Because things that previously were general “adulting” functions have been hypercommodified and we’re left having to navigate the world with less money, less time, and less idea of what’s real and what’s a scam.
This isn’t a generational issue, it’s fucking capitalism.
We also get to do our adulting with the knowledge that almost everything we do is slowly cooking the environment.
Thank you! I get so tired of the generational generalizations. And you’re right, it’s getting more difficult for working people of all ages to navigate this late stage capitalism shit show.
Pushes glasses up nose: Uh, late stage capitalism, to be clear.
Please. As if this isn’t the goal for capitalists. It’s their wet dream.
Insert Scooby Doo meme unmasking capitalism.
Yeah no shit. They feel that way because it is that way. You don’t need polls for this information. It’s economics. “Perceived” or not, it is actually, literally harder for millenials and younger adults to achieve the same level of financial stability as their parents, full stop. That’s not a matter of feeling or perception. That’s the declining real value of money. Inflation, greedflation, economic contraction at key life milestones, wealth inequality, lower indicators for health, and on and on. Across every metric I can think of off the top of my head, millenials and the next generations perform worse than previous generations due to circumstances entirely beyond their control (and largely the result of the prior generations, including dead hand control and policies directly adversarial to young adults’ accumulation of wealth). For many young adults, the best financial windfall they’ll ever experience will be when their more affluent parents die, and no active measure they can take on their own behalfs will meaningfully change it.
The ruling class should be terrified of them.
My mother has joked with me that she’s spending my inheritance, despite her friends telling her not to say that. I didn’t expect any windfall even before that, to be fair, but it’s nice my own mother can be honest about the “Fuck you I got mine.”
no active measure they can take on their own behalfs will meaningfully change it.
They don’t seem to understand what this means to an economy. I experience it now at my job: there’s no reason to work harder, there’s nothing to gain. Without growth there’s no reason to invest and an economy collapses. All growth right now is artificial, consolidation of smaller growth business into giant mega corporations that won’t pay taxes or employees fairly.
A Greek proverb says a society grows when old men plant trees whose shade they shall never know. What’s the exact opposite of that?
A Greek proverb says a society grows when old men plant trees whose shade they shall never know. What’s the exact opposite of that?
Well what’s happening right now is old men are actively uprooting anything that won’t grow to shade tree size in their lifetimes. It’s as if their aim is to one day build their own coffin out of the absolute last tree on Earth.
A Greek proverb says a society grows when old men plant trees whose shade they shall never know. What’s the exact opposite of that?
My mother has joked with me that she’s spending my inheritance, despite her friends telling her not to say that.
Without knowing your mother, it’s entirely possible she was first exposed to that joke when it was generally believed that your children will be at least as successful as you, thanks to ever-increasing standards of living, and never stopped to reevaluate the cruelty of the joke. But since friends are telling her to stop, she’s either willfully ignorant or being cruel.
A Greek proverb says a society grows when old men plant trees whose shade they shall never know. What’s the exact opposite of that?
Fuck you; got mine?
chopping down trees to heat the house in their vacation homes? i dunno
My mother has joked with me that she’s spending my inheritance, despite her friends telling her not to say that. I didn’t expect any windfall even before that, to be fair, but it’s nice my own mother can be honest about the “Fuck you I got mine.”
Not that I want or expect any inheritance from my mother, but because she’s rubbing it in like this you could ask her a question. Say “As I navigate life growing up, I’ve learned many things from you so let me ask you this. How much inheritance did your parents leave you when they passed away? Are you planning on equaling (adjusted for inflation) what you received to pass on to me or are you deciding to take from them without giving back? I’m just trying to figure out how I should be a parent to my kids.”
What’s the exact opposite of that?
Maximizing next quarter earnings.
You know what your problem is, it’s those damn cellphones.
And coffee. And avocado toast. And wokeness.
And iphones!
The ruling class should be terrified of them.
Well, this time around they’ve got technology. They’ve got the Internet.
And they’ve learned from past attempts, and I believe they have nearly perfected their ideal society (which is really just feudalism again). Which includes exposing people to enough lies and propaganda that they will actively advocate against policies that would help “correct” things, and in favor of policies that worsen and perpetuate their (and their children’s) own situation.
At least here in the US, we’re far too comfortable with our Real Housewives, and our XBoxes to ever take real action beyond just voting. I’m including myself in this so don’t think I’m being high and mighty.
Gee, it’s almost as though paying 2½ times more for an education and 3 times more for a house on basically the same wage is hard. This is not rocket science. It’s basic arithmetic
Motherfuckers pulled up the rugs, roads and rails behind them and can get entirely fucked. They had generation after generation invest in their eventual well-being and then spent like mad. Devastated everything. Fuck them. No contact. No grandkids.
That’s a terrible headline that puts the blame on them instead of the people who made the world they have to live in…
They want us to fight a generational culture war rather than a class war. My parents are boomers and were born poor and will die poor. There is no windfall. And what little savings most boomers have are going to be completely ate up by end of life care that has been designed to rip them of their last dollar. It’s the rulling class who needs to be living in fear for what comes next.
Gee whiz, I wonder who runs the company’s putting shit like this out there? Couldn’t be…
I still question what “being an adult” even means. Sure, I pay taxes and have a job. Is that…it? I play video games in my spare time, spend way too much time on Youtube, and really not much has changed from when I was a teen until now.
I have no hope of ever buying a home or of seeing even a fraction of the comparative wealth of a generation or two ago. So, what does being an adult even mean right now?
If you’re poor, being an adult is foregoing all of life’s pleasures and working until you are incapable of working any longer.
If you’re rich, being an adult is indulging in all of life’s pleasures and making others do the work for you.
I don’t believe that adults actually exist. Everyone is just an overgrown child who occasionally does things that are perceived as “adulting”
ETA: I used to say this as a joke, but as I get older the more I actually believe it
What is your retirement fund stock/bond allocation? Target retirement date?
It means letting your dreams die a miserable death in service to whatever the fuck it is that this society values. Wage-slavery and and celebrity worship, I suppose.
The article keeps mentioning a “glimmer of hope” but that glimmer is just surviving or getting married on schedule.
I don’t know what they’re smoking.
That glimmer of hope is the lure of the anglerfish, waiting to devour the naive millennial.
the light at the end of the tunnel is actually an oncoming train
That train?
Albert Einstein.
No actually, it’s climate change. The train is climate change and we’re all going to die.
Or WWIII, whatever gets worse first.
Can it just get it over with at this point?
Yeah this is it. My marriage is 100% two decent people who can’t pay rent/health insurance solo. At least we are friends🎄.
Gen Z and millennial adults are having a hard time achieving the same milestones their parents did when they first ventured out into the workforce, such as finding a job, getting promoted or buying a house.
Ha! What a joke of an article. The financial and environmental and social concerns today are wildly different. Many CAN’T do what their parents or grandparents did. It’s not a one to one comparison.
Read ‘Hell’s Angels’ by Hunter Thompson. He has a chapter on the economics of being a biker/hippie/artist. A part-time waitress could support herself and her musician boy friend, and six months as a Union stevedore would keep an Angel on the road for two years.
It’s tragic what capitalism has done to the middle class in this country, and that includes brainwashing us into accepting it, if not directly advocating for it.
I say this all the time.
Before Nixon took office, ‘middle class’ was one job supporting a family of four. That’s with a house, a car, and money to send the kids to college. In those days, $1 million was a giant fortune. By the time Bush Sr. left office ‘middle class’ was two incomes to support the family and $1 million was what a rich guy paid for a party.
It’s a lot more palatable to adult, when your actions have a reasonable chance to lead you to a better life situation.
Oh wow, you mean to tell me that between paying disgustingly high rent, car payments, car insurance, gas, increasing food prices for less food than before, and having buying power that is stagnant at best and shrinking in most cases due to inflation, it’s hard to be financially stable?
Next thing you know, that article will tell me water is wet.
Removed by mod
I don’t think any of that is “adulting.”
As a parent of a 17yo, adulting is:
- Buying and eating your own healthy food
- Arranging your own transportation
- Working and living within your means, whatever that looks like
- Paying your bills on time
- Regularly doing something for the community
- Making and keeping your own appointments
- Managing your own meds
- Having someone/ something besides yourself to take care of
- Trying to understand people you don’t agree with
- Focusing on people instead of problems
I’m stealing this list. And I’m a 52 yo man.
I’m still fucked regardless of definition. I can barely get through the work day even without substantial caffeine, even with 3 years off caffeine and just being miserable I still had bloody diarrhea and back pain that would come and go with seemingly no explanation. Having a camera snake through me didn’t reveal anything. Then whenever I don’t have anything else fucking me up it’s migraines with aura that last as long as a week and a half and everyone is mad at me when I am finally able to get to work without either killing someone with my car, or getting run over with my bike.
adulting
Please don’t
This article is a really clever bait and switch. It talks extensively about how resilient and optimistic Gen Z is. Which is unfortunate for me: I wanted an article explaining how I can get better at adulting.
0/0%, just throw my corpse in the work dumpster when I die.
