Look up ‘Hell’s Angels’ by Hunter Thompson. He has a chapter on the economics of being a biker/hippie/artist in the early 1970s.
A biker could work six months as a Union stevedore and save up enough to spend two years on the road. A part time waitress could support herself and her musician boyfriend.
I think that’s part of the point. The system doesn’t want the majority to be able to say no to a job because they were able to save easily and can take time off whenever they feel. On top of the things mentioned here like food and insurance costs there are also other things now like being certified in a field or needing to continue education or paying for permits every year that seem way to calculated in cost which is just another way of keeping you from getting to far ahead.
My family does ok, but we were still cutting it close a few years ago. Today we are looking at new jobs that we hopefully can get and pay more because ours stopped giving raises and inflation has us stuck living paycheck to paycheck.
I wish I could take more than a few weeks off a year to do what I actually enjoy doing for once. 1 of those weeks is a cheap vacation and the other is just spent getting things done because work takes up most of our time. It’s stressful and tiring and the longer it goes on the more depressing it becomes.
Another thing to consider. Working folks used to be able to afford really nice things. In 1960, a Rolls Royce was about $20,000 and a Jaguar was about $6,000. A ringside ticket to the first Ali/Fraiser fight was $200. They want peasants scrambling for crumbs, not peers
Their current philosophy is an incredibly shortsighted mistake. You make money by having a robust consumer class with plenty of disposable income to spend on things they like. If most people are barely affording essentials, there’s way less variety in where money ends up. If I’m the executive of Samsung, I want to publicly support better pay and higher taxes, because it means more people can buy my TVs and phones.
I struggle to describe the situation because it actually goes against capitalism. The rich are pursuing the option that gives them less profit and hurts the free market.
We’ve gone so far off the rails in terms of the economy that it boggles the mind.
I was brought with the idea that the old Tsarist system of a few great land owners; a small middle class of minor merchants, tradesmen, white collar civil servants; and a sea of serfs, was always going to be unstable. That’s the idea the Right wants for all of us.
Till there be property there can be no government, the very end of which is to secure wealth, and to defend the rich from the poor. In this age of shepherds, if one man possessed 500 oxen, and another had none at all, unless there were some government to secure them to him, he would not be allowed to possess them.”
Adam Smith, “ Lectures on Jurisprudence” 1766
All states are unstable, because their function is to secure the wealth of the many in the hands of the few.
I’m sorry but they don’t actually want you to have money. They want you to have credit. Lots and lots of credit if possible. Because then they win twice. Once in the purchases and second in the interest.
True, but that still requires people to have enough disposable income that they’re freely buying things. To nail them on interest you want them to spend more than they earn, agreed, but it’s all a balance. Go too far, and they’ll pull back on spending, and you lose out doubly.
The mistake you’re making is thinking that long-term effects are a concern in capitalism. They aren’t. The point is for the people at the top to make as much money as possible in as short a time as possible, keep milking the corpse until it rots, then fuck off with your money.
I think you’re missing it because you’re still thinking in a national frame. Capitalists do not. If US workers can’t afford their products, they’ll just sell to Chinese workers. That’s part of why they’re so desperate to get into that market. Capitalism always requires expanding markets. It’s why the web is going through enshittification, also.
There is no nation for a capitalist, they may play at patriotism when it suits their interests, but in reality they will go wherever they can to make as much as they can. If that stops being here, they’ll go elsewhere.
The distribution of that pie is also being skewed. Technology has brought prices slightly down (relative to income) for a lot of things that we buy, meaning that we get better prices and more variety on things like food, clothes, travel, and obviously electronics, but a couple of unavoidable things like housing prices and college tuition have exploded so dramatically that it totally overshadows the modest gains that we get. Both are things that only need to be paid for once, so anyone that went to school and bought a house before prices exploded now gets to enjoy cheap housing and cheap commodities, while anyone unlucky enough to come after is just screwed. I think that’s part of why older generations are so unsupportive of how much of a struggle it is for millenials and gen Z, the economy has gone to crap, but so far its only really hit the young
I think that’s part of why older generations are so unsupportive of how much of a struggle it is for millenials and gen Z, the economy has gone to crap, but so far its only really hit the young
Most of us older Generations though have kids of our own, and so we see how today’s life affects them, and the fact that we usually have to help them out because they have it much harder than we did at their age, so we’re aware of the situation.
What it comes down to is a human nature type of thing, where some people think “I’ve got mine and I don’t care about anyone else”, and that transcends physical age.
Yeah, it certainly isn’t everyone in the older generations, no group is ever a monolith. I was generalizing the general sentiment that I’ve seen, but I’m also in an ultra-conservative area that tends to be very “pull yourself up by your bootstraps”, so my perspective is probably skewed too.
I was generalizing the general sentiment that I’ve seen
Fair enough, and I thank you for the clarification.
The only reason I replied was because comments like these tend to really bother me, because as I get older, I find I become the recipient of ageism more and more, which is a form of prejudice.
I definitely do agree though that older generations have certain opinions and ways of thinking that they can be set into, but that doesn’t mean they can’t rise above that.
Just slapping the “Boomer” or “Neckbeard” label on everything and moving on feeling victorious is never a good way of solving any society problems.
And on a personal note, as a Gen-Xer constantly being called a Boomer, it reminds me of that line in the Monty Python movie where Death comes to a dinner party and picks up all these people who just died to take them away because of some bad food that was served. Theres one guy in the group being taken away by Death, and he says “hey I didn’t even eat the salmon mousse”.
Hmm… I knew a Hell’s Angel when I was younger and he certainly didn’t work a union job. He was essentially a gangster, who made bundles of money doing illegal things.
He was a Hell’s Angel in the 70’s and 80’s, so it was during the same time period that the book was written about.the Hell’s Angels have always been a criminal organization, despite trying to paint themselves as a simple motorcycle club.
Yes, but they’re not called Hell’s Angels. There are still bikers who aren’t in the Hell’s Angels. I’m replying to someone who specifically said “Hell’s Angels”. If you’re a biker that isn’t a Hell’s Angel and you call yourself one, you’re going to have a real bad time.
A biker could work six months as a Union stevedore and save up enough to spend two years on the road. A part time waitress could support herself and her musician boyfriend.
Look up ‘Hell’s Angels’ by Hunter Thompson. He has a chapter on the economics of being a biker/hippie/artist in the early 1970s.
A biker could work six months as a Union stevedore and save up enough to spend two years on the road. A part time waitress could support herself and her musician boyfriend.
I think that’s part of the point. The system doesn’t want the majority to be able to say no to a job because they were able to save easily and can take time off whenever they feel. On top of the things mentioned here like food and insurance costs there are also other things now like being certified in a field or needing to continue education or paying for permits every year that seem way to calculated in cost which is just another way of keeping you from getting to far ahead.
My family does ok, but we were still cutting it close a few years ago. Today we are looking at new jobs that we hopefully can get and pay more because ours stopped giving raises and inflation has us stuck living paycheck to paycheck.
I wish I could take more than a few weeks off a year to do what I actually enjoy doing for once. 1 of those weeks is a cheap vacation and the other is just spent getting things done because work takes up most of our time. It’s stressful and tiring and the longer it goes on the more depressing it becomes.
Another thing to consider. Working folks used to be able to afford really nice things. In 1960, a Rolls Royce was about $20,000 and a Jaguar was about $6,000. A ringside ticket to the first Ali/Fraiser fight was $200. They want peasants scrambling for crumbs, not peers
Their current philosophy is an incredibly shortsighted mistake. You make money by having a robust consumer class with plenty of disposable income to spend on things they like. If most people are barely affording essentials, there’s way less variety in where money ends up. If I’m the executive of Samsung, I want to publicly support better pay and higher taxes, because it means more people can buy my TVs and phones.
I struggle to describe the situation because it actually goes against capitalism. The rich are pursuing the option that gives them less profit and hurts the free market.
Look at the crypto bros.
We’ve gone so far off the rails in terms of the economy that it boggles the mind.
I was brought with the idea that the old Tsarist system of a few great land owners; a small middle class of minor merchants, tradesmen, white collar civil servants; and a sea of serfs, was always going to be unstable. That’s the idea the Right wants for all of us.
Adam Smith, “ Lectures on Jurisprudence” 1766
All states are unstable, because their function is to secure the wealth of the many in the hands of the few.
I’m sorry but they don’t actually want you to have money. They want you to have credit. Lots and lots of credit if possible. Because then they win twice. Once in the purchases and second in the interest.
True, but that still requires people to have enough disposable income that they’re freely buying things. To nail them on interest you want them to spend more than they earn, agreed, but it’s all a balance. Go too far, and they’ll pull back on spending, and you lose out doubly.
The mistake you’re making is thinking that long-term effects are a concern in capitalism. They aren’t. The point is for the people at the top to make as much money as possible in as short a time as possible, keep milking the corpse until it rots, then fuck off with your money.
Those who are empowered these days seem to be very selfish and self-centered.
The Center will not hold, if this continues.
that’s exactly the thing rich corps want. Whatever money and power that’s left to go into their coffers.
I think you’re missing it because you’re still thinking in a national frame. Capitalists do not. If US workers can’t afford their products, they’ll just sell to Chinese workers. That’s part of why they’re so desperate to get into that market. Capitalism always requires expanding markets. It’s why the web is going through enshittification, also.
There is no nation for a capitalist, they may play at patriotism when it suits their interests, but in reality they will go wherever they can to make as much as they can. If that stops being here, they’ll go elsewhere.
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Wealth inequality was much lower in the US after the war: http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/files/capital21c/en/Piketty2014FiguresTables.pdf Europe building back should mean the total pie is bigger. The real problem is that the wealthy parasites are sucking up more and more of a proportion that pie.
The distribution of that pie is also being skewed. Technology has brought prices slightly down (relative to income) for a lot of things that we buy, meaning that we get better prices and more variety on things like food, clothes, travel, and obviously electronics, but a couple of unavoidable things like housing prices and college tuition have exploded so dramatically that it totally overshadows the modest gains that we get. Both are things that only need to be paid for once, so anyone that went to school and bought a house before prices exploded now gets to enjoy cheap housing and cheap commodities, while anyone unlucky enough to come after is just screwed. I think that’s part of why older generations are so unsupportive of how much of a struggle it is for millenials and gen Z, the economy has gone to crap, but so far its only really hit the young
Most of us older Generations though have kids of our own, and so we see how today’s life affects them, and the fact that we usually have to help them out because they have it much harder than we did at their age, so we’re aware of the situation.
What it comes down to is a human nature type of thing, where some people think “I’ve got mine and I don’t care about anyone else”, and that transcends physical age.
Yeah, it certainly isn’t everyone in the older generations, no group is ever a monolith. I was generalizing the general sentiment that I’ve seen, but I’m also in an ultra-conservative area that tends to be very “pull yourself up by your bootstraps”, so my perspective is probably skewed too.
Fair enough, and I thank you for the clarification.
The only reason I replied was because comments like these tend to really bother me, because as I get older, I find I become the recipient of ageism more and more, which is a form of prejudice.
I definitely do agree though that older generations have certain opinions and ways of thinking that they can be set into, but that doesn’t mean they can’t rise above that.
Just slapping the “Boomer” or “Neckbeard” label on everything and moving on feeling victorious is never a good way of solving any society problems.
And on a personal note, as a Gen-Xer constantly being called a Boomer, it reminds me of that line in the Monty Python movie where Death comes to a dinner party and picks up all these people who just died to take them away because of some bad food that was served. Theres one guy in the group being taken away by Death, and he says “hey I didn’t even eat the salmon mousse”.
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No, that’s only one of a much larger suite of factors.
Hmm… I knew a Hell’s Angel when I was younger and he certainly didn’t work a union job. He was essentially a gangster, who made bundles of money doing illegal things.
So, you’re saying you have no concept of things changing over time?
He was a Hell’s Angel in the 70’s and 80’s, so it was during the same time period that the book was written about.the Hell’s Angels have always been a criminal organization, despite trying to paint themselves as a simple motorcycle club.
And there were bikers who weren’t in the Hell’s Angels.
Yes, but they’re not called Hell’s Angels. There are still bikers who aren’t in the Hell’s Angels. I’m replying to someone who specifically said “Hell’s Angels”. If you’re a biker that isn’t a Hell’s Angel and you call yourself one, you’re going to have a real bad time.
A biker could work six months as a Union stevedore and save up enough to spend two years on the road. A part time waitress could support herself and her musician boyfriend.
The name of the book was ‘Hell’s Angels.’