- cross-posted to:
- news@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- news@lemmy.world
Americans’ credit card debt levels have just notched a new, but undesirable, milestone: For the first time ever, they’ve surpassed $1 trillion, according to data released Tuesday by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
A single income used to afford a house, and family, a car or two, vacations, and retirement savings.
Then we needed families to have two incomes to have that lifestyle.
Then we held on to that system, but had that lifestyle, WITHOUT the building up of any savings, and without the vacations.
Then we needed two incomes just to be able to LEASE that watered-down lifestyle.
And then we needed two incomes and good credit to juggle that watered-down lifestyle, and deferring debt to some point down the road when we assumed we’d be high-income earners.
Now we are in stunningly dangerous territory. We’ve largely given up any luxuries, and we struggle to find the CREDIT to LEASE basic essentials like housing, food and medicine. Often we fail to do so.
Inflation has hit us incredibly hard, but when student loan payments start up in mere weeks from now, it’s going to be CRIPPLING, not just to those with debt, but EVERY business that needs those people to buy their goods and services.
We’ve been robbed of our future by corporate greed and the psychopathic cruelty of the boomer-run government.
… And just in the past 6 months we’ve seen the invention of the first artificial general intelligence. Even if it never got any better than it is today, it would still decimate the workforce. But it is getting better. At a staggering rate. We are headed for a jobs crisis the likes of which has never been seen in all of human history.
Add to that the rise of fascism in a global scale.
Add to that the hundreds of millions of anticipated climate change refugees, and potentially catastrophic failures of the ecosystems which sustain various crops.
Add to that that all of human experience and evolution has left us WILDLY unprepared to understand let alone solve problems of this pace and magnitude.
It is difficult to see how we survive this.
Not that I support everything about her, but Elizabeth Warren literally wrote the book on our 2 income problem.
Society tracks “family income” and for a gigantic portion of history that was one income, then in the 60s-70s women started entering the workforce in larger numbers (in the US, not sure about globally) and we see family income “rising” so we think “great, we’re growing! We’re doing well!” Except that it only grew because of an additional income.
Now we’re at the point you’ve mentioned where that isn’t even enough anymore especially when the vast majority of jobs seem to offer around 50-60k unless you’re a specific professional/tech bro.
I’m a perpetually single blue collar schmuck, I’ve completely given up on the idea of homeownership, and am very very quickly realizing my retirement plan has to be a shotgun to the head.
What a wonderful future we have to look forward to.
And I’ll just add this so no one has to later: GlObAlLy We’Re BeTtEr ThAn EvEr! Because you know, that totally helps…
@flossdaily @MicroWave
That’s the thing tho … most humans won’t survive this. The super rich are buying up remote properties/islands at an incredible rate and want Mars asap.
Most of the rest of us will die of starvation, fires, heat, dehydration/poisoned water or the massive storms.
Mars is a pipe dream. Unless Earth goes full Venus, it will be vastly better then Mars for at least the next thousand years. Terraforming Mars would be a centuries long endeavor, and terraforming Earth would be vastly easier.
Very well written and accurate. I just want to add that the financial requirements to raise children have been out the window for some time as well. Not that they would want to exist in a world with climate change anyway.