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Over the years I have mentioned some of this before, but the perception of unfairness and complaining about what others have is getting worse in my view. Did I and others in my generation have everything easier because we were born in the 1940s?
True I wasn’t burdened with student loans, but on the other hand I never had the full college experience and most of my night school was paid by the GI Bill. I was never burdened by credit card debt, because I was taught never to buy what you couldn’t pay for- the alternative was doing without.
I grew up in a modest income family, probably not reaching middle-class ($3,000 in 1950- $41,000 in 2026 money). In the early years I remember we didn’t have a car and my parents couldn’t afford a house until my father was in his 60s and then shared with my sister’s family.
Unlike what I hear these days, there was no complaining, no talking of unfairness. There were a couple of overnight and one week long road trip, but never a real vacation, my father didn’t get paid for vacations until years later when I was an adult.
Life was life and you accepted it and made the best of it and enjoyed it as simple as it was. I don’t recall whining about millionaires or thinking about them and what they had and we didn’t. We didn’t know anyone as rich as Rockefeller. There weren’t many billionaires in those days, J Paul Getty and H.L. Hunt were exceptions.
I had no feelings of going without, but I admit I had thoughts of doing better. While I never received an allowance, I always had some change in a piggy bank or my pocket, enough for a ice cream cone at ten cents or in high school a slice of pizza for fifteen cents.
As children we worked for every penny- and we saved from those pennies. We collected soda bottles for the deposit, shined shoes, raked leaves and shoveled snow plus the occasional Kool-Aid stand. If you wanted something, you needed money, there was no-one to ask for it and that was understood and ok. My father worked six, sometimes seven days a week 8-8. He would come home for dinner and go back to work. If he didn’t sell a car, there was no pay.
Our expectations were low, I guess that’s both good and bad. We didn’t know anyone who had much more than we did. I wondered, but never asked, why my aunts and uncles all had houses.
I started paying FICA at age 14. I don’t recall complaining government was ripping me off, but I was happy decades later when I hit the taxable wage cap later in the year. And I’m happy now that I have received SS benefits equaling much more than I and my employers paid in FICA taxes. Far from viewing SS as a scam, I see it as adding to a comfortable retirement even though I paid into it for fifty-three years.
Perhaps it’s just my perception warped by social media, but today nobody seems satisfied, they envy the very successful and conclude they are entitled to a share, many see corporate America as the enemy and taking advantage of them. They seem entitled and feel opportunities are blocked. They believe they deserve higher pay, and just “more” somehow. Some see working more than eight hours a day as demeaning and a sign of economic failure. We saw it as opportunity.
Recently a person told me I was too old to understand, my generation had it easy, things are harder today. Things are different for sure and so are the attitudes of people. Maybe different attitudes and expectations did make growing up in the 40s and 50s easier.
I have observed that things that used to be considered luxuries are standard or baseline.
My Dad was a music buff, he thought Karen Carpenter was the bomb. He returned from Vietnam and bought a new 1974 Dodge Dart and was just delighted to have an under-dash cassette tape player to listen to his favorite music. It was a luxury to him, one of few he allowed himself.
Now people feel that wired connectivity to the music apps on their phones just isn’t good enough compared to wireless, but it’s so much better than just a few years ago.
The proliferation of luxury features in our consumer mindset is a huge contributor to inflation. On many products, you can no longer find a simple manual system, everything is “smart.”
I don’t object to the development of labor saving features, I object to the dependence on it. I’m probably guilty of this like anyone else, but I miss the days where you had to WORK for the fancy stuff. Or just do without.
I think I misled on the tone of this post. It is not just the younger generation complaining. We old folks do our share, especially about SS and Medicare being insufficient, about taxes, especially property taxes, but also any taxes on the basis seniors have paid their share. 😱
It’s like we have all forgotten we are part of a large society and what it takes 340 million of us at all income, education and intelligence levels to function as a society.
I think it is more than a generational phase. I hope I am wrong.
Thanks for the clarification, Dick, I thought you were just being a grumpy old man again😁. Between my time with the union, and your time in human resources, we could no doubt keep each other entertained for hours, sharing the crazy things we heard people say.
I don’t think there’s a fix for this. Rumors spread in the days before the personal computer. In the 90s it got worse as people began passing around those stupid unsigned emails, and now with social media it is just insane.
Affluenza…
There are valid complaints in our and any society. But I think as we get and expect more, we loose perspective on how much we have.
There have been multiple periods in U.S. history where workers pushed back hard against companies—the late 1800s, early 1900s, the 1930s, even the late ’60s and ’70s. That wasn’t entitlement. It was usually a response to wages, conditions, or lack of bargaining power. I anticipate another push coming soon.
The stretch many of us grew up in was actually a pretty favorable one economically—rising wages, stronger benefits, easier path to homeownership and inexpensive educational opportunities. That doesn’t take away from the work we put in, but it does matter.
Today’s issues look different—housing costs, job security, fewer pensions, more visible inequality. Add social media and people see what others have constantly. That changes how dissatisfaction shows up.
I agree that focusing too much on “they” isn’t useful. But when you see broad frustration across a generation, historically that’s usually been a signal, not just attitude influenced by social media. Listen, don’t dismiss the current generation.
I totally agree. A new push is forthcoming, every generation has different challenges, and do not dismiss today’s kids.
I’m pretty sure our parents had their doubts about us pot smoking hippies, but we turned out okay.
It’s easy not to miss what you’ve never had. I was well into my twenties before mobile phones or the internet became a thing, and I never felt their absence — they simply didn’t exist. Now I can’t imagine being without either. I pay for a phone contract, I pay for broadband, and if my handset breaks, I feel compelled to replace it at indecent speed. On top of that, I now subscribe to a premium movie channel and, for my sports-mad grandson, a premium sports package. Not one of those bills existed thirty years ago.
Previous generations managed differently, and nobody seemed to suffer for it. As a kid during the summer holidays, my friends and I would scour the neighbourhood for returnable deposit bottles — two of them got you a swim at the local pool. My parents never owned a car. That was simply how things were, and I never missed it. Now it seems most families consider two cars a basic necessity.
Each generation, I think, inherits a new layer of costs that the one before never imagined. The standard of what counts as acceptable living slowly rises, and what was once considered a luxury gradually becomes essential. That’s why things feel dearer — it’s not just inflation, it’s the shifting baseline of what we believe we can’t do without.
Here is a recent example of outrageous points of view IMO and grossly inaccurate as well. The effective tax rate for 50% of Americans is 3.7%
“37% tax on just our wages. Then add sales tax, gas tax, registration fees, property tax, state tax, local tax, tax on tax. We’re basically taxed out of existence….. this has to stop!!!!”