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I live in Canada and have a locked-in retirement fund, from a former employer, which I have zero control over. It’s lost 10% since the Dumpster was elected.
That mf’er is killing us too.
This isn’t fair! I was gambling with those other people’s lives!
You keep saying retirees when I think you mean future walmart door greeters.
“Last season’s winners”
“No. Last season’s losers”
oh that reminds me, our local old lady Walmart greeter passed away 😔
R.I.P. Ms Wendy
My fucking parents are going to end up Wal-Mart greeters and they will not admit, even after everything, that they fucked up voting for Trump.
It’s obviously Biden’s and Obama’s fault, they made the stocks go so high in the first place! Not only does that mean they could buy fewer, but it also means they fall more!
They’ll keep saying it’s still a good idea butt just barely executed for years. That’s what happened with Brexit in the UK.
If there is one thing I’ve seen about Republicans and conservatives is that conservatism/Republicanism can never fail, only people can fail conservatism. It’s always that it wasn’t implemented HARD enough. Or those damn liberals fucked it up somehow, etc…they are even more afield than old school Marxists when it comes to being steeped in a completely ridiculous narrative about economics. Hilariously, so many of the cons think it is THEY who are the hard-nosed realists… 🤣
True, but sadly not unique to conservatism. It’s a human condition, lots of psychology involved with self-identity and worldview. See “communism just hasn’t been actually implemented properly yet, and the Soviet Union and China were/are actually capitalists pretending to be socialists/communists” for examples on the “opposing” spectrum.
Absolutely, that’s why I mention the old school Marxists. :) I have to admit the comparison is not one I’ve come up with; I’m pretty sure I heard driftglass (of the Professional Left Podcast) reference it several times…
Good point out, and I should have said not unique to either conservatism or hard leftism there. The “extremities” of the spectrum really highlight it obviously, but I think almost everyone is guilty of and/or capable of the same rationalizing over anything that forms a part of core identity, consciously or not. The stakes are just higher when it comes to politics than something like an odd food preference, and thus get stronger reactions both from external observers and the person holding that viewpoint. I try to apply a “never attribute to malice that which can be explained by something else (I know incompetence usually goes here but in this context comes off maliciously)” for most people. Everyone is the hero of their own story, yada yada.
I fall into the same trap advocating for left leaning libertarianism never being implemented with the correct mix of government guardrails (both from and against the government), and it will be funny when we all surprised Pikachu face when it turns out 500 years from now it was the Anarcho-syndicalists who were right all along ala South Park Mormonism.
Also I haven’t heard the Professional Left Podcast before but I’m definitely going to check it out, thank you for mentioning it.
Yeah, it’s always ideology first. No argument or evidence can convince them otherwise.
“The leopards ate my face”
Only if they voted for Trump. Many didn’t. This election saw a lot more young people, especially men, move to the Republicans. In fact if you want to blame a specific demographic then blame men.
Yet even more GenZ men just didn’t vote because they hated both options
Bit of a tactical blunder, that.
I’m sure they’ll be quick to blame “boomers” for it, though.
I dont want to blame a specific demographic because that would be a stupid thing to do
I blame the non voters.
When more people vote Democrats tend to win.
If everyone voted the Republican party wouldn’t exist.
I think the blame rest solely on the 78 million people or so that showed up to vote for Donald Trump. And maybe the 40 million or so people that didn’t show up to vote at all.
Yeah it’s definitely not the system that prevents those people from learning critical thinking skills and encourages them to vote explicitly against their own interests, pitting them against each other as they work themselves to death
Blaming the death cult of capitalism 🚫
Victim blaming 👍
You’re not the victim. We paid for 12 years of your schooling and you shit the bed in Math, history, critical thinking, and most importantly Civic duty. Since we our way past acknowledging our individual civic duty to protect democracy I say…
COMMUNIST REVOLUTION WEN?
Lol. Do you assume that shit about everyone you talk to or just people who disagree with you
Edited to add: this schooling? 12 years of this? Thanks a LOT 🖕 https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2017/02/15/u-s-students-internationally-math-science/
Edit 2: super thanks for this BTW love your work on this https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/school-shootings-by-country
Edit 3: i didn’t even claim to be the victim, although I certainly am a victim of capitalism as someone with multiple disabilities that are almost certainly caused by environmental factors present as a result of the unending evil behavior from corporations (including the USG) and many other problems that are inflicted upon me by these systems including artificial scarcity and my rights being whittled down year after year. The victims I was saying you’re blaming are the ~120 million people you explicitly blamed for what is being done to our country and our population and the rest of the world by a few extremely rich and powerful assholes, most of which are almost certainly not responsible for any appreciable fraction of harm being done (relative to what is happening at a massive scale) right before our eyes by those same assholes. By the way, since you’re so upset about what’s happening (according to what you’re saying) what are you doing to counter it? I’m sure it’s more than just spreading your garbage takes on Lemmy right?
Is this system here in this room with us now?
You can double that second figure.
"How Many People Didn’t Vote?
Close to 90 million.
According to data from the University of Florida Election Lab, approximately 245 million Americans were eligible to vote in the 2024 general election…
preliminary election data shows about 155 million ballots were cast. This would mean an estimated 89 million Americans, or about 36% of the country’s voting-eligible population, did not vote in the 2024 general election."
“I don’t want to have to worry that everyone is constantly changing my financial reality,” said Alison Carey, 64, of Oregon, a freelancer in the theater industry. “Let the economy do its machinations, but don’t put me in the gears.”
Sorry you had to learn it this way, Alison, but “the economy” has always been grinding people up in its gears. The main difference is, that it is now reaching you, personally.
I gotta assume a theater freelancer in Oregon probably didn’t vote for him
Oregon is more than the west coast. It’s only recently that the state isn’t literally, legally, run by the KKK.
Theater freelancer is also doing a lot of heavy lifting there, tbf
I was thinking the same, but…people surprise you. I know some lesbians that moved out of one (red) state into Colorado because of how they didn’t feel quite safe there…but then voted for donvict, because “Republican do conomy good” type of reasons, from what I can discern.
Holy fuck.
Yup. The leopards are out and about eating every face they can find.
The stupid thing about all this is that everything that is happening right now was on full display for the entirety of 2024 up to the election. They said they would crash the economy, round up their list of “undesirables,” destroy much of the inner workings of the federal government, etc, and half this country cheered it on, only to be [shocked Pikachu] when they actually followed through. Like, welcome to reality, actions have consequences. Don’t get me wrong, I am no fan of the Democrats and how they operate, and that we are in need of serious overhaul in how we operate as a country, but this is about the most wrong way to go about it possible. A Harris win would’ve kept the status quo, possibly in perpetuity, but I’d rather that at this juncture than whatever the fuck is going on right now.
Yes, what is happening right now is very dangerous. If things get bad enough economically speaking, the demagogues will point the angriest set of magoffs at the other half of the country and grant them the “right” to do their worst.
People keep acting like things under Biden were awful and that the Democrats/Kamala/Biden were just being monsters to say the economy was actually tracking on a very good course. Sure, many people I’m sure were miserable as economic inequality has not been getting better. But again - the adults in the room know full fucking well things could get much, much worse, especially in the hands of the clueless and the party without any empathy whatsoever.
However, I don’t think some have any idea just how much worse it could get. Many people are too young or have forgotten how miserable the 70s were, apparently. And people seem to not have learned about violence in the 60s.
And if people think they were mad about bullshit made-up nonsense like “Bidenflation”, just fucking wait and see how angry they get over the kind of pain that donvict seems determined to inflict on everyone…if enough people are starving and are told by the likes of Faux that it’s the fault of “DEI” or the trans or the liberals or Biden…enough will believe that to make things get very dangerous very quickly.
Republican do conomy good
I cannot understand how this lie persists to this day. Republicans have trashed the economy in every single administration they had for at least the last half century. I’m an adult with children and my lifetime has not seen a Republican that was good for the economy…
This is a holdover from Reagan, and the boom times through the 80s and into the 90s. Deregulation works… until everything implodes/explodes. Revenue was up alongside the tax cuts because of the huge gains across the board, it just wasn’t sustainable.
The economy is like an engine, you can squeeze massive horsepower out of it for a few races or regulate it to run for millions miles. There is a happy spot that produces the highest output with acceptable longevity, but since Reagan the Republican strategy has been to crank it to the max.
The Democrats also continued the deregulation and government has abdicated it’s duty to enforce anti-trust laws, protect the commons, and ensure level playing fields. Add to that the lag time between government action and results, and you have the “Republicans do economy good”.
We have been a runaway diesel for decades, and the engine is close to detonation.
Except it was a lie EVEN DURING REAGAN’S term. He had to raise taxes multiple times to cover his own tax cuts. Guess who he raised them on? Everyone but the rich, who got to keep their cuts.
I think it has something to do with how the right lionizes business so much. I think they adore business because it has zero democracy; it’s basically a top-down structure, just like the authoritarian government they so crave.
Because they think government should be run like a business (another idea that is beyond stupid) and since they think only Republicans operate businesses, they seem to think this translates into “Republican in charge” = “good economy”.
History and facts don’t seem to enter into it, it’s all vibes with that bunch.
“I don’t want to have to worry that everyone is constantly changing my financial reality,”
Welcome to my entire adult life, Alison
“Swarms of leopards unleashed upon zoo-goers who voted for Leopard Looser to run the zoo, millions of zoo-goers stunned, in disbelief, mauled.”
The main difference is, that it is now reaching you, personally.
Ah, republicans and not giving a shit until it hurts them, name a more iconic duo.
a freelancer in the theater industry.
I wonder what that means. I’m not in the creative industry, but that sounds like that could be barely-subsistence type of money or something in the stratosphere… ?
I love how people seem to think that “the economy” or “politics” is the same type of thing as sports— a recreational activity with no actual bearing on anything that other people pay attention to as a diversion. It explains so much about how we ended up here.
Oh well, should have raised your kids to be better people.
Let’s go vote republican !
Aw dang it Aw dang it Aw dang it Aw dang it Aw dang it Aw dang it Aw dang it Aw dang it Aw dang it
But the next Republican will for sure fix it!
Aw dang it
That’s exactly what happened with this lady.
Wait, I thought this was the plan…what happened? You mean dipshit game show host who bankrupted so many businesses doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing?
“But… but… but at least we stuck it to the libs didn’t we? Right?.. Right!!!”
Gosh darn it!
Bootstraps or whatever
Clearly they just need to take their own advice:
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No more avocado toast
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Stop buying so much coffee out. Make it at home.
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???
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Profit.
Simple as.
Don’t forget about the cell phone plan, Internet access, Netflix or large screen TVs. I remember reading about “boomer math”, if I remember correctly - the skewed notion about what really costs what.
Used to be a color TV was a luxury, and that probably made a real imprint on some. Same for coffee - until Starbucks really cracked that market, the idea of paying more than fifty cents or whatever for a cup of coffee was considered ludicrous at one time. And things like cell phones, Netflix and Internet were not really things in their formative years…
I just saw the Costco flyer for this week and they had a 75" LG TV on sale for like $599. I couldn’t believe how cheap TVs are now.
Exactly. I think once they started monetizing the data from “smart” TVs, they really, really fell through the floor. And yeah, compare that to memories of the 60s or 70s when a mere color TV of any size was a big deal and definitely a luxury item for the rich and adjust for inflation…in 1965, say, $599 would be $59.13…so if you imprinted on that in your twenties, I could see how that might be hard to understand the delta…
See the prices for a 23"-25" color TV in 1965 - $1800-$2000. That’d be $18,233 - $20,259 in today’s dollars…so if someone is doing “boomer math” when chastising people for buying huge TVs, and claiming that’s the reason they cannot afford a house/rent, I can sort of get it, but it’s also just a one-time cost…and they really need to update their thinking.
Also they could just get an easy job at McDonald’s???
Maybe they could try an unpaid internship to get experience first
They just arent qualified for that job.
Boot straps. Don’t forget about the boot straps.
They could eat the bootstraps.
Trumps plan is to fix obesity by making everyone too poor to eat… Or something
Maybe they could have remembered to not trust everything they see on the internet for the past decade.
Oh! And learn some basic financial literacy!
Can’t just rely on someone else to make all your decisions for you =D
Time to start by brushing up on some basic math, its not like everyone will always have a calculator in their pocket.
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It’s ok everyone they will all be a lot better off once manufacturing comes back to the US, they can make up the difference by working in a local sweatshop.
Yeah, just hold on and wait for those low paying, low skilled manufacturing jobs that no one really wants to work, and that we don’t have logistics in place to support.
Then you can make minimum wage working 12 hour shifts with no pension and a 401k that will flatline right before you can retire.
When you die next to the assembly line they’ll cover your face with a red MAGA hat right before they wheel you to the Soylent green processing facility
Even that chucklefuck billionaire was talking about how it will be all robots - openly. Meaning, I don’t know how many sweatshop jobs will be on offer 5, 10, 15 years or whatever it takes to build that kind of infrastructure here…
https://www.axios.com/2025/04/03/tech-jobs-robots-lutnick-manufacturing-renaissance
Didn’t you hear? Vance is saying that manufacturing is never coming back to the US.
So even working in a sweatshop won’t be an option. Well, I guess until we’re colonized.
Suppose it does come back, who is going to buy it ?
Once wages undercut China, they can sell stuff to the Chinese.
But we don’t have any manufacturing capabilities
And even if we did, the Dipshit put tariffs on the raw materials any factories would need to actually make stuff. He literally made shit more expensive to make here.
They don’t want that crap though, nobody does. Who are they going to sell crap to, nobody wants it.
What gets me is that these morons think domestically manufactured products will somehow be cheaper that their imported counterparts. The entire reason we’ve come to rely on imports is because they’re cheaper than the domestic variant, almost entirely because American corporations are notoriously greedy shitbags. It’s ridiculous to think that since imports are going to cost significantly more that American corps are going to suddenly find a conscience and charge anything remotely resembling a reasonable price for their goods/services. Even with possible breakthroughs in automation and “AI” (lol), the owner class is guaranteed to use that to enrich themselves at the cost of the rest of us.
The elderly yearn for the assembly lines.
Retirees? I’m not even 40 yet and my 401k dropped several thousand the last couple days.
401k are supposed to be the long game, ride out the ups and downs. That being said, it’s best to have other investments too.
Good news, those are plummeting as well
401k are supposed to be the long game
The older you get, the shorter the game is. You need to gradually reduce the volatility of your investments, even at the cost of rate of return.
Yeah, I try to forget it exists and only check it every few months.
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Going to brag a little bit. I’ve been very suspicious of tech and the US stock market for a long time. When I finally got the job I have now and got to choose 401k contributions I went heavy with international stocks and specifically avoided anything involved in too much tech. My 401k has gone down in the last week but we’re talking barely 3%. The paranoia sometimes works in my favor
I’m not very tech or stock savvy but tech industry always seemed unstable to me
“Victor Fettes, 54, of Georgia, who retired last week”
Fucking hell, you guys can retire at FIFTY FOUR?
It think it’s like suing someone. You can sue whomever you want for any reason but that doesn’t mean it’s going to be successful. If this guy is retired yet keeps all his retirement money in volatile stocks, he’s not going to be successful in retirement.
you guys can retire at FIFTY FOUR?
My cousin retired 2 years ago at 48.
Stock market whiz? Nah: union.
He started working at a local mechanic in high-school, as engines were interesting; just sweeping up. He asked questions. He applied for his apprenticeship and the school district moved him to the ‘trade’ oriented school where the rough kids seemed to end up completely randomly when catchment overlapped. Did metal shop in his final year and found a funding programme to get through his first courses. Displayed a natural talent for adequate work and straightforward math that was apparently everything people needed when paired with his indomitable spirit and happier-than-sadder mood profile. In short: he hustled, he did his fucking work and he was a net-positive to work with.
Now we fast-forward. The union was good to him, and he moved into jobs where his 5’8 size, nimble fingers and “yeah, I’ll crawl in the slushy muck” attitude got him as many opportunities as his quick wit got him out of shitty politics. He went to a place we call Fort McMoney and was able to exercise his options when bosses were dinks; and he did so very quickly and openly, explaining what’s happening on the way out – “We agreed on this vacation time, but you broke that agreement. I’m still getting on the plane tonight. I got a job with the guy down the road, so that’s why I’m clearing out. I’m sorry it went this way, but we both get to learn from this. Good luck, and have a great weekend.”
At 48 he’d done his 25-plus years at one career and many shops, and the half-pay-for-life union retirement kicked in.
He now rides his donorcycle with his adorable wife or they take the little car on trips to climb mountains or see a lake or something. He got a shitty place in a nice place, made some friends and some of them knew how to fix up his place and needed his own skills, and his easygoing attitude provided the glue to get everything fixed everywhere, and he’s kinda set.
He touches grass and trees a lot, and the pics he posts on his cell phone show some great locations and his beaming face in the dawn light. He’s fucking winning so hard and I’m half jealous and intensely proud of him because he is actually an absolute sweetie and a great and caring guy.
Guys, build better unions or build better labour code. Focus on getting into a work arrangement with a group that pretends to like you better than at-will dot-com fat-cat “we’re a family” pizza-party dickheads think they’re pretending.
Holy shit I just felt like I lived his life vicariously with that comment.
I’m really happy for this guy and just absolutely despairing over how weak labor generally is. People don’t even imagine a better world, it feels like.
i have a trade that involves working outdoors, medical, saving lives type of gig. i was a whistleblower for wage theft against the people we worked for. because of that ive been blacklisted. Ive been told literally by the people that were fired for stealing our overtime hours that I have no future with them. No promotions no nothing. Similarly I’ve directed a video that was shown on MTV. I barely made any money and had to scrape by.
sometimes hard work doesn’t pay off, even when you do all the right things. Not saying im hopeless just thats what happened to me. But im happy for your cousin that it did.
Don’t worry, he won’t stop working. He’ll spend the next 15 years as a ‘consultant’ in his old position and make 100 times more than he did as an employee.
It probably means that he retired from a job and receives that retirement pay, but he still won’t qualify for social security or other benefits until he hits whatever age they’ve raised it to. Some companies let you retire after 20 years, some even less.
receives that retirement pay
Lol actual pensions are rare in the US these days. Most companies/institutions just do a 401k - the decline of which is exactly what will kill your early retirement plans.
Very very few can. Or do. But yes.
He can’t access that 401k without some pretty significant restrictions or penalties, though.
He was senior director of risk management, so I assume more than 100k+ salary a year.
I’m surprised he kept his job so long, seeing how poorly he managed his own risks…
This comment here is excellent - I love it! Thank you for sharing!
ZING!
But at least they’re stripping the rights of foreigners and women - that’s what they voted for, right? Cruelty? Fuck those ones and every other Trump voter. Enjoy your inevitable consequence you bastards.
