Na brother, we're all just equally burnt out from this capitalist hellscape the billionaires created, and with a collapsing global ecology, we want justice for the future that has been stripped away from us and our children.
Gerontocracy is fundamentally an issue of the few holding more than their fair share of wealth and power at the expense of others and pulling the ladder up behind them. It is a class issue same as everything else.
We've got Sam Altman and Taylor Swift in the millennial category off the top of my head. Elon Musk is Gen x, not a boomer. So boomers have Microsoft, Apple, Nvidia at the moment, but soon they'll go to gen X and the problems will perpetuate. Oh, Googles Ceo is Gen X as well
Yes, and once boomers start dropping dead, gen Xers will be fighting tooth and nail to hold on to their slice of the state pension ponzi at the cost of everyone below them on the ladder the same as boomers did. That does not change my point at all.
There is no fair and equitable world in which state pensions can continue working the way they work now. The system was built on the expectation of infinite growth with every generation being larger than the last.
Yeah, if we saw something like an unavoidable 25% tax on all wealth over $300 million, we would see around $2.5 trillion in taxes that could be distributed as a universal base income that would place $17,857 per average household (2.5) in the U.S.
If we actually combated housing prices, that could potentially cover housing everyone in the U.S. from that alone, then retirements would only need to cover food costs. There are a lot of changes that would need to be made, they just won't come until the last second when people are dying in large enough numbers to make people do something.
I love taxes, I would gladly pay even more taxes if that meant everyone would be provided for.
Except at the moment our taxes here in Belgium are already quite high, and our tax system is a complete cluster fuck with plenty of loopholes for the strongest shoulders to not have to carry their weight. Some part of that is even fraudulent, and they're trying to get a law through right now to find those cases of fraud more efficiently... But it is being opposed by parts of the govt with privacy as the excuse (which I'd normally agree with, except what they're trying to change is not that egregious afaik and the ratio of found vs investigated fraud is insane)
It's a myth that all the boomers got theirs. Don't get me wrong, our deal is absolutely worse, but the rich have been fucking people for profit as long as there's been rich people.
Something something not all boomers. There's selfish rich people in every age group. In the case of Boomers they happened to be born at the same time as a ton of other people, so they became the most influencial voting block (and later the wealthiest voting block because of the political influence) but of course many boomers are absolutely struggling financially, getting screwed over by the same ladder pulling that younger folks are getting screwed over them
But as you say, they are the wealthiest generation ever. And based on who is voted in and policy made (at least in my country), they very much don't want to share that wealth.
My parents are a part of that struggling generation, so I know first hand it's not all
That's not true, though. Partisanship is far more tied up with local industry than individual intelligence or educational attainment.
People who earn money in Republican friendly industries vote Republican. What the GOP has done to capture the nation is to seed big swing states with a petrochemical industry and tell people "if you vote Democrat, they're going to Green the economy and you'll lose your cushy jobs"
I've heard this argument before. It seems to neglect how much modern libertarian ideology is packed into the modern school curriculum.
Conservatives scream about education being Marxist and Woke. Thousands of teachers are purged. Curriculum gets ratcheted further to the right. And by the time your own kids are going to school, they're asking why history textbooks are venerating Newt Gingrich, bio textbooks include disclaimers decrying evolution and germ theory, and math class is just 8 hours a week of long division exercises the whole semester.
But you can't just pretend we're living in a Shepard Tone of a society, because we're here now in spite of "superior" education we received a generation or two ago.
We can't just blame this on "schools make you smart/dumb" because so much of your modem understanding of the world is formed after you've graduated.
So many people don’t understand why we live in a society, and apparently have no capacity for empathy.
They’re free to go live in the wilderness, with no roads, no fire department, no water or electricity, no services whatever, and find out how much they’re actually benefiting from our collective.
They won’t, because though they like to complain, they’re pussies who can’t be bothered to think for 5 minutes that the fact they can read and write their snarky bullshit is because they benefitted from free education, else they’d be illiterate.
But gods forbid they pay back the overwhelming amount they benefit from society in a small way. It’s fucking infuriating.
As someone who works on private wells and water systems, its always baffling to me when someone with a "hunt camp" more luxurious than any house I'll ever afford is complaining about the cost of our services. Like dude your "camp" is 2000 sqft and 200 kms from the nearest city. Yea its gonna cost a bit to make your well water clean, clear, and safe to drink while running on a solar system.
They'll even start to question my wage and why the bill costs so much (as if i have any say) completely tone death to the struggles of people outside their class. They imply if i was paid less their bill would be much cheaper despite me barely making enough to own my own tiny home and my wages really aren't a major cost on the bill.
You are not free to do any of those things as the land is owned and you would be squatting. These people are removed by force. There is no choice except engage with society as there are no other options.
Yeah, but ‘nobody wants to be there for a reason’ is my whole point.
It will absolutely suck for you. That’s why civilisation is better, and also why we have to make some concessions to be in a society.
There’s no utopia where everything is perfect. There never was.
If you want societal amenities, you have to pay for them in some small way, and if you don’t, your life will be very hard. Those have always been the choices.
They’re free to go live in the wilderness, with no roads, no fire department, no water or electricity, no services whatever, and find out how much they’re actually benefiting from our collective.
That's the neat part. They do try, repeatedly, and it always fails. A classic one is Grafton. It's also known as A Libertarian Walks into a Bear because their little paradise got overrun by aggressive bears. Lack of public services will do that.
They’re free to go live in the wilderness, with no roads, no fire department, no water or electricity, no services whatever, and find out how much they’re actually benefiting from our collective.
Where?
This is what I want to do, but I can’t afford to buy land on which to do it (and not just any land is useful for this either, it needs to be capable of supporting people before you can count it). Land enough to support a small homestead isn’t cheap, and zoning/local laws often restricts what you can do on it. So for example you may buy land, but not be allowed to drill a well, even if you have the means and knowledge to do so. Or if you buy land you can afford, you may not be allowed to build a permanent structure on it at all.
You’ll get kicked out (and possibly fined) of both state and national parks in the US if they find you “permanently camping”, which they are likely to do since there are frequently people out there. The only other option is squatting on private property. If you get caught before whatever time passes for squatters laws to take effect, you lose everything you’ve built up.
I mean don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind paying for things I’ll never use because it makes society as a whole better. All I’m saying is opting out of living in a society is nearly impossible for most people even if they are ok with not having all the stuff society funds like roads and fire control.
Ok, but if your plan is to live solo forever and not interact with society, you’d basically need to pay for it upfront. That means you need a lot of money all at once, otherwise you’ll still need income, which limits the ability you have to be separate from society.
Yes, that would need to be the plan. One upfront payment then never paying for utilities or other things forever. That’s the only way this works. You don’t need income, because you live on rabbits and fish and your garden. If your house burns, you put it out with buckets from your stream. You build your house yourself by cutting down trees.
If you get sick, you either die or you don’t.
I think this is madness, but that’s how you do this.
Right, and you get why this is impossible for most people? That was my original point. Most people, even if they want to do this, can’t. It’s unaffordable.
The point is that your suggestion that someone is free to do this is just very much not the case.
People aren't down voting because they don't think the properties exist, they're down voting because your argument doesn't really make sense. People that are saying, "I'd rather just live in the wilderness" are not the ones that can afford to just purchase land. You almost will certainly have to pay taxes on the land as well.
Saying you can not participate in society by participating in society very hard so you can afford to participate a little less and a little further from society isn't what these people are looking for, they want to hop in a truck with some tools, drive into the woods, never to be seen again. Without a million dollar piece of paper saying they're allowed to.
Well yeah, I get that. But there are plots for really cheap, but they don’t have any kind of access to water, sewage, or whatever. Plots for like 10,000 or less. That sounds like a lot, I suppose, but it isn’t. I think it’s more that people don’t understand how money works,
I like how your dream of self-sufficiency starts with there being g a road you can drive on. Or do you think most woods are reasonable places for driving trucks? You'd be better off buying a donkey or mule. Worst case scenario, you'd have a bit more meat to eat before you starved.
I was speaking figuratively, but if you want to be literal, I never said anything about a road, and there's many kinds of trucks that can drive over many types of terrain.
The kind of truck that can handle any kinds of undeveloped forest are more expensive than the land you say is too expensive for the people who would want to do what you're saying. So, unrealistic expectations all around.
many kinds of trucks that can drive over many types of terrain
truck that can handle any kinds of undeveloped forest
Again, not what I said. A second hand F150 or Tacoma will get you damn near anywhere you want to go that is not heavily forested and is certainly cheaper than a plot of land. You're trying to pick minute details of my comments and blow them up into the most literal sense of the words yet somehow failing to actually read what I'm saying.
At this point the conversation is a day old and the chance of actually interesting dialogue coming from it is practically zero, so any further misreadings will have to be done on your own.
The machine would stop having elections at that point, or just come up with more convolutions to try and undermine the sentiments within the movement of any emerging “public consciousness”.
The revolution Must Not be Televised (or on the internet, lol)
I wouldn’t put money on it (especially since that technology is precisely what has gotten us into such catastrophes as for example all the oil cartels buying government influence around the world, wanting to continuously gain access to more of natures most profitable industrial raw material, despite all of us now recognizing what it would mean to actually burn all of it, and how, generally, the creation and use of better ways of capturing energy and byproducts from oil refineries, is not worth the tradeoff of letting robber barons around the now-more-global-than-ever world’s economy own nearly the whole of the worlds reserves of various resources through private claims made to vast scales of area of the globe is not, and will not likely ever end up being, a valuable or productive enough use case for those landscapes, and that the systems of measure we have been using to determine compensation, resource pricing, and measuring+recording debts have all contained various major design flaws which had not been established with enough guard rails in place [or maybe one could argue that no such single use currency could have enough guard rails, so perhaps upwards of 3 or 4 might be required] to be able to protect innocent lives throughout nature which have all each found their niche by carefully and patiently adapting a resilience to survive and thrive another day, despite constantly changing adversity throughout their environments.)
No need for the unnecessary hostility. It's obvious that plenty of young people are voting for your rich politicians too. US politicians can't win with only 28% of the vote. And US elderly make up a substantial portion of those below the poverty line, and they don't all vote alike anyway.
I attended a very rural school district and in 7th grade a bunch of retired people got their friends to elect them to the school board and at their first meeting they closed my school.
I'm tired of people acting like they shouldn't contribute to the betterment of society as a whole because their contribution doesn't benefit them personally, or benefits others they dislike.
I always take it to a literal extreme when these sorts of arguments come up.
"I'm happy paying towards unemployment benefits because everybody needs to eat. Even if its going to drug addicts spending it on crack, because they need thst crack and theyre going to get it. I'd rather them be in the dole office with their hands out than sneaking around my house in the night taking my xbox."
Same is true for people who really really don’t want to work. I’d rather they live in social housing, get some small social assistance check and spend their time in front of the tv drinking beers, than roam the streets and bothering people by begging or worse committing crimes because they can’t hold a job down and refuse all help.
Some people just can’t be convinced to better their lives and these people need to be managed and jail is not the answer. And often these people do turn around and start accepting help.
People are not a consistent part of any community and have no relationship with the past or future of any community. The past is a completely different world, as will be the future, and we move through communities constantly in modern life, never becoming a meaningful and enduring part to any of them. A community would have to be part of our sense of self to have any of our interests be in its future. The pace of change has completely disconnected us from any concept of planning beyond the boundaries of our own lives, especially into a future we will never see and for communities we don't, and never felt a part of.
We have also become almost completely powerless with regard to how the world is shaped and for what purpose. Corporations, the wealthy and powerful, and authoritarian inclined governments have taken that power from individuals and communities to use for their personal desires. They are also the cause of the pace of change, creating the very context of community disempowerment which enables them to take that power.
Everyone in the lower 99% is struggling to simply keep existing and find a justification to do so, maybe have a couple of kids if they're lucky. It is not reasonable, living in a rapidly changing system of constant political and economic selfishness, to expect the struggling people to make their own lives harder to try and make plans that benefit other people's futures. It's impossible to even know what plans are wise when the powerful and wealthy change things so fast to benefit themselves, that most plans will never have any confidence to even be fulfilled.
We are all being fucked, present past and future, by the runaway selfishness of people whose power is seemingly unchallenged. Pointing fingers at each other for making desperate decisions that hurt others to protect ourselves is fucking stupid. These are not the choices we want to be making but are forced to. There are no good choices to make, be selfish or be dead is becoming normal. That's the world we inherited.
Sorry, but Bari Weiss is running a story on 60 minutes about a rich black woman using food stamps to buy a fancy car. So now we're cutting the Give Surplus Food to Starving People program in half and giving twice it's value to a company run out of Hondorus by Peter Thiel's Ket dealer called QueefCoin.
Fun fact, the guy who posted that (Caleb Hammer) is a YouTuber that allegedly hired actors to pretend to be broke people making bad financial decisions to get money off selling you a budgeting course when real people weren't shocking enough for the audience, and also allegedly pressured a guy into doing OnlyFans after touching him inappropriately. Fun! /s
Linked in is basically facebook for weirdo "80 hour workweeks should be a minimum, thats how I show my dedication!" types.
The allegations don't entirely surprise me, either. I find it hard to believe people the kind of people desperate enough to come on his show, would act like that without an incentive of being encouraged, or just being wholesale fake actors.
Wouldnt surprise me if the accusations of being a right wing troll prove accurate, with how they keep seemingly trying to get people who look like what right wingers think liberals are, just to scream at them and denegrate them while they act, according to script, flippantly.
"Why should I, a man who religiously drives and has no children or grandchildren, pay for these things?"
Because it benefits you and society at large in other ways. It is in society's best interests that people are educated so they can do much more in society than they would've otherwise. It is in society's best interests to have robust, comprehensive public transport, because that way the roads won't be clogged up, stopping you from driving. It benefits you that the nurses at your care home can read what meds they're giving you and can do maths. It benefits you if people can get to their destinations without driving otherwise you would not be able to park at your destination. Your meals on wheels not getting stuck in traffic? The ambulance being able to get to you and get you to the hospital on time? The people around you being able to have the skills to operate in not just the work place and the world? All of that benefits you.
Thinking like this is how we ended up in the shit we're in worldwide.
I'd be willing to wager these people also exhibit telltale signs of anti-social personality disorders. Who woulda thunk, that anti-social people would be antithetical to society?
I love the "but I don't use that so I shouldn't pay for it" argument. Like come on, my dude, that's what a society is about. If you don't want to live in society, move to Siberia.
Social security is the kind of thing that everyone should be glad to pay, and crosses their fingers they'll never need it.
I'd rather have a part of my income goes there and have the ability to bounce back if life gives me lemons, instead of ending up in a bottomless spiral of poverty I have no hope to get out of.
This guy is not actually saying he doesn't want to pay into social security he is pointing out how dumb of an argument it is "I don't use it therefore I shouldn't have to pay into it". Although even if he is complaining about it it's valid because until now it's been something that you could pretty much count on for getting after you retire. But now for my generation we are probably all fucked
I am happy to pay it so long as I have any sort of expectation that I will see a return from it.
It is becoming increasingly clear to working Americans that we will never see a dollar back out of the Social Security program when it comes time for us to need it.
Social security does need reform. There's no reason we should cap contributions. We also need more nuance by ability and type of work one does when we determine retirement ages.
Not sure, but the two arguments aren't even equal.
"I don't want to pay for something I'll never receive" vs. "I don't want to pay for something I already received"
Neither one is a good attitude, but one seems more selfish than the other. Now, if the other person said "well I was well off and went to private school so we never used it" at least it would be more similar, still greedy
That's a really dumb argument. A person complains about paying for something that they'll never get, and the IndyStar's response is to complain about paying for something that they've already benefited from, and that was paid for by others. I would further add, paying for schools is a great thing even if you don't have and will never have kids. Without good schools, everyone else's kids will probably grow up to be conservatives or editors at the IndyStar.
Current boomers have paid for 100% of their Social Security pension from payroll deductions from their working years. Social Security pensions are not dependent on young taxpayers. It hurts to see Lemmy becoming a source of youngster misinformation like Reddit. Lemmy needs to delete this miseducational and divisive thread.
we’re still paying money into social security that we will never receive
You don't know that you won't receive Social Security. That's just pointless scaremongering. In any case, vote for legislators who will manage Social Security better instead of blaming everything on boomers.
That's not how Social Security works. The money the Boomers paid into the system went to paying benefits for the previous generations. The benefits the Boomers (at least the ones that have retired) are getting now is being paid by the workers in the younger generations. While it's true the program has run a surplus, if the young taxpayers stopped paying into the system that surplus wouldn't last very long.
The money the Boomers paid into the system went to paying benefits for the previous generations.
False. The pension is fully vested by the workers receiving the pension, based on the taxes that they contributed. In fact, many elderly would be better off if the amount they contributed were invested in a hedge fund instead of Social Security.
That's exactly how it works, well other than me having the dates off as the Boomers weren't even born when Social Security was enacted by FDR. When Social Security was enacted, retirees started receiving benefits even if they never paid into the system, which was paid for by the current workers who were paying into the system. It's been like that ever since. Social Security is also not a pension.
You are correct that for most people would be better off investing their Social Security taxes into a hedge fund but workers don't really have a choice in the matter.
retirees started receiving benefits even if they never paid into the system, which was paid for by the current workers who were paying into the system.
The vast majority of current boomers have fully paid for their own Social Security pension.
Social Security was designed to have winners and losers in the contributions game. My mom died at 64, and my dad died at 59. They both contributed to Social Security during their entire working lives without collecting a cent from it. That's the way it goes.
Okay, but that necessarily means that other people are now paying for their Social Security. This person, specifically, did not fully pay for their own Social Security. They're living off of public money, not money they contributed themselves.
*specifically boomers between years 1946 and 1964, which have actually paid more than they'll get in benefits.
The others are still taking more than they contributed. It's fair to say that some current boomers have paid for their Social Security, but many others have not, and the situation isn't getting any better.
To put it simply, there are just fewer workers paying in to the system than there are people taking money out, and that number only grows as people get older.
This means only about 80% of existing benefit rates are expected to be paid to people when they retire later, and many of those benefiting from existing rates are already taking more from current generations than they paid in.
I don't think we should universally hate boomers just because the economic situation they were in happened to favor them in some ways, after all, I want my grandma to keep being able to afford her retirement care right now before she dies, but it's also just not true to say that all current boomers have paid for their social security in its entirety.
Only some of them have, and with the way things are going, it's not looking like we'll be any better as we grow older, as rates will have to decline just to prevent draining the entire fund, while people continue to pay the same % of their income into the system.
boomers between years 1946 and 1964, which have actually paid more than they’ll get in benefits.
So boomers 79 and younger are fully paying their own way. According to Google, the average US longevity is 78.4 years. I don't see an unfairness problem. Google also states that only about 4-5% of the U.S. population is 80 and older. You also assume those over 80 have paid nothing toward their pension.
I don’t think we should universally hate boomers just because the economic situation they were in happened to favor them in some ways
Again, most boomers pay their own way. And many seniors are living below the poverty line. And speaking of being favored, male boomers were required to risk their lives for their country. Current US males can take that risk optionally. Do you have any idea of how many young men had their lives cut short during WW2 and Vietnam?
there are just fewer workers paying in to the system than there are people taking money out, and that number only grows as people get older
Obviously false. Most seniors have already fully paid for their pension. If everybody is paying their own way, what difference does it make whether there are fewer workers? You falsely assume that current workers are paying for current seniors.
it’s not looking like we’ll be any better as we grow older
Whatever happens to you, it won't be because of the boomers who are paying their own way.
opinion: individualism is a plague and the generational war is a distraction
Yep, the real war is the class war and the billionaires are winning.
Amen, brother. No war but the class war.
Jesus Christ you said the exact words I was going to. Am I robot?
Na brother, we're all just equally burnt out from this capitalist hellscape the billionaires created, and with a collapsing global ecology, we want justice for the future that has been stripped away from us and our children.
Couldn't have said it better myself.
Preach sister!
Exactly. Class is the biggest thing that divides us, the rest is a distraction.
Most billionaires are also boomers. The class war and the war against gerontocracy are one and the same.
There are shitty people in every generation.
Neither of those are billionaires.
Gerontocracy is fundamentally an issue of the few holding more than their fair share of wealth and power at the expense of others and pulling the ladder up behind them. It is a class issue same as everything else.
We've got Sam Altman and Taylor Swift in the millennial category off the top of my head. Elon Musk is Gen x, not a boomer. So boomers have Microsoft, Apple, Nvidia at the moment, but soon they'll go to gen X and the problems will perpetuate. Oh, Googles Ceo is Gen X as well
Yes, and once boomers start dropping dead, gen Xers will be fighting tooth and nail to hold on to their slice of the state pension ponzi at the cost of everyone below them on the ladder the same as boomers did. That does not change my point at all.
There is no fair and equitable world in which state pensions can continue working the way they work now. The system was built on the expectation of infinite growth with every generation being larger than the last.
Yeah, if we saw something like an unavoidable 25% tax on all wealth over $300 million, we would see around $2.5 trillion in taxes that could be distributed as a universal base income that would place $17,857 per average household (2.5) in the U.S.
If we actually combated housing prices, that could potentially cover housing everyone in the U.S. from that alone, then retirements would only need to cover food costs. There are a lot of changes that would need to be made, they just won't come until the last second when people are dying in large enough numbers to make people do something.
With the projected population decline, the inflationary effects of creating money in order to pay pensions could actually be beneficial
This is so close. You're nearly there. Just let go.
people should be able to have their own sense of choice and identity.
people should also realise that together we can make it so that everyone can reach their full potential, making society better.
pay your fucking taxes
I love taxes, I would gladly pay even more taxes if that meant everyone would be provided for.
Except at the moment our taxes here in Belgium are already quite high, and our tax system is a complete cluster fuck with plenty of loopholes for the strongest shoulders to not have to carry their weight. Some part of that is even fraudulent, and they're trying to get a law through right now to find those cases of fraud more efficiently... But it is being opposed by parts of the govt with privacy as the excuse (which I'd normally agree with, except what they're trying to change is not that egregious afaik and the ratio of found vs investigated fraud is insane)
I wasn't calling out your tax Stance, more of a general statement to go with the "pro individualism" statement I have.
I wasn't calling you out at all just going on a bit of a tangent :)
We can't, because there is always a percent of people, a large percent, for whom suffering is the point.
We can't, but something else can, and something more civilized will displace us.
Our evil dies with us.
There can be more than one issue, of which both of these are a problem.
The boomers and the rediculously wealthy have the same mindset: fuck you, I've got mine
It's a myth that all the boomers got theirs. Don't get me wrong, our deal is absolutely worse, but the rich have been fucking people for profit as long as there's been rich people.
Something something not all boomers. There's selfish rich people in every age group. In the case of Boomers they happened to be born at the same time as a ton of other people, so they became the most influencial voting block (and later the wealthiest voting block because of the political influence) but of course many boomers are absolutely struggling financially, getting screwed over by the same ladder pulling that younger folks are getting screwed over them
For sure I don't disagree.
But as you say, they are the wealthiest generation ever. And based on who is voted in and policy made (at least in my country), they very much don't want to share that wealth.
My parents are a part of that struggling generation, so I know first hand it's not all
I love paying for schools, because I hate being surrounded by dumb people.
Jokes on you, I pay for schools and am still surrounded by dumb people!
How unbearable would it be if they received no education, I can't imagine.
The underfunding or undercutting of education is a big part of why we're in the current situation
Yup, stupid people vote Republican. Their war on education will only end when their party is dead, burned, buried, and pissed on.
That's not true, though. Partisanship is far more tied up with local industry than individual intelligence or educational attainment.
People who earn money in Republican friendly industries vote Republican. What the GOP has done to capture the nation is to seed big swing states with a petrochemical industry and tell people "if you vote Democrat, they're going to Green the economy and you'll lose your cushy jobs"
I've heard this argument before. It seems to neglect how much modern libertarian ideology is packed into the modern school curriculum.
Conservatives scream about education being Marxist and Woke. Thousands of teachers are purged. Curriculum gets ratcheted further to the right. And by the time your own kids are going to school, they're asking why history textbooks are venerating Newt Gingrich, bio textbooks include disclaimers decrying evolution and germ theory, and math class is just 8 hours a week of long division exercises the whole semester.
But you can't just pretend we're living in a Shepard Tone of a society, because we're here now in spite of "superior" education we received a generation or two ago.
We can't just blame this on "schools make you smart/dumb" because so much of your modem understanding of the world is formed after you've graduated.
"A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they shall never sit"
So many people don’t understand why we live in a society, and apparently have no capacity for empathy.
They’re free to go live in the wilderness, with no roads, no fire department, no water or electricity, no services whatever, and find out how much they’re actually benefiting from our collective.
They won’t, because though they like to complain, they’re pussies who can’t be bothered to think for 5 minutes that the fact they can read and write their snarky bullshit is because they benefitted from free education, else they’d be illiterate.
But gods forbid they pay back the overwhelming amount they benefit from society in a small way. It’s fucking infuriating.
As someone who works on private wells and water systems, its always baffling to me when someone with a "hunt camp" more luxurious than any house I'll ever afford is complaining about the cost of our services. Like dude your "camp" is 2000 sqft and 200 kms from the nearest city. Yea its gonna cost a bit to make your well water clean, clear, and safe to drink while running on a solar system.
They'll even start to question my wage and why the bill costs so much (as if i have any say) completely tone death to the struggles of people outside their class. They imply if i was paid less their bill would be much cheaper despite me barely making enough to own my own tiny home and my wages really aren't a major cost on the bill.
if you guys don't have much competition, you should start treating those customers fairly
and by fairly I mean treat them how they treat you
Sounds like you need to raise your rate. And also not break out your wage from the other costs in the invoice.
You are not free to do any of those things as the land is owned and you would be squatting. These people are removed by force. There is no choice except engage with society as there are no other options.
You’d have to buy your own land, of course.
But you could buy a tiny plot in the middle of nowhere, not hook up any utilities or have roads, and just live off your land if you wanted.
There are small parcels in the middle of noplace that nobody wants because there are no roads, utilities, or other services.
Small parcels? Australia and many other places are pretty much empty. And yes, nobody wants to be there for a reason.
Yeah, but ‘nobody wants to be there for a reason’ is my whole point.
It will absolutely suck for you. That’s why civilisation is better, and also why we have to make some concessions to be in a society.
There’s no utopia where everything is perfect. There never was.
If you want societal amenities, you have to pay for them in some small way, and if you don’t, your life will be very hard. Those have always been the choices.
I know. I just wanted to point out that the are huge swaths of land that are empty, not buy tiny patches.
You literally can do that.
Why do people seem to think this is impossible?
What’s changed? Some parts of that life are sometimes illegal, but most people haven’t been against it like this.
What’s different?
Well, yeah. Regulations are a major part of society, and a major reason we tend to come together. Yet another reason libertarianism is misguided.
That's the neat part. They do try, repeatedly, and it always fails. A classic one is Grafton. It's also known as A Libertarian Walks into a Bear because their little paradise got overrun by aggressive bears. Lack of public services will do that.
we live in a society, while rich people live in an economy
Where?
This is what I want to do, but I can’t afford to buy land on which to do it (and not just any land is useful for this either, it needs to be capable of supporting people before you can count it). Land enough to support a small homestead isn’t cheap, and zoning/local laws often restricts what you can do on it. So for example you may buy land, but not be allowed to drill a well, even if you have the means and knowledge to do so. Or if you buy land you can afford, you may not be allowed to build a permanent structure on it at all.
You’ll get kicked out (and possibly fined) of both state and national parks in the US if they find you “permanently camping”, which they are likely to do since there are frequently people out there. The only other option is squatting on private property. If you get caught before whatever time passes for squatters laws to take effect, you lose everything you’ve built up.
I mean don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind paying for things I’ll never use because it makes society as a whole better. All I’m saying is opting out of living in a society is nearly impossible for most people even if they are ok with not having all the stuff society funds like roads and fire control.
Search off-grid properties. They exist.
For the downvoters, here are some in the US:
https://www.landsearch.com/off-grid/united-states
Plenty of gorgeous listings.
And in Australia:
https://www.realestate.com.au/news/for-sale-australias-best-offgrid-properties/
Some very beautiful places, and also some very cheap.
Or Iceland:
https://www.bluehomes.com/buy-secluded-Iceland/ISL/10AL/AL/en/theme3.html
Or Siberia?
https://farmlands-agency.com/
Yes I know, I’ve looked at them. That’s how I know they are quite expensive.
But you never have to pay for utilities, rent, taxes for schools or roads or services … obviously it wouldn’t be completely free to purchase the land.
Ok, but if your plan is to live solo forever and not interact with society, you’d basically need to pay for it upfront. That means you need a lot of money all at once, otherwise you’ll still need income, which limits the ability you have to be separate from society.
Yes, that would need to be the plan. One upfront payment then never paying for utilities or other things forever. That’s the only way this works. You don’t need income, because you live on rabbits and fish and your garden. If your house burns, you put it out with buckets from your stream. You build your house yourself by cutting down trees.
If you get sick, you either die or you don’t.
I think this is madness, but that’s how you do this.
Right, and you get why this is impossible for most people? That was my original point. Most people, even if they want to do this, can’t. It’s unaffordable.
The point is that your suggestion that someone is free to do this is just very much not the case.
It’s almost as if we all rely on each other to exist. If only there was a word for that.
People aren't down voting because they don't think the properties exist, they're down voting because your argument doesn't really make sense. People that are saying, "I'd rather just live in the wilderness" are not the ones that can afford to just purchase land. You almost will certainly have to pay taxes on the land as well.
Saying you can not participate in society by participating in society very hard so you can afford to participate a little less and a little further from society isn't what these people are looking for, they want to hop in a truck with some tools, drive into the woods, never to be seen again. Without a million dollar piece of paper saying they're allowed to.
Well yeah, I get that. But there are plots for really cheap, but they don’t have any kind of access to water, sewage, or whatever. Plots for like 10,000 or less. That sounds like a lot, I suppose, but it isn’t. I think it’s more that people don’t understand how money works,
I like how your dream of self-sufficiency starts with there being g a road you can drive on. Or do you think most woods are reasonable places for driving trucks? You'd be better off buying a donkey or mule. Worst case scenario, you'd have a bit more meat to eat before you starved.
I was speaking figuratively, but if you want to be literal, I never said anything about a road, and there's many kinds of trucks that can drive over many types of terrain.
The kind of truck that can handle any kinds of undeveloped forest are more expensive than the land you say is too expensive for the people who would want to do what you're saying. So, unrealistic expectations all around.
Again, not what I said. A second hand F150 or Tacoma will get you damn near anywhere you want to go that is not heavily forested and is certainly cheaper than a plot of land. You're trying to pick minute details of my comments and blow them up into the most literal sense of the words yet somehow failing to actually read what I'm saying.
At this point the conversation is a day old and the chance of actually interesting dialogue coming from it is practically zero, so any further misreadings will have to be done on your own.
God I hate boomers
The rich and powerful are making us hate each other to distract us of the real problems of the world
Yes, but boomers are a chunk of the reason that the rich and powerful continue to be able to grasp and maintain power.
If boomers ceased to exist tomorrow and elections were held, I think there'd be a good swing left. Not a total swing, but substantial.
The machine would stop having elections at that point, or just come up with more convolutions to try and undermine the sentiments within the movement of any emerging “public consciousness”.
The revolution Must Not be Televised (or on the internet, lol)
Good thing it won’t be too long until it’s over.
Disagree, the machine is 99% boomers to begin with. It would cease to exist.
I wouldn’t put money on it (especially since that technology is precisely what has gotten us into such catastrophes as for example all the oil cartels buying government influence around the world, wanting to continuously gain access to more of natures most profitable industrial raw material, despite all of us now recognizing what it would mean to actually burn all of it, and how, generally, the creation and use of better ways of capturing energy and byproducts from oil refineries, is not worth the tradeoff of letting robber barons around the now-more-global-than-ever world’s economy own nearly the whole of the worlds reserves of various resources through private claims made to vast scales of area of the globe is not, and will not likely ever end up being, a valuable or productive enough use case for those landscapes, and that the systems of measure we have been using to determine compensation, resource pricing, and measuring+recording debts have all contained various major design flaws which had not been established with enough guard rails in place [or maybe one could argue that no such single use currency could have enough guard rails, so perhaps upwards of 3 or 4 might be required] to be able to protect innocent lives throughout nature which have all each found their niche by carefully and patiently adapting a resilience to survive and thrive another day, despite constantly changing adversity throughout their environments.)
These people don't look like boomers to me.
Boomers are only 28% of the US voting population. Try again.
They’re way fucking more than 28% of the fucking politicians dipshit.
No need for the unnecessary hostility. It's obvious that plenty of young people are voting for your rich politicians too. US politicians can't win with only 28% of the vote. And US elderly make up a substantial portion of those below the poverty line, and they don't all vote alike anyway.
And boomers are NOT all the same
Google search tells me 48% Democrat, 46% Republican and the remaining undecided
Boomers are only 28% of the US voters. Explain why their chunk is more responsible and the younger 72%.
while that is true, it is also true that a majority of boomers I know are worth this feeling of contempt and loathing
Of the boomers I know
I hate them too but boomers can fuck off as well. Logan's run was onto something.
Not that I disagree, but 90 would be silent generation.
Then you should disagree. Saying all boomers are entitled traitors is like saying all millennials squander their income on avocado toast.
I attended a very rural school district and in 7th grade a bunch of retired people got their friends to elect them to the school board and at their first meeting they closed my school.
But hey, it's OK. They're all dead now.
I love a happy ending.
Should be 21-28 years only.
I'm tired of people acting like they shouldn't contribute to the betterment of society as a whole because their contribution doesn't benefit them personally, or benefits others they dislike.
And it absolutely does benefit them personally, just in ways they're too dumb to see.
I vote for school tax levys. I don't (and probably will never) have kids.
I always take it to a literal extreme when these sorts of arguments come up.
"I'm happy paying towards unemployment benefits because everybody needs to eat. Even if its going to drug addicts spending it on crack, because they need thst crack and theyre going to get it. I'd rather them be in the dole office with their hands out than sneaking around my house in the night taking my xbox."
Same is true for people who really really don’t want to work. I’d rather they live in social housing, get some small social assistance check and spend their time in front of the tv drinking beers, than roam the streets and bothering people by begging or worse committing crimes because they can’t hold a job down and refuse all help.
Some people just can’t be convinced to better their lives and these people need to be managed and jail is not the answer. And often these people do turn around and start accepting help.
People are not a consistent part of any community and have no relationship with the past or future of any community. The past is a completely different world, as will be the future, and we move through communities constantly in modern life, never becoming a meaningful and enduring part to any of them. A community would have to be part of our sense of self to have any of our interests be in its future. The pace of change has completely disconnected us from any concept of planning beyond the boundaries of our own lives, especially into a future we will never see and for communities we don't, and never felt a part of.
We have also become almost completely powerless with regard to how the world is shaped and for what purpose. Corporations, the wealthy and powerful, and authoritarian inclined governments have taken that power from individuals and communities to use for their personal desires. They are also the cause of the pace of change, creating the very context of community disempowerment which enables them to take that power.
Everyone in the lower 99% is struggling to simply keep existing and find a justification to do so, maybe have a couple of kids if they're lucky. It is not reasonable, living in a rapidly changing system of constant political and economic selfishness, to expect the struggling people to make their own lives harder to try and make plans that benefit other people's futures. It's impossible to even know what plans are wise when the powerful and wealthy change things so fast to benefit themselves, that most plans will never have any confidence to even be fulfilled.
We are all being fucked, present past and future, by the runaway selfishness of people whose power is seemingly unchallenged. Pointing fingers at each other for making desperate decisions that hurt others to protect ourselves is fucking stupid. These are not the choices we want to be making but are forced to. There are no good choices to make, be selfish or be dead is becoming normal. That's the world we inherited.
I am 70 and tired of paying for wars, corporate welfare, and bailing out bankers and oil companies.
EDIT: And genocide.
Sorry, but Bari Weiss is running a story on 60 minutes about a rich black woman using food stamps to buy a fancy car. So now we're cutting the Give Surplus Food to Starving People program in half and giving twice it's value to a company run out of Hondorus by Peter Thiel's Ket dealer called QueefCoin.
The best corporate propaganda money can buy.
If you're 90 and that selfish, you shouldn't have made it to 90.
“They’re not going to bail me out,” Nelson said. “I’ve been on food stamps and welfare. Anybody help me out? No. No.”
Overgrown toddler. (The actor going on the dumb rant, not you)
Fun fact, the guy who posted that (Caleb Hammer) is a YouTuber that allegedly hired actors to pretend to be broke people making bad financial decisions to get money off selling you a budgeting course when real people weren't shocking enough for the audience, and also allegedly pressured a guy into doing OnlyFans after touching him inappropriately. Fun! /s
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/beware-austin-based-creator-caleb-hammer-victor-vulcano-bjzaf
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3ZYxFlcLII
Jesus that’s on Linked in
Linked in is basically facebook for weirdo "80 hour workweeks should be a minimum, thats how I show my dedication!" types.
The allegations don't entirely surprise me, either. I find it hard to believe people the kind of people desperate enough to come on his show, would act like that without an incentive of being encouraged, or just being wholesale fake actors.
Wouldnt surprise me if the accusations of being a right wing troll prove accurate, with how they keep seemingly trying to get people who look like what right wingers think liberals are, just to scream at them and denegrate them while they act, according to script, flippantly.
Jesus Christ, it's not Jason bourne
Common Caleb L.
I've seen a bunch of the videos. Ones from a year ago or longer were much better, lately he's been a dick.
"Why should I, a man who religiously drives and has no children or grandchildren, pay for these things?"
Because it benefits you and society at large in other ways. It is in society's best interests that people are educated so they can do much more in society than they would've otherwise. It is in society's best interests to have robust, comprehensive public transport, because that way the roads won't be clogged up, stopping you from driving. It benefits you that the nurses at your care home can read what meds they're giving you and can do maths. It benefits you if people can get to their destinations without driving otherwise you would not be able to park at your destination. Your meals on wheels not getting stuck in traffic? The ambulance being able to get to you and get you to the hospital on time? The people around you being able to have the skills to operate in not just the work place and the world? All of that benefits you.
Thinking like this is how we ended up in the shit we're in worldwide.
Yep.
Just cause you don't actively use it every day, doesnt mean you don't actively benefit from it every day.
People are so myopically fucking ignorant...
I have met people who think like that on the regular and I just want them to go move to an American Car Suburb and see how they like it.
Funny username
I'd be willing to wager these people also exhibit telltale signs of anti-social personality disorders. Who woulda thunk, that anti-social people would be antithetical to society?
I love the "but I don't use that so I shouldn't pay for it" argument. Like come on, my dude, that's what a society is about. If you don't want to live in society, move to Siberia.
Social security is the kind of thing that everyone should be glad to pay, and crosses their fingers they'll never need it.
I'd rather have a part of my income goes there and have the ability to bounce back if life gives me lemons, instead of ending up in a bottomless spiral of poverty I have no hope to get out of.
This guy is not actually saying he doesn't want to pay into social security he is pointing out how dumb of an argument it is "I don't use it therefore I shouldn't have to pay into it". Although even if he is complaining about it it's valid because until now it's been something that you could pretty much count on for getting after you retire. But now for my generation we are probably all fucked
I am happy to pay it so long as I have any sort of expectation that I will see a return from it.
It is becoming increasingly clear to working Americans that we will never see a dollar back out of the Social Security program when it comes time for us to need it.
90 and not happy paying taxes? Save us all some trouble and move on to the graveyard
Did you not go to school when you were younger? You benefited from those schools at some point in your life.
The doctors giving you end of life care also went to school. Unless you are ok with us changing that?
Yup. No matter which angle you want to approach it from, bitching about funding schools is not a good look.
Yes, of course you are. That's why taxes are mandatory and you go to jail if you don't pay.
We sure do live in a society... why are boomers/silentgen like this?
Their parents didn't hit them hard enough.
Username checks out
Social security does need reform. There's no reason we should cap contributions. We also need more nuance by ability and type of work one does when we determine retirement ages.
How that person move around at 90 without public transit? Hope is not driving.
Cycling? My granddad did at 90. 4 years later he still does, but on 3 wheels
Not sure, but the two arguments aren't even equal.
"I don't want to pay for something I'll never receive" vs. "I don't want to pay for something I already received"
Neither one is a good attitude, but one seems more selfish than the other. Now, if the other person said "well I was well off and went to private school so we never used it" at least it would be more similar, still greedy
What public transit. If you don't live in a larger city there is none.
Edit: I would surly love to hear from the down votes how I'm wrong? But I doubt I will.
If only there was some way to change that
Give up! All is lost!
If it has a blue check on a Nazi platform, it might be a Nazi.
They also give out blue checks for verified accounts and frequently if you don’t even ask for it. Plus, lots of them are just idiots, not Nazis.
At 40, I’m tired
That's a really dumb argument. A person complains about paying for something that they'll never get, and the IndyStar's response is to complain about paying for something that they've already benefited from, and that was paid for by others. I would further add, paying for schools is a great thing even if you don't have and will never have kids. Without good schools, everyone else's kids will probably grow up to be conservatives or editors at the IndyStar.
Twitters UI sucks, indystars statement came first, then the outer comment.
Ah, oops. I should pay closer attention. I'll leave the post and take my beatings.
Lol, 19 day old account with only 4 comments saying "test," idk what kind of bot you're going to turn into but it's an instant block for me
Naming the account "sysadmin" is another massive red flag.
Random interjection bot.
Current boomers have paid for 100% of their Social Security pension from payroll deductions from their working years. Social Security pensions are not dependent on young taxpayers. It hurts to see Lemmy becoming a source of youngster misinformation like Reddit. Lemmy needs to delete this miseducational and divisive thread.
Okay, we're still paying money into social security that we will never receive, so the anger won't just go away
You don't know that you won't receive Social Security. That's just pointless scaremongering. In any case, vote for legislators who will manage Social Security better instead of blaming everything on boomers.
There will never be another general election in the United States.
You can hold onto all the hope you want, but some of us can do basic math and situational reasoning.
That's not how Social Security works. The money the Boomers paid into the system went to paying benefits for the previous generations. The benefits the Boomers (at least the ones that have retired) are getting now is being paid by the workers in the younger generations. While it's true the program has run a surplus, if the young taxpayers stopped paying into the system that surplus wouldn't last very long.
False. The pension is fully vested by the workers receiving the pension, based on the taxes that they contributed. In fact, many elderly would be better off if the amount they contributed were invested in a hedge fund instead of Social Security.
That's exactly how it works, well other than me having the dates off as the Boomers weren't even born when Social Security was enacted by FDR. When Social Security was enacted, retirees started receiving benefits even if they never paid into the system, which was paid for by the current workers who were paying into the system. It's been like that ever since. Social Security is also not a pension.
You are correct that for most people would be better off investing their Social Security taxes into a hedge fund but workers don't really have a choice in the matter.
The vast majority of current boomers have fully paid for their own Social Security pension.
That's a distinction without a difference.
The OP specifically depicts someone that's 90 years old.
Doesn't that mean the amount they paid in to Social Security might have actually run out years ago?
Social Security was designed to have winners and losers in the contributions game. My mom died at 64, and my dad died at 59. They both contributed to Social Security during their entire working lives without collecting a cent from it. That's the way it goes.
Okay, but that necessarily means that other people are now paying for their Social Security. This person, specifically, did not fully pay for their own Social Security. They're living off of public money, not money they contributed themselves.
That's why many senior citizens live below the poverty line.
*specifically boomers between years 1946 and 1964, which have actually paid more than they'll get in benefits.
The others are still taking more than they contributed. It's fair to say that some current boomers have paid for their Social Security, but many others have not, and the situation isn't getting any better.
To put it simply, there are just fewer workers paying in to the system than there are people taking money out, and that number only grows as people get older.
This means only about 80% of existing benefit rates are expected to be paid to people when they retire later, and many of those benefiting from existing rates are already taking more from current generations than they paid in.
I don't think we should universally hate boomers just because the economic situation they were in happened to favor them in some ways, after all, I want my grandma to keep being able to afford her retirement care right now before she dies, but it's also just not true to say that all current boomers have paid for their social security in its entirety.
Only some of them have, and with the way things are going, it's not looking like we'll be any better as we grow older, as rates will have to decline just to prevent draining the entire fund, while people continue to pay the same % of their income into the system.
So boomers 79 and younger are fully paying their own way. According to Google, the average US longevity is 78.4 years. I don't see an unfairness problem. Google also states that only about 4-5% of the U.S. population is 80 and older. You also assume those over 80 have paid nothing toward their pension.
Again, most boomers pay their own way. And many seniors are living below the poverty line. And speaking of being favored, male boomers were required to risk their lives for their country. Current US males can take that risk optionally. Do you have any idea of how many young men had their lives cut short during WW2 and Vietnam?
Obviously false. Most seniors have already fully paid for their pension. If everybody is paying their own way, what difference does it make whether there are fewer workers? You falsely assume that current workers are paying for current seniors.
Whatever happens to you, it won't be because of the boomers who are paying their own way.
1946 to 1964 is exactly the range of birth years traditionally assigned to 'baby boomers'. anyone older or younger isn't a boomer at all.