These kids today are bitching because they claim we of the older generations had it easy. They claim since rent is $2800/month, things are harder now than they were.
When I first got out of the military I moved to Arkansas. My entire family wound up living in the storeroom of the business I was trying to start. My kids were bathing in a 4 quart ice chest. It sucked. The only job I could find was working for a plant that made aluminum BBQ bits. Not as a maintenance worker or as an electrician, but filing the burrs off of metal castings for $5 per hour.
I decided we couldn’t make a living there, so we moved to Florida. When I got here, the only job I could get was as an electrician for $7.25 an hour. I was working for a company called Palmer electric, and two of us would be tasked with wiring a house (rough in) each day. That’s a lot of work for two people. The company charged the contractor $400 for the job. There was no real profit to be made. That’s why they started using illegals- the companies who were doing that could charge even less and still make money. This was 30+ years ago.
I was making $1000 per month and using that to support a family of four. The rent on our two bedroom apartment was $550 a month. That left us $450 per month for food, utilities, clothes, all of the other expenses. WalMart sold hotdogs $1 per pack, and Mac&Cheese $4 for 4 boxes. Slice 2 hot dogs up and mix with the pasta, and you have 4 dinners for $5. WalMart sold blue jeans for $8. I washed them in Borax to get the oil stains out. That’s how we made the money last.
I managed to get a job as an electrician at the airport, repairing boarding bridges, conveyor belts, and car washes. The pay was better- I was getting $9 an hour. We still struggled, so I got a second job as a part time firefighter.
This extreme poverty was what led me to asking my wife to get a job while the kids were in school. I just couldn’t take being poor and working two jobs while she sat home all day and the kids were in school. She refused, telling me that she married me so she wouldn’t have to work, and we wound up separating. Less than three months after that, I was homeless.
That’s not struggling, according to them. This generation thinks that no one else can possibly know what it’s like to struggle, as they complain about high rent. I can find a dozen apartments for less than $2k. Looking in my old neighborhood, I see a 2BR going for $1600. When you take into account the difference in pay from then, and housing is about the same cost as it was 30 years ago.
The poverty level for a family of 4 was $15,600 per year when all of that happened. I made $15,100 that year with a wife and two kids. The poverty level today for a single person is $15,300 per year and $32,150 for a family of 4. The difference is that Florida’s minimum wage is now $31,200. In other words, it’s EXACTLY the same as it was then. Nothing ever changes.
These people bitch over and over again about how they are poor. Then people who used to be poor come forward and give them perfectly reasonable advice on how to change. Instead of accepting that, they say “things are totally different now, you had it easy” then go back to bitching about how they are poor and it’s all Elon and “capitalism” that has caused it.
3 Comments
William Wallace · June 15, 2026 at 10:56 am
I came of age in the early 80s. I can remember odd even day gas rationing. That was if the station had gas. First mortgage had an 11% fixed rate. New car loan was close to 13%. Thinking back to my youth in the 70s and I can remember no beef in the supermarkets. Pork and chicken was quickly bought up due to the lack of beef. McDonald’s was a once in a blue moon treat and they weren’t in every other town yet. Stagflation and high unemployment are some other memories along with the start of off shoring manufacturing. Good times.
Charlie · June 15, 2026 at 11:14 am
I will say tnis in defense of those kids: The Federal Student Loan program is a malicious unforgivable atrocity. It’s designed to put people into perpetual debt. Kids are stupid about money, and everyone has been brainwashed into the idea that a degree is necessary to success. They’re willing to go into debt that serves no one but the scum bankers and schools.
Because student loans are uniquely pernicious debt in that they cannot be discharged in bankruptcy, and the debt is further guaranteed by the government, there is no moral hazard for the banks. The schools know this, and have raised tuition exponentially. Tuition debt is like medical debt (another coercive cartel pricing situation where prices and debt are wrecking people) – people are willing to rack it up.
You used to be able to work your way through college without debt if you worked summers and a part time job, back in the 70’s and early 80’s when state schools’ in state tuition was under circa a thousand bucks a year or semester..That is no longer possible.
If student loans debt was dischargeable in bankruptcy, risk would force the banks to restrict their lending, and schools would be forced to reign in their avarice. Tuition would necessarily fall. Furthermore, only people really committed to getting a degree would do so, and this stupid credentialization situation where degrees are required for everything, as well as over production of “elites” would be moderated. IF no one can afford to go to school, they won’t. Only people who really should and want to be in school will be. Many lives of wasted hours prevented, a whole lot of debt eliminated, time and money saved.
In any case, the debt constrictor is killing its host. This situation cannot and will not continue. A debt and equity collapse approaches. There will be a debt jubilee when money inflates away, evaporates and no one can pay any more. Also, the property hoarding boomers will not live forever. In twenty years the Zoomers will inherit the world. With the concomitant collapse and recalibration there will be many opportunities and general “relief” of sorts..
Divemedic · June 15, 2026 at 11:23 am
No. What would happen is a person would go through college, become a doctor. Then the day after graduation, they would file bankruptcy and walk away to begin a $300k career with no debt. What needs to happen is:
1 the college agrees, as a part of the agreement with the government backed lender, that any person who receives a degree and cannot earn enough working in that major to repay the loan, the college must repay that portion the graduate is unable to pay.
When you claim the boomers are “hoarding” I assume you are referring to the fact that old people won’t sell you their home for a fraction of what it is worth.
The “zoomer” generation was born starting in 1997. They won’t be retiring, or even close, for another thirty+ years. In the meantime, Generation X (my generation) will be retiring in about 6 years, Millenials in about 20 years, and finally Gen Z will begin, some time in 2060.