Late Stage Capitalism
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I'll start by saying that I absolutely don't mean to diminish anyone's personal circumstances. Being poor sucks.
I think one thing that a lot of these kinds of articles miss is that this is predominantly an American perspective. The US (and to a lesser extent Canada) seem to have had a disproportionately better quality of life in the past — I see a lot of anecdotes about how someone's grandfather was a postman and they had 7 kids and 2 houses and a boat and took 3 vacations a year, etc. and all on one income. This is absolutely not how it was at the same time in the UK, for instance.
I'm a Gen Xer, and in the mid 90s I was a software developer for a decent-sized company in London, and my ex-wife was a university professor — but we still lived "paycheque-to-paycheque". I was 30 and she was 35 when we had our Gen Z daughter. If anything I'd say she and her husband are doing as well or better than we were at their age — decent house, far too many TVs, 2 cars, pets, recently got married (with a much bigger wedding than I had) and thinking about kids. Maybe the difference is that they're in Canada.
I hate to say it, but I think this is the US catching up with the rest of the world.
"I suffered so should everyone else." Is this your outlook or am I off base?
Not at all. I'm just saying that for a lot of the world, this has been situation normal for a long time.
Most of humanity at this point.
Weird, all the data I can think to look for off the top of my head says Brits were very close to Americans in the past and are doing better now. The clear exception is stuff that measures hard cash but then Americans get no government healthcare and less benefits (and they have a more unequal society) which more than evens out. The perception that current generations are having it worse than future ones also seems pretty universal across the developed world. Did you by any chance have above average expenditures, like a large debt you had to repay?
I have to say I'm impressed that the 2 responses to my comment are one guy mad that I grew up poor in a bad economy and noticed, and one that thinks I'm a right-wing separatist.
It’s pretty amazing to see such right wing propaganda. I’ll bet you’re a separatist based on that… language.
Maybe read it again.
Are you a separatist?
Absolutely not. Brexit was a massive fuckup that I can't believe the UK did to themselves, and I'm glad Alberta voted against going the same way (though I wouldn't be surprised if Danielle gets ousted at some point as that's what the right seems to like to do to themselves and they have another one later). I'm not sure what other separatism you might be thinking of if I'm honest.
What about my comment makes you think I might be a separatist? Or indeed right-wing?