Class has never been more important

It's no secret that people tend to be more leftist when they are young and more conservative when they are older. The common assumption by the establishment is that it's just a "phase" that people go through before they smarten up.
Which is incredibly patronizing.

“Monsieur, my son is 22 years old. If he had not become a Communist at 22, I would have disowned him. If he is still a Communist at 30, I will do it then.”
- Georges Clemenceau

What makes much more sense, and isn't so belittling, is people acting according to class interests and experience.

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As baby boomers age, their percentage of total US wealth has increased from 20% to nearly 60%.
Gen X and millennials haven't even reached these wealth levels. Thus far, Gen X only comprises about 16% of US wealth. And perhaps most strikingly, the line for millennials is almost completely flat: They've barely seen any increase in net worth, coming in at less than 5% of total US wealth in 2019.
...
That means the wealth gap between older households and younger households has nearly doubled in the past 20 years, climbing from seven to twelve times the net worth. In that time frame, the average net worth for households ages 20 to 35 has declined by $2,600, while households ages 52 to 70 have seen a $452,400 increase in net worth.

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Of course as people build wealth that they would be more happy with the status quo.
It isn't a matter of getting smarter. It's self-interest.

That's why the break in generational wealth transfer will have political consequences.

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The Democratic establishment shouldn’t get too smug about these numbers, though. Millennials may be naturally inclined to lean left. But that doesn’t mean that they venerate the party’s leaders or are committed to maintaining its organizational status quo.
... In a recent Harvard Institute of Politics poll, 38 percent of young voters (and 48 percent of millennial “Likely Voters”) agreed that the Democratic Party “cares about people like me,” while 31 percent (and 32 percent of young likely voters) disagree. That’s a positive margin, but it’s far smaller than the 44-point margin by which House Democrats won young voters in the 2018 midterms, suggesting that young voters prefer Democrats to Republicans but don’t deeply love or trust their party.

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detroitmechworks's picture

It's disrespectful to all the people who worked HARD to get everything they had! Clearly if you own something you deserve it. Look, anybody can talk about statistics, but the absolute HATRED that this article exudes is completely unfair.

I demand an apology to all baby boomers immediately. Including an acknowledgement that they were the ones that stopped all wars forever with their protests in the sixties, that their music is better, they're sexier and invented sex, everything they do is incredibly fashionable, and dismissing their opinions is tantamount to declaring that you want to commit Genocide on them.

/snark

(Don't think I missed any of the arguments, but the day's still early and I'm sure there will be someone along quickly to point out all the ones I missed)

/snark (COULD NOT Resist)

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_snxpDlGZc]

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I do not pretend I know what I do not know.

@detroitmechworks We did make a huge difference in how sex is viewed and accepted as normal.
We did make great music.
We were Woodstock. And Ohio State.
And we tried, and should not be the ass end of a joke.
I do think a lot of Boomers did lose their socialist religion when they found themselves with some affluence that they earned and lucked into, due to markets.
I look forward to seeing any generation today doing what we DFH did then.

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

detroitmechworks's picture

@on the cusp Seriously, you just managed to make my point FAR better than I ever could.

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I do not pretend I know what I do not know.

@detroitmechworks then lose the snark tag.
There is a difference in experiences in every age group.
Some boomers are assholes.
Some are true to their principles.
The same can be said of your generation.
Broad brush is one thing, making fun of us in another.
Please don't do that.

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

@on the cusp Works every time. I loathe that OK Boomer crap and it has NOTHING to do with the fact that I too am a boomer although a late generation one. Just one more tool in the owners arsenal to distract and divide. But hey, it's a really cool meme and those of us who are older just don't get it and never will, for shame. Oh well, since we don't get it I guess that means we all should just go on ahead and die already, I am just sure, sure, sure that'll make it all better.

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Only a fool lets someone else tell him who his enemy is. Assata Shakur

detroitmechworks's picture

@on the cusp No thanks.

See, here's the thing. You're being a dick. You're shutting down humor. See, I was going to have this whole thing where I continued writing, and shared my thoughts with you folks because clearly you CAN take a joke.

But you can't. ANd I won't fucking apologize.

So, I have two choices. I can sit here, explain patiently my humor, about how baby boomers can't take a joke, and as such would viciously defend any besmirching on their honor... even coming from somebody who had CONSTANTLY defended them against intergenerational anger, and tried to say it's just individuals... But nope, immediately on the enemies list...

which is funny because it's TRUE.

Or I can fuck off and play with somebody who isn't a dick who can't take a joke.

So, just gonna do what I do whenever I play a game against somebody who's a jerk.

DBAD, Goodbye

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I do not pretend I know what I do not know.

@detroitmechworks @detroitmechworks gave you some legal assistance for free?
I remember.
edit: you likely did not know I was a boomer. You should have looked me up on the State Bar of Texas website.

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

@detroitmechworks @detroitmechworks Look in the mirror.

BTW, I enjoyed the humor in your original comment, AND I appreciated the response from a fellow boomer. But, IMO, you lost it with your followup.

As for "conservative" boomers, I have a sizable amount of money (to me, anyway) in an IRA and elsewhere, yet I get more radically socialist every day, and more horrified by how humans are murdering the planet every day.

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travelerxxx's picture

@on the cusp

I'll probably regret this, but I think too much of both you, otc, and of dmw to let it go.

***

So, sarcasm on the Internet claims more victims. If there's one thing that is almost always true about the Internet, it's this: when you do sarcasm, and it fails, it's almost always spectacular. Feelings hurt, people pissed off. The original writer, who assumed everyone would catch the joke, is hurt because what he thought was obvious, wasn't; people who missed the nuance and/or the punch line are convinced something opposite of the intention was conveyed.

Moral: don't try it at home, kids ... but especially don't try it on the Internet – no matter how good it seems. In fact, sometimes the better the sarcasm, the harder it is for readers to fathom.

Time for examples:

dmv wrote first this:

It's disrespectful to all the people who worked HARD to get everything they had! Clearly if you own something you deserve it. Look, anybody can talk about statistics, but the absolute HATRED that this article exudes is completely unfair.

Now, does dmv believe this? At first we don't know. In fact, unless one reads all the way to below the second paragraph, where the "/snark" tag is shown, one would think it's a statement of dmv's beliefs. After the third paragraph, a second "/snark" tag is added just to be sure no one mistakes what is stated. An apology is even added after the second "/snark" tag," stating that he "COULD NOT Resist)."

Well, in retrospect, I'm sure dmw wishes he had resisted. I wish he'd resisted, too. Because what can happen with Internet sarcasm, did indeed happen. It got misconstrued. Badly.

Our fellow c99er, dmv, most certainly does NOT believe the statements made above the "/snark" tag. In fact, he believes the opposite, but rather was attempting to portray how the data gjohnsit presented would be attacked. It's sarcasm, and no matter how good the sarcasm is, a writer has no control over how readers perceive the meaning. In this case, the worst happened. The edge of the sarcasm was a bit too sharp, and hit on a subject that is troublesome to many ... at best.

So, otc, when dmw made the statement (downthread) that "Seriously, you just managed to make my point FAR better than I ever could," he wasn't kidding. You really did make his point. And in that post he was indeed being serious. And he was right; you made his case and better than he did.

Now, I read the dmw's original post and missed it at first, too. Then, when I noticed the "/snark" tag, I realized he meant the opposite of what he was stating. I also thought that he was taking a chance that I probably wouldn't take. Boomer-blame (or blame placed on any age group of people) is something that raises my hackles immediately. So, when I first read dmw's post, I was pissed too. I knew dmw didn't think like what I was reading, so I went back and then noticed the "/snark" tag. Whew! Glad you didn't let me down, dmw!

Except, dmw did let me down. Our friend dmw is too good a writer and too experienced at this Internet message-board thing to have posted this. I think he thought twice, but should have thought thrice. I'm sure he'd like to take it back. Did I think it was funny? Yes, I did, but not at first. Not until what my eyes read – the "/snark" tag – managed to connect correctly with my brain. Then, I laughed ... before that, I wasn't laughing.

So, snark (the Internet term for sarcasm, of course) claims more victims. Sad.

Internet sarcasm – just say no.

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Shahryar's picture

@travelerxxx

Other than that...

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Dawn's Meta's picture

@travelerxxx @travelerxxx However, I do like internet sarcasm: actually written sarcasm, as long as it can be understood. It is a form of cartoon in words.

We are letting read too fast and in too small fragments destroy our critical thinking and mind stretching abilities.

On the subject at hand: my DH and I knew we could not live US after retiring, as neither of us had a rich uncle or parents to be gifted with capital or land. We had to make it on the upward mobility hems of the WWll generation. We have family who have done well: inheriting farms; working in well paying sectors of the economy and yes some work. We had only the long hour, hard work part. And did make some headway.

It came to a stop with us though. We have nothing to leave the next generation. We don't have the kind of nest egg, pensions and retirement our parents had for assisted living. We do hate the whole concept of separating people out by age or health and putting them in housing, but it is a horrible idea and drains every penny out of the post WWll middle class. So they will not leave much to their kids (us) either.

We moved to France largely because of economy and quality of life. We are exposed to several cultures here, and find it fascinating. French, age in place and there are many programs to aid in that endeavor. There is still a lot of dependence on family: up, down and sideways. We are truly on our own, but would have been in the US.

The US would not let us take our earned Medicare with us, and we were not paid back our deductions for future benefit. I've had some 'liberal' friends say that is as it should be. You're not here contributing, so no, you shouldn't have access to Medicare. Hmmmm. The French allowed us into their health system within three months as long as we took out long term visas and declared our principal home to be in France. Now they get our SS and small pension incomes as contributions to their economy. We pay 20% VAT but get that nice Carte Santé, good roads, great and accessible rail, gateways to many countries in a few short hours, no cost at point of use for emergency room care; best possible local produce, meat, local cheeses, at daily outdoor markets at prices less than chain stores. And so much more. It's worth it.

It never occurred to us that there is more than one way to view "class". In the US it is largely from my own experience, based on money, wealth and how easily one can buy things, land, access. In the UK it is still based on the schools you went to (new idea for us). This is somewhat changing. I would like to know what Bill Bryson would say now about it now that he has seen the US and GB lately. His first book on this subject was 1996. But the type of education is key.

I should mention that our mutual nest-eggs were spent on medical emergencies in the US. We should have declared bankruptcy to save our investments, our equity and a few other things. Then our goal of buying a house outright here would have been met. We are in the 60th percentile here in income, but would have been in rural poverty in the US.

Life is slower in many ways, and could revert at least in rural areas to an earlier and local way of life. It wouldn't take much. But we can get to big, energetic cities very quickly and in comfort. So in a way, we have the best of things.

My DH and I talk about our generation, money, politics, power and wonder how we got to the point we didn't know or maybe didn't care about more than keeping the roof overhead and the car to get to said job.

I do think a lot of Boomers did lose their socialist religion when they found themselves with some affluence that they earned and lucked into, due to markets.

As for me: I got into the designing and building of microchip plants. It took me a year to realize that next to nuclear, a chip plant is about as toxic as it gets. By then, single, fortyish, and so on, this was an intense, mind expanding way to work. Used every bit of my mental, cultural and social skills to negotiate in the environment of post WWll owners and the various cultures of high tech IT clients.

I had doubts about working in the industry, but by then options were becoming limited, as was a good paycheck. Plus as a woman in a male workforce, the freedom to move and expand what I was doing was almost limitless at the time. I didn't sell my soul, but it may have been Hoovered.

Please be kind to one an another, and somehow we all need to do a double take on our perceptions of the comments as they come spewing out.

Thank you.

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A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit. Allegedly Greek, but more possibly fairly modern quote.

Consider helping by donating using the button in the upper left hand corner. Thank you.

Centaurea's picture

@Dawn's Meta

Would you consider posting something like this as a stand-alone essay?

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"Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep."
~Rumi

"If you want revolution, be it."
~Caitlin Johnstone

Dawn's Meta's picture

@Centaurea in France we have run into a couple of bad actors, which I hasten to add is rare here.

But they happened to fall on the house we bought as our forever home and when it turned out to be contaminated with mold throughout at "uninhabitable" levels. We have had to evacuate over a year ago.

We are undertaking 60% enlevé, removal, of the house and rebuilding. Our retirement is now debt heavy.

Our refuge, a very large two story apartment nearby, turned out to have a serious non ventilation of exhaust gases from a too old gas house-sized water heater for radiators and potable water. It almost killed us.

So now lawyers and all kinds of things with our health. Not a good Christmas this year or last.

It is my hope and goal to write more, with pictures and everything. But for now, I write as I have the energy and/or the time.

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A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit. Allegedly Greek, but more possibly fairly modern quote.

Consider helping by donating using the button in the upper left hand corner. Thank you.

Centaurea's picture

@Dawn's Meta
you've had to deal with that, and twice in succession! A few years back, a black mold problem developed in the house I was renting. That stuff affects the human body in so many ways.

Hopefully the new decade will let you move on past this. The past few years seem to have been tough for a lot of us. Out with the old, in with the new, for all of us.

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"Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep."
~Rumi

"If you want revolution, be it."
~Caitlin Johnstone

travelerxxx's picture

@Dawn's Meta

... I do like internet sarcasm: actually written sarcasm, as long as it can be understood. It is a form of cartoon in words.

We are letting read too fast and in too small fragments destroy our critical thinking and mind stretching abilities.

I enjoy sarcasm immensely, and it can indeed make a point much like the cartoons you mention, or even a song. But, I've never seen it fail so often as on the Internet. Perhaps you are right about reading too fast and with thoughts disjointed. Often sarcasm takes quite a bit of groundwork to be made self-evident.

Your reply was thought provoking for sure and I agree with poster Centaurea that it would stand well as an essay here. Further, I am so glad you put this at the end:

Please be kind to one an another, and somehow we all need to do a double take on our perceptions of the comments as they come spewing out.

Kindness to one another should be a hallmark of this place. All of us are of the 99%.

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@detroitmechworks Just not at my expense.

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

@on the cusp https://youtu.be/iKEZoY-TMG4

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thanatokephaloides's picture

@on the cusp

We did protest wars.

Since age 11, in 1969. (Bombing of Cambodia)

We did make a huge difference in how sex is viewed and accepted as normal.

You mean everything besides "man over woman, for making babies only, get it over quick, and don't enjoy it too much" ?? NO joke there!!

We did make great music.
We were Woodstock. And Ohio State.
And we tried, and should not be the ass end of a joke.

There are some never-DFH Boomers out there who -- pardon the crude language -- did nothing with their lives but fuck the rest of us over. My first high school was positively infested with these ..... I can't think of any creature I hate so much as to liken it to these "humans". They graduated, had way too many children way too soon, voted Ronald Fucking Reagan, both Bushes, and the Clinton Creature I into the Presidency, and infected my poor hometown (Colorado Springs, Colorado) with no less an archdaemon than Rousas John Rushdoony himself!

To paraphrase a very wise Texas Attorney of my most fortunate acquaintance, we have nothing in common with these "humans" except a range of birthdates. It is these, most dear lady, to whom detroitmechworks cast his well-earned cynical oppobrium, and not to us or our DFH kind.

That shoe fitteth us not. We should not attempt to wear it. Wink

I look forward to seeing any generation today doing what we DFH did then.

You're soaking in it now. (Only Boomers and Silents can be counted upon to get that joke!)

Peace and Love ever be upon you!

Biggrin

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"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar

"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides

Dawn's Meta's picture

@thanatokephaloides In a previous dust up here, what I saw and see again, are thoughtful members entering in to calmly strike a balanced review and plea for patience and time.

I really like that we try to keep this community together. Over and again, I've seen people hit a bad patch and say things they would otherwise regret. Chances are given; some have gone - some many of us miss; many stay.

Thank you.

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A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit. Allegedly Greek, but more possibly fairly modern quote.

Consider helping by donating using the button in the upper left hand corner. Thank you.

thanatokephaloides's picture

@Dawn's Meta

I really like that we try to keep this community together. Over and again, I've seen people hit a bad patch and say things they would otherwise regret. Chances are given; some have gone - some many of us miss; many stay.

Thank you.

Any time, cor mea. I'm just doing the best I can.....

Smile

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"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar

"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides

mimi's picture

@thanatokephaloides
but in my imagination I feel some empathy of why he might be gone (though it's of course completely based in my phantasies. I wish him well. If some of you know how to contact him, tell him that I miss him and remember his essays fondly.

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Pricknick's picture

@detroitmechworks
some of your disdain for the so-called boomers, of which I am not.
I was mistaken.

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Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.

Lookout's picture

Panel: This one chart tells the whole story of the 2020 election (8 min)
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NonAff3V5zM]

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

janis b's picture

@Lookout

I especially enjoyed listening to Maximillian Alvarez.

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Pluto's Republic's picture

Thanks, @Lookout .

What I found especially intriguing were the views of the Millennium Woman, who was a guest on the program. To my ear, her words contained familiar packaged slogans, which she positioned herself to deliver again and again. These slogans were wrapped a narrative formula that is widely used in the media to smear Socialism. The object of this formula — which was incubated on AM radio — is to embed slogans in American minds that define Socialism as "a dictatorship that forces equal impoverishment upon everyone."

I was curious to see how the panel's hosts, Saagar Enjeti and Krystal Ball would handle this familiar gambit. To begin, Socialism is declares to be a universally-known evil. This is followed by the repetition of a packaged slogan. A familiar example is: "Wherever Socialism has been tried, it has failed." This is too complicated to challenge.

Next, an inequality or injustice is named, one that Americans suffer after they fall through the tattered US safety net. This injustice can be anything from death caused by medical neglect to the persistent hunger suffered by 25 percent of American children. In this panel, the selected suffering was the inescapable cycle of poverty that holds generations of Americans in its grip. Without upward mobility, which no longer exists in the US, few are able to lift themselves out of poverty. Bootstraps don't work in a gravity well, although they are mentioned, in the narrative formula. as a key aspiration of all Americans.

Finally, the strawman is torn apart by a contrived comparison of the US — not a comparison to other wealthy developed nations, god forbid — but a comparison to a nation that is listed among the world’s most destitute. By comparing poverty in the US to poverty in a country like Sierra Leone, where social and physical horrors are common, we are told that abject poverty in the US looks like a life of luxury to an impoverished person from Sierra Leone. This is never challenged and the discussion ends in victory for the propagandist.

In using this narrative formula, the Millennium Woman implied that either state of poverty would be more acceptable than living under the rule of Socialism. The Socialist solution is to spread the misery to everyone equally, she says, which forces everyone to live like paupers in small, standardized housing units. This, also, is too depressing to challenge.

In the US, Media Monopoly news is allowed to adopt a propaganda-based definition of socialism that matches their political bias. This propaganda can no longer be challenged by a regulatory mechanism like the Fairness Doctrine, which would have exposed the audience to a rebuttal of the propaganda and the opinions that were presented as facts. Or to paraphrase Issac Asimov:

"American political life is nurtured by the false notion that Democracy means that my ignorance about Socialism is just as good as your data-rich knowledge of Socialism in the twenty-first century."

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
Lookout's picture

@Pluto's Republic

A couple of weeks ago Max and Stacy interpreted the data/graph in question in their unique manner too. 1st 15 min
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KippearmDnE

Trumpolini has been pushing the anti-socialist message too.
https://usaherald.com/trump-says-america-will-never-socialist-country/

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

Shahryar's picture

not any generation. "Generation" is non-existent, anyway. It implies that people of a certain age feel the same way. We know there are good people and jerks of all ages.

Anyway, I'm not an economist but here's my take on the wealth disparity. I remember, as a youngster, noticing the same problem, that older people had the money. But it wasn't as bad as it is now. When we visited Portland in 1989 we could have bought a house for $50,000. By the time we moved up and decided to buy, the market had "boomed" and it cost us $75,000. 1990. If you run that through an inflation calculator that's $147,000 in today's money. If houses like ours cost $147k then they'd be affordable for Xers or millennials. That's not the case, though.

We needed to refinance because I guess we're not really rich! But apparently our $75k house that would be $147k is worth $600k. Which is insane. So the credit union was happy to refinance the house. And give us money. It's truly weird.

It's not anything that we did. Somehow we accidentally got to be middle class. Real estate value is outpacing inflation and that's an understatement. And it's gotten beyond the reach of younger people. I mean, I make no more than I did in 1989, relatively, and we were cash poor then. Speculators (of all ages) have priced real estate up, up, up. 30 years later we have some money (not a whole lot but some) and it's all because we "bought" (in quotes because we'll never pay it off and even if we did there are property taxes). The "wealth" we have is really our house. The value to us of the house is that the landlord won't be raising the rent much so we won't have to move.

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no trust for Dems

According to CIRCLE’s 2018 pre-midterms poll, just 33.7% of young white people age 18–24 believed membership in a political party made their voice more powerful. Black and Latinx youth held slightly more favorable views of party membership than their white counterparts, with 40.6% of Black youth and 40.9% of Latinx youth believing that membership in a political party made their voice more powerful. Among Independents in the CIRCLE poll, only 22.7% expressed trust toward the Democratic Party, while a mere 12.9% expressed trust in the GOP, and distrust toward “party elites” is especially high among young Democrats.
...
Conventional wisdom holds that voters tend to become more “conservative” as they age and reach certain milestones such as owning a home and having children. But the oldest millennials who would be preparing to make that shift — those who may have been in high school or college during 9/11 and took an active role in electing Barack Obama in 2008 — remain solidly Democratic, according to Della Volpe. “People who are now in their later 30s and even early 40s are staying really progressive instead of going toward conservatism,” Kawashima-Ginsberg told Teen Vogue. Moreover, once-predictable patterns of homeownership, marriage, and having children are happening later in life for most young people — if they are happening at all, a trend that is expected to continue with Generation Z.
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Pluto's Republic's picture

“Monsieur, my son is 22 years old. If he had not become a Communist at 22, I would have disowned him. If he is still a Communist at 30, I will do it then.”

How old is 30 in Brainwashing Years?

Years of actively frightening your population by lying them into global murder and chaos is unrelenting "slow terrorism" in action. The authorities quietly agreed they would no longer televise film showing the ruined corpses of the defeated enemy. They learned that allowing the imagined gore and suffering to accrue in the subconscious is a much more powerful and open-ended way to control the population through fear. This insidious form of PTSD piles up in the brain, layer upon layer of misfiring synapses. This describes the state of the brains of the voters in your democracy. That is how America's isolated democracy was rigged by the US globalists.

This is how the wisdom-of-the-elders in the US was finally defeated over a span of a few decades.

Pick your voters carefully or renounce your democracy. Unless the rest of the world can shed their confidence in the rulership of the US government, all people along with many forms of life, are doomed. Our collective fate is really up to us to decide.

You must be aware that there will be no candidate on the 2020 ballot who will elevate humanity.

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato

@Pluto's Republic link

Most people know the quote as this:

If You Are Not a Liberal at 25, You Have No Heart. If You Are Not a Conservative at 35 You Have No Brain

What people don't know is that it started as this:

“He who is not a républicain at twenty compels one to doubt the generosity of his heart; but he who, after thirty, persists, compels one to doubt the soundness of his mind.”

Because people who aren't monarchists after 30 are stupid.

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Boomers I know are in HUD housing and in the queues at the food banks for free food.
I was unaware I was in a class due to date of birth.

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

@on the cusp
Hell, I didn't even mention Gen X (my generation), which appears to be the biggest suckers of them all

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@gjohnsit farmers who farmed on leased land. They could not purchase it.
No way they were a class of entitled, and as a child of these Depression born farmers, post-WWII, I do not remember more than 5 years of my life with financial "excess", for want of a better word. All it took to reduce that to zero was the illness of my husband. (Actually, if the hospital had sued for the $487,000 I owed, we could call it way less that zero.)
He, too, was born to Depression Era parents, although they were neither educated or brilliant, but they owned their farm, inherited since the Civil War. Over the century, the vast farm dwindled, due to lawsuits, illness, taxes, and my husband's windfall was 12 acres. Worth virtually nothing, except it was somewhere he could put a mobile home on and live.
I spent every last cent on him, he left me every last thing he had to me in his Will.
If that is conservative, if that is a life of selfishness, a life of entitlement, I must be in a very strange fucking class of Boomers.
And he and I did protest. And he and I farmed. And he and I spent a short, 12 year marriage giving to our neighbors.
We didn't give a shit if we had anything more after we paid the bills.
If anything, the older I get, the more I realize I am not obligated to pass along wealth to heirs I do not have, just a brother who can sell whatever I have and have a party to last him out of this world, the less I give a shit about accumulating wealth.
I have NEVER been more socialistic and radical than I am today.

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

@on the cusp

I have NEVER been more socialistic and radical than I am today.

I've always been a leftist, but over the past decade I've hardened my position (mostly by researching the origins of socialism).
My current book is '10 Days That Shook the World'.

But I think we are not in the majority.

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@gjohnsit There is some joy/honor in giving millions to Ellen to give someone $ to pay off a mortgage, but in my world, people live in such grinding poverty, nobody will extend them a loan in the first place.
When I attended my college sociology class in the '60's, "class" had very different definitions than it does today. It had to do with family status, not wealth. Or, profession.(The professional class consisted of doctors, lawyers, university professors, accountants, and pharmacists.) An example was Jackie Kennedy. She was blue blooded, accorded all high class status, but she was actually dirt ass poor during her university years. She went to all the cotillions wearing borrowed clothes, was in some equestrian program at her elite college using borrowed equestrian gear. Her rich classmates accused her of something like theft, borrowing for way, way too long sort of thing.
But even when she was a low paid photographer for a newspaper or magazine, she was the one who got instant entrance into high society.
Nowadays, class is determined strictly by wealth, and nobody cares about your ancestors, unless they passed along their wealth to you.

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

Lookout's picture

@on the cusp

True enrichment. Thanks for your story.

I have a friend, retired union carpenter, who lost everything with his wife's cancer. Then his son got busted for meth and his world really went to hell. Son is finally out of prison but facing a lifetime of parole and probation hell. We torture our youth in many ways.

I hope you have a wonderful experience in Morocco and Scotland! West Scotland is on our bucket list. Can't recommend Orkney enough....power place!

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

@Lookout @Lookout would be put into savings that would go entirely to a nursing home in the future. Or, I can spend on me, to see the world I was unable to explore in my youth, due to illness.
Well, I am not sick now.
No nursing home can expect my ticket to Uzbekistan or Scotland!

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

Lookout's picture

@on the cusp

enjoy the world and explore what you can while you can. As a friend of mine says, "Time is ticking".

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

@Lookout instilled in me.
My socialists tendencies are also what they instilled in me.
I hope to go to Normandy in 2021 to Utah Beach, to just go where my Dad got his damn innards blown away.
He asked me to go when I could.
I did see the hospital in London where he was kept for 18 months.
I do despise the Red Cross. Seems they gave the officers expensive cigarettes, the privates cheap something or other, if anything.

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

WaterLily's picture

You're going to love it. It blew my mind.

I'm an X-er with no heirs. We'll "own" our house soon, which I suppose is an accomplishment, but I haven't had a job that offers a 401k for more than 15 years, so I have very little in "retirement" savings and have had no opportunity to build wealth in that way. The costs of daily living are such that discretionary dollars are few. I have health insurance but we all know what *that's* worth. I can't afford to use it.

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't worried about the future. What if I get Alzheimer's and my partner is gone? What if I can't live independently anymore and have no kids to help? What money will I have to pay for care? ('Cause I won't have any, that's for sure).

[Edit: was supposed to be a response to OTC].

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mimi's picture

@on the cusp @on the cusp
title that class has never been more important and wondered about the generational wealth differences he talked about in the essay. I tried to figure out to which class people I am close to in real life belong to and how their wealth relates to their place within their family's generational timelines.

It's too cumbersome to write about this in detail, but my conclusion is that the more important issue is HOW you got the money you either have (to pay for your living and survival), or you don't have. This seems to me not be dependent on your age or generation you belong to.

It is between those parents, who were able to pass inheritance in money/land/houses to you versus those parents, who didn't have something to give as inheritance, neither money, nor land or houses.

If you inherit land or house, you may not be richer, but safer to secure shelter for yourself, independent from class, educational level and your oqn job security.

May be it's more like war is the more important these days,, they generate poverty struck populations and filthy rich CEO and CFO profiting from war related processes making money in banking and real estate and weapon technologies.

Peasants, who owned their land during wwII were the richest folks. They were disliked by those, who could not secure their survival in the Weimar Republic, in Nazi Germany or wwII and beyond. They - middle class folks, low-level civil servants - not necessarily the lower working class of craftsmen (ie assumed to be socialists) - had to beg less educated farmers for food and shelter to sleep on their farms, while fleeing by foot from the terror of bombs and tankers invading their neighborhoods. This was true for teenage youngsters as well as the elderly. And some farmers showed their true colors.

I think it's wars that destroy land and houses and with it the wealth of the owners. Wars generate homeless poverty stricken migrants, internally and across borders.

Once everybody is levelled into poverty and land is cheap and lots of work to be found to rebuild after wars, you can generate new wealth by working hard, buying land and houses cheap, independent of what you were before educational wise or class wise.

It's nothing new, wars make the money that makes the world go around.

[video:https://youtu.be/6rechCN3FAk]
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mimi's picture

@mimi
I begged God in my dreams to stop those damned wars, because they cause so much pain. God answered me: Heh, girl, what do you think is more painful, me not being able to stop the wars, or me not be able to stop the world from turning around.
Now I have a pity with God. Who can he blame for the darn world turning around and around?

Poor lordy, if you haven't done this shit, who has?

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@on the cusp who are busy committing suicide so our owners can get out of paying their SS and Medicare or God forbid their unemployment since their jobs were lost long ago. Oops, I forgot, one only "gets" that for a short time so most of them really aren't collecting that little bennie anymore. Perhaps that will make some of the generational warriors happy, eh? Most of the suicides seem to be middle aged white males as well so there's even a nice bit of ID politics for the social justice warriors. Yippee! Let's blame each other while the bankers celebrate our demise at their latest international gala. If we're really good they'll let us all watch them on the boob tube so we can admire their private jets, their haute couture, and all that wonderful jewelry they'll parade before us for our viewing pleasure.

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Only a fool lets someone else tell him who his enemy is. Assata Shakur

@on the cusp plus in an hour from now I'm on my way to the food bank and there are people of all ages in the usual line.

I also have a friend a few years younger than me that gets a thousand dollars a week from a trust fund set up by his late father. That thousand looks a lot bigger when you consider he doesn't even know hnow much his rent is because it is always covered by the 'trust', but if he found a house he wanted he could have it but he doesn't want the responsibility of a house.

He also got over medicated last year and drove head on into an oncoming car, fortunately no serious injuries occurred but as far as the legal problems from that he used his usual attorney and connected him directly to dealing with his trustee. So he doesn't know the cost of that either, and the expensive Chrysler he totaled got delivered to his apartment (he can't drive at that time) an even nicer Chrysler with even more bells and whistles that the last one.

There are many more examples but it's easy for people to point out that he once had a commercial fishing boat he and his wife lived on four months of the year along the west coast of Washington, British Columbia and around Alaska, making lots of money for a lot of years until he was badly injured in a boating accident.
So he worked for that money but missing from the story is that not everyone can buy a commercial fishing boat and license and go make big bucks, all of that was possible because of an inheritance and his father's foresight to set up the will to where he couldn't blow it all.
He is one of many people, from young to old,that I've known that are rich solely because of an inheritance that gave them the ability to do anything, or nothing.

It is all about 'Class', not age, but the elite would certainly like to make that the argument that could divide their opposition into internal squabbles that saps away any grassroots power that was possible.

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edg's picture

Of course Baby Boomer wealth has increased. The second chart explains it quite well. As Boomer parents died off, Boomers inherited their wealth. The same thing will happen with succeeding generations as Boomers die off. As they are starting to do already. This process shouldn't be a mystery to anyone or be considered some kind of evil machination by Baby Boomers.

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@edg Did much better than boomers. And if boomers have money, it is because they inherited all or most of it.

I have got lots of boomer friends that are dirt poor. One has a social security check of $500 a month and has to keep working and will till the day she dies. And she worked all her life. If anyone needs Yang's universal basic income, she does. He advocates adding it to social security by the way.

And I think this chart is quite misleading. The billionaires and the one per cent are most likely nearly all boomers and the skew the whole chart.

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Pluto's Republic's picture

@davidgmillsatty

The conclusions of the chart are manipulated. The chart is an historical anomaly caused by a profound change in the tax laws in the 1970s and 1980s that forever changed this nation's demographics. Those changes marked the death knell of the middle class, who over a period of three decades, were marched off a cliff.

The distortion in the chart is the intersection between the average age of the extremely wealthy and the age and size of the baby boomer generation You will never see another demographic layout like this one. It is a freak. You can only kill the middle class once.

What do you think this chart will look like in twenty years? Wealth will no longer intersect with a generation. As the nation's wealth matriculates upwardly into a concentrated mass of family foundations, it will disappear on the demographic chart. Wealth across all generations will normalize into gentle slopes. The concentrated wealth and windfalls of the few will be absorbed and hidden inside the nation's financial sector.

As long as we maintain our current void in the redistribution of wealth, charts like this will look much like they did in the pre-industrial era. On the ground, the masses of people will increasing be seen as disposable, and swiftly so, as we jump to automation. Depopulation is the ace in the hole that comforts the Elite when concerns about global warming crop up.

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
polkageist's picture

@Pluto's Republic
I just spent an hour writing a long-winded piece that you caused me to junk because yours is succinctly right on the money. Thanks Pluto.

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-Greed is not a virtue.
-Socialism: the radical idea of sharing.
-Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.
John F. Kennedy, In a speech at the White House, 1962

Pluto's Republic's picture

@polkageist

I am sorry to hear you scrapped your comment (although I delete more than I post, myself). I always wish you posted more often.

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato

@davidgmillsatty
because it's always been either UBI or Social Security.

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On to Biden since 1973

@doh1304 tweaked his UBI proposal in recent months, but his website states that UBI would "stack" on SS benefits, so no choosing. It's still either/or wrt welfare-type benefits.

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@wokkamile
UBI stacks with SS but not with SSDI. I worked for 30 years, never making more than $48k. Now that I have Parkinson's I get $1350 a month, so no UBI for me.

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On to Biden since 1973

@doh1304 Please take good care of yourself, and eliminate as much stress as you can.

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

janis b's picture

but I am convinced that it is and has been responsible for most of humanity’s suffering.

[video:https://youtu.be/v0nmHymgM7Y]

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mimi's picture

@janis b
...is the lord ready for me ?

I am surrounded by people, who are ready... and are waiting. While sitting on the bus station to wait for the bus to bring them there, do they really want it darker?

Wouldn't it be nice we could still hope they want it warmer and lighter?

As long as the bus doesn't come and bring them there, can we still give them a smile?

Cohen was such a great poet and you are a great human being to have chosen this song for exactly this thread and moment. It is so fitting that it dropped my jaws.

Thank you, janis b.

To distract all of you from the darkness, I wanted to tell you about 'sardines', ie

"Sardine" and "pilchard" are common names used to refer to various small, oily forage fish in the herring family Clupeidae. ... One criterion suggests fish shorter in length than 15 cm (6 in) are sardines, and larger fish are pilchards

Did you know that a couple of thousand Italians feel like they are 'packed like sardines in a box'?

'Sardines' against Salvini: Italy's fight against the far right -Grassroots protests have brought tens of thousands of people on to the streets of Rome

What is remarable imo that the demonstrators carried no flags with them, just cute sardine posters and that alone made me smile.

Viva la Sardinas!
Smile

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Lookout's picture

@mimi

...and recently learned it. Your comment brought it to mind...

I am surrounded by people, who are ready... and are waiting. While sitting on the bus station to wait for the bus to bring them there, do they really want it darker?

Wouldn't it be nice we could still hope they want it warmer and lighter?

As long as the bus doesn't come and bring them there, can we still give them a smile?

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfwGkplB_sY]

So "Hello in there!"

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

mimi's picture

@Lookout
What can I say? The images and lyrics and sounds are exactly what I imagined in my mind when posting.
From the lyrics:

Me and Loretta, we don't talk much more,
She sits and stares through the back door screen.
And all the news just repeats itself
Like some forgotten dream that we've both seen.
...
So if you're walking down the street sometime
And spot some hollow ancient eyes,
Please don't just pass 'em by and stare
As if you didn't care, say, "Hello in there, hello."

The gardener/handyman/care-taker for my sister told us today he saw some ancient eyes staring into something nothing. He drove by an apartment building's window, where an old lady pulled apart the curtains and looked out into nowhere. He couldn't say 'Hello, in there', but he waved from his car to her. And she responded with a smile. It made him happy.

Like your comment makes me happy. Thanks. Smile

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janis b's picture

@mimi

I enjoy them.

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mimi's picture

@janis b @JtC
Smile

PS, can you convince JtC to tell us the story why the only textual smiley in his list, ie Mamba never shows as an image smiley? I happen to remember it did show up, once upon the time in the very early days, but then the image for that mamba thingy was hidden behind closed doors and sent into nowhere. I have my suspicions why that may have been dumped, but it would be upon JtC to explain it.

It's the holiday season, so I forgive JtC to say nothing.
Peace.

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janis b's picture

@mimi

I don't use the graphic smileys, so I don't have any idea. If whatever the image is, and is not offensive you can find it online and copy and paste it into your comment.

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"Born to be Scorned"(sorry to reference a song from the '60's)
1952 birth year marked me as "a type", and a member of a "class" with which I bear no resemblance, other than year of birth.

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

janis b's picture

come to fruition.

A "pension" for children is being touted as one way to address child poverty in New Zealand – and there's a suggestion it could be funded by means-testing superannuation.

Data released this week by Children's Commissioner Andrew Becroft showed 17 per cent of New Zealand children now live in households existing on less than 50 per cent of the median household income.

Almost 150,000 children have to regularly go without six or more essentials, such as decent shoes, enough food, the ability to see a doctor or pay electricity or gas bills on time.

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As baby boomers die off, where do you think their wealth will go? Maybe their children.

I don't think many of the boomer aged correspondents at this site fit the boomer stereotype.

Surely you will concede we had the preponderance of the best music.

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@FuturePassed Unfortunately, where all wealth goes, to the 1%. Most likely by economic crisis. An illness, family problems, something...some opportunity to divert that wealth before it can be transferred to the next generation.

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Daenerys's picture

@Snode from my parents. My mom owns the farm, but because of Medicaid Reconciliation (or whatever it's called) it will go to the county since my dad is in a nursing home. It's not their fault or mine. How the hell do you plan four years ahead for an accident?! I might get the lawn mower, if I can grab it before the county does.

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This shit is bananas.

@Daenerys The government is big on responsibility of (some) citizens to pay their fair share. For the government to do the same for it's citizens.....blasphemy! When the gov. went to 5 year look back (sometimes beyond) it became legalized confiscation. That's why I laugh when someone in the 99% say they own something. We just rent our lives from the state.

Meanwhile, 99% of the major corporations in the U.S. pay little or no taxes.

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@Daenerys

had to pay to bury my folks and siblings
not too great a price to repay
having shared a slice of life

think the essay misses the point
it takes a lifetime to amass a thin veneer
of 'wealth' long hard work
takes only one hospital visit to
make it magically disappear

not about class or the transitions
between one gen and the next
divisions will always exist
mostly as a shield

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snoopydawg's picture

@Daenerys

PM on the cusp and see what you can do to protect the farm. This is one more thing we can thank Clinton for doing.

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

Daenerys's picture

@snoopydawg I just went back into my PMs and reread the conversation. Not sure how different it is between TX and MN; I still need to research things. Of course they count on people not fighting things.

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This shit is bananas.

snoopydawg's picture

@Daenerys

I'd start there. If they can't help they might be able to refer you to someone who can. Or maybe your mum can put the house in your name. Here's some other advice.

https://www.elderlawanswers.com/protecting-your-house-from-medicaid-esta...

It's the only program that the government does that makes people return the money that they spent on us. I just read about this but now the link is dead. Welcome to Orwell's reality.

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Daenerys's picture

@snoopydawg that all assumes the property gets transferred or put into a trust before the person goes into the nursing home. Since my dad is already in a home and my mom still lives here I'm not sure what else can be done, but IANAL. We're hoping to move some time next year anyway.

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This shit is bananas.

Creosote.'s picture

@snoopydawg
Neither of us are (now) on Medicaid, but I have intense feelings about my property and trees (my closest family), and want to do everything I can to preserve them and somehow convey them to someone feeling the same respect. The website holding your link looks valuable too.

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Graphing the entire generation is misleading as disparities amongst given generations are larger than they used to be and getting larger.

Secondly there is a difference between economic lefty and cultural lefty. While we've gained lots with issues, regarding equal rights based on sexual orientation or race for instance, things have regressed economically. And the pivot to the right economically began just as the boomers were coming of age. Love beads were replaced with coke spoons and gratuitous displays of wealth. Think Trump at 32 years old.

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The protests and defiance of the 60's scared the 1%. Seeing the power ordinary people could muster to change the course of politics, against the interests of the 1%, put in motion all the actions that brought us to today. It was all out war on the American worker. American labor was the enemy of business. Machines, foreigners, all preferable to those who could blunt businesses blind ambition at the ballot box. Vote for who you want, fight about politics, it won't matter. Things will always go the way the 1% want.

The 70's were the start of the ineffective democrat, at least for the average citizen. It's when both factions of the Capitalist Party were born, agreeing on nothing except their common enemy was the left.

I imagine when the last boomer dies they will be remembered as the selfish, dirty hippies that ultimately were the cause of all the problems future generations will face. It's always the victorious that write history.

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and is just another of the deliberate attempts to separate the people into factions. Ie, hate the boomers because they are hoarding the money.

How would that first chart look if the members of the top 1% economic class were removed?

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to fight amongst ourselves. As with all such internecine battles, we lose, they win. It just so happens that the Boomers are the last generation to clearly remember what everyday life was like before the 1980s. We knew life before trickle-down economics, the destruction of unions and the deregulative onrush of mergers, acquisitions and takeovers. We were semi-aware of the elimination of the Sherman Antitrust Act, the consequences of which most of us couldn't imagine. We remember Clinton's WTO/GATT/NAFTA obsession, his shocking prison/ welfare reforms, the 1996 Telecomm Act and the repeal of Glass-Steagall. Through it all, we watched the world change before our very eyes and uncomfortably adjusted our little lives to that colder more impersonal reality not of our own making. We watched local main street businesses wither and disappear while suburban chain stores and shopping centers sprouted up selling us goods created half-way around the world and sold via transnational corporations headquartered far away. As unions folded, some of us, and most of our children, got to know minimum wage part-time work sans benefits. Some of us saw our pensions disappear amid the merger mania. We who had enjoyed affordable college saw our younger relatives struggling with massive student debt and increasingly scarce (outsourced) jobs. Many of us, along with our children and our children's children, came to terms with very uncertain futures. Those of us who managed to learn highly skilled or professional jobs and buy houses in the 1980s found a degree of financial security while watching society fray and collapse around us.

That bleak world is the only one that Millennials and Gen Z have ever known. Gen X grew up during this painful transition and reacted with very appropriate alienation and rebellion. Boomers are the last generation to clearly remember life before the momentous Reagan-Bush-Clinton coup. If the oligarchy can silence or belittle the Boomers, our children and grandchildren might think the present world is how it always was. "OK Boomer" could be a clever way to render us, and our memories, invisible so that young people will never know that it does not have to be this way.

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Lurking in the wings is Hillary, like some terrifying bat hanging by her feet in a cavern below the DNC. A bat with theropod instincts. -- Fred Reed https://tinyurl.com/vgvuhcl

travelerxxx's picture

@laurel

Wow! Another comment that could be an essay on its own!

Thanks, laurel.

I've previously spun a yarn here about how, growing up in the 50s and 60s, I played in the yard of the doctor, who lived next door to the bulldozer operator, who lived next to the shoe salesman. My neighbor's grandfather, who built (and paid off) a brand new home, was a milkman who used to sell us kids popsicles from his milk truck.

When I tell that to millennials or even Xers, they think I've lost my mind and am making it all up. But, I'm not making it up. That was what America was like growing up.

Even more mind boggling is that our nearly all-white Baptist church used to swap choirs periodically with the nearly all-black AME church. Ours probably lulled the poor AME congregation to sleep, but still... And this was in Kansas!

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@travelerxxx , it's precisely these memories that need to be shared and discussed with younger people. My neighborhood was like yours, and no one thought anything of it. Now what we had is quaint and charming as all get-out. But that was back in the day of local business owners, not corporate CEOs living in gated McMansion communities. I've tried, to my limited ability, to connect our lived experience with what was actually being done in the governance of this country, and it's all explainable; it makes sense. It's cause and effect, not chance. I don't think they intended to harm us to this extent; I think they had their own goals in mind and an ideology or two to guide them, and they didn't fully understand (or care) that millions of people, even generations to come, would be so profoundly affected by what they were doing.

So there's that. But in the meantime, while we're still sentient and in possession of our memories, we need to revivify the pre-coup world, flesh it out and make it real for those who never lived it. There are so many ways to do this. It can be as simple as sharing on social media. But it would also make a terrific documentary or written essays and photo essays, novels, films, etc.

And then there are conclusions to be drawn. We can learn a lot about community, healthy vs. unhealthy populations, democratic governance, accountability, rules that must not be broken and new rules that need to be written.

And now, of course, the perps who benefited have hardened into something like a corporate state, deep state, oligarchic elite, and it looks like they're not going to relinquish their power without some kind of fight. Chris Hedges is saying we need to take to the streets.

But without a living memory of what is possible, it's going to be harder to envision our goals and steer a revolution in the right direction. So as Boomers, let's share while we can.

BTW, Buster Keaton is one of my favorite comic actors and Sherlock Jr. is one of my favorite films.

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Lurking in the wings is Hillary, like some terrifying bat hanging by her feet in a cavern below the DNC. A bat with theropod instincts. -- Fred Reed https://tinyurl.com/vgvuhcl

@laurel and conveys my opinion so well.

Thanks.

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@exindy . The world needs to hear from you. We will not go quietly into that good night!

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Lurking in the wings is Hillary, like some terrifying bat hanging by her feet in a cavern below the DNC. A bat with theropod instincts. -- Fred Reed https://tinyurl.com/vgvuhcl

lotlizard's picture

@laurel  
so nothing is passed down between flesh-and-blood people face to face.

“OK Boomer” = don’t listen to any of the older folks you actually know in real life, believe voices and images that come over the media.

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@lotlizard . There seem to be some truly diabolical minds working on the population control aspect of their coup. They try to manage our very consciousness. That's the whole point of smearing the best among us and silencing the elders. Well, we won't let 'em.

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Lurking in the wings is Hillary, like some terrifying bat hanging by her feet in a cavern below the DNC. A bat with theropod instincts. -- Fred Reed https://tinyurl.com/vgvuhcl

snoopydawg's picture

@laurel

Boomers are the last generation to clearly remember life before the momentous Reagan-Bush-Clinton coup.

Whenever the PTB wants to make changes to our lives they have been very patient going about it. They don't make changes that go in effect right away and risk the wrath of the current generation. Oh no. They make changes that go into effect years down the road. Look at the things Clinton did. Glass steagal for one didn't hurt anyone right away, but it ended up crashing the global economy a decade later. Same with a lot of the other things he passed. It wasn't until Obama became president that I saw the damage his presidency caused.

We are seeing things much quicker from Obama's tenure because things didn't really recover from the damage Clinton's legislation wrought. The ByeDone bankruptcy bill is affecting young people now because they can't discharge their student loans that were reconstructed during Obama's tenure. Blackrock bought lots of the empty houses after the crash after Obama asked them to get them off the market and they did. Then they raised rents through the roof. Now with high student loan debt, high cost of housing and rents and low paying jobs...well the younger generation has every reason to be pissed off!

When Ryan wanted to make changes to SS he wasn't aiming for this generation. He said that his grandparents would kill him if he did. But they would have affected the generations coming up. Oh yes they have been very patient undoing the new deal passed by FDR.

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

of pulling the wool over our eyes, @snoopydawg . We, as ordinary citizens, were not equipped to understand the ramifications of their cancelled old laws and the proposed new laws. But our elected representatives and "media" should have been able to catch what was happening and both let us know and also draw the line. And that is the genius of the 1996 Telecom Act which placed the entire mass media system into the hands of a few corporate elite. That was their big win. Reagan sold us out, but Clinton really sold us out with GATT, NAFTA, and the 1996 Telecom Act. That cannot ever be forgiven.

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Lurking in the wings is Hillary, like some terrifying bat hanging by her feet in a cavern below the DNC. A bat with theropod instincts. -- Fred Reed https://tinyurl.com/vgvuhcl

is the disparity amongst the any given generation. Widespread stagnant and declining wages began when the middle cohort of boomers were coming of age. Those who were employed and retained their jobs, did ok, those who came of age during times of extremely high unemployment, didn't do as well.

Another factor is inherited wealth, even from industrial workers. The greatest generation and silent generation did well in the way of real estate, boomer children who had the luck to have grown up in coastal areas with high appreciation in real estate did well. Others from declining rustbelt areas got nothing. Also the high incomes of greatest/silent/boomer industrial workers facilitated investment via the invention of the IRA and 401K, and they had the disposable income to invest in those instruments.

Millenials and those that followed have experienced the lack of jobs that pay to a greater degree. Much fewer have made it to middle income, the wealth the boomers inherited is maybe gone.

GM used to be the largest employer, now it's Walmart. The auto assembly line was not a cush job, it was hard, monotonous, and physically demanding, not so different from Walmart, the difference is that it paid for a middle class life.

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