It’s stunning how many people seem to forget that there are other countries on the planet that use dollars and weren’t involved in Vietnam. No, I’m not making an assumption. The person who posted this is Canadian.
Y’all really need to take a step back and reflect a little bit.
My grandfather picked tomatoes to eventually buy his house in cash.
He was a hard worker, but damn, imagine buying a house in cash.
Dude went on to have like 10 kids and a good standard of living.
Change the last bit to
Retire in 2001 with a inflation linked final salary pension scheme.
deleted by creator
Then smile to yourself as the rest of the world grinds to a halt to protect you during the pandemic.
As long as you’re white
And a man.
And lived in US
When you are white the sky is the limit. When you are not the limits the sky. -Chris Rock
Chris Rock must have been high as a kite when he said that then.
That or I’m having a stroke while reading it.
This is from his bigger and blacker stand up from early 2000 after saying this line. He also said that there is a one legged white bus boy who would not switch places with me and I’m rich because the bus boy would say nah man I’m gonna ride this white thing out and see where it takes me.
Cool, but the quote is still giving me a stroke.
The limit is the sky?
I don’t think dying at 54 is ideal…
Look at this guy with his “hopes” for a “future”
Look at this edgelord right here in his 20s. This obsession on Lemmy with killing oneself is fucking sick.
Bitch, I’m 42. They’ve been pulling this crap long enough that there’s more than one generation who are catastrophically fucked and well aware of it.
Didn’t work for me… in my 1972 bank job interview I was told, “I’d hire you if you were a man, but you’re not. If I hired you, you’d just get pregnant and leave.” It wasn’t against the law for him to say all that.
And for what it’s worth I didn’t buy a home - a small one-bed flat - until I was in my 40s. Cost me so much I couldn’t afford proper furniture. Yes, my current house is worth a lot more than what I paid for it (mainly because I bought a wreck), but so is any other house I could afford if I sold it.
Wow, so it’s almost like no matter what time/year you were born that you will have hardships to face? Lemmy led me to believe that houses cost peanuts in the 60s and everyone working at a gas station could afford a multi room house.
Neo liberalism is proving to be a terrible bandaid. It could be argued their hasn’t been any human progress. We could turn back the clock for anything at this point.
I had the same interview at a dental office in something like 2017. I wasn’t offered the job because, as the female dentist told me, they’d have to put a lot of time and effort into teaching me, and then I might just get pregnant and quit.
At least there is only fans
would be great if you told us how much it costed and how much you brought in hourly. i wanna sympathize but then i remember you could rent a studio in the 70s-80s for like 300 dollars month. i probably could have bought a house with a missing arm and working 30 hours a week.
My flat cost £43k in the early 90s, nearly three times my annual income at the time, and all my savings went on the deposit. I had previously lived in a shared house, the only way I could afford to save anything.
More nostalgia… Looking for a 1br flat to rent in 1980s Wellington (NZ) was a trip. Demand far, far outstripped supply. Among the gems offered to me for top rental (can’t remember how much, but it was crazily high), was a place that stank of damp and had rat-holes chewed in the bathroom wall - which was just soggy softboard against a dirt bank. There were three couples viewing at the same time. Another place I was told was fresh to the market, no-one else had seen it yet. The stove had been dismantled and the toilet was piled high with human shit. When I shouted at the agent she said, You don’t want it then?" and hung up.
I eventually lucked in with a “granny flat” whose owners, an adorable elderly Polish couple, lived upstairs.
Dang so it sounds like new Zealand has had a bit of a time with housing for a while then huh? I’ve heard a lot about it recently but just assumed it was a relatively new probably (post 2000-ish)
Wellington has had a heated property market longer than most places - it’s hilly for a start, so can’t just sprawl like Auckland, and it’s the capital, so a lot of well-heeled bureaucrats who don’t want to commute from the hinterlands. I don’t live there any more, so I don’t know what the rental market is like now.
Yes we’ve been through multiple housing crises although it’s gotten truly ridiculous in the last couple decades.
The crowning achievement of the first labour government when they were elected in 1935 was to create a massive state house building programme due to the huge shortages and miserable state of the stock at the time. This continued until the 1980s when we went full neoliberal, privatised everything and sold off most of the state houses and private landlords and speculation now dominate.
Anything built between early 1990s and 2004ish is prone to leaks due to the deregulated building code at the time and is basically trash.
Wellington is a particularly bad case, and has always had a worse housing situation than the rest of the country (although Auckland is more expensive). Hilly topography has meant lack of space to build and lots of damp hovels that get little sun. Add in character/heritage protection that made it effectively illegal to alter or demolish the draughty and falling apart 1920s wooden villas that make up most of inner Wellington and there you go.
When my parents bought in the UK in the early 80s, the average family house was £20k. But mortgage rates at the time were ~20%, meaning you had to pay £4k per year just to cover the interest alone, and the average salary was below £6k.
Yes, interest came back down after a few years, but a lot of people learned about Negative Equity during those years.
I dont know how things are in new zealand these days but in a medium city in canada a house or condo costs at least 10 times the average annual income and closer to 20-25 times a minimum wage income. So things may not have been as easy for you as the post makes it seem but they’re a hell of a lot harder for a lot of people now.
ahhh, didnt realize you were from the UK dont know enough to speak on it. i rescind anything i might have said
No worries - life is always a struggle for some, no matter where in the world you are.
That’s the general problem for everyone who is not from US here on Lemmy: Everybody from US assumes that everybody knows we are talking about US. I would never say that “the ideal life is being born in 1947” and I was wondering why anyone would say that. That’s right after World War 2. Must have been a crazy time.
Yeah, I was hoping I’d see less of that moving away from Reddit to a non-US site, but eh, what can you do.
You should do an AMA on life back then
Way to make me feel like a bloody dinosaur!! 😂
The ideal life is dying when you’re only 54? That’s pretty bleak!
Longer than I expect to live
If you were a vet and saw combat in Vietnam, that was the cancer you got from all the Agent Orange they sprayed on you that killed you…
My birth father died a slow agonizing death after getting exposed to agent orange. My adopted mother calls me a bastard all the time. She is a horrible person. Life is America is horrible it is no wounder so many kill themselves.
But probably true!
Right? I sure hope it doesn’t take that long.
All the coke and alcohol catches up.
Fuck I hope not. I’m 54 now.
June 19th 2026. I’ll see you soon.
Or you could’ve been sent to Vietnam…
Americans trying to comprehend people living outside their country except for when they’re killing them.
Okay, I agree with your sentiment but that level of harshness isn’t needed.
Americans do seriously have a problem with putting their own country as the center of the world in a thousand different ways. American Exceptionalism is pretty severe online, and in ways most Americans aren’t even aware they’re doing, but that ain’t the way to handle it bro. I’m out here being kinda dickish about it and even that I’m second guessing myself. But that’s just a bit too harsh.
Not as a Canadian
Goin out for a rip are ya bud?
Hilarious.
And nah I’m more newfie. Goin out fer a scoff me buddy
Hey b’y. How’s ya gettin’ on? Goin’ down fer a jigs dinner now da once
ELLO ME DUCKY! O you knows it, dis is it. Luh, save me a couple spuds der wouldya? Gotta get some grub, eh der b’y?
Hey bud you wanna go out for a rip?
We all live in a simulation
And nah but I’m down to go out for a scoff me buddy!
(Secret Newfie)
I mean okay but this person would’ve been a young adult during the Vietnam war and the war on drugs and died at 53 to avoid the war on terror.
Impress them with a firm handshake.
This is basically my dad
deleted by creator
Look around, you already do. You always did. There’s a lot more people willing to do the right thing and speak out against it now… but I wouldn’t count on that lasting much longer.
deleted by creator
My dad bought his house for $650 in 1976, had it moved from the mill village where it was for $2000 and has lived in it on land he was given for 50 years. Its current value is over $225k.
He offered to sell me a quarter acre for $50k.
Sounds like pops is needing slot machine money.
Fyi $650 in 1976 is about $3600-3700 adjusted for inflation.
The ideal life is to be born a multi-millionaire, then earn billions by exploiting workers
could you live with yourself though?
If I was born rich, I’d probably have no empathy either.
How are you supposed to develop it?
NOT philosophy, that’s for sure.
Huh? I find it exactly the opposite.
I’d rather be born a billionaire so I don’t have to do shit
So I think a lot of billionaires, especially the younger ones of today, are all on kind of uppers or drugs. You know, because they’re always busy doing shit, meddling, and trying to bring about stupid ideas that no one asks for. Honestly, if we lived in more of a socialist society, I predict a lot of progress. And people doing shit. Because the last thing I want to do is just sit around and not do shit. But because I can’t find meaningful work and an environment that isn’t antisocial, it causes me to not be productive. If the capitalist want us to be productive, but they’re the ones getting in the way of the productiveness. And now our economy is just this empty void. I’ve lived long enough around about 40 years and I can tell you things just get worse And I mean horrificly worse i’ve worked on my feet, worked with my hands, real jobs., and I can tell what seems like optimism is just your ignorance to the constant decline that is promised. It’s just diminishing returns until once again we are sent to another world war to die for nothing. We’re getting close to another nuclear weapon being used. Who is the only country that’s ever done this? Oh, that’s right, the United States. And once again, they will do it again.
I always thought I would have made a good trust fund baby.
being prime military age for the vietnam war? no, please got no
Yeah, I’m pretty happy with being born after the draft became less used and I’m now old enough to not qualify for the draft anymore. Life is pretty good.
Also literally any day could be the one the Bomb dropped. It’s easy to forget how close we came, or how fucking terrifying it was that you had no way of knowing.
Countries other than the United States exist and my country was the one people ran away to in order to avoid the draft. Also the same country of the person who posted this.
