…And then they mostly couldn’t be bothered to actually get college degrees despite how cheap they were, yet still ended up with good careers capable of supporting entire households with only one person working anyway.
Despite his cynicism, even Bernie manages to understate the problem here!
Just throwing out there, this was one generation out of however many to the dawn of time that was able to do this. And they did it on the backs of the hundreds of thousands of people that fought, starved and died to get unions established. For the vast majority of history, if you could work you worked man, woman & child because if you didn’t your family starved. Then people fought for generations to get unions established and they finally did it and one single generation got the advantages of it before the next generation decided they didn’t need no stinking unions as they were working white collar jobs and here we are. We’re not standing together so we’re falling together.
To be fair, the reason every job nowadays requires a college degree is because so many people went to college. Before that, the boomers were coasting on with barely a high school degree but they tought that by pushing their kids to get college degrees, they can help them achieve more wealth (and by extension, themselves). This combined with the fact that they basically directly contributed to the erosion of unions (it was a very common thing that an employer/union leader paid off by a company offered boomers a deal where they get a higher pension but it would not apply to anyone born after 2000 or something; of course they took those deals because they are the “me me me generation”, who has the foresight of a hampster) and then they are deliberately oblivious to the fact that young people can’t achieve anything career wise because they don’t have strong unions backing them up. No unions, no better pay, no better working conditions, no guarantied good deal on pension and insurance, etc etc.
As a side note, in the US at least there is a reason many advise people to just learn a trade instead of getting a college degree. Trades are in high demand, has been for a good while and probably will be for decades.
You know what else changed? On-the-job training is now practically unheard of. The kind where the company invests in employees and their development.
Image Transcription: Twitter Post
Bernie Sanders, @BernieSanders
The Boomer generation needed just 306 hours of minimum wage work to pay for four years of public college. Millennials need 4,459.
The economy today is rigged against working people and young people. This is what we are going to change.
^I’m a human volunteer transcribing posts in a format compatible with screen readers, for blind and visually impaired users!^
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Talked to a (old) boomer just yesterday during a BBQ. Everything from climate change denial to citing the Bible to … I don’t kinow, justify his hate of “weirdos” like gay and trans people.
But he did admit that young people have it harder than him and that he would not be young in our current time.
I’ve been looking for work since losing my job in March. And all these lead-addled antiques keep saying, “nobody wants to work anymore.” These people couldn’t be any less attached to reality.
I can promise you this: for every boomer who says something like that, there’s another boomer who thinks that one is a douche.
Finances aren’t the only difficulty in life. It’s not that simple and reducing down to just the financial aspect of life, while that aspect is important, is oversimplifying things. Don’t forget there were tons of poor boomers too. Only about 1/3rd ever saw a pension. Plus, try telling gay boomers, POC, women, people with mental and emotional issues, etc that they had it easier. They weren’t all middle class straight white men, and treating them as one homogenous group is disingenuous.
Plus, try telling gay boomers, POC, women, people with mental and emotional issues, etc that they had it easier.
Doesn’t making necessities unaffordable affect all working class populations?
I get what you’re saying, and agree in part, but depending on where you are in the US, a lot of the progress has really only been superficial - and over the same time working class purchasing power decreased and social safety nets decreased.
Economics is an easy point of intersectionality for the working class, because it hurts us all. We can unite around that instead of dividing ourselves from it. It even hits the boomers, and I think we’re all aware that many of them are already skating on thin ice in retirement.
There are no ‘easy times’ for some groups of people (and they deserve our utmost empathy) but I can’t help but see it like this: Throw in a minority identity, or a neurodivergency, or anything else that already makes life hard on top of this late stage capitalist economy, and 2020s are right out of a dystopian novel. At least in my opinion.
I’m (barely) in the boomer generation, and I have a daughter who is 25, so I see the situation she has compared to what I had. I also have boomer employees and coworkers with younger kids. The cost of buying a house and paying for education is for sure a lot higher now compared to wages, and those are big quality of life factors.
One thing I rarely see mentioned in these discussions is the availability of a safety net. My daughter has had to have a fair amount of help from us, as have most of her peers from their parents, and that sucks, but the fact of the matter is that it’s more of an option today than when I was young. Most of my friends have paid 100% of their kids’ education, and many if not most have helped with housing in one way or another. That was less viable when I was young. I was lucky that my parents paid for my education, but that wasn’t true for most of my peers at the time. When I left the house, it was made clear that there’s no going back.
I’m in no way trying to say we had it hard or harder, just mentioning that there are a lot of factors that go into the situation.
Oh, one other thing: I really believe that the current high cost of education is at least in part intended by older conservatives. Today’s conservative agenda relies on people voting against their own interests (it’s amazing that poor Midwestern farmers largely support tax cuts for the wealthy - it’s crazy). Making education something only wealthier people can afford and creating a giant media franchise that looks like news but is really conservative propaganda are two approaches to furthering that goal. We have to fix it, but there’s a bunch of people who actively don’t want to fix it because they’re happy with the situation.
Bernie sanders screaming into the wind yet again.
Bernie i love ya but nobody is gonna do the things you say.
They are way too reasonable.
Isn’t that kind of defeatist?
I don’t really have a horse in this race since I am not from the US.
It’s more cynicism than defeatism. People from the United States have pushed for these kinds of common sense reforms for our entire lives and we still have nothing to show for it.
First you say
Isn’t that kind of defeatist?
Then,
I don’t really have a horse in this race since I am not from the US.
So, that’s the thing: after you have lived here long enough and seen all this shit happen, it’s much easier to have a cynical outlook on the whole situation.
If you live in an area of the world where you feel as if you can actually improve things, I can kind of understand why you might be surprised.
But, the US is kind of fucked.
I do understand having a cynical outlook on things. That is how I look at the state of policing in the US.
And in my part of the world there are similar defeatist opinions, but through engagement with the community at large we (the people) are slowly able to change things for the better.
Sometimes it feels like it’s one step forward but two steps back. That just means I’ll pick up speed and march on faster.
Lol i dont know what you mean really.
He means basically you are shitting on the people actually trying to change things for the better. Your basic claim is that for some unknown reasons nothing can ever change. This is not the only way things can be, this is not the way things have always been. Change is possible.
If yall think bernie sanders is going to make real change, y’all weren’t paying attention to the 2020 presidential race. Im oversimplifyng but Bernie had overwhelming support for Democratic Presidential nomination and the DNC went with Biden. This and a career long history of being overlooked. I would vote for bernie and his policies if ever made it anywhere but into memes.
Your basic claim is that for some unknown reasons nothing can ever change.
No. My claim that the US governemnt is not designed to bring about useful and rapid change. Prove me wrong.
The Democratic Party is a lot more moderate than you think. I voted for Bernie, he lost.
Bernie is a shining example of progressive ideals that has shifted the landscape. But he never going to get the support of the majority of Democrats.
Bernie is a shining example of progressive ideals that has shifted the landscape. But he never going to get the support of the majority of Democrats.
Lol my student loans got shifted alright.
Statements like these reaffirm my political stances. This system is working as intended and its miserable af. Lol
This is why i am an anarchist.
You know Biden is pushing for debt relief right? That’s Bernie shifting the landscape. Shift it enough, and you’ll get someone like Bernie.
Unless you want to go back to '90s Republican-lite Democrats.
Thanks for clarifying much better than I would be able to :) this is exactly what I meant and also the reason I added I’m not from the US, as not to step on anyone’s toes.
Change is definitely possible. It has been happening for as long as I have been following American politics. Though the change has been (in my opinion) mostly in favour of rich old people. This should only strengthen our resolve to change things for the better.
Reasonable?
As someone who lives in a country where Bernie’s political view would be considered far more right than left, yes. Reasonable.
Imagine a politician with a good grasp of reality and actually wanting to improve the conditions for the people. Being right about all contentious issues for the past 3-4 decades… Then imagine instead electing an absolute narcissist moron who I would entrust with a single thing.
I don’t have to imagine unfortunately
That is what we are going to change
Then do it! I feel like I’ve heard this for so long, from all the parties, and just nothing gets done.
Do you realize who tweeted that? Because I feel like asking Bernie Sanders to just “do it” is very unfair. He’s been fucking trying for the past decade.
I used to like Bernie , I think he talks a good game to get people in but can be counted on to take a dive.
Take a dive, as in concede after losing the primary and supporting the Democratic nominee? That’s exactly what he said he would do all along. It’s a requirement to run as a Democrat in the primary and Bernie is a man of his word.
I’ll agree he is trying, but it’s so little, so slow, the whole legislature sucks at making progress.
Yeah, but again that’s not on Bernie. If we had more Bernies things would be different, but he’s literally trying to roll that rock up the mountain like goddamn Sisyphus by himself.
Idk. I just feel like your comment is ungrateful for his efforts. He’s an old man who deserves a rest from all this futility, but I get the feeling that he won’t stop trying to effect change until he dies or is too physically/mentally infirm to continue.
Can we keep the timestamp in when cropping a post from another website?
7:29 AM · Apr 24, 2019 for the record.
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Incredible. But what actually did happen to cause the wealth gap to suddenly and rapidly start to widen?
Probably something related to the bretton woods conference. That is the only major economic event that took place around that time that I can think of.
Edit: I meant the bretton woods system being dissolved. The coference happened much earlier sometime in the 1940s.
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I would love that! Can someone skilled in graphics software do it?
Sorry, Bernie’s full of crap. He’s deliberately twisting facts to misinform. He’s using today’s highest minimum wage to calculate paying tuition at levels of 50 years ago, and trying to imply that people only needed to work 306 hours THEN to pay for college tuition THEN. That’s just not true.
When I was working during high school / college, minimum wage was $1.50 / hr. That works out to $459 for 4 years of college education. Tuition at public institutions in the mid '70’s was $1210 / year nces.ed.gov That’s $4840 for 4 years at a time when my comfortably middle-class father was earning ~ $25 K / year. It was cheaper, but not by as much as Bernie claims.
Also, public colleges have always been subsidized by the state. You’d also need to look at the level of subsidy between then and now and whether we’re choosing to subsidize less.
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Fyi A full time job is 2080 hrs a year (40hrs/wk x 52 weeks).
Just use 2000 hours. It makes the math easier, plus anybody who doesn’t get (at least!) two weeks of vacation with their full-time job is a chump who needs to unionize anyway.
Vacation, stat holidays, sick days, we can keep adding it all. I’m going to stick to 2080.
The nice thing about assuming 2000 hours is that you can easily convert between annual salary and hourly wage by multiplying or dividing by 2 and moving the decimal point (e.g. $20/hour = $40k/year). But hey, if you’d rather do the math to come up with $40K/year = $19.23/hour or $20/hour = $41,600/year, more power to you, I guess.
Not hard to pull off if the economy gets better
Keep kicking at that football, Charlie
This is very smart of him to use generational terminology to engage with young voters. He’s looking at trends on social media. Maybe it will work for him. His main obstacle is that most democrats are moderate and don’t have a problem voting republican if they think the democrat is too far to the left. Maybe engaging with young voters in this way can help him get over that obstacle.
The Federal Reserve has more power to control inflation than the president ever did. Presidents can’t control supply and demand, nor can they control how much Amazon, Uber or Walmart pay their workers. Why do so many people believe that the US president is able to raise or lower prices of commodities, homes or college on a whim?
The president appoints multiple people on the board of the fed. But that’s about it. More to your point neither the fed or the president has any control left on the main causes of inflation. Principal of which is corporate greed. Every major market in the US is an unnatural monopoly due to the fact we stopped busting monopoly’s. Corporate greed would not be an inflationary cause but since there is so little competition in markets they can conspire without communication. Neither the president or the fed have any levers in which to do anything about this realistically since half our legislation is wholly owned by those same companies that hold control over these markets.
Companies very literally trained judges through continued learning requirements to not fight monopolies. The only bar for a merger today is a single question “Will prices go down” companies lie saying “yes” then it gets approved and there is no recourse or follow up.
They further make fallacious claims like “Monopolies don’t exist without government!” Which is a total farce perpetuated by the same groups. It’s meant to have people vote against their interests. Monopolies are an inevitable consequence of capitalism. It must divide at a certain point or stagnate.
I’m confused… Did someone say the president controls this stuff? I don’t see that in the original post.
It’s not minimum wage’s fault, it’s the government guaranteeing student loans. Tuition skyrocketed since then and has been out of control since.
Then with so many people being told “You have to go to college so you don’t become a garbageman!” the requirements for most jobs increased as well. Manufacturing in pharma, for instance, I could take a kid out of middle school and teach him the job in an hour. Get fresh grads from college for a bachelor’s degree and they still need an hour of teaching. But now the Bachelors is required for some reason.
Ironically, garbage man pays pretty decent for some minimal manual labor.
Except that’s not the case. The GI bill alone (passed in 1944) put millions people through college who otherwise would not have had the opportunity to do so and did so for decades and the price didn’t skyrocket. Once deregulation happened the prices began to skyrocket.
Student loans were guaranteed way back in boomer days too. So that would be a non-difference.
Sallie Mae wasn’t even a thing until 1973. Literally not boomers LOL. Federal student loans were very uncommon back before the 90s even and applied to only a few different areas, not everything. It is incredibly clear that something happened in the early 2000s that caused the current fiasco, with both tuition and debt skyrocketing.
1980s is when the trend starts – https://www.bestcolleges.com/research/college-costs-over-time/
1980s, you say? Must be a total coincidence…
It’s always good to focus on buying power. I bet you would get similarly ridiculous numbers when valuing food or housing in some normalized work hours (doesn’t have to be minimum wage, could be median income too).
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Dumbest take of the year.
Typical troll.
I think the only solution to this problem is subsidies.
Subsidies knowledge works well around the world.
I think subsidies got us here in the first place. When the government pays for stuff it drives prices up.
Yeah that works best when they’re combined with regulation of industry.
Depends what you subsidize, if you subsidize the learning, the work, the tools, etc. You’ll also have a lot of young people already committed, having bought their own tools or paid for much of their education etc already, who will feel that they’ve lost their advantage in the job market due to the subsidy, and others who need it who may not qualify, who will be in a major pickle. At this stage at least, there’s no one size fits all policy
