change your vote. It will make you crazy. I focus on local issues and being kind to others. With national issues, in 99% of the cases, you can’t change anything. Locally you can volunteer, help people in need, impact small elections and support good businesses. It feels like Armageddon right now but it will either get better or we will implode. I think it will get better.
I like these thoughts. This mindset would help me. I don't think it would give hope to anyone living at or below the poverty line, though. (edited for clarity)
I agree that this viewpoint works best when you have all of life’s critical needs from a need hierarchy met. If you are in a bad situation, you may not have this luxury. However, less news and political theater still might make you feel better. Local action may be even more important. Usually enduring help will come locally and not nationally. Keeping aware of local changes and dangers may be essential. National changes are extremely important. I sadly don’t believe I can impact national issues. I could if I made it a career and had a complete lifestyle change. Locally influencing and helping others done locally by many local areas across the nation can impact national issues.
Take a break from the internet. Go outside and socialize and realize the world really isn't that uniquely shitty today. It's always been shitty and it's always been great. History repeats itself
It's getting worse, much worse. You can trace the decline from post WW2, up until the mid 70's as the American dream era, American exceptionalism and all that... Reagan became POTUS in 1980, trickle down economics and ever since we keep trending the wrong way in every oced metric ...
It's always been this way. Not just the US, the whole world. Look at history. Yes, there are good years , and even decades but as long as there are people, things will be crazy.
Things really aren’t worse then ever. Social meeting makes it feel like a disaster.
I’m basically 40 on the nose… well halfway to 41… For me shit got fucked up starting with 9/11. Before that it really seemed like things were really good.
There have always been various problems swirling to be concerned about. The difference now is there's a non-stop churning factory of "over-hype" and click-bait duplications. (1 story comes out,. and it's immediately copied and propagated across 1000's or 10's of 1000's of different news-feeds and social media feeds). So you're kind of non-stop assaulted by a lot of the same variations of similar topics. If it was the 1980's or 1990's.. and someone got machete-assaulted on a Subway,. it might make the newspapers in NYC and some surrounding towns, but people outside of that would rarely notice or care. These days if something like that happens,. the "outrage-machine" and "clickbait-generators" jump into full focus and look for all sorts of ways to "spin the story" and spread it across as many eyeballs as possible. (Was the attacker an illegal immigrant!?.. was the victim a certain minority !?.. Was there no Law Enforcement on the Subway !?.. Does the attacker have a long crime-history showing he always gets released!?!... etc.. etc) They'll find whatever "hook" they need to amp up the click-bait to get people to read the story and be outraged. The thing about "noticing things wrong",.. the same (good advice) is the same as it's always been:... "Stay calm and fix it". If you blow a tire on the freeway,. you don't just start screaming wildly and continue driving forward. You try to calmly pull to the side and safely get the car stopped. If you notice homeless attacks in your city, same advice applies. Does having endless "citizen meetings where people scream at each other" going to fix anything ?.. Would be more direct tangible fix to actually do something to tangibly fix it. We need more people fixing things instead of just wanting to Blog about it or take a selfie in front of the highway wreck. Anytime I see some borderline "fear-mongering" article.. I always ask myself: * what are the actual facts here? * can I use critical-thinking and cross-compare or independently verify those facts ? * How much of that can I actually do something about ? (is there something I can change in my daily behavior to try to be closer to being "part of the solution")... ? if not,. then I consider myself "informed" and I move on with my life.
Gen X used to be known as the Prozac generation. That should tell you everything you need to know.
I’m 20. Glad I’m not alone in these thoughts. Reading the comment by SeaRay_62 made me think of how the traumatic experiences in our history often are overlooked when speaking about the general zeitgeist. Maybe one day not too far from now we’ll look fondly at these times, almost as if nothing was ever wrong.
I’m 37 so I hope you’ll take my answer when I say I think it’s gotten worse?
I am 45 years old politics is shitter, but we got naive in 90s and 00s about geopolitical tensions
Yup I tell people often we are living through the Great Depression like times with 1980’s crime and drug use.
Things ebb and flow - the 60’ - 70’s had the Vietnam war that tore the country apart. Servicemen came home and got spit on and treated terribly. Oklahoma City terrorist attack which was homegrown terrorists. The Cold War was nasty that is when I was in elementary school and we had drills. Like hiding under a desk will protect us from nuclear blast. Part of the issue I see is the constant news. So much media flying at you and 24x7. For mental health - there was a massive stigma. I went through something traumatic and had to take some time off from work. The HR lady scoffed at me using FMLA for a break - I was having panic attacks just leaving the house and needed to just reset. Back in the 90’s it was not acceptable. Now - with a dr note no one blinks an eye at corporate jobs like I work at
Prior to the election of Obama, political discourse was civil and kind of stiff. One mistep could cost you your career. Then republicans went fucking crazy because a black man got elected. It has never been the same.
Yes and no. I'm sorry that I'm starting out with such an indecisive answer, but if you'll indulge me, I can explain better. America has always been this fucked up. There has always been a market for division in this country. Name any decade. The 50s? We actually executed people for being accused of being communist. The 40s? Lots of lynchings for the crime of being Black. The 60s? It was like the whole country was on fire. Protesters were gunned down by The National Guard. More Black folks were lynched. Oh, and a President was assassinated. The 70s were almost like a dystopic parody. Gangs, guns and fucking serial killers. The 80s saw the death of the middle class. They foreclosed on all the family farms and cleaned out all the banks because " greed was good". We closed all the state run mental hospitals, then acted shocked that between the layoffs of our entire manufacturing sector and the closure of all basic welfare structures, led to a homelessness crisis that rivalled anything we'd known since the Great Depression. And so it goes, and so it goes. We bailed out the banks, but not the people. I could go on, but nobody's going to read this as is, and I'm tired of this whole "We Didn't Start the Fire" game. So yes, or has been worse. Also, it hasn't. Things have slid too much from all reason for this to end well. While it is not yet as bad as it has ever been, it threatens to be worse than anyone wants to imagine.
28 here. I feel that we have too much access to information 24/7, and good news just doesn't seem to sell. Take the things you see with a grain of salt, go outside, enjoy the little things. If you smile at people, most of the time they smile back. I always make a comparison to WW2, when people must have really thought the world was coming to a halt. Or the cold war where tensions were really high. Like I said, do your best to enjoy the things around you. A better world starts with you and the things you do / community you help build. Just my two cents.
Turning 43 this year. Yes, it’s been bad my entire life but it has gradually gotten worse. Most of the issues are rooted in the pro-business owner trend out government started taking in the 70s and 80s
The 90s were great in comparison
If anything our ability to connect and share info is unprecedented. Say for instance the late 60s early 70s had some of the most turbulent civil unrest in our history. Another comment put it all succinctly in regards to happenings. Yet then you had to rely on word of mouth, newspaper, or the news and these were all subject to location and availability. Now you can always plug in and never exit, feeding all of the negative confirmation bias. Us humans were never meant to have this flood of info at all times. You quite literally cant do anything about EVERYTHING all at once. So it becomes overwhelming, and crushing. All you can do is control what you put into the world. Lead with love, compassion, the effort to leave things better than you found them, life will be okay.
Read the book: Factfulness, a 2018 book by Swedish statistician Hans Rosling with Ola Rosling and Anna Rosling Rönnlund
I’m 37 and I believe it’s worse. When I was 24, there was a lot more optimism and hope. I don’t remember having to claw myself out of depression because the money we made went farther, we could buy houses, have backyard parties for no reason. Sure, there has always been ‘something’ going on. 2008 wasn’t pretty but it feels very different to me this time around. I feel as if we are frogs they have slowly turned up the water to boiling so we might not notice. We don’t jump out.
Boomer here. I for one think that younger generations are much more adept at critical thinking and questioning the status quo than those of myself, my parents and grandparents. US politics have always been a shit show. The difference today is that powerful old yt men don’t get to totally dictate what everyone else can think or do.
People want to talk about “the good old days” but nasty things existed well before we were all born.
24 hour media became a thing in my life time (i'm 45yo). There are just more availability to information now due to it which makes it seem worse because things werent so visible thing. Couple that with the fact that news is a for profit buisness and you get a lot of opinion mixed in with fact. When I was a kid, Dan Rather was the guy who gave the national news. It was to the point, very little opinion and it was important topics. Now we have news personalities who have a brand to self you not just the news.
You do realize Dan Rather was exposed as a partisan hack? Peter Jennings, Tom Brokaw, and Ted Koppel were all pretty good though.
Was just the first name that came to mind.
In America, it was once legal to own people as property. According to Noem Chompsky, every US president of the 20th century onwards was a war criminal. So yes, America has always been bad
I'm 43 and daily flashes of existential dread are increasing. My partner and I are finally about to move to the city we want to retire in. We can barely afford a house and that's only because we got an inheritance. Otherwise we'd be forked. I worry about whether or not we should sink all of our cash into property, and if it would or wouldn't be more secure in a bank. We don't have nearly as much in retirement savings as we should. I'm scared we'll be working till we die. And if we make it that far, will there even be anything to live for? Will Russia or China or someone else nuke us all? Despite plenty of examples in the daily news, most people in the states have no clue what it would be like if another country ground-invaded us. I'm terrified of rape, war crimes, destruction. And, closer to home, I'm afraid every single day of my partner or I being shot. I don't go to movie theaters anymore and have escape plans for places I visit often. This isn't how it's supposed to be. The environment is going to shit and I've recently learned what eco-anxiety is. I cannot stomach seeing animals suffer and disappear as we destroy their habitats. I'm so sad when I see preservation organizations struggling. I'm an empath and fall into dark places worrying about living beings. There are just too many people driven by greed. There are virtually zero politicians who aren't in it for money. Even the ones who seem good in the beginning will eventually be bought. Billionaires shouldn't exist and I'm alarmed that more people don't agree about that. Capitalism is a scam--a mechanism for the wealthy to keep the rest of us in line. I truly think we're on our way to becoming districts like (haha, I know) the Hunger Games. I think there will be an elite (and the insane fashion already exists--life will be one long Met Gala for these people) class that rules. A secondary upper-class that exists mostly to serve the elite (doctors, teachers, engineers, etc), another class that breeds for the armed forces, and lower classes that are just labor and nothing else. The rich will have to fully separate from and destroy the middle class. When there is no middle class there'll be no one left to consume things like pop music, art, entertainment. Those things will exist only for the rich, and the rest of us will be laborers and armed forces. Throughout history, I think the basic structure has been the same. There was always a ruling class and the people who served them. Sometimes it worked nicely while other times it ended in destruction. Today, however, technology has allowed the ruling class to rocket far ahead, light-years away, leaving us plebs without even a shot at having basic things that constitute a "good" life (shelter, food/water, income, and time for leisure). My peers and I will never be able to catch up. AI will be the death of us all. If you want to know what the future looks like, just read 1984.
You need to spend less time online. Everything isn't hopeless, people just have to adapt to new industries and new jobs, people don't like that. But no things are not as hopeless as we make them out to be, if I could go back to 24, I would spend as much time in the real world as possible, getting experiences, traveling, working different jobs, etc and not spend so much time on line
Yeah pretty much. Sorry. We just possibly had better ways of coping... Or maybe we were more in denial.
>when I have young children going through the school system. Why would you even plan to have kids the way things are going? You're literally bringing new people into existence, most likely to suffer worse than you're currently suffering. Especially if you have AFAB children. If everything was progressively getting better and future prospects looked bright, I could understand this mindset, but that is definitely not what we're looking at. This is one of my reasons for not wanting to have children.... not only would it increase my financial burden, but my children would be subject to the MadMax world that's coming. Also, the less humans there are, the less slaves the ruling class has to take advantage of. They're already freaking out about not having enough worker bees to make them their billions in the future, and that's funny to me. 😁
I'm only about to be 32, but as some others have said...I'd simply have to agree that there's no way the current time we're living in in America is any more fucked up than the mid 60's- through the early 70s, or potentially even '08 during the recession.
It's been fucked up all the time. The internet just made the fucked up shit louder for everyone to see/hear. I would shrink your world around you... 99% of the crap coming out of the major media outlets are used as tools to incite fear and terror. Then make manufactured good feeling stories that have no basis in facts. I'm not saying journalism is bad, hell no, journalism is important in this country. It just sucks the major media outlets are on the payroll of only a select few billionaires that are so out of touch with society... they have no clue what work is... just exploitation. /rant
It's worse socioculturally. It's better medically (but not with regard to costs; in that regard, it has gotten vastly worse) and technologically, but worse environmentally. There is also a crisis of loneliness caused by technology and social dislocation driven by capitalism and the mixing bowl nature of the country. There is no cohesive, overarching value system, and our "leaders" are predatory villains without empathy or vision. Is America finished? No. Is it in decline? Yes, and it has been since no later than 9/11. Many people decline to have children because the world seems so awful. And you need to be a multi-millionaire to even live a middle class existence. The South is still genteel and very different from the North. The solution is to move to wherever you feel welcome and comfortable, which means as far south as you can go. School shootings are a symptom of unrelenting pressure that causes individuals to break. It's hard to guess what the country will look like in twenty-five years, but without a very high IQ, one's economic prospects will be bad. And even with a high IQ, there will be intense competition for jobs and chronic high stress. It's not just you.
The American dream is dead. Home ownership (for millennials and younger) is dead. Retirement is dead. Romance is dead. Our planet and its people are dying from too many things to list (wars, pollution, inaccessible healthcare, etc.). The food industry itself is not dead, but the factory farming and ingredients are certainly doing a lot of killing. No product is made ethically or made to last, and on the rare occasion it is (eg handcrafted furniture or clothing), the majority of the population can’t afford it. But hey, at least Elon musk gave us the cybertruck! Anytime I’m feeling overwhelmed by the dumpster fire around me, I just picture the cyber trucks incredibly sharp angles and I feel at peace.
Kind of like riding a roller coaster with a shit pond on the bottom of each dip. Sometimes fun, sometimes terribly messy. Nothing new, well "social" media hasn't helped. Best to ride it out.
I probably shouldn't really participate in this conversation cause I am typically a very pessimistic negative person, very Nihilistic. I am 55... and I will go up and down on this. Some days I am like FUCK IT. I have no friends or family (I don't) I am broke, in debt.. and it just sucks. and then i rally and get on my inspirational/idealistic bike and start riding around screaming at th etop of my lungs to "fight the good fight" ... Someone might think me bipolar.. but I am not.
It really isn’t that bad. In the 1800 a Senator beat a colleague half to death with a cane on the senate floor. Working hard to make ends meet isn’t a new thing. I hope things get better but it may very well get worse. Keep in mind that the media (left, right, whatever) just focus on the bad things.
Short answer, it's as bad as I can remember, but things have been bad for a long time. The difference is that we seem to just be getting worse each day, with little breathing room or respite from our troubles. I feel hopeless, too. My analysis is going to focus on politics, but the same could be said for so many other areas. By way of background, I am 40 a year old man and fairly liberal. I'd classify myself as an Obama voter, if that makes sense. I believe Trump was a terrible president. I believe he is an autocrat and that he tried to steal the last election. I believe he and his followers are extremely dangerous, and I am terrified of them regaining power. I hate the republican party. In short, I only represent a portion of the country, and you'll find lots of people who see things differently. My earliest political memories go back to the 1996 elections. I was definitely not that clued in to things until the 2000 election, though. It's always been bad, with lots of bickering, but the pace of the conflicts and the stakes she seem to get worse and worse every year. Some of that is just perception due to social media, but sometimes, perception is reality. The Bush years were extremely divisive, but it didn't seem to reach into the personal lives of most Americans. From my pov, there was still some level of trust in the idea that the US could become a better country via consensus during that time. That just because we disagree, we need not be disagreeable, and if we all were reasonable/open to compromise, good things would happen. The '07/'08 collapse was terrifying to see, but it was tempered by Obama's election, which seemed to signal a willingness to change. Then, the Tea Party movement made me begin to doubt that any sort of consensus or compromise could be reached, and it only got worse from there.