This is exactly what mega-corporations want. If we save money, they don’t get it.
The powerful rich are always pushing for the closest thing to slavery they can get away with.
Once they have everything, then what happens next? If there is nobody to buy things
Why we are not having kids or even getting married can’t collect my debit when I am dead and have nothing. Just go full nihilist
On the other hand, some of them just refuse to do any overtime or aim for promotion. It won’t get them any closer to their goals so why bother. It’s quiet quitting by default.
I’ve never understood “quiet quitting” as a term. When did just doing your job become something that needs a term? “Working adequately” seems more apt, but I can’t imagine the context that would be worthy of discussion outside an employee review.
They used to say “give it 110%”
In that context, here is a little decades old joke about that.
If: A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z is represented as:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26.
Then:
H-A-R-D-W-O-R-K
8+1+18+4+23+15+18+11 = 98%
and
K-N-O-W-L-E-D-G-E
11+14+15+23+12+5+4+7+5 = 96%
But,
A-T-T-I-T-U-D-E
1+20+20+9+20+21+4+5 = 100%
And,
B-U-L-L- S-H-I-T
2+21+12+12+19+8+9+20 = 103%
AND, look how far ass kissing will take you.
A-S-S-K-I-S-S-I-N-G
1+19+19+11+9+19+19+9+14+7 = 118%
So, one can conclude with mathematical certainty that while Hard work and Knowledge will get you close, and Attitude will get you there, it’s the bullshit and Ass kissing that will put you over the top!
Lolbruh. Yeah, I made the poor decision of getting a phd. At least it was in the hard sciences, so I learned some transferable skills. I BSd my way onto a high-paying career track. You gotta BS.
It’s about creating a negative connotation with doing your job, so you’ll either feel guilty about not doing more than your job, or feel anger at those who do more than you.
You know, keeping the plebes angry at each other so they don’t think too hard about the wealthy.
I can give you a real answer if you’re sincere, but this tends to disappear into downvote oblivion.
Quiet quitting is a sudden and noticeable shift, not in reduced performance, but engagement and morale. Increased negativity, pessimism, criticism, etc. It adversely affects team morale, often resulting in reduced performance of others. It’s more effective than you may think.
A good manager would address this with questions to better understand the sudden change in job satisfaction, and meet those concerns with change. Most seem to be complaining that they don’t have a reason to fire the team member, which is why you always read about “continuing to meet performance expectations.” If a manager told me the latter, I’d address it as a failure of their leadership skills.
I started quiet quitting after it came to light that the new hires with zero experience were being paid more than I was, someone who had been there for over a year, and already had 5 years of experience. I no longer give a shit about the company, because they made it clear they don’t give a shit about my contribution. If you want people to put in extra effort, you have to give them extra money. Once you cheat an employee, they’re not gonna get over it because of a pizza party. fucking pay them.
Again, it’s not about effort or results, but morale. Unequal pay is an absolutely justifiable reason for low morale.
You’re either lying or you’re simply misimformed. You didn’t mention staying late and doing extra work, which is what most people have meant when using that term to denigrate workers that do their job well but leave immediately after work is completed.
Ah, that makes sense. I’m in the military, and we have a similar thing for people who are either due to transfer or retire in the next couple months: FIIGMO. It means “Fuck it, I’ve got my orders.” (For clarification, orders in this context are travel/Primary Change of Station/Retirement Orders, a written and signed document saying they’ll be leaving)
It seems like a weirdly deliberate term for something that has been around forever and typically just attributed to low morale. It makes it seem like a person unhappy at work but just doing their job is somehow sticking it to their boss/company. I’ve dealt with a lot of people like that, both as a peer and a supervisor, and it was never them doing anything intentionally, just being unhappy (and most of the time it had nothing to do with the pay or conditions, just not being suited to the job or general attitude toward life). They could often be a blight on morale, though, so I see how it could be frustrating for supervisors (and peers, they made work miserable for everyone).
Quiet quitting is just middle management’s manipulative language for people doing their jobs adequately but then not putting in a bunch of unpaid extra effort. When there is no incentive to go above and beyond, why should anyone? It is the job of management to create those incentives, but if they are unwilling to pay for that, complaining about people’s work ethic to try to guilt them into doing unpaid work is their next strategy. It isn’t very effective.
You’d think actual pay would be the next step after they realized pizza parties weren’t cutting it anymore
Nope, the new strategy is to just complain “no one wants the deal I’m offering”
Fuck overtime. Forty hours a week is plenty.
I’m saving up for the American Dream 2.0™️: Moving to another country
It’s not just America though.
Where I’m from:
UK average income before tax) £34,963 - £27,911 after tax (assuming NO student loan and NO pension) (for context: a band 3 nurse with 3 years experience makes £24,336 before tax or £20,631.51 after with no pension)
England average house price: £375,131
Approx ratio after tax: 13:1
Minimum deposit: 5% - £18,756.55
Tax: 0% on first time buyers
Fees: about £1,000 - £5,000
Total cost to get going: Approx £21,750 - nearly a years wage.
Now let’s look where I live: Spain!
Turns out Spain really is a load of countries wearing a hat so getting unified stats is not easy. Let’s try Barcelona:
Average income before tax: €33,837 - €25,470 after tax
Average house price: €376,399
Approx ratio after tax: 15:1
Minimum deposit: 10% - €37,639.90
Purchase tax: 10% - €37,639.90 (plus 1.5% for new builds)
Fees: 2 - 5% - 7,527.98 - 18,819.95
Total cost to get going: €82,807.78 - €94,099.75
Turns out treating housing as a market to speculate on might just be the problem all along.
Yeah, I hate this American-centric idea of “Oh, only my country is experiencing this totally unique problem, I’ll just go somewhere else.”
As if late-stage global capitalism would somehow be a problem that is unique to a single country.
The fediverse is a lot more multinational than That Other Site, and I’m seeing the same sort of articles from all over the place.
Just to add to this, there’s zero chance you’re getting a 13x mortgage. For a 375k house on a 25k salary you’re going to need something more like 250k to start.
To add to this, the rule of thumb in the UK is your maximum loan is 4.5x your salary.
The average worker could borrow about £157,000.
To be fair, the UK is essentially aiming to be America 2.0
Many countries are trending more expensive (Belgium went up 30% house price in 4 years) but the UK is on another level of the wealthy literally owning all property and purposely leaving tens of thousands of houses empty just to spite the working class.
I knew someone would say this, which is why I also used Spain where the houses are as expensive, the pay is worse, and the tax is higher!
It doesn’t matter where you go in the West, the dream of liberalism is dead
Unfortunately not much better elsewhere, if at all. What would make me move is the idiotic healthcare system.
“Consumers demoralized by capitalism…” …paywall…
Let’s go a little hollow, as a treat 💀
Every time I read the phrase ‘the American Dream’ I think of the part of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas when, after spending the whole novel trying to find the American Dream, they’re given directions, only to find the remains of a burnt-down nightclub, “a huge slab of cracked, scorched concrete in a vacant lot full of tall weeds.”
Thompson rightly concludes that the American dream is already dead by the 70s.
If you look west you can almost see the place where the wave broke and rolled back…
Thompson rightly concludes that the American dream is already dead by the 70s.
Important context for that is that the novel is a famous, and relatively early, meditation on the failures of the 1960s counterculture movement and the intense, if ultimately unfocused vision for a better future for the nation that was central to it.
Fear and Loathing should be required reading in schools. A lot of the meaning gets lost in all of the drugs, but in the midst of that haze one can find a lot true things about America.
Never read it because I assumed it was just a funny story about guys on drugs with his characteristic cool writing style, but if it had actual things to say about America, maybe I’ll read it sometime. Or watch the movie lol.
The movie actually takes all of that out unfortunately and makes it much more of a funny story about guys on drugs. I still like the movie, but the book is so much deeper and more meaningful.
I liked the book and I was surprised how close to it was the movie, the part tgat got there. And yes, they left out many things, but it’s understandable, because the movie was planned as a “funny movie”, not a “socio-economical movie”. So the book was like “drugs-capitalism-drugs-Vietnam-drugs”, tgey cut out all the “boring” parts, leaving only drugs.
The movie is cool though, but It’s just me always trying to appreciate what is shown to me, and not trying to compare with another media.It’s definitely not a bad movie or even a terrible adaptation of a book. Like you said, it just had a different goal with the same story. That’s fine.
I think of the Carlin bit… It’s the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe in it.
If the American Dream were realistic, we wouldn’t be calling it a dream…
You have to be asleep to believe it --George carlin… I probably dodnt get it right
Nah, that was pretty much word for word what he said 🙂
A fantasy?
An ad.
I mean, it was real for white people. It makes sense why they’re the most pissed and confused lately
Exactly, it would just be the “American Way”.
“Everything is very expensive, and people can’t save money”
FTFY
Its a curious state of affairs, because the stock market has been booming all the while.
If you have savings you’re getting enormous passive incomes. 20-30% jumps in accumulated investments annually. If you don’t have savings you’re watching prices skyrocket while salaries flat-line in the face of anti-inflation economic policy.
This does kinda raise the question “Where are equities markets getting all this extra cash from?” And the answer appears to be… its very profitable to charge people more and pay them less.
The stock market is a measure of how much wealth can be extracted from the working class.
It does not measure the health of the economy. That sometimes the market is doing well as the economy is doing well is closer to coincidence than causality.
The fact that the working class can no longer save money, and must spend every dime is great for the stock market. Next they will come for the dollars we have not spent yet. Because mortgages are no longer feasible for most people they’ll have to find new debt traps. Cars will skyrocket in price, you’ll be able to take out a loan to rent an apartment. Student debt will spiral to laughably unrepayable levels.
They’ll take every dime we have, then they’ll take every dime we’ll ever make. And when it gets to the point where there’s no more money to bleed, unless a new source of endless dollars can be found, the market will feed on itself.
If you think peacefully protesting Wall Street is going to fix that, I’ll sell you the Brooklyn bridge.
They’ve already taken every dime we’ll make, plus every dime our children and grandchildren will make… That’s what the trillions of dollars in debt is.
The stock market is a measure of how much wealth can be extracted from the working class.
I’d argue it goes beyond that. Quite a few ticker symbols on the NYSE are speculative above and beyond anticipated surplus extraction. They’re functionally auction prices on coveted luxuries.
Because mortgages are no longer feasible for most people they’ll have to find new debt traps. Cars will skyrocket in price, you’ll be able to take out a loan to rent an apartment. Student debt will spiral to laughably unrepayable levels.
These have largely come to pass. The “loan to rent” is just your deferred payment on credit card debts to cover rising rental rates.
If you think peacefully protesting Wall Street is going to fix that, I’ll sell you the Brooklyn bridge.
Sure, I can buy it. I just don’t try to cross it for fear the NYPD will arrest me.
stocks are as divorced from actual value now as cryptocurrencies. real estate too. it’s all grift all the time. have a look at the value of djt or tsla, they’re nfts.
it’s all grift all the time.
Its decades of cheap lending to people with all their consumer needs satisfied. If I can borrow at 4% and get 20% ROI, I’m going to borrow every dollar I can get my hands on.
On the flip side, you’ve got private lenders offering double-digit interest rates to the underclass. They’re lucky to get a cost of living increase year over year. So you’re asking people to borrow at 20% with the expectation of a 2-4% ROI.
have a look at the value of djt or tsla, they’re nfts.
DJT is fucking hilarious, because its pure vaporware. But TSLA does actually have factories and vehicle stock and revenue streams and such. Its mismanaged and overvalued, but there’s some amount of there there.
But who is holding Tesla? Vanguard Group, BlackRock, State Street Corp, and Geode Capital Management all have access to the Fed credit window - either directly or through proxies - and can borrow at miniscule rates. They get a positive ROI so long as Tesla appreciates at all. And the long term ROI on an electric car company looks pretty good, even if its overvalued in the short term. So buy buy buy!
Look up the Haymarket square protest.
“A harsh anti-union clampdown followed the Haymarket incident and the Great Upheaval subsided. Employers regained control of their workers and traditional workdays were restored to ten or more hours a day. There was a massive outpouring of community and business support for the police and many thousands of dollars were donated to funds for their medical care and to assist their efforts.”
bootlickin’ since time immemorial
Support for the 8 hour day also blossomed after the Haymarket incident. It lead directly to May day.
you’re right, but i’d love to see, just for once, the people clap back with fierce resistance that amounts to “FUCK YOU I WON’T DO WHAT YOU TELL ME”. fuck the waiting period of change. i just want to know that we have the power to resist without compromise.
and when i say ‘the people’, i really mean the radical progressives.
- It’s* a curious state of affairs
- it’s* very profitable
Literally nobody was confused by those grammatical mistakes, this is just a stupid grammatical rule designed to be a gotcha that grammar people can wield as proof that someone isn’t well educated.
Put the apostrophe wherever the hell you want, just write in a clear way that gives enough context that unless someone is a computer program incapable of tolerating slight grammatical mistakes they will understand fine.
This is true, I asked a new-ish employee about getting/saving for a house and she was like, “why bother? They cost to much.”
the price of homes goes up faster than anyone can save. that’s the problem.
housing prices used to rise at or below inflation. now they rise at like 3x inflation.
Even you are thinking too far ahead. I’m spending rent money every month that obviously could be saved to someday buy a house… But on top of that my rent has increased faster than my income. Every place I’ve lived. By renting, you’re guaranteeing you’re going to be priced out of affording your shelter. And most young people have to rent, to start out. The rich have us fucked at every turn…
I love how Fortune always deflects from the actual issue: wages aren’t matching prices, which means the average American is getting screwed by company owners and wealthy investors, at work, at the bank, at university.
It’s not about interest rates or inflation, although those are both relevant. If inflation were evenly balanced, it wouldn’t hurt most people, right? That is definitional. And high interest rates block house purchases, but in theory they also benefit house owners who have fixed interest rates. So again, if people were able to afford houses in the yhr past few decades, this wouldn’t be such a big issue.
“Getting screwed by government”
That’s the primary issue. Stop deflecting from the fact. Government is and always has been a problem. Fix government spending, checks and balances, audit the fed thoroughly, and everything else will fall in line.
Stop spending on war. Problem solved.
Facts. Not just that… our government is infatuated with spending tax dollars on really stupid studies. For example quails high on cocaine.
And these amongst a long list of other wasteful spending:
Fauci’s NIAID spent $478,188 to turn monkeys transgender $6.9 million smart toilet analyzes “anal print” Feds give $300,000 to virtual reality penguin study The State Department gave $25,000 in grants to Chinese surfers Harvard spent $75,000 in federal grants to blow lizards off trees with leaf blowers
The headline reads like big retail trying to squeeze more profits. Of course people aren’t saving as much, they have to buy groceries.
No, but even for those of us with some extra money… we’re not building a savings pile for a house or anything… we’re just spending the extra on doing things and buying stuff beyond our needs.
This is how you never accumulate wealth…
Itty bitty savings will never lead to wealth either. The working class and “middle class” that remains has a low enough income to recognize this.
It depends on what you call “itty bitty” and “wealth”. Saving $1,000/month is doable for many people and will make you a millionaire by retirement age, even adjusting for inflation.
Saving $1,000/month is doable for many people
You’re not being serious, right?
Crackitalism is a serious drug Jimmy, it’s deadly serious.
And don’t call me Shirley.
Bro, what?! Who the fuck can save $1000/month with current rents and home prices? 🤣
I thought you were serious for a second! Good one.
lol. It’d actually be kinda disrespectful if it wasn’t clear you’ve never met a struggling American in your life
$1,000/mo in savings is pretty difficult for most people.
$300/mo, invested earning 8% for 40 years, does get to a million though (10% rate of return + 2% interest safe assumption.) This is as $60k/yr job, contributing 3% to a 401k with an employer match, not something that’s particularly rare.
I know prices are high and people are hurting… but there’s a lot of people who are just not really trying.
Not if you’te middle aged by the time you get a job that allows you to save.
we’re just spending the extra on doing things and buying stuff beyond our needs.
That’s one of many problems and majority of the people who fit this category like to point the finger at anything and everything else… when the problem is themselves and their spending habits.
Oh. Oh shit it hurts that reading this made me self-aware of this behavior. It’s one thing to be in this mindset and not be aware of it and it’s another to have it written out in front of you. 🤢
My retirement plan is a heroine overdose. I’ll try to do better than that, but I’m not expecting much.
Ya know, I’ve been saving better than most my age. 401k, savings account, emergency fund, investments, crypto, etc. and I keep being reminded that no matter how much I save, I’ll still never achieve the American dream without help.
I’m in a similar boat, minus crypto. If anything it’s made me realize how big that chasm has become.
What the fuck is this American dream anyway?
Economists: “WONTFIX: Working as designed.”
it actually kinda pisses me off. we have been dropping the ball as consumers for a long time. if people would just stop buying all this bullshit, the market might reconsider.
🙋♂️ That’d be me. Keep moving the goalposts society. I’m over it. I’ll wait for my mom to die to get her house. Idgaf anymore. Don’t need a house.
deleted by creator
Same. My dad dying and leaving me his house is the only way I was able to afford to stop renting and stop living paycheck to paycheck. A perk of being an only child I suppose.
Lots of news articles this week using a lot of words to say “Americans don’t have savings”
“Prices are going up but wages aren’t. What have millennials done to cause this?”
Millennial here.
We exist.
And whose fault is that??? HMMMMM points at you
Thanks, Skeletor!
cHeCkMaTe LiBrUlZ!
There are dozens of us. Dozens!
Now there’s a baker’s dozen!
Millennial here.
I wish I didn’t.
thoughts (no self harm talk, just sadness!)
My society clearly hates me and doesn’t want me to exist, my parents bought the modern austerity riddled American dream hook line and sinker and so they believed they shouldn’t help me too much after I became an adult and basically they severed that deep link between parent and child for… some shitty neoliberal ideologies that are empty as fuck?
I am a millenial and I exist, I don’t want to, even though I was given a lot of privilege when I was younger I am ADHD as fuck and life is honestly genuinely miserable. The world wasn’t designed for my brain, it was designed to shunt someone with my brain into jail or a death spiral of some kind of addiction (you ever looked up the percentage of prisoners in US prisons that likely have ADHD? It is shocking).
It would be one thing if things were getting better for ADHD people, but they are quickly accelerating towards being worse in every aspect, random ADHD med shortages because the FDA wants us to die, more and more executive function required for basic tasks (more paperwork, more scheduling, more consequences for not following rigid schedules perfectly), less and less energy and free time available left over after work, less and less tolerance for simple mistakes at work, more complex and brittle steps to get healthcare help that involve a million carefully designed give-up points custom designed to coax an ADHD person into never utilizing their healthcare because they can never get through the hoops to do it. The job application process of sending out resumes to online job after online job alone is catastrophic for my ADHD.
I am not going to hurt myself, or by extension others around me, after all that is precisely what is making me sad in the first place. I have lost that flame inside me because I know I won’t be able to live a fulfilling life where I am genuinely happy in a way that I don’t always go to sleep at night wishing I could disappear painlessly and be forgotten by all…. unless I win the lottery either literally or get the rare job that doesn’t treat me like shit. (Then I am happy and am surrounded by a bunch of dying people like me that I have to try to ignore…?).
It is hard because therapists are usually older adults and they just can’t understand this depression as a rational response from an entire chunk of a generation rather than an individual pathology. Focus on the positives! they say….and I think… I will eventually die of old age or health problems (hey can’t afford the doctor or dentist so that will speed it up :P ) and wont have to force myself to survive in a society with rules designed to put me in a constant state of suffering while constantly coding my desperate struggle to keep basic aspects of my life together as laziness, naiveness, lack of work ethic, lack of personal responsibility etc…
hey, I’m sorry you’ve been feeling down. I can’t offer a solution, but I just wanted you to know you’re seen. and if you want to talk about it more, absolutely feel free to shoot a message.
fwiw, I absolutely sympathize. I’m a young adult with adhd, and struggling with depression, though the latter is getting better I think. I went pretty quickly from being a “gifted kid” to being what most would consider an underachiever. I don’t, to be clear; I’m proud of where I am, regardless of how it seems to compare to some of my friends. it’s still a mad reality check, though.
on a related note, I left christianity a year ago, and holy fuck has that been an adjustment. most of my optimism was always rooted in religion, and without that worldview, it’s suddenly on me to find new reasons to be even a little hopeful, even to want to be alive. I’m not suicidal, but for a while there I couldn’t say that I wasn’t. I do feel like I’m happy to be alive now, and that’s great, but holy crap this is not as easy as it was when I believed in an all-powerful benevolent god. ah well.
I hope you have a lovely day, but if you don’t, that’s valid too. life isn’t always lovely, and there’s nothing wrong with acknowledging that. there’s nothing wrong with feeling down about it. all we can do is try to support ourselves and one another, y’know?
i’m sorry for the dreams that’ve been taken from you and the injustices you’ve experienced. you deserved better, and so did I, and so did most of us. thank you for being honest about it. 🫂
Thank you so much, I deeply appreciate these kinds of posts that don’t attempt to fix me but just engage in solidarity :)
on a related note, I left christianity a year ago, and holy fuck has that been an adjustment. most of my optimism was always rooted in religion, and without that worldview, it’s suddenly on me to find new reasons to be even a little hopeful, even to want to be alive. I’m not suicidal, but for a while there I couldn’t say that I wasn’t. I do feel like I’m happy to be alive now, and that’s great, but holy crap this is not as easy as it was when I believed in an all-powerful benevolent god. ah well.
I think the least interesting question about religion is whether god exists or not. There are many things you can take away from yourself about christianity that don’t have anything to do with a bearded man in the sky existing or not. It is enough to appreciate the beauty of how a spiritual perspective on life and the beings around you can lead you into a happier, better life even if you that spiritual perspective is fundamentally not reflective of science or reality as we know it.
It is like how I don’t necessarily believe we have souls (I mean whatever, but there is zero scientific evidence of souls or even suggestions that they exist), but the concept of a soul and how it can be affected by the world and other people is an incredibly useful way of looking at the human condition. It is a concept and word that does not derive its power from the fact that it exists, and you can appreciate that outside of believing there is something like a soul literally imbued into ourselves in some magic/spiritual way.
i’m sorry for the dreams that’ve been taken from you and the injustices you’ve experienced. you deserved better, and so did I, and so did most of us. thank you for being honest about it. 🫂
thank you for being honest and listening!
<INTERNET HUGS>
I relate to this immensley.
🫂
Generation X here.
We sound coolest, and nobody blames us for shit.
We didn’t do chit… the problem is and always has been, always will be, government.
Well, you gotta be asleep to believe the American Dream, so maybe this means a lot of people are waking up.
By brother in Satan, high inflation makes you spend money now. It’s either that or going to hell.
Im saying that this bs is out of some relative comparison of how much generations are saving/investing. Everyone tried saving. But with low relative wages ofc ppl wont save as much as eg boomers - they didn’t give up vacations or buying whatevers, but still saved money. Younger gens are just left with no money after that.
And also falling relative wages (inflation) makes you buy things asap to actually save money.
It’s literally cheaper to buy things I know we’ll need at some point (assuming we have the space to store the thing) using a rewards credit card that’ll give us 1-3% back than it is to save and buy those things later when they’re even more expensive. (Paying off the CC before it accrues interest, of course.)
The only move that is ‘smarter’ is to be risky with our money and invest in some way. Which then either makes me a part of the corporate enrichment cycle or a member of the rentier class.
Investing isn’t that cheap, especially if you want to be moral about it (no shadow pools, company screening, etc). Coz you know, you are just fueling the same problem you are solving.
The only move that is ‘smarter’ is to be risky with our money and invest in some way. Which then either makes me a part of the corporate enrichment cycle or a member of the rentier class.
Online savings accounts also exist.
A solid suggestion.
I often discount those because I think of them in terms of cable TV pricing, that you have to hop around on to get the maximum benefit. It seems that there’s no trustworthy info to find online these days, so I don’t really know how they stack up, or even if my assumption about them is correct.Something to add to the vast hopper in my brain labeled “things to research if I ever find enough time.”
Ymmv but I’ve found Ally Bank to be good and the rates fluctuate with the baseline rates. I think you get over 4% interest right now. I’ve seen them go up and down just as the fed makes movements, unlike my ing direct account (which became capital one or something) where the rates only ever went down.
If you would have bought a basement full of canned food somewhere shortly before corona or shortly before the russians went full loco in ukraine, it would have been a top tier investment. And if it wouldn’t have been, they don’t go bad fast and you can still eat them :') In high inflation environment, buying stuff instead of stacking money can make sense indeed.
Why grind when production is way higher than needed.
Just eat the rich.
Historically it always led to an era of prosperity.
