• ddh
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      382 years ago

      They actively took away the supports.

  • @Wanderer@lemm.ee
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    52 years ago

    The system needs changing.

    The goal should be overtime everything gets relatively cheaper and relatively better. Housing is the big exception.

    Stop immigration as a mean of increasing population and keeping wages down.

    In crease density in cities even if it means new taxes (LVT) or forced government buy outs.

    Built new cities or high density suburbs with direct train links to the city centre.

    • @gowan@reddthat.com
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      82 years ago

      The problem is with climate change immigrants are going to come and unless you are advocating mass murder the nations that have the ability to sustain life must take them in.

    • @smosjoske@sh.itjust.works
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      62 years ago

      Stop immigration as a mean of increasing population and keeping wages down.

      Sure, it is immigration that is keeping the wages down… I have no idea which country you originate from, but immigration is probably necessary to keep your population balance in check. So they are not the reason that wages are down; that would be the few determining the wages and exploiting you and those immigrants together.

      • @Wanderer@lemm.ee
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        22 years ago

        I don’t believe immigration is necessary for a countries survival.

        Maybe fore increasing GDP but not for sustaining high standard of living. There is plenty of fat in the system and a lot of it is taken up by lack of affordable housing. Which immigration does not help with.

        It’s basic supply and demand if there are less workers wages have to go up.

        • @kurosawaa@programming.dev
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          12 years ago

          Look at many of America’s top companies and you’ll see they are run by immigrants. There is a huge demand for skilled labor in America and there aren’t nearly enough skilled Americans. If you stop immigration these skilled workers will immigrate to other wealthy countries and build world class industries there instead and outcompete the United States. Immigrants are by far one of America’s most important assets.

        • @bouh@lemmy.world
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          22 years ago

          Affordable housing is not a problem caused by migrants but by landlords who inflate the prices and governments and companies who delay the constructions so prices rise even more.

    • sj_zero
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      112 years ago

      I find it hard to wrap my head around the idea that spending more debt than every government before them every single time for decades is austerity. They spent more than all the money constantly. Some austerity would have actually helped but they didn’t do that.

      • @Techmaster@lemm.ee
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        342 years ago

        They have been needing to raise taxes on the wealthy for decades, but they’ve been reducing them instead.

        • sj_zero
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          32 years ago

          You’re rearranging the deck chairs of the Titanic. You get into some pretty absurd taxation levels, you just won’t get the sort of revenue that you need to balance a budget that is so much spending.

          And the worst part is, the government’s already taxing you for stuff that you should just get. The United States spends more public money on health care than most countries, as much money on health care as some single payer nations. Everyone seems to think that there needs to be more money, but there doesn’t. The money is there. It’s just not being used properly. In any other country on the planet that amount of money should result in universal healthcare. Instead, the government program is run so incompetently that every family needs to spend absurd amounts of money on Private health care.

          This just seems to be the way that the US government works. They take the money to do a thing, then they just don’t do the thing. That is an austerity, it’s incompetence.

      • @bouh@lemmy.world
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        262 years ago

        That’s exactly the neoliberal agenda: austerity is spending less for workers and public services, and more to help companies so that growth can come back and make earth a paradise free of socialism.

        Austerity has nothing to do with spending less. It’s all about taking the money from the poor to give it to the rich.

  • @just_change_it@lemmy.world
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    182 years ago

    The era of a strong economy was brought on by factors from WW2 and the weakening was brought on by 2-3x growth in world population.

    More people fitting into the same cities means less space and more demand.

    More people means more workers for jobs that pay even less because the competition is fiercer than ever.

    More people means more percentage of resources going to surviving and less on luxuries.

    We can give a small % of global population luxury. US QOL isn’t sustainable on a global scale with the resources available in the world.

    • SokathHisEyesOpen
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      122 years ago

      I hope no one takes this the wrong way, because I fully support equality for all races and sexes, but there’s also double the workforce now. Women entering the workforce and eventually gaining near, or sometimes even superior footing, means that there are twice as many people competing for the same jobs. A larger candidate pool means companies can pay less and it’s harder to get a job for the individual.

      • @TyrionsNose@lemmy.world
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        52 years ago

        All true, but neither of these parent posts address the fact these efficiencies we’re not passed onto the worker but hoarded at the top

        If pay would of stayed near the slope of productivity gains in the US none of this would be a problem.

        Every average worker from french fry cook to teacher to nurse to engineer should be paid double what they are if everything stayed in line. Or you at least increase the top tax rate to redistribute the money back to normal folks.

        But the US has done none of these which leads us on the path to the most common reason nations fall. Excessive amounts of inequality….

        • @bouh@lemmy.world
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          62 years ago

          This has absolutely nothing to do with women or demography! We didn’t need pills to invent riches inequalities or slavery, which is basically what liberalism reinvented with money rather than blood.

          There is absolutely nothing interesting in your ideas here but the worst conservative propaganda!

        • SokathHisEyesOpen
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          22 years ago

          We don’t need to keep out immigrants, or put women back in the kitchen.

          I hope it was made clear that I wasn’t advocating for either of those options.

    • @smosjoske@sh.itjust.works
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      212 years ago

      In my opinion, the whole population growth excuse is always an excuse and leads to dangerous results. The growth in population in Western countries has completely decimated since WW2. At this moment, only Africa is thought to have a positive growth number in the coming years. The population has grown, but the needs of almost the entire world have drastically increased. Leading to enormous growth in wealth and also productivity. That productivity has not been translated into less work, and the population increase has not translated into less work. Both of those things have translated into more wealth and more wealth inequality. Blaming the housing crisis/ financial crisis on too many people will only lead to racism, while the system keeps sucking everyone dry and making very few rich. There is plenty to go around, and the population growth is a story of the last century. We will reach our cap this century with all its effects to it.

      • Grimr0c
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        42 years ago

        This is wildly incorrect. Where the heck did you get this data from??

          • @just_change_it@lemmy.world
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            12 years ago

            Fertility rate is just one piece of the equation.

            Infant mortality rate is off the charts in Africa compared to the majority of the world.

            Average life expectancy is also much lower in most African nations compared to the places with low total fertility rate.

            There’s a lot more nuance than even just these two other pieces. Generalizing at a continent level is really poor. A typical metropolitan couple/family is going to have less kids than a rural family in the US where cost of living is lower and pressures from religion and family are higher.

            When your neighbors, friends and family are holding off from kids to pursue higher socioeconomic standards there’s pressure to live up to them or surpass them. When your neighbors, family and friends are having kids left and right you feel pressured to join them too. Just food for thought.

    • Uriel238 [all pronouns]
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      72 years ago

      Population means more labor and more consumption as well. For all of human history before thr industrial age, labor shortages were dire.

      The problems that come with overpopulation are pollution and shortages of specific resources. No this is about unchecked capitalism focusing all the resources to a tiny elite class. Even more concentrated than the wealth in France, 1789.

      • @just_change_it@lemmy.world
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        I’m having trouble understanding what you’re trying to say. You think we have a lower standard of living today than in the past?

        50 years ago what was so great that we have lost? 25 years?

        From where i’ve sitting my QOL is only higher than when I was a kid growing up without hot water or air conditioning. Poorest family in a middle class town. That’s just anecdotal but most seem to take for granted the things everyone has today. Magical handheld computers didn’t exist when I was a kid and now almost everyone has one in the US.

        The only thing out of reach is home ownership. Landlords are the new slaveowners. Not that you can really compare slavery to modern day working class jobs.

        • @bouh@lemmy.world
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          62 years ago

          It’s not the same people that were poor before that are poor now. A lot of immigrant makes for the poors of today, and their situation is certainly not better than 50 years ago.

          Many things are to consider: it’s far harder to find a job now, and it’s far, far more expensive to have a home.

          But indeed we got stuff that didn’t existed before. Phone, Internet, etc. But these things are comparatively very cheap. And you actually need them to have a normal life today. They are more like new expenses than luxury. You also need a car today, something you didn’t 50 years ago.

          Basically, inflation rised faster than income, new expenses were created. I’m pretty sure we have less public services now than 50 years ago too.

          The new expenses would be a benefit to societies if the rich didn’t take all the benefit for themselves. All progress has been stolen by the rich.

          • @just_change_it@lemmy.world
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            12 years ago

            My wife grew up in a 3rd world country so I know a bit about how things have changed in the past 30-40 years or so even abroad. QOL has risen around the world. Immigrants from poorer countries will ALWAYS be last place when coming here and competing to climb the ladder if they come with few skills - but they’ll also be better off than the overwhelming majority of people in their former country.

            Many things are to consider: it’s far harder to find a job now, and it’s far, far more expensive to have a home.

            I disagree that it’s harder to find a job. It’s harder to find a job that pays well that isn’t blue collar without a college degree and fluency in English. In Massachusetts it’s trivial to find a job for $15/hr (minimum wage). You can’t afford an apartment on your own though… you’re going to be renting a room at best and hopefully if you’re lucky living with family who already have a home.

            If you start off as a blue collar apprentice doing carpentry, hvac, plumbing - you name it, you’re going to start off above minimum wage, you’re going to get regular raises and each certification you pass will greatly increase your income, and it’ll all be paid for by the employer. Blue collar jobs in construction will always be in demand and are always hiring. Amazon may lay off tens of thousands of highly compensated employees but aint nobody laying off a plumber. If you’ve ever looked at getting work done on a family home you’d know there’s a lengthy waiting period.

            Basic cell phones are fairly cheap. Internet is fairly cheap for low income households.

            Basically, inflation rised faster than income, new expenses were created. I’m pretty sure we have less public services now than 50 years ago too.

            If you think we had things better 50 years ago i’d try watching a documentary about life in the 60s or 70s. We take a LOT for granted today. Life is practically nothing like it was back then. MRIs didn’t even exist until 1977. CT Scans weren’t invented until literally 50 years ago. This is just two examples of medical technology but the list goes on and on. The cost of everything is much higher but the quality and safety standards today are higher than ever in most industries. Labor cost here is also higher than ever.

            Higher housing costs are almost entirely a function of higher incomes and higher demand. US population has grown from ~212 million to ~331 million.

            When I was a kid you were still paying per minute for phone calls. Air conditioners were still a luxury (I never had one growing up.)

            In my extended family i’ve seen two people who are immigrants pass a programming boot camp and get jobs in this economy (past 12 months.) Zero connections, references etc… they applied and got jobs. What’s stopping someone from learning how to program? or if ADHD- learning how to do blue collar work as an apprentice?

      • @Daft_ish@lemmy.world
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        Anytime someone claims to know why the economy behaves the way it does I am immediately skeptical. Unless the reason is to create inequality we should be able to use that information to establish a better syatem.

  • @MorningstarCorndog@lemmy.today
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    1532 years ago

    Unsustainable system finally collapses under the weight of greedy spoiled generation when their children cannot compete with their parents enough to continue supporting said unsustainable system.

    There fixed that shit.

    Those fools need to get the fuck out of here with that nonsense!

    • @bdiddy@lemmy.one
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      152 years ago

      Most boomers and whatever came right after boomers don’t even have decent retirements… That’s what’s sorta funny about all this. I know quite a few 60s and 70s yr olds that legit don’t have enough to sustain their lifestyles and still have to work. The system failed LONG before Millennials showed up.

      Many of them went their whole lives “not trusting the stock market” just to literally have no retirement. Much of it was lack of education and access to the stock market when they could have been investing, but then at the same time it is a pretty stupid fucking system of retirement when without notice you can lose 40% of value because some bankers fucked around.

      The system sucked for them that’s why they still have to work, but instead of trying to fix it, they just complain that it’s their kids fault.

      • @Blackmist@feddit.uk
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        222 years ago

        And even the ones that have a lot of assets to be considered well off have a problem. They’re living in the only thing they own that’s worth a significant amount of cash.

        Property prices have completely fucked everyone. Just because somebody can barely afford to pay 50% of their wages every month for the next 40 years in order own their own house, it doesn’t mean they should. It means they’ve got no choice because there isn’t enough.

        • @bdiddy@lemmy.one
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          122 years ago

          oh yeah that reminds me of an 80 yr old lady I know. She’s land rich and insanely poor. Like if she sold all her real estate assets she’d probably have easily over a million dollars. But she doesn’t want to sell anything just cause. But she’s super poor. Like she literally needs a new roof on her trailer and can’t afford it. But is sitting on 7 figures of assets lol.

          Hell my FIL is that way not that I’m thinking about it. He can’t take care of his house he’s in a booming hood in Houston and has like 8 acres to boot. He keeps borrowing against it to afford shit and still owes like 100k on it which would still net him a pretty penny for the whole set up. I keep telling him just sell the shit and buy a small home out right and get out of the debt and whatever, but he’s super stubborn about it.

          • @Blackmist@feddit.uk
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            92 years ago

            I can sympathise. A home isn’t just a house. Depending on how long they’ve lived there, there’s a lot of memories wrapped up in that.

            It’s not a simple financial equation.

          • @Asafum@feddit.nl
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            162 years ago

            This is literally my landlord too. She’s a nice lady, but she depends on my income to pay her bills…

            She’s sitting in a beautiful town on a property that could easily get over 1mil, probably 2-2.5, but instead I have to live in her garage that has a leaking roof she can’t afford to fix… I imagine she’s just holding on to it for her kids or something, but she’d be so much better off if she sold. Of course I’d get kicked out in an instant and be in deep shit myself, but that doesn’t change what’s best for her.

          • Never underestimate the power of psychology and sentiment. If he sold it at his age he’d be left with what? A pile of money and regret? And at, say, 80 starting over is brutal. Living in a place he doesn’t recognize, away from anyone he knows, etc. It is probably why some people don’t leave struggling small towns, they grew up there and to leave is to start over and abandon everything.

  • @Licherally@lemmy.ml
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    422 years ago

    My parents spent most of their time getting drunk and trying to be 18 again. I wouldn’t really call that a good setup for their kids.

    • Uriel238 [all pronouns]
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      532 years ago

      According to Forbes? Of course is the fault of the impoverished they didn’t take personal responsibility. Forbes is a magazine for persons with stock portfolios.

      • themeatbridge
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        272 years ago

        That’s pretty much the main thesis used to justify capitalism. You have the money you deserve. If prosperity isn’t merit-based, then capitalism would be a horrifying abuse of the underclasses.

  • @SpiderShoeCult@sopuli.xyz
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    302 years ago

    reaping what one sows comes to mind

    or the classic ‘well, well, well, if it isn’t the consequences of my own actions!’

  • @SIGSEGV@sh.itjust.works
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    1112 years ago

    No one is mentioning upper management and CEO’s pay. The money is trickling up, and that’s more of a problem than all of the other factors combined.

    • @dome_duztah@lemm.ee
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      62 years ago

      UGH! I can’t figure out how to reply OR how to find communites/subs on this app!!!

      I totes agree wif yew, doe!!!

          • I get your point, and I’m not saying that boost is the panacea of client possibilities, but here are my experiences with other clients (I’m also happy to be corrected if these gripes are resolved):

            1. The web interface. No ability to customise default views, when i go to all, it keeps loading shit as in trying to read it as new posts are added. Frustrating and I did not engage in the platform

            2. Jerboa, buggy as hell. Constantly crashing. Unusable.

            3. Connect. Good browser, but every time you comment you get punished by losing your place. No read tracking.

            4. Sync. Does almost everything I want. Some ads, wish it would hide read posts when I come back later.

            I’m a much more valuable member of the Lemmy community because I use sync.

            If there is another client that’s more betterer let me know and I will check it out.

    • Uriel238 [all pronouns]
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      82 years ago

      Yep. Nick Hanauer’s done activism including TED talks pointing how ethical capitalism has become impossible what with regulatory capture and stable longer-term business models failing to compete with exploitative short-term models… and that we proletariat aren’t going to stand for our state of perpetual precarity for much longer.

      • @Piers@lemmy.world
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        32 years ago

        It doesn’t even matter if the proletariat decides they’ve had enough. If things don’t change then we get dramatic vast-scale climate migration that breaks the existing system that drove it to happen in the first place. Ideally, we’d change those systems now so things don’t get as bad as they could. But if we don’t, those systems are about to blow themselves up either way.

    • @Drivebyhaiku@lemmy.world
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      212 years ago

      Not to be that guy… But Americans have always been partially socialist. That’s the reason child labor is not supposed to be a thing, your work week isn’t 60 - 80 hours long without overtime, you have things like vacation days, sick leave, agencies in charge of stamping out food and drug adulteration, OSHA codes for safe workplaces, a public school system, public libraries, banking regulations… And a very long list beyond that.

      Do you think any of these things are naturally occuring under a capitalist system? These were the fights you can map to specific socialist movements of the past.

      But who am I kidding anybody who unironically starts complaining about Communists is so far up McCarthy’s ass all they can smell is grave rot.

      • @mayonaise_met@feddit.nl
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        72 years ago

        Is that really socialist though?

        A strong labour movement isn’t necessarily socialist. In fact I do believe it kind of gets in the way of socialism as they make capitalism bearable for the well organised labour class. Socialism is when the labour class also own the means of production, and for now, mostly, that isn’t the case in most developed countries.

        • @Drivebyhaiku@lemmy.world
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          62 years ago

          Your definition of socialism has been warped by decades of propaganda to weaken labour friend. Labour movements including labour unions are a feature of socialism, not capitalism or even liberalism. Only at the very deep end is socialism about labour co-ops and abolishment of private property. There is also not a unified singular definition philosophy or movement within socialism though it can be very roughly broken into a raft of different breeds of “market socialism” and “non-market socialism” . Market socialism looks at itself as a balancing force to coexist and oppose capitalism because capitalism left unchecked is a hellscape. Capitalist marketing has been very good at taking credit for a lot of market socialism’s previous fights and rebranding it as a sort of “responsible capitalism” but basically all the civil rights and labor movements that we celebrate today had variable breeds of socialist cores. The few unifying factors of Socialism is democracy and collective action and that there are at least some things that should be held and maintained as “public goods” that require protection from private interest. Things like national parks, environmental services, roads and infrastructure, sanitation, public education, fire fighting services, the public domain are examples. In some places these extend to things like healthcare.

          When the majority of people on the left talk socialism they talk market socialism or social democracy. When people on the right start frowning and stamping their feet about socialists (and what you are doing now) they are usually tarring all socialists with the brush of non-market socialism… which even the majority of people who identify as socialists veiw as complete loony-toons idealism.

          • @mayonaise_met@feddit.nl
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            I get your point, but I would still argue there is use for a distinction between two sets of ideas. One which aims to improve upon capitalism to make it sustainable for the working class, and one which aims in some for to transition to a system where workers own the means of production outright. Ownership (of labour) is really key in Marxist theory.

            The term social democracy is kind of unhelpful too because while it is used for the Nordics, Western Europe, etc., a society where capital is exclusively owned by the workers can be, at least in theory, at least as democratic. But I still prefer it as a term over socialism.

            I’m not stamping my feet about socialists either by the way. I just don’t want people to get the wrong idea about countries like mine. I live in the Netherlands, and the left is not doing that great. We’ve had right leaning coalitions for decades that have been slowly eroding social services, sometimes aided by misguided political ambitions of labour leadership. The working classes are voting for populists and even our largest party VVD, which presents itself as the fiscally conservative entrepreneurs’ party. It’s the familiar story.

            I’m not sure if socialism is Utopian or not, but using that term to describe countries like mine and the social policies we’re known for internationally surely doesn’t do socialism any justice.

            • @Drivebyhaiku@lemmy.world
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              12 years ago

              I don’t think folks have such high expectations of it being utopian. The issue is that unchecked capitalism is kind of a worldwide gig. If you as a society are competing with people from a market who basically allow their people to save their money by being dangerous and unprincipled and put their money permanently out of the tax system they are still mining your society for resources and cash that are taking it out of the system.

              But even a system that is imperfect but equal is better than one that basically tells you that if you don’t earn enough you basically deserve to die. I fear for a lot of my friends in the states because everytime they change jobs if anything happens to their health before their insurance re- kicks in they mighy never financially recover.

              I know a lot of people with what have been considered jobs you could afford to pay a morgage with 30 years ago who are living paycheck to paycheck out of their cars. I see people with disabilities whose families can’t afford to help them who depend on institutions like libraries because other government services got privatized and decided that they were “able enough” because of bottom lines. I know people who have suffered burnout, displacement and have been traumatized by working conditions because their employers decided that their shareholders were more important than the people actually making their products.

              Being Canadian is to have more than a bit of surviors guilt watching American friends you visit from time to time do everything you do but without the same safety net… We are a more socialism forward country with less people and less resources but the difference is stark. My American friends have it noticeably worse.

              Right now my Province is losing another city because climate change, lobbied for by rich assholes worried they won’t be able to make as much money on plastic and oil is causing my province to burn. We are too small alone to fix these problems. It requires the sign on of a much bigger collective action. The failure isn’t your country - it’s that its not enough countries.

      • @vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org
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        52 years ago

        Do you think any of these things are naturally occuring under a capitalist system?

        Some of them did evolve, looking a bit differently. I mean soup kitchens, places for the poor to sleep (it didn’t look nice, I’m thinking late XIX and early XX centuries), sick leaves and vacations were sort of traditionally fine, work weeks, while being unregulated, weren’t necessarily longer than what we have, cause unregulated just means individual arrangement, and so on. Life of a factory worker surely sucked, yes.

        It’s just questionable whether this social progress and labor protection laws are the same.

        I mean, there’s that problem with socialists - they like to call anything good in human history socialist or proto-socialist (the extreme case is Soviet history books for children with their descriptions of what was Spartacus’ rebellion or German peasant rebellions and so on).

        • @Drivebyhaiku@lemmy.world
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          42 years ago

          One of the issues with capitalist narratives is that they are very good at rebranding successful socialist initiatives as “responsible capitalism”. Also it likes to point at non-market socialism and claim that’s what socialism looks like completely ignoring market socialism and social democracy.

          Also you really need to check your history. The 12 hour day was looked at as the standard before 1926 in America though 100 hour work weeks were not unheard of. Overtime pay was not a thing it was all flat rate. Ford gets the credit for adopting what was then a long standing issue campaigned for by labor to show “actually it’s beneficial for capitalist interests!” but the idea as it applies to modern labor was originally campaigned for by Robert Owen in 1818 and was being implemented across Europe by socialist labor parties starting in the 1850’s. Ford just basically swooped in last second and like capitalists do stamped his bloody name on it.

          What a vacation looked like for a lot of people pre - vacation pay was you packed up to the countryside to work an non-mechanizable agricultural job like hop picking. Labor day and the American origin of the paid vacation itself comes from the Haymarket mass rally of socialist interest in 1887.

          So yeah, it’s not really as questionable as you make it seem.

          • @vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org
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            12 years ago

            I mean, there’s no particular narrative in my comment - but there is one in yours.

            So yeah, it’s not really as questionable as you make it seem.

            I’d say you are arguing against something you’ve imagined. The subject your whole narrative is built around is touched in my comment by the following words: “life of a factory worker surely sucked”. And that’s it.

            So you’ve basically illustrated this observation, I’ll quote myself:

            I mean, there’s that problem with socialists - they like to call anything good in human history socialist or proto-socialist (the extreme case is Soviet history books for children with their descriptions of what was Spartacus’ rebellion or German peasant rebellions and so on).

            • @Drivebyhaiku@lemmy.world
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              12 years ago

              That’s some short term memory loss there biddy. You seem to have left all the stuff I was responding to on the table… And quoting yourself OOF. I am embarrassed on your behalf

              It’s like you don’t remember saying any of this :

              Some of them did evolve, looking a bit differently. I mean soup kitchens, places for the poor to sleep (it didn’t look nice, I’m thinking late XIX and early XX centuries), sick leaves and vacations were sort of traditionally fine, work weeks, while being unregulated, weren’t necessarily longer than what we have, cause unregulated just means individual arrangement, and so on. Life of a factory worker surely sucked, yes.

              I would suggest reading a bit more into the labor practices of the 18th and 19th centuries and the labour movements of the 19th and 20th otherwise you really are gunna just keep playing pretend and talking out of your ass about this pastoral fantasy and this conversation is really gunna leave you behind.

        • @LadyAutumn@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          2 years ago

          Say you’re a single parent. Say you have to take medication for your mental health, say you have ADHD and can’t work without it. And your job doesn’t provide health insurance. Say your job pays less than minimum wage. There are entire industries that avoid minimum wage legislation in the United States. Say your parents are minorities and have spent the entirety of their lives in a country legally discriminating against them in governance, finances, employment, housing, Healthcare, transportation, education, and in social programs meant to help the poor.

          You have no fallback. You are only ever offered debt that you can never return, and eventually they offer you nothing. You can’t afford even a single bedroom apartment. You pick between feeding your children and taking your meds. And if you can’t take your meds you can’t work. You spend every single day perched precariously on a knife edge, one single Healthcare bill or car repair bill away from homelessness starvation and death.

          These people are real. There is no possible financial adaption that will alleviate this situation. And if we count up all the people unfairly treated in this society, if we track everyone and see the way all disenfranchised oppressed people suffer injustice - it becomes immediately apparent that the vast majority of the working class is in a perpetual state of near homelessness barely scraping by even as they slave themselves away for the interests of corporations who have proven time and time again they see human life itself as worthwhile only in its ability to generate capital.

    • You sound like somebody who had an incredibly fortunate childhood and you don’t understand anything about people who actually had to work to get where they are.

      You claim that your parents didn’t support you but they paid your college. It sounds like you got supported a lot.

      The people who really had to pull themselves up by their bootstraps are people like me. I quit a full ride scholarship to go back home and get a job to support my father and family after he broke his back at work and it took two years before his disability paid out.

      From there I was destitute and I’ve had to work my way back up to a point where I can afford to pay college out of pocket by myself while also affording all of my other expenses (like purchasing a house, and supporting my own family as an adult.) I’ve had to make serious sacrifices in my life.

      You really should be less judgmental about other people because you sound ignorant when you make those comments.

        • @bouh@lemmy.world
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          22 years ago

          You started you adult life with education and without being indebted for 20 years? You are a privileged one. That’s just how it is. I am too. That’s just life, but you should have the honesty to recognise that most people don’t have this privilege. They can’t be conservative and plan their life because they don’t have the education or the resources (social or monetary) to do it.

          • @bob_wiley@lemmy.world
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            12 years ago

            I like to give people more credit than that. No one needs a formal education to make a budget or emergency fund. Having good examples going up helps significantly. But even without that, the internet, or a library, is an amazing resource to learn this kind of thing, where maybe someone can learn so they can teach it to their kids and stop the cycle. If we collectively throw up our hands and say no one can do anything about what they were born into and there is no upward mobility over the generations… then things can only get worse, because we’ve artificially closed off a main path for improvement.

            This is basically what my dad did, and what someone along the lines had to do in every family tree with some level of “privilege”. People can be this person on their own family tree. It doesn’t mean they’ll go from broke to billionaire in one step; that’s not the goal. The goal would just be to start creating some stability and solid footing so if/when some shit happens there is a little cushion and people aren’t at the whims of the currently government to try and save them, as that’s never going to happen. And to create some education and habits around this finances in the home, as most schools are teaching this stuff.

            • @bouh@lemmy.world
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              12 years ago

              You are oblivious to reality. There’s nothing to do with you, you are blind. Hopefully one day you’ll discover social sciences and you will learn some facts about your society.

              • @bob_wiley@lemmy.world
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                12 years ago

                Ok. Have fun waiting for the government to magically fix everything. You’re children’s children’s children will still be waiting.

        • Actually, I was thinking about what I said and that was way more harsh than I should speak to anyone.

          I apologize for acting like a jerk. I appreciate what you said and hope you have a good day.

          I was being far too sensitive, and that’s on me.

  • @Magister@lemmy.world
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    1082 years ago

    My Y daughter is doing well, maybe it will be shitty for her to buy a house or condo but she can. My Z one, yeah, I’m helping her, paying stuff here and there like groceries, microwave, etc, she’s in her own flat and all and is not too bad but still, rent is 40% of her earning. It’s ok to help your kids.

      • @Nythos@sh.itjust.works
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        182 years ago

        I have seen absolutely nowhere near the same hostility people on Reddit have towards children and their parents.

        Seems like you’re pulling shit out your arse to cause a rile.

        • @Cold_Brew_Enema@lemmy.world
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          32 years ago

          Wrong. This place is going to turn into an antikid circlejerk in no time. There are already childfree and kidsarefuckingstupid communities.

      • Bramble Dog
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        22 years ago

        What?

        If you have 1 child born in 1995 and another born in 1999, then your children are of two separate generations.

      • @lozzasauce@lemmy.world
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        372 years ago

        In the literal sense, yes, but not in the context of marketing cohorts, which are usually based on birth date ranges and are used to group members of society who experience similar pressures and exhibit similar behaviors. Gen Y/Millennial and Gen Z are marketing terms, so it’s possible for a parent to have a child in each.

        • @Nonameuser678@aussie.zone
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          32 years ago

          There’s also us zillenials born between 1990 - 1996. The defining feature is that we’re old enough that we were alive during 9/11 but were too young to understand the way it changed society at the time. Our formative years also occurred during both pre and post internet being everywhere.

        • @littletoolshed@lemmy.world
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          172 years ago

          Thank you for the thoughtful reply. I was trying to be funny but it totally missed the mark and fell flat. Oh well 🤷‍♂️ I do think it would be nice if we didn’t find ourselves referring to our social constructs in terms of marketing cohorts.

    • @NathanielThomas@lemmy.world
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      232 years ago

      it is okay to help but at the same time it sucks you have to do that because life is so economically insecure now that adult children cannot survive without that help.

      In my own situation, my partner has a 25-year-old son who has autism and cannot be financially independent. We finance his $2,200 apartment (which is standard cost in our expensive city) because on his own he’ll never be able to do that . This will directly impact our own finances for the foreseeable future.

    • @atomWood@lemm.ee
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      392 years ago

      I absolutely agree! It’s not a competition, we are all living in the same world with the same problems.

      Families are at the centre of any society. Families function best when they help each other out. Parents are meant to sacrifice to help their children, just as their adult children should sacrifice later in life to help them.