• @[email protected]
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    3 months ago

    Shoutout to our parents for hitting an absolute timeline sweet-spot. Drop in right after a world war, have a bunch of weird sex before HIV, buy a house for like 20.000€, start a family, retire young and peace out right before the ocean kills us.

  • @[email protected]M
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    1973 months ago

    peace out

    Spend their retirement calling the cafeteria staff at Luby’s racial slurs and saying trans kids and drag queens are evil.

    • Secret Music
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      1003 months ago

      And voting for people that will make everyone’s life hell and ensure that no one else will ever get to experience the quality of life that they did.

      • @[email protected]
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        103 months ago

        They didn’t just pull up the ladder behind them, they have a ladder propulsion system that will launch it into space

      • Lucien [he/him]
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        373 months ago

        Not to sound ageist, but I firmly believe voting privileges should be revoked when you retire.

        • @[email protected]
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          103 months ago

          I would think that removing the barriers to voting that affect younger voters is the better option, along with getting rid of the electoral college and allowing felons to vote. Taking away voting rights for certain classes of citizens is a slippery slope, especially when the root problem is some votes count more than others and many potential votes never make it to the polls.

        • @[email protected]
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          33 months ago

          they way leaders emerge from certain personalities, and get so corrupted, i think we’d be better off with random selection.

        • ByteMe
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          113 months ago

          I’m not sure about voting but probably about being elected

          • Miles O'Brien
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            93 months ago

            I don’t trust anyone with one foot in the grave to make long term decisions that benefit young people more than themselves any more than I trust a small child to make sound logical laws about bedtime.

            • @[email protected]
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              23 months ago

              Well we all vote in our own best interests, as I’m sure you do too. The art of good governance is to provide an environment in which everyone can thrive.

              The problem here is not old people who don’t vote in your best interest, it’s the government that aren’t ensuring everyone is catered for.

        • @[email protected]
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          3 months ago

          If you need to wait 18 years to vote you shouldn’t be able to vote once you are 18 years from average life expectancy (as in life expectancy is 80, you can vote until you’re 62, not after).

          Imagine how much focus would be put on healthcare if that were the case…

          • isles
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            23 months ago

            Dumb and arbitrary, just how we like it!

            • @[email protected]
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              13 months ago

              If it works one way it should work the other way as well! You’re too young to be responsible enough to vote? Then you can be too old to care enough about the future to vote!

            • @[email protected]
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              83 months ago

              Yes, I meant 18 years after birth = 18 years before average age of death, so politicians would need to either reduce 18 to something lower or would have to work to increase life expectancy.

  • @[email protected]
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    413 months ago

    Spend all of their own parents inheritance, leave nothing for their own kids, talk about how they had to work their way up from nothing.

    • Lovable Sidekick
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      323 months ago

      It’s amazing how often this gets mentioned. In truth almost nobody paid that tax rate because it applied only to salaries. Rich people have always gotten most of their income from capital gains (which were taxed at a low rate in the 1950s, just like today).

      • @[email protected]
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        3 months ago

        It applies to income, not salaries, and it applies to corporate income as well as personal income. Nobody needs to pay it for it to achieve its purpose. Indeed, nobody should be paying it, ever.

        You have a choice. I’ll give you $900 for you to do anything you want with. Alternatively, I’ll give you $10,000, but you can only spend it on something that you can convince me is something you need for your business.

        You can buy $900 of GOOG, or you can spend $10,000 on a bunch of electronics. You can buy $900 of AAPL, or spend $10,000 “entertaining clients” at a strip club.

        You can buy $900 worth of stocks, or purchase goods and services produced by workers.

        Nobody is taking the $900 here. Everyone is taking the $10,000. Nobody is paying 91% on $10,000 over the line. You can get much more value from your large “business” spending than you can get from your small investment.

        Now, if the numbers are $6300 on anything, or $10,000 on business, a lot of people are going to take the $6300. This is a top-tier of 37%.

        $7500 on anything, or $10,000 on business, most people are going to take the $7500. This is a top-tier of 25%.

        The 91% tax rate isn’t for the government to spend more money. The 91% tax rate is to ensure the richest among us get greater value from hiring workers than they do from buying securities.

        • @[email protected]
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          93 months ago

          You frame it like those are the only two choices. They aren’t. The third choice is capital flight.

          People constantly forget that governments don’t have godlike tax enforcement powers. In the real world people avoid taxes via a million different avenues. Absconding with their money for greener pastures is a last resort but it happens constantly.

          Take China for example. Taxes are way lower than the US yet capital flight is such a huge problem that the government has enacted Capital controls. Yet capital flight from China continues largely unabated.

          So what this means in practice is that if you want to have a 91% top corporate tax rate in the US without a gargantuan capital flight problem you’re going to need a government that is way more powerful and draconian than either the US or China is right now.

          Now you might say “what if I just let everyone go and get the money back when they try to sell things to the US?” Well that’s basically what the US under Trump is doing right now, via tariffs. But then you tack on the capital flight beforehand and that means all the big companies, all the great jobs, leave the country before prices skyrocket. This is how you impoverish the US to third world status.

          • @[email protected]
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            73 months ago

            Do you have an alternative suggestion to tackle the issues that such a high tax rate tries to address? I’m just genuinely curious.

            • @[email protected]
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              33 months ago

              If by issues you mean wealth distribution and the existence of an ultra-rich, powerful class, no. I don’t have a solution to that. The fundamental problem is that wealth brings power and the concentration of wealth and power in fewer hands brings other benefits, namely: coordination.

              Smaller groups nearly always have an easier time coordinating their efforts than larger groups, so smaller groups tend to have a disadvantage unless they’re on the battlefield (and even then, wealthy well-supplied small groups of soldiers easily defeat large groups of poorly-equipped, poorly-trained peasants).

              The big problem with the high-tax approach is that it’s a class warfare strategy. Apart from the communist revolutions of the 20th century, the history of class warfare has not gone well for the non-rich side. I think that moment in history was a unique one and unlikely to be repeated, barring the unforeseen appearance of some new decentralized warfare technology.

              So where does that leave us? We can try non-class-warfare strategies. We want to align the interests of everyone, rich and poor, towards a common goal: peace, prosperity, and sustainability. Why would the rich want this? Because life is better that way! It’s much nicer to live in a safe, walkable, integrated, and prosperous community than it is to live in a walled compound surrounded by ghettos.

              • @[email protected]
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                13 months ago

                Because life is better that way! It’s much nicer to live in a safe, walkable, integrated, and prosperous community than it is to live in a walled compound surrounded by ghettos.

                💯

                Selfish rich people should be properly selfish and make the world better so they don’t have to be grossed out by poors. Or worry about heli skiing becoming impossible one day. Be selfish richies!


                Hey economists love VAT I hear?

                • @[email protected]
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                  3 months ago

                  I’m reminded by the story I once read about Eritrea, a country with wealthy enclaves for the royal family plus foreign petro-engineers. The enclaves have these walls along the road with vast ghettos on the other side.

                  It’s a miserable place. The engineers tend not to stay long. Just make a lot of money in a short time period and then leave.

          • @[email protected]
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            You frame it like those are the only two choices. They aren’t.

            No, I provided a simplistic, informal explanation, not a conclusive evaluation.

            The third choice is capital flight.

            Let the parasites leave. That’s the point. They are sucking the working class dry, and we would be better off without them.

            Your argument operates under the assumption that a member of the current ownership class needs to be involved for a business to be successful. That is simply untrue. They aren’t the component enabling employment. They are the parasite leeching our productivity.

            The reality is that the most prosperous era of American history was made under a 91% tax rate, specifically because such a tax rate drives capital into the control of the working class.

          • Lovable Sidekick
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            3 months ago

            A third choice is capital flight. there are even more choices, including but are not limited to creative accounting to hide revenue and assets, or bribing -er I mean supporting politicians in exchange for writing loopholes into the tax code.

            • @[email protected]
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              13 months ago

              Yes. Capital flight is one of the last resort moves, as I said. Take your money with you and leave the hostile country.

    • @[email protected]
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      43 months ago

      EXACTLY! I found something so defeated and defeatist about this thread UNTIL I read your comment.

      This was once a reality!

      Why do we not have it now?

      Obviously an extremely nuanced question but clearly part of that is that even the obscenely wealthy were forced to realize that obscene wealth destroys more than it builds.

  • @[email protected]
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    Yeah, my mother was able to earn a bachelor’s degree (iirc? either that or an associates), paying for it by working as a cashier at McDonalds.

    The fucking eighties, man.

    My anger as I approach my thirties, unable to afford college even when I was working full time (before I lost my job), can not be overstated.

    • @[email protected]
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      153 months ago

      You can still do that if you live in a first world country… Yes, I’m implying what I’m implying.

      • @[email protected]
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        223 months ago

        Lemmy, every 5 seconds:

        guys are you aware the united states sucks

        guys
        guys

        I don’t think you’re aware

        the US sucks

        guys

        listen

        hey

        the US sucks

        did you know that?

        guyssssss

        like, yes, I get it, we suck, but also it’s exhausting being unable to emigrate anywhere and being constantly reminded of how much suck I get to endure for the rest of forever.

        • @[email protected]
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          93 months ago

          That’s what happens when your country won’t shut up about how great they are. Or rather, won’t shut up full stop.

          “USA! USA! USA! NUMBER ONE!” Is so fucking annoying, of course non-Americans remind you you’re only number one in percentage of the population in prison.

          America is a shit country that feeds its population “patriotic” propaganda from the day they are born until the day they die. You literally make a pledge every day at school. That’s cult behaviour.

          Lemmy just opens your eyes to the rest of the world, where you’re no longer in the bubble of America. Lemmy isn’t the problem, you’re just finally hearing the voices of those outside the USA, unfiltered.

          This is from Scotland, in 1983, the sentiment now hasn’t changed much.

          I’m sorry that this comment is so harsh because you’re just tryna live your life and already sound down about being told how shit your country is. But Americans need reminded that we don’t “hate ya cuz we ain’t ya” or jealous or whatever, as a nation you’re just insufferably obnoxious and commit heinous crimes whilst making out you’re the saviour of the world, the good guys, the world police. When you’re institutionally arseholes. You won’t even submit to international criminal courts or uphold most human rights. America is a bully nation that is finally reaping what it’s sown.

          If you’re an American reading this and you’re fucking fuming at what I’ve said and want to throw hands, good. Use that anger to create positive change in this world. Organise unions, strike in solidarity, stand up for others, become politically active, change your country for the better. Stop enabling greedy consumerist behaviour and excusing rapists, racists, and murderers. You may just be one person, what can you do? But I’m just some dude on the other side of the planet having a bored rant whilst taking a shit and I’ve managed to get you to read all this. Do something to improve your community, encourage others to do the same, many many incremental changes combined can make a large difference. Finally fucking live up to the tagline “land of the brave”, because you sure as shit don’t deserve it so far.

          • @[email protected]
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            33 months ago

            Yeah, most Americans are generally not into the “USA USA USA” cult-like behavior of it all. Most of us are just regular people working shitty jobs to pay for shitty places to live. And all the grandstanding and “Do something!” from your rant is extremely disingenuous to the people are fucking doing something. Just because you don’t hear about it doesn’t mean it’s not happening. And you’re kind of an asshole for generalizing a whole people like that.

        • Miles O'Brien
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          133 months ago

          And dint forget, no matter who you voted for you’re still a dirty American and FUCK YOU for existing at a time when your country sucks more than usual. It doesn’t matter how you voted or what your beliefs are.

          And also if you can’t move out of the country it’s your fault for not… Something. I guess.

          And also depending on what community you’re in, SUPER FUCK YOU for deciding to leave your country instead of fixing it.

          And of course, as we can already see, every single shortcoming of your country is CLEARLY your fault or at the very least you deserve to be punished for your country being shitty in any way, whether it started long before you were born or not.

  • zout
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    703 months ago

    Also flying to Vietnam for a government paid vacation when they were 18 years old.

          • @[email protected]
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            This kind of seems like a meaningless statistic without some more context (such as what % of US citizens were boomers, and what % of US citizens served in Vietnam). On its own, it doesn’t really say anything.

            I think a more useful statistic would be the percent of people who served in Vietnam that were boomers.

            • @[email protected]
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              13 months ago

              It matters because if you are going to say that a defining factor of that generation is that they went to Vietnam when less than 1/25 people did it’s misleading. It’s like saying that a defining factor of millennials was being in nyc when the twin towers went down

              • @[email protected]
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                Fair enough… I wasn’t the one who said that, and I do not agree. Vietnam itself was a defining factor of the generation, but not “going to Vietnam”

        • @[email protected]
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          93 months ago

          Baby boomers are 1946-1964 Gen X is 1965-1980 Gen Y is 1981-1996 Gen Z is 1997-2012 Gen alpha is 2013- present

          • @[email protected]
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            63 months ago

            It’s all made up horse shit to draw lines between us. People don’t neatly fit into a line or graph and it’s really lame people keep repeating this crap.

            • @[email protected]
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              33 months ago

              It’s not some complicated plot to drive conflict… it’s literally just a metric that has turned out to be somewhat useful as we can talk about what major life events different generations experienced at what approximate age.

              For example most Gen Y was a teen when 9/11 happened and most Gen X was a teen when the challenger explosion happened and most boomers were a teen when we landed on the moon

    • Lovable Sidekick
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      Shhhh, the primary social media population wants to believe life was a breeze until they came along.

      • @[email protected]
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        133 months ago

        It was kind of a breeze in comparison to now, no? My dad bought his first house for $37,000 when the average salary was $15,000. I just bought a house and couldn’t find one within an hour for under $420,000… The average salary around here is apparently $55,000

        • Lovable Sidekick
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          23 months ago

          Valid point that life was cheaper than it is now (and also a lot more expensive than when my parents were my age). But that whole time is weirdly misrepresented like it was a walk in the part, ignoring the massive social upheaval over race issues, women’s rights, the Vietnam War, pollution, Nixon and many other things. There was also the Cold War keeping us in constant fear of World War 3. My school had air raid practice FFS. Life wasn’t a party, it was just less expensive.

        • zout
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          43 months ago

          But is it also the average household salary? Most boomers were single income. Then in the late eighties early nineties people realized that you could get higher mortgages in a double income, and as a result houses got a lot more expensive. Also, interest rates have declined a lot since the eighties, which also allowed people to borrow more.

          • @[email protected]
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            123 months ago

            That just adds to my point? It doesn’t matter why it happened, housing is significantly more expensive compared to income. But since you brought it up, let’s do the math.

            $15,000 average salary, single income, $37,000 house. That’s about 30 months salary.

            $55,000 average salary, dual income ($110,000), $420,000 house. That’s 45 months salary. With both people working.

            So…yeah, seems like “the basics” are a lot harder to achieve nowadays than they were in the 80s.

            • zout
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              13 months ago

              I really wouldn’t know if that last statement is true. We were only discussing housing, so not all of the basics. Also, like I said earlier, interest rates on mortgages were higher in the past. I would also consider this when comparing, because the interest can be more than total debt.

              • @[email protected]
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                63 months ago

                Interest rates peaked in '81 at 18% and yes that brings it closer to today’s % of income…but it plummeted within a few years.

                And housing/mortgage stuff isn’t the only part in this equation - the bottom 90% of the country has been getting significantly less for their labor since Reagan. Money is hoarded and wages have not kept up with inflation

      • @[email protected]
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        63 months ago

        Life has always been a struggle, but it truly feels hopeless being 20 something given the current state of the world. There’s some days where I spend 80% of the day consumed by suicidal thoughts.

        • @[email protected]
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          13 months ago

          And you can’t admit it to anyone, lest you end up involuntarily committed for a couple days and also handed the bill for the stay 🙃

      • @[email protected]
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        273 months ago

        There was no oil crisis, no cold war, no economic crash in the 80s, no housing shortage in the 80s, no rampant crime!

        The 70/80s where glorious!

        /Sssss

        • Lovable Sidekick
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          23 months ago

          I definitely enjoyed myself, more in the 80s than the 70s (which seemed largely like the record industry still trying to milk money out of the 60s).

          • @[email protected]
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            13 months ago

            Well if you enjoyed the 80s soooo much then a) you where too young to grasp the problems facing your parents or b) you where too well off.

            Just look at the cinema and listen to the music of my fine period.

            Everything, every theme was: please dont kill us and can i have a room to call my own.

            The politics where insane, mortgage rates of 10-15% where the norm, enormous economic shifts.

            The 90s where fun but the eighties where, in my experience, very, very dark.

            Ever listened to, I dunno, two tribes, war, dancing with tears in my eyes, Russians, etc.? Those first albums of u2? Really grasped what Terminator was about? Wall Street? Or the much lighter but still terribly fucked Trading Places?

            It was all really dark stuff, my brother. Fun, but very dark.

            • Lovable Sidekick
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              I was a regular guy in my 20s/30s working as a computer programmer, living in a house with roommates and doing a lot of theatre. Amazingly there were more than your two possibilities, and I would hazard a guess that there are even more. LPT: simplistic binary thinking makes people boring.

              • @[email protected]
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                13 months ago

                Yep, regular guy in the 80s doing programming.

                Thats even now not so regular, that was very special and very high paying back then.

                So amazingly, you being in your 70s (80s where 40 years ago after all) now and still unable to really fathom, comprehend, how very very good you probably still have it compared to others is telling enough. And that was one of the two binary options i gave for the 80s: too young too comprehend, too rich to care. You clearly fell and probably still fall in the latter category.

                Not a lot 70+ year olds on Lemmy btw.

                That all, combined with the use of the lpt acronym makes me doubt your age. That, or i’m talking to a llm.

                Binary is boring that is true. It also has a 50% chance of being right the first time.

                • Lovable Sidekick
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                  13 months ago

                  Obviously you know my life better at a glance than I do, having lived it. Meme-level thinking at its best! Take in minimal information, make a value judgement based almost entirely on preconceptions, and scroll on to the next item. This is why we have Trump (again) - because too many people dismissed all the issues as simple good/evil decisions so they could get back to entertaining themselves.

      • 𝕽𝖚𝖆𝖎𝖉𝖍𝖗𝖎𝖌𝖍
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        113 months ago

        It’s also forgetting the Korean war, and several smaller wars in between (Panama, Honduras).

        Vietnam was bad, but don’t forget so easily that we only just got out of the longest running war the US was ever been in, and it wasn’t Boomers or Gen X fighting in it. It spanned two generations. Now, because there US just can’t not be involved in a conflict, we’re casting about trying to find a good enemy; I think the next one will be with a developed country. We’ve realized that we don’t do so well with insurgencies, so maybe Russia or China. Or, maybe India and Pakistan will finish everything for us! They both have nukes, and China isn’t just going to sit there while they trade nukes across the border.

        Anyway, it’s a little depressing that y’all have already written off the 800,000 veterans who fought in Afghanistan as being unworthy of notice.

        • @[email protected]
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          103 months ago

          The Korean War “ended” in 1953 the oldest boomer would have been 7 year olds, about half of them were the right age for Vietnam but even with that only about 2.7m served in some capacity for the Vietnam war with a lot in non combat roles there were 76m baby boom era so less than 4%

        • Lovable Sidekick
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          If you want to nitpick in that area, US soldiers in the Middle East over the past 30 years have all been enlistees, average age around 30. The average age of US soldiers in Vietnam was 19, most of whom were drafted. No American high school students since 1973 have had to watch lottery balls on TV decide whether they get sent to war.

  • Lovable Sidekick
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    Some people are taller, smarter or better looking than me. It’s not fair!!!

    • @[email protected]
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      83 months ago

      Yes. He’s really saying that about the generation who was factually proven to have been mentally affected by leaded gasoline.

      That’s it. You’re so smart. Go take your statins and nap.

    • @[email protected]
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      113 months ago

      Is it wrong to highlight that society in the west has gotten worse.

      Sure you can’t blame boomers for just being born at the right time, but you can certainly blame them from pulling up the ladder and voting against anything that will affect them.

      Take near me in the UK, plenty of home owners protesting against adding more houses along the green belt as it might devalue their properties. Utterly selfish behaviour, yet there are some home owners in these areas that support more houses because they care about more people than just themselves.

      If you think giving more people a better chance at life is a threat to your existence then you’re a shitty person.

      • Lovable Sidekick
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        13 months ago

        No, it’s definitely not wrong to highlight societal problems, but boomers didn’t pull up any ladder, son. Billionaires and business in general did that. Normal people just went to work, came home, lived our lives. What percent of ANY generation do you think has the influence to personally affect society? I’ve been voting progressive ever since I was old enough to vote. I was never invited to any of the meetings where boomers sat down and decided to fuck over future generations, and no I don’t think giving more people a better chance at life is a threat to my existence. I also think it’s weak to put stupid words in people’s mouths to justify stereotyping them. Have a nice day.

    • @[email protected]
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      13 months ago

      Some people are taller, smarter or better looking than me.

      Yep. Quite a bit of people are all of these.

  • @[email protected]
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    3 months ago

    What about Korea, Bay of Pigs, Vietnam and the fact that ptsd was treated with electrical shocks or drilling holes in your brain

  • @[email protected]
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    253 months ago

    I don’t blame old people, they lived the best of times, their lives were comfortable because they were in a boom. They had high hopes, had kids with a bright future in mind for them, but things change, some see it, others are oblivious to it.

        • @[email protected]
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          Yeah, no. Speak for yourself please.

          I already have so much less opportunity than the average boomer, and I’m still not doing that. Because I’m not a piece of shit. It’s really not difficult.

    • @[email protected]
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      It’s still fair to blame them. Old people blame young people for everything afterall.

      • @[email protected]
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        13 months ago

        My parents don’t, well not completely. They know the world be screwed up, but they also think there’s a degree of responsibility on my part too. We are all stuck in this shit show together, and old people thought they’d be dead long before it got really really bad, but Trump SA’d the money, and now we all get to suffer.

        I’d keep friends and loved ones close.

    • @[email protected]
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      13 months ago

      it’s not “things change” all the current mess was created by them in the decades after the time period of the op tweet

      • @[email protected]
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        263 months ago

        Because they don’t vote…

        If your demographic is (correctly) viewed as being made up of nonvoters, then politicians are never going to pander to you no matter how much you whine online.

        • m3t00🌎
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          43 months ago

          it’s a hard truth so many fail to realize. small inconvenience to clam your views.

        • @[email protected]
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          33 months ago

          Two party system. One party is neoliberal ultracapitalists, the other is racist mysoginist neoliberal ultracapitalists.

  • @[email protected]
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    3 months ago

    The future looks less bleak if the goal is not to live the life of that generation. There is AI, there are mobile phones, there is solar power and many more things.

    When things are expensive, it means that few resources are used. This is good for the environment.

    The big difference is that communication is free. We can talk to almost anybody in the world. This is still a huge untapped potential. That generation had a good life, but ours can be better.