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No surprise. Life is too precarious in America. You start at 18 with immense debt, jump through hoops in college, find a starting salary job, pay off student lo

No surprise. Life is too precarious in America. You start at 18 with immense debt, jump through hoops in college, find a starting salary job, pay off student loans, buy a car on debt, rent an expensive apartment, dating sucks, isolation and loneliness, spend days and nights grinding for corporate America, PIPs, unreasonable expectations, then get laid off a few times while rent/housing price keeps rising, bullshit healthcare that takes too much of your time and energy - and suddenly you are 35 with undeveloped social skills, high debt, loneliness, PIP for corporate America, and no real assets to speak of. And you want us to reach life milestones sooner?

throwaway5959 3y ago
Companies expect people to work constantly, especially since the pandemic. It’s ridiculous. Tech is totally different than what it was 10 years ago in terms of demands on people’s time.
- nine_zeros 3y ago
  > Companies expect people to work constantly, especially since the pandemic. It’s ridiculous. Tech is totally different than what it was 10 years ago in terms of demands on people’s time. Totally! The expectations have completely changed. Engineering used to be more like Architecture. You design stuff and then you manufacture it. But "managers" seem to want to treat it more like the warehouse where X number of packages must be shipped in this sprint.
than3 3y ago
> And you want us to reach life milestones sooner? Its pretty clear based on the conclusions of the article that the author doesn't have much credibility. Don't forget, there's no guarantee college = paying job. Its been shown with quite a lot of supporting evidence that experienced workers crowd out the entry-level jobs used by College Alumni, when their primary work isn't available. It used to be 'Everyone has a mortgage, and they do it for the mortgage'. Now its 'Everyone has rent, and they do it for the rent and food'.
laratied 3y ago
It strikes me that we just have our head in the sand when it comes to dating. From the sample of young guys I know, the ripped guy on trenbolone that takes great shirtless pictures is fucking so many women that he actually says he is picky on tinder. All the other guys are playing video games. The ripped guy has zero interest in relationships and giving up what he has now. The video game guys have zero chance at a relationship. No mystery that this setup is going to produce a highly neurotic society that almost no one is happy in besides the small group of guys working on a sex addiction. The other stuff you mention is really not much different than the past. Min wage in 1990 was $3.35 an hour and average new car price was $15k. All my money at 20 went to a piece of shit car that constantly broke down and needed repair. That was pretty much everyone I knew. That is a time when even the $15k new car was basically a piece of shit by modern standards. There was never a time in the past when the average person had it easy economically sipping champagne. Dating though you have a point.
- ravenstine 3y ago
  Dating today is tough for many reasons, most of which are systemic. To go on a bit of a tangent from the main discussion here, a certain amount of the difficulty is self inflicted. People are convinced that dating apps are their only option, but my experience has been the opposite in practice. The actual trouble is how so few people are actually willing to meet and give others a chance IRL. I host a bar games meetup in Los Angeles, a place you'd think would be teeming with youngish people looking to go out and have fun with new friends, and yet a meetup in a hip part of town like the Arts District may only have 4 attendees. Everyone complains about how hard dating is, but so few are willing to put down their phone and actually go out and find people. Even if they do, they come up with excuses as to why everyone is not their exact type. There's women I meet all the time who are obsessed with a certain archetype of man, and even if they happen to stumble upon that kind of man by chance, they refuse to approach. Men are no better either. What I'm saying is that these are choices people make. Companies like Tinder and the media we live vicariously through have definitely trashed the landscape, but we are also our own worst enemies, and I see that as the biggest problem. I'm not the most accomplished in terms of dating, but all of my long term relationships came out of just meeting people organically. I'm not even particularly good looking. I'm bald and have a touch of gray hair, but I've still managed to find opportunities with women. Even when I was fat I wasn't as hopeless as I thought I was at the time. Some people truly lose the genetic lottery, but at least 90% don't actually fall in that category. I just hope someone reads this and figures out that a big part of the problem with dating comes from within. Not everyone has to be in a relationship or be some kind of Casanova. But if it's something a person wants then they need to get out of their own way. The culture today convinces people to remain in their own way because it's not profitable for people to stop using apps and TV. > There was never a time in the past when the average person had it easy economically sipping champagne. There's truth to both claims. Things have always been difficult. I think there are also ways in which opportunities were more accessible to some, and the only thing holding those opportunities back today is an economical bust-boom similar to those that many of our elders were able to benefit from. Where I live, many of those in my parents generation got into careers they weren't educated or experienced in because the economic condition incentivizes businesses to hire anyone with a pulse. That can happen again, but we haven't had anything like that (outside of some sectors of tech) for at least 15 years. Many younger people found themselves to be "failures" because they needed far more debt and time investment than their parents only to end up with less than they had at the same age. To your point, things often seem harder because our expectations are higher than those of early generations, both in terms of person expectations and material expectations.
ravenstine 3y ago
To top it off, I find it common that older generations underestimate the amount of "wiggle room" they had that's barely available to the generations that follow them. My parents and other parents in their generation have told me countless stories of the ways they practically walked into jobs without experience, or the businesses they started from virtually nothing, and all the good deals that were afforded to them; yet these experiences can be nearly impossible to replicate today. Go ahead and "pound the pavement" with only a go-getter attitude and no experience, and see how that works out for you. I'm not the only one of my generation who were told by their parents to "just walk in and ask the manager for a job" or "offer to make them coffee or sweep their floors just to get your foot in the door" only to be met with laughter and being told to fuck off. Want to start a business like your parents did? Oh, well that's too bad, because the tax advantage they had was since sealed up by the IRS and the same industry now requires several forms of regulatory approval that didn't exist in 1987. But maybe you just want a low key, honest, and reasonably playing job, in which case your own parents may be voting against increasing minimum wage because "how dare they expect more than $3.75 an hour in 2023! I paid my way through college on $3.75 /hr!"
- arp242 3y ago
  Also: because the cost of living – especially housing – is so much higher, taking a risk like starting a business or a new job is a lot more, well, risk and requires a larger amount of savings.

throwaway5959 3y ago

Companies expect people to work constantly, especially since the pandemic. It’s ridiculous. Tech is totally different than what it was 10 years ago in terms of demands on people’s time.

nine_zeros 3y ago
> Companies expect people to work constantly, especially since the pandemic. It’s ridiculous. Tech is totally different than what it was 10 years ago in terms of demands on people’s time. Totally! The expectations have completely changed. Engineering used to be more like Architecture. You design stuff and then you manufacture it. But "managers" seem to want to treat it more like the warehouse where X number of packages must be shipped in this sprint.

than3 3y ago

> And you want us to reach life milestones sooner? Its pretty clear based on the conclusions of the article that the author doesn't have much credibility. Don't forget, there's no guarantee college = paying job. Its been shown with quite a lot of supporting evidence that experienced workers crowd out the entry-level jobs used by College Alumni, when their primary work isn't available. It used to be 'Everyone has a mortgage, and they do it for the mortgage'. Now its 'Everyone has rent, and they do it for the rent and food'.

laratied 3y ago

It strikes me that we just have our head in the sand when it comes to dating. From the sample of young guys I know, the ripped guy on trenbolone that takes great shirtless pictures is fucking so many women that he actually says he is picky on tinder. All the other guys are playing video games. The ripped guy has zero interest in relationships and giving up what he has now. The video game guys have zero chance at a relationship. No mystery that this setup is going to produce a highly neurotic society that almost no one is happy in besides the small group of guys working on a sex addiction. The other stuff you mention is really not much different than the past. Min wage in 1990 was $3.35 an hour and average new car price was $15k. All my money at 20 went to a piece of shit car that constantly broke down and needed repair. That was pretty much everyone I knew. That is a time when even the $15k new car was basically a piece of shit by modern standards. There was never a time in the past when the average person had it easy economically sipping champagne. Dating though you have a point.

ravenstine 3y ago
Dating today is tough for many reasons, most of which are systemic. To go on a bit of a tangent from the main discussion here, a certain amount of the difficulty is self inflicted. People are convinced that dating apps are their only option, but my experience has been the opposite in practice. The actual trouble is how so few people are actually willing to meet and give others a chance IRL. I host a bar games meetup in Los Angeles, a place you'd think would be teeming with youngish people looking to go out and have fun with new friends, and yet a meetup in a hip part of town like the Arts District may only have 4 attendees. Everyone complains about how hard dating is, but so few are willing to put down their phone and actually go out and find people. Even if they do, they come up with excuses as to why everyone is not their exact type. There's women I meet all the time who are obsessed with a certain archetype of man, and even if they happen to stumble upon that kind of man by chance, they refuse to approach. Men are no better either. What I'm saying is that these are choices people make. Companies like Tinder and the media we live vicariously through have definitely trashed the landscape, but we are also our own worst enemies, and I see that as the biggest problem. I'm not the most accomplished in terms of dating, but all of my long term relationships came out of just meeting people organically. I'm not even particularly good looking. I'm bald and have a touch of gray hair, but I've still managed to find opportunities with women. Even when I was fat I wasn't as hopeless as I thought I was at the time. Some people truly lose the genetic lottery, but at least 90% don't actually fall in that category. I just hope someone reads this and figures out that a big part of the problem with dating comes from within. Not everyone has to be in a relationship or be some kind of Casanova. But if it's something a person wants then they need to get out of their own way. The culture today convinces people to remain in their own way because it's not profitable for people to stop using apps and TV. > There was never a time in the past when the average person had it easy economically sipping champagne. There's truth to both claims. Things have always been difficult. I think there are also ways in which opportunities were more accessible to some, and the only thing holding those opportunities back today is an economical bust-boom similar to those that many of our elders were able to benefit from. Where I live, many of those in my parents generation got into careers they weren't educated or experienced in because the economic condition incentivizes businesses to hire anyone with a pulse. That can happen again, but we haven't had anything like that (outside of some sectors of tech) for at least 15 years. Many younger people found themselves to be "failures" because they needed far more debt and time investment than their parents only to end up with less than they had at the same age. To your point, things often seem harder because our expectations are higher than those of early generations, both in terms of person expectations and material expectations.

ravenstine 3y ago

To top it off, I find it common that older generations underestimate the amount of "wiggle room" they had that's barely available to the generations that follow them. My parents and other parents in their generation have told me countless stories of the ways they practically walked into jobs without experience, or the businesses they started from virtually nothing, and all the good deals that were afforded to them; yet these experiences can be nearly impossible to replicate today. Go ahead and "pound the pavement" with only a go-getter attitude and no experience, and see how that works out for you. I'm not the only one of my generation who were told by their parents to "just walk in and ask the manager for a job" or "offer to make them coffee or sweep their floors just to get your foot in the door" only to be met with laughter and being told to fuck off. Want to start a business like your parents did? Oh, well that's too bad, because the tax advantage they had was since sealed up by the IRS and the same industry now requires several forms of regulatory approval that didn't exist in 1987. But maybe you just want a low key, honest, and reasonably playing job, in which case your own parents may be voting against increasing minimum wage because "how dare they expect more than $3.75 an hour in 2023! I paid my way through college on $3.75 /hr!"

arp242 3y ago
Also: because the cost of living – especially housing – is so much higher, taking a risk like starting a business or a new job is a lot more, well, risk and requires a larger amount of savings.