I see a lot of propagada on this thread, blaming older people for society’s woes. Well shit! All we have to do to fix things, is abolish pensions, Social Security, and Medicare…just like the ruling party wants to do?
You’re buying bullshit. Getting angry at boomers, Zoomers, Xers, etc., while the ruling class laugh their asses off at the useful idiots who actually help further their agenda.
Slow down. Don’t ever believe FORTUNE about anything employment-related. They exist to make bosses feel good about bad decisions. Period.
This has nothing to do with generation warfare and everything to do with wealth. AI is a smokescreen, a scam, a waste of word count.
There are no laws against the masters organizing, only for workers.
-Adam Smith
"Our merchants and masters complain much of the bad effects of high wages in raising the price and lessening the sale of goods. They say nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits. They are silent with regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains. They complain only of those of other people.”
― Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
And I’ve met so many libertarian econ-bros who worship Smith. I bet they don’t know that one.
There are no laws against the masters organizing
there is: anti-monopoly laws, anti-cartel laws etc
Which remain unenforced, like a great many laws these days.
They get enforced when another rich person gets their fee fees hurt.
Laws are only laws when they’re actually enforced. Gestures broadly around at monopolies in America.
They have much too much money to give a fuck about something as trivial as laws.
This is your reminder that division along age or generation lines is as much of a distraction as division along race lines is. The real division is between who works for a living and who owns for a living. Simple as that. Sadly, the owning also includes owning the media and politicians (why yes, also most democrats), so there’s not much you can do either way. Get used to not owning a home.
Based
Those entry level jobs not only provide pay/benefits, but also essential training and instruction for young adults. I would call this extremely short sighted if the US wasn’t being run by the most evil people imaginable.
I would love for this to be a US thing, this seems to be a capitalism thing though.
Those outside the USA will one day learn themselves. End stage capitalism comes for us all in the end.
For now, they get to pretend their country is so exceptional that it could never happen to them.
I am not sure i understand your comment, i was trying to say, that this is already a global phenomenon
I read it as they were agreeing with you, but it was definitely a bit awkward.
The Great American Decline continues.
This is going to be a very bleak nation to live in within another decade or two. I mean it already is for many.
Perhaps we’re nearing the nadir. I’d map the slump from the 70s until today as a long descent into madness started by reaganomics and ending in literal trump madness.
could be the conservatives will look at what their bullshit wrought and stay out of the process in the future.
potentially, I could grow wings out of my ass and learn to fly…
but I’m not gonna hold my breath.
If you are a United States Citizen over 18 years old PLEASE make sure to check your voter registration and PLEASE vote!
Voting is always worth it. Even if you write in “anyone else” it still shows that you’re willing to get off your ass and vote unlike half of voting-eligible people for some reason.
Writing in some protest vote will re-elect the current authoritarian regime.
It’s still better than not voting. I hate it too but for the love of god fucking vote.
The vast majority of people who just choose to not vote will vote dem in the upcoming election.
yeah , I don’t think things look great across the board but I really struggle to see any light for the younger generations that are either in the education system or just coming out of it. With no real incentive to educate out side of a desire to just be educated I could see a strong dystopian future where those generations have less and less skills to critically judge information … but also clearly the older generations can’t critically judge information as well - which is how we got here. But , perhaps things will look dystopian enought that it will trigger change.
I really struggle to see any light for the younger generations that are either in the education system or just coming out of it.
Unprecedented wealth transfers are happening between the dying elderly and the much smaller Millennial / Zoomer / GenA cohorts. The problem isn’t one of generation, its one of position within your labor cohort. Do you have rich parents? The last five years alone have likely added a digit to their net worth. Do you have poor parents? Huge mistake. You’re going to inherit the “Own Nothing And Like It” lifestyle that was shoved down their throats.
JD Vance’s kids are set for life. Baron Trump and Joseph Kushner are going to be just fine. Dario Amodei’s kids? Sam Altman’s kids? Elon Musk’s favorite kids? Anyone sitting on a big portfolio of tech stocks they bought in the 1990s? Anyone with real estate holdings in a major metro area? Anyone in the Epstein Files? They’re on the golden path.
But yeah, what’s the value of a material education in a world that considers information a cheap commodity? Idk. I do know that I have a friend who was misdiagnosed with cancer in her 20s and went thousands of dollars out of pocket to discover the error. So, there’s definitely some amount of value-add in education from that perspective.
But , perhaps things will look dystopian enought that it will trigger change.
Watched the Penultimate Episode of Bluey last night with my 2-year-old son. It’s called “The Sign”, and it plays out against an allegory of a farmer.
Is the current manifestation of events lucky or unlucky? We’ll see.
With no real incentive to educate out side of a desire to just be educated I could see a strong dystopian future where those generations have less and less skills to critically judge information …
the twist is: it doesn’t matter if large parts of the population aren’t able to make meaningful decisions, if you don’t allow them to make decisions in the first place … that’s the plan here, dismantle democracy and give all control to the hands of a few.
If being smart makes you so good, how come our country isnt lead by smart people? Check mate nerds. /$
This WILL backfire, manual labor creates angrier, stronger, more cohesive mobs
That’s what Flock and such are for; they’ll identify the riff raff and nip in the bud so… this’ll be a slow starter then?
Not really complete. We did not shift the wealth from young to old. The old have money, because in their time, they still participated in the wealth they generated.
Nowadays most of the generated wealth goes to the wealthy, not to those who generated it. This hits both old and young.
The money that the youth is lacking went to the rich, not to the old.
The old have money, because in their time, they still
participatedhad opportunities to participateFixed it for you.
Nowadays most of the generated wealth goes to the wealthy, not to those who generated it.
🧑🏻🚀🔫🧑🏻🚀
This hits both old and young.
But the vast majority of the rich are old, and the vast majority of the young are poor.
The money that the youth is lacking went to the rich, not to the old.
Again, the rich are mostly the old.
Far from all old people are rich, but the vast majority of rich people are old and/or have inherited wealth.
The vast majority of the old are poor also. And the vast majority of the Rich would fit in a moderate concert venue.
Its the working class vs the 1%, not generation vs generation.
Fact is that my generation, Millennials, are the first generation since the 1930s to grow up economically worse off than our parents and it’s only gotten WORSE for the following generations.
To the point that Boomer/Gen X middle of the middle class is rich by Millennial/Gen Z standards and will be considered economically obese by the time Gen A become adults.
Which may represent reverting to the norm of history where very few were rich and everyone else was a peasant. If you want to change this look to the governments after the Depression and World wars. What did they do? High taxation for real public good.
The old and the rich are the same. People over 55 own 52% of the US which is one of the best examples of inequality. Boomers all together own 8x more than billionaires. Any old person with a decent 401k or otherwise stock/index fund based retirement is one of the shareholders living off the working class.
After the billionaires are guillotined or otherwise disposed of, there would still be terrible inequality that needs to be taken care of. Put simply, the billionaires alone don’t have enough assets to fix this.
Some few of the people over 55 own 52% of the US.
You are trying to shift the blame from the rich to the pensioner.
"The son of the worker, on entering life, finds no field which he may till, no machine which he may tend, no mine in which he may dig, without accepting to leave a great part of what he will produce to a master. He must sell his labour for a scant and uncertain wage. His father and his grandfather have toiled to drain this field, to build this mill, to perfect this machine. They gave to the work the full measure of their strength, and what more could they give? But their heir comes into the world poorer than the lowest savage. If he obtains leave to till the fields, it is on condition of surrendering a quarter of the produce to his master, and another quarter to the government and the middlemen. And this tax, levied upon him by the State, the capitalist, the lord of the manor, and the middleman, is always increasing; it rarely leaves him the power to improve his system of culture. If he turns to industry, he is allowed to work–though not always even that --only on condition that he yield a half or two-thirds of the product to him whom the land recognizes as the owner of the machine.
We cry shame on the feudal baron who forbade the peasant to turn a clod of earth unless he surrendered to his lord a fourth of his crop. We call those the barbarous times. But if the forms have changed, the relations have remained the same, and the worker is forced, under the name of free contract, to accept feudal obligations. For, turn where he will, he can find no better conditions. Everything has become private property, and he must accept, or die of hunger." - Peter Kropotkin (The conquest of bread)
Very nice quote! Thanks!
The old and the rich are the same. People over 55 own 52% of the US
… while making up how many % of the population?
And what’s the distribution of that 55%?
Unprecedented wealth transfer from young to old
I mean, you lost me here. The notion that people are being distributed money based on their age is wildly off the mark. The US has an enormous population of impoverished elderly people and a tiny population of extraordinarily rich elderly people. The wealth isn’t anywhere approaching evenly distributed.
So much of this is just blaming “The Olds”. Nevermind that much of the AI rollout is being performed by the cartel of mega-influential Millennials and Zoomers and a smattering of GenAs. How do you square this? The tech industry is dominated by folks under 50. The people coming out of college to join the tech sector are being paid salaries to perform this automation. The thing you’re complaining about is people maybe 4-10 years your senior doing the work that you would be doing if you’d gotten there a bit earlier.
Nothing in this bit implies any amount of class solidarity. It’s all just crabs in a bucket.
This. The essential struggle is a class struggle.
We need to vote these people out. We need to also vote with our wallets. And if it’s necessary then we riot for a change. People have rioted for less, tbh
You really only needed that last sentence.
Nah, we still need to vote. I’ve seen a lot of anti-voting propaganda lately, all conveniently before midterms.
Trying to get an internship around the time iPhones got popular was a nightmare.
So much scut work and entry level work (i.e. assistant and basic secretarial) just didn’t need a person any more.
I can’t imagine how bad it is right now.
I recommend woodworking or metal fabrication in anticipation of future guillotine demand.
Rusty Cage built one in Florida, there’s a whole tutorial, happy crafting!
Or the collapse of society in general. Being a craftsman is a valuable skill when your society loses the ability to buy the cheap products of slave labor.
If they don’t find you handsome, they should at least find you handy.
How much could one banana cost?
$10?
When they can’t be grown locally and global supply chains have broken?
A lot.
This question becomes less rhetorical and more academic by the day
cheap products of
slave labormass-market and economies of scaleI’m building up a stache of niche tools for all sorts of little odd repair jobs. And rechargeable batteries, portable solar panels, etc.
The chances of someone needing a watch battery changed in a post-apocalyptic world are slim, but hey if they’ve got the battery I’ve got the tools.
Other thing like sharpening stones and soldering supplies could be useful more often though. And sewing supplies, leatherworking kits, etc.
I hope I can get a forge and anvil before society collapses. They’re not too expensive but right now the main thing is finding the space for it.
Water purification is another big one. And random things like grain mill, oil press, brewing supplies, etc.
The guy with the microbrewery in his basement will be a huge asset in a post-collapse world. He could barter for almost anything he needs (if anyone has it, at least).
We can do the same thing with a rusty spoon.
Working on shop space now. If I get laid off the plan is to take a precision machine degree at th local community college
I hope you have the money saved up to let that happen.
For tuition, but haven’t figured out how to keep a roof over my head yet
This guy has the right idea, not just about his
guillotinelemon chopper.
I’m not too worried about the entry level jobs. My current theory, which changes every few weeks this world is too fast now, is that businesses are going to start to worry about business continuity. It’s a very real concern, and it’s going to cause them to hire entry level people simply to have the next generation of management.
Yes and no. You may be right, but the MBA math doesn’t agree with you. You’re an investor and you can make an investment in one of two companies who are otherwise equal, except one acknowledges that it needs to invest in it’s future work force and the other is only concerned with maximizing returns. The first company may be healthier long term but that value won’t be actualized for many years. Whereas the second company can provide larger returns sooner. Which company is the safer investment?
You may say it’s company A, except that your money won’t make money for much longer, a lot can happen in that time. With company B it may not pay off in the long run so don’t. Invest, collect, leave, find another investment. Your money is vulnerable for less time and has a better chance of making money in the short run. Which company is the safer investment?
While that’s true, the flip side of that is rating agencies and auditors. If you go through an audit and get downgraded due to business continuity risk, that also can effect the price. So the question is, which one affects the price more?
yeah, people are gonna invest in the thing that brings more money after X amount of time. if company A sinks after X+1 time, that’s not an issue as you will have jumped ship by then.
I think that people would only start to plan long-term if the short-term profitability goes to zero. I.e. if short-term progresses stop happening.
Speedrunning empire decline at levels unimaginable to past generations. Bankrupt the rising generations to squeeze just a little more for the billionaires.
one’s gotta say that the decline of the empire is happening fast, but so is everything else. you might wanna check what the ratio of decline to general technical progress is. is it more or less than previous empires?
