If the number of young people who can buy homes is going down and the number of young people that can afford to start families is also going down then how are people getting richer?
It used to be that you could buy a home and start a family and have a stay-at-home-wife on whatever bullshit job you stumbled into after high school. You used to be able to afford to rent an apartment by yourself by working part-time at the minimum wage. Now that's financially impossible. The problem isn't young men being angry at the system, the problem is the system and the people who made it.
I understand this perspective, but it's like... I would like to have a house and kids and all those things you mentioned, even if it was hard. That's not an option, financially, for a lot of young people
The government has spent decades figuring out ways to lie about this. Are you actually shocked? The number of men who can buy a home and have a stay-at-home-wife on a random job they got out of high school is nigh 0% when this used to be the norm.
The part about being needy is so true. Here is a quote I read recently that I've been trying to spread everywhere. It's from Hideo Kojima (insane video game man): "If you spend your time chasing butterflies, they'll fly away. If you spend your time making a beautiful garden, the butterflies will come to you. And if they don't come, you still have your beautiful garden"
My mother, father, dogs, and grandparents were all dead by the time I turned 19 years old. I was homeless on and off before then, and I stopped living with my parents at the age of 14. My father was a hoarder and my mother was an alcoholic, and I experienced pretty severe childhood neglect. At 19 I worked bullshit jobs for about a decade before lucking into a programming gig after years of searching, and it's honestly not that great.
Believe me when I say that I spent way too much time on the internet asking for advice on what to do. I had a lot of people try to give me advice, but none of it ever really worked. Most people have not had similar issues, and so don't know what advice to give. I'm 30 now and that's still the case. You can imagine I never fit in anywhere and don't have special connections either. So I will try to give you advice on what worked for me.
Reading is very important. Philosophy from Aristotle and Dostoyevsky helped me. It's important to be honest and recognize the fact that life can be awful and lots of people die alone and unfulfilled. That could be any of us. Exercise is important, get cardio and weight lifting in every day. Eat a good diet. Don't try to make friends at work. Those are coworkers, and many of them will use whatever you tell them as ammunition in a game of politics. Always be looking for a better job, even if you're already employed. Money is one of the most important things to have because it gives you freedom. You aren't guaranteed friends or family but you can always try to make your own life better.
Here's a quote from Hideo Kojima that sums it all up: "If you spend your time chasing butterflies, they'll fly away. If you spend your time making a beautiful garden, the butterflies will come to you. And if they don't come, you still have your beautiful garden."
Probably the most fulfilling thing you can do in life is raise a happy, productive child in a safe community that you belong to. If you're an American this is all but impossible these days, because getting married is Russian roulette.
I'm sorry if you were hoping for a different answer, but this is what I've got. Godspeed to you.
It's just so weird you would bring your hatred of a "typical White male" strawman into this discussion when most people on this website are White and male and are themselves arguing for full stop privacy for everyone.
You could have named any other group (and been far more accurate in your assumption of a disregard for privacy, by the way) but you chose White men (like the ones who codified "a right to privacy" in the first place). Why?
Okay sure, life was unironically just better for everyone back in the 90s except for the highest paid exceptional programmers.
Do you feel better now? Will you admit the economy is bad, and has been getting worse for 50 years straight for absolutely everyone (except the most exceptional engineers)?
No, the average 30 year old American owns far less than the average 30 year old American did in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s. Owning a home in a safe community is what is most important, and most young men can't seem to get that. Things are getting worse.
I'm going to add my perspective here, I'm new to the website and have noticed people here might not fully understand not having any opportunity and what that is like. My mother, father, and grandparents all died before I was 19. I was homeless for a bit, and slept behind bushes while working at a local Kmart. I would have stayed homeless if not for some friends (that I barely knew then) inviting me to rent an apartment with them (they did not know about my situation).
The one thing I had going for me was that my grandmother prepaid my college tuition. So I scraped by working bullshit jobs, completed college, and now in my 30s I'm doing sort-of okay as a programmer for a start up (the pay here is bad, which is why I'm here).
It was awful getting here and I was always one small step away from being permanently homeless or dead. Maybe he didn't mean it like this, but a "normal" person means a person living in poverty in China or Indian or wherever else, and they all have it even worse than me.
I'm writing this here because, not you, but others on this website tend to just give some form of "bro, just stop sucking so bad if you want to improve your life" and it doesn't seem like they really understand what having no option is like.
I feel this so much. This expectation to care about work outside of work is obscene. The anger you will often receive for saying this is just as jarring.
Look man, life was unironically just better for everyone back in the 90s. Minimum wage, median wage, highest earners, if you do the math everything was cheaper and wages were comparatively higher. Gas, food, electricity, housing, it was all cheaper. There were fewer regulations and less bureaucracy.
The buying power of a programmer in the 90s was much, much higher than an average programmer today.
This is a sign of social isolation, not wealth.