• Cantaloupe877@lemmy.world
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    13 hours ago

    I don’t blame old people, they lived the best of times, their lives were comfortable because they were in a boom. They had high hopes, had kids with a bright future in mind for them, but things change, some see it, others are oblivious to it.

  • rayyy@lemmy.world
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    15 hours ago

    Would have been nice if younger folks had voted in their own interests.

      • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        3 hours ago

        Because they don’t vote…

        If your demographic is (correctly) viewed as being made up of nonvoters, then politicians are never going to pander to you no matter how much you whine online.

  • FlyingSpaceCow@lemmy.ca
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    20 hours ago

    I’m at least relieved to not have lead poisoning, for my gay brother to be safely out, and for my interracial marriage to not be scorned by the community.

  • rekabis@lemmy.ca
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    22 hours ago

    Stating the raw value of the house will only make naysayers throw inflation into your face.

    The better way of saying that would be,

    buy a detached SFH for only 4× annual minimum wage

    Like, really drive it home how absolutely unaffordable homes are these days. In my corner of Canada, the median detached SFH is going for 28× minimum wage, and it’s 32× if it’s new construction. My own 1972 split level sold brand-new for only 4× the 1972 minimum wage.

      • rekabis@lemmy.ca
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        13 hours ago

        A quick way of estimating annual wage for a full-time position is to take hourly, double it, then move the decimal point to the right by three spots.

        So for example, the BC minimum wage is $17.40. Double that is $34.80. Annually in a full-time job, that’s about $34,800 before taxes.

        And 4× that is $139,200. Current median SFH prices for used homes sit at just under $1M in my podunk tourist town. All detached SFH, $1,200,000. New construction, $1,500,000.

        I mean, really - who under 50 can actually afford those prices without intergenerational wealth to give them a leg up in life?

        • Jerkface (any/all)@lemmy.ca
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          1 hour ago

          Suburban SFHs should be outrageously expensive. They are an unsustainable model with huge externalities. They were artificially cheaper for previous generations due to the tax shell game they run on us all. They are a part of the reason the current generation is under water.

          And it pisses me off that “externality” is STILL not in my spelling dict in 2025.

        • theImpudentOne@discuss.tchncs.de
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          3 hours ago

          Also median detached sfh in the 70s was probably closer to 1200 sq ft. No builder is going to do anything less than a McMansion these days

    • explodicle@sh.itjust.works
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      19 hours ago

      You can throw the inflation right back at them. Boomers were born into the Bretton Woods system, started borrowing from us in the 1970s, and then kept voting for lower taxes on the wealthy.

      Old people used to complain about inflation frequently because they experienced a stable dollar for decades… until the Nixon Shock.

      • rekabis@lemmy.ca
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        13 hours ago

        It’s not just low minimum wage, although BC’s is currently the third highest in Canada.

        No, the problem is also “investors” that buy on spec only to sell at a much higher price just before completion, as well as “investors” that buy up 5, 10, 15 or even more homes for rental income. Both of these goose home values into the stratosphere and massively constrain the supply of homes that are affordable to those wanting to stop being renters.

        Were it not for “investors”, homes would likely be half or even less than what they currently are.

  • slappypantsgo@lemm.ee
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    21 hours ago

    What I like about this is that it doesn’t pretend boomers are uniquely evil, just the generation that got lucky.

    • CompostMaterial@lemmy.world
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      16 hours ago

      Except that’s not really the full truth either. The generation got lucky AND systemically burned every thing down so that they were the only ones left with all the benefits that luck provided.

      • slappypantsgo@lemm.ee
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        14 hours ago

        Any other people would have done that. Boomers are no different than anyone before or since. It is 100% Random Chance and anyone who disagrees is a liability.

        • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          3 hours ago

          Any other people would have done that.

          What a load of bullshit. Major self-report my friend.

          Before boomers, every subsequent generation was more well-off than the previous.

        • CompostMaterial@lemmy.world
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          3 hours ago

          Speaking in absolutes not only makes you a sith, it makes you ignorant too.

          It is important to understand why people are the way they are in order to prevent future repeats. In the case of Boomers, I don’t blame them 100% nor am I going to just chalk it up to just random chance.

          If you look at the generation as a whole, the predominant qualities they have are entitlement, arrogance, narrow mindedness, and a deep lack of empathy. Those attributes are what lead them to do the things that they did with the benefits that the luck of their circumstances gave them. But where did those attributes come from? I believe again you have to blame the parents.

          I believe that the root of the problems come from the Boomers’ parents. After the war, they were so happy to be alive and living in relative peace, that the popped out a bunch of kids and then showered them with all the benefits that the post-war prosperity brought while also not really paying that much attention to them (who has time to work and be fully involved in the lives of 5 kids?). What did that lead to? A generation that was spoiled and had no boundaries set, so they grew up to do a bunch of drugs, have a bunch of sex, and generally think that every thing is owed to them and everyone else is wrong because they are the best.

          Boomers are spoiled children.

  • RBWells@lemmy.world
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    23 hours ago

    I would still take my life over my mom’s. Things were not good for women back then.

      • rekabis@lemmy.ca
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        22 hours ago

        It’s getting comparable… women are being charged with murder for totally natural miscarriages. Imagine ending up in prison for decades for something you had absolutely no control over.

        And women are also dying from preventable issues with pregnancy, because it is illegal for doctors to remove fetuses even when they are a direct threat to the mother’s life (ectopic) or even totally dead in the first place.

        America is becoming exceedingly hostile to anyone not white, cis, and male.

        • Coreidan@lemmy.world
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          22 hours ago

          I agree that things were bad back then but my point is things are about to become much much worse. We will all be looking back wishing we could go back in time. Our future is bleak and you’ll be lucky to not starve to death in the coming years.

          • rekabis@lemmy.ca
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            13 hours ago

            America alone is going to be in immense economic pain starting some time within the next 3-9 months. Shipping into America from China is dropping off a cliff, with a nearly 40% all sources drop in port activity on the west coast at this time. Seattle alone has seen a 60+% drop in Chinese shipping.

            2025 is going to be an absolute economic bloodbath for most any American citizen inside America.

        • RBWells@lemmy.world
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          13 hours ago

          Well she was around before birth control was legal or widely available, and before abortion was legal. Yeah I agree the US is getting more hostile but nobody at my work is asking me to get the coffee, or saying women can’t do the job. And she raised 4 kids while doing a dissertation, widowed when the youngest was not even a teen yet.

          I don’t think now is great but it’s better in a lot of ways.

          • swelter_spark@reddthat.com
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            20 hours ago

            There’s a lot of people who resent that things ever changed for women, and have spent every moment since trying to put things back to the way they were. I’ve worked for a lot of them. I’ve definitely been expected to get coffee, been told not to speak to male coworkers unless absolutely necessary, been told that I dressed too well and it was tempting male coworkers to sin, been told there was something mentally wrong with me because I didn’t “take care of myself” by wearing more makeup, been blamed for work conflicts I wasn’t involved in because I should’ve been the peacemaker. All in the last 10 years. But, yeah, I’m glad I can use birth control legally.

            • RBWells@lemmy.world
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              20 hours ago

              Holy crap! That is dreadful. I have not worked anywhere that backwards. “Not to speak to male coworkers?”. Did you work for the Mike Pence campaign or something? What did the other women in the workplace think?

              I did get paid less than the guys I worked with in the early 1990s, literally because they were men. But not since. We have female VP of Finance, female Financial Controller, I’d say it’s 75/25 still in the top so not equal, but about half our operational managers are women, and I work in sports, that doesn’t seem a wildly progressive industry.

  • aeronmelon@lemmy.worldM
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    1 day ago

    peace out

    Spend their retirement calling the cafeteria staff at Luby’s racial slurs and saying trans kids and drag queens are evil.

    • Secret Music@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      1 day ago

      And voting for people that will make everyone’s life hell and ensure that no one else will ever get to experience the quality of life that they did.

        • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
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          1 day ago

          If you need to wait 18 years to vote you shouldn’t be able to vote once you are 18 years from average life expectancy (as in life expectancy is 80, you can vote until you’re 62, not after).

          Imagine how much focus would be put on healthcare if that were the case…

            • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
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              14 hours ago

              If it works one way it should work the other way as well! You’re too young to be responsible enough to vote? Then you can be too old to care enough about the future to vote!

          • NJSpradlin@lemmy.world
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            1 day ago

            A quick google says the US is 77 years, add 18 to that and you’re already way too high. 77 is geriatric, just like everyone complained about the last and current US presidents.

            Or… did you mean ‘from’ as in below? That would make more sense. Early 60s isn’t too old though.

            • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
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              1 day ago

              Yes, I meant 18 years after birth = 18 years before average age of death, so politicians would need to either reduce 18 to something lower or would have to work to increase life expectancy.

        • i_dont_want_to@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          24 hours ago

          I would think that removing the barriers to voting that affect younger voters is the better option, along with getting rid of the electoral college and allowing felons to vote. Taking away voting rights for certain classes of citizens is a slippery slope, especially when the root problem is some votes count more than others and many potential votes never make it to the polls.

        • Num10ck@lemmy.world
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          24 hours ago

          they way leaders emerge from certain personalities, and get so corrupted, i think we’d be better off with random selection.

        • letsgo@lemm.ee
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          1 day ago

          I wonder if you’ll still firmly believe that when you retire.

          • Miles O'Brien@startrek.website
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            1 day ago

            I don’t trust anyone with one foot in the grave to make long term decisions that benefit young people more than themselves any more than I trust a small child to make sound logical laws about bedtime.

            • letsgo@lemm.ee
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              24 hours ago

              Well we all vote in our own best interests, as I’m sure you do too. The art of good governance is to provide an environment in which everyone can thrive.

              The problem here is not old people who don’t vote in your best interest, it’s the government that aren’t ensuring everyone is catered for.

      • frunch@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        They didn’t just pull up the ladder behind them, they have a ladder propulsion system that will launch it into space

    • wowwoweowza@lemmy.world
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      22 hours ago

      EXACTLY! I found something so defeated and defeatist about this thread UNTIL I read your comment.

      This was once a reality!

      Why do we not have it now?

      Obviously an extremely nuanced question but clearly part of that is that even the obscenely wealthy were forced to realize that obscene wealth destroys more than it builds.

    • Lovable Sidekick@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      It’s amazing how often this gets mentioned. In truth almost nobody paid that tax rate because it applied only to salaries. Rich people have always gotten most of their income from capital gains (which were taxed at a low rate in the 1950s, just like today).

      • Rivalarrival@lemmy.today
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        1 day ago

        It applies to income, not salaries, and it applies to corporate income as well as personal income. Nobody needs to pay it for it to achieve its purpose. Indeed, nobody should be paying it, ever.

        You have a choice. I’ll give you $900 for you to do anything you want with. Alternatively, I’ll give you $10,000, but you can only spend it on something that you can convince me is something you need for your business.

        You can buy $900 of GOOG, or you can spend $10,000 on a bunch of electronics. You can buy $900 of AAPL, or spend $10,000 “entertaining clients” at a strip club.

        You can buy $900 worth of stocks, or purchase goods and services produced by workers.

        Nobody is taking the $900 here. Everyone is taking the $10,000. Nobody is paying 91% on $10,000 over the line. You can get much more value from your large “business” spending than you can get from your small investment.

        Now, if the numbers are $6300 on anything, or $10,000 on business, a lot of people are going to take the $6300. This is a top-tier of 37%.

        $7500 on anything, or $10,000 on business, most people are going to take the $7500. This is a top-tier of 25%.

        The 91% tax rate isn’t for the government to spend more money. The 91% tax rate is to ensure the richest among us get greater value from hiring workers than they do from buying securities.

        • chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world
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          1 day ago

          You frame it like those are the only two choices. They aren’t. The third choice is capital flight.

          People constantly forget that governments don’t have godlike tax enforcement powers. In the real world people avoid taxes via a million different avenues. Absconding with their money for greener pastures is a last resort but it happens constantly.

          Take China for example. Taxes are way lower than the US yet capital flight is such a huge problem that the government has enacted Capital controls. Yet capital flight from China continues largely unabated.

          So what this means in practice is that if you want to have a 91% top corporate tax rate in the US without a gargantuan capital flight problem you’re going to need a government that is way more powerful and draconian than either the US or China is right now.

          Now you might say “what if I just let everyone go and get the money back when they try to sell things to the US?” Well that’s basically what the US under Trump is doing right now, via tariffs. But then you tack on the capital flight beforehand and that means all the big companies, all the great jobs, leave the country before prices skyrocket. This is how you impoverish the US to third world status.

          • Lovable Sidekick@lemmy.world
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            15 hours ago

            A third choice is capital flight. there are even more choices, including but are not limited to creative accounting to hide revenue and assets, or bribing -er I mean supporting politicians in exchange for writing loopholes into the tax code.

          • IncogCyberspaceUser@lemmy.world
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            1 day ago

            Do you have an alternative suggestion to tackle the issues that such a high tax rate tries to address? I’m just genuinely curious.

            • chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world
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              19 hours ago

              If by issues you mean wealth distribution and the existence of an ultra-rich, powerful class, no. I don’t have a solution to that. The fundamental problem is that wealth brings power and the concentration of wealth and power in fewer hands brings other benefits, namely: coordination.

              Smaller groups nearly always have an easier time coordinating their efforts than larger groups, so smaller groups tend to have a disadvantage unless they’re on the battlefield (and even then, wealthy well-supplied small groups of soldiers easily defeat large groups of poorly-equipped, poorly-trained peasants).

              The big problem with the high-tax approach is that it’s a class warfare strategy. Apart from the communist revolutions of the 20th century, the history of class warfare has not gone well for the non-rich side. I think that moment in history was a unique one and unlikely to be repeated, barring the unforeseen appearance of some new decentralized warfare technology.

              So where does that leave us? We can try non-class-warfare strategies. We want to align the interests of everyone, rich and poor, towards a common goal: peace, prosperity, and sustainability. Why would the rich want this? Because life is better that way! It’s much nicer to live in a safe, walkable, integrated, and prosperous community than it is to live in a walled compound surrounded by ghettos.

              • brbposting@sh.itjust.works
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                13 hours ago

                Because life is better that way! It’s much nicer to live in a safe, walkable, integrated, and prosperous community than it is to live in a walled compound surrounded by ghettos.

                💯

                Selfish rich people should be properly selfish and make the world better so they don’t have to be grossed out by poors. Or worry about heli skiing becoming impossible one day. Be selfish richies!


                Hey economists love VAT I hear?

                • chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world
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                  13 hours ago

                  I’m reminded by the story I once read about Eritrea, a country with wealthy enclaves for the royal family plus foreign petro-engineers. The enclaves have these walls along the road with vast ghettos on the other side.

                  It’s a miserable place. The engineers tend not to stay long. Just make a lot of money in a short time period and then leave.

          • Rivalarrival@lemmy.today
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            24 hours ago

            You frame it like those are the only two choices. They aren’t.

            No, I provided a simplistic, informal explanation, not a conclusive evaluation.

            The third choice is capital flight.

            Let the parasites leave. That’s the point. They are sucking the working class dry, and we would be better off without them.

            Your argument operates under the assumption that a member of the current ownership class needs to be involved for a business to be successful. That is simply untrue. They aren’t the component enabling employment. They are the parasite leeching our productivity.

            The reality is that the most prosperous era of American history was made under a 91% tax rate, specifically because such a tax rate drives capital into the control of the working class.

  • zout@fedia.io
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    1 day ago

    Also flying to Vietnam for a government paid vacation when they were 18 years old.

      • CalipherJones@lemmy.world
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        20 hours ago

        Life has always been a struggle, but it truly feels hopeless being 20 something given the current state of the world. There’s some days where I spend 80% of the day consumed by suicidal thoughts.

      • Redredme@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        There was no oil crisis, no cold war, no economic crash in the 80s, no housing shortage in the 80s, no rampant crime!

        The 70/80s where glorious!

        /Sssss

      • glimse@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        It was kind of a breeze in comparison to now, no? My dad bought his first house for $37,000 when the average salary was $15,000. I just bought a house and couldn’t find one within an hour for under $420,000… The average salary around here is apparently $55,000

        • Lovable Sidekick@lemmy.world
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          14 hours ago

          Valid point that life was cheaper than it is now (and also a lot more expensive than when my parents were my age). But that whole time is weirdly misrepresented like it was a walk in the part, ignoring the massive social upheaval over race issues, women’s rights, the Vietnam War, pollution, Nixon and many other things. There was also the Cold War keeping us in constant fear of World War 3. My school had air raid practice FFS. Life wasn’t a party, it was just less expensive.

        • zout@fedia.io
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          But is it also the average household salary? Most boomers were single income. Then in the late eighties early nineties people realized that you could get higher mortgages in a double income, and as a result houses got a lot more expensive. Also, interest rates have declined a lot since the eighties, which also allowed people to borrow more.

          • glimse@lemmy.world
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            1 day ago

            That just adds to my point? It doesn’t matter why it happened, housing is significantly more expensive compared to income. But since you brought it up, let’s do the math.

            $15,000 average salary, single income, $37,000 house. That’s about 30 months salary.

            $55,000 average salary, dual income ($110,000), $420,000 house. That’s 45 months salary. With both people working.

            So…yeah, seems like “the basics” are a lot harder to achieve nowadays than they were in the 80s.

            • zout@fedia.io
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              I really wouldn’t know if that last statement is true. We were only discussing housing, so not all of the basics. Also, like I said earlier, interest rates on mortgages were higher in the past. I would also consider this when comparing, because the interest can be more than total debt.

              • glimse@lemmy.world
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                1 day ago

                Interest rates peaked in '81 at 18% and yes that brings it closer to today’s % of income…but it plummeted within a few years.

                And housing/mortgage stuff isn’t the only part in this equation - the bottom 90% of the country has been getting significantly less for their labor since Reagan. Money is hoarded and wages have not kept up with inflation

      • It’s also forgetting the Korean war, and several smaller wars in between (Panama, Honduras).

        Vietnam was bad, but don’t forget so easily that we only just got out of the longest running war the US was ever been in, and it wasn’t Boomers or Gen X fighting in it. It spanned two generations. Now, because there US just can’t not be involved in a conflict, we’re casting about trying to find a good enemy; I think the next one will be with a developed country. We’ve realized that we don’t do so well with insurgencies, so maybe Russia or China. Or, maybe India and Pakistan will finish everything for us! They both have nukes, and China isn’t just going to sit there while they trade nukes across the border.

        Anyway, it’s a little depressing that y’all have already written off the 800,000 veterans who fought in Afghanistan as being unworthy of notice.

        • Lovable Sidekick@lemmy.world
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          If you want to nitpick in that area, US soldiers in the Middle East over the past 30 years have all been enlistees, average age around 30. The average age of US soldiers in Vietnam was 19, most of whom were drafted. No American high school students since 1973 have had to watch lottery balls on TV decide whether they get sent to war.

        • BussyCat@lemmy.world
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          The Korean War “ended” in 1953 the oldest boomer would have been 7 year olds, about half of them were the right age for Vietnam but even with that only about 2.7m served in some capacity for the Vietnam war with a lot in non combat roles there were 76m baby boom era so less than 4%

    • BussyCat@lemmy.world
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      A lot of boomers missed Vietnam as even in 1975 some boomers were only 11 years old

          • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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            3 hours ago

            This kind of seems like a meaningless statistic without some more context (such as what % of US citizens were boomers, and what % of US citizens served in Vietnam). On its own, it doesn’t really say anything.

            I think a more useful statistic would be the percent of people who served in Vietnam that were boomers.

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          1 day ago

          Baby boomers are 1946-1964 Gen X is 1965-1980 Gen Y is 1981-1996 Gen Z is 1997-2012 Gen alpha is 2013- present

          • fishy@lemmy.today
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            1 day ago

            It’s all made up horse shit to draw lines between us. People don’t neatly fit into a line or graph and it’s really lame people keep repeating this crap.

            • BussyCat@lemmy.world
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              12 hours ago

              It’s not some complicated plot to drive conflict… it’s literally just a metric that has turned out to be somewhat useful as we can talk about what major life events different generations experienced at what approximate age.

              For example most Gen Y was a teen when 9/11 happened and most Gen X was a teen when the challenger explosion happened and most boomers were a teen when we landed on the moon

  • archonet@lemy.lol
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    1 day ago

    Yeah, my mother was able to earn a bachelor’s degree (iirc? either that or an associates), paying for it by working as a cashier at McDonalds.

    The fucking eighties, man.

    My anger as I approach my thirties, unable to afford college even when I was working full time (before I lost my job), can not be overstated.

    • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
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      1 day ago

      You can still do that if you live in a first world country… Yes, I’m implying what I’m implying.

      • archonet@lemy.lol
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        1 day ago

        Lemmy, every 5 seconds:

        guys are you aware the united states sucks

        guys
        guys

        I don’t think you’re aware

        the US sucks

        guys

        listen

        hey

        the US sucks

        did you know that?

        guyssssss

        like, yes, I get it, we suck, but also it’s exhausting being unable to emigrate anywhere and being constantly reminded of how much suck I get to endure for the rest of forever.

        • Miles O'Brien@startrek.website
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          1 day ago

          And dint forget, no matter who you voted for you’re still a dirty American and FUCK YOU for existing at a time when your country sucks more than usual. It doesn’t matter how you voted or what your beliefs are.

          And also if you can’t move out of the country it’s your fault for not… Something. I guess.

          And also depending on what community you’re in, SUPER FUCK YOU for deciding to leave your country instead of fixing it.

          And of course, as we can already see, every single shortcoming of your country is CLEARLY your fault or at the very least you deserve to be punished for your country being shitty in any way, whether it started long before you were born or not.

        • punksnotdead@slrpnk.net
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          1 day ago

          That’s what happens when your country won’t shut up about how great they are. Or rather, won’t shut up full stop.

          “USA! USA! USA! NUMBER ONE!” Is so fucking annoying, of course non-Americans remind you you’re only number one in percentage of the population in prison.

          America is a shit country that feeds its population “patriotic” propaganda from the day they are born until the day they die. You literally make a pledge every day at school. That’s cult behaviour.

          Lemmy just opens your eyes to the rest of the world, where you’re no longer in the bubble of America. Lemmy isn’t the problem, you’re just finally hearing the voices of those outside the USA, unfiltered.

          This is from Scotland, in 1983, the sentiment now hasn’t changed much.

          I’m sorry that this comment is so harsh because you’re just tryna live your life and already sound down about being told how shit your country is. But Americans need reminded that we don’t “hate ya cuz we ain’t ya” or jealous or whatever, as a nation you’re just insufferably obnoxious and commit heinous crimes whilst making out you’re the saviour of the world, the good guys, the world police. When you’re institutionally arseholes. You won’t even submit to international criminal courts or uphold most human rights. America is a bully nation that is finally reaping what it’s sown.

          If you’re an American reading this and you’re fucking fuming at what I’ve said and want to throw hands, good. Use that anger to create positive change in this world. Organise unions, strike in solidarity, stand up for others, become politically active, change your country for the better. Stop enabling greedy consumerist behaviour and excusing rapists, racists, and murderers. You may just be one person, what can you do? But I’m just some dude on the other side of the planet having a bored rant whilst taking a shit and I’ve managed to get you to read all this. Do something to improve your community, encourage others to do the same, many many incremental changes combined can make a large difference. Finally fucking live up to the tagline “land of the brave”, because you sure as shit don’t deserve it so far.

          • GenerationII@lemm.ee
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            16 hours ago

            Yeah, most Americans are generally not into the “USA USA USA” cult-like behavior of it all. Most of us are just regular people working shitty jobs to pay for shitty places to live. And all the grandstanding and “Do something!” from your rant is extremely disingenuous to the people are fucking doing something. Just because you don’t hear about it doesn’t mean it’s not happening. And you’re kind of an asshole for generalizing a whole people like that.

          • Soulg@ani.social
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            24 hours ago

            Tl;Dr you’re just defending the act of kicking people when they’re down

  • blueamigafan@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    Spend all of their own parents inheritance, leave nothing for their own kids, talk about how they had to work their way up from nothing.