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Not sure how this is being downvoted - the truth hurts. We just have it too damn good, and without any wide-scale struggles to know how good we have it. I woul

Not sure how this is being downvoted - the truth hurts. We just have it too damn good, and without any wide-scale struggles to know how good we have it. I would like to a read a serious response from a detractor.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
sambodigiorno 10y ago
I'm your Huckleberry. My parents are late boomers and they and many of their friends were able to sleep-walk into middle class comfort and early retirement. Literally all they had to do was show up for work, 9-5, Monday-Friday and their prosperity was lifted on a rising tide of property prices. When they were in their 20s you applied for a job by sending a CV and covering letter. No three rounds of assessment days and homework assignments. When they left work at the end of the day, it didn't follow them home because technology didn't allow it. And the world of fax machines and mail rooms was limited in the amount of ruthless efficiency pressure it could put on workers. They didn't even need degrees. And my mother is a perfect example of how boomer women being expected to be secretaries is anachronistic SJW nonsense. She never attended university, just started working as a junior claims person at an insurance firm in the 70s, showed up for work for 30 years and ended up in the boardroom with stock options. Never faced any discrimination. And she would be the first to admit she never put much into her career - no need for constant re-training, seminars, conferences, when she was home she was home. While enjoying these comfortable lives, their generation with their hippy views presided over explosive increases in immigration to most western countries, and are the architects of wealth-hoarding tricks like buy-to-let and all kinds of snaky BS union-breaking contract work. The bottom line is, as a young person today you simply couldn't repeat their lives in terms of comfort and financial security. To match it, you'd need to put in several times the effort and hours they did, with a lot more anxiety biting at your heels. The first Millennials came of age to the images of those planes hitting the WTC and, as corny as it is, that was some incredibly apt symbology. The few of us who manage to be "anti-fragile" may make out good from this new era, but that the security of the ordinary middle-class majority has been shattered is indisputable.
thriftwy 10y ago
There's no room to grow. In the modern world, for most people, there's nothing productive to do and no fame to get from it. In the USA, all the highways are already built (and even when they're failing, their fixing will be postponed). High speed rail lines weren't, and they're not going to be. Not on any human time frame. So most people are engaged with running pre-built technosphere that is slowly falling apart, with no new developments, for ever-shrinking pay, while more and more money are extorted from them to pay for previous generations entitlements, and also for medicine, real estate, tuition and law, which from services all turned into endless money sinks. Friges and ovens are not the alpha and omega of life. Productivity, respect and growth are. Are we having any all across post-development countries?
- edblarney 10y ago
  "There's no room to grow." "Productivity, respect and growth are. Are we having any all across post-development countries?" Have any of you ever taken a basic Econ course? 'No room for growth'? THE ECONOMY HAS BEEN GROWING EVERY YEAR. Do you realize that 'feature phones' to 'cell phones' is economic growth? Do you realize that '2G to 4G' is economic growth? Do you realize that more people going to college than ever before is good? There are new medicine trials every day - gene therapy. Jesus H Christ you can now chose the gender and eye colour of your offspring. That's how advanced we are. 100 years ago - there was no 'medicine'. 95% of all operations were basically amputations with crossed fingers of no infection. Do you realize that the amount of air travel in the world has doubled in the last little while? That you have access to 100000x more information that people just 20 years ago, before the internet? You do realize that the iPhone/Android/Facebook are only 10 years old? That 20 years ago there was no YCombinator? I'm just going to assume that most of you are too young to have any perspective, because I just can't understand the commentary here. When you hit your 30's, you can look back and your own life can be a literal testament to the change. Yes, some things stay the same, but at least in terms of material productivity, things are better.
  - thriftwy 10y ago
    > THE ECONOMY HAS BEEN GROWING If the college provides same service while extorting twice as much money, this means that economy grows, but people become poorer, more indebted and strained. The economy might be growing; but WE don't. > Do you realize that more people going to college than ever before is good? But when they graduate they have worse employment prospects than High School graduates 40 years ago. > Do you realize that '2G to 4G' is economic growth? But how many participate in it as makers and not just as consumers? When Interstates happened, a lot of people made them with their hands. But now, very few people are directly involved in the 2G to 4G transition and are proud for it. The others just feel like a passengers in a fast moving bus without any control of the route, or, for that reason, trip safety. > Jesus H Christ you can now chose the gender and eye colour of your offspring But can you afford it today as a middle-income person? If you can't, it's not there yet. What's the engagement numbers? > You do realize that the iPhone/Android/Facebook are only 10 years old? ...but I liked more what was before them. I would have preferred N900 and LiveJournal, too bad I don't have this choice realistically. Talk about bus passengers. > Do you realize that the amount of air travel in the world has doubled in the last little while? How many people are making it happen? And not on the crappy jobs such as flight attendants? Wait - now even the pilots have their jobs unsatisfactory thanks to long hours and bad pay. > When you hit your 30's I'm 32.
alphonsegaston 10y ago
Okay, here's one. The boomer's coasted on the tail end of a rising post-war economy and government largesse, then burned the ladder behind them and destroyed their legacy by electing Reagan. By any measure (college financing, wages, home prices) they were ridiculously advantaged relative to young people today, who now have to suffer under an obscenely priced regime of credentialism, largely administered (for their own profit) by Boomers. Instead of extending these advantages to young people, they sold them down the river to an actor pretending to be a conservative, who got off on police shooting protestors and buddied up with apartheid South Africa. Why? So they could get pay less taxes and get false promises of "animal spirits" inflating their 401ks. And when the social progress they ostensibly fought so hard for came up against the wall, they chose to let schools be resegregated, throw all the POC drug users in jail, and have LGBTQ people die of AIDS (because, y'know, property values). This disgusting rightward lurch sets the stage for a CIA scion to pretend he was a cowboy and kill half a million innocent people in the Middle East and destroy the economy. And now a parody of Reagan himself to do the same or worse, putting the nail in the coffin of Millennial's future. And also: Ended the Cold War? Look at 2017 and think about that one. More like destroyed an already poor country with corrupt Capitalism, so the KGB could take over and come back at us even stronger.
- edblarney 10y ago
  "The boomer's coasted on the tail end of a rising post-war economy and government largesse, then burned the ladder behind them and destroyed their legacy by electing Reagan. " Utter bullshit. It's not even anectodal - it's just complete narrative fiction. This is HN, try some facts. Which material or social elements regarding standard of living between the generations, implies that 'Millenials have it harder'? By every external measure, you have more wealth and opportunity than any generation in history. "This disgusting rightward lurch sets the stage for a CIA scion to pretend he was a cowboy " What the smack are you on about? This is HN not the Huffington Post. "Ended the Cold War? Look at 2017 and think about that one." If you were alive during the cold war, then you know that 2017 is obviously not the cold war. Stop complaining.
  - alphonsegaston 10y ago

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

sambodigiorno 10y ago

I'm your Huckleberry. My parents are late boomers and they and many of their friends were able to sleep-walk into middle class comfort and early retirement. Literally all they had to do was show up for work, 9-5, Monday-Friday and their prosperity was lifted on a rising tide of property prices. When they were in their 20s you applied for a job by sending a CV and covering letter. No three rounds of assessment days and homework assignments. When they left work at the end of the day, it didn't follow them home because technology didn't allow it. And the world of fax machines and mail rooms was limited in the amount of ruthless efficiency pressure it could put on workers. They didn't even need degrees. And my mother is a perfect example of how boomer women being expected to be secretaries is anachronistic SJW nonsense. She never attended university, just started working as a junior claims person at an insurance firm in the 70s, showed up for work for 30 years and ended up in the boardroom with stock options. Never faced any discrimination. And she would be the first to admit she never put much into her career - no need for constant re-training, seminars, conferences, when she was home she was home. While enjoying these comfortable lives, their generation with their hippy views presided over explosive increases in immigration to most western countries, and are the architects of wealth-hoarding tricks like buy-to-let and all kinds of snaky BS union-breaking contract work. The bottom line is, as a young person today you simply couldn't repeat their lives in terms of comfort and financial security. To match it, you'd need to put in several times the effort and hours they did, with a lot more anxiety biting at your heels. The first Millennials came of age to the images of those planes hitting the WTC and, as corny as it is, that was some incredibly apt symbology. The few of us who manage to be "anti-fragile" may make out good from this new era, but that the security of the ordinary middle-class majority has been shattered is indisputable.

thriftwy 10y ago

There's no room to grow. In the modern world, for most people, there's nothing productive to do and no fame to get from it. In the USA, all the highways are already built (and even when they're failing, their fixing will be postponed). High speed rail lines weren't, and they're not going to be. Not on any human time frame. So most people are engaged with running pre-built technosphere that is slowly falling apart, with no new developments, for ever-shrinking pay, while more and more money are extorted from them to pay for previous generations entitlements, and also for medicine, real estate, tuition and law, which from services all turned into endless money sinks. Friges and ovens are not the alpha and omega of life. Productivity, respect and growth are. Are we having any all across post-development countries?

edblarney 10y ago
"There's no room to grow." "Productivity, respect and growth are. Are we having any all across post-development countries?" Have any of you ever taken a basic Econ course? 'No room for growth'? THE ECONOMY HAS BEEN GROWING EVERY YEAR. Do you realize that 'feature phones' to 'cell phones' is economic growth? Do you realize that '2G to 4G' is economic growth? Do you realize that more people going to college than ever before is good? There are new medicine trials every day - gene therapy. Jesus H Christ you can now chose the gender and eye colour of your offspring. That's how advanced we are. 100 years ago - there was no 'medicine'. 95% of all operations were basically amputations with crossed fingers of no infection. Do you realize that the amount of air travel in the world has doubled in the last little while? That you have access to 100000x more information that people just 20 years ago, before the internet? You do realize that the iPhone/Android/Facebook are only 10 years old? That 20 years ago there was no YCombinator? I'm just going to assume that most of you are too young to have any perspective, because I just can't understand the commentary here. When you hit your 30's, you can look back and your own life can be a literal testament to the change. Yes, some things stay the same, but at least in terms of material productivity, things are better.
- thriftwy 10y ago
  > THE ECONOMY HAS BEEN GROWING If the college provides same service while extorting twice as much money, this means that economy grows, but people become poorer, more indebted and strained. The economy might be growing; but WE don't. > Do you realize that more people going to college than ever before is good? But when they graduate they have worse employment prospects than High School graduates 40 years ago. > Do you realize that '2G to 4G' is economic growth? But how many participate in it as makers and not just as consumers? When Interstates happened, a lot of people made them with their hands. But now, very few people are directly involved in the 2G to 4G transition and are proud for it. The others just feel like a passengers in a fast moving bus without any control of the route, or, for that reason, trip safety. > Jesus H Christ you can now chose the gender and eye colour of your offspring But can you afford it today as a middle-income person? If you can't, it's not there yet. What's the engagement numbers? > You do realize that the iPhone/Android/Facebook are only 10 years old? ...but I liked more what was before them. I would have preferred N900 and LiveJournal, too bad I don't have this choice realistically. Talk about bus passengers. > Do you realize that the amount of air travel in the world has doubled in the last little while? How many people are making it happen? And not on the crappy jobs such as flight attendants? Wait - now even the pilots have their jobs unsatisfactory thanks to long hours and bad pay. > When you hit your 30's I'm 32.

alphonsegaston 10y ago

Okay, here's one. The boomer's coasted on the tail end of a rising post-war economy and government largesse, then burned the ladder behind them and destroyed their legacy by electing Reagan. By any measure (college financing, wages, home prices) they were ridiculously advantaged relative to young people today, who now have to suffer under an obscenely priced regime of credentialism, largely administered (for their own profit) by Boomers. Instead of extending these advantages to young people, they sold them down the river to an actor pretending to be a conservative, who got off on police shooting protestors and buddied up with apartheid South Africa. Why? So they could get pay less taxes and get false promises of "animal spirits" inflating their 401ks. And when the social progress they ostensibly fought so hard for came up against the wall, they chose to let schools be resegregated, throw all the POC drug users in jail, and have LGBTQ people die of AIDS (because, y'know, property values). This disgusting rightward lurch sets the stage for a CIA scion to pretend he was a cowboy and kill half a million innocent people in the Middle East and destroy the economy. And now a parody of Reagan himself to do the same or worse, putting the nail in the coffin of Millennial's future. And also: Ended the Cold War? Look at 2017 and think about that one. More like destroyed an already poor country with corrupt Capitalism, so the KGB could take over and come back at us even stronger.

edblarney 10y ago
"The boomer's coasted on the tail end of a rising post-war economy and government largesse, then burned the ladder behind them and destroyed their legacy by electing Reagan. " Utter bullshit. It's not even anectodal - it's just complete narrative fiction. This is HN, try some facts. Which material or social elements regarding standard of living between the generations, implies that 'Millenials have it harder'? By every external measure, you have more wealth and opportunity than any generation in history. "This disgusting rightward lurch sets the stage for a CIA scion to pretend he was a cowboy " What the smack are you on about? This is HN not the Huffington Post. "Ended the Cold War? Look at 2017 and think about that one." If you were alive during the cold war, then you know that 2017 is obviously not the cold war. Stop complaining.
- alphonsegaston 10y ago