Read
They grouse about us boomers collecting things like kitsch (maybe not Hummel figurines) because “that stuff’s worthless, I’ll just throw it out, they’re squandering my inheritance!”
The little monsters ...
“Once upon a time, a family who rarely ate out, or flew anywhere, could afford a smaller home, a lousy car, and they didn’t send their kids to college. All on one income.”
College is not for everyone. Why pay to be indoctrinated in an evil philosophy? It is not clear even science and engineering degrees are a guarantee of a job in the near future.
Yeah, this narrative isn’t going to fly. Education is vastly more expensive in real terms than it was 50 years ago. Houses were 2.5 times median annual earnings back then. They are 6 times median annual earnings now. Real wages have hardly risen since that time. Yes, things really are much much worse for younger people now than they were back in your day Boomers. Hate to break it to you but there’s no question that as a whole, its true.
Wait a minute, my dad flew when he was young, circa 1943 and he did not have to pay for those flights. Alas both parents worked. My mom worked in a defense plant of some kind but without a vehicle, she took 3 busses each day each way to get there.
In my case my first flight was on world airways when I was 22. It was free!!
Hubby and I got married in 1976. In the late 70s interest rates started rising, as did inflation, and jobs were scarce. We didn’t have it “easy” and what we have now wasn’t obtained by luck. We worked hard for all of it.
I remember looking for a job in 1982 and finding one by hard work and the grace of God....for $4.50 and hour. I was so excited. I left the job interview after closing time and my car wouldn’t start (it was an old Ford Fairlane I’d borrowed from my Mom for the interview). No one was around to help and the building had closed. I had to walk two miles to a garage where a friend of my husband worked. No cell phones then. Life wasn’t all roses but we all made do.
Now, young people want to leave college and go straight into a corner suite at 300 thousand a year.
He also doesn’t mention that back in the day of the boomers, a two-car family was still a luxury. Now it is the norm.
When I was less than 25 years of age, I lived quite well with -—
1. A used car
2. No smart phone
3. No television
4. No computer
5. Sharing a house/apt with a friend
6. No college loans to payoff
8. Worked full time during summers and when in college also worked parttime
All to save money to eventually buy a house.
So if these 20 and 30 somethings have been living a similar life, then I will start being concerned.
The housing issue is particularly salient: young people are buying these new builds of 2,500 square feet and vaulted ceilings, attached two car garage... I bought a 1960s ranch of about 850 square feet, and guess what? It was pretty affordable!
In the 1950's the average sized house was 1,000sf. The cars had very basic technology, not much more advanced than the 1930's, and they only lasted 100K miles at best. College attendance was much lower as a percentage of the population, and since most people who did go had to pay out of pocket - no student loans - the market price to attend was based on sound supply vs demand economics, that is, cheaper.
Want is cured by earning.
Got my first mortgage in 1989. 10% no points. Reason to celebrate!!
Some of this is true but there is no way they will ever understand why and…they would not want to change it back anyway.
A family could own a home, a car and send their kids to college, all on one income.
.
Gone are safe neighborhoods, pensions, jobs where you were treated decently, respect for privacy, and just basic simplicity.
Gone is the assumption that a high school grad had common sense, a work ethic, manners, fear of God, etc.
Gone is the sense that being American was OK. Now we are supposed to take the entire world here, as if we had a duty to support them and respect them for being lazy, uneducated, corrupt, dirty, pagans.
They, in turn, are ingrates who deep down hate the US and hate us, but they like our welfare and our self-hating ways.
Rats are to blame for all of it, starting with Wilson.
When I was a young man I wanted more than I had. So I joined the Coast Guard after high school then went to college and then got a job so I could buy things I wanted.
And go figure. I now have money to buy goods and services I desire.
One other thing to consider… after WWII America was a manufacturing power house when much of the rest of the world was in ruins. This was a great advantage for us that no longer exists.
Seems we have a perfect storm of negatives. We are spiritually bankrupt (the biggest negative) with fewer shared values, the Fed. Reserve Act (1913?) the big banks rule in our debt based economy, evolution taught as fact vs theory, senators elected by popular vote, sexual liberation of the 60’s and the destruction of marriage (the basic unit of government), and as others have mentioned national debt to GDP, offshore manufacturing, influx of foreigners (legal and illegal), miseducation of our youth and college/univ. indoctrination centers, corrupt judges, a lying media, an extremely divided nation with one side lusting for power at any price and the other not entirely sure what they believe or what is worth dying for, the murder of Charlie Kirk (a man who was reaching our disaffected youth and helping them think rationally and spiritually).
If Kamala had been elected it would already be over. If Repubs lose in the mid-terms - Trump’s agenda compromised or halted. Dems will try to impeach him again. What happens if China invades Taiwan and our access to chip production is closed? America faces a very uncertain future. People’s expectations seem unrealistic. We have a big hole we are trying to dig ourselves out of with half the country working to elect people who hate our country and our way of life.