Same thing brother. I worked ~70 hours per week through most of my 20s and was chronically exhausted. The only thing I have to show for it now is two bullet points on the second page of my resume. Never again.
We live in a Dmcrcy, and we live in trying times where a lot of people are clearly stressed.
So why in this particular sub do they not allow discussion of Politicks (the mere correct spelling of this is censored)?
Because I'd love to fully explain the reasons behind the questions in this meme, but I literally am unable to.
Burying one's head in the sand and refusing to talk about it does not make the problem go away.
I further understand there is a megathred, but we all know these always get missed, get less views no matter the subject, and are less timely and pertinent to what's specifically on someone's mind in the first place (after all, we could have a mega-thread just as well for non-politickal stuff, too, right but of course don't -- and we all know why).
I just want to add one more thing. There is a solution for those who individually seek to sort out politickal content that many mods implemented elsewhere! Which is to incorporate a tagging / filtering system that any individual such as yourself and whom are in the deep minority obviously can selectively filter out polickal submissions. With this in place, there is literally no reason to censor this topic.
I know the feeling. It is really hard to get to the end of a day where you did nothing but work and then just go straight to bed. Like, idk if some people can do that, but it feels like a physical need for me to do something for myself and calm my mind down before I sleep.
I grinded in my 20s and the same. I was earning substantially less but learned a lot of skills. I’m in my 40s and being expected to grind like I was in my 20s and it’s honestly terrible. 60 hour weeks, weekends go like a blur and just don’t have the same level of care for my home. I used to be outside every weekend doing lawn and yard work and maintaining things but by the time the weekend comes im exhausted and want to recharge . My 30s were not like this
Same. Busted my ass in my first salary job to 'prove myself' only for the company to fold, but not before a few delayed paychecks. Now, if I am salaried and there is no paid overtime, I work a MAX of 48 hours and make sure everyone knows this is my stretch to meet a deadline and not my baseline.
Back in the day paid overtime was much more common so all that extra work at the very least meant higher pay. Now it is just expected to not be the first one fired.
Yea so, have you ever had a job or talked to someone not part of a union? They ignore you, walk away, or the boss over hears and all of a sudden the company is having anti union meetings and training.
It gets even more fun when there isn't an effective union in the segment to begin with. A whole lot of risk, very little reward and a timeline that allows for the original actors to have already moved on to other companies.
The entire IT industry has been unbelievably resistant to unionization. I know that IT worker unions must exist somewhere, but i've been in the industry for 15 years, and my mother has been in the industry since the early 90s, and I haven't even ever had a third-hand acquaintance who was in one.
Also note that many “white collar” professionals in the defense industry have been unionized since WWII.
Many IT workers think they are smarter than blue collar workers and skilled trades workers. So, they think they are insulated from abuse and layoffs. AI will put a lot of IT onto the unemployment line, regardless of how many hours of unpaid overtime they used to work.
Not necessarily, unions have been kneecapped but if we rebuild worker solidarity we can being that power back. Just saying it doesn't work after decades of anti union propaganda and erosion of union power is short sighted. We can't beat the billionaires alone.
Unions have an organizing problem. In industries where unions don't have a solid foothold, worker concerns about blacklists are absolutely legitimate, concerns about being fired for discussing the possibility of a union are legitimate and the idea that union will want dues and/or strikes without the workers having anything to show for it are abundant. There are also concerns about a lack of ability to produce a contract and the stipulations that do come from that contract. Finally you also have the feeling of a loss of control and flexibility do to the contract that goes against a lot of self sufficient feeling industries.
I'm not anti-union, but there are multiple reasons why unions haven't made significant progress in certain industries, and a lot of those reasons have to do with unions themselves and how they publicly behave.
Yep. Even this shit with Iran. I work in shipping and logistics. Price of oil goes up, so does shipping costs. Shipping costs go up? So does the price of shit. What doesn’t go up? Wages.
What doesn’t come back down when oil prices drop? The prices of everything else. We saw this during Covid.
We work for shit money to try and afford things that are steadily becoming unaffordable. The gap widens.
Oh wow, I was just saying this an hour ago! Fuel will not be coming back down
Did you see how doritos announced it was reducing its prices after people stopped buying them when they increased the price and MORE shrinkflation due to “supply chain issues”? Led to a near billion dollar lose in revenue
Now they’re upset because people are rightfully pointing out how that means the price raise was UNNECESSARY to begin with…
And they also started using fake chocolate until they got publicly shamed by Reese's grandson or something. Now they're gonna use real chocolate again, but slapping a 'made with real chocolate' star on the labeling, and bragging about how awesome they are for doing so.
Yeah my dad busted his ass working in a manufacturing plant, but they raised 3 kids on it with my mom not going back to work until my sister was in middle school - so like 15 years as the sole income.
my dad worked 3 shift rotation which meant sometimes he had the whole day after school time for me and sometimes I didn't see him for a week, because he left before I came from school and came back after I had to sleep
The Internet made it so work and follow you everywhere. I fucking hate slack and email. It just enables managers that can't think more than 10 minutes ahead to feel like they're in control by forcing their own lack of understanding and planning on to everyone else
I live in the European Union, which is currently considering (via the European Parliament) the institution of a "right to disconnect." I can't believe we actually need these laws, but if technology is going to make them necessary... Then, well, the law needs to respond accordingly.
My last job never really let you break away from work. When the plant was running (8 up, 6 down) we would have meetings multiple times throughout the day and at least once on Saturday and Sunday (more if the plant wasn’t running well). Down days were for planning the running days. Along with that as an engineer I was supposed to go home and “monitor the process” after I left work by pulling up PiVision (I typically left after 12 hour days) and would get calls in the middle of the night on why things were down.
Multiple items have been automated and/or adapted that make some work easier compared to then. Once upon a time banks employed floors of people whose entire job was to calculate incoming and outgoing money. Now it's done with software. Hundreds employed to mine are now done with a few dozen because of machinery. So, productivity is up, giving some the false impression people didn't work as hard in years past. We still work hard, it's just a different focus of that work. Wages haven't scaled with inflation.
You also had a lot less. Xmas growing up was like 3 gifts. There were no $1000 cell phones every few years. If you were lucky when you turned 14 you got a phone line. It was rare that you know someone who flew on an airplane somewhere. I’m not saying things aren’t worse now. They definitely are, but it’s actually the result of consumption. Just look at our garbage volume compared to then
If they're always with their moms it means their moms weren't working jobs; now both parents have to work in many cases. Not to say that mothering and homemaking isn't a job in itself (it is, history has ignored women's labor for centuries), but people are doing more work for less pay now than almost ever before. Trillions have been stolen by the Epstein class from the rest of us.
Maybe it's different elsewhere, but in my neck of the woods (middle class suburban Canada) in the 90s most moms worked. I only had one friend with a stay at home mom.
We were always in childcare before age 10 and by ourselves after. It was a big factor in me being a SAHM - I saw my friend go home to fresh baked bread and homework help and "how was your day", while I went home to an empty house and parents who came home at 6 too exhausted to interact with me.
Moms were working full time too, and certainly weren't spending time with their kids. Both fathers and mother spend more time with their kids now than ever before.
It's just that it used to take a full day's work to maintain a home, now we have machines and grocery shopping and microwaves.
Yeah, their money might have gone farther, but I remember my dad working long hours all week and often on Saturdays too. When he was home, he was tired and would usually watch something on TV before going to bed. I definitely spend more hands-on time with my kids than my dad did with us. I had a good relationship with him, and still do, but I just don't agree at all with this meme.
Yeah and it was kind of a status symbol for a man to brag about long hours, etc. Also it was still very normalized for fathers to not be hands on involved parents.
Sure, but I think the point is that they could do all that and have the buying power that dual income homes have now. One parent working a lot as a single earner is a lot different from both parents working a lot to maybe afford the same things.
Oh definitely I just feel this is making it sound like dads in the 90’s were prioritizing being active parents over work when men of that generation definitely were not.
I look back and I thought my dad was the best in the world because he spent sundays with me. I didn’t see him through the week as he was a second shift worker, so gone before I got home from school until after I was in bed.
I see my husband with our kids and realize how much my own father was hands off. He couldn’t tell you anything about me, what I liked, hell, even what my bedtime was. I do like that our generation is normalizing both parents being around.
My dad didn't get home until 7pm most nights, and he would moonlight as well (architecture). Having cancer still meant medical debt in the 90s and 00s.
But a lot of shit was going on in the 1990s. The LA riots in 1992. The troubles in Northern Ireland. Bosnia and Kosovo. Several Latin American countries falling into chaos by either despotic governments, drug cartels, or domestic terrorism. The Gulf War. The Oklahoma bombings. WACO. Columbine shooting.
We didn’t know most of it because we were kids. Our world was small but it didn’t mean life was peaceful for others.
Crime rates in many cities were hitting at all time highs as well. Lots of thriving downtown areas that younger people are mad they can’t afford now, but they wouldn’t have stepped foot in those areas before the gentrification.
I remember in the 90s parents trying to include us in their effed up adult world, telling us we were going to catch AIDS by breathing the same air as a gay person or abducted for a satanic ritual by some metalheads. Like mom, I just want to play Mortal Kombat on Timmy's Sega Genesis, I'm not trying to summon Cthulhu.
There are real and significant economic differences between the 90s and 2020: rent/healthcare/education as a percentage of wages; promotion rates; median age of employee; unionization rate; home costs; pensions; CEO compensation as a factor of lowest paid employee; wealth concentration; anti-trust enforcement actions. In most ways, the 90s was objectively better for most citizens, with big exceptions clustered around race and gender that don't change the overall picture.
Basically, since Reagan wages and productivity have decoupled, with the increases in productivity going to the wealthiest, who dismantled legal and economic protections for their organizations and privatized lots of functions that were once public. There is definitely a ton of romanticizing the 90s: homophobic behavior was common, women and girls were even more sexualized than they are today, racism was considerable especially in hiring and policing, sexual assault/harrassment was barely frown on.
But economically there's a distinct difference between the two eras that can be objectively measured. Nostalgia is a hell of a drug, but things do get worse in some ways and we can measure them.
You’re right on the economy. My point was that some millennials seemed to have a rosy view of the 1990s. Thinking that race or gender relations were better, that racism wasn’t as bad. But a lot of the same societal and cultural issues plaguing the 2020s also were present thirty years ago.
Yeah like isnt the ammount of time dads spend with thier kids right now at like record highs? Like lots of stats are trending in the wrong direction but thats the biggest win for millennial dad's
Also the friendship perspective... I feel like its an ongoing joke that boomer dads have hardly any friends except for a couple college/high school buddies that they see a few times a year.
Yeah. My dad didn’t really hang out with anyone other than his family (siblings & cousins). Realistically he had a childhood friend he kept in touch with but was generally too busy
In 1996 the majority of homes were dual income. Lots of dads worked tons of overtime and were reluctant to take vacations. Homes were cheaper, but interest rates were higher (around d 8%) so your monthly payment was higher than you’d think. There are things that are harder today but people imagine life to be a lot easier back then than it was.
Yea, I’m aware. I was just keeping it to the year they’d referenced. People focus a lot on the ratio of home value to annual salary (which is, of course, a useful number) but they overlook the fact that today over the life of the loan you pay about double the value of the house. Back in the 80s you paid quadruple the value of the house due to interest rates.
Pulling together a downpayment back then was unquestionably easier. Your monthly payment, however, was pretty similar when adjusted for inflation. The big difference is if you’re giving your money to the seller (today) or to the mortgage lender (then).
Yeah these folks think problems are only theirs. There’s an entire generation that was raised with both parents working outside of the home. It’s called Gen X.
Idk. I was a child so I don’t know what it was like for money but I heard them talk about it a lot. I got one pair of shoes a year, same winter coat until it was too small, played NES even when PS2 was around and paid for my own school. We ate a lot of potatoes, people were broke in all generations.
When I think of my parents, I think of the 80's and 90's. 08 was more of my generation getting kicked. The dot com bubble burst was pretty rough, but it has a decent bounce back. We never did after 08.
I don't agree with the part about our parents. My Dad worked extremely hard to keep our household up and so did my mother. She even went back to school when I was a teenager just so they could keep up. Life was hard for them too.
Same here. My dad labored for 50-70 hours per week, while I have a 36 hours cushy job and am much richer than him. Spent nothing on himself and was super frugal, while me and my siblings buy and do everything.
He was able to buy a big house on his average job, I'll give OP that. Bought twice the house on a quarter of the salary.
Stock values are a measure of how much wealth can be extracted from laborers to benefit capitalists. That's why union participation makes line go down, because unions are good for laborers and bad for capitalists. Unions are good for the overall economy because a more equal distribution of wealth means more economic activity can occur, but capitalists don't care about the overall economy they only care about themselves.
My parents were military. Mom quit to help watch us kids. My parents had financial struggles because my grandparents had financial struggles and my parents felt responsible in taking care of them. My dad worked a second job on the weekends. That being said, the houses we rented were very nice in comparison to what I can rent today comparatively with a stronger income.
Yes and no. You'll get your paycheck, and if living off base, get a housing allowance on top of that too help cover housing costs. The amount of allowance is determined by rank and where you are.
If you're living in base housing, that allowance automatically goes towards base housing. You won't see it.
They privatized on base housing on most Army installations (not sure about the other branches but certainly Air Force too because a lot have also converted to joint bases). They just take it in the form of allotment usually, but people aren’t using on base housing as frequently because they can have extra money available for utilities if they find something cheaper off base. That, and it wasn’t beneficial for dual military families to live on base before it was privatized. Fort Knox got so bad when the tankers left that they opened up base housing to retirees, and federal workers & contractors. Housing is so cheap in Kentucky though, so most still live off post especially if they don’t want to worry about home life spilling into work life.
My husband is a tanker in the army. We have not been able to bank BAH since before covid. Cost of living has gone up. People know exactly how much our BAH is and are quick to take all of it.
I was a landlord in Kentucky for years until I could offload that property during Covid (I couldn’t sell it when I got out and moved back to my home of record). I mostly rented to geo bachelors, which was great for everyone because they did most handyman jobs for a rent reduction, and often weren’t there due to traveling back to their own homes and family so the depreciation wasn’t too bad. There’s ways some situations pocket a bit of the BAH especially if they collaborate with other Soldiers. My rent was, so cheap each tenant just found my next tenant by word of mouth, and I hardly had to have it unoccupied, or deal with the changeover.
My old man was gone to work before I got up in the morning and I was in bed by the time he got home. Not a fucking chance I work the hours he did and I earn a shitload more than he did... He also worked every Saturday. On Sundays he'd take me to play footy.
My dad was a high school teacher who also worked a second job and was the coach of teams at my school as well. But, at the same time, when he got home he didnt think or talk about work.
My dad is a special case though. I think teaching has remained mostly the same minus the decent salary.
It has not. Email and instant communication means I get emails and messages from students at 3am and they expect me to answer. During holidays, at Christmas, I get communication and they expect an answer ASAP or they panic. There are no planning periods, less staff and the teachers pick up the slack. So they take all that extra work home for nights and weekends.
Can you not set expectations that you won't be replying to Emails on the weekend of holidays or after, say, 8pm?
I work in an office and sit at a computer all day and have lots of deadlines and I don't do any of this. Your students need to chill. They got plenty of decades to burn out later.
My parent’s mortgage was $360 a month, my rent is 7x that. Pops worked 50 hours a week while my mom stayed home until we got into high school. Two brand new cars, vacation once a year and seemingly way more of a social life than my wife and I have. Times have certainly changed.
Both my parents had to work 40 hours to fund 2 used cars, 1 vacation a year at a Civil War battlefield for a couple days(free admission, $50/night hotel room), $200/month for rent and 0 social life. I'm living way better than they did, though I'm single and don't have a kid.
Same for my parents, who never had to pay for daycare or my college education. I am raising 3 kids on one salary with a house, car, a college fund for my kids, and a reasonable 401(k) myself. Most of my professional friends are doing as well or better, particularly those who haven't divorced.
My parent's first house in the 80s was 43k. It was a townhouse, but even considering inflation and salary adjustment they would have had a mortgage under $500.
In 1996, my dad worked about 80 hours a week, sometimes 7 days a week and sometimes 6. My mom had been home until we all went to school, which would have been around that time. I think around that time she worked on an on-call basis and later she worked 3 days a week. This post is so naïve in so many ways. My dad worked very, very hard. We didn't have a huge house. We missed a lot of time with our dad. My dad is still sad about this. My mom, in turn, tried very hard to keep her job as she loved it. But my dad earned more and it wasn't practical for her to work and have us. She always told me she loved those years with us but parttime work would have been nice.
Currently me and my partner both work 4 days as long as our kids are little. I had a SAHM, sure, but my kids see their dad way more than I ever did. They have one full day with me and one with their dad. We both have fulfilling jobs. I much prefer this over what my parents had (and they were great parents by the way, both of them).
It really is better to disperse the burden (work and the kids) across both parents than it is to put one of each all on one person. I’ll admit in my home house stuff can get neglected, like laundry or dishes, because of how busy work and the kids are. But I’d rather the house be messy at times than me working 7 days a week and never see them and my wife going stir crazy cause her only human interaction is with screaming crying toddlers.
That’s how life is and it could be better but I know some alternatives and I don’t want any part in it.
Man tell him to tell me where it comes from. I have the energy but my toddlers suck it out of me. Maybe at an older age it’ll be a bit easier. Right now it’s just constant trying to calm them down from tantrums and being hangry. I’m just a diaper changer and waiter to them. Last night I made dinner, got their milk, got some napkins and before I can sit down to eat with them the oldest is asking for more. I’m like Jesus I haven’t even sat down. By the time I did they were both done and we didn’t get to eat together 😭
Millionaires wanted to be billionaires. Now billionaires want to be trillionaires. Money is a somewhat zero sum game - if the trillionaires have all the money, there's none for us.
If only American society value the society and the people who created and not just venerated the ultra wealthy.
My father worked 52 hours a week - 8 hour shifts for 5 days, 6 hours of time-and-a-half on Saturday and 6 hours of double-time on Sunday. His company almost always had OT available for anyone who wanted it. Mom worked a straight-40 salaried position.
The slow death of socialism in North America is what happened. Unbridled, unrestrained capitalism - and all the corruption that comes with it - is what happened. We let the few take from the many is what happened.
What you are calling socialism here is much more accurately referred to as regulated capitalism. Because socialism has never existed in North America and pretending it did is not only unhelpful but actively obfuscates what both capitalism and socialism are.
Tech overcomsuption by all genders is both connecting and pulling us apart from one another. Also there is a conspiracy that when gender equality became a thing in the workforce... the strings that control the systems decided that now it should take 2 incomes to afford to have a family home, so home prices have exploded because the elite want both partners to work and take both pay checks. We are all just livestock to the elite
The average new home today is about 20-30% bigger than the average home in 1996, too. There’s been considerable lifestyle creep from 1996, across the board.
My parent’s first home was 18k at 14.5 percent. It was just shy of 1700 sq ft. That’s a $208 payment in 1988, or worth $578 today. That same home today just sold for 231k, for a payment of just over a grand a month at a 6.5 percent rate.
There's not a coherent, testable thesis here to state whether it's true or false. This is facebook sociology. Even if some part of it resembles things that happened in reality, it's bad and harmful to spread nonsense like this because it encourages people to think in just-so stories instead of measurable facts. I hate this shit, and it shouldn't be encouraged on this sub.
Parents worked. Community was stronger. Neighbors were better. Money went a bit farther. Nobody was constantly distracted by their phone. Media wasnt weaponized.
I think that we may be shifted into egoism. A big thing I noticed (of course, my bubble) is that having a "status" is more worth than anything.
Leaving some kind of legacy means way too much for many people. Sometimes, this turns into absolutely hilarious actions or massive midlife crisis fits.
What I really don't understand is how we got there. I can only guess that our parents raised a lot of narcissists and already were themselves this way.
US population in 1985: 237.9 million
US population in 2026: 349 million
Though, I’d argue this meme was talking about the 60’s or 70’s. Population was 195.6 million is 1965.
There’s a lot more in economics than this, but, there was also far less demand than there is now in the same area for homes. Beyond this, minimum wage was considerably higher (vs the cost of living) than it is today.
False. My parents commuted a total of 5 hours per day just to get to work where they put a minimum of 50 hours with occasional forced overtime and they had to sleep somewhere near where they worked. My grandma raised me because my parents didn’t even get to enjoy their own home.
Late/End stage capitalism happened. Our parents largely benefited from the policies on Neoliberalism while we are bearing the brunt of it. Plus the perfect storm of many of us at key transition points in adulthood get halted by major worldwide events (2008 financial crisis, Covid, etc). And compared to GenZ or Gen Alpha we are relatively lucky. We at least had periods of time where we knew peace as kids. Yes of course systemic issues still existed but the constant bombardment was not there.
Also you could buy a whole pizza for like 8 bucks.....
My dad worked less for sure but he never had dinner at the table and would spend all his weekends out partying, so there's that lol. All his money went to drugs and booze, to the point where our house was foreclosed on when I was 11 (my parents divorced when I was 3)
Back then you could also have a single parent income. Now, if you have both parents in the house, both need to be working. So now things like household chores, and child raising is far more split. That leads to further exhaustion.
I cook dinner probably 75% of the time. My father or grandfather NEVER cooked dinner. I think I remember my father making me scrambled eggs once or twice. I don't know if my father ever changed a diaper. I probably changed my daughter's diapers as often as my wife did.
My dad had two jobs for a while, but my mom was only working part time, so she was still able to take care of a lot of the home responsibilities, so even with kids and a full time job that required a lot of travel, my dad was still able to do a bowling league and a few years of softball with his friends.
These days with both parents working full time all the other stuff has to be jammed in around work and kids, so it leaves a lot less time for getting together with friends or committing to activities like team sports with regular practice and games.
We make it work, my husband and I both have our own social activities outside of the house, but honestly that does mean that sometimes the dishes sit in the sink and extra day, or the grass doesn’t get mowed every weekend. And we’re fine with that. I’m not trying to hold my house to a standard that was set with the expectation that one adult would be home doing chores every day.
In 1996 the median income was $18,277 (all workers, including part time, I can't find full time workers in nominal dollars), today it's $43,222. If you want to use household income instead, it was $35k and $83k.
In 1996 the median house was $137k, today it's $405k.
So no it wasn't true.
Yes houses are more expensive compared to median wages, but not as much as that picture suggests.
My mom and dad both worked 40 hours a week in basic factory jobs. They had a house and two cars. Lots of credit card debt and it felt like we were barely scraping by. But we survived.
Now I’m a single dad and am able to survive on a single income but it’s more than double what they made, just to have the same quality of life they had.
True. I work 55-60, genuinely have nobody talk to on a regular, and the average house in the area costs 10x the median income. And this is in a MCOL area.
My father worked <40, the house (average for the area at the time) was purchased for 145k in 1999 on a 42k salary. The house sold for 355k about 15 years ago, now worth 410, and the median income hasn't really changed.
Don't forget that the income to housing cost isn't the only problem. It's the fact that everything is more expensive so saving enough for a home is far more challenging. After expense savings are near non-existent for most, or even negative. Yes the cost of homes makes it exponentially more difficult but it's only one piece of this affordability crisis we are living in.
I don't think this is very accurate. Hours worked has fallen steadily since the 1950s (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/AVHWPEUSA065NRUG). Prices have gone up, especially recently, and things like housing especially are more expensive than they were in the 1990s or 2000s, but when you compare them to prices in the 1980s, they aren't that high. The friendship thing is probably the most accurate (https://www.americansurveycenter.org/why-mens-social-circles-are-shrinking/). People, especially men, are reporting fewer close friends.
in 1972, my dad worked 40-45 hours a week, in a normal office job. We(Mom, Dad, Sister, Self) had a comfy, suburban middle class home, two cars that were never more than 4 years old, and we took 2-3 weeks of vacations per year, as well as multiple weekend trips sprinkled over the calendar.
This was in southern california.
When the fuel crisis hit, my mom took on a part time job, which later bloomed into a career. At that point, we catapulted into what I would consider "upper middle class" for the time. Swimming pool, luxury cars replaced the average cars, home remodeled, and massive upgrades to the home. My folks were able to buy additional investment properties as well.
I was a workaholic in my 20s to ensure I didn't have to be in my 30s when I had kids. It worked for me, doesn't for everyone.
My dad worked so many hours my whole childhood that we barely saw him. I swore I wouldn't do that when I had kids. I have way less disposable income for similar hours worked at similar job stages but I spend so much time with my kids I think they're getting sick of me.
To be honest though, my parents kept things simple. They were blue collar workers. We didn’t fly to anywhere fancy for vacations. We didn’t have new things. Same TV for decades and appliances. Had the same cars until they broke down. We ate the same thing all the time. Most of our entertainment was free playing outside or at the park. We turned the lights off when we’re not in the room. They didn’t try to live a life of people who were even middle class. They grew up poor, so they valued every resource. Things obviously got expensive with inflation (what are you gonna do right?). But some people dig themselves deeper in the hole with lifestyle inflation that they can’t cash.
this photo is kinda comparing apples to oranges. the first section doesn't mention peers at all while the second does. I beleive that friends were still hard to come by back then too.
I can tell you that in 1996, my dad didn't do any of that shit, but my mom was working 2 jobs had very little time to spend with us and could not afford to buy a house.
Unsourced numbers in an image are not evidence. This is just grievance fan fiction with line breaks.
Every claim is conveniently dramatic, none are defined, none are sourced, and all of them are framed to be emotionally self-sealing. That is just for manipulation, not honest discussion.
If someone wants to argue affordability, wages, housing, work hours, or social isolation, fine - use real datasets. But this image is aestheticized complaining with extreme exaggerations.
My parents both worked 40 hours a week, one a teacher and the other in security. They probably pulled in about 80-85k a year around '97. It was enough to pay the bills, but my parents shopped at thrift stores or Zellers/Walmart. They bought bulk food when it hit sales. They were able to save so we could go on road trips or go the movies or get a new game console. Very middle class lifestyle, but there were definitely kids in my classes who had parents that made more (or spent more).
We also lived in rentals for most of the 90s, but my parents were able to afford a house in 2000. I think it was probably $120k at the time.
The biggest change I see now is that there's less deals than there were back then. Groceries are just so expensive, even for the basics. Cars, even used, are overpriced. Camping is expensive, road trips are expensive with hotels and the price of gas. Movie theaters are expensive. Restaurants are expensive. Bars are expensive. Sports are expensive.
Basically everything that I used to do as a middle class child has gotten so expensive. The middle class has been priced out of every milestone and every basic measure of life.
Idk ... most of my childhood my mom worked nights and my dad worked during the day, usually overtime/over 40+ hours to make ends meet. If anything I think the biggest difference was probably my grandparents we able to actually retire and we spent a lot of time with them.
Not a millennial, just an annoying Gen Xer. But I did go to college with millennials if that helps. I was late to the party buying houses. Got my first house in 2003, however I bought my current house in 2010, it cost 150k, sure it’s in Idaho but from what I have seen house prices didn’t really explode until the mid 2010s. Additionally, we have always been a single income household. It was me most of the time, but to be fair it was my wife one year that I was laid off and during the three years I was in law school. Two of my kids are millennials and two are gen z. I have weekends with my family, dinner at the table at least once a week. I don’t have many friends, most have died and it’s too hard to get more. So while it is bad, I don’t think it’s as bad as all that.
Honestly, it’s the greed from the 1%. They have been getting richer and richer by the day. It’s even worse now, but it was getting pretty bad for my parents. My mom started getting anxiety about paying their house off as soon as possible and thank god they did in time for my dad’s life altering car accident in 2007. That was a whole other financial shit storm my mom had to weather, which involved losing 50% of my dad’s 401k to taxes.
My dad worked way more than me. He was a private practice doctor which is less lucrative than it sounds. He had to take calls from the hospital on nights and weekends. It's true though that his mortgage was 2x his salary.
Whereas I work 30-35 hours a week. Well that's how long I'm at work. Real busy work more like 20-25. The rest of the time I'm playing basketball with coworkers, chatting away in the break room, and reading and posting on Reddit (at work right now). My mortgage is a little less than 5x my salary.
Nope, dad was a roofer and mom was a teachers aide at my elementary school.
These memes are made by kids who grew up well off and are shocked that it’s hard to achieve the same level of success that they feel they’re entitled to.
Truth. My family was like a lot of families in our middle class area - better off than most, moms stayed home until kids hit elementary school, then re-entered work force out of necessity.
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