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How bout you just give all your money to rich people, it will trickle down on your face and keep you warm. Just pull yourself up by your own bootstraps and work harder, put down the avocado toast.
Did they not know, they could just buy a house?
But landlords buying any and all available properties are not a problem!
I'm so jaded after months of stupid comments. All i can do now is just sarcasm.
But what about their tax cuts for the wealthy? Are they safe?
Time to start pulling on them bootstraps.
It's almost like essential services are just entirely too expensive. You know the simple things like housing, food, and health care.
On the bright side... Um, well... I'll have to get back to you on that one.
Oh no, the consequences of their actions.
Don't worry there are safety nets in society since our corpo overlords love and care for us. Its not like the voted their entire life to get rid of them.
Gotta love how every single comment here is talking about boomers like they're a monolith that's been voting for Republicans since the Nixon era.
Boomers have been consistently voting conservative since the Nixon era. Sure, not all of them, but the majority. And they’ve been the largest voting bloc since. Millennials are due to overtake them soon though.
Source? https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2018/03/01/1-generations-party-identification-midterm-voting-preferences-views-of-trump/ Y’all really do have this boomer scapegoat in your head. Also, millennials make up a larger voting bloc now than boomers.
Republican and conservative are not identical terms. Boomers are not a majority Republican, but they are a majority conservative. (Actually it’s a plurality, not a majority, so I did misspeak. It’s a very hefty plurality, though.) Conservative Democrats are a minority in the Democrat party, but they exist, and they help pass conservative legislation, and they block progressive legislation.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/181325/baby-boomers-likely-identify-conservative.aspx
Also, as of the 2016 election, boomers still outnumbered millennials, but maybe that’s changed. I haven’t heard the news if it has. The trend line for boomers is going to accelerate down as boomers become older. You also have to factor that around 70% of boomers vote whereas only about 50% of millennials vote.
Also, where was I scapegoating boomers? I said they’re consistently conservative. That doesn’t mean they deserve to be homeless or each one is personally responsible for the housing crisis. I think you might be assuming that everyone younger than the boomers is a monolith.
Right, but relying on the voting habits of a majority to justify mocking a poor old person becoming homeless is pretty reductive and just ever so slightly cruel. It really doesn't make for a compelling discussion.
Edit: thanks for the downvotes, but in case you didn't read lolcatnip's first comment, I'm agreeing with them as a rebuttal to hperrin, not saying hperrin is doing the things I said. hperrin was going to bat for the commenters.
I’m not a fan of mocking homeless people. Calling it a consequence of the voting habits of their generation is a perfectly valid argument though. It’s a good jumping off point to a larger discussion about the consequences of a generational rejection of progressive policies. We’ve consistently allowed wealth, property, and power to accumulate in the hands of a tiny group of powerful people/companies, and this is the result of those policies. We already knew that this would be the result, because it always is, every time.
Didn't say you were. OP of this thread was talking about the general response from all commenters.
Seriously. Everyone here talks about taking down corporations and everyone getting their needs met, but is pretty quick to generalize and discard a now at risk population who has a lowered ability to self serve.
The vitriol towards baby boomers is disturbing. Blaming a single, entire, generation for all of the current problems in the US is insane. It’s like if we blamed millennials for the Trump craziness.
Hang on, because I don't think ~~anyone is~~(I should say) most people are actually doing that. When we speak of "Boomers" we mean the generation, and the individuals who espouse those prototypical generational thought processes. If I meet someone in that age group, I don't go "Aw, fuck you for trickle down economics" because I don't blame all Boomers on a personal level. But recognizing where they fucked up, and why their ideologies have created an existential crisis for future generations, that's fair game.
I don't blame all Boomers on a personal level. But recognizing where they fucked up, and why their ideologies have created an existential crisis for future generations, that's fair game.
Stop with your nuance. You have to either personally punch every homeless Vietnam veteran in the face or absolve Reagan voters of 100% of the damage they did (and continue to do). It's one or the other.
Ok? A majority of the top level comments on this post are saying that they are unsympathetic towards the homelessness problem because they are boomers, or even insinuating that they deserve it.
It's a good reminder to me that many voices on Lemmy are just edgy folks spitballing opinions as if they are gospel.
Boomers have fucked my generation so I couldn't give a chicken fried fuck about this, hell maybe now that its affecting boomers the government might actually be forced to do something about it.
"boomers" are not individuals, it's a title for a large group.
True
I’d like to be sympathetic, but this is the world they created. And on top of that, our generation was called lazy, entitled, etc. by the boomers. Guess you can lay down in that nice bed you made.
I mean, that's a huge generalization in both directions.
There's no evidence these people, throughout their younger life, did anything but try to survive.
“I’d like to be sympathetic” Based on your comment it seems like quite the opposite, actually. You’re no better than this boomer boogeyman figure you’ve created in your head.
If these baby boomers are still paying rent or are facing homelessness, then it's probably safe to assume that they probably weren't the ones who had a say in the world that was created.
Poverty and the proletariat exist in all generations.
Ever heard of a job‽ Pull yourself up by the bootstraps!
They should buy less avocado toast 😏. Lazy ass generation
And the boomers are still talking about slashing social security... We will be a beggar nation before they're done robbing us.
Governments don't seem to give a shit. I'm Canadian and all our government talks about are foreign affairs, scandals, bureaucracy. While ignoring housing costs, food costs, lack of safety net and jobs with decent wages. They're just kicking the can, while we drown in debt.
Governments actually do talk a lot about local affairs, but people generally don’t tune in for it. Become more active in your local and regional governments and get involved in the conversations and debates about these local issues.
I think cost of living has gone beyond being a local issue. Frankly it's a global issue, but at the very least it's national, and the federal government telling us to complain to the local governments (who have zero power to change food or housing costs) isn't a solution, it's a merry go round.
its less of a global issue, its very specific to countries. it basically affects countries who has a lot of property that can be seen as an investment for profit. house ownership is a rolling ball, once you own a few, it becomes easier to own more, and then it results into a situation where concentration of ownership is in the hands of the few.
I don’t know how it works in Canada, but in the US, each state has its own minimum wage. In California, we just upped minimum wage for fast food workers to $20/hour. If there’s something similar that you can do in Canada, that would certainly be a great first step.
I love how people point the finger at Trudeau, citing his disastrous immigration policy as the main reason housing is fucked. PP claims he'll fix it....by literally changing nothing. The NDP is a joke at this point. I'm not sure what parties people support, but something is truly rotten in Ottawa. And don't even get me started on Bernier and his one man culture war.
Something, something socialism.
We can do both.
I want to capitalize on this and use these disgruntled, hurting voters to strengthen our social safety net, maybe lower the retirement age, fix the social security benefit to a cost of living index, and protect them and everyone who comes after them from dying in poverty when you no longer serve the corporate overlords and are discarded.
But I want us to do that while making comments about telling them to put down the avocado toast and stop buying so many expensive coffee drinks. Tighten your belt a little! Maybe don't have that Ensure for breakfast, gramma!
Because the truth is, while on an individual level, they likely don't deserve to die sick and miserable. But on a generational level, the majority of them are, statistically, the reason we are in the mess we're in. And we should be allowed to snark and give them back a taste of what they gave us our whole lives, while we clean up this mess. Hopefully by making them vote for what will actually help everyone for once.
Being snarky towards homeless people! You’re really showing them! Stick it to those stupid boomers!
I've been homeless before, and I have no problem snarking at a homeless person because they're still people and not strictly speaking, victims. It's far more damaging to be unseen than it is to be snarked at but ultimately, helped. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that at least someone snarking at me meant they saw me as a real human being.
welp I know what my future looks like in 40 years
I always thought conservatives were more likely to be rich and poor people die off more quickly resulting in aging populations being more conservative.
The problem here is that I would guess poor boomers are probably less likely to be conservative so it feels really dumb to cheer on boomers dying from being unable to pay rent.
It's probably less that they are conservative or not, and more that they were the generation of having multiple houses, properties, and boats. Credit and debt was the name of the game. Buy all the things recklessly. It was a learned societal behavior on the rear end of WWII. Capitalism will only always go up, so why worry?
Then they enter retirement, and don't want to admit to themselves that the world is more shitty than it was when they were younger, nor that they were directly/indirectly responsible (probably also amplifies that warped "MAGA" perspective.) One was promised 40 years work at one job without a college education (and associated debt), a pension, social security, and retirement with all the things they acquired along their fruitful life. The now world must look like a dystopian nightmare by comparison.
Once this fiscal viewpoint they grew up with is applied in retirement, even the most conservative could easily become ensnared in a lack of funds if they didn't tone down their previous fiscal behavior and learn new methods that fit with the era. It would also be really hard to undo fiscal mistakes when on a fixed income and no easy job prospects to hit the undo button with.
I know some retired boomer indirectly that takes out home equity lines of credit every time their property values increase, and then they moan to their HOA to ensure it is spending every dime to make it look like a golf course in the desert so their property values continue to increase. (So they can get that next home payout.)
Poking fun is fun, albeit crass, but also it just kinda makes you feel sad for an entire generation that believed these lies so hard that they screwed up their own lives and generations after them. I can understand the fun-poking though, with all the loud uneducated boomers screaming online about how younger generations just don't "get it" when they're actually the ones that don't.
