Millennial here. Us, too.
Gen X checking in. What happens when I can no longer work or no one will employ me, but I cannot afford to retire?
Retire? Is that some kind of a car thing?
Ohhh so that’s why I was told I’ll never be able to retire, because I can’t afford a car! Makes sense now
I’ve been pondering this one myself for awhile. I knew a decade ago that, barring massive financial change, I would never be able to afford to retire. So these are the options:
- Work until I die
- Work until I can’t (or nobody will hire me/pay a living wage), live off of savings until I can’t, then die
- Stop working, live off of savings until I can’t, then die
The first two are the default and just kind of accepted by society as fair and just. The last one, strangely, gets all sorts of pushback, even though the only material difference is 20-30 years of mundane toil to make line go up.
You could also go to jail
Pretty sure you just die. Of a heart attack. From stress.
Same and I was already homeless thanks to the W era and clawed my way back to mostly stable. It’s a traumatic experience I don’t want to repeat.
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Alternate headline, sub header combo:
"Gen Z aware of main cause of homelessness.
Boomers and Forbes editors remain unconvinced"
Something something… avocado toast.
Just give up the something something and you’ll be fine.
I do not fear becoming homeless. The state should fear my homelessness as it will only signify the next phase of my radicalization.
People forced out into the cold will set society on fire to keep warm.
They’re more likely to freeze to death.
Not in my country, because it’s hot here, not because we have good social protections.
This is the most gen z vibe
Yeah the state doesn’t worry about the homeless as a threat to authority. Where have you ever seen the homeless in organised political action?
The Bonus Army? Not necessarily homeless, but pretty close to it.
Your radicalization poses absolute zero threat to the state.
Sleeping rough is eye opening. But the folks closest to the atrocities are inevitably the ones who have the least power to stop them.
Only remedy for that situation is the kind of mass organizing of the lumpen proles that hasn’t seriously happened since the 70s/80s. Thanks to mass surveillance, brutal policing, and a corporate state increasingly run by algorithms, its harder and harder to see a world in which a mass movement can emerge again.
Doesn’t mean folks shouldn’t try. After 40 years of digging our own graves, we’re in one hell of a hole. But the only way out is to start climbing.
Enough radicals and the state is threatened.
Eventually, minor iterative quantitative changes will result in a drastic qualitative change.
“some” …
EDIT: and yet another article that ignores the generation between millenials and boomers …
Hey, my partner may technically be Gen X but I’m pretty sure the entire generation is an urban legend.
Sun don’t even shine through our window pane
Ah yes the generation that wasn’t even worth naming so they gave us a placeholder.
Growing up Gen X in the US was watching a slow motion train wreck where you’re able to see the causes, current wreck, and even look down the road to the future repercussions but everything you do or try to make things better for everyone is ignored, co-opted, or sidelined by the monolithic boomer voting bloc. And all the while you’re being gaslit by the beneficiaries of the current shitshow selling you an American Dream that never was true and hasn’t been remotely attainable since you joined the workforce.
Boomer is a state of mind, and Gen X gobbled down hard on that Reaganomics.
Spent 6 years sofa surfing, its less a fear and more a reality for some. Sadly in most western countries homelessness is seen as a punishment and housing programmes stipulate no alcohol, no drugs, curfew. all of which put people back on the streets.
housing programmes stipulate no alcohol, no drugs, curfew. all of which put people back on the streets.
More often, its the risk of physical or sexual violence that pushes people out. Shelter work is grueling and the pay is shit. The only people in the business tend to be the the boundlessly charitable or the ruthlessly exploitative.
The Texas Youth Corrections System has a scandal every five years or so, in which this or that low level staffer gets strung up for trading drugs to inmates in exchange for pornography or sexual favors. Its a regular low-rent Epstein Island that the state administrators know and actively cultivate, but periodically have to run Limited Hangout on when the heat builds up too high.
Just stay tuned for the show when/if the Orange Fascist gets into office again. Cuts to Medicare, SS, and a dismantling of the ACA will be top priorities, and then you’re going to see huge increases in the numbers of homeless old folks. Grandpa and Grandma trudging their carts down the road, loaded with the sum or their earthly possessions, heading for the next place to sit next to traffic with a cardboard sign or heading for the nearest tent-city that hasn’t been ripped apart by the cops. These income/benefits cuts (and similar - think Medicaid) will be savage for younger people too, but younger people can at least, usually, at minimum, get some kind of crappy job whereas older people, the vast majority of whom are on small, fixed incomes, will very often be unemployable due to illness or injury or (as should be obvious to anyone who pays attention) age discrimination. If that sub-minimum-wage job office job can be done by 20yo Sally or 70yo Sam, if that house-painting job can be done by 20yo Chad or 60yo Cindy, guess who’s going to get the job and who’s going to be unable to rent even a single-room flat because of no job, no income.
I point this out mainly because one seldom encounters articles that are sympathetic to the financial plights of older people - they’re assumed to be all out playing golf at The Club all day, eating restaurant meals afterwards, taking long vacations whenever, just because, and living in comfortable, fully-owned houses with incomes that support their upkeep as well as the upkeep+use of that brand new gigantic RV parked outside. Oldster unemployment and poverty and medical debt and, ultimately Oldster homelessness, is just outside of the narrative.
Don’t forget us disabled people who get fucked by the same cuts to already ridiculously underfunded programs that vary in helpfulness depending on which state you ended up stuck in.
only some? i was in fifth grade worrying about getting a job and how i’d stay alive otherwise. we need FDR back god fucking dammit. give us another WPA.
In one of its most famous projects, Federal Project Number One, the WPA employed musicians, artists, writers, actors and directors in arts, drama, media, and literacy projects.[1] The five projects dedicated to these were the Federal Writers’ Project (FWP), the Historical Records Survey (HRS), the Federal Theatre Project (FTP), the Federal Music Project (FMP), and the Federal Art Project (FAP). In the Historical Records Survey, for instance, many former slaves in the South were interviewed; these documents are of immense importance to American history. Theater and music groups toured throughout the United States and gave more than 225,000 performances. Archaeological investigations under the WPA were influential in the rediscovery of pre-Columbian Native American cultures, and the development of professional archaeology in the US.
jesus i wish we still had that program - many places in the usa need a decent theater or performing arts center
There’s an excellent film about the musical, The Cradle Will Rock, which brought down the WPA Theater Project and started the communist witch hunt.
The film is ‘Cradle Will Rock’ without the ‘the.’ It also has an amazing cast. It’s too bad it flopped because I love it.
The cost-of living crisis is so bleak that some Gen Zers
genuinely fear becomingare homelessFTFY
The amount of people living in their cars at the park near me in Long Angeles is astounding. It’s really sad.
I never understood of you have a car why not leave and try somewhere else?
There is no digging yourself out of a hole in Cali…you just can’t.
The weather, the jobs, friends and family in the area, many reasons.
Whole tent cities under the freeway routinely get raided by the police and “cleaned up”. And our political climate is increasingly moving toward the view that the non-homeless would be better off moving homeless folks into a prison camp or grave.
As a single GenX, this is my biggest fear. I have never been homeless but I have been very close a couple of times. My rent is about half my take home pay and I’m sure it is going up again this year.
Vasectomy and shack up with a sexy roommate is my advice.
The answer was so simple, why didn’t we all see it?!
I’m Gen X with a masters and work as a computing director. I’ve been homeless 4 times, though I didn’t yet have a masters or this job. None of this has been fun.
My greatest fear is financial crisis. To an irrational degree where I expect to commit suicide in a panic. I’m in therapy, don’t worry.
Hugs, bruh
Fear becoming? You mean ARE becoming
What… genuinely fear homelessness… such a new concept!
I have news for you, as an old millennial, it’s not just G Zers.
The whole system is broken, we can’t fix it, we must tear it down.
Sadly the aftermath would be devastating.
Awww, capitalist oligarchy not to your liking? Eat cake, pleb.
As an unemployed millennial, I also fear this. I’ve been looking into how to survive as a homeless man and it doesn’t look very enticing.
Gym membership and a storage unit. Alternatively, meet a very nice woman.
Yeah I should get a sugar mama.
Gym membership for exercise and showering were legit part of my plan. And somewhere to store a laptop (locker) was vaguely part of it too.
But I don’t think I have the constitution for sleeping rough. Maybe I’d surprise myself. I feel like I’d get lots of reading and writing done.
