Claire*, 42, was always told: “Follow your dreams and the money will follow.” So that’s what she did. At 24, she opened a retail store with a friend in downtown Ottawa, Canada. She’d managed to save enough from a part-time government job during university to start the business without taking out a loan.
For many years, the store did well – they even opened a second location. Claire started to feel financially secure. “A few years ago I was like, wow, I actually might be able to do this until I retire,” she told me. “I’ll never be rich, but I have a really wonderful work-life balance and I’ll have enough.”
But in midlife, she can’t afford to buy a house, and she’s increasingly worried about what retirement would look like, or if it would even be possible. “Was I foolish to think this could work?” she now wonders.
She’s one of many millennials who, in their 40s, are panicking about the realities of midlife: financial precarity, housing insecurity, job instability and difficulty saving for the future. It’s a different kind of midlife crisis – less impulsive sports car purchase and more “will I ever retire?” In fact, a new survey of 1,000 millennials showed that 81% feel they can’t afford to have a midlife crisis. Our generation is the first to be downwardly mobile, at least in the US, and do less well than our parents financially. What will the next 40 years will look like?
Now try being a mid 30s millenial that couldn’t even make it running a business
Running a business is way harder than just being a worker. I don’t understand what you mean by this.
in the article someone with a successful business is worried about home affordability and retirement. elsewhere someone with an unsuccessful business is worried about both of those things plus the business bleeding money. I’m referring to myself. I ended my so called business, quitting while I was behind because there is no getting ahead of the explotative big players without drowning in stress and never having time to relax or enkoy life.
Aw shit I did the classic reddit thing and only read the headline. Sorry, that’s my bad.
I do that all the time too.
For real. I’m over here having a mid-life crisis since I was 27.
i felt like that at 28 after my 3rd layoff, i’m in my early 40’s now and still feel this way and wish the article had something to share besides describing my life using other people as an examples.
That was your “quarter-life crisis”. Don’t worry your mid-life crisis is still on its way :D
Goddamn right, I thought the quarter was rough, I was wrong
My plan is to open a kiosk once I retire im a night owl anyways and it’s not too physically demanding.
Man, that’s a lot better than my plan.
My plan was just to add a lot more bbq and fried food to my diet once I get to around 60.
Was it speedrun of unhealthy diet?
I will die the way I always wanted to live.
Surrounded by an assortment of artisanal barbecue sauces and fancy hot sauce.
Obesity%
Hell. Gen X also are worried about retirement.
Will social security be here in 15 years? My 401k has not kept up at all… Everything today costs soooooooo much there’s no real room for saving.
Most recent social security trustees report says the trust fund will run out in 2035. What happens in 2035? Benefits are still funded at 83% in perpetuity. By the way, last year it was going to run out in 2033, and the year before that it was going to run out in 2031. And also by the way, the trust fund was specifically set up because they knew the baby boomers were going to stress the system, so it’s supposed to get depleted as the boomers use it.
Everything is working mostly as intended, and yet there’s all this anxiety around Social Security. Why? Because Republicans want you to think Social Security is fucked all on its own so that you don’t question it when they ratfuck it. That and they want to constantly frame the conversation as such so that the conversation doesn’t turn to “how do we make social security more robust and generous?” or some other radical socialist nonsense.
Right??
Early Gen Z / very tail end of millennial here.
Got a job that pays ~80k (with promotion potential to 100k in a year) and I’m just… dumbfounded at how yall are making it. I didn’t grow up wealthy at all, and struggled with homelessness for a time, so I’m not new to the frugal game, but being able to put away only a hundred or two bucks a month after taxes is crazy with the hours and time I put into existing. I’d rather just not work at all if the end result is the same.
Doordash is a crux in my life and something I’ve definitely splurged on in the past, but groceries are just as expensive outside of rice beans and chicken. Baffling. :(
At this point, I’m still looking at working till the day I die.
being able to put away only a hundred or two bucks a month after taxes is crazy with the hours and time I put into existing.
Every little bit helps. Future you will thank you for even putting that amount away.
I try, but of course life finds a way to rip whatever savings I’ve got slowly but surely.
What do you invest your 401k in?
Lol!
No.
Alas, I do have a plan involving retirement. It is filed under “things that happen to other people”.
The probability I’ll survive to retirement age is negligible, why worry about it?
You won’t retire, no. No longer work a job because everything is slowly falling apart as our climate apocalypse trudges on? Sure, but you’ll still be working hard to survive.
Gonna leave a bit of advice for any young folks that might see this. Something I wish to god someone had told me when I was 20.
Start an annuity plan. They’re generally stable, all but guaranteed to accrue money. You can set a percentage of your paycheck to be deposited automatically into the account. If you have the option to do this through your employer, do it, find out if they match the deposit like mine. Put 10% of yorlur paycheck in there. After 10 years, I have $40,000 sitting in a retirement account with a series of low yield bonds set to mature in between now and my retirement age. Those bonds will roll back into shorter term bonds when they do, and add more value to the account. My projected retirement age is still 72, but at least I know that money is there.
Also, after 4 years, the account matures and you’re able to borrow against it, like collateral for a loan. So if I wanted to right now, I could take that money and use it as a down payment on a house. I’ll be expected to put it back, but the interest is generally lower than a home owner’s loan.
Generally speaking in the US annuities are horrible and significantly underperform a regular 401k/IRA invested in a broad total market index fund. The fees eat you alive. Don’t know how it is in other countries. But annuities here are damn near fraud.
Annuities have been bad because they invest in bonds and interest rates have been very low in recent years.
Over the next 10-20 years stocks could crash and rates increase.
I mean, if this is what you believe, you can still invest in bonds in a 401k or brokerage account. Even if I believed this about stocks crashing, I still wouldn’t put any $ in an annuity.
Also, predicting the stock market and making huge decisions based on that tends to not go well.
The main benefit of an annuity over bonds is that it will keep paying out until you die.
A small annuity that just covers you and your spouses essential living expenses is not a bad investment.
I agree, large annuities are a waste.
This sounds a lot like superannuation that we have in Australia and is mandatory. A certain amount of money from your paycheck is put with a super and they invest it for you, and the idea is that you should have a few hundred grand by the time you retire.
In the US that was Social Security but currently it’s broken
But what happens if you have an annuity and need cash noooooowwwwwww?
Call J.G. Wentworth!
877-CASH-NOW!
The downfall of every one of my savings plans. At a certain point rent takes priority
This is another one of many things that the government should be taking care of for people (and they sort of tried to with Social Security) but of course the “privatize everything” sociopath elites killed that idea, and our culture expects everyone to just learn how to Warren Buffet better. Bro, do you even index fund?
As someone born in '82, I plan to feel a strong dispassion for human society, and then die.
I just need to do the dying part.
‘85 … I expect to die in the water wars.
Bless the maker and his water, Bless the coming and going of him, may his passing cleanse the world.
00s, I hope to not die for Putin’s palaces and yachts.
The next forty years will look like absolute hell and the lack of proper services for the explosive number of diseases in the millennial cohort.
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Milliennials by and large don’t have enough money to retire, and they are experiencing in striking numbers high rates of immunodeficiency and cancers. (I was personally diagnosed with cancer at 42. You know, the ultimate answer to life the universe and everything…) This will mean they will need more elder care and sooner.
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No Child Left Behind has properly fucked US education for the foreseeable future, and US education was abysmal before that already. The elderly are going to be being taken care of by adults who may be functionally illiterate and when you’re functionally illiterate, you can become anti-vax even if you got hired as caretaker for the elderly.
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On top of education being gutted and there being a dangerous future of incapable people being put in these jobs because there’s no one else to do them: The collapse in birth rate because nobody can afford to have fucking kids will also make this problem worse as fewer and fewer workers will be available to take care of more and more elderly and infirm people.
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Most of the places that take care of the elderly are being bought up at rapid pace by investment groups, hedge funds, and the like, and all they do is cut services, make things worse, and cause more suffering and death so they can wring more money out of people suffering at the end of their lives. How many of these businesses will even still exist in 20 years? Many of them are shutting down constantly because the numbers just don’t add up.
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Because of all of this, we we will an absolute explosion of homelessness in the elderly.
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You can bet your ass fuck-nothing will be done to prevent any of this. Especially if Trump wins in November, then we’re dealing with this process outright accelerating at a breakneck pace.
This is kind of where I’m at. I don’t imagine any amount of cash in a bank account is going to prepare us for what’s to come. Even if you could put money aside, the money you typically put towards retirement might just be better off towards becoming a doomsday prepper. Probably wouldn’t save you either way, but it may buy you a little time that you wouldn’t have otherwise.
Like others have said, I imagine my “retirement” as bearing witness to the collapse of modern society and ultimately dying in some lousy brawl with other desperate refugees, or by some untreated bacterial infection.
I just know that my death will be something dumb in the coming collapse, like stubbing my toe and dying to infection when there is no remaining, effective antibiotics on our superheated hellhole.
We some how got wedged between Idiocracy and Cyberpunk 2077.
What do you mean somehow? Cyberpunk as a genre has always been a vision of a future of unchecked corporate power, it only became prescient because Americans gave corporations unchecked power.
I didn’t think to word it “Walking into the future lubed up, bent over, and ready to pay for the patriotic right to get split roasted by Google and Blackrock” because that’s a bit of a mouth full.
Original comment mentioned game Cyberpunk 2077, not entire genre cyberpunk. But yes, unchecked corporate power leads to neofeudalism.
Our dreams of technology didn’t meet with the realities/limits of materials science/engineering except for computing and the internet.
The technology was there; the humanity wasn’t.
You know, we live in “technology was there; the humanity wasn’t” since DMCA was legislated. We literally have information duping machine, but there is law that forbids it. When there will be everything duping machine, ruling class will its use by anyone outside of ruling class.
Because of all of this, we will see an absolute explosion of homelessness in the elderly.
And it can’t be fixed just through capitalism. Only either through policy or comand economy.
try to keep an eye on neat, simple engineering projects from poor countries because we may need to rely on similar options soon enough ourselves.
I am just sitting here as a infrastructure guy trying not to have a mental break of crying and laughing. It’s so fucking bad and getting so much worse. You know what was today’s item? I am working on one small system for a replacement wastewater treatment plant for a town of about 3,000 people that the pieces of shit general contractor has dragged out for 8 fucking years. 8 years for a project that should have taken 6 months. They haven’t done any work. Longer it goes on the more they get to bill. Oh and my favorite part? The general contractor is one of the bigger ones, they have a Wikipedia page.
Cost disease is going to break us. Entire country is going to be spending a trillion a year with the water supply of Flint.
Now if you excuse me I am going to drink now. Cause fuck it I can’t save anyone.
I appreciate your efforts, but we as a nation were not guaranteed to make it. It was up to us to make it, and we failed ourselves by devolving into petty tribalism between two 1% owned political parties.
Are lawyers involved? You should sue to get it for free, not to pay more, because contracts like that usually put a penalty on the supplier if they break their promises
I at first I expected you to work in IT infrastructure specifically, but sewage? When sewage can’t keep shit together - nothing in country can keep shit together. USSA is slowly turning from worse than Russia in some areas to worse than Russia in all areas.
Cause fuck it I can’t save anyone.
You’ve done your best. It’s definitely not personally your job to save anyone anyway. If we can’t figure out how to do it collectively, well, maybe we just suck as a species. Thanks for doing what you could and can and don’t bemoan yourself for your inability to fight a broken system on your own. I don’t expect engineers and scientists and doctors who have been telling us this shit needs to be done for years to have any fucking patience for it anymore. You’ve all done your bit.
Also, thanks because I’ve just been assuming as much has been going on behind the scenes for a long time. I’ve been saying for years the entire nation gave up on any idea of long-term maintenance of anything in the 90’s. We’ve had failing infrastructure grades for bridges all over the country since at least 2010, if not earlier, and fuck-all has been done. I’m not even close to being an engineer, but I’ve helped some friends with some basic construction and I’m just floored at how many corners are cut on so many things in our country. It’s prevalent everywhere, it’s part of why there’s so many data breaches in the tech sector. They don’t want to pay to update old systems to bring them up to compliance. We’ve literally built workarounds in the form of Virtual Machines just so people can run outdated software on modern hardware so insecure outdated software can simply keep being used despite its age. So yeah, feeling vindicated that it’s not all just in my head.
We’ve literally built workarounds in the form of Virtual Machines just so people can run outdated software on modern hardware so insecure outdated software can simply keep being used despite its age. So yeah, feeling vindicated that it’s not all just in my head.
Insecure outdated software AKA proprietary software. Fuck that shit.
Brought to you by Free Software Foundation.
US education was abysmal before that already
Solid points all around, but I wanted to add one historical tidbit: at one point the USA had literally the best edumacashiun in the world. After WWII, the other nations (like the UK + those in the EU) were bombed all to hell & back whereas the USA was relatively fine. People like Bill Gates advocated strongly for US education funding, b/c it helped feed that behemoth giant of a corporation to have an already-educated workforce, funded by US tax dollars, that they could take advantage of.
We have fallen FAR down the world rankings since then. Tbf, some of that may reflect changes in measurements e.g. does “every” kid need one, or can some be excused to go be a farmhand without needing to finish? (this affects averaged measurements, but not peak ones, or the previously thus-filtered ones)
After WWII, the other nations (like the UK + those in the EU) were bombed all to hell & back whereas the USA was relatively fine.
There was certain union in Europe(not European Union) that was bombed 9% by area and 55% by population.
does “every” kid need one, or can some be excused to go be a farmhand without needing to finish?
Translation: To have more you should produce more, to produce more you should know more.
Farmers need education too.
EDIT: lemmy broke my comment with link to image
Farmers need education. Farmhands do not.
Anyway I was just attempting to use it as an example - we could substitute gas station attendant or fast food worker, etc. There are jobs where, for the job anyway while ignoring the quality of life for the actual person, formalized education is less necessary than for other jobs, e.g. doctor or lawyer.
But my example of using farmhand was not made up: farmers literally pulled their kids out of primary schooling in order to make use of them on the farm. Perhaps they supplemented it with homeschooling at other times when the crop cycles allowed… or perhaps not. But either way, the ways we use to measure intelligence - e.g. if we ask what country does the city of Athens belong to - the farmhands will appear extremely low in such rankings.
So long as someone else in the family does the planning work, someone who was not merely pulled out but who flunked out of primary schooling could exist in life by contributing purely manual but not much intellectual labor.
I accidentally wiped my comment. Now it will not be as good as it was.
Derp. Still, everyone needs education.
we could substitute gas station attendant or fast food worker, etc.
Dull, mind numbing work that should have been automated long time ago. And we are talking about schools, not universities.
e.g. doctor
Schools are not medical universities. But even in school you will be taught first aid. And basic anotomy in biology class.
farmers literally pulled their kids out of primary schooling in order to make use of them on the farm. Perhaps they supplemented it with homeschooling at other times when the crop cycles allowed… or perhaps not.
This is bad. Terrible.
to measure intelligence - e.g. if we ask what country does the city of Athens belong to
This question does not measure inteligence, it measures erudition. Inteligence, erudition and wisdom are different things. Question for intelligence would be like “bat and ball cost 1.1$, bat costs 1$ more than ball, how much ball costs?”.
So long as someone else in the family does the planning work, someone who was not merely pulled out but who flunked out of primary schooling could exist in life by contributing purely manual but not much intellectual labor.
We are Homo sapiens, not Homo ergaster. Tractor better contributes “purely manual but not much intellectual labor”.
If you will allow me to say? Your premise seems incorrect. Words like “need” presumes a goal to keep people alive. We “need” Oxygen, in order to breathe which itself is necessary in order to stay alive rather than convert into a corpse state of ‘existence’. However, as e.g. https://lemmy.zip/post/17644464 shows, we are not being allowed to have even that. And if even Oxygen is denied us, then surely education will be even less of a “right”, for homo sapiens or otherwise.
To a fascist, such as the current set of billionaires in charge, education of the masses - or even our very existence, in light of globalism for now and automation eventually - is no longer necessary. And with climate change diminishing resources, possibly it is not even desirable or neutral anymore, so much as something to be either neutrally or perhaps actively pursued to demolish what has previously been built up. e.g. when the pandemic occurred, the response was “so what? let them die. BuT tHe EcOnOmY will go on just fine without them, in fact better without those restrictions imposed by safety protocols”.
So no, “everyone needs education” sounds like something that is not true… at least according to the likes of Elon Musk, who now controls Twitter. Not Bezos, nor Zuckerberg, etc. And they would really like it if we did not tax them in order to pay for such. And a LOT of people seem to agree with them, whether we like it or not. See this fantastic description of it: https://youtu.be/agzNANfNlTs?si=dAGHoctLiPimmTTQ.
Also for some reason I didn’t do first quote and my “derp” didn’t looked like reply to my obvious mistake. Sorry.
Words like “need” presumes a goal to keep people alive.
I was talking more broadly as a goal to make everyone fully functioning member of society and citizens of their own country, preferably capable of finding cognitive biases in their and others’ statements and distinguishing science and medicine from pseudoscience and homeopathic antivax chiropractors.
However, as e.g. https://lemmy.zip/post/17644464 shows, we are not being allowed to have even that.
I was so often sangry lately(for last 2 years), that I’m just tired of bullshit happening everywhere.
And if even Oxygen is denied us, then surely education will be even less of a “right”, for homo sapiens or otherwise.
You know, from my sofa it seems everything sucks, just some countries like nordic ones suck slightly less. And it seems the world plunges into neofeudalism with celebrations by ignorant.
current set of billionaires in charge, education of the masses - or even our very existence, in light of globalism for now and automation eventually - is no longer necessary.
Meanwhile they will do everything to keep internationalism and automations to themselves, but never for masses. I think I already mentioned DMCA as expample. Other examples are software patents(which are basically math patents), patents on nature(for example plant varieties, genes of existing organisms).
pursued to demolish what has previously been built up.
It seems it happens everywhere. How about subject called “basics of orthodox culture” in school? Secular state is so secular. Another reason to hate Putinism.
e.g. when the pandemic occurred, the response was “so what? let them die. BuT tHe EcOnOmY will go on just fine without them, in fact better without those restrictions imposed by safety protocols”.
This is so stupid. Human must not be considered a tool. And I feel stupid too because at start of pandemic my opinion wasn’t far from that, but more along the lines of “it doesn’t help that much, why bother” rather then economy part. To be fair it was during peak of police violence and fines printing press during lockdown.
And a LOT of people seem to agree with them, whether we like it or not.
Damn. I am afraid of my country becoming like this.
It’s okay - that’s how I interpreted it:-). Lemmy formatting can also be weird sometimes and people access via different methods, so I try to remember that as well.
citizens of their own country
^This is the big one, particularly in a democracy this is so extremely crucial. But… we did not bother to secure it, so now we may be (are?) losing it all. Like someone who has lost their immune system, we are now vulnerable to not only lack of knowledge but outright presence of active disinformation. Wait… didn’t we need that - ooopsie daisy!? :-P
I am afraid of my country becoming like this.
If we had had more fear sooner, we might have avoided getting eaten alive by Russian disinformation campaigns. As it is… our lack of fear has definitely harmed us greatly, possibly fatally.
The good news is that whatever society rises out of our corpse will have learned lessons from the ordeal. Rome also fell too, but life goes on. Ours might not, and given climate change humans or even mammals + far more might not, but even so, all we can control is ourselves individually, right now. I for one take that as a charge to do whatever I can in however much time we have left. And maybe it’s not a foregone conclusion after all? So much the better. All we have is today - make it a good one.:-)
People like Bill Gates advocated strongly for US education funding, b/c it helped feed that behemoth giant of a corporation to have an already-educated workforce, funded by US tax dollars, that they could take advantage of.
Sounds like bill gates just wanted to steal more surplus labor value from his workers.
Then you understand correctly.
The difference is, people like Bezos also want to steal the value of our labor, but without allowing us to educate our children.
Hence it is worse.
If the orange man wins, America is over and none of your concerns will matter as we slip into a fascist dystopia. That is an existential threat we have to deal with right now, and it can actually be prevented.
Republicans moving to install a fascist government? Sounds serious!
So when will democrats drop gun control considering this imminent threat?
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X’er here. I have what most would consider a good job, with good pay, and a good boss. I consider it a good job with good pay and a good boss. My spouse is unable to work, and we have two children. I’m currently seeking some skill or product I can develop without taking time away from my existing responsibilities such that I have a chance of not having to work until I die at my desk one day.
With no shade against millenials, this is the only time I’m grumpy about being forgotten in the generational sniping that goes on. All these articles (like OP) about this very valid angst from older millenials and I identify with it pretty much every time. I know I’m not the only X’er who does.
It’s the trouble with attributing it to any specific generation. It’s like people forgot that Gen Xers grew up reading the same dystopian sci-fi that we did that predicted this corporate shithole world. Neuromancer was written in 1984, when I was three years old. People forget that the cynicism of Gen X explicitly came from being such a small generation compared to the Boomers that it was just always a given that they wouldn’t ever have much political influence. Hell, it even affects a lot of Boomers, because this has been going on for a long time.
Gen X gets forgotten, but they were honestly the first to bear the brunt of this disease that’s eating at all of us, and thus it’s sad that they get forgotten. Cheers mate, and I hope you find that skill and succeed in your goals.
Thanks buddy. 🥹
I leave this parting gift…
First, the 1% gets all the money and then the piss trickles down.
Do not, my friends, become addicted to piss. It will take hold of you, and you will resent its absence
And then the money is used for regulatory capture and influencing the government in the 1%'s behalf.
Aka capitalism progressing through it’s innate path towards end stage.
X too, steady job, ok pay, lucky enough to have bought a house before COVID, but not enough to save thousands of $ for retreat.
not having to work until I die at my desk
Lol this guy thinks there is a chance he will die at his desk. I wish I could feel that optimism.
Chances are better that at best you will die in gig or part time job like Walmart. The most likely is in you kids house, really yours but you will give it to them, and without medical support beyond basic hospice.
Many of your peers and friends will die in homeless camps or from police violence.
You were jacking off when you wrote this, weren’t you.
I’m grumpy about being forgotten in the generational sniping
Every generation grows up, settles down, and starts quarrels with its parents.
In 10-15 years, Zoomers will remember you.
I have noticed that the titles of many articles, yes even at The Guardian that generally has good content once you get past that, are written to generate maximum clicks.
You were not ignored by accident. It was a calculated decision to maximize profits, in a manner that controls the conversation and leaves you out in the cold.
Fuck corporate greed:-(.
But for you, my fellow human being who isn’t a hollowed-out shell i.e. CEO, I wish the absolute best outcome possible. (And me too.)
Maybe house prices will go down someday? I really am genuinely surprised at all that Biden('s administration) has managed to accomplish, but it was set back years before it even started by the pandemic, greedflation, and other economic and other forms of unrest. If we can get past this next election without a literal and actual bloody civil war… well then most of us will still die of climate change (gee, I am just full of positivity today aren’t I? sadly, that is the most positive take possible on that one:-|), but we might be able to make some headway? e.g. start incentivizing building houses further away from city centers, which WFH should help make possible - and even if you want to live in a city, the decrease in demand should help lower prices?
Anyway, all we can do is what we can do (aka not everything is within our control), so don’t stress too awfully much about it. We’ll die - we can’t change that - but hopefully we’ll have some good days between now and then:-).
Thanks!
I remember your username primarily because you are always so courteous even when we disagree. (not that we do here)
I fall just at that borderline of the two and have the same sort of spot. Took too long to get to a decent career-class job, managed to buy a basic house but only just and not much of one, savings of an amount to be confident of retirement are a fantasy from a bygone time. Spent many years with the mantra of show up, do your job, don’t cause trouble, the promotions and raises will follow and in 50 years you get a nice gold watch and a permanent vacation. BS…
You know it. At least we’re not alone. :)
No.
But one day I will get so desperatly poor that taking out someone in siphoning wealth from the country and ending them might seem like a fitting end.
If we don’t change things anyways.
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”
- John F. Kennedy
Let’s make peaceful revolution possible by campaigning for electoral reform at the state level! We should all be free to vote for those who best represent us, secure in the knowledge that our vote will still be cast against those we don’t want in office.
We don’t need to wait for trump to have a hamburger heart attack, we dont need to wait for the republicans to stop existing. We can do this right now… and some states already have!
Yours can to, most especially the blue states. Who is stopping you in those blue states?
I always wonder why people shoot up schools and parks when their problems are caused by people in board rooms. Never see a mass shooting in a board room for some reason.
Maybe there’s a selection bias, and we only hear about the dumb ones who target innocent people and get caught.
Believe it or not, people willing to murder others aren’t the best at thinking clearly.
Well one of the original mass shootings resulted in the expression ‘going postal’, but I don’t recall what was ever theorized as a motive there. Workplace frustration maybe?
Who told her that? That’s obviously bad advise.
Thus millennial thinks we will all die in 10 years or so from climate related disasters and none of us will live to retirement age as things currently stand.
Thus millennial
thinkshopes we will all die in 10 years or so from climate related disastersand none of us will live to retirement age as things currently standso they don’t have to worry about retirement.Ftfy. The entire “collapse” thing is a coping mechanism.
We can have different opinions. Imo climate change denialism is a cope. I also hedge my bets by also planning for retirement. But as it stands, we’re all on hospice.
Imo climate change denialism is a cope.
I agree. And I think both doomerism and denialism are encouraged by the fossil fuel industry, because they both lead to inaction.
The reality is:
- the climate is getting worse because of fossil fuels
- through action, we can make it less worse
- this action will be difficult
- this action will cause a lot of very rich people and companies to lose money
Maybe, but we’re getting into a classic discussion about nihilism here when it comes to doomerism - if nothing matters, how should I feel? Depressed, or finally free to do whatever since it doesn’t matter anyway?
The reality is:
- As it currently stands, with current technology and current input/output, we are facing literally 6 of 9 separate world ending catastrophes which are feeding into each other. https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2022/07/recklessness-defined-breaking-6-of-9-planetary-boundaries-of-safety/
As of 2021, according to SRI, we had already gone beyond the safe limit for five of these planetary boundaries: • climate change; • biogeochemical flows (i.e., excessive phosphorus and nitrogen pollution from fertilizer use); • biosphere integrity (e.g., extinction rate and loss of insect pollination); • land-system change (e.g., deforestation); • and novel entities (e.g., pollution from plastics, heavy metals, and what are commonly referred to as “forever chemicals”).
In an April 2022 update, SRI found that a portion of a sixth planetary boundary – fresh water use – had also been crossed. In addition, in a June 2021 interview with the journal Globalizations, Dr. Will Stefan of SRI said that a seventh planetary boundary had also likely been crossed: ocean acidification (one that has been theorized as a key contributor to previous mass extinction events in geologic history). One other boundary has been too uncertain to judge: atmospheric aerosols from fine particle pollution caused by fossil fuel combustion. Yet, we are clearly pushing this boundary too, when considering that air pollution from burning fossil fuels has been blamed for 8.8 million deaths worldwide per year.
If a used car salesman said, “just get this baby a new engine, new transmission, new brakes, tires, and new radiator and she’ll be perfect!” Would you buy the car or trust that’s everything wrong with it? Or would you assume it’s “as is” or worse?
Best case scenario, we put up a gigantic aluminum or whatever space blanket in space to reflect a certain percentage of the sun’s energy to buy us some time. But it doesn’t appear to be happening.
Because the rich genuinely think they are immune to the laws of science. Look at the Titanic sub - they will bet their own lives on their hubris. Including with the planet.
If a used car salesman said, “just get this baby a new engine, new transmission, new brakes, tires, and new radiator and she’ll be perfect!” Would you buy the car or trust that’s everything wrong with it? Or would you assume it’s “as is” or worse?
I kinda did that. Not with a car, but a house. Bought my mom a cheap shitty house because she’s poor as shit and I’m trying to get her to be able to retire with some dignity.
But it’s a start. We have the house. We just redid the plumbing. Next the foundation. Next the electrical, then the hvac. Improving over time as we have the money and the capacity. Eventually, it will be a perfectly fine, liveable house.
It’s a LOT of work. And ridiculously expensive. But it’s DOABLE, and buying a “normal” house is NOT doable because they’re crazy expensive nowadays. We improve as we can, and over time things get better as long as we keep moving forward.
That’s what I think the best case scenario is for the planet. Renewables. Electric vehicles. Public transit. Carbon capture. Reforestation. Zero waste. I have a vision of a planet Earth in 500 years that is not an apocalyptic hellhole, but a green, vibrant, forward looking one, mildly embarrassed about how their ancestors let things get so bad before fixing it.
We can do that. A lot of us are working towards it.
Yes, with a house and just you and your mom, it’s doable. Even with a car, it’s doable. Why? Because it’s been done before (so parts are already made, how to guides, etc), not an entire planet of 8 billion people AND a completely new series of issues we have to engineer around and can’t fuck up or we all literally die. We also don’t have the time (like we are out of time) to implement much.
I think trying to fix it is completely imperative. I simply don’t believe it will get fixed. It should be fixed, yes, imo - but I doubt it will be. Partially because our government isn’t taking serious action to do so. Partially because every environmental scientist, environmental engineer, biologist, ecologist, I know is extremely depressed or suicidal.
The worst thing that would happen if you didn’t fix up that house, is that you’d be living in bad conditions but not unlivable ones. The amount of dissociation people have from the seriousness of what’s going on around us is stunning. I assume a profound lack of education about the environment or biology. Things are bad.
Partially because our government isn’t taking serious action to do so. Partially because every environmental scientist, environmental engineer, biologist, ecologist, I know is extremely depressed or suicidal.
Look, this is lemmy. Everyone and their fucking dog is suicidal here. It’s damn near a death cult.
it’s doable. Why? Because it’s been done before
That’s not an issue. We have the science. Sure, there are efficiency gains from improved science, but it’s not like we’re fumbling in the dark here. We know exactly what we need to do and how to do it. And it’s not a braindead simplistic soundbyte like “just do a revolution” or “everyone bike everywhere”. It’s complex, it’s complicated, but it is known. Stop using fossil fuels. Start using renewables. Capture the carbon that has already been released. It’s a super simple equation. It’s like dieting, you can have all the fancy diets in the world but the absolute core of it is that you need to take in less calories than you burn in order to lose weight.
or we all literally die.
That’s not true and I can tell you’re smart enough to know it, so I won’t dwell on it. But it dovetails into the next point
We also don’t have the time (like we are out of time)
It’s not a binary. We have passed the threshold where we can prevent negative effects. In that sense, we are out of time, yes. Species have gone extinct and we can’t get them back. Not like, “very soon this will happen”, but like “this has already happened”. It will keep getting worse. That’s how you have to think of it. Not like a video game. Not like “fix the problem in x years or else we all immediately die, game over!” It’s “the longer it takes to fix, the worse the world gets in the mean time.”
I believe, as long as the US doesn’t fall into a regressive fascist science-denying hellhole (which is a whole nother thing but bears mentioning), we will fix it. Possibly in my life time, or at least be on a trajectory to complete recovery (minus extinct species) within my lifetime. A lot of people are putting a lot of money and time and effort into it.
I will retire eventually. That may be due to my inability to be productive at an advanced age. I don’t see why we shouldn’t still get social security payments. I’m gonna just stop eventually once my kids are working. I have a small house and it will have been paid for by that time. Hopefully I can just rest at that point. Job done.
How are you going to make those tax payments, maintenance costs, transportation costs, etc. You think your social security will be enough to cover? Or is the plan “sell the house”?
I have a 401k. Live in Louisiana there is little property tax. I’ll just die eventually.
That’s the spirit!
