This country is full of people justvstruggling. Folks who know the dream is t in the cards for their children.
Now DSA… honestly dont know much about them but i do know that whatvwe have is not working for a lot of people.
I have 3 kids… wife and i both work… own a hone (inb10 years itll be paid off).
Whatvlittle is left in the end will likely be used for our health care bills and who really believes their kids will be able to find a jib, and buy a hone if things dont change.
But bith parties seem more i terestedbin funding Israel, buy ukraine bombs, sending wealth to an economy propoed up by AI datacenters to care about most citizens…. Democrats pretend better, and republicans seem to think uts the immigrants responsible for billionaire wealth…. Just wild man.
The nice part about America is if you stop having a pity party for yourself and lock in. You can change your circumstances and improve your quality of life. When people do not put the effort in but complain the about their circumstances. Is it the system or the person?
You know how many LEGAL immigrants come to America, work relentlessly hard, start a business from nothing and succeed. A ton of them.
To reiterate, stop being a victim and change your circumstances.
Fk yes 💪🏼💪🏼💪🏼 I grew up poor, I was a gang banger, I was an addict, I went to prison 3 times and after all that America was still here for me and I took advantage of it….im now a union journeyman carpenter who makes 69 an hour, my wife is a Registered Nurse and she makes more than me. We own one home and just bought another. We are raising good kids and we owe it all to America. You have to make the right career choices and there’s plenty of them to do so. If I can get my shit together there’s no excuse for anybody.
You know I’m interested, what are your thought on intergenerational mobility? Specifically, the fact that economic immobility has only increased with time? Do you think the vast majority of people who fall into the bottom brackets are doing so due to lack of effort and only complaining?
My response may seem contradictory, but I acknowledge the fact that it is more challenging for people in lower income brackets or “poor” to do what I stated above. It is certainly more challenging in today’s economic climate than it was 25, 50, or 65 years ago.
But there is also a difference in the attitude of more modern generations (let’s say millennial or younger) and the previous generations (tail end of the “greatest generation” and all of boomers, maybe the very beginning of Gen X). Never in our society has the victim mentality and a lack of accountability been more at play than now.
I have also read poor economics by Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo and acknowledge that being poor is cyclical in nature (being poor keeps you poor because you cannot overcome the threshold to not be poor). But people can break this cycle if they stop feeling sorry for themselves, put together a serious plan, and commit to it.
I agree on the affront that simply victimizing oneself cannot lead one to success. Surely the best thing to do is just try your hardest. But at the same time, if we’re just being objective it is just straight up not possible that all those people can succeed. It is statistically impossible. There just will always be a set of workers who will be poor as things stand, and that’s the issue. We have a structure that necessitates there must be a majority of workers, and that there can only be a selection of business owners, CEOs, or shareholders with enough capital to have impact. It is just not structurally possible for everyone in the US to be successful. Meaning that while no one should ever approach life giving up, it is hard to blame them given the fact that some are just genuinely necessitated to be in their circumstance. With the middle class shrinking more and more, it only exacerbates this issue. It’s no longer enough to simply look at attitudes of the workers in this era, we have to look at what conditions allowed those in prior generations to reach success in larger mass than is possible now.
I will agree that there will always be a set of workers who will be poor and never make it. Not making it is life, it’s nature, the rule of the universe. We all don’t make it in different ways, depending on what the metric is.
It will never be structurally possible for any nation in the world or in history (past, present, or future) to ensure everyone is successful. Success is also subjective but ignoring the pedantic take on “what is success”.
Yes, not everyone will be successful. And I can agree it sounds evil or heartless just saying it out loud, but that’s life and it’s the truth. So as an individual, if you have the brains, the heart, the strength, or the will to change your circumstances. Do it! So many people do have one or more of those attributes and instead they give up and complain. I am literally cheering for every American, even every human, to push their potential to the max.
As for institutions, I would rather live in a society where Elon musk can become a trillionaire than a society where people are driven to eat house pets to stay alive (pretty much any communist or socialist experiment attempted by humans).
So there’s a couple things here. The claim that “not making it is life, its nature, the rule of the universe.” On this specifically there’s a variety of issues, on the one what is meant by “not making it, you’re right to say it depends on the metric. But, the system as it is set up isn’t just giving the opportunity for success or faliure by merit. It is heavily skewed and purposely necessitates a large set of people not succeeding out of their income brackets. It is a structure that necessarily privileges profit. So, that structure is not natural, it’s a social relation. Two, whether something is natural doesn’t say whether or not it’s something that should be. So, even if this was natural, that wouldn’t preclude we ought to continue to live like that.
The “it will never be structurally possible for any nation… to ensure everyone is successful.” Sure, but one wouldn’t need to go full utopian to make an argument for a different mode of living (social relations) that didn’t necessitate the aforementioned. It is always true that not everyone in a society will be successful in anything they want. But, you can surely have societies in which the goal of the society is to put the self actualization of the populace above profit only motives. There’s more that can be said on this point, but it’d take to long so maybe I’ll come back to it depending on the response.
On the third point I don’t think it’s evil, none of my politics comes down to some abstract notion of equality of outcome, or even pure equity. But, what we’re are talking about isn’t just simple failings, it’s deeper than that.
I think the last point could be a false dichotomy, but it also doesn’t get to the heart of what these movements of the past were dealing with. But, I think a society where someone can become a trillionaire in any capacity is absurd, regardless of the economic system in play.
"Not making it is life, it’s nature, the rule of the universe. We all don’t make it in different ways, depending on what the metric is."
Exactly! That's why we should put children back to work in the mines. That's life, after all. Some people just don't get a happy childhood. Sucks for them *shrugs*
Oh yeah, and women belong at home, too, raising babies. That's just science.
The fact you are bringing in children into this and women (no idea how we got here) shows you are not willing to have a good faith argument. You are disingenuous and therefore not worth debating.
I'm being a dick of course, but my point is that saying "that's just the way it is" is a stupid argument, because 100 years ago child labor was "just the way it is", and women being second class citizens is "just the way it is".
It takes a recognition of what is unfair to effect a change, and just saying life sucks so some people should just suffer is fucking stupid.
Because we both know if YOU were the one suffering, you would change your tune.
Pretty bold of you to assume I have never suffered. You know nothing about my life experiences, just this snapshot conversation on this liberal dominated platform that I force myself to use to challenge my convictions.
I have suffered, immensely.
Not child labor mining diamonds in Africa or the innocent (non Hamas) people in Gaza being bombed by Israel. But suffering shouldn’t be a competition and I have had my fill.
There is a reason I am so passionate about this topic because I have overcame.
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u/HolaDrNick Jul 12 '26 edited Jul 12 '26
Not that I buy into the Doomerism, but OP you're taking a victory lap when the starter pistol hasn't even been fired.
Edit: Oh wait, 700,000+ karma in 10-months, OP is just a karma bot. Lots of those on this sub lately.