7 ms·

It's interesting how people see lives as an outsider - I see many who are paid well yet are unhappy and complain they are poor all the times. I have been living

It's interesting how people see lives as an outsider - I see many who are paid well yet are unhappy and complain they are poor all the times. I have been living in the last 10 years in the US (near the St Louis area) as an international student. Some of the complaints are true, for example, housing has become very expensive. Part of what to blame is immigrants/international students (especially ones with rich parents in undergraduate) who drive up demands for land and housing. But on the other hand, I know many millennial friends -- females and males -- who complained they "can't cook" and would eat out every meal and "food is very expensive." That "can't cook" disability is especially common among American friends for some reason. I know friends who work at Walmart who take home $1300 per month and have cell phone plans with unlimited everything for $120 per month because they can't live without a "good phone." Same for having pets, taking credit card loans, car payments, Netflix subscriptions, game consoles, dresses, cosmetics, non-GMO food, fancy gadgets, etc. When a phone or a laptop breaks, they say that's a piece of junk and throw it away to buy a new one. And at the end of the month, they ask where the money went. Sometimes I think because some people think they are entitled to the "lifestyle" they have now. While I don't think it's fair to say everything has to stay the same, but I have seen and know people who don't take those things for granted in grad school. I see some people had depression, yet they didn't get a dog as a companion because they knew they couldn't afford a dog. When a laptop broke, they would try to ask a friend to fix it. Yet, I think you would rarely hear a person complaining they couldn't afford a dog, you only hear people who have dogs and complain that "dogs are expensive" "people who have dogs are discriminated against" when it comes to housing, and they don't "make enough money." You hear people who complained they had to throw the laptop away to the trash can because it breaks after 2 years and they got ripped off for a piece of shit, and can't afford a "good" (aka expensive) new one. You hear people who dumped their phones in the toilet and are like "I just know Apple and iPhones, and I like blue bubbles, don't ask me to buy any cheap shit," and at the same time "I don't make enough." You don't usually hear the person who rocks their 5 year old secondhand Android phone with a broken screen complaining about not having money to buy another phone. Sometimes I wonder: Did their parents not cook at home ever? Did their parents change cars every 5 years and phones every 1.5? Did their parents throw a computer away because they spilled coffee on it? Did their parents only use Apple because they only know Apple? Did their parents never buy secondhand products? The entitled are the ones who tend to complain the most about money. On the other hand, I see many who see life as self-sufficient, live humbly and enjoy life for whatever they have. The unprecedented amount of advertisement and social media might have contributed to that sense of entitlement. Keeping up with the Joneses is hard, who would have thought?

salawat 8y ago
Have you or anyone you know tried making it by on with a 'normal' job through adversity? The hiccups and bumps that life can throw at us have gone higher and higher in price. Health benefits were basically a given for my parents growing up, even when working in retail full time. Now, most places play HR shenanigans to avoid having to offer either those benefits, or enough wage for the worker to afford them themselves. Paying out of pocket is even more destructive in the sense that without an insurer backing you up, you end up having to fight shifty pricing practices on your own, where the insurance company devotes entire departments to it. Or how bout that iPhone? Increasingly, the non-digital Rolodex is becoming an anachronism. Contact information and the ability to communicate at "normal" rates results in increased dependence on technology that is being priced inordinately high. Or how about drug companies buying old drugs long proven and jacking up prices. Or keeping new drugs from being generic'd to bring down prices? Or how about those bankers, and real estate firms buying up and developing land purely for rent seeking? How about that lack of SERIOUS financial education, and an increasingly skewed and asymmetric job market where companies are paying 1970's wages, but raking in 20XX revenues? Tried learning how to fix your car and maintain equipment that has become increasingly unfriendly to user service? I get your message. Don't pretend it is all their fault though. The System they have to work from is pretty gnarly, and very few have any precious idea how to navigate it surefire. Even the more "Well-to-do" who have done everything right can end up with sudden massive reversals of fortune. Before you start calling an ENTIRE generation out for having messed up priorities, remember that the priorities that lead to success had their foundations set by those that came before, and not even THOSE foundations are guaranteed to remain relevant. The whole world seems to have this idea that there is an entitlement to greatness. The elders for the work they've done, and the youngsters from youthful inexperience. A humble, self-sufficient life doesn't even occur to many as an option anymore, and becomes less and less probable as tech and globalised economies of scale begin to maximize around fiscal success as a proxy to improving human quality of life. But hey, life and big picture thinking is hard and making dismissive excuses instead of recognizing our own parts we play of the problems we face as a species/society is easy, right?
ohyes 8y ago
Your little diatribe has little to do with the article. Happiness is obviously a state of mind and any of us can be happy with any amount of income above abject poverty. That’s not the point. This isn’t a morality parable. The point is that people of my age are set back economically compared to generations prior at the same stage in life. Not us bourgeois tech dweebs, but normal people who aren’t in industries that have had unprecedented growth over the last 30 years. Think about that for minute. Even wages in tech have been mostly stagnant, keeping up with inflation but not really growing, despite the incredible, staggering wealth creation of the last 30 years. No. This isn’t keeping up with the Joneses, this is the system being broken in a fundamental way for the common person. The few get rich and the rest are left behind to toil in financial uncertainty until an inevitable hardship wipes out their savings and they’re back at square one, or more likely in great debt. I own a 15 year old car, haven’t been on a vacation in 10 years, and work as a software engineer making 120k in a major metro. I put the max into my investment/ savings account. If I feel concerned about this in my admittedly comfortable lifestyle, I can’t even imagine the level of stress that the other person who doesn’t have my skills/advantages feels like. The person who works a minimum wage job must be in constant complete financial terror. The type where you give up and shut down and stop trying to dig out of the financial hole, because it’s bottomless and endless and it keeps getting deeper.

salawat 8y ago

Have you or anyone you know tried making it by on with a 'normal' job through adversity? The hiccups and bumps that life can throw at us have gone higher and higher in price. Health benefits were basically a given for my parents growing up, even when working in retail full time. Now, most places play HR shenanigans to avoid having to offer either those benefits, or enough wage for the worker to afford them themselves. Paying out of pocket is even more destructive in the sense that without an insurer backing you up, you end up having to fight shifty pricing practices on your own, where the insurance company devotes entire departments to it. Or how bout that iPhone? Increasingly, the non-digital Rolodex is becoming an anachronism. Contact information and the ability to communicate at "normal" rates results in increased dependence on technology that is being priced inordinately high. Or how about drug companies buying old drugs long proven and jacking up prices. Or keeping new drugs from being generic'd to bring down prices? Or how about those bankers, and real estate firms buying up and developing land purely for rent seeking? How about that lack of SERIOUS financial education, and an increasingly skewed and asymmetric job market where companies are paying 1970's wages, but raking in 20XX revenues? Tried learning how to fix your car and maintain equipment that has become increasingly unfriendly to user service? I get your message. Don't pretend it is all their fault though. The System they have to work from is pretty gnarly, and very few have any precious idea how to navigate it surefire. Even the more "Well-to-do" who have done everything right can end up with sudden massive reversals of fortune. Before you start calling an ENTIRE generation out for having messed up priorities, remember that the priorities that lead to success had their foundations set by those that came before, and not even THOSE foundations are guaranteed to remain relevant. The whole world seems to have this idea that there is an entitlement to greatness. The elders for the work they've done, and the youngsters from youthful inexperience. A humble, self-sufficient life doesn't even occur to many as an option anymore, and becomes less and less probable as tech and globalised economies of scale begin to maximize around fiscal success as a proxy to improving human quality of life. But hey, life and big picture thinking is hard and making dismissive excuses instead of recognizing our own parts we play of the problems we face as a species/society is easy, right?

ohyes 8y ago

Your little diatribe has little to do with the article. Happiness is obviously a state of mind and any of us can be happy with any amount of income above abject poverty. That’s not the point. This isn’t a morality parable. The point is that people of my age are set back economically compared to generations prior at the same stage in life. Not us bourgeois tech dweebs, but normal people who aren’t in industries that have had unprecedented growth over the last 30 years. Think about that for minute. Even wages in tech have been mostly stagnant, keeping up with inflation but not really growing, despite the incredible, staggering wealth creation of the last 30 years. No. This isn’t keeping up with the Joneses, this is the system being broken in a fundamental way for the common person. The few get rich and the rest are left behind to toil in financial uncertainty until an inevitable hardship wipes out their savings and they’re back at square one, or more likely in great debt. I own a 15 year old car, haven’t been on a vacation in 10 years, and work as a software engineer making 120k in a major metro. I put the max into my investment/ savings account. If I feel concerned about this in my admittedly comfortable lifestyle, I can’t even imagine the level of stress that the other person who doesn’t have my skills/advantages feels like. The person who works a minimum wage job must be in constant complete financial terror. The type where you give up and shut down and stop trying to dig out of the financial hole, because it’s bottomless and endless and it keeps getting deeper.