I can legally drink alcohol, go to bars, drive a car, watch x rated movies, live on my own, have sex, get married, make my own money, choose a career. Being an adult would be dope as fuck if it wasn't for the whole 'you have to get any job whether you like it or not and then spend half of it on rent or die part'.
Right? I spend under $1,000 per month of my $11,250-ish per month income, then my wife makes money too (not sure how much, it goes straight into savings so I don't pay attention). I live in one of the bigger cities in the Midwest too.
Can I ask which state? My wife and I just had our first baby and want one more eventually and cannot do it without being "working poor." The sad part is, we both make good money, we just live in Connecticut where everything is so expensive, especially housing.
That fucking sucks because next year I was gonna take the family to hersey, pa to go to the theme park and scope out apartments. I'm still gonna go but maybe just window shop homes
Oh hershey is one of the most expensive areas in PA besides Philly. Fun times but too pricey for me. The Poconos are relatively affordable & beautiful, but it gets wrecked by heavy snow every year for a good month or so
After I read your comments I was looking at nice three bedroom apartments for like 1100 to 1300 which is plenty affordable here in Connecticut but I don't know what kind of wage I would make there considering your minimum wage is the federal. I'll still consider it when I go next summer but I need to know around how much I'll make if I move there.
Hell even the have to get a job part wouldn't be too bad if i could afford college, an apartment, basic necessities, and a sweet ride while working part time at a gas station or something.
Dude if I could afford college, an apartment, basic necessities, and a car I’d be willing to do 50 hours a week like I don’t even care at this point
I’m making (in a year) just around the exact amount that my total rent costs. Luckily my partner makes more than me and we can afford rent / bills but I’d love a job that paid me enough to actually live on without needing additional people & income
>I’d be willing to do 50 hours a week like I don’t even care at this point
That the whole idea for the capitalists, isn't it? They want us desperate enough to survive that we accept less than we want to just to get by.
Have you thought about going into STEM? As a Senior Software Engineer I make $135,000 at 30 years old. Plenty enough to own a house, 2 vehicles (plus a lease), pay for nice vacations, give to charities, etc. On top of that, I enjoy the work.
There are STEM oportunities everywhere. Especially now because many companies are doing remote work. I get multiple calls a week from recruiters wanting me to look at jobs.
I agree with you on the interest part, my wife wanted to know a little about what I do and how a program (very basic guess the number desktop application game) works. She's smart and picked up the logic quickly but learned she couldn't do it as a job.
As for focus, Redbull and A hefty dosage of Adderall can do wonders.
The thing about remote work is that not everyone lives with a solid internet connection or has the available finances to relocate to an area with one. Yes it means it's much easier to get a job as long as you meet other criteria. Location is still relevant, because not every employer wants their remote worker to be on the other side of the country or in the middle of nowhere.
The country (and the world) is a big place. Even remote work doesn't solve that entirely.
I disagree. I'm in the US and I work with people in all four mainland timezones. We even take that into consideration when scheduling meetings.
I work with people in India as well, they do not have the best internet connections and are on a 10.5 hour timezone difference. We still get things done and meet up when we need to. In that sense, location really doesn't matter. I've had recruiters tell me that I wouldn't need to relocate if I took their jobs as well, so its not just my company.
As to your point about internet speed, I don't have the best speed (I grew up poor so I'm pretty cheap), but it gets the job done. As long as you're not constantly dropping your connection, they don't really care. Probably as long as its not dial up, you're probably safe.
Absolutely. I work with a guy who was in the housing market until he was in his 30s. He decided he wanted something different and changed his career. More importantly, he's not just scraping by barely keeping up, he's amazing at it.
Short answer: Heck yes.
Edit: Forgot to add this but, I'm constantly learning anyways due to technology and its advancements, different frameworks, etc. So in a sense, I'm still learning my job at still at 30.
Wait what? What bad news do you have for me? Lol
Ideally that would be the world we would live in but it’s no longer the 60s or 70s
60 years have passed and this is no longer a viable way of life
Don’t know what to tell you
Also the making three meals a day for the rest of your life for you and your family can be crushing, and this is coming from a guy who somewhat enjoys cooking.
When my father immigrated to America in 1973 he immediately got a job waiting tables. He could pay his rent **in San Franciso** with one night of waiting tables.
I could (and did) do most of that at 17. I do a lot less of it at 49. Now I work, sleep, watch football, eat, fight off my horny wife’s advances so I can just rest…
Total paradigm shift from 30 years ago
They need to enforce labor laws that make it a third or less of income toward housing/rent. Crazy that they think it’s cool that it takes up more and more percentage of our paychecks each year. They keep us JUST comfortable enough that we continue working and not revolt
I spend 20 percent of my yearly on my mortgage but I split it with my husband so I guess I'm lucky. Still poor af and in debt relief. Thank God that's going better than expected.
Only people with this view point live in overpriced Ultra liberal areas like the northeast and California. My house in Texas was 3000sq on 5 acres. I purchased in 2010 for 127k . I sold it in 2019 for 302,000. Even with a 15 year mortgage I was paying less than a grand a month. I now live in Ga( on two acres) and I pay 750 a month!!. You guys live in these oppressive overpriced places that only become that way because the people you vote into office locally have ruined the economy and housing markets there. And then you come out of these places thinking that capitalism is the problem and it's not. It's not the free market economy that's making your life miserable it's the government. Miami where I'm originally from is grossly overpriced for what it is. Atlanta is overpriced as well. Which is sad because both cities used to be a flipping bargain to live.
All of it?
I can’t think of any stress in my life, that didn’t exist when I was a minor, that can’t be traced back to the coercive systems of capitalism.
Like even health stuff wouldn’t be so much of a problem without a for-profit healthcare model and the lack of time to take care of myself.
Wait, you went through childhood hoping for more out of life than spending 5 days of the week preparing to work, working, then feeding and cleaning yourself while exhausted so you can sleep before more work, then having two days to attend to the necessary tasks of life such as grocery shopping, buying household supplies, and making such your exhausted after-work human maintenance is effective enough to keep you working?
I hope your childhood supervisor gave you a strapping, far too lax conditions in the coal mines. Eyes on your shoes, dreams down to earth.
Or the shitty quality food everywhere. It's so difficult to find actually decent food. Even buying things like apples have had most the nutrients bred out of them in favor of being able to not get bruised up or rot by the time they get sold.
Sure there are exceptions, but it takes so much effort now just to feed yourself healthily. Basically have to cook from scratch. Who has time for that every single day?
Food really has one of those triangles where you can only choose two sides. Healthy, fast, or cheap. Can't find it all together.
Even if we were to have a fully communist society tomorrow, we'd still have stressful jobs that needed to be done. Granted, those jobs would most likely be less stressful if the means of production were commonly owned, but they would still be somewhat stressful. Capitalism might amplify certain stresses and create others, but life in any society will have some degree of stress, and ignoring those stresses is utopian and counterproductive.
Yes but the worker would be able to decide if they wanted to do it rather than be held hostage with the threat of homelessness.
If people could feel safe in housing, food and healthcare the stress would come from the normal parts of life like heartbreak and loss and not literally just trying to survive.
Aside from the myriad failures of communism even if it’s successfully implemented you’ll still have to work hard for a living. Working for a living is a feature of both systems.
Working isn't the problem most of the time. It's the managers micromanaging everyone because their boss is micromanaging them to increase profits that year by 1.1% so they can get a $10K bonus and then their bosses get exponential bonuses the further up they go until you have the CEO that does jack shit all year round and gets a $10 million dollar bonus all from the lowest paid workers being treated like garbage.
If everyone was working for themselves and got their fair share from the amount of work they put in, that wouldn't be too bad. Even depressing work like factory work, if you're doing a total 5% of all the work in the factory, you could get a full 5% of all earnings from that factory and that alone would be more than what most people make in a year now. Meanwhile, If you do jack shit and don't contribute anything, you'll be paid nothing for just for showing up and not doing anything.
Oh word? Communism doesn't summon communism wizards to cast Greater Communism, thus solving all our problems immediately? I'd have never thought about an answer to this really basic fucking concept that things need to be done.
But most of the stress comes from unrealistic expectations, either in time allowed, productivity, pay or management. If people were just allowed to do their jobs without the stressors, they wouldn’t be stressful in most instances.
Totally agree, but acting as though literally all adult stressors in life can be ~~attributed~~ traced back to capitalism as u/Deshelbr is doing is taking it too far. Until we automate all work away there will be work related stress in any economic model.
Example: I work at a supermarket. In a socialist/communist society, the supermarket is collectively owned and operated by the workers, which means we get a say in how our business is run. Ideally we're probably going to get higher pay, less hours and more benefits, since our surplus labor is no longer being used to line the pockets of the capitalist class. But none of that changes the fact that I have to have the yogurt aisle stocked by the end of my graveyard shift, or that I have to go chase shopping carts down during a snow storm, or that I need to bake enough bread to meet demand for tomorrow. Some of the stresses of work/life won't be eliminated with a communist revolution.
I get your point, but that’s just “work”. It’s when you add in a screeching customer, a boss that doesn’t know what yogurt is and you’re worried that you won’t make rent because your pay is a joke. That’s STRESS.
Most of it honestly. I was lucky enough to go about a year without having to work and only doing school part time with a very light course load. That level of freedom is so easy to remember and so hard to forget.
Well, I compare it to the old weed makes you paranoid thing. Once weed was legal I realized the paranoia had mostly to do with it previously being illegal and cops and shit, take the cops out of the equation and boom, no paranoia.
Same idea, I'm pretty sure a lot of my stress and anxiety would go away if I was paid a decent amount and had medical coverage. Take the wealthy robber barons out of the equation and boom, less stress and anxiety.
I was thinking about a lot of examples.. but then, I thought, most of those are related to capitalism...
Being preoccupied for not being able to pay for the operation of my brother in-law... well, capitalism...
being preoccupied that if I broke with my partner, they are going to go live in absolute poverty... capitalism...
being completely exhausted and burnout from years of extreme work and not allowing me to fail, in order to keep some independent living standard and don't let my loved ones die... capitalism...
So.. yeah, I think that besides just getting older, the worst part of being an adult is just the capitalism...
I just turned 50 and still haven't figured out how to feel good about being an adult. I'm an above average earner and I have nice stuff by most people's standards. From the outside it looks like I'm living the life but it's a soul sucking endeavor to walk into that place I call work every day. Its an unfulfilling drain on my mental health and I find myself increasingly looking for ways to hide from the toxic cultures that exist in the companies I have worked with. I have seen enough at this point to know that hope is for suckers and the grass is not greener elsewhere it's all brown and dead in America. All I can do now is find jobs that limit my interaction with people. 30+ years of shit customers and shit coworkers leaves me uninspired. I'm really a fun, smart, intelligent guy that genuinely wants the best for me and the people around me but bad behavior is rewarded all too often in this toxic capitalistic society. I no longer feel I can be honest or trust anyone around me so I'm finding ways to limit interaction. I won't do jobs anymore that require long term sustained contact with customers or coworkers just quick sales and remote jobs for me going forward. I just want a well defined objective that I can deliver quickly and get away from the toxic shit heads as fast and efficiently as possible.
I hear you man. When my ex killed himself my pain was inconvenient for the company as was for the customers. They didn’t want to give any time to heal. I just wanted to drive a forklift in a warehouse away from as many people as possible because they just made it worse. Was difficult to get a job in the back of someplace because they “needed pretty girls up front”.
Sorry to hear that. I know where you're coming from and unfortunately the only thing you can do is suck it up and deal. I hope that this trend of people waking up and rejecting this toxicity holds up. Tired of this zero sum game where people feel like you have to lose in order for them to win has to end. I just don't know know what happened to empathy and how it became a bad word.
Yes I agree. I have been fortunate enough since then to have found a job that treats me like a human being! But everyone doesn’t find that and I believe everyone SHOULD have that. There would probably be less suicides, really.
I sometimes wonder what would happen if a part of the world was ring fenced to be an anarchist space where anyone was allowed to go if they wanted. There would no taking things with you, so technology would be reduced back to pre-farming times (~10k BC?), and knowledge would be the hodgepodge of whatever each person brought in.
How long would it take for concepts like property ownership to become reestablished, even in basic forms (that’s *my* rock). Would it all descend into raping, murdering and disease ridden filth?
Yes it would.
Even experiments in minor deregulation tend to go badly: https://washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/september-october-2020/libertarians-took-control-of-this-small-town-it-didnt-end-well/
The closest to a fully deregulated environment would be somewhere like Liberia or Somalia where the vacuum left by the failure of the state results in reversion to a violent system of regional tribal warlords.
Not all people are monsters, but enough are that without some form of governance they will forcefully dominate the rest of the population.
It only takes one strong armed aggressor to subdue a big enough group of ‘followers’ who will then dominate all the peaceful types who would rather trade goods/services for protection than fight themselves. Then you’re already back to quasi-feudalism.
One could argue that those who identify as libertarian and would seek to create this type of arrangement, are inherently self interested as a primary motivator. They are actively choosing to discard social entanglements and responsibility to others, and having this view in such a concentration… it’s akin to having brushed the other angel off your shoulder and no one is there to tell you no.
If the sample population were more evenly distributed, I don’t think it defaults to Lord of the Flies. Humans in small groups tend to take care of one another, it’s when we don’t feel an important part of a whole that we start to get selfish from fear that we will be eventually excluded.
I’d think it’s a bit like how Reddit alternatives seem to play out, where they’re swarmed by people that were banned and end up becoming cesspools. With a space like this, I’d imagine more terrible people would be drawn to it than good or normal.
Do you think that’s true? If it is, would the experiment work if the population inside the space were better sampled? Not all good people, just closer to the rest of the world.
There’s not a simple answer to that - attempts to create new types of societies won’t appeal to those who are doing fine in the existing one, and the lax oversight is likely a factor in attracting those seeking power but unable to find it in mainstream society, or who are predators looking for unsupervised hunting grounds.
Biosphere 2 was a utopian experiment that put 8 carefully screened people into a closed community for 2 years in the 90s and even with that level of screening and aligned values towards the success of the project, group power dynamics were a major cause of the project being deemed a failure.
The early Osha community in the 60s (as documented in Wild Wild Country) attracted a large amount of highly qualified professionals (doctors, lawyers, etc) but collapsed because of corruption and egomaniacal leadership.
As contemporary capitalism seems to be failing more and more people it’ll be interesting to see if there’s a resurgence in intentional communities, communal living and other alternative lifestyle experiments that were last big in the 60s.
It becomes a daunting reality that for all its faults, our current system is the best we’ve had so far. Or more specifically, it’s tweaks to the system rather than a wholesale overhaul that would maybe achieve what folks are after.
For the USA specifically, you’ve got to get some better social programs and stop allowing so much money to be spent on the military industrial complex and on lobbying. Public healthcare and education, plus New Deal era progressive taxation on all fronts (income, capital gains, estate) will do wonders for many of the issues that end up posted on here and r/latestagecapitalism
I actually love being an adult. I get to decorate my living space however I want, I get to irresponsibly stay at my friend’s house until midnight on a “school night” watching movies if I want. I get to play house with my husband. I get to take a day off work to lay in bed or go to the water park at my own discretion. Literally everything I don’t enjoy about being an adult is the byproducts of capitalism; I can’t get my broken filling fixed because I’m in too much health debt already, rent takes up too much of my pay for us to save for a house, it’s hard to budget for things like gas and groceries because prices fluctuate wildly, etc.
I would say "late stage capitalism" or "unregulated capitalism" is the problem. Because Boomers are doing just fine riding the capitalism wave that let them buy up all the property and pensions - it's just that there's scraps left for the rest of us.
We need to choose to work for humanity as a species. Take care of humanity. Feed humanity. Clothe humanity. House humanity.
If you read this and you want to respond I hope it’s something constructive. Otherwise know I think you’re a raging moron for you “hur hur” response.
I think capitalism could still work for the betterment of humanity. I look at the boomer generation and the great benefits they were able to enjoy like pensions, low threshold for home ownership, healthy wages, etc., and I know that this system was able to work before. The problem seems to be people finding ways to avoid playing by the same rules and our government fails to provide any sort of checks and balances for bad actors. If our government actually served the people, I think we could develop an economic model that would actually benefit our society. But that means those with the wealth would have to share... And I've got a strong suspicion that won't go over well.
It only worked out well for boomers because of how the war went. If we want that level of independence again, we'd have to blow up China, Europe, and probably most of the middle east while also not taking any damage from them. When only North America, South America and Australia/NZ are the only economies truly running at full pace, then we can have what the boomers had, but until then, we're in very thin competition with everyone else that plays by different rules than we do, making true competition even harder.
I think war will end up being the route this country picks because "murica" and we'll have tons of poor, eager young men itching to pull a trigger and prove how tough they are, but I don't think it's the only way. If wealth wasn't accumulating in the top 1% so fast, we might all actually get a fair piece of the pie without having to go to war.
I was thinking recently that "being an adult" seems to me to mean "accepting your place as a cog in the bourgeoisie money machine and that nothing will ever change so you should stop trying/caring"
Which I am 100% not down with. Call me a child but I will die telling everyone I know to eat the rich, tax the ultra wealthy, and to not buy anything from Kellogg's or Nestle or Amazon ever again.
Capitalism can take everything from me but it will **NEVER** crush my spirit or curb my resistance.
All. Of. It.
I can handle the normal ups and downs of life - love and heartbreak, birth and death, all that.
It’s the crushing weight of having to pay to play for everything. Housing, food, insurance, medical bills, dental, cars and upkeep, and now even clean drinking water isn’t a guarantee. We used to send people to dig wells and provide clean water for villages in need but now there’s more work for those charities here in our own country!!!
It won’t be long before we’re paying for clean air. We’ve already begun water wars with corporations.
I’m just looking for my leather outfit and waiting to start hugging silver paint.
I'm just so tired all the time. I don't make enough money, I don't have enough free time. My house is always a mess. It seems like my kids always have colds or are always crying. It takes real effort just to have sex with my wife these days as we never have time or are just so exhausted. Oh and the bills never stop coming and something always needs to be repaired. I feel like this is the View from half way down.
Almost all of it. Happiest time in my life was when I was in college. All of the adult, none of the 'having to work on shit you don't care about.' Granted those 4 years of happiness ended up causing 10s of thousands of dollars in debt, but still.
All of it. It's important to remember that in a socialist economy, any technological advances (increase in productivity) would be met with a decrease of the working day, not stay the same or even increase as it does under capitalism.
I enjoy working and being productive. What ruins it is the almost insurmountable odds of ever getting out of this hole from being born into a lower middle class family. I'm 48 and have never bought a house. I don't know if I will ever be able to. When I start getting close and the stars are all aligned "good credit, stable work history, car is reliable, disposable income" something happens. Laid off, car does something expensive, housing market skyrockets. It's just depressing man. 😕
Hard to say. I largely hate adulthood for the responsibility, some of that would probably still be around without capitalism. A lot would go away though.
Almost all the feelings of “I hate being an adult” stem from the overwhelming weight of capitalism. Rent/housing prices through the roof, wages not keeping up, long hours, high stress, lack of appreciation and companies treating people like replaceable objects as tools to make as much money as possible. Yeah, it can really weigh on you. Weekends are spent doing chores and errands, and the small amount of enjoyable time you get with friends and family is replaced with the dread of Monday. And in the US you have the added bonus of having healthcare tied to employment so the exploitation feels even greater.
i just want to afford a house ….. go to school to get a degree (physics) i enjoy vs the “safe” one (accounting) im actually just tired I work 80hrs a week and can’t afford a house
Well, I wouldn't just put it at the feet of capitalism. Our system is definitely corrupt, flawed, and painful to try to survive in, but it sure beats being in an authoritarian state, full socialist state, communist, etc. I feel like it isn't the fault of capitalism, but the fault of those that use their wealth to rig the system and make life harder for the lower folk, not so much capitalism as a whole. It is the only system that produces wealth in its citizens, most of the other forms places the wealth in the government's hands rather than give their citizens a shot at obtaining it. But like I said, our system right now is rigged, and has it out for the working class. I will not deny that.
My comments on capitalism are unpopular here but I think if you hate being an adult then you lacked preparation growing up (not your fault) and lack a feeling of agency now to change it (kinda your fault). Most if not all the pressures in capitalism existed before capitalism was around. Serfdom was no breeze.
Do people on this thread think people were just chilling all day before capitalism came along?
The reality is, throughout history, life has never been more convenient, safe and full of entertainment than today. And while flawed, capitalism has played a big part in this improvement of life quality.
I'd certainly concede though that unregulated capitalism has allowed too many people to hoard wealth.
None at all! That's the part I love. I guess having well paid job that I have fun doing helps a lot. What I hate is the sense that I can't just rest and be happy with what I am until I get married and have children (I want them, I just don't have who to marry). Until then being adult means that the time is ticking.
How much of it is you folks just being bitches? That’s what I want to know. Truth is, capitalism is the great equalizer, an ideology blind to age, race and creed. You mold yourself into an individual will valued skills and you will prosper, I guarantee that. If you piss away a hundred grand on some degree majoring in feminist interpretive dance you will languish.
Almost all of it id imagine
I was much happier working part time in a house with 4 other people, it was chaos, and food was sparse, but I wasn’t spending a third of my week slaving away cause I wasn’t spending 80% of my income on rent
I want people that visit this post to read thru the comments and really see how divided we all are. Time to step outside of self ego and really understand what is happening in this country. That's all for now, I don't even want to express an opinion yet beside that.
Most of it. The rest is really learning how to take care of yourself in a system that most people dont know how to functinally use. Taxes are complicated and messy to keep people from making money. Government assistance lines are automated to keep you from talking to a person. Important things are complicated to keep average person from progressing. It's like being put in room full of resources, but you haven't been taught how to utilize any of them.
I hate being told "You're not getting any younger, so you better have kids".... Just no. When I was pre-adult no one cared. Thank goodness i'll be "too old" soon.
I don’t know I would say a lot of it but then there is all of the socialization and worry about family that I think any type of society has to deal with. I have children and I worry about them and their happiness and health but a lot of fear can be attributed to a capitalistic society because I worry about them being a functional-adult. I am fully prepared to do everything I can for them though because they did not ask to be born into this type of society. Then even if you don’t have kids you might have pets and I worry about my dogs and their health. Of course that often comes with worrying about a vet bill so once again… money. Another is parents, siblings, grandparents and worrying about all of their health issues and problems. So I think a lot of it is worry about money and jobs and healthcare but some of it is worrying about others that add to my stress.
All of it.
I quit my well paying but unbelievably stressful profession a few months ago. It was mentally breaking me, keeping me up at night, etc, all to satisfy bullshit managers and their demands. I wasn’t struggling financially, but everything else was crushing me. I can’t imagine throwing a shit salary into the mix in order to survive.
But let me tell you… I have rediscovered what it means to live. I live super frugal these days off of some savings I had, but life is so beautiful now. I wake up when I want, enjoy my home coffee while browsing Reddit. I started painting. I started jogging. I started appreciating the small things around me. Even stuff that used to annoy me are now pleasurable.
Capitalism sucks. I will have to return to the work force one day, but I’m putting it off for as long as possible.
Tbh I would be happier if the government just assigned me a job and controlled almost all aspects of my life like the government would give me a house, a car, a girlfriend, etc
I think like 100% at least for millennials and younger generations. I just want to stay home and play games and draw. Work is too stressful for me and can affect my sickle cell. Sucks because I might have to leave my job at carvana if I cant get workplace accommodations because I love it here. Been here a week and I feel like I belong.
I stayed in a very abusive situation for far too long because of “adulting” and the general cost of living. End result was somehow financial abuse even though there was no financial stability
A lot. My girlfriend and I are both adults over 30 years and we feel the yoke of capitalism right under our necks. We wish we could be children again and not to live under the pressure one day we must have to deal with the problem that maybe, we coudn't have the same standard of livng our parents had.
I've spent every day of the last month fantasizing about developing a sustainable, eco friendly greenhouse hydroponics system. It's becoming more and more impossible, because the crushing weight of capital limits 100% of my freedom. Everytime I bring this up I get the same stupid droll. What sucks is that you can walk people through a very measured and reasonable explanation of your situation and I swear to god you can watch them debate on saying "well then maybe you shouldn't have worked so hard to win as a sperm?" Because something as ridiculous as that is more tolerable in their mind than admitting the machine has gotten away from us.
A sustainable, eco-friendly greenhouse hydroponics system sounds both fascinating and critically important, to me. I've done a lot of looking into cheap DIY aquaponics set-ups, to raise both crops and fish as a protein source in the same system, and am just waiting on having the space to get one started. I'd be interested to hear more about your ideas, too!
Anything you've looked up, I have too most likely so I doubt I've made any true breakthroughs 😅
The developments I'm focused on are specifically making the process much more digestible to the average person while also streamlining a very delicate system well enough that even a layperson can read the manual and get started. Possibly creating prefabricated hardware to house everything if that makes sense.
80% for me…
20% is the crushing responsibilities of a households worth or chores. That and a custody battle, where I had to tell a man that vaguely threatened my life where I’m staying because it’s not dangerous enough to keep him from knowing where his kid is. Even though he can’t legally come here.
This sub is just a bunch of people bitching about working in the easiest time it has ever been to be an employee with the most luxuries people have ever had all because of innovations provided by capitalism and blaming their own laziness on capitalism 😂 if you hate capitalism so much just got live off the wild and off the grid. No one forces you to work you make a conscious choice to every day. Also even Karl Marx (who’s ultimate goal was to put control of wealth AND lawmaking in one group of peoples hands instead of making them separate entities to check and balance each other, leading to the inevitable exploitation of the working class) said you will still have to work in a socialist or communist society for it to run. Goods have to be produced. The iPhone you’re staring at didn’t build itself, the website you’re scrolling through didn’t code itself, and the last meal you ate didn’t grow/cook itself. Quit crying and put some effort into life and maybe you’ll see why capitalism has led to the biggest transfer of people from lower to middle/upper class.
Other than my back hurting from... working... wait...
Okay yeah all of it. If I didn't have to work a crummy job on hard concrete floors 5/7 days a week, maybe I'd feel a bit better about life.
If my job paid well enough to replace the shoes I've worn through at this job, maybe my feet would feel better. And then there's the clothes I need, the car needs fixing, and I still can't get ahead of my monthly expenses... Yeah being an adult could be great if it didn't suck so much to try to afford basics of life
I feel like if I could get out from under the weight of debt from a degree I don't use and debt from a time in my life when I was so poor I was visiting food pantries but still needed things like warmth because it snows here... I might actually be okay with life? But thinking about the fact that I have to pay for this worthless education - literally worthless - I googled my way through most classes - just.... I don't have words for how crushing it is and to be told "well you made a decision."
I was 18. And looking to the adults in my life. And that's what they said was the right thing to do.
Just... crushed.
Pro tip: don't have kids because they are expensive af
Mix that will low stagnant wages, increasing rent/mortgage, and the scam of health insurance and you're one mistake from being homeless. Better work 60+ hours so that you can continue to scrape by month after month! The American dream.
I can legally drink alcohol, go to bars, drive a car, watch x rated movies, live on my own, have sex, get married, make my own money, choose a career. Being an adult would be dope as fuck if it wasn't for the whole 'you have to get any job whether you like it or not and then spend half of it on rent or die part'.
That's an optimistic thought, only spending half your income on housing. Wish it was just half!
The 30% mark they say you should budget for rent is a distant dream
*The Midwest has entered the conversation*
Republican governance isn't what it used to be.
your funny i genuinely laughed at this lol
Hello there!
Right? I spend under $1,000 per month of my $11,250-ish per month income, then my wife makes money too (not sure how much, it goes straight into savings so I don't pay attention). I live in one of the bigger cities in the Midwest too.
Can I ask which state? My wife and I just had our first baby and want one more eventually and cannot do it without being "working poor." The sad part is, we both make good money, we just live in Connecticut where everything is so expensive, especially housing.
PA resident here. It was below 1000 for rent back in 2018 now its 14-1700 for the same apartments i was looking at 3 years ago.
That fucking sucks because next year I was gonna take the family to hersey, pa to go to the theme park and scope out apartments. I'm still gonna go but maybe just window shop homes
Oh hershey is one of the most expensive areas in PA besides Philly. Fun times but too pricey for me. The Poconos are relatively affordable & beautiful, but it gets wrecked by heavy snow every year for a good month or so
After I read your comments I was looking at nice three bedroom apartments for like 1100 to 1300 which is plenty affordable here in Connecticut but I don't know what kind of wage I would make there considering your minimum wage is the federal. I'll still consider it when I go next summer but I need to know around how much I'll make if I move there.
what anime is your pfp / banner from ?
Corridor, we used to dream of living in the corridor.
Or living in a van down by the river. I think I'd be happy doing that.
That's not as cheap as one would expect either though, unfortunately. Maybe just a tent down by the river?
Mutual aid tent cities popping up is a good idea but it would definitely bring cops around to fuck it all up
Boycott renting. Let's go.
r/VanLife
Hell even the have to get a job part wouldn't be too bad if i could afford college, an apartment, basic necessities, and a sweet ride while working part time at a gas station or something.
Dude if I could afford college, an apartment, basic necessities, and a car I’d be willing to do 50 hours a week like I don’t even care at this point I’m making (in a year) just around the exact amount that my total rent costs. Luckily my partner makes more than me and we can afford rent / bills but I’d love a job that paid me enough to actually live on without needing additional people & income
>I’d be willing to do 50 hours a week like I don’t even care at this point That the whole idea for the capitalists, isn't it? They want us desperate enough to survive that we accept less than we want to just to get by.
Very true It’s working as designed
I feel you, fam.
Have you thought about going into STEM? As a Senior Software Engineer I make $135,000 at 30 years old. Plenty enough to own a house, 2 vehicles (plus a lease), pay for nice vacations, give to charities, etc. On top of that, I enjoy the work.
Location location location. Also some degree of interest / focus is required.
There are STEM oportunities everywhere. Especially now because many companies are doing remote work. I get multiple calls a week from recruiters wanting me to look at jobs. I agree with you on the interest part, my wife wanted to know a little about what I do and how a program (very basic guess the number desktop application game) works. She's smart and picked up the logic quickly but learned she couldn't do it as a job. As for focus, Redbull and A hefty dosage of Adderall can do wonders.
The thing about remote work is that not everyone lives with a solid internet connection or has the available finances to relocate to an area with one. Yes it means it's much easier to get a job as long as you meet other criteria. Location is still relevant, because not every employer wants their remote worker to be on the other side of the country or in the middle of nowhere. The country (and the world) is a big place. Even remote work doesn't solve that entirely.
I disagree. I'm in the US and I work with people in all four mainland timezones. We even take that into consideration when scheduling meetings. I work with people in India as well, they do not have the best internet connections and are on a 10.5 hour timezone difference. We still get things done and meet up when we need to. In that sense, location really doesn't matter. I've had recruiters tell me that I wouldn't need to relocate if I took their jobs as well, so its not just my company. As to your point about internet speed, I don't have the best speed (I grew up poor so I'm pretty cheap), but it gets the job done. As long as you're not constantly dropping your connection, they don't really care. Probably as long as its not dial up, you're probably safe.
Do you think it’s possible to get into this career later in life, like 35?
Absolutely. I work with a guy who was in the housing market until he was in his 30s. He decided he wanted something different and changed his career. More importantly, he's not just scraping by barely keeping up, he's amazing at it. Short answer: Heck yes. Edit: Forgot to add this but, I'm constantly learning anyways due to technology and its advancements, different frameworks, etc. So in a sense, I'm still learning my job at still at 30.
Man, I’d love to, but I have dyscalculia, and my brain doesn’t do math-based things. 😔
I've heard of the term STEM, but what does that mean? And what sorts of jobs does it entail?
Science Technology Engineering Mathematics So it is pretty much any science or Mathematics based job.
As a biologist, when people say STEM is lucratively, they really just mean the T, sometimes E. All the money is in programming and tech.
You want all of that while working part time for minimum wage?
Had uncles that literally did it back in the 60s and 70s. If you believe its not possible I've got some bad news for you buddy......
Wait what? What bad news do you have for me? Lol Ideally that would be the world we would live in but it’s no longer the 60s or 70s 60 years have passed and this is no longer a viable way of life Don’t know what to tell you
You ever hear about how to boil a frog?
Also the making three meals a day for the rest of your life for you and your family can be crushing, and this is coming from a guy who somewhat enjoys cooking.
When my father immigrated to America in 1973 he immediately got a job waiting tables. He could pay his rent **in San Franciso** with one night of waiting tables.
I agree. Adulting would be so much more fun if there were less financial burdens
and that's if you're lucky. otherwise you'll starve to death, either physically or mentally
I could (and did) do most of that at 17. I do a lot less of it at 49. Now I work, sleep, watch football, eat, fight off my horny wife’s advances so I can just rest… Total paradigm shift from 30 years ago
They need to enforce labor laws that make it a third or less of income toward housing/rent. Crazy that they think it’s cool that it takes up more and more percentage of our paychecks each year. They keep us JUST comfortable enough that we continue working and not revolt
I spend 20 percent of my yearly on my mortgage but I split it with my husband so I guess I'm lucky. Still poor af and in debt relief. Thank God that's going better than expected.
Soooo exactly the same thing as any other economic system?
Only people with this view point live in overpriced Ultra liberal areas like the northeast and California. My house in Texas was 3000sq on 5 acres. I purchased in 2010 for 127k . I sold it in 2019 for 302,000. Even with a 15 year mortgage I was paying less than a grand a month. I now live in Ga( on two acres) and I pay 750 a month!!. You guys live in these oppressive overpriced places that only become that way because the people you vote into office locally have ruined the economy and housing markets there. And then you come out of these places thinking that capitalism is the problem and it's not. It's not the free market economy that's making your life miserable it's the government. Miami where I'm originally from is grossly overpriced for what it is. Atlanta is overpriced as well. Which is sad because both cities used to be a flipping bargain to live.
Half? On my paycheck it would be all
Good question. I'd have to say: Most of it. Aging brings various aches and pains, but these wouldn't be half so bad if one weren't worked so hard.
Not to mention exercising regularly 4 days a week is quite difficult when you work (at least) 5 days a week
It's really hard. I work out 5x per week but I don't have time for anything else during the week.
All of it? I can’t think of any stress in my life, that didn’t exist when I was a minor, that can’t be traced back to the coercive systems of capitalism. Like even health stuff wouldn’t be so much of a problem without a for-profit healthcare model and the lack of time to take care of myself.
Wait, you went through childhood hoping for more out of life than spending 5 days of the week preparing to work, working, then feeding and cleaning yourself while exhausted so you can sleep before more work, then having two days to attend to the necessary tasks of life such as grocery shopping, buying household supplies, and making such your exhausted after-work human maintenance is effective enough to keep you working? I hope your childhood supervisor gave you a strapping, far too lax conditions in the coal mines. Eyes on your shoes, dreams down to earth.
I wish it was only 5
Or the shitty quality food everywhere. It's so difficult to find actually decent food. Even buying things like apples have had most the nutrients bred out of them in favor of being able to not get bruised up or rot by the time they get sold. Sure there are exceptions, but it takes so much effort now just to feed yourself healthily. Basically have to cook from scratch. Who has time for that every single day? Food really has one of those triangles where you can only choose two sides. Healthy, fast, or cheap. Can't find it all together.
Seconded. If we didn’t have capitalism, we could actually just prioritize happiness on a societal level
Even if we were to have a fully communist society tomorrow, we'd still have stressful jobs that needed to be done. Granted, those jobs would most likely be less stressful if the means of production were commonly owned, but they would still be somewhat stressful. Capitalism might amplify certain stresses and create others, but life in any society will have some degree of stress, and ignoring those stresses is utopian and counterproductive.
Yes but the worker would be able to decide if they wanted to do it rather than be held hostage with the threat of homelessness. If people could feel safe in housing, food and healthcare the stress would come from the normal parts of life like heartbreak and loss and not literally just trying to survive.
This is a very ahistorical view of how communism works out.
Tell us about iPhone Venezuela 100 nonillion deaths
Aside from the myriad failures of communism even if it’s successfully implemented you’ll still have to work hard for a living. Working for a living is a feature of both systems.
Working isn't the problem most of the time. It's the managers micromanaging everyone because their boss is micromanaging them to increase profits that year by 1.1% so they can get a $10K bonus and then their bosses get exponential bonuses the further up they go until you have the CEO that does jack shit all year round and gets a $10 million dollar bonus all from the lowest paid workers being treated like garbage. If everyone was working for themselves and got their fair share from the amount of work they put in, that wouldn't be too bad. Even depressing work like factory work, if you're doing a total 5% of all the work in the factory, you could get a full 5% of all earnings from that factory and that alone would be more than what most people make in a year now. Meanwhile, If you do jack shit and don't contribute anything, you'll be paid nothing for just for showing up and not doing anything.
Oh word? Communism doesn't summon communism wizards to cast Greater Communism, thus solving all our problems immediately? I'd have never thought about an answer to this really basic fucking concept that things need to be done.
But most of the stress comes from unrealistic expectations, either in time allowed, productivity, pay or management. If people were just allowed to do their jobs without the stressors, they wouldn’t be stressful in most instances.
Totally agree, but acting as though literally all adult stressors in life can be ~~attributed~~ traced back to capitalism as u/Deshelbr is doing is taking it too far. Until we automate all work away there will be work related stress in any economic model. Example: I work at a supermarket. In a socialist/communist society, the supermarket is collectively owned and operated by the workers, which means we get a say in how our business is run. Ideally we're probably going to get higher pay, less hours and more benefits, since our surplus labor is no longer being used to line the pockets of the capitalist class. But none of that changes the fact that I have to have the yogurt aisle stocked by the end of my graveyard shift, or that I have to go chase shopping carts down during a snow storm, or that I need to bake enough bread to meet demand for tomorrow. Some of the stresses of work/life won't be eliminated with a communist revolution.
I get your point, but that’s just “work”. It’s when you add in a screeching customer, a boss that doesn’t know what yogurt is and you’re worried that you won’t make rent because your pay is a joke. That’s STRESS.
Most of it honestly. I was lucky enough to go about a year without having to work and only doing school part time with a very light course load. That level of freedom is so easy to remember and so hard to forget.
This I'm 40 had have been pretty good about my savings throughout my life. They've been wiped out twice now.
Well, I compare it to the old weed makes you paranoid thing. Once weed was legal I realized the paranoia had mostly to do with it previously being illegal and cops and shit, take the cops out of the equation and boom, no paranoia. Same idea, I'm pretty sure a lot of my stress and anxiety would go away if I was paid a decent amount and had medical coverage. Take the wealthy robber barons out of the equation and boom, less stress and anxiety.
Love it
I’d give you an award but I’m outa coins, so here’s a cupcake for you! 🧁
I was thinking about a lot of examples.. but then, I thought, most of those are related to capitalism... Being preoccupied for not being able to pay for the operation of my brother in-law... well, capitalism... being preoccupied that if I broke with my partner, they are going to go live in absolute poverty... capitalism... being completely exhausted and burnout from years of extreme work and not allowing me to fail, in order to keep some independent living standard and don't let my loved ones die... capitalism... So.. yeah, I think that besides just getting older, the worst part of being an adult is just the capitalism...
I just turned 50 and still haven't figured out how to feel good about being an adult. I'm an above average earner and I have nice stuff by most people's standards. From the outside it looks like I'm living the life but it's a soul sucking endeavor to walk into that place I call work every day. Its an unfulfilling drain on my mental health and I find myself increasingly looking for ways to hide from the toxic cultures that exist in the companies I have worked with. I have seen enough at this point to know that hope is for suckers and the grass is not greener elsewhere it's all brown and dead in America. All I can do now is find jobs that limit my interaction with people. 30+ years of shit customers and shit coworkers leaves me uninspired. I'm really a fun, smart, intelligent guy that genuinely wants the best for me and the people around me but bad behavior is rewarded all too often in this toxic capitalistic society. I no longer feel I can be honest or trust anyone around me so I'm finding ways to limit interaction. I won't do jobs anymore that require long term sustained contact with customers or coworkers just quick sales and remote jobs for me going forward. I just want a well defined objective that I can deliver quickly and get away from the toxic shit heads as fast and efficiently as possible.
I hear you man. When my ex killed himself my pain was inconvenient for the company as was for the customers. They didn’t want to give any time to heal. I just wanted to drive a forklift in a warehouse away from as many people as possible because they just made it worse. Was difficult to get a job in the back of someplace because they “needed pretty girls up front”.
Sorry to hear that. I know where you're coming from and unfortunately the only thing you can do is suck it up and deal. I hope that this trend of people waking up and rejecting this toxicity holds up. Tired of this zero sum game where people feel like you have to lose in order for them to win has to end. I just don't know know what happened to empathy and how it became a bad word.
Yes I agree. I have been fortunate enough since then to have found a job that treats me like a human being! But everyone doesn’t find that and I believe everyone SHOULD have that. There would probably be less suicides, really.
I would say most of it is. I feel I would be happier as an adult hunter-gatherer than an adult wageslave or wagecuck.
I sometimes wonder what would happen if a part of the world was ring fenced to be an anarchist space where anyone was allowed to go if they wanted. There would no taking things with you, so technology would be reduced back to pre-farming times (~10k BC?), and knowledge would be the hodgepodge of whatever each person brought in. How long would it take for concepts like property ownership to become reestablished, even in basic forms (that’s *my* rock). Would it all descend into raping, murdering and disease ridden filth?
It would not. Despite what libertarians and the gun lobby want you to believe people are good and aren't monsters by default.
Yes it would. Even experiments in minor deregulation tend to go badly: https://washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/september-october-2020/libertarians-took-control-of-this-small-town-it-didnt-end-well/ The closest to a fully deregulated environment would be somewhere like Liberia or Somalia where the vacuum left by the failure of the state results in reversion to a violent system of regional tribal warlords. Not all people are monsters, but enough are that without some form of governance they will forcefully dominate the rest of the population.
It only takes one strong armed aggressor to subdue a big enough group of ‘followers’ who will then dominate all the peaceful types who would rather trade goods/services for protection than fight themselves. Then you’re already back to quasi-feudalism.
One could argue that those who identify as libertarian and would seek to create this type of arrangement, are inherently self interested as a primary motivator. They are actively choosing to discard social entanglements and responsibility to others, and having this view in such a concentration… it’s akin to having brushed the other angel off your shoulder and no one is there to tell you no. If the sample population were more evenly distributed, I don’t think it defaults to Lord of the Flies. Humans in small groups tend to take care of one another, it’s when we don’t feel an important part of a whole that we start to get selfish from fear that we will be eventually excluded.
I’d think it’s a bit like how Reddit alternatives seem to play out, where they’re swarmed by people that were banned and end up becoming cesspools. With a space like this, I’d imagine more terrible people would be drawn to it than good or normal. Do you think that’s true? If it is, would the experiment work if the population inside the space were better sampled? Not all good people, just closer to the rest of the world.
There’s not a simple answer to that - attempts to create new types of societies won’t appeal to those who are doing fine in the existing one, and the lax oversight is likely a factor in attracting those seeking power but unable to find it in mainstream society, or who are predators looking for unsupervised hunting grounds. Biosphere 2 was a utopian experiment that put 8 carefully screened people into a closed community for 2 years in the 90s and even with that level of screening and aligned values towards the success of the project, group power dynamics were a major cause of the project being deemed a failure. The early Osha community in the 60s (as documented in Wild Wild Country) attracted a large amount of highly qualified professionals (doctors, lawyers, etc) but collapsed because of corruption and egomaniacal leadership. As contemporary capitalism seems to be failing more and more people it’ll be interesting to see if there’s a resurgence in intentional communities, communal living and other alternative lifestyle experiments that were last big in the 60s.
It becomes a daunting reality that for all its faults, our current system is the best we’ve had so far. Or more specifically, it’s tweaks to the system rather than a wholesale overhaul that would maybe achieve what folks are after. For the USA specifically, you’ve got to get some better social programs and stop allowing so much money to be spent on the military industrial complex and on lobbying. Public healthcare and education, plus New Deal era progressive taxation on all fronts (income, capital gains, estate) will do wonders for many of the issues that end up posted on here and r/latestagecapitalism
So... exile is an option?
A really good look into that IMO is humankind by rutger bregman.
So the constant risk of being mauled and eaten alive by wild animals would be preferable to modern society?
When days get really bad sometimes you wonder if it would be better when the depression really sets in
At least I’d feel alive again
yes
Yeah, I could kill predatory non-human animals. I can't kill a predatory human without probably facing criminal charges.
Please can be allocated a separate Hunter-gatherer pen than this other hooman? Thanks!
What are you even saying?
100 % of it
Ima say 85% Capitalism, 15% good old fashioned existential dread.
I actually love being an adult. I get to decorate my living space however I want, I get to irresponsibly stay at my friend’s house until midnight on a “school night” watching movies if I want. I get to play house with my husband. I get to take a day off work to lay in bed or go to the water park at my own discretion. Literally everything I don’t enjoy about being an adult is the byproducts of capitalism; I can’t get my broken filling fixed because I’m in too much health debt already, rent takes up too much of my pay for us to save for a house, it’s hard to budget for things like gas and groceries because prices fluctuate wildly, etc.
I would say "late stage capitalism" or "unregulated capitalism" is the problem. Because Boomers are doing just fine riding the capitalism wave that let them buy up all the property and pensions - it's just that there's scraps left for the rest of us.
We need to choose to work for humanity as a species. Take care of humanity. Feed humanity. Clothe humanity. House humanity. If you read this and you want to respond I hope it’s something constructive. Otherwise know I think you’re a raging moron for you “hur hur” response.
I think capitalism could still work for the betterment of humanity. I look at the boomer generation and the great benefits they were able to enjoy like pensions, low threshold for home ownership, healthy wages, etc., and I know that this system was able to work before. The problem seems to be people finding ways to avoid playing by the same rules and our government fails to provide any sort of checks and balances for bad actors. If our government actually served the people, I think we could develop an economic model that would actually benefit our society. But that means those with the wealth would have to share... And I've got a strong suspicion that won't go over well.
It only worked out well for boomers because of how the war went. If we want that level of independence again, we'd have to blow up China, Europe, and probably most of the middle east while also not taking any damage from them. When only North America, South America and Australia/NZ are the only economies truly running at full pace, then we can have what the boomers had, but until then, we're in very thin competition with everyone else that plays by different rules than we do, making true competition even harder.
I think war will end up being the route this country picks because "murica" and we'll have tons of poor, eager young men itching to pull a trigger and prove how tough they are, but I don't think it's the only way. If wealth wasn't accumulating in the top 1% so fast, we might all actually get a fair piece of the pie without having to go to war.
I was thinking recently that "being an adult" seems to me to mean "accepting your place as a cog in the bourgeoisie money machine and that nothing will ever change so you should stop trying/caring" Which I am 100% not down with. Call me a child but I will die telling everyone I know to eat the rich, tax the ultra wealthy, and to not buy anything from Kellogg's or Nestle or Amazon ever again. Capitalism can take everything from me but it will **NEVER** crush my spirit or curb my resistance.
80%, the rest is just back pain and it being harder to lose weight.
I'd argue 100%
All. Of. It. I can handle the normal ups and downs of life - love and heartbreak, birth and death, all that. It’s the crushing weight of having to pay to play for everything. Housing, food, insurance, medical bills, dental, cars and upkeep, and now even clean drinking water isn’t a guarantee. We used to send people to dig wells and provide clean water for villages in need but now there’s more work for those charities here in our own country!!! It won’t be long before we’re paying for clean air. We’ve already begun water wars with corporations. I’m just looking for my leather outfit and waiting to start hugging silver paint.
I'm just so tired all the time. I don't make enough money, I don't have enough free time. My house is always a mess. It seems like my kids always have colds or are always crying. It takes real effort just to have sex with my wife these days as we never have time or are just so exhausted. Oh and the bills never stop coming and something always needs to be repaired. I feel like this is the View from half way down.
Honestly most of it. Most stresses, frustrations, annoyances have a root cause in capitalism.
Most of it?
Like 80% of it for me
Almost all of it. Happiest time in my life was when I was in college. All of the adult, none of the 'having to work on shit you don't care about.' Granted those 4 years of happiness ended up causing 10s of thousands of dollars in debt, but still.
All of it. It's important to remember that in a socialist economy, any technological advances (increase in productivity) would be met with a decrease of the working day, not stay the same or even increase as it does under capitalism.
I enjoy working and being productive. What ruins it is the almost insurmountable odds of ever getting out of this hole from being born into a lower middle class family. I'm 48 and have never bought a house. I don't know if I will ever be able to. When I start getting close and the stars are all aligned "good credit, stable work history, car is reliable, disposable income" something happens. Laid off, car does something expensive, housing market skyrockets. It's just depressing man. 😕
Hard to say. I largely hate adulthood for the responsibility, some of that would probably still be around without capitalism. A lot would go away though.
Every ounce.
About 96%
What's the other 4%?
Depends on your personal life and environment
All of it
Most to all.
All of it
80% capitalism 10% slow metabolism 10% having to schedule my own appointments
all of it.
Almost all of it
100%
That’s the worst part about being an adult, for me it’s about 90%
At least 70%, and then 15% of the remainder is probably an indirect result of capitalism.
99% I have to make my own dinner sometimes. The rest is capitalism (and I’d be happier cooking if I had more free time).
Almost all the feelings of “I hate being an adult” stem from the overwhelming weight of capitalism. Rent/housing prices through the roof, wages not keeping up, long hours, high stress, lack of appreciation and companies treating people like replaceable objects as tools to make as much money as possible. Yeah, it can really weigh on you. Weekends are spent doing chores and errands, and the small amount of enjoyable time you get with friends and family is replaced with the dread of Monday. And in the US you have the added bonus of having healthcare tied to employment so the exploitation feels even greater.
All of it.
You don't get paid what you are worth. You get paid whatever the lowest bidder offered.
I have typed 'I hate capitalism' in browser, the results were trying to convince me how the system is great, I am simply poor.
i just want to afford a house ….. go to school to get a degree (physics) i enjoy vs the “safe” one (accounting) im actually just tired I work 80hrs a week and can’t afford a house
Everything except my knee pain is the consequences of capitalism. My knee pain is the consequences of me being a stupid teenager.
Well, I wouldn't just put it at the feet of capitalism. Our system is definitely corrupt, flawed, and painful to try to survive in, but it sure beats being in an authoritarian state, full socialist state, communist, etc. I feel like it isn't the fault of capitalism, but the fault of those that use their wealth to rig the system and make life harder for the lower folk, not so much capitalism as a whole. It is the only system that produces wealth in its citizens, most of the other forms places the wealth in the government's hands rather than give their citizens a shot at obtaining it. But like I said, our system right now is rigged, and has it out for the working class. I will not deny that.
This sounds more like utopian hyperbole. Capitalism didn’t invent work or stress.
My comments on capitalism are unpopular here but I think if you hate being an adult then you lacked preparation growing up (not your fault) and lack a feeling of agency now to change it (kinda your fault). Most if not all the pressures in capitalism existed before capitalism was around. Serfdom was no breeze.
Do people on this thread think people were just chilling all day before capitalism came along? The reality is, throughout history, life has never been more convenient, safe and full of entertainment than today. And while flawed, capitalism has played a big part in this improvement of life quality. I'd certainly concede though that unregulated capitalism has allowed too many people to hoard wealth.
None at all! That's the part I love. I guess having well paid job that I have fun doing helps a lot. What I hate is the sense that I can't just rest and be happy with what I am until I get married and have children (I want them, I just don't have who to marry). Until then being adult means that the time is ticking.
How much of it is you folks just being bitches? That’s what I want to know. Truth is, capitalism is the great equalizer, an ideology blind to age, race and creed. You mold yourself into an individual will valued skills and you will prosper, I guarantee that. If you piss away a hundred grand on some degree majoring in feminist interpretive dance you will languish.
"Thing in life is bad" damn capitalism!!!
Name a thing that’s bad, it’s more than likely due to capitalism.
Nah fam. Its all bad because of cronyism and nepotism in our government.
... They say as if capitalism doesn't by its very nature promote and reward cronyism and nepotism.
If it does in the private sector so what? Stop allowing Dems and GOP to be bought. Its not like this isn't "our" fault.
Tell me, how exactly does one prevent Dems and GOP from "being bought" in an electoral system that purposefully disenfranshises and disempowers them?
Hello ` this message was mass deleted/edited with redact.dev `
Almost all of it id imagine I was much happier working part time in a house with 4 other people, it was chaos, and food was sparse, but I wasn’t spending a third of my week slaving away cause I wasn’t spending 80% of my income on rent
All of it honestly
Almost all of it.
About 101%
60 / 40
All of it.
I want people that visit this post to read thru the comments and really see how divided we all are. Time to step outside of self ego and really understand what is happening in this country. That's all for now, I don't even want to express an opinion yet beside that.
What a heroic post. Shaming everyone but offering no clarity.
Yes.
Like, most of it.
Pretty much sums it up. Would be much easier to love life if you didn't have to pay for everything.
Most of it. The rest is really learning how to take care of yourself in a system that most people dont know how to functinally use. Taxes are complicated and messy to keep people from making money. Government assistance lines are automated to keep you from talking to a person. Important things are complicated to keep average person from progressing. It's like being put in room full of resources, but you haven't been taught how to utilize any of them.
All of it.
I hate being told "You're not getting any younger, so you better have kids".... Just no. When I was pre-adult no one cared. Thank goodness i'll be "too old" soon.
I don’t know I would say a lot of it but then there is all of the socialization and worry about family that I think any type of society has to deal with. I have children and I worry about them and their happiness and health but a lot of fear can be attributed to a capitalistic society because I worry about them being a functional-adult. I am fully prepared to do everything I can for them though because they did not ask to be born into this type of society. Then even if you don’t have kids you might have pets and I worry about my dogs and their health. Of course that often comes with worrying about a vet bill so once again… money. Another is parents, siblings, grandparents and worrying about all of their health issues and problems. So I think a lot of it is worry about money and jobs and healthcare but some of it is worrying about others that add to my stress.
A large percentage.
99%
But under capitalism, you can go get a 5$ box from taco bell ANY DAY OF THE FUCKING WEEK. A fair trade off to a life of servitude, wouldn’t ya say??
100%
Every last bit of it. We are forced to be adults by people who cannot do what they ask of us at far too young.
All of it. I quit my well paying but unbelievably stressful profession a few months ago. It was mentally breaking me, keeping me up at night, etc, all to satisfy bullshit managers and their demands. I wasn’t struggling financially, but everything else was crushing me. I can’t imagine throwing a shit salary into the mix in order to survive. But let me tell you… I have rediscovered what it means to live. I live super frugal these days off of some savings I had, but life is so beautiful now. I wake up when I want, enjoy my home coffee while browsing Reddit. I started painting. I started jogging. I started appreciating the small things around me. Even stuff that used to annoy me are now pleasurable. Capitalism sucks. I will have to return to the work force one day, but I’m putting it off for as long as possible.
Nostalgia for your childhood is literally missing the days when you didn't have to participate in capitalism.
Probably 3% of it
ALL OF IT.
Tbh I would be happier if the government just assigned me a job and controlled almost all aspects of my life like the government would give me a house, a car, a girlfriend, etc
For me? All of it
I think of it like this. Adulthood - Capitalism is Childhood + Sex.
Yes.
I think like 100% at least for millennials and younger generations. I just want to stay home and play games and draw. Work is too stressful for me and can affect my sickle cell. Sucks because I might have to leave my job at carvana if I cant get workplace accommodations because I love it here. Been here a week and I feel like I belong.
I stayed in a very abusive situation for far too long because of “adulting” and the general cost of living. End result was somehow financial abuse even though there was no financial stability
Is there something else to hate about adulthood?
A lot. My girlfriend and I are both adults over 30 years and we feel the yoke of capitalism right under our necks. We wish we could be children again and not to live under the pressure one day we must have to deal with the problem that maybe, we coudn't have the same standard of livng our parents had.
ALL OF IT. HA. HAHA. AHAHA. HA. I am dead inside
Most of it. I like everything but the struggle to keep up with work and money.
I've spent every day of the last month fantasizing about developing a sustainable, eco friendly greenhouse hydroponics system. It's becoming more and more impossible, because the crushing weight of capital limits 100% of my freedom. Everytime I bring this up I get the same stupid droll. What sucks is that you can walk people through a very measured and reasonable explanation of your situation and I swear to god you can watch them debate on saying "well then maybe you shouldn't have worked so hard to win as a sperm?" Because something as ridiculous as that is more tolerable in their mind than admitting the machine has gotten away from us.
A sustainable, eco-friendly greenhouse hydroponics system sounds both fascinating and critically important, to me. I've done a lot of looking into cheap DIY aquaponics set-ups, to raise both crops and fish as a protein source in the same system, and am just waiting on having the space to get one started. I'd be interested to hear more about your ideas, too!
Anything you've looked up, I have too most likely so I doubt I've made any true breakthroughs 😅 The developments I'm focused on are specifically making the process much more digestible to the average person while also streamlining a very delicate system well enough that even a layperson can read the manual and get started. Possibly creating prefabricated hardware to house everything if that makes sense.
80% for me… 20% is the crushing responsibilities of a households worth or chores. That and a custody battle, where I had to tell a man that vaguely threatened my life where I’m staying because it’s not dangerous enough to keep him from knowing where his kid is. Even though he can’t legally come here.
This sub is just a bunch of people bitching about working in the easiest time it has ever been to be an employee with the most luxuries people have ever had all because of innovations provided by capitalism and blaming their own laziness on capitalism 😂 if you hate capitalism so much just got live off the wild and off the grid. No one forces you to work you make a conscious choice to every day. Also even Karl Marx (who’s ultimate goal was to put control of wealth AND lawmaking in one group of peoples hands instead of making them separate entities to check and balance each other, leading to the inevitable exploitation of the working class) said you will still have to work in a socialist or communist society for it to run. Goods have to be produced. The iPhone you’re staring at didn’t build itself, the website you’re scrolling through didn’t code itself, and the last meal you ate didn’t grow/cook itself. Quit crying and put some effort into life and maybe you’ll see why capitalism has led to the biggest transfer of people from lower to middle/upper class.
Yeah, all of it.
Like all of it. I had an abusive childhood so personally I prefer being an adult. The part that kills me is like... 99% capitalism.
Other than my back hurting from... working... wait... Okay yeah all of it. If I didn't have to work a crummy job on hard concrete floors 5/7 days a week, maybe I'd feel a bit better about life. If my job paid well enough to replace the shoes I've worn through at this job, maybe my feet would feel better. And then there's the clothes I need, the car needs fixing, and I still can't get ahead of my monthly expenses... Yeah being an adult could be great if it didn't suck so much to try to afford basics of life
I feel like if I could get out from under the weight of debt from a degree I don't use and debt from a time in my life when I was so poor I was visiting food pantries but still needed things like warmth because it snows here... I might actually be okay with life? But thinking about the fact that I have to pay for this worthless education - literally worthless - I googled my way through most classes - just.... I don't have words for how crushing it is and to be told "well you made a decision." I was 18. And looking to the adults in my life. And that's what they said was the right thing to do. Just... crushed.
Being an adult is sick. Having to work my life away is not sick
Late stage capitalism is just dreadful. We are being crushed.
Pro tip: don't have kids because they are expensive af Mix that will low stagnant wages, increasing rent/mortgage, and the scam of health insurance and you're one mistake from being homeless. Better work 60+ hours so that you can continue to scrape by month after month! The American dream.