It’s stunning how many people seem to forget that there are other countries on the planet that use dollars and weren’t involved in Vietnam. No, I’m not making an assumption. The person who posted this is Canadian.
Y’all really need to take a step back and reflect a little bit.
So you wouldn’t even live to be 60?
My dad bought about a third of an acre of waterfront property in the 80s with a small cottage on it that we added to. He paid something like $50,000. Guess what a small waterfront property is worth now?
No one gonna bite? Ok, I’ll go first… One million dollars!
Change the last bit to
Retire in 2001 with a inflation linked final salary pension scheme.
Yeah, you’ll still have a good 20 years to enjoy retirement with your portfolio, then peace out before the pandemic.
Then smile to yourself as the rest of the world grinds to a halt to protect you during the pandemic.
I don’t think dying at 54 is ideal…
Look at this guy with his “hopes” for a “future”
Look at this edgelord right here in his 20s. This obsession on Lemmy with killing oneself is fucking sick.
Bitch, I’m 42. They’ve been pulling this crap long enough that there’s more than one generation who are catastrophically fucked and well aware of it.
The ideal life is dying when you’re only 54? That’s pretty bleak!
Right? I sure hope it doesn’t take that long.
Longer than I expect to live
Fuck I hope not. I’m 54 now.
June 19th 2026. I’ll see you soon.
All the coke and alcohol catches up.
If you were a vet and saw combat in Vietnam, that was the cancer you got from all the Agent Orange they sprayed on you that killed you…
My birth father died a slow agonizing death after getting exposed to agent orange. My adopted mother calls me a bastard all the time. She is a horrible person. Life is America is horrible it is no wounder so many kill themselves.
But probably true!
My dad was born in 1947. He died a year ago. Lived in my basement for 3 years toward the end, we converted it to a “in-law” suite. Probably spent most of his money on medical bills though because he had an accident that paralyzed half his body.
Anyhow he worked the same job his entire life only worked his way up to middle management at a factory. Prided himself in slacking off his entire career and still did better than I do now and I have to work much harder and have my spouse be employed to pull in what he did alone half-assing it.
So it was different for sure, middle-class was easily achieved if you were a white male. I’d almost say if you were poor you just got very unlucky, were a single mom, or a minority. If you were a white male, you’d really have to be dealt a bad hand in life to not be middle-class.
Only to live during a time where hate and sexism was rampant. Nah, chief, I don’t wanna live in that period. I’m good.
Look around, you already do. You always did. There’s a lot more people willing to do the right thing and speak out against it now… but I wouldn’t count on that lasting much longer.
You’re right. But even if we lost this time, we can come back from this. Who knows how long that will take, but we can fix this.
Edit: Guess I ruffled a pessimist’s feathers with this comment.
Or you could’ve been sent to Vietnam…
Americans trying to comprehend people living outside their country except for when they’re killing them.
Okay, I agree with your sentiment but that level of harshness isn’t needed.
Americans do seriously have a problem with putting their own country as the center of the world in a thousand different ways. American Exceptionalism is pretty severe online, and in ways most Americans aren’t even aware they’re doing, but that ain’t the way to handle it bro. I’m out here being kinda dickish about it and even that I’m second guessing myself. But that’s just a bit too harsh.
Not as a Canadian
Goin out for a rip are ya bud?
Hilarious.
And nah I’m more newfie. Goin out fer a scoff me buddy
Hey b’y. How’s ya gettin’ on? Goin’ down fer a jigs dinner now da once
ELLO ME DUCKY! O you knows it, dis is it. Luh, save me a couple spuds der wouldya? Gotta get some grub, eh der b’y?
Hey bud you wanna go out for a rip?
We all live in a simulation
And nah but I’m down to go out for a scoff me buddy!
(Secret Newfie)
This is hyperbole
Didn’t work for me… in my 1972 bank job interview I was told, “I’d hire you if you were a man, but you’re not. If I hired you, you’d just get pregnant and leave.” It wasn’t against the law for him to say all that.
And for what it’s worth I didn’t buy a home - a small one-bed flat - until I was in my 40s. Cost me so much I couldn’t afford proper furniture. Yes, my current house is worth a lot more than what I paid for it (mainly because I bought a wreck), but so is any other house I could afford if I sold it.
I had the same interview at a dental office in something like 2017. I wasn’t offered the job because, as the female dentist told me, they’d have to put a lot of time and effort into teaching me, and then I might just get pregnant and quit.
At least there is only fans
Neo liberalism is proving to be a terrible bandaid. It could be argued their hasn’t been any human progress. We could turn back the clock for anything at this point.
This is great, as reply and shitty, as content. made my day and ruined my evening.
I’m sorry! Truly.
Wow, so it’s almost like no matter what time/year you were born that you will have hardships to face? Lemmy led me to believe that houses cost peanuts in the 60s and everyone working at a gas station could afford a multi room house.
would be great if you told us how much it costed and how much you brought in hourly. i wanna sympathize but then i remember you could rent a studio in the 70s-80s for like 300 dollars month. i probably could have bought a house with a missing arm and working 30 hours a week.
My flat cost £43k in the early 90s, nearly three times my annual income at the time, and all my savings went on the deposit. I had previously lived in a shared house, the only way I could afford to save anything.
More nostalgia… Looking for a 1br flat to rent in 1980s Wellington (NZ) was a trip. Demand far, far outstripped supply. Among the gems offered to me for top rental (can’t remember how much, but it was crazily high), was a place that stank of damp and had rat-holes chewed in the bathroom wall - which was just soggy softboard against a dirt bank. There were three couples viewing at the same time. Another place I was told was fresh to the market, no-one else had seen it yet. The stove had been dismantled and the toilet was piled high with human shit. When I shouted at the agent she said, You don’t want it then?" and hung up.
I eventually lucked in with a “granny flat” whose owners, an adorable elderly Polish couple, lived upstairs.
ahhh, didnt realize you were from the UK dont know enough to speak on it. i rescind anything i might have said
That’s the general problem for everyone who is not from US here on Lemmy: Everybody from US assumes that everybody knows we are talking about US. I would never say that “the ideal life is being born in 1947” and I was wondering why anyone would say that. That’s right after World War 2. Must have been a crazy time.
Yeah, I was hoping I’d see less of that moving away from Reddit to a non-US site, but eh, what can you do.
No worries - life is always a struggle for some, no matter where in the world you are.
Dang so it sounds like new Zealand has had a bit of a time with housing for a while then huh? I’ve heard a lot about it recently but just assumed it was a relatively new probably (post 2000-ish)
Yes we’ve been through multiple housing crises although it’s gotten truly ridiculous in the last couple decades.
The crowning achievement of the first labour government when they were elected in 1935 was to create a massive state house building programme due to the huge shortages and miserable state of the stock at the time. This continued until the 1980s when we went full neoliberal, privatised everything and sold off most of the state houses and private landlords and speculation now dominate.
Anything built between early 1990s and 2004ish is prone to leaks due to the deregulated building code at the time and is basically trash.
Wellington is a particularly bad case, and has always had a worse housing situation than the rest of the country (although Auckland is more expensive). Hilly topography has meant lack of space to build and lots of damp hovels that get little sun. Add in character/heritage protection that made it effectively illegal to alter or demolish the draughty and falling apart 1920s wooden villas that make up most of inner Wellington and there you go.
Wellington has had a heated property market longer than most places - it’s hilly for a start, so can’t just sprawl like Auckland, and it’s the capital, so a lot of well-heeled bureaucrats who don’t want to commute from the hinterlands. I don’t live there any more, so I don’t know what the rental market is like now.
I dont know how things are in new zealand these days but in a medium city in canada a house or condo costs at least 10 times the average annual income and closer to 20-25 times a minimum wage income. So things may not have been as easy for you as the post makes it seem but they’re a hell of a lot harder for a lot of people now.
You should do an AMA on life back then
Way to make me feel like a bloody dinosaur!! 😂
When my parents bought in the UK in the early 80s, the average family house was £20k. But mortgage rates at the time were ~20%, meaning you had to pay £4k per year just to cover the interest alone, and the average salary was below £6k.
Yes, interest came back down after a few years, but a lot of people learned about Negative Equity during those years.
You forgot the part where you get to call young people lazy
You have to be at least middle class and “white”/seen as the dominant demographic for this to work out. Just like every other place and time period.
What ‘place’ are we actually talking about here?
middle class constraint can be relaxed for hunter-gatherer societies.
Could one feasibly claim that the less hunter-gatherer we are, the less egalitarian we are, societally?
I’ve heard it claimed social stratification didn’t really start happening until agriculture; that’s when you see many small residential structures and a few large ones. On the other hand, it allowed for specialization and the pursuit of arts and sciences (at least for the elite).
I mean okay but this person would’ve been a young adult during the Vietnam war and the war on drugs and died at 53 to avoid the war on terror.
This is basically my dad
I am so tired of people presuming that
US’s economic history is somehow universal.all countries have first world economy of western hemisphere, more specifically, the anglosphere. Boy do I love cultural hegemony.This comment section is kind of hysterical. Some people saying “STOP IT ALWAYS BEING ABOUT AMERICA” and other people going “Vietnam because America” and I’m here as a Canadian like
k
And before you ask, yes. The person who tweeted that is Canadian.
i am here like ok then. go drink your maple syrup i guess. sorry i just don’t understand what you are trying to convey.
My point is that you immediately went “Not all countries had the economy of America” but this isn’t about America and I find that both funny and sad.
Everyone instantly goes to pointing fingers and saying “AMERICAN” and in doing so effectively treat Canada like it doesn’t exist. Either Americans are too bought into (whether they realize it or not) American Exceptionalism or foreigners are too focused on them because they’re loud as hell.
ok hold on imma fix my comment, so its correct and respects the first worlder outlook on geography.
k.
What economy would Canada have without the U.S., honestly? We’re all kind of entangled here in North America. I know you guys are all pissed at us right now, but it was not that long ago that people would call Canada “America’s little brother” endearingly
