Feudalism didn't organize enough intelligent people and trick them into producing enough shit like plastic, nukes, etc. to eliminate all life on this planet. Forever. Soon.
We humans cannot eliminate all life on this planet. Even if we set that as an actual goal, we would fail. We can wipe out a lot, cause vast harm to existing ecosystems, but life will go on long after we make ourselves extinct.
I wouldn't say that your parents, my parents, their parents .etc failed us.
The ones who failed them and everyone around them, were the peers that ran the system that lied and convinced everyone that everything was going to be okay when simpler times were taken advantage of.
When GenX were kids, both parents had to work, yet standards of living hadn't improved. It's not an intergenerational conflict. It's intergenerational mental illness caused by a top-down capitalist system that doesnt work to serve the public, in fact, captures and repurposes public-serving government.
Watching today as SCOTUS scrambles to justify doing what our plutocrats (their leashholders) want instead of what is just or what would serve the public.
Thanks to the internet, the proletariat is aware of all the lies, the mistruthes and fables we used to justify trying to work hard for a seat in Heaven, or upward mobility, or an honest wage. Those were all cons, and we know now we can't trust our bosses to treat us fairly. In fact, they're actively trying to automate us to homelessness, which they're then looking to criminalize.
basically a return to slavery, ultimately. actual slavery (vs wage slavery). as you say, trying to criminalize being homeless. as i type this, my states is hearing arguments about whether it’s ok to fine and arrest people for sleeping outside even if there is nowhere else they can sleep. in hawaii they banned using plankets and umbrellas while sleeping, regardless of weather. and so on.
Older generations didn't fail us, the bourgeoisie did. Don't let capitalists get away with reframing class struggle as generational struggle when that's not what it is. Poor folks of past generations weren't the problem. It was the ones wealthy enough to have political influence and control that were the problem. And that will continue being true for future generations so long as capitalism exists.
If the bourgeoisie fucked my parents as hard as they're fucking me, I would have been brought up homeless. My mom was making the equivalent of like $60 an hour today when I was a kid, as an illegal immigrant with a two-year degree. I was born in the US and have a master's of science with a 4.0 GPA and can't even get a job.
Things have definitely changed with time, and the younger generation is having a worse time because of it.
I think the point the comment above you was trying to make is that it isn't the old generation that is fucking thr young generation harder, it is the rich that are fucking the young. The old may have had it better, but it was because the rich weren't fucking them as hard.
I feel fucked by the rich, but I feel more directly fucked by the people a decade or two older than me in management at the jobs I'm applying to. As much as I'd love for the US to be more socialist and have better workers rights, it didn't for my parents and it doesn't for me. The sole difference is that I feel excluded from society, despite toeing the educational line my whole life.
I'm GenX. I was pissed off about how much boomers took so much and left so little for us. Millenials got it even worse. Gen Z worse again. The concentration of capital in fewer and fewer hands is a looming disaster
I don't think it's the boomers fault but rather the filthy rich, they are the ones who changed the rules so that they can take from us even more than from our parents/grand parents. Made it harder to own stuff and impossible to fight them and improve our lives so we stay occupied in their businesses trying to survive.
I read a comment yesterday where someone said “You remember how after we had all those occupy wall-street protests, and the media started heavily focusing on race issues?”
Every so often, someone comes along and reminds me to stop looking at trees and take in the whole forest, and I’m like “Ah, fuck. The forest is on fire.”
If you're under 40, please vote for as much as you can. I know in San Francisco, we're going to have like a 7 card ballot in Nov. With so much stuff on it, but please research the people and props that are on the ballot. There are so many progressive vs moderate things on the ballot that really need the youth vote... And yes anyone under 40 is the youth because so many people under 40 don't vote like the older people do!
America has particularly failed veterans since the Revolutionary War, when soldiers weren't paid the money they were promised and given IOUs(not joking).
But every generation of American has had a better life than the previous generation until now.
Every generation up to and including boomers. Gen X, Millenials and Gen Z have had progressively worse conditions thanks mainly to boomer and older politicians pulling the ladder of social mobility up behind them in exchange for bribes from the rich and powerful.
