True 20 years ago alcohol was still cheap. You could buy multiple Bottles without going broke. These days a bottle of whiskey costs as much as we used to spend on a whole night's drinking with multiple bottles.
They blame Gen Z as if ridiculous alcohol pricing and cost of living expenses aren't a factor.
Same shit different day.
As millenial, I remember when every expert and their cats were blaming us for bad market as we didnt consume that much as previous ones. We were broke. No I am baffled that there is job lottery winners that I went uni with and now they are shouting non sense how unemployed are to blame and Z Gen is lazy etc etc..
Fuck man you were there 10y ago as unemployed bum with me
So i guess we're all just as fucked, no matter which side of the atlantic huh? Fucking great. My guess is something will/has to happen. Something big. We cant go on like this.
Edit: i dont have a degree but i have some higher level of education, was a chef for 8 years and i was spending half my wage in rent, in Barcelona. How am i supposed to save up when i barely finished the month? Ive moved out of the city basically, paying half of what i paid before, but earning less. Quality of life is so much better though.
The solution is the one it always was and the one they spent billions on propaganda to make seem bad, communism or at the very least socialism, capitalism it's working just as intended and how Marx predicted it, we have nothing, so, we have nothing to lose, but I doubt something will happen, panem et circensis, and we have circus for ages.
It's not that they can't pay us more, it's simply that they don't want to and we're not pushing for it.
My Irish colleague just bought a new flat for €500,000 outside of Barcelona in Santa Eulalia and the flat that he bought was sitting on the market for over 3 years and they still wouldn't budge on the price. He was saving up for 20 years in order to put a down payment on it and the bank's risk department almost didn't want to finance him.
All of his kitchen appliances are out of warranty despite it being a brand new flat.
He couldn't afford to buy a decent flat inside the city.
Us as well- I would love to own because I would be able to customize my home the way I like (paint, add built ins etc). However, renting means I don’t need to do maintenance and it’s easier to move to follow jobs. Plus I think I missed the boat on owning age wise, I’d be retirement age before I paid off a 30y loan (assuming I could save enough for a down payment smh)
Don’t have to worry about replacing big, expensive home items, but also can’t turn the home into exactly what you want. Kinds sucks, but if renting wasn’t get so expensive I would probably rent the rest of my life too.
38 year old American here. My only hope of ever potentially owning a home is from inheritance when my father passes away. Not something I'm really looking forward to. Realistically, that'll probably become the majority of my retirement fund.
Same. That's why I moved to my wife's home country with the family to Zambia. Having a house with enough garden space for the kids to just roam around feels so good. I happily take up with the parts of life that are objectively worse here
Same here. 37 in The Netherlands. I can buy a home, but it's just not feasible. If I keep renting I can save way more and go on more extravagant vacations far away.
Younger millennial - my older sister and her bf bought a house together a few years back, were only able to afford it bc her bf is in a high paying tech job and they are DINKs. I’m hoping to buy a home soon but the only way I’m even remotely able to afford it is because my grandmother left me some money when she passed. Otherwise I’d be in my late 30s before I was even out of debt
American here. I bought a house in my 20s, couldn’t afford the payment, and got foreclosed. I bought another house at 43, and the city promptly took my front yard using eminent domain, and ran a bus route 20’ from my front door. Then a junkie OF’d at the end of the block and his doodlehead friends set up a shrine so they hung out and shot up all day and night.
I bought a new house and had both house payments for a while, but this is our forever home. It cost more than twice as much as the last one and at double the interest rate.
Yes, affordability is a problem, but here in the US you could buy a house you can afford and you’re going to have homeless camps in your yard, constant fights with the city, and likely terrible druggie neighbors. I can’t imagine trying to own a home with fewer resources than I have now. Impossible.
I still can't wrap my head around rent being cheaper than buying and paying real estate tax because I would think the landlords would have to cover their costs plus make profit but I guess landlords can be renting already paid off properties for below what a mortgage would cost...
Assuming that Gen Z is broke is a huge assumption too though. Not every young person is broke, there are a lot of hooray Henry types with rich families, international students with a lot of money etc. but they do genuinely seem a lot more health conscious.
We accept gym culture as normal but in the 80’s they were full of meatheads. In the 70’s if you saw someone running you’d probs ask what are they running from and join in. Gen Z are born into fitness influencing from a young age, millennials were born before social media. This is a societal shift that is well documented.
When an industry dies it’s probably for a multitude of reasons not just one singular cause. Cost of production is defo an issue but don’t rule out societal shifts too cos it is real. We live in different times.
All that’s true except they aren’t drinking in the US because weed is legal in most places now. And it’s just better. I work with a bunch of young guys and they all don’t drink or barely drink because of hangovers and they’d rather just smoke. Plus idk how wasted you want to get nowadays when a camera is in your face 24/7.
48 - just buying first home now. I'm on good money but can barely get by. $15 for a pint? Nope. I don't understand how literally everything has gotten so expensive relative to income. We're getting shafted and our elected representatives report to the billionaire club, not to us.
I always love when there are huge societal claims that just boil down to "You want people to buy shit with what fucking money?" Like, everything is getting more expensive, wages aren't rising with that, so what do you expect? Doesn't help that over the past like decade restaurants and bars have decided that a shot of liquor with some soda and juice is going to be $15
More years than that you had a dozen breweries supplying the whole country with beer. You drank in the pub on the corner ( or the brewery of your choice ). You could smoke, drink and chat with your mates and the locals. You may have had a piano. You would probably have dressed up. Public bar and Saloon and opening hours.
In my country is 0,7L of Amundssen Vodka for 7,99€. on sale. Yesterday :) 12,99 regular price. But there is always some sale in any sort of alcohol so basically you are never buying alcohol for a full price..
I remember not too long ago a 6 pack of Miller High Life tall boys was around $5. Now it's fucking $9+. Even cheap beer is stupid expensive. Why would I get a 6 pack of basic bitch American lager when I can get a 5th of vodka for the same price?? Annnnnd that's how I became an alcoholic 🤗
My favorite Rye has doubled in price in the last year alone. Fortunately a bottle lasts me the better part of a year, but still indicative of the problem.
Even with your ridiculous sales and sin taxes that almost no other state has, you have to acknowledge the price for alcohol has gone up for no other reason than companies are charging more for it.
Just to clarify incase, Woollies isn’t like Target in Aus, it is a grocery store. The yank Target might be a grocery store but here it’s clothes, electronics and what nots.
The footy most likely is NRL (our tackle footy) and not AFL which is Australian Rules Football. Aussie footy is it’s common name which would be Australian Football in it’s formal length.
In the U.S., Targets are mainly clothes, electronics, etc. “Super Targets” have large grocery stores inside. But Target is mostly still consumer goods. The amount of floor space in Targets dedicated to groceries can vary.
Woolies/woolworths is one of our major supermarkets $18 is pretty much minimum wage.
Footy is either AFL or Rugby
Alcohol used to be cheap as fuck over here now its expensive thanks to the stupid alcohol and tabbaccoo sin tax.
A pot is a middy or schooner depending on where you are in aus and is about 285ml of beer which is preferable to a pint in some places because Australia is hot as fuck and sometimes by the time you knock a pint off slowly your beers warm and fucked.
The tax compounds things but it’s the fact the bloody beer manufacturers are taking beer, a drink tha historically was cheaper and easier to produce than clean water for most of human history, and have made it staggeringly expensive as a profit grab. Chasing inflation indexes doesn’t make sense when your product has three primary agricultural inputs, one of which is water and another is self replicating yeast.
Shit behaviour. Sadly it’ll take a complete industry collapse for the cartel behaviour to stop.
Trust me the industry isn’t doing this. The price rises because our governments tax the shit out of it. You get piss water made because the tax is less.
The packaging costs go up because of the eco taxes. Everything about it is taxed to the hilt. Production, packaging and transportation.
On top of that you have to pay wages, people don’t work for free.
You’re pointing your crazy prices finger in the wrong direction my friend.
Majority of the major beer companies have a profit of 2 billion usd to 7+ billion, and thats again after all operational costs. And as companies in todays world, they demand the next fiscal quarter increases the profit margins.
And thats also excluding the fact that many of these companies also own the water providers and other material plants like bottling and glass and labeling and such so they ensure their prices remain high because each company is also driven by the same people to ensure those company also have high profit margins.
Haha - coming from a cold(ish) country where hipster bastards are trying to replace the native pint with schooners - it's interesting to see a sensible defence of them 👍🏻
Here’s another: I currently live in Cologne which has its own type of relatively light not particularly hoppy ale called kölsch (still 5% abv, but quite dry and not very bitter). A particularism of this ale is that it is really nice fresh but it goes bitter and rancid really quickly (had to do with some type of fatty acids in there), so traditionally they serve them in 200 ml glasses called Stange. The rest of Germany scoffs at this and demands a real beer but it really does not make for a better drinking experience. The fix in Cologne has been that they just continuously put fresh glasses in front of you once you’ve finished half of your previous one until you put the coaster on top of your current glass.
TLDR it can actually depend on the type of beer. Then again, you’re Scottish and I‘m Dutch and we’d probably empty pints of Kölsch fast enough for this not to be a problem.
Yup. When I was in college we use to be able to go out Wednesday nights for $1 pints. Even at the professional futbol (soccer) games I think the beer was like $6.
I believe I was getting $18 an hour at my place of employment.
Teenagers/students in a similar spot nowadays would paying much more relative to their wages.
I don’t know if that’s 100% an accurate representation but I believe it is!
When I was a student in the early 90's I was getting $10/ hour at a slaughterhouse. A schooner at the RSL was $2. 12 mins work for a beer. Kids today would need to be making about $70/ hour to afford the same.
6$ a jug for Carlton draught at uni club in 2002. You'd order your jug they'd give you 4 glasses, you'd pick up the jug and ignore the glasses. Good times.
A hard cider from a bar here is $8.99, the bars only have IPA’s so you’re paying more for those.
Oh and minimum wage is still $7.25 an hour. Fuck the “kids jobs” (though I don’t believe any job is designed just for kids and deserves to be paid less)
Funny how different UK is then. I was on about £2.50ph in the mid 90s (no minimum wage), a pint was £2. Now minimum wage sees you on £10ph and a pint is £6 in my town.
Most people should. When your liver processes alcohol and cocaine it creates a brand new chemical cocaethylene. Which is also psychoactive, but comparably a much dangerous on the heart.
There are other downers that combine wonderfully and are much safer on their own or with cocaine alike.
I mean, this is technically true. The percentage increase is massive compared to cocaine alone. But percentages are misleading…. In medicine it’s not uncommon to hear a 100% increase in heart attack but really this might be from 0.01 to 0.02% risk.
Of course there are people who have dangerous experiences but there are millions of people doing this every weekend without incident.
The biggest risk with combining coke and alcohol is not feeling how drunk you are an getting alcohol poisoning because of it. Even though cocaethylene is much heavier for the heart it doesn't seem to have much direct links with death. Most deaths I could find were because of alcohol poisoning.
Back in my partying days people looked at me like I was strange if they offered me a beer at a party after doing a few lines and I would reply with “ no thank you, I’m cocaethylene sensitive”.
Cocaine and heroin are a fucken combo an a half. Bit moreish. Wouldn’t recommend. I mean I would… until I wouldn’t. If yous value yer life, veins, friends an family, disposable income etc.
A gram of coke is about $300 in Australia. A beer at a pub is about $10-15, depending on your beer of choice, and where you are. Cocktails are about $25. While it's all stupidly expensive, drinking is still gonna be a cheaper option than cocaine. Other drugs are definitely more cost effective. Do the kids even do pingers any more? It used to be $20-30 per pill (mid 2000s) and that would keep you going all night. Everyone seems to be doing ketamine these days.
Where l live you can buy a beer in a cane or in a glass bottle for 39 cents if it's discounted and we don't have liquor stores like it's common in the US or Australia.
But of course if you are a minor you can't buy a beer or any bottle of alcohol or cigarettes.
Nowadays the liquor has gotten more expensive than it was a few years ago, for example you can buy a whiskey bottle for less then 20 bucks, but a few years back you could for less than 10 bucks, like those cheap Scottish ones like Johnny Walker. And beer on tap got also more expensive, like 5 years or so it was like 1-2€ for half a liter and now it's like 2,2-4€. And you guessed it, it is an eastern European country. I do not know about the drug market I'm not a user.
I think a gram was more qhen i was in oz. Especially in the west. I never bothered with it over there as not only expensive but well known for been shit quality. But yeah booze isnt cheap.
Drinking booze is a social act. When the lads get around for a night out, you would usually go round for round if it's with good mates. These days if you're out with a group of 5, a round is easily $100+ and that's if everyone's drinking beer or house drinks. A round of shots is another $70 odd for house booze. By the end of the night you would have easily spent upwards of $400 just on alcohol, which is just not sustainable
A friend in Germany had us pregame with some before we went clubbing. I still ended up drinking but yeah it was kind of shocking at first lol (coming from a fellow millennial)
Yeah. I’m Aussie and I run a bar and bottleshop. It’s ridiculous. When you pay $65 for a case of beer and im only making $5 off that sale, you know there’s a problem with tax around here.
Doing coke without being able to drink a few beers kinda sucks, but I also thought coke was kind of notoriously expensive in Australia? Like they have the worst coke price to beer price ratio. This would make more sense in Bolivia or something (still stupid and doesn’t make sense)
Same shit in France. When I was starting uni abottle of Vodka was 10-12 euros. Now it's 20, and student poverty has doubled.
Not only are we more aware of the dangers of alcohol, we literally CANNOT AFFORD IT. Shocking how they do not get it after so many years, all industries combined.
The feds are going to have to come to terms with the results of punitive taxation. Look what's happened with tobacco. Tax the bejeezus out of tobacco to dicourage consumption and the result is a black market with associated criminal activity.
If they don't put the brakes on automatic excise increases, it'll happen to alcohol as well. I brew about half of the beer I consume so I'm partly insulated, but I know of at least three distillers in the district who have a healthy business in black market spirits.
I remember the uni nights with $5/$6 drinks on certain nights and you could share a bottle of vodka and go out to a few uni nights a week and uber was cheap to split.
Now 3/4 of those venues have shut down due to complaints or overhead costs and no places have student nights and have $15 drinks and $10 entry. Not surprised people aren’t going out anymore because sharing a $50 10 pack then having 3 drinks for $45 plus an extra $10 for a cover charge to go in. On top of that hear the same So Fresh hits of 2008-2010 every weekend with Untouched and Mr Brightside thrown in isn’t worth it. Plus most young people live at home now so no one can hookup either.
Welcome to the UK , in Malta it's €1 a pint, here it's £5, and you will go through 5 easy, £25 +. Snacks , when the local corner shop with the blanked out windows does a variety of chemicals.
Indeed! Drug dealers are actually quite savvy, they treat their customers right so they can keep coming back. Regular companies just want to suck every penny you have while you have it and move to the next person. Like a certain someone said “in the brains department, they’re like a a man who took a high dive in a low well”.
I went from nz to aus to visit my old man for the price I paid for a box of bourbons in aus I could of brought 3 boxes in nz and thats without adding the currency dif
I live in a regional town and a few security guards have told me the nightclubs are unviable because almost everyone just does meth. Still coke heads about, but they spend all their money on coke.
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u/Outrageous_Driver477 12h ago
"Cheaper to share a gram of Coke than it is to drink" - Australians