Is THIS the Problem ?
I am going to take a crack at identifying a social disease which goes by the acronym T.H.I.S.
It stands for Temporal Hierarchical Identity Disorder and it pertains to an intergenerational relationship disease.
Before, I get into the specifics of this current disease, I want to cite some historical examples of hierarchical identity disorder which were based upon race and geography, and not base upon age.
Prior to the Civil War, the slaveholders were of the mindset that they were more hierarchically important than the slaves and were ignorant of the connection between their own wellbeing and that of the slaves. The status quo was not sustainable and it led to war.
Similarly, the Treaty of Versailles created conditions in Germany which were unsustainable but the victorious French and English were ignorant of the connection between the well being of the Germans (people who were out of sight and out of mind in Paris and London) and their own well being.
The lesson from these historical examples is that indifference to the experience of a critical mass of people comes back to bite the people who are ignorant of their interdependent relationship with those people who are beyond their personal tribal concerns.
This new flavor of social indifference which I am attempting to illuminate is not based upon color or geographic distinction like the examples I listed from the past. As mentioned, I'm trying to illuminate differences across generations.
As a Boomer, my characterization of my generation is one that was born on 3rd base and thinks we hit a triple. We were born to people who struggled through the Depression and WW2 rationing into a post-War economic boom whose relative advantages may never be equaled. In the 50's a man could get a job in factory and afford a stay at home wife with 3 kids and have a pension that would nicely supplement their income in old age if they managed their finances well. Housing was cheap. Education was cheap or free and employment which paid a living wage was abundant as the USA led the rebuilding of other nations which were devastated during WW2.
My state university cost me $4,500 / yr in the early 80's for tuition, rent, food and books and I graduated with a degree in accounting and 5 job offers making $20k / year. After summer jobs and savings, I only needed to borrow a little over $5k to make it through and a single year of salary was as much as 4 years of college. 7 years later, i was making $60k and bought my first house in N. Cal for $170k with no family assistance. I had the wherewithal to be financially "independent".
Today, the cost of that education and the cost of that house have increased by about 10x while the starting salary has increased by ~ 3.5x. Young people are going heavily into debt for college and coming out with fewer opportunities and unable to get on the housing ladder unless they are fortunate to have wealthy parents who assist them. Manufacturing jobs such as the folks who worked in Detroit half a century ago have largely been outsourced during the ensuing globalization. the job market for college grads is not nearly as robust and many people in their 20's have no option other than to live with their parents or in densely cramped settings with their peers. Young men are not able to afford to raise families and giving rise to a phenomena call "incels" because the virile option of heading a family is financially out of reach.
Young people are bitter about the contrast between what my generation has and what theirs has reasonable access to. Our government doesn't cater to their needs, it caters to the wishes of wealthy investors who are gobbling up residential real estate for the purpose of rent maximization. The American Dream of a half century ago has largely vanished.
If we really wanted to make America great again, we would remove tax depreciation and interest deductions on investments in residential real estate and bump up the property taxes on non owner occupied homes to drive the price of real estate back in the direction of affordability for young people. Their access to the housing market is part of the sustainable social fabric of the nation. That's more important than rich people adding commas to their personal equity.
Beyond economic injustice, there is of course the issues associated with environmental destruction that we are dropping in young people's laps. We Boomers consume today and Gen Z will be stuck cleaning up our mess tomorrow.
I believe that we're witnessing a changing of the guard with the election of people like Mamdani and the rise of politicians like AOC.
I'm imagining that the golden years of Boomers like myself are not going to be as smooth as we might imagine. If the world goes the way I think it might, the young people who come to run the govt in 10-20 years are going to be faced with some difficult resource allocation issues. And we Boomers might find ourselves on the outside looking in when Gen Z and Millennials are in control of the govt. Maybe social security and Medicare will not be financially sustainable and those benefits might need to be curtailed. Maybe there won't be enough physicians to care for a huge geriatric population and health care will have to be rationed. If I am right and **** hits the fan regarding climate breakdown, maybe the generation that ignored it is going to be last in line for support.
Just like the slaveholders were indifferent to the slaves and the people dictating terms at Versailles were indifferent to the German people's experience with reparations ..... so might our indifference to younger generations come back to haunt us.
There is an African Proverb which speaks to this situation ..... "if you don't allow a child to participate in the benefits of the village, they bask in the warmth of the village as it burns down".
THID
It won't haunt anyone who has the common sense to see the system is likely unsustainable.
Social security will be eroded heavily by the affects of inflation but likely will remain intact. Purchasing power will be significantly decreased.
Will likely just go back to living how most of the rest of the world lives now and how it's been for nearly the entire existence of humanity. More multi generational households, more modest living. Cheap/free Healthcare will probably be curtailed a bit, especially for those who are elderly or low quality of life.
I don't think boomers will ever get a true comeuppance. These affects will mostly only materialize for those who weren't financially responsible. And they will still have it better than elderly in most of the world, certainly better than 3rd world countries.
I haven't read or even looked at the 1st sentence of OP.
Thread with this kind of title shouldn't be allowed, they operate on the same click bait level the tabloids do.
Apply yourself!
F-
Spoiler
unless ''THIS'' is a name an then I apologize
I am going to take a crack at identifying a social disease which goes by the acronym T.H.I.S.
It stands for Temporal Hierarchical Identity Disorder and it pertains to an intergenerational relationship disease.
If we want this acronym to capture the public imagination, we are off to a great start.
We done with the book already?
America was engineered to be exactly where it is.
.... we’d start by re-anchoring housing costs to reality.
If people had kept housing expenses around the traditional 25% of income like in the 1980s instead of the 40% today, the median home would be closer to $250K instead of $400K, and rents about 30-40% lower.
The same goes for cheap, endless credit and the collapse of personal savings. If those numbers looked like they did in the 1980s, people wouldn’t be nearly as squeezed and the economy wouldn’t be running so hot that prices keep running away from wages.
But I’m not seeing present or future generations doing much to change that pattern on their own. As with Social Security and healthcare, we'll eventually need to force policies, laws, etc on the people that protects the people from themselves re bidding up housing prices and consumer goods with easy credit.
But I’m not seeing present or future generations doing much to change that pattern on their own. As with Social Security and healthcare, we'll eventually need to force policies, laws, etc on the people that protects the people from themselves re bidding up housing prices and consumer goods with easy credit.
The wheels of time are turning into a new era.
Metaphorically speaking, American Boomers represented a demographic bulge in the global history. Arguably the most privileged and advantaged demographic in human history. That bulge has translated to the voting booth where dominant Boomers have voted for policies which advantaged themselves. When they graduated from that free / cheap college, they gutted those benefits for future generations and voted for a politician (Reagan) who seduced them with their wish to pay low taxes. Their desires warped the Democratic Party to leave behind their grass roots legacy and cater to the dominant wealthy Boomers.
The Dems had a candidate who was immensely popular with young people in Bernie Sanders and their rejection of him was Boomer privilege shitting on young people's dreams.
Young people's turnout has been depressed because they couldn't overcome Boomers at the polls.
Now Boomers are starting to die off and we're seeing how a young socialist in Mamdani prevailed with young voters backing. That's not an anomaly .... that's a taste of the future.
There's a wolf lurking in the next generation. A generation that has a lot of righteous anger at the way Boomers have treated them. I suspect some karma is the way history tends to manifest for those who are indifferent to the suffering of others.
I have a question for the audience.
Why do you suppose I authored this post ?
From my standpoint, I authored it for the purpose of sharing an authentic perspective of a disease which ails the world. I offer it from the perspective of a social physician so that we might have an intelligent discussion as to the merit of the diagnosis and whether or not any corrective action might be considered.
I am trying to connect with you all as my fellow citizens to gauge your thoughts and feelings about these issues which strike me as being extremely important and close to the heart of what ails society today.
What I am getting in return for my outreach is contempt ...... not contempt for the ideas which I am expressing .... but personal contempt and admonishment for mistyping a word disorder where I meant to write syndrome.
The question I have to ask myself is ..... what about my efforts causes such a trigger in others that motivates them to express their contempt for me ?
The only thing that makes sense is that the topics I raise present ideas which are in conflict with the beliefs upon which our egos depend.
I am retired with a mortgage free home and a retirement income that leaves me secure. I have that largely because I was born in the right place at the right time.
I have a question for the audience. Why do you suppose I authored this post ? From my standpoint, I authored it for the purpose of sharing an authentic perspective of a disease which ails the world. I offer it from the perspective of a social physician so that we might have an intelligent discussion as to the merit of the diagnosis and whether or not any corrective action might
WPNdonk thoughtfully engaged your OP barely two hours after you posted it and you never addressed it.
I haven't read or even looked at the 1st sentence of OP.
Thread with this kind of title shouldn't be allowed, they operate on the same click bait level the tabloids do.
Apply yourself!
F-
Spoiler
unless ''THIS'' is a name an then I apologize
Taking five seconds to read the 1st sentence would have been at least 10x faster than you typing this ridiculous post.
I have a question for the audience. Why do you suppose I authored this post ? From my standpoint, I authored it for the purpose of sharing an authentic perspective of a disease which ails the world. I offer it from the perspective of a social physician so that we might have an intelligent discussion as to the merit of the diagnosis and whether or not any corrective action might
I'm skeptical that you want an actual answer, but on the off chance you do, here is my take.
You don't really seem to want to discuss issues. Rather, your overall tone comes across like you believe you are the teacher and we are the students. You aren't as irritating or grandiose as craig, but your overall tone is at least craig-adjacent.
This lecturing tone is all the tougher to take because you often present well-trodden views on social phenomena as personal insight. Millions of words have been written about the social ills of resource inequality and the sustainability (or lack of sustainability) of empires premised on exploitation. On a more concrete policy level, millions of words have been written about the solvency of Social Security and Medicare, and the economic challenges of supporting an aging population.
The mere fact that these issues have been discussed at enormous length of course does not mean you should avoid discussing those issues. But it does bear on the way you should discuss those issues if you don't want to be off-putting to your audience.
Taking five seconds to read the 1st sentence would have been at least 10x faster than you typing this ridiculous post.
From what I gathered from the answers I was right?
Title provided nothing, no context or indication of its content/intent, it was click bait .
It's the same as any tabloid site articles beginning with :
You won't believe this!
They were right!
This old problem finally has an answer!
etc....
Garbage titles for garbage people.
From what I gathered from the answers I was right?
Title provided nothing, no context or indication of its content/intent, it was click bait .
It's the same as any tabloid site articles beginning with :
You won't believe this!
They were right!
This old problem finally has an answer!
etc....
Garbage titles for garbage people.
In my opinion, what you 'gathered' was incorrect.
Just a thought: Maybe you might want to consider evaluating what the OP himself wrote rather than on the responses to what he said.
To each their own.
Millions of words have been written about the social ills of resource inequality and the sustainability (or lack of sustainability) of empires premised on exploitation. On a more concrete policy level, millions of words have been written about the solvency of Social Security and Medicare, and the economic challenges of supporting an aging population.
.
So ... millions of words have been written ..... what is the consensus on how we should respond to these social ills ?
That's the conversation I'm trying to get at.
So ... millions of words have been written ..... what is the consensus on how we should respond to these social ills ?
That's the conversation I'm trying to get at.
Personally, I thought the OP was fine. A particular issue that I have is that you seem to go off the deep end with some of the structural changes that you believe need to be made while having an ironclad opinion that said changes will work. When some potential roadblocks are brought into the conversation that I feel that you should be able to acknowledge, you routinely revert back to some general allegorical talking points to elude the discussion and then pop in with the same argument the next day in another thread.
The practice solutions is the conversation that I'm trying to get at.
