With a decent rice cooker and some 20-lb bags of rice, lentils and beans, you can have nutritious, protein-rich meals for about $1 a day; maybe $1.50 a day if you're an unusually big and/or physically active person—even if you're living in a transitional situation where you don't have a stove/hot plate/cook top. An outlay of $5 every few months in the spice aisle can add flavor and variety.
Add in a good multivitamin/mineral plus some extra stashes of quality supplements of vitamins D, C, and B12 (none of which can be meaningfully "overdosed"), and you've got yourself a nutritious, extremely protein-tich, diet that's loaded in all the necessary micronutrients. Still clocking in under $2 a day. Still if you don't even have a stove or a hot plate.
One of my favorite meals is Tandoori Chicken and Ginger and Garlic Rice. You can get three large breasts of chicken for $13 at Loblaws in North Van. A 1 lb. bag of rice runs about $8.
Well, I am not sure how long one can last on rice and beans alone. I don''t think it's realistic to expect anyone in the modern world, surrounded by food temptations, to survive just on rice and beans for a long time. I would get bored out of my mind at some point and won't be able to stick to it. (And I think I am relatively disciplined about my nutrition and budget)
"However, we can help the next generation by demanding that schools make cooking and budgeting core courses in high school. One course, call it life skills, covering both would be sufficient." Meh... My daughter's high school had a mandatory personal finance class (as do all schools in our state) - she learned nothing. (Ditto for her classmates who took a cooking class). However, she quickly learned to budget and cook when she found herself on a very lean budget in college. With all the recipes on the internet, learning to cook is easier than ever now. Most of her friends in college manage to cook for themselves. It's fun, they exchange recipes and invite one another over to try them. It's nice when your parents and grandparents teach you when you are little and pass on some cool family recipes, but really, basic, healthy, budget cooking is not that complicated.
Maybe but I suspect your daughter learned to budget and cook because of how she was raised rather than because she was on a lean budget.
So kudos to you.
If all it took was lean budget to teach these skills we wouldn't have seen so many people complaining online. "I don't have enough money! I'm going to lunch."
Oh, home ec classes are certainly fun and should be offered for those who are interested - just not mandatory since it's a skill one can learn without a teacher.
There's a huge number of low-cost cooking shows on YouTube, mostly aimed at young adults who don't have a lot of money or time ("Struggle Meals" is my favorite). Many of the younger people I talk to about this don't believe that its's easier, cheaper, and healthier to cook at home than it is to order delivery (and nearly as quick).
The "I don't have time" argument make little sense. How do people with kids and all the time consuming demands that come with it, have more time than childless single people?
Have them add up a month's worth of delivery meal costs. (If it's two meals a day, this will be WELL into the four-figures in U.S. dollars. Even if it's just one meal a day, if that meal costs $28 like everybody is saying above then that's still almost $1,000 a month.)
Then ask them if they'd spend that much per month at the grocery store. Hell, ask them if they even COULD spend that much per month at the grocery store.
As an old engineer for decades I have said that the single most important class in high school would be a home econ + basic finance one. Should be mandatory in every school district with minimum grade of "C" to pass. I was fortunate in being able to learn quickly because despite all the high grades I got in high school I was woefully unprepared to be on my own. Thankfully I learned to live inexpensively and stay out of debt, but would have been nice to have a better foundation to start from.
I buy snacks and drinks for our young part-time workers so they don't go and buy an $8.00 coffee. I feel it is my duty to not only provide but to give a bit of schooling on saving money. Speaking of coffee, a friend and I were in a SoCal coffee house/restaurant and marveled how we were enjoying the fruits of a lovely setting because some crazy women were willing to ride in covered wagons with their even crazier husbands to settle the West. But no one thinks of these things. No one reads John Steinbeck to know what it really was like a 100 years ago. As for 'affordable housing' we don't have a housing shortage as much as we have a shortage of housing where people desire to live. I grew up in a pretty area with rolling hills. Section 8 housing killed the area. This isn't unique. Drugs killed the Rust Belt areas and rural areas. The problem is that there are no more functioning schools or grocery stores. But this is a far different obstacle than the slums and dangerous jobs that met immigrants over a 100 years ago. We are all soft and that includes me.
It's very good of you to help out the young people. I remember my first Starbucks coffee. I had it while visiting Seattle with the Canadian Navy sometime in the 1990s. It was awesome! That said, the explosion of coffee shops and growth of coffee culture, for lack of a better term, is probably not helping young people save money.
Housing is complex problem. Certainly looking down on an 800 sq ft apartment and roommates is not helping. I never lived alone and my wife and I lived in a small one bedroom for a few years after we were married. Not once did we think we had it bad.
Living in much of SoCal is unaffordable. Hands down. And the political landscape keeps chasing businesses away. There used to be a pretty robust engineering economic sector but they were chased away. So you have young people doing service jobs and they using aid to get by. At the Farmers Markets young health people think - especially young women - think nothing of using food stamps to buy things. I don't blame them. In my early 20s I might have done the same thing but society made it unacceptable. The larger problem is that the subsidies distort everything. Where I grew up, there are well built brick homes for less than $150,000 but no one wants to live there. So we have the homes but not the amenities. I get that but that is a luxury attitude that didn't exist a 100 years ago.
What I think is worse is that we are squandering the natural resource of human resolve to figure things out. Not that such a process is easy. The slums of NY over a 100 years ago are frightening. But prosperity grew out of the garbage.
A good chunk of this is not just financial mismanagement, it's a feeling of deprivation. Remember these kids are living in an economy that has been getting notably whole worse for their whole life. This kind of behavior is part of the psychology of deprivation, which I think amplifies time preference:
George Orwell speaks of this in The Road to Wigan Pier:
> When you are unemployed, which is to say when you are underfed, harassed, bored, and miserable, you don’t want to eat dull wholesome food. You want something a little bit ‘tasty’. There is always some cheaply pleasant thing to tempt you. Let’s have three pennorth of chips! Run out and buy us a twopenny ice-cream! Put the kettle on and we’ll all have a nice cup of tea!
It doesn't matter that their lifestyle is better than 99% of the people on the planet and in 99.99% of people who have ever lived. They're responding to the downward trajectory.
He also captures the dynamic of the wealthy criticizing the poor over their choices:
> Would it not be better if they spent more money on wholesome things like oranges and wholemeal bread or if they even, like the writer of the letter to the New Statesman, saved on fuel and ate their carrots raw? Yes, it would, but the point is that no ordinary human being is ever going to do such a thing. The ordinary human being would sooner starve than live on brown bread and raw carrots. And the peculiar evil is this, that the less money you have, the less inclined you feel to spend it on wholesome food.
These are the sorts of things you do when you have options in a plan.
Agreed. It's just a pattern I keep seeing and I think Orwell captured it well.
It reminds me of my friend John from back in the day living in a punk house where no one had any food. When they had money they just wasted it on weed and beer. Guy who recently moved in got annoyed with all this, had an extra few bucks, went out and bought a case of ramen and two dozen eggs. John laughed, said "you know man don't think you're cut out for this lifestyle."
I vaguely remember “health” class my freshman year of high school (mid-1990s) that took one-third of the year in lieu of PE. Nothing fancy, but it did include some rudimentary cooking (including hands-on) and was as much “home ec” as it was “health” (what I’ll call matter-of-fact, biology-driven sex ed).
I actually think it's the instant gratification mentality that culture has pushed for ~40 years. Each subsequent generation simply possesses less distress tolerance for, well, anything. That includes tolerating the time, talent, and prep work to make one's own food. This, and the defensiveness on display of said behaviors, can all be neatly summarized by the word "entitlement."
"I'll never own a house so I'm going to brunch," is not something mature people say.
Thirty years ago a black colleague of mine explained the concept of young broke black men buying expensive sneakers in much the same way. “They realize they’ll never be able to afford the 3000 square foot brick home that you live in, so they look for luxury and status in different ways”, he told me.
A Canadian who swore to defend his country, instead stood by while it was betrayed to foreigners sneers that they aren’t brown bagging it? Keel hauled too good for ye. Canadian billionaires are the most disgusting oligarchy in the Western Hemisphere. That’s a bold statement.
Hubris where there should be shame. Steal, sell out to foreigners just to make sure there’s no ladder to climb, then sneer. Disgusting. They can buy lunch all they want, you can eat beans and rice.
I hadn't heard about the Oleary kerfuffle. I took Home Economics, and all I remember is that I made applesauce and a denim skirt, both of which I didn't like. So I don't think that is the solution. My conclusion is different than yours. I would say this generation has zero patience and seeks instant gratification. Kids will literally grab the phone out of your hand if you are texting too slowly! They are growing up with cars that drive themselves, AI that writes papers for them, and a host of conveniences that require no skill in learning. This generation looks to influencers who dictate to their adoring followers (a word in itself that defines the problem) what they deserve, although none of it is earned. So in answer to the Oleary question, they don't make a sandwich because why should they when it's so easier to order one that will taste better than what they could possibly make. It offers a temporary distraction from the fact that they may not be able to afford a house or healthcare, but damn it, they can afford a sandwich. And you know what? It's not their fault, it's Kevin Oleary's and all of us grown ups who built this house of cards or looked the other way and continue to do so.
Why should they? Because they can save $10 every time they order something. I know many young kids laugh at the concept of saving, but that's the problem. (Yep, they scoff at cooking at home and saving $3000-4000 a year.) It's possible that they may still not be able to afford a house this way, but by ordering everything online they sure as hell will not be able to!
I wouldn't dismiss home ec just because it wasn't run properly when you took it. Teaching people to cook and manage a family budget would be very simple.
To a certain degree I agree with your "all of us grown ups" are to blame because we all voted and made choices, but what choice did the average person make that led us here?
Got a job, got married, found a place to live, raised a family, spent/saved money? I have no idea how old you are, but what would you have done differently that would have made the world a better place?
Thanks for engaging in further conversation. Recognizing where our culture went wrong and then finding solutions is really important if we are going to help future generations avoid our mistakes. And I'm not saying we created the problems. That was mostly created by poor policy decisions and corrupt leadership, leading to a concentration of wealth. Our part in the failure of which I am guilty is complaining about that leadership, but not demanding accountability and transparency over the past decades which allowed them to grow ever more powerful.
We let them repeal the Glass Steagall Act, we let them pass Citizen's United, we let them renew Homeland Security time after time. Every election, we settle for two shitty choices of candidates from a uniparty that we really don't want and nobody but the DNC and RNC elected. We bought their lie that the family unit will be just fine despite 2 parents working outside the home. We let them use our taxes for war. We let them bail out banks. We let them do gain of function and create bioweapons. We shame them for pedophelia and rape but no one goes to jail. We even protest in the streets and nothing changes.
Let's fast forward a bit. Now we let them create wearable devices and take our biometric data, willingly offer up our faces for surveilance, sign over privacy rights. We cannot even participate in normal daily life without a phone or a computer. We entered into a contract without reading the fine print so to speak.
Now enter this new generation. Depending on their employment, they might be doing well and saving money, or they might not. But all of them are keenly aware that the systems I mentioned above are broken, and feel powerless to do anything about it because we have proved for decades that we can't do anything about it. The media feeds them so much ideological bullshit that they question the validity of their own reality, even biological sex. Is it any wonder they seek comfort and pleasure in distraction?
All this is not to say that the world is a horrible place or that our country is doomed. I do not feel this way at all. On the contrary, I think we are all lucky to be alive and breathing every day and can love our children, our neighbors, our pets, to create art or walk in nature and watch the sunset. There is plenty good in the world and we can cultivate that goodness, but we have to take responsibility for allowing our corrupt leaders and institutions to get away with figurative and sometimes literal murder. And then do something about it.
P.S. I've always said, if we all just stopped paying our taxes in unison, we might get their attention. Anyway, thanks for letting me rave. It felt good.
"Our part in the failure of which I am guilty is complaining about that leadership, but not demanding accountability and transparency over the past decades which allowed them to grow ever more powerful."
Democratic intuitions are susceptible to corruption and/or capture by ideological groups. Most of us can only act as individuals. The current breakdown would not have been possible were it not for an erosion of social norms.
Yes, Americans have only two real choices every 4 years. Unless they get involved in politics and vote in primaries. Which the majority do not. Even then the deck is stacked.
You can like or hate Trump but you can't deny that the level of corruption in government is at an all time high. And yes, I'm aware that Biden was corrupt as well.
We've normalized corruption, theft, lying, pornography, drug use, laziness, poor behavior in school, grade inflation, etc. and then either blame boomers and/or lament bad politicians.
I don't have a fix but saying - and I'm not saying this is your point - "what else are the young supposed to do" is definitely not going to fix the problem.
When it comes to sweeping reforms, we all feel powerless because doing what we can doesn't seem to make a difference in the public sphere. I've voted third party (Nadar, Stein, Bernie, Bobby) so I don't align with either party anymore. Affecting change in our own lives can make a big difference in our immediate families and communities, and I think that's what the younger generation doesn't seem to understand. They have fallen prey to defeatism and seem to have given up trying. So I agree, doing nothing will do nothing. Good 'chatting.' I enjoy your writing.
He didn't blame all of today's problems on feminism. He blamed the lack of Home Ec training.
I recently had a similar discussion with a lady on X who claimed that Home Ec training was oppression because it was designed by the male patriarchy to keep women at home. I explained that her assumption was incorrect. We wanted to learn how to cook and sew, and most of the women in my Grade 7, 8 and 9 Home Ec classes went on to university and settled into careers ranging from Kindergarten Teacher to Corporate Lawyer and Civil Engineer.
Being able to feed oneself and make clothes on a budget is a valuable life skill. But feminists felt that if we learned it, we'd become trapped...miserably slaving for ungrateful families, under the thumb of a demanding and controlling husband. Absolutely false.
I am reminded of a young lady I once interviewed who told me that she didn't learn to type because she never wanted to become a secretary. I wondered if she refused to learn to drive for fear of becoming a taxi driver. Needless to say, she didn't get the job.
With a decent rice cooker and some 20-lb bags of rice, lentils and beans, you can have nutritious, protein-rich meals for about $1 a day; maybe $1.50 a day if you're an unusually big and/or physically active person—even if you're living in a transitional situation where you don't have a stove/hot plate/cook top. An outlay of $5 every few months in the spice aisle can add flavor and variety.
Add in a good multivitamin/mineral plus some extra stashes of quality supplements of vitamins D, C, and B12 (none of which can be meaningfully "overdosed"), and you've got yourself a nutritious, extremely protein-tich, diet that's loaded in all the necessary micronutrients. Still clocking in under $2 a day. Still if you don't even have a stove or a hot plate.
I love rice!
One of my favorite meals is Tandoori Chicken and Ginger and Garlic Rice. You can get three large breasts of chicken for $13 at Loblaws in North Van. A 1 lb. bag of rice runs about $8.
That's a minimum of three meals for $21.
😋😋😋
Well, I am not sure how long one can last on rice and beans alone. I don''t think it's realistic to expect anyone in the modern world, surrounded by food temptations, to survive just on rice and beans for a long time. I would get bored out of my mind at some point and won't be able to stick to it. (And I think I am relatively disciplined about my nutrition and budget)
I hear Ya. It's not something ppl would do unless they have to... but for those who have to, it's a workable solution.
"However, we can help the next generation by demanding that schools make cooking and budgeting core courses in high school. One course, call it life skills, covering both would be sufficient." Meh... My daughter's high school had a mandatory personal finance class (as do all schools in our state) - she learned nothing. (Ditto for her classmates who took a cooking class). However, she quickly learned to budget and cook when she found herself on a very lean budget in college. With all the recipes on the internet, learning to cook is easier than ever now. Most of her friends in college manage to cook for themselves. It's fun, they exchange recipes and invite one another over to try them. It's nice when your parents and grandparents teach you when you are little and pass on some cool family recipes, but really, basic, healthy, budget cooking is not that complicated.
Maybe but I suspect your daughter learned to budget and cook because of how she was raised rather than because she was on a lean budget.
So kudos to you.
If all it took was lean budget to teach these skills we wouldn't have seen so many people complaining online. "I don't have enough money! I'm going to lunch."
We loved our high school "home ec" classes and even learned how to cook a few things (this was the 70's)!
Oh, home ec classes are certainly fun and should be offered for those who are interested - just not mandatory since it's a skill one can learn without a teacher.
The problem is not enough people are learning them. Especially the budget side.
That said, we could decrease the cost of schooling if we just eliminated all the electives. Go back to the three R's.
At first we did it because there were mostly girls in the class, 😂 but we actually loved the cooking!
There's a huge number of low-cost cooking shows on YouTube, mostly aimed at young adults who don't have a lot of money or time ("Struggle Meals" is my favorite). Many of the younger people I talk to about this don't believe that its's easier, cheaper, and healthier to cook at home than it is to order delivery (and nearly as quick).
That is astounding.
The "I don't have time" argument make little sense. How do people with kids and all the time consuming demands that come with it, have more time than childless single people?
IKR... maybe they just assume there's alws a stay-at-home parent in those situations? (which says a lot about their own background)
Have them add up a month's worth of delivery meal costs. (If it's two meals a day, this will be WELL into the four-figures in U.S. dollars. Even if it's just one meal a day, if that meal costs $28 like everybody is saying above then that's still almost $1,000 a month.)
Then ask them if they'd spend that much per month at the grocery store. Hell, ask them if they even COULD spend that much per month at the grocery store.
As an old engineer for decades I have said that the single most important class in high school would be a home econ + basic finance one. Should be mandatory in every school district with minimum grade of "C" to pass. I was fortunate in being able to learn quickly because despite all the high grades I got in high school I was woefully unprepared to be on my own. Thankfully I learned to live inexpensively and stay out of debt, but would have been nice to have a better foundation to start from.
I agree 100%.
I buy snacks and drinks for our young part-time workers so they don't go and buy an $8.00 coffee. I feel it is my duty to not only provide but to give a bit of schooling on saving money. Speaking of coffee, a friend and I were in a SoCal coffee house/restaurant and marveled how we were enjoying the fruits of a lovely setting because some crazy women were willing to ride in covered wagons with their even crazier husbands to settle the West. But no one thinks of these things. No one reads John Steinbeck to know what it really was like a 100 years ago. As for 'affordable housing' we don't have a housing shortage as much as we have a shortage of housing where people desire to live. I grew up in a pretty area with rolling hills. Section 8 housing killed the area. This isn't unique. Drugs killed the Rust Belt areas and rural areas. The problem is that there are no more functioning schools or grocery stores. But this is a far different obstacle than the slums and dangerous jobs that met immigrants over a 100 years ago. We are all soft and that includes me.
It's very good of you to help out the young people. I remember my first Starbucks coffee. I had it while visiting Seattle with the Canadian Navy sometime in the 1990s. It was awesome! That said, the explosion of coffee shops and growth of coffee culture, for lack of a better term, is probably not helping young people save money.
Housing is complex problem. Certainly looking down on an 800 sq ft apartment and roommates is not helping. I never lived alone and my wife and I lived in a small one bedroom for a few years after we were married. Not once did we think we had it bad.
Living in much of SoCal is unaffordable. Hands down. And the political landscape keeps chasing businesses away. There used to be a pretty robust engineering economic sector but they were chased away. So you have young people doing service jobs and they using aid to get by. At the Farmers Markets young health people think - especially young women - think nothing of using food stamps to buy things. I don't blame them. In my early 20s I might have done the same thing but society made it unacceptable. The larger problem is that the subsidies distort everything. Where I grew up, there are well built brick homes for less than $150,000 but no one wants to live there. So we have the homes but not the amenities. I get that but that is a luxury attitude that didn't exist a 100 years ago.
"I don't blame them. In my early 20s I might have done the same thing but society made it unacceptable."
The erosion of social norms is possibly the biggest problem.
Here's what I did when I couldn't find a job in the place I really wanted to live, I moved.
I have no sympathy for people who feel they deserve to live in expensive cities when there aren't any jobs that will pay them enough.
Move!
What I think is worse is that we are squandering the natural resource of human resolve to figure things out. Not that such a process is easy. The slums of NY over a 100 years ago are frightening. But prosperity grew out of the garbage.
The cost of eating out versus brown bagging represents $5k a year extra
Simple breakdown:
Takeout sandwich $10
Value of materials in sandwich $2
Labour value value of sandwich $8
Time to make sandwich 2mins
Hourly cost of having someone make you a sandwich is effectively $240/hr
If you make less than $240/hr it’s silly to have someone else make sandwiches for you.
Nobody is suggesting that you can't eat out occasionally, but doing it daily and complaining that you don't have any money is just dumb.
A good chunk of this is not just financial mismanagement, it's a feeling of deprivation. Remember these kids are living in an economy that has been getting notably whole worse for their whole life. This kind of behavior is part of the psychology of deprivation, which I think amplifies time preference:
George Orwell speaks of this in The Road to Wigan Pier:
> When you are unemployed, which is to say when you are underfed, harassed, bored, and miserable, you don’t want to eat dull wholesome food. You want something a little bit ‘tasty’. There is always some cheaply pleasant thing to tempt you. Let’s have three pennorth of chips! Run out and buy us a twopenny ice-cream! Put the kettle on and we’ll all have a nice cup of tea!
It doesn't matter that their lifestyle is better than 99% of the people on the planet and in 99.99% of people who have ever lived. They're responding to the downward trajectory.
He also captures the dynamic of the wealthy criticizing the poor over their choices:
> Would it not be better if they spent more money on wholesome things like oranges and wholemeal bread or if they even, like the writer of the letter to the New Statesman, saved on fuel and ate their carrots raw? Yes, it would, but the point is that no ordinary human being is ever going to do such a thing. The ordinary human being would sooner starve than live on brown bread and raw carrots. And the peculiar evil is this, that the less money you have, the less inclined you feel to spend it on wholesome food.
These are the sorts of things you do when you have options in a plan.
Yes, everything is explainable. Do you have free will or not?
Then make good choices.
"no ordinary human being is ever going to do such a thing."
Be less ordinary.
People give up because we've normalized self-pity.
This is not the first generation to experience tough times.
The version of you that tries will be better off than the version of you that doesn't.
There are plenty of jobs out there, there are just too many people who have been raised to think "I'm above that job."
I could go on and on and on, but I won't.
Try or don't try, just don't complain when not trying leads to failure.
Agreed. It's just a pattern I keep seeing and I think Orwell captured it well.
It reminds me of my friend John from back in the day living in a punk house where no one had any food. When they had money they just wasted it on weed and beer. Guy who recently moved in got annoyed with all this, had an extra few bucks, went out and bought a case of ramen and two dozen eggs. John laughed, said "you know man don't think you're cut out for this lifestyle."
LOL
The person in question does have to be able to cook something without burning their place down.
In some cases, this is beyond them, mostly because they've never had to do it.
If the bar is "don't burn your house down," it's pretty low.
Anyone can learn to cook.
I vaguely remember “health” class my freshman year of high school (mid-1990s) that took one-third of the year in lieu of PE. Nothing fancy, but it did include some rudimentary cooking (including hands-on) and was as much “home ec” as it was “health” (what I’ll call matter-of-fact, biology-driven sex ed).
Yes, obviously it would have to be restructured to focus on useful life skills.
I actually think it's the instant gratification mentality that culture has pushed for ~40 years. Each subsequent generation simply possesses less distress tolerance for, well, anything. That includes tolerating the time, talent, and prep work to make one's own food. This, and the defensiveness on display of said behaviors, can all be neatly summarized by the word "entitlement."
And that's all.
Entitlement? Probably. However, laziness and immaturity have to play some role.
"I'll never own a house so I'm going to brunch," is not something mature people say.
It's difficult to say how broad this behavior is. Obviously X is going to show you the worst side of the Zoomer generation.
"I'll never own a house so I'm going to brunch," is not something mature people say.
Thirty years ago a black colleague of mine explained the concept of young broke black men buying expensive sneakers in much the same way. “They realize they’ll never be able to afford the 3000 square foot brick home that you live in, so they look for luxury and status in different ways”, he told me.
Yes, it's understandable but it's shortsighted and more importantly wrong.
This isn't the first generation to experience economic difficulties. Blowing money because times are tough today just puts you in a permanent hole.
Absolutely agree!
https://unbekoming.substack.com/p/after-closure
Hubris where there should be shame.
A Canadian who swore to defend his country, instead stood by while it was betrayed to foreigners sneers that they aren’t brown bagging it? Keel hauled too good for ye. Canadian billionaires are the most disgusting oligarchy in the Western Hemisphere. That’s a bold statement.
Hubris where there should be shame. Steal, sell out to foreigners just to make sure there’s no ladder to climb, then sneer. Disgusting. They can buy lunch all they want, you can eat beans and rice.
I hadn't heard about the Oleary kerfuffle. I took Home Economics, and all I remember is that I made applesauce and a denim skirt, both of which I didn't like. So I don't think that is the solution. My conclusion is different than yours. I would say this generation has zero patience and seeks instant gratification. Kids will literally grab the phone out of your hand if you are texting too slowly! They are growing up with cars that drive themselves, AI that writes papers for them, and a host of conveniences that require no skill in learning. This generation looks to influencers who dictate to their adoring followers (a word in itself that defines the problem) what they deserve, although none of it is earned. So in answer to the Oleary question, they don't make a sandwich because why should they when it's so easier to order one that will taste better than what they could possibly make. It offers a temporary distraction from the fact that they may not be able to afford a house or healthcare, but damn it, they can afford a sandwich. And you know what? It's not their fault, it's Kevin Oleary's and all of us grown ups who built this house of cards or looked the other way and continue to do so.
Why should they? Because they can save $10 every time they order something. I know many young kids laugh at the concept of saving, but that's the problem. (Yep, they scoff at cooking at home and saving $3000-4000 a year.) It's possible that they may still not be able to afford a house this way, but by ordering everything online they sure as hell will not be able to!
Yes, Stan. That was intended to be sarcasm.
Went completely over my head! Glad we agree. 😍
Oh, I missed the sarcasm too. Sorry about that.
I mean Stefan, so sorry.
😂
I wouldn't dismiss home ec just because it wasn't run properly when you took it. Teaching people to cook and manage a family budget would be very simple.
To a certain degree I agree with your "all of us grown ups" are to blame because we all voted and made choices, but what choice did the average person make that led us here?
Got a job, got married, found a place to live, raised a family, spent/saved money? I have no idea how old you are, but what would you have done differently that would have made the world a better place?
I'm genuinely interested in reading your reply.
Thanks for engaging in further conversation. Recognizing where our culture went wrong and then finding solutions is really important if we are going to help future generations avoid our mistakes. And I'm not saying we created the problems. That was mostly created by poor policy decisions and corrupt leadership, leading to a concentration of wealth. Our part in the failure of which I am guilty is complaining about that leadership, but not demanding accountability and transparency over the past decades which allowed them to grow ever more powerful.
We let them repeal the Glass Steagall Act, we let them pass Citizen's United, we let them renew Homeland Security time after time. Every election, we settle for two shitty choices of candidates from a uniparty that we really don't want and nobody but the DNC and RNC elected. We bought their lie that the family unit will be just fine despite 2 parents working outside the home. We let them use our taxes for war. We let them bail out banks. We let them do gain of function and create bioweapons. We shame them for pedophelia and rape but no one goes to jail. We even protest in the streets and nothing changes.
Let's fast forward a bit. Now we let them create wearable devices and take our biometric data, willingly offer up our faces for surveilance, sign over privacy rights. We cannot even participate in normal daily life without a phone or a computer. We entered into a contract without reading the fine print so to speak.
Now enter this new generation. Depending on their employment, they might be doing well and saving money, or they might not. But all of them are keenly aware that the systems I mentioned above are broken, and feel powerless to do anything about it because we have proved for decades that we can't do anything about it. The media feeds them so much ideological bullshit that they question the validity of their own reality, even biological sex. Is it any wonder they seek comfort and pleasure in distraction?
All this is not to say that the world is a horrible place or that our country is doomed. I do not feel this way at all. On the contrary, I think we are all lucky to be alive and breathing every day and can love our children, our neighbors, our pets, to create art or walk in nature and watch the sunset. There is plenty good in the world and we can cultivate that goodness, but we have to take responsibility for allowing our corrupt leaders and institutions to get away with figurative and sometimes literal murder. And then do something about it.
P.S. I've always said, if we all just stopped paying our taxes in unison, we might get their attention. Anyway, thanks for letting me rave. It felt good.
"Our part in the failure of which I am guilty is complaining about that leadership, but not demanding accountability and transparency over the past decades which allowed them to grow ever more powerful."
Democratic intuitions are susceptible to corruption and/or capture by ideological groups. Most of us can only act as individuals. The current breakdown would not have been possible were it not for an erosion of social norms.
Yes, Americans have only two real choices every 4 years. Unless they get involved in politics and vote in primaries. Which the majority do not. Even then the deck is stacked.
You can like or hate Trump but you can't deny that the level of corruption in government is at an all time high. And yes, I'm aware that Biden was corrupt as well.
We've normalized corruption, theft, lying, pornography, drug use, laziness, poor behavior in school, grade inflation, etc. and then either blame boomers and/or lament bad politicians.
I don't have a fix but saying - and I'm not saying this is your point - "what else are the young supposed to do" is definitely not going to fix the problem.
When it comes to sweeping reforms, we all feel powerless because doing what we can doesn't seem to make a difference in the public sphere. I've voted third party (Nadar, Stein, Bernie, Bobby) so I don't align with either party anymore. Affecting change in our own lives can make a big difference in our immediate families and communities, and I think that's what the younger generation doesn't seem to understand. They have fallen prey to defeatism and seem to have given up trying. So I agree, doing nothing will do nothing. Good 'chatting.' I enjoy your writing.
Thanks Tina!
Gotta love the crybaby men who blame all today's problems on feminism.
Incorrect.
I also blamed teachers and school boards.
Note: in a 1007 word essay the word “feminists” appeared twice.
He didn't blame all of today's problems on feminism. He blamed the lack of Home Ec training.
I recently had a similar discussion with a lady on X who claimed that Home Ec training was oppression because it was designed by the male patriarchy to keep women at home. I explained that her assumption was incorrect. We wanted to learn how to cook and sew, and most of the women in my Grade 7, 8 and 9 Home Ec classes went on to university and settled into careers ranging from Kindergarten Teacher to Corporate Lawyer and Civil Engineer.
Being able to feed oneself and make clothes on a budget is a valuable life skill. But feminists felt that if we learned it, we'd become trapped...miserably slaving for ungrateful families, under the thumb of a demanding and controlling husband. Absolutely false.
I am reminded of a young lady I once interviewed who told me that she didn't learn to type because she never wanted to become a secretary. I wondered if she refused to learn to drive for fear of becoming a taxi driver. Needless to say, she didn't get the job.
Ya, there are a lot of stupid decisions being made under the banner of "freedom."