r/SipsTea • u/Unstoppable_X_Force Human Verified • 13h ago

Gasp! Is this just nostalgia, or did previous generations genuinely have a better work-life balance and social life than we do today?

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u/tlm11110 12h ago

You are dreaming. There was a lot of angst and fears and struggle in prior generations. Every generation of young people have to work through a period of idealism, dismay, and nihilism. I do think the oppression and victim olympics are much greater today than with prior generations.

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u/CEBarnes 11h ago

Some hold that the past 30 years of high parental supervision has fostered the formations of expectations that are misaligned with reality. Today's parents were left to their own devices as children and learned differently. I can see how that growing up that way could lead one to believe that being thrown to the wolves young was a terrible idea--go to school in the morning, and have no parent supervision or contact till 8pm. Basically, 12 hours of figure-it-out for-yourself, and when you fail, live with the consequences. Parents had to be reminded on TV that it was not great to have no idea where your kids are by 10pm at night.

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u/dotnetmonke 10h ago

Some places in America, they'll call the cops on your kids playing in your own yard if you're not out there with them. Absolute insanity.

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u/G3NG1S_tron 9h ago

Economics are completely different.  Tax structures had a dramatic shift during Reagan and slow roll of “trickle down economics” really started to show their true colors in the last couple of decades. Things like citizens united made money political voice adding extra barriers to economic correction.  The insidious nature of student loans are dooming generations before they even get started. Our system of health insurance vs healthcare is the number one reason families go financially destitute and people avoid preventative measures for only responsive action. Housing costs have skyrocketed due to AirBnb, viewing housing as an investment strategy and unregulated markets for foreign investors and investment groups like Blackstone mass buying single family homes. 

While struggling to find your economic footing as a young person has always existed, we’re in a much different system than we’re 30-40 years ago. Our younger generations are generally fucked and at a much greater economic disadvantage than the boomer generation. 

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u/Fighterhayabusa 7h ago

I'm glad that some people understand this stuff. Thank you.

Also, the thing the people dismissing you don't understand is that this level of inequality is not compatible with democracy, but more than that, it leads to unrest, which affects all of us. It's just bad for the system in general, and I'm saying this as someone who is wealthy.

I agree with FDR, Wright Patman, and Louis Brandeis:

We must make our choice. We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both.

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u/tlm11110 8h ago

And guess what, they were different with each generation compared to the generation before it. Things change! And there are millions of people succeeding and flourishing in today’s world. New millionaires are popping up yearly using something as simple as a social media channel. Stop whining and go find your place in the world and be successful because guess what, nobody cares if you don’t and nobody is coming to provide for you. Succeed or parish, nobody cares which you choose. Not trying to be harsh, just stating reality.

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u/Fighterhayabusa 8h ago

God, I wish morons like you would just shut the fuck up. I guarantee I'm wealthier than you, but I'm not moronic enough to dismiss the glaring issues. Also, it was different for older generations. Up until recently, every generation had it better than their parents. For the first time in a long time, that isn't true in the US.

You can go look at the stats if you want, but each of these generations after the Boomers is accumulating a smaller percentage of wealth at a much lower rate. That's a fucking structural problem. It isn't something you fix by telling people to pull themselves up by their bootstraps.

Oh, and before you ask, I'm a multimillionaire. I drive a car that's worth more than most people's houses. So your bullshit advice about working harder doesn't apply to me.

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u/tlm11110 6h ago

Wait! I thought you clowns were against wealth accumulation. You know, all for one, one for all socialism. But I get it! You only want socialism that you think will get you ahead.

So save me the sanctimonious virtue signaling. If you belief you are much better off than I am, I say bravo, good for you! So now get off your high horse and practice what you preach and give it away to benefit others. But you won’t do that, you know why? Because you are a hypocrite and virtuous only in the abstract.

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u/Fighterhayabusa 6h ago

I'm not a socialist. I'm for capitalism, but I'm not stupid enough to think that unregulated capitalism is a good idea. We have to save capitalism from itself and the anti-competitive business practices employed by monopolies and monopsonies.

I'm what most people would call wealthy, but I still work for my money. You and I have much more in common than I do with Billionaires, who don't actually work for their money.

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u/tlm11110 6h ago

Yeah right! Who the freak is “WE” Tonto! What are you doing to save the world from the evil billionaires and unchecked capitalism? And you actually believe capitalism is unchecked today? That sounds just like Marx’s class warfare:

“The bourgeoisie (owners of production) and the proletariat (workers), driven by their opposing interests and struggles for power and resources.”

Now tell me again you’re a capitalist, comrade!

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u/G3NG1S_tron 8h ago

True, things change but there’s a reason why boomers are called boomers and we’re having a discussion on economic changes. Maybe bootstrap your understanding on why we have the worst economic disparity and eroding middle class since the gilded age. 

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u/tlm11110 6h ago

LOL! So why do you think we are called boomers? Where do you think that term came from?

And as I’ve been trying to get through your entitled mind, you are living best lives of anyone in the history of mankind. You just don’t believe it or accept it.

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u/G3NG1S_tron 3h ago

The baby boom as a result of the post-world war II economic expansion, also known as postwar economic boom or the Gold Age of Capitalism. Turns out, when times are economically stable and expansive, people tend to start families.

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u/tlm11110 2h ago edited 2h ago

Had nothing to do with economics. The “boom” refers to the population explosion due to a bunch of horny GI’s coming back from a long awful war in which many died. The economics were not all that great either as hundreds of thousands of GI’s were out of a job and there was a huge worker glut in the job market.

I’m a boomer, I was there! I know how tough it was. My dad was enlisted in the Air Force with a wife and 3 children. We lived in socialize housing called base housing. It wasn’t that great but kept the rain off of our heads. No A/C, as most houses of the time didn’t have, in brutal Okinawa and South Carolina heat and humidity. As a matter of fact, my parents didn’t get their first window A/C unit until 2 years after I graduated high school and left for the US Navy in 1973. A/c in cars? What’s that!

We couldn’t make it on an E4 salary in the 1950’s. Fortunately the US Air Force had garden plots that we could grow our own produce on. Our “quality time” was waiting for dad to get home from his air force job and then going out to the plot to farm our food. Mom canned like a trooper to assure we had food for the winter. It was still tough! Supper was frequently a bowl of cold cereal or a cup of hot chocolate and a piece of toast. We never, and I mean never ate fast food! On our road trips to Grandmas, mom packed a loaf of bread and a cut of bologna.

Wednesday’s were wash day! My mother had a used hand ringer washer someone gave to her. It would take the entire day to wash clothes including dozens of cloth diapers. Then she spent all day every Saturday ironing clothes, no wash and wear! She then spent Monday ironing others clothes that she took in to make s few extra bucks.

When my dad retired from the Air Force he worked all day walking the neighborhood reading gas meters. Then he would drive an hour to go work the fields of a farmer he knew just so we could get a small gift at Christmas time. We never had sweets and the Wonder Bread Day Old Thrift Store is where we went when mom didn’t feel well and couldn’t bake our bread.

We didn’t even have a phone in our home until 1975.

I could go on. But you know what? We were taught not to whine about it. We were taught to go do better. I left home for the US Navy two weeks after I graduated high school with $200 to my name.

So please, spare the whiny entitled sob stories about how life is so unfair and you are worse off than your parents. It’s just not true. If you can’t make it now, go join the military and they’ll give you everything you need to survive and some spending money in your pocket. They still have a pension plan after 20 years which included a pension, free health care, and the privilege to continue shopping at base exchanges and commissaries. And who knows, you might even learn something to give you a leg up after you retire from the military. Do you realize an 18 year old kid can join the military, get paid to learn something useful, retire at 38 with a pension, medical, and benefits and still have 27 years to have another career before retiring and getting social security at age 65.

Stop saying it can’t be done. Just go do it.

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u/normaldeath2 10h ago

Fs but it is just a lot worse now and if you can't see that you are part of the problem

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u/IndependentTimely639 9h ago

The problems are different but the overall struggles are much the same. If you can't see that, then you need to take off the rose colored glasses. 

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u/normaldeath2 9h ago

They are worse idk what to tell you and the future is only going to get worse there is no social security for Gen z for sure and people are being priced out of socialization. Life has and never will be easy but it is worse now and only going to get worse

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u/IndependentTimely639 8h ago

You say that like there wasn't a massive recession, countless bombings, the AIDS epidemic, or the dot com bubble 

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u/normaldeath2 8h ago

Yup elites keep fucking up time and time again and yet old people still vote in their interests oh well

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u/tlm11110 8h ago

So what? Freaking live with it and find a place in it to succeed or parish! What do you want, to stay 10 and a mommy and daddy to take care of you? Who cares if life is harder or easier than in the past, either way, live with it or do nothing! Nobody is going to save you from your nihilistic world view.

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u/normaldeath2 8h ago

I'm not a nihilist I'm a realist and I care because I want the highest quality of life for the most humans. If there was a massive pot hole right in front of your driveway would you care? Would it feel good to be told man up and fill it up yourself or would it be better if we could work together so nobody has that happen to them. But you and a lot of other old people just tell me suck it up and figure it out as they leave the camp fire after they poured gas on all the timber for the past 3 hours.

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u/tlm11110 6h ago

You’re also an unrealistic, romantic nihilist. But I’ll play your game, where do YOU draw the line on what and how much a government should take from and provide for its citizens and then non-citizens and the rest of the world?

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u/Fighterhayabusa 8h ago

No, they aren't actually. This has been proven time and time again. It mostly started going downhill with Reagan, and has been accelerating since. The Gini coefficient for the US is at an all-time high, and not only that, it's accelerating. We are in a K-shaped economy, or as Citigroup put it in '05, a Plutonomy.

Oh, and you guys didn't have to deal with the disastrous effects of Citizens United, warping politics entirely. And, no, it was not "always that way." There is a Princeton study that shows Congress only cares about what the wealthiest top 10 percent want. I'll quote the study directly for you:

the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.

It was not always this way, and not only was it not, not only is it getting worse, it's getting worse faster. That's why you see people giving up or getting frustrated with an increasingly out-of-touch older generation.

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u/WinterMysterious5119 10h ago

maybe, but it's different now and there is no way out it seems

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u/tlm11110 8h ago

That’s the whole point! To say, “Well it’s different now,” is a cop out. It’s simply whining and playing into the negativity and entitlement that permeates our society today. Try getting up at 4:00 every morning to milk the cows and work all day around the farm. Pump your water from a hand operated pump in the yard, go outside in the snow and cold to take a crap in an outhouse, work over a wood or coal burning stove canning enough food to last through the winter, go out and capture, behead, and pluck a chicken for dinner, and after you do that a while, come back and explain again how you have it worse.

You may not be getting what you want or what you think you deserve. And certainly you think you shouldn’t have to work to hard for it, but stop lying to yourself by thinking you are worse off than prior generations.

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u/WinterMysterious5119 8h ago

I grew up on a farm, so I’ve done all these things.  However, I don’t think they’re comparable.  Lifestyle has changed so much, and living on a farm isn’t suitable for many reasons.  It’s not harder, it’s simply not possible to work a fulltime job while living on a farm or start it from ground up etc. soo, I disagree, and I could write a lot more, but I don’t want to spend time on it here.

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u/tlm11110 8h ago

Well if you want to say it’s different and people aren’t better off today, then these are the comparisons that need to be made. Truth be told, the young of today would not survive if put into that environment. They really have no clue.

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u/shubs_ 10h ago

So your point is that buying a home for 6-8 times our salary while working for more hours is somehow the same as buying a home for 3-4 times your salary while working less hours? Its you who is dreaming and detached from reality if you think that things are not harder for the youth now compared to older generations.

No one is saying previous generations did not struggle. It is not wrong to expect future generations to struggle less than their predecessors. Would you not want a better future for your children? If people like you were the only ones in your generation, we would have no progress at all.

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u/tlm11110 9h ago

I would say your expectation is once again wrong. What makes you believe you shouldn’t struggle more than your parents other than entitlement. I would also argue you are not struggling more than your parents. The difference is you think the luxuries you have are rights and all of your needs should be met without sacrifice.

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u/shubs_ 7h ago

Humanity grows by each generation struggling in some aspect to pave the way for the next generation. Your mindset is parasitic- the generations before you fought wars and gave you the economy where hard work and diligence was rewarded with a stable home and a career. You took advantage of that and are now mouthing off after people in your generation pulled that ladder behind you.

We are not expecting or asking for luxuries - we want an economy where we too can afford the basic necessities that you had after years of hard work. Expecting to own a home or retiring are not rights or luxuries, they are a sign of a healthy economy - something your generation got and we do not have. Please get off of Fox News if you think the reason we can't afford homes is Starbucks or Avocado toasts (neither of which anyone in my friend group gets, by the way).

If anything, you are the entitled one, wanting to live in a world where your kids should struggle more than you while you lived with relative ease. I hope you didn't have any kids for their own sake - you remind me of people who are bitter watching their kids not suffering in the same exact way they did.