jonnyboy
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- Aug 12, 2016
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You make plenty of good points I agree with, and i make zero excuses for those who exhibit laziness or complacency.You make some good (and very obvious) points but.......these are not new situations. They have been going on for years, regardless of who sits in the White House. When "Trump's economy" was supposedly booming, young people could not afford a home, couldn't afford food and rent, and were overdosing in the street. Democrats tried (and did to a certain extent) make health care a reality. The Republicans gutted it as much as they were allowed, and are trying to shit can it today. Things are demonstrably better under Biden even if they still suck in general. It's also demonstrable that things weren't a whole lot better in the mid '70's when I was coming of age and trying to find a place in the world. Instead of blaming the generations before us, we got on with the business of surviving.
Sorry, I try not to rag on the younger generations, but if the Boomers fucked up, it was handing out participation trophies so no one got their feelings hurt. Now these generations expect participation trophies just for waking up. There ARE, decent paying good jobs out there to be found. Unfortunately too many people think they can pick and choose indefinitely. Personally I would (and did) take a job no one else wanted. Having my own home and providing for my family were more important than a rainbows and unicorn job, pie in the sky "Dream" job. I stuck out a job I pretty much loathed for the last 20 years of it because it paid my bills and promised a halfway decent retirement. As @riverman is always saying, "Choices". And everyone's "metric" should be "Am I comfy?". And if the answer is "no", then they need to try something different. Today's younger generations whine more than the Boomers did at the same age. We faced so many of the same issues. We just weren't quite as quick to make excuses.
And one final word on the "Am I comfy thing"........As I have been told since I came of voting age, the primary metric in casting your vote for president is to ask yourself, "Am I better off today than I was 4 years ago?" The answer for me, @crandc and plenty more of us is a resounding and unequivocal HELL YES! I'll be 70 years old in another month and I spent a lifetime working hard. If you think you're going to shame me for caring about my comfort in my old age, you're just trying to shame me for living the American Dream (you know, the one the Right seems to think we left behind).
I just feel the older generations don’t quite understand the gravity of the situation because they aren’t living it. It’s not in the same ballpark, or universe for that matter as when you were coming of age. My response to Riv outlines alot of it. When you look at the numbers it is really quite jaw dropping. Nobody is blaming the older generations for carving out a life for themselves, it’s what we all are trying to do. It’s just that blaming younger generations for not being able to accomplish what you did isn’t exactly a fair judgment when you see the numbers are so heavily weighed against them.