Back in the day pay was lowish and houses and rent was cheap.
Everyone could find a job.
Now the pays pretty much less by comparison, rent and houses are too high, many jobs have been dissolved, and people are working 20% more hours for no real gain.
The enemy is modern medicine. It keeps people alive longer than the system was intended. The solution to save Medicare is cuts to Medicare (limit baseline Medicare to preventative and palliative care after 80 with mandatory DNR. An individual can pay for a premium policy upgrade on their own if they wish).
We are getting the "wrong" medical advances. Things that kill the young like brain cancer and ALS have shown almost no improvement in 5-year survival rates, and colon cancer rates have gone up for young people but stayed the same or even gone down a bit for old people. Meanwhile, the tech to hook up a ventilator and feeding tube to a 90 year old and keep that person alive nearly indefinitely has improved immensely.
Hundreds or thousands of people running on the street with numbers pinned to their shirts would have been considered lunacy to the average person before the early 1970s. Only a tiny number of unusual men who ran marathons did that.
I can speak to my own experience. I missed one question on the math portion of the SAT, and was the top male student in my high school class. I was a state champion. I went to state school because I was poor. I worked multiple dead end jobs (full time in the summer and part time during the school year) from the age of 15 to pay my way through college. I traveled out of state for track meets twice in high school in four years on my own dime. I paid for all my clothes, running shoes, most of my meals, and I didn’t have a car until I was 23. I did undergraduate research (because I had excellent grades in engineering and made contacts through my professors) and got a job from someone who had done research in the same program years prior. I haven’t inherited a cent and my parents played no role in my career. Please let me know how much easier I had it than you.
A friend of mine was born in the mid 1990s. He got almost all As and a nearly perfect score on the SAT, but he also ended up going to a state college since he had to compete with tens of thousands of other kids who also had top grades and test scores, and the top colleges can't accept all of them.
He was the fastest guy at his high school in the 400, 3200, and every event in between, but he didn't even get to race more than 50 miles from his hometown (let alone out of state) until he got to college. His school district was poor and filled one bus to over-capacity just to allow the team to compete at a rival school. If his team got to compete in at least 5 track meets, it was considered a busy season. There were no invitationals, just dual meets and one local championship. The track is still dirt/cinders today, and all times are hand-timed on a rutted, poorly maintained track.
His parents were immigrants who came the legal way and had to wait decades to finally get their citizenship. He had no family connections or inherited wealth he could use to his advantage.
But the key difference is that your struggles were mostly over by your mid 20s. He probably won't be able to afford a down payment for his house until he's 40, and he's doing better than most of his peers.
Not a boomer, but a gen Xer. Every generation thinks they have it tougher than the last, but in reality, each generation has its own challenges. Life wasn’t all roses for boomers either. If you keep believing life is a struggle, it will become one. If you believe you can do great things and are willing to work for them, then you will. Adulting ain’t easy, and never has been.
I can speak to my own experience. I missed one question on the math portion of the SAT, and was the top male student in my high school class. I was a state champion. I went to state school because I was poor. I worked multiple dead end jobs (full time in the summer and part time during the school year) from the age of 15 to pay my way through college. I traveled out of state for track meets twice in high school in four years on my own dime. I paid for all my clothes, running shoes, most of my meals, and I didn’t have a car until I was 23. I did undergraduate research (because I had excellent grades in engineering and made contacts through my professors) and got a job from someone who had done research in the same program years prior. I haven’t inherited a cent and my parents played no role in my career. Please let me know how much easier I had it than you.
I don't know about having it easier than you, but all of that achievement did nothing to curb your concern about people on here claiming that they have it easier than you.
In other words, all of your self-actualization means nothing if you still feel a compulsion to compare your experience to others. You could be sitting back enjoying the fruits of your labor, but instead some younger people claiming unique circumstances somehow forces you to come one-up everyone and make it all about you.
Congrats, I guess? In the words of Randal from Clerks, "I hope it feels so good to be right. There's nothing more exhilarating than pointing out the shortcomings of others, is there?"
Do you get it? You had different formative influences. Less FOMO, less comparison game. You didn't see so much distraction, division, hedonism. Your options were few, and everyone was okay with that.
Life is harder today in most ways, but that's not to say some boomers didn't have it hard. Before the legendary American George Malley, there was no summer.
3. Apply. Complete psychometric tests. Usually numerical and communication. Sometimes abstract reasoning. Complete 4 x 500 word responses.
4. Sift.
5. Complete video interview.
6. Sift.
7. Group interview or face to face.
8. Sift.
9. Face to face interview.
I applied to the civil service. Scored better than 90% of test takers in the numerical section and better than 88% of test takers in the written section. Then a panel interview in front of 3. Rejection. I have a physics degree and a masters in nuclear. I'm probably more qualified than the panel put together.
You have “a physics degree and masters in nuclear” and you only tested better than 88-90%?
I'll give you one example: the job market. In the old days, job interviews were really just a formality. Nobody "prepped" for job interviews, unless you consider finding a suit to wear to be a form of interview prep. Nowadays it's not unusual for people to spend 6 months prepping for interviews. There are whole books and paid courses on how to "crack the interview process" for companies or industries. Even podunk companies will put candidates through rounds of subjective technical and behavioral questions.
Total BS about what it was like back then. For white collar jobs back then the process was essentially identical to what you describe happening today. I know because I've interviewed over several eras including this one.
I'll give you one example: the job market. In the old days, job interviews were really just a formality. Nobody "prepped" for job interviews, unless you consider finding a suit to wear to be a form of interview prep. Nowadays it's not unusual for people to spend 6 months prepping for interviews. There are whole books and paid courses on how to "crack the interview process" for companies or industries. Even podunk companies will put candidates through rounds of subjective technical and behavioral questions.
What a bunch of bull. I had to do a lot of job interviews to find a good job. Yes, there were books about apply for jobs. But remember at that time we all could read.
Maslow's pyramid of needs says it all. If the generations should be measured it should be on objective metrics such as apartment prices, food prices, access to jobs etc.
Earlier generations of Americans grew in up in a relative utopia compared to the current nightmare, which is why the party of the status quo, which is the Democrats atm, is going to become more and more fringe and crazy. The racism against non-blacks, sexism against men, illegal invaders over citizens, criminals over victims, etc, etc, etc, has to go or people will throw away the entire Constitution to fix these things, and more (like protecting their kids from being groomed and gaslighted into trans-genderism).
"But muh stocks in duh stock market," nobody cares outside the 8%, everyone else is willingly to burn the stock market to the ground with tariffs for just the chance of getting their country back.
I hear lots of whining about the cost of college. My daughter is in college, pays $9000 a year tuition, lives at home, works full time as an EMT (soon to be AEMT) making $40k a year with no expenses. She's pretty tired but is managing to keep her grades high enough, is aiming for medical school, gaining tons of confidence from the real-world experiences she's getting. She wouldn't have to prepare for an interview; she could just tell stories about her job and all the things she's involved in. I didn't want her to get a job since I had a college fund for her, but she isn't using it, she took responsibility for herself. And this is my lazier child. She just bought a new car with her own money today and she's 19. Even with the car she's putting half her paycheck in the bank, and will be a paramedic in about a year with corresponding large pay bump. By the time she comes out of college she'll easily be able to buy a starter home with her own money. If she leaves her college fund alone, I'm pretty sure she can just leave it there growing and use it for her own children someday.
What's stopping any of you from doing what my daughter is doing? The EMT certification was a semester in community college which cost about $2500. She did that while also taking 14 credits in her main college degree program at another school, taking guitar lessons, boxing lessons, dance lessons, and participating in HOSA.
It's really all about attitude. You have to believe in yourself, what you're doing, and where you're going.
I hear lots of whining about the cost of college. My daughter is in college, pays $9000 a year tuition, lives at home, works full time as an EMT (soon to be AEMT) making $40k a year with no expenses. She's pretty tired but is managing to keep her grades high enough, is aiming for medical school, gaining tons of confidence from the real-world experiences she's getting. She wouldn't have to prepare for an interview; she could just tell stories about her job and all the things she's involved in. I didn't want her to get a job since I had a college fund for her,
Most Americans don't have a few hundred buck for emergency funds, but your daughter comes from a privileged family, where her parents already a college fund for her, she grow up in the right neighorhoods with time/money invested in her already. She has the option of living at home with "no expenses" just stacking cash, because you have money to make it look as if she's doing it all on her own.
I hear lots of whining about the cost of college. My daughter is in college, pays $9000 a year tuition, lives at home, works full time as an EMT (soon to be AEMT) making $40k a year with no expenses. She's pretty tired but is managing to keep her grades high enough, is aiming for medical school, gaining tons of confidence from the real-world experiences she's getting. She wouldn't have to prepare for an interview; she could just tell stories about her job and all the things she's involved in. I didn't want her to get a job since I had a college fund for her,
Most Americans don't have a few hundred buck for emergency funds, but your daughter comes from a privileged family, where her parents already a college fund for her, she grow up in the right neighorhoods with time/money invested in her already. She has the option of living at home with "no expenses" just stacking cash, because you have money to make it look as if she's doing it all on her own.
People also have fewer kids than when boomers were growing up. That means kids today receive more financial assistance from their parents and have fewer people to share inheritances with. My mom was one of 7, my dad was one of 4. I was one of three. I’ve got two kids.
I'll give you one example: the job market. In the old days, job interviews were really just a formality. Nobody "prepped" for job interviews, unless you consider finding a suit to wear to be a form of interview prep. Nowadays it's not unusual for people to spend 6 months prepping for interviews. There are whole books and paid courses on how to "crack the interview process" for companies or industries. Even podunk companies will put candidates through rounds of subjective technical and behavioral questions.