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Is not about politics
It’s all about politics. Just not about the 24/7 clown show that passes for politics in the US.
It’s about who gets what, how the spoils are divided. It’s obvious how the deck is stacked against ordinary people: the middle class is being bled dry and the hoarder class is taking off with all of it.
What’s extraordinary is that that somehow passes for ‘natural’ and ‘not about politics’.
Well capitalism is based on the horrible unfeeling cruelty of nature, that we originally created human society to escape.
So that's why it feels natural. It's the unfair unfeeling system of nature that society is not supposed to be
Not bees. Bees cooperate with each other, nurture their young, operate according to democracy, take nectar freely given by plants, and only use their stingers for self defence.
Fun fact: old scientists believed the queen controlled the hive for purely political reasons. They wanted evidence in nature for the existence of monarchy. They were wrong. Bees are communists and monarchy doesn't exist in nature. Neither does capitalism. No animal profits purely from owning something, they all have to put in work to get what they need to live.
Trees actually cooperate and share resources.
This horrible cruelty shouldn't be accepted as natural.
It is about politics. You need to organise yourselves better into unions. Then, you strike until you get what you deserve.
Why does Denmark and the rest of the Nordic countries have so high quality of living and happy people? Cause the people realized that you need to work together to get what you want. You need to have solidarity with your other workers to push for better compensation and work environments.
Do this, or you're doomed.
Absolutely 100% this.
To be totally blunt, this doesn't need political backing. This requires people collectively coming together, forming unions with single-focus, and pushing for an increase in pay to align with the cost of living. Hell, if anything it's better if Trump and his lackies oppose this, because you ultimately have the power to cripple these businesses via strikes, forming your own cooperatives off the back of your soon-to-be previous employers, or simply signalling to businesses that if they cannot afford to pay people enough money they shouldn't be in business.
Push for gradual increase year-on-year until pay is aligned. If this is missed, everyone walks. Push for the removal of limited sick pay, and for 25+ days minimum vacation time a year. Leave it at that, and you've got terms that 90% of workers will agree to. Can't get a single company to agree? Create a professional body for your line of work and promote it as the place to be for those in your field. Push for accreditation for roles, and shun those that avoid it.
I’ve anecdotally heard that the reason Nordic countries rank high on happiness is because they have a relatively high level of cultural homogeneity, or similar ideals circulating around with most people. This is in contrast to a place like the US that has a relatively high variety of ideologies and cultures. In other words it’s easier to get along if we all generally agree. What are your thoughts on this?
True, but misleading.
Yes, if you got rid of all the Nazis in America, then Americans would be happier. On the other hand, if everyone in a country, say, Germany, agreed on establishing a fascist dictatorship, then Germans would be unhappy.
Norwegians aren't just happy because they all agree. They're happy because they agree, and they're left wing. Agreement is important, but only if it's agreement on people's rights and decency.
Every other time I've encountered this argument, it's been an argument in favor of racism and xenophobia, often a Nazbol argument like "socialism only works if no diversity." It's my instinct to refuse it.
But I couldn't deny that, American conservatives and liberals + leftists, on the mental level, live in different realities, with not only different core values and worries, but different ideas of what is actually happening (and no, I actively believe American leftists do not live in a fundamentally different reality from American liberals the way conservatives do from liberals + leftists.)
Learn how to live in poverty and go unnoticed, because no grand and noble revolution is coming
Revolutions are never grand and noble.
(But some history books have been written by the survivors)
Honestly, the ones who survive well are the ones who build communities that take care of each other: Sharing meals, sharing gardens, sharing skills and labor, sharing rides, sharing emotions and stories, etc.
Capitalism was always pushing the US towards a gigantic class divide, and Boomers and Gen X carried that torch at the expense of their descendants' future. Communities of support are something that will have helped regardless of who is carrying what ideology and regardless of who is in charge, and they thrive in adversity.
So if you're looking for advice, build your local communities. Strengthen your bonds with your neighbors. Participate in local governance.
Gen x is in the same boat as millenials, they just had a tiny bit more of a chance still.
I would if the damned bank would let me buy a house!!! Trying to get a 90K bank loan, have 36k in cash, and still denied because I don't have a credit score.
let me buy a house
The advice wasn't for house owners only. All the others are human, too.
You get milked by the big corpos. Money flows from the poor to the rich.
And as long as you have only these two extreme right wing parties, there is nobody who would change it.
Beautiful. In fact, under royalty, people used to be killed with things like the Breaking Wheel and being boiled alive, which makes the Guillotine a far more humane punishment. I'm tempted, though, to say that "nothing ever happens" and assume the U.S. will proceed as normal.
Nothing ever happens, until it does.
You can survive on very little, it just will be a lower quality of life than previous generations which feels bad, but you do what you need to in order to get by.
The simplest way to deal with all of this is to actually perform the financial calculations to see what's the best situation for you.
A $80,000 a year job in a city may actually leave you with a lower quality of life than a $40,000 a year job in the middle of nowhere if you're spending $4,500 a month on rent for a two bedroom apartment in the city, and it would only be $1000 for a two bedroom house the middle of nowhere.
Calculate some possible budgets for different areas and different lifestyles, and find out what works best for you. Being in a city is not as good as it used to be financially speaking.
If you're having trouble "surviving" either way, you need to figure out how to reduce your costs and/or up your income.
Common things like sharing a home (with a partner or roommate) can reduce your costs massively, trying to live alone is pretty stupid financially right now.
Learn how to cook things yourself, it's not hard with Youtube these days, you can massively slash your food budget by not eating out or buying pre-made food. One of the stupidest things I see is people picking up a second job, making very little per hour, and then spending 6 hours of their income on a dinner from a restaurant (eat in, eat out, doordash, etc.). You would have been better off just buying decent meal ingredients for 2 hours of your wage, and then spending 1 hour cooking and cleaning. Then you've got 3 hours worth of time back that you can either use to work for more money for other things, or just not bother working at all to have more time for you.
If you're stuck in a dead end low wage job, invest time in getting new skills that will enable you to get a better job. It's never too late to retrain for a better position unless you've already retired.
I’m leaving. I’m tired of fighting.
Serious question, but where do you plan to go and how? I see so many people posting about leaving, but unless you're in a fairly high-demand career field, planning on marrying a local, or are already wealthy to the point that you likely won't be affected by whatever is coming down the line, you're going to have a bad time. Most countries aren't swinging the gates open for people that won't be a net positive on their system. And the ones that do probably aren't ones you want to go to.
It’ll take awhile, but the crux of it hinges on the inheritance I stand to receive next year. I know for a fact that I’ll be more than enough to do what we want to do.
Second, I’ve been planning on going back to school anyways for computer engineering, so what’s wrong with studying abroad? I’ve also been in and around IT and tech all my life, and I’m pretty decent with a soldering iron. I currently work as a board rework tech.
My wife is a pharmacy tech that’s been doing it for close to 20 years in a variety of environments. Depending on where we go, her field is one of those that are in demand. Specifically, we know she can get a Canadian work visa pretty easily. We have family in Vancouver so it works out.
I assume you've looked into visa requirements and whether you and your wife will be able to work. Canada is a bit cold for my taste, but if that's what you have your sights on, I hope you can make it work. Best of luck to you.
I moved to Japan which has its good and bad points (like anywhere). If I had it to do over, I'd probably pick Norway or Finland instead, but I plan on spending the rest of my life here barring some earth-shattering change.
Humans have a great capacity to adapt. Consider people around the world who have adapted to even worse circumstances.
spoiler
unionize
This is a circumstance born, in no small part, of the idea that manual labor and menial labor is meaningless and has no real value.
Our economy has been sold from beneath us, and the overall cultural ideologies result in most people avoiding these things. But it is the only thing that is actual production - the rest of the economy is all efficiencies or expenditure.
Slowly, the wealth has slipped away, and now it's becoming apparent to people, and they don't know who to blame.
Find or make an enclave and survive together.
The america empire is following in the exact same footsteps of the Roman empire. If you fail to learn from history then history will repeat itself. The great American empire will fall and there will be nothing u can do about it no matter how hard u try.
"Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light."
— Dylan Thomas
The greatest trick Yahweh ever pulled was convincing people that "light" can be a euphemism for metaphysical goodness.
To be fair the USA seems to have the brightest future compared to basically any other country because you guys don't have this imminent demographic collapse like most other developed countries like Japan, Korea, China, Germany, Italy, etc. And because of your geography and size you are would only be mildly affected by a WW3.
Perhaps it helps to look at other parts of the world and see how comperativelly well you guys have it.
I guess the biggest challenge is to minimize the huge divide between the rich and the poor. Sadly you missed the opportunity to choose Berny Sanders as your leader a couple of times, that would have helped a lot.
Lol we do once the borders close.
heh, and republicans are going to lose their fucking minds when they start to see the consequences of the choices their leaders made. Like when fruit is like $10/lb because its all rotting in the fields because everyone who normally picked it is locked in a border ~~concentration~~ reeducation camp.
Too bad we have to live with the consequences of their choices too.
Yeah those voters aren't turning against Republicans. Trump will piss enough people off that, if there's a free and fair election in 2028, Democrats will win. However, every problem Trump causes will get blamed on Democrats, who won't win a large enough majority to override their token centrist villains and pass meaningful reform, so we'll end up with another even crazier Republican administration in 2032. From there climate change fucks us all up and we die in the water wars of 2035 or the great famine of 2038 or some other horrible thing that we're too stupid to address before it slaps us in the face.
Many of us will not.
buying a house is simply out of reach unless you have dual income
Not in all areas of the United States. Houses routinely sell for under $200k in my city. There's also many for under $100k.
People say this kind of thing a lot, but I don't really understand if they don't have any family or friends, don't care about their family and friends, or just think it's reasonable to have to choose between your relationships and living in an affordable house.
It sucks but you have to do what you think is best maybe the savings allow for some road trips to visit.
First you look at other countries around the world. Then you see that lots of people somehow eke out OK livings despite horrible shit in government. So maybe you can too.
That's not to say the horrible things to come are acceptable. Rather, you're probably more capable than you believe. Believe in examples of billions around the globe.
For the last 40 years through free trade we’ve had a large population join the market from countries like China, Russia, India etc.
Free trade with China has given us cheap consumer goods but at the cost of our own manufacturing which suppressed wage growth and inflation for a long time. We hit the peak of this just before Covid and we are now feeling the after affects.
China’s dramatically aging population along with geopolitical instability means that the logistics and manufacturing capacity that existed overseas for 20 years Is now failing. The US forced to reshore or nearshore (Mexico) much of its manufacturing capacity. Basically if we want to continue to have stuff we need to find somewhere else to make it besides China. This isn’t a cheap process and it won’t be as efficient as the old system.
Russia’s war with Ukraine has huge implications on resources and energy. Russia exports a lot of raw materials, fertilizer products, food, energy and aluminum. Taking them offline has affected international trade and has many many markets.
Our institutions that support labor have also withered over the last 40 years. Labor unions don’t have the sway they used too and politicians have ignored their needs for decades. Big business will not just give wage increases much like in the 20s and 30s Labor will need to grow and become more combative than it currently is to see any improvements.
In short the world order that we all grew up in is breaking down and changing. It will be at least a decade before these changes finish shaking out and we see solutions to the problems we are facing fully materialize.