The ideal life is to be born a multi-millionaire, then earn billions by exploiting workers
could you live with yourself though?
If I was born rich, I’d probably have no empathy either.
How are you supposed to develop it?
I am so tired of people presuming that US’s economic history is somehow universal.
The ideal life is dying when you’re only 54? That’s pretty bleak!
Longer than I expect to live
But probably true!
being prime military age for the vietnam war? no, please got no
Also literally any day could be the one the Bomb dropped. It’s easy to forget how close we came, or how fucking terrifying it was that you had no way of knowing.
Yeah, I’m pretty happy with being born after the draft became less used and I’m now old enough to not qualify for the draft anymore. Life is pretty good.
My dad bought about a third of an acre of waterfront property in the 80s with a small cottage on it that we added to. He paid something like $50,000. Guess what a small waterfront property is worth now?
No one gonna bite? Ok, I’ll go first… One million dollars!
For some my uncle and my dad did these things but also died prematurely from health complications related to Vietnam
Deserved it
Oh look, it’s a tankie fuckwit! How does it feel to be a scurge on society, your family, and to have dropped out of primary school?
It feels great, thanks for asking! I love holding viewpoints that are “dangerous” but liberals agree with 4 years later (and pretend they held all along)
Life for seniors is ok. About to get a tax break on SS benefits. Would be 78 this year. Possible to get another 12 years of senior benefits. Trump was born that year, so things can work out past 2001.
You have to be at least middle class and “white”/seen as the dominant demographic for this to work out. Just like every other place and time period.
middle class constraint can be relaxed for hunter-gatherer societies.
Could one feasibly claim that the less hunter-gatherer we are, the less egalitarian we are, societally?
So you wouldn’t even live to be 60?
Impress them with a firm handshake.
My dad was born in 1947. He died a year ago. Lived in my basement for 3 years toward the end, we converted it to a “in-law” suite. Probably spent most of his money on medical bills though because he had an accident that paralyzed half his body.
Anyhow he worked the same job his entire life only worked his way up to middle management at a factory. Prided himself in slacking off his entire career and still did better than I do now and I have to work much harder and have my spouse be employed to pull in what he did alone half-assing it.
So it was different for sure, middle-class was easily achieved if you were a white male. I’d almost say if you were poor you just got very unlucky, were a single mom, or a minority. If you were a white male, you’d really have to be dealt a bad hand in life to not be middle-class.
As long as you’re white
And a man.
And lived in US
And cishet
And secretly homosexual
And resemble a wasp
When you are white the sky is the limit. When you are not the limits the sky. -Chris Rock
The limit is the sky?
Didn’t work for me… in my 1972 bank job interview I was told, “I’d hire you if you were a man, but you’re not. If I hired you, you’d just get pregnant and leave.” It wasn’t against the law for him to say all that.
And for what it’s worth I didn’t buy a home - a small one-bed flat - until I was in my 40s. Cost me so much I couldn’t afford proper furniture. Yes, my current house is worth a lot more than what I paid for it (mainly because I bought a wreck), but so is any other house I could afford if I sold it.
would be great if you told us how much it costed and how much you brought in hourly. i wanna sympathize but then i remember you could rent a studio in the 70s-80s for like 300 dollars month. i probably could have bought a house with a missing arm and working 30 hours a week.
My flat cost £43k in the early 90s, nearly three times my annual income at the time, and all my savings went on the deposit. I had previously lived in a shared house, the only way I could afford to save anything.
More nostalgia… Looking for a 1br flat to rent in 1980s Wellington (NZ) was a trip. Demand far, far outstripped supply. Among the gems offered to me for top rental (can’t remember how much, but it was crazily high), was a place that stank of damp and had rat-holes chewed in the bathroom wall - which was just soggy softboard against a dirt bank. There were three couples viewing at the same time. Another place I was told was fresh to the market, no-one else had seen it yet. The stove had been dismantled and the toilet was piled high with human shit. When I shouted at the agent she said, You don’t want it then?" and hung up.
I eventually lucked in with a “granny flat” whose owners, an adorable elderly Polish couple, lived upstairs.
ahhh, didnt realize you were from the UK dont know enough to speak on it. i rescind anything i might have said
That’s the general problem for everyone who is not from US here on Lemmy: Everybody from US assumes that everybody knows we are talking about US. I would never say that “the ideal life is being born in 1947” and I was wondering why anyone would say that. That’s right after World War 2. Must have been a crazy time.
Yeah, I was hoping I’d see less of that moving away from Reddit to a non-US site, but eh, what can you do.
I dont know how things are in new zealand these days but in a medium city in canada a house or condo costs at least 10 times the average annual income and closer to 20-25 times a minimum wage income. So things may not have been as easy for you as the post makes it seem but they’re a hell of a lot harder for a lot of people now.
Dang so it sounds like new Zealand has had a bit of a time with housing for a while then huh? I’ve heard a lot about it recently but just assumed it was a relatively new probably (post 2000-ish)
Yes we’ve been through multiple housing crises although it’s gotten truly ridiculous in the last couple decades.
The crowning achievement of the first labour government when they were elected in 1935 was to create a massive state house building programme due to the huge shortages and miserable state of the stock at the time. This continued until the 1980s when we went full neoliberal, privatised everything and sold off most of the state houses and private landlords and speculation now dominate.
Anything built between early 1990s and 2004ish is prone to leaks due to the deregulated building code at the time and is basically trash.
Wellington is a particularly bad case, and has always had a worse housing situation than the rest of the country (although Auckland is more expensive). Hilly topography has meant lack of space to build and lots of damp hovels that get little sun. Add in character/heritage protection that made it effectively illegal to alter or demolish the draughty and falling apart 1920s wooden villas that make up most of inner Wellington and there you go.
This is great, as reply and shitty, as content. made my day and ruined my evening.
I’m sorry! Truly.
My dad bought his house for $650 in 1976, had it moved from the mill village where it was for $2000 and has lived in it on land he was given for 50 years. Its current value is over $225k.
He offered to sell me a quarter acre for $50k.
Fyi $650 in 1976 is about $3600-3700 adjusted for inflation.
Sounds like pops is needing slot machine money.
You forgot the part where you get to call young people lazy
