Young people are TIRED!
Young people are TIRED.
They’re tired of growing up with forever wars, with no healthcare, with crumbling infrastructure. Young people have every right to demand better from their leaders. It’s their job to. pic.twitter.com/aCqrVLZESi
— Rep. Jamaal Bowman Ed.D. (@JamaalBowmanNY) May 3, 2024
Just stop it. Joe Biden ended the Afghanistan war and cut American drone strikes nearly to zero. The US is not currently fighting any major wars and in 2022, for the first time in decades, reported no civilian deaths due to US combat.
Health insurance coverage has steadily increased among the young for the past decade:
And infrastructure is not "crumbling" by any stretch of rhetoric. Even the always dour American Society of Civil Engineers says as much: its most recent report gives US infrastructure its highest grade in more than a quarter of a century.¹ Spending on infrastructure has increased by a quarter since 2000:
There is a relentless drumbeat of claims on both sides of the aisle that America is falling apart at the seams and _________ has it worse than ever in living memory. But it's just not true. Wages are high for every demographic group you can name; life satisfaction is steady; unemployment is low; drug abuse overall is down; our educational system is good; poverty is declining; we have more entrepreneurs than any country in the world by a wide margin; democracy is alive and well; our economy is the envy of the world; social welfare spending is generous; and a future of driverless cars, artificial intelligence, medical revolutions, and abundant energy is practically on our doorsteps. Even our demographic problems are about the least bad of any advanced economy—thanks, in part, to our supposed problem of too much illegal immigration.
Everyone has personal problems. Every country has national problems. The fact that we have problems is completely normal. But honestly, our problems right now are about as mild as they've been in our entire history.
¹Their 2021 report gave infrastructure a grade of C-. By ACSE standards this is roughly an A+.
* Wages are high for every demographic group you can name
Except everyone is still caught in the debt spiral because capitalism requires extracting as much as it can from every individual.
* life satisfaction is steady
Sure, NOW we're going to pretend the social sciences are legit. Also, shouldn't it be improving?
* unemployment is low
Which is no consolation to those being laid off by mega corps doing their cyclical share-holder dance.
* drug abuse overall is down
Who the fuck has drug abuse as a top issue?
* our educational system is good
Objectively wrong because we can't agree what our educational system is for other than to be a front in the culture war, and whatever its purpose it is under funded.
* poverty is declining
Poverty cannot decline under capitalism because it requires failure to be a state people can fall into. Only the definition of poverty can change.
* we have more entrepreneurs than any country in the world by a wide margin
Who the absolute fuck cares about those labeled as entrepreneurs.
* democracy is alive and well
Yes, a 50/50 chance of electing a fascist is democracy alive and well. After we already elected him.
* our economy is the envy of the world
The EU does not envy in the slightest.
* social welfare spending is generous
Under a massive bureaucracy designed to make enjoying these benefits as painful and dehumanizing as possible.
* a future of driverless cars, artificial intelligence, medical revolutions, and abundant energy is practically on our doorsteps.
And if it was guided by an intent to better humanity and not profit, that'd be amazing.
Like Jesus Fuck even the title "Stop Whining" is suck a troll move. What the actual fuck Kevin. You can't arbitrarily choose some measures going well as a metric for life/society; you have to decide on what your preferred metrics are and stick to them for decades. One could choose levels of abortion access, queerphobia, or misinformation as criterias for how well we're doing.
Maybe instead of telling the kids they're fine compared to random statistics or your own weak memory of your experiences, act like a progressive and look at how things should/can be better. Cause a tread-line on a graph is not a story and it does not convince anyone not already in your camp.
“ a tread-line on a graph is not a story and it does not convince anyone not already in your camp.”
But that one DOES tell a story. The story is that ten years ago 73% of young people had health insurance and now it’s close to 90%. That seems fairly convincing no matter what camp you’re it.
Seems like Kevin was talking to people like you specifically. Negativism is an annoying feature of the far left, the far right, and anarchists. They all take such a dismal view of the country.
And what's with the ‘capitalism’ ‘capitalism’ nonsense. Sorry, but the battle between ‘regulated capitalism’ and ‘socialism’ has already been fought, and socialism lost. If you really think that regulated capitalism is so bad, then trying living in socialist Cuba for a while.
"Poverty cannot decline under capitalism because it requires failure to be a state people can fall into."
Oh, come on. The tremendous reduction in the poverty rates in capitalist countries over the last 200 years is one of the most important achievements in history. Just look up any estimates of poverty reduction by year. And capitalism has no inherent need for people to be living in poverty. In fact, those people could help companies if they had the right job skills and are healthy and able to work. The US currently has widespread labor shortages. There are about 50 workers available for every 100 open jobs.
It's the unregulated capitalism that's the problem right now.
I fully agree that negativism isn't helpful and is even a terrible trend of the Left. But you're absolutely wrong about capitalism and poverty: there must be a failure state, there must always be folks at the bottom of the economic hierarchy, as the drive is to incentive people to work harder and harder.
You can't arbitrarily choose some measures going well as a metric for life/society; you have to decide on what your preferred metrics are and stick to them...
He can do whatever he wants. It's a free country and it's his blog. You, on the other hand, are screaming into the void.
Yeah, it was a bad night and I shouldn't have reacted to Kevin's bullshit.
Yes, today's world is the most horrible ever -- except for every single period in history that preceded it. Maybe a brief look at the history of most of the 20th century when life expectancy was in the 50s, war was everywhere, poverty and hunger were far worse, pollution was unmitigated, workplace conditions were appalling (re-read The Jungle, please), racism was accepted if not encouraged, and women couldn't vote. And the previous century was worse, and the one before that even worse.
Everyone thinks the world didn't exist before they were born. Poor us!
Yup to Citizen.
These "Sky Is Falling" are doing their best to put TFG back in the White House.
Couldn’t agree more. The huge under-reported story is how much progress the Biden Administration and the Democrats have made on most of these metrics. You can feel the fear on both the far left and in the plutocracy that people might actually figure this out, and decide they want more of it.
It would be interesting if the government and pro-government bloggers would speak in the same way about statistics for rates of suicide and depression and other psychological metrics which are arguably more revealing and important.
"Yes, today's world is the most horrible ever --"
It's a powerful myth, and more powerful than any honest account of history. The myth underlies much of Western religion, and even though we live in more secular times, the myth lives on. Once we lived in paradise, then came the fall, and now we're on the road to Armageddon.
The converse, that everything is better now, is also a myth. The truth, in my opinion, is that we're vastly better now in many ways, and the evidence is overwhelming, but at times in the past we had better sense in how we lived our lives. We seem overwhelmed today, far more anxious than what reality merits, and more than what human consciousness is designed for. In our minds, the global has replaced the local, and as long as there is terror somewhere in the world (and there always is), we cannot rest, even when everything may be hunky-dory in our personal lives.
I don't think the answer is a return to blissful ignorance, but I think we need perspective.
We also need better guardrails to control for malevolent actors who profit from driving the world insane.
Look, if you can't even recognize when something got better, you don't have a chance of moving things in the right direction.
Abortion is an outlier -- 5 guys and a girl decided to make up a story about what abortion was like in 1868, and get to pretend that that matters.
But health insurance is much easier to get today after Biden's cranking up the subsidies on the ACA, esp. if you live in a Medicaid expansion state.
Queerphobia? Compared to when Kevin was young, it is infinitely easier to be gay today.
Queerphobia is worse than it was ten years ago, but... that's not Biden's fault.
Media spreading anti-trans, anti-furry, conspiracy theories is the problem there.
Under a massive bureaucracy designed to make enjoying these benefits as painful and dehumanizing as possible.
By far the two largest safety net programs in the United States are Social Security and Medicare. They both work great, with minimal fuss for recipients, and report high levels of user satisfaction. Also, I've got a nice bridge to sell you if you think Europeans are strangers to bureaucracy.
And if it was guided by an intent to better humanity and not profit, that'd be amazing
Amazing indeed, as it's a complete certainty we wouldn't enjoy such innovations without the profit motive. Take a look at satellite images of the Korean peninsula some time.
I'm genuinely curious. How does one (like you) become so completely oblivious to everything? You realize you're not at Jacobin, don't you?
I don't read Jacobin, but I've been reading Drum for over a decade. Obliviousness is obviously subjective, ultimately everything is about framing not reality. Drum in this post is trying to frame things as "things are good" using some selectively chosen metrics, and it's real easy to argue those are bad metrics OR even if things are better when he was a youth they're still not ok.
Government cannot fix any of these problems. That’s what Mr. Drum should be saying… this is as good as it gets and it’s better here for more people than anywhere else. If you have some skills and apply them, you’ll have a decent life. If you don’t, you won’t. And no one really wants to babysit you.
Uhh, what? Why? Because you say so?
No one makes you spend more money than you make, even if "capitalism" depends upon it in your mind.
People laid off by "mega corps" like Google and MSFT are probably getting new jobs pretty quickly. There's an insane amount of demand for the laid off folks, but those companies went nuts on a hiring spree in 2020, and the CEOs decided that they wanted their stock to go up.
Well, considering how many people from outside the US I see in our universities, we must be doing something right.
Social welfare spending isn't that generous here. Take a look at Sweden's parental leave policies to see what generous looks like.
AI? It isn't even real intelligence -- just a power hungry mad libs system.
By 'forever wars', the author of the tweet may mean how much we advocate for and fund other wars around the world. As citizens of the country sponsoring the war, we are all directly responsible for the morality of the war. This puts a sizable psychological burden on American citizens as those wars are often times deeply immoral and deadly.
There's less war today than any other time in history, tho.
What wars are we advocating for? Ukraine -- sure, but they were f**king invaded by a country whose leader believes the liberation of the Eastern European nations by Gorby was a historic tragedy, and likely would keep moving west until stopped.
Wow, you really are a whiny donkey.
Excellent points, comrade! We must crush capitalism with the people's iron fist!
People are saying young people are terminally depressed after reading Kevin's frequent predictions that they face a dystopian future where AI does all the work and they'll have nothing to do but write poetry or get into gang wars. Many many people are saying that on the internet.
Inevitably the gang wars will be about the poetry. That's a future that seems worth struggling towards.
Haha, Kevin did leave that out of his analysis.
I like Kevin and think it's great that we have at least one blogger or new person who can actually do arithmetic.
But I think he'll be disappointed by AI's progress. It's pretty worthless today, even if it is cool that you can have a 'conversation' with one. Bland regurgitation of what other people have said, mixed with random hallucinations.
Re "forever wars"
Whoever says that is obfuscating in the service of George Bush Jr. His name should be prominently attached to the Afghanistan War (the result of his administration's failure to do anything significant prior to 9/11) and the Iraq War (the result of a made-up assertion that Saddam Hussein was building WMD).
Mostly, "forever wars" has been deployed by MAGA and various GOP stooges, but that expression is now out in the wild, with groups on the other side of the spectrum using it, like Bowman.
The forever wars are of no consequence to the anxious young people. They aren’t fighting in them. It’s a bad career choice.
https://www.thebulwark.com/p/disaffection-despair-all-volunteer-force-crisis
“The AVF’s problems are not limited to recruiting, but its recruitment problem is the most visible symptom of many lingering issues. Underneath the hood, the AVF suffers from an exhausted workforce using aging equipment in the context of a cumbersome bureaucracy that is resistant to change. Families are similarly overextended, and their unaddressed frustrations have taught them to be wary of the government’s inability to fix systemic issues. And recently retired service members—the veterans of the 9/11 generation—are in particularly bad shape. The Veterans Administration (VA) is not set up to adequately support veterans who spent twenty years fighting two unsuccessful and unpopular wars while incurring PTSD, moral injury, and other harms.“
Telling people people that the world is shit is the foundation of all national news media. About 30 years ago, I realized that most people in the media either (1) do not really know what they are talking on any given subject, or (2) will manipulate information flow to get the maximum emotional reaction from whatever population is their 'target demographic'. That people still sift through their bullshit trying to finds seeds of truth is amazing to me.
Yes. And now with clicks being the metric of everything, what you said is true in spades.
"That people still sift through their bullshit trying to finds seeds of truth is amazing to me."
Not sure how you get your news then.
Amen. And it's worse now today than before because bad news pays the bills apparently,
This is hilarious. American carnage!
A teenager is dead after a quadruple shooting in the Kingsessing section of Southwest Philadelphia on Saturday, according to police.
Kevin’s post and the replies are hilarious, not the shooting. It’s just bad thing we’re not supposed to notice.
Good catch! Kevin overlooked the absurd per-capita gun ownership in the US and its link to mass shootings. And why the rest of the world *does not* envy our gun laws and homicide rates. Thanks for reminding us!
Gun policy and crime control are definitely among the least successful aspects of US society.
You seems to be unaware that shootings over all are down from when all of use were kids. Including the kids.
Doesn't help those who are still victims of crime, but, there are fewer victims, which seems important to notice.
Depends on when you were kids, but it’s still higher than in 1980 and 1995. The murder rate is down, but the overall numbers of shootings are not.
“ More Americans died of gun-related injuries in 2021 than in any other year on record, according to the latest available statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). That included record numbers of both gun murders and gun suicides. ”
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/26/what-the-data-says-about-gun-deaths-in-the-u-s/
“ However, not all types of homicide grew at the same rate. Between 2019 and 2021, firearm homicide rates increased 44%, from 4.6 victims per 100,000 people in 2019 to 6.7 victims per 100,000 people in 2021. Alternatively, homicides committed by cutting or stabbing injuries or suffocation – the next most common methods of killing – decreased 17% and 33%, respectively.
While the firearm homicide rate had been slowly decreasing from a peak of 6.8 victims per 100,000 people in the early 1990s, rates have since returned to those levels.
…
In the mid-1980s, around 60% of all homicides involved a firearm. That rose to 71% in the early 1990s and 81% in 2021. In other words, by 2021, homicides involved a firearm four times more often than all other weapons combined.”
https://usafacts.org/data-projects/firearms-homicides
Yes, the overall murder rate is down compared to the twin peaks of 1980 and 1994, but the country has roughly 105 million and 50 million more people than at that time. In addition, guns have gone from being in involved in less than 60% of all murders in the 1970s to over 80% in 2021.
The ahistoricity of the "everything is terrible and getting worse" mantra is really fascinating. We've made massive improvements in the last 25 years in LGBTQIA rights, healthcare insurance, mass incarceration, drug policy, and medication affordability. Our most salient issues of today are only a few years old - abortion access, Gaza, Ukraine, inflation - which means we have no idea if they will be long-term issues or just blips. We quickly forget about previous blips (remember when the big worry was anti-gay marriage legislation in the states?), and start to take things for granted.
Even housing affordability, which has been extremely volatile over the last 25 years, is treated as if today's conditions are permanent. That's especially odd, given how much today's affordability issues are a direct result of pandemic fallout. Things will likely look very different in 5 years, with a good chance that it is better.
Let’s face it. Everything above the neck is kaput. https://youtu.be/9pJESEpEPlI?si=4FpFNTTcPCIAV7_n
As an old timer this reminds me of the laugh I had when everyone started claiming after 9/11 that "America has never been in greater danger!" Really?
I agree Kevin and it won't change anyone's mind but do remember: at no point does anyone in power get anything but sarcasm for declaring "you've never had it so good" but there is great political power to be gained by relentlessly wallowing in public problems and disappointments. You either convince people that those in charge of government need to be thrown out or, better yet, that no government can do anything and so those with power and wealth should be left alone to make the rules.
> there is great political power to be gained by relentlessly wallowing in public problems...
Coincidentally last night I saw a local production of The Music Man, and in the famous number "Trouble", the actor playing Harold Hill I think quite deliberately adopted some Trump mannerisms. Here's the Robert Preston version, with more of a Kennedy-era speech flavor:
https://youtu.be/LI_Oe-jtgdI?feature=shared&t=42
Trouble! We got trouble! Right Here!
In some ways things are a lot better than they were ten, twenty, thirty years ago. Obviously the youths will grumble about the olds, as they always do. And the olds will grumble about the youths, as they always do.
However.
Even if you think Biden probably wins, you’d be crazy to not assign Trump at least a 10% chance of winning; it’s probably much higher than that. Even 10% is *terrifying*. Not coincidentally, the entire Republican Party apparatus has gleefully transmogrified itself into an anti-voting-rights, if not outright fascist, party. So yes, democracy is alive. For now. Hopefully for a lot longer. But I just don’t see how you can assert that it is *well*.
Sure wish I thought Trump had only a 10% chance of winning. At this point it seems likely that he will win. How could that be? Trump promises to start his new “presidency” by declaring himself dictator and deporting a minimum of 10 million people! And as far as I’ve seen no one seems to take that seriously. Hardly a peep of protest. But on college campuses I see signs calling BIDEN “genocide Joe”.
All the good things Kevin talks about are real but fragile. And Trump and those who vote for him want to smash it all to dust. I don’t know if young people are tired, but as an old person, I’m scared.
+1
You know, with the exception of a free Ukraine, we'll probably even survive another Trump term.
But I don't think he'll win. Dobbs is a non-stop disaster for Republicans. The fact that Trump supports red states treating pregnant women as prisoners who need to be tracked during their pregnancies, while these same states try to restrict lifesaving medical treatments for failing pregnancies, is going to cost him and hopefully other Republicans as well.
If not, well, I guess Americans just aren't interested in freedom as I thought they were.
The desire to improve quality of life is vitaly important for a society.
The desire to tell kids to shut about improving their quality of life because back in our day is both a weird quirck of old people and a detriment to society as a whole.
Yes quality of life has improved, but get over yourself. Or get out of the way. We still have a long way to go.
Not that I am a cynic or anything… and I’m definitely not a Matrix fan, but for some reason this came to mind…
" but get over yourself. Or get out of the way"
how is that working out for you in getting people to vote for your preferred candidate?
well?
Kevins approach is incredibly unappealing to voters. Candidates who take peoples concerns as legitimate and offer solutions (or even just the hope for solutions) tend to do better. Dismissing people is not a good strategy.
Who's telling kids to shut it, tho?
Kevin, who says we need to improve but we are in fact improving... or the guy lying about this being worse than it was and we should... I don't know, vote in the guy who thinks it should be worse for alot of us?
Kevin is. He even wrote about it. Its right here. Just look up above. He was pretty direct.
The guy on the clip was pretty clearly not saying that.
Kevins offputting, dismissive approach hasnt worked very well for Democrats in the past.
Three options for when you feel bad:
Option 1: Assume someone you have no influence over is to blame.
Option 2: Assume things will get better and all you have to do is wait.
Option 3: Assume things will get better and your role in making things get better is essential.
To those who choose Option 1 or Option 2, Citizen Donald is saying: "Welcome to the team."
To those who choose Option 3, President Biden is saying: "Thank you for your support."
The best of times, the worst of times.
I agree with Kevin that in many ways, this is the best of times. Without Social Security and Medicare, and even the flawed pharmaceutical industry, I would have been in the grave long ago.
So that is why it is so puzzling that we have the current crisis of greed, ignorance and stupidity. Politically, we are in grave danger of electing a dictatorship dedicated to greed, ignorance and stupidity. Things CAN turn around pretty damn fast. It is not an exaggeration to think that this makes it the worst of times.
This must be telling us something. But what?
"This must be telling us something. But what?"
Don't be greedy, and expand the threshold of your knowledge by working to reveal your ignorance to yourself.
FYI: my knowledge is what I know, my ignorance is what I do not know, and my threshold of knowledge is the interface between my knowledge and my ignorance. Also, "working to reveal my ignorance" involves being skeptical of my own potentially but not necessarily erroneous assumptions.
I think, therefore I am making potentially but not necessarily erroneous assumptions.
. . . .our problems right now are about as mild as they've been in our entire history
But, there is that one thing, all these people who want to vote for Private Citizen Princess Tiny Paws and are highly organized, motivated and funded to destroy any part of civil society they can get near.
Every other complaint is just a way of not talking about these people, because they have always been here and they are the only problem we've ever had.
I find it curious that no one -- including Kevin -- has mentioned the huge looming problem that is indeed new in our history: climate change.
It would threaten his astrophotography jaunts.
Compared to the damage that Trmup win will cause, climate change is peanuts.
As part of the carnage, he will reverse any progressm on climate change. But he will also reverse any progress that happened in any other field.
"Compared to the damage that Trmup win will cause, climate change is peanuts."
Not to undermine how awful a president Trump would be (see, for example, how awful a president he was), but that's just loopy. Trump isn't an existential threat to gobal ecosystems; nor does he represent a multigenerational challenge/manifestation of the Great Filter answer to Fermi's paradox, the way climate change does. Stop pumping the guy up--he's a sleepy farting old man with an assinine combover and a minority fan base of fools with a bunch of dumb and antidemocratic ideas, not the devil or evil incarnate.
Yes, electing Trump will make climate change harder to deal with, because the damn fool and his entourage of idiots and malefactors will actively work against clean energy transitions, but we'll still be fighting climate change one way or the other long after The Reaper resolves the Trump problem.
You are both exaggerating the problem of climate change and underestimatibng the danage that Trump will do.
Sure, but Biden is actually making progress on that front, too. He passed the most subsidies for electrifying transportation and building grid-tied battery systems to expand our grid's capacity for renewable energy.
Like, exactly what we should be doing.
Biden has indeed been doing good things on that front. That doesn't change that fact that we're already headed toward really unpleasant changes and all the efforts to date have merely reduced the acceleration toward the worst outcomes.
Kevin is absolutely right that things have continued to improve for most people, albeit at different rates depending on where you are on the economic scale. As he says, when people are asked in polls how they personally are doing and whether they are satisfied or happy, they basically say they are doing fine. The dissatisfaction usually comes out in political contexts. When asked how the economy is, Republicans say it is terrible, which is absurd - they just feel compelled to repeat the lies of Trump and Republicans. Democrats are also partisan, but much less so. The media seek out the people who are dissatisfied personally, because that is what people want to read or watch. The general mood or "vibe" is poor because of the political partisanship, total bias of right-wing media and both-sider coverage by the MSM. This is very bad because low-information swing voters may consider that a supposedly bad economy requires a change of President.
Remember that politically most people do not think in terms of policies, they think in terms of people or tribes. If the economy is perceived to be bad, they blame it on the President and think a change would be for the better, regardless of whether the challenger's policies are actually in their favor or not. Of course White Christian tribal loyalties dominate the lower-income part of the right, but the election looks to be close and will still be determined by the least partisan swing voters.
I think Kevin is mistaken in thinking that inequality has ceased to increase - the basic economics have not really changed enough. But inequality is certainly not increasing more than it did in the Trump administration, or in any recent Republican administration.
But "our problems right now are about as mild as they've been in our entire history" is going too far. As far as current daily life and the national economic performance is concerned that may be true, but we face the end of democracy (such as it has been - it's still alive but not really well), and some very big problems because of global warming.
Just curious -- when would you prefer to have lived? During slavery? WW1? WW2? Vietnam? Before the Civil Rights Act and Immigration Act of 1965? American women could only be financially independent of their husbands starting in the 1970s, so maybe after that? Before gay rights were recognized by a majority of people in the 1990s?
Yes, today we recognize global warming is a bigger deal than we thought (although it was always a thing, but one we didn't recognize). And corporations are biased too much to distributing profits to their shareholders instead of labor, something fixable in the tax code if people cared enough to vote for economic progressives.
I took a course on Mark Twain in the late 1970s from a professor who really thought that the best time to be an American was the 1890s, which I never bought. Maybe you think he was right, but I'm guessing that's not going to be the year you pick.
The first graph is perhaps a little confusing.
The totals do not seem to match the height of the bars.
At least it made me look at the source!
Look, Mr Drum. This is a Presidential Election Year, and there's a Democrat in the White House. Moreover, he's running for re-election. Of course everything is a total disaster! Of course we're all suffering horribly! Of course things have never been as bad as they are now!
That's just Journo 101! Can't get tarred with that "Librul Meedia" label, can we? Look what happened to NPR, attempting to "just report the facts", which included multiple sides and long form discussions? NO!! Just NO!
LOL
Boomers are mad younger people are pointing out things that Boomers don't want to hear about.
Maybe that's true a wee bit. But maybe boomers have lived more years and through enough ups and downs to have a somewhat better perspective on some things than younger people.
Yeah, Boomers have had opportunities we didn't. I will never have a house that gained 1000% in value, for instance.
But they faced higher all the bad things than we do.
We shouldn't be talking as though Democrats aren't pushing things in the right direction, on net.
Just for fun, I looked up the house that my parents paid $24,000 for in 1962 (Greatest Generation, not Boomers). It's worth $1,073,000 according to Zillow. That's a gain of 6.2% annually. And that doesn't take into account any maintenance required to keep a house's value over that period (new roofs, plumbing, new water headers and furnaces, etc).
Put half your savings in stocks and half in bonds and you'll probably get a little better than that across a half century. I've averaged about 7.5% after taxes that way.
Not all opportunities are in the past. Just sayin'.
Kevin, take a drive down Sunset Blvd. next time you're up in LA, chat with the homeless in their tents that line the sidewalks, buy some gas and something to eat, call about/google the rent at some of those fancy new apartments being built. That's what young folks see (and some of us old folks), your statistics and charts don't have quite the same impact.
I know you're making a more complicated point, but you know politics ain't complicated.
I know you think you're making a point, but...
...the fact that it's not illegal to be homeless right now is literally a thing that's better today.
Two decades ago, the police could just arrest them for sleeping on the street. That's not allowed by federal courts currently.
Literally, the fact that we pay attention and have more beds, more section 8 apartments, and you can go and ask them without their fear of being arrested coming up... that's better, not worse.
We have a long way to go to eliminate homelessness. But that it's been decriminalized is but a step.
You're using homeless people, and that's disgusting.
You clearly have no fucking clue what point I'm making.
I'm not using or complaining about homeless people, I'm pointing out that no amount of charts or statistics can counter what people see in real fucking life, walking down the street.
You're turning into quite the asshole in here, I've noticed it in other threads as well. Other than the obvious trolls, nearly everyone in Kevin's community are on the same page about most issues, maybe with a somewhat different POV. Maybe next time you come across a comment you think is "disgusting" you should take a minute and ask yourself if you've misinterpreted it before assuming the worst.
A million years ago, when our ancestors climbed down from the trees and moved into the savannahs, there were those who insisted life was better in the trees. Not much has changed since.
Ya know, I was gonna respond to that kids post yesterday, but a friend of mine in Chile invited me to watch Godzilla minus one with another friend in California. That movie is amazing. So yeah, we really had a great time, and I'm glad everyone else responded instead.
All three places are capitalist societies, btw. So was where the movie was made. As well as the discord channel and internet. All came from capitalist societies. Lastly, one of my three friends is a communist (a literal one, not just a socialist). But he has the freedom to be so, even if its a shitty idea, because its a free country.
A very clear-cut episode in the ongoing saga "That thing you're worried about? It doesn't bother me, Kevin Drum".
More like: "That thing you're worried about? The stats tell a different story." Now if you want to disagree with Kevin, that's fine. But show your work.
Plus one.
Kevin's right that wages, benefits, health care coverage and things of that sort are pretty strong right now. I think the disconnect, particularly for young people, comes from the fact that *despite* being in relatively good financial shape, it seems like they still can't afford a home anywhere they'd want to live and even if they could afford a place in LA or SF or Austin, how are they going to afford raising a family on top of that? That makes it hard to dream about a brighter future.
Housing is a problem, but how is being against Biden going to help it?
How is misrepresenting the other things in the economy going to make it better?
Kevin's post wasn't about Biden, but unfortunately yes most folks blame the president for perceived current circumstances regardless of fault. Regardless, the point is to stop telling people things are fine because they could be worse. Stop telling people everything is okay when their lived experience is far from ideal.
I read this and I said to myself: "This ninny has primary opponent, right?"
It turns out he does. Thank God!
Digby responds to this post on her blog. I thought she had a good explanation as to why:
I had an exchange with the grocery checker at my local Ralphs about how everything’s gone to hell in a hand basket and how her grandmother had it better back in the 30s when a dollar went so much further. For real.
I blame Trump. His never ending moaning and wailing permeates our entire culture and now everyone’s doing it.
And here I am whining about the whining. You can ‘t escape it.
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