TL;DR: Americans now need to make $120K a year to afford a typical middle-class life and qualify to purchase a home. Minimum.

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[–] [S] 174 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (20 children)

I honestly don't even know why this upsets me so much. I am 50 and all set. I don't have children and barely any debt. I never considered myself particularly patriotic but somehow this whole thing gets under my skin. I guess it sours my achievements and fruits of decades of struggle (it took three generations of planning and hustle to get us out of poverty). It's like being a kid having a birthday party at Chuck E Cheese by yourself while all your friends are locked outside and you can see them through the glass windows.

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  • [–] 110 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    It gets under my skin because the west was on the right trajectory; improving wealth equality, quality of life, work life balance, etc — Then Capitalists killed all those gains using Conservatism, Neoliberalism, and a bastardised version of Libertarianism — just to enrich a tiny percentage the human population and return the rest of humanity to feudalism.

    Why should they own all the gains from humanities collective efforts, when all of us have a rightful claim to a share of those gains?

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  • [–] 56 points 2 years ago

    In the early 1900s we had huge fights for labor. Strikes yes, but also some literal armed fights.

    We won a lot. They conceded a lot.

    But they've eroded those wins, little by little, for a century or so.

    This is what will ALWAYS happen when you live in a system explicitly designed to extract profit from workers and reward greed. It cannot be reformed. It cannot be controlled. It will always slide backwards into this. We need a different system altogether.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago

    the west was on the right trajectory

    A lot of the west is still on the right trajectory. It's the US that is not.

    There are a lot of developed countries, especially in Europe, where the "American Dream" is much easier to attain than in America. But, more often than not, they don't even want that dream. For good reason.

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  • [–] 43 points 2 years ago (9 children)

    Wanting other people to have what you have, without your struggle, is an opinion we need more of.

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  • [–] 31 points 2 years ago (8 children)

    Especially when we have a society with a huge number of people who think that if you're poor, you deserve it.

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  • [–] 29 points 2 years ago (7 children)

    What gets me is, a lot of the POOR people say that about POOR people.

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  • [–] 10 points 2 years ago

    We live in the most effectively propagandized society ever created. It hasn't been until more recently that it's started to slip. A lot of folks still believe in the old lies and believe that everything would work if we just got rid of the immigrants, Jews, and corrupt politicians. Still I think more people are waking up to the reality that this system is broken not the people in it.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 years ago (5 children)

    And that's because they are stupid. They are not educated becasause the education they received was garbage. All by design from your "trickle down" bringing republikkkans. Working as planned.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (4 children)

    By “your,” you mean United States’s of course? Because they aren’t mine.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (3 children)

    What in the fuck are you talking about?

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  • [–] 8 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    I'm in a similar boat, except in my early 40's.

    My parents are in their 80's and working for DoorDash. They are lucky they at least paid off their home, because they didn't save enough and this country is sucking every penny it can get from them.

    I bought a condo that I love, have almost all my debt paid off, and am saving for what I hope will be an early retirement. It breaks my heart to see people struggling everywhere, and if I had Elon Musk money, I wouldn't be blowing it on a vanity space program.

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