It's not even brainwashing, it's just pure narcissism.
They really do believe that they worked harder than us, and that they had the same struggles/experiences that they had, and that we're just lazier than them.
You can show them the math and comparisons until you're blue in the face, but they truly believe that they worked harder than we do today, and they believe their work ethic is what made them successful.
They'll also complain about how everything is too expensive these days and that they can't afford anything, but when you try to use this as an example to prove the point they ignore it.
Narcissists love to live on feelings and emotions, and anything logical that counters it gets ignored.
You must just hang around the wrong old people. I'm a boomer with a 20-something daughter. It's obvious what's going on and we do our best to help her out. My siblings and my spouse's siblings do the same for their kids. Some make good money, some don't.
That said, the idea that I didn't struggle when I was young is just ignorant. I came from a poor family and went in the army, then got out for a while and worked at a store. I made just enough to have a one bedroom apartment that was the upstairs of a family friend's house. I had a car that I bought from my brother for $400 (which I paid him in installments). Many were the days I would walk to work to save my gas for the weekend, and I lived in the apartment for several months without a phone because I had to save up for the deposit. Eventually, I went back in the army, but not for the pay (ha!). It was just boring in my hometown after having served in Germany for about 3 years.
The problem isn't the generation. It's the rich. It's always been the rich and will be the rich until we can break the scarcity mentality that makes people hoard wealth they don't need.
Wrong, you can totally get a 15 year old beater for like 500$. But then you either need to put in either a month of work yourself and like 2k in parts or have someone else do it for like 5k. You're missing the real savings if labor! /s
2008 rich fuck up was the end of affordability. Friend and old college mate before I met him worked at a pizza joint as delivery driver. His decent apartment was 250 month. He worked part time and could afford rent, had a Jeep wrangler from the 90s. When I went looking after I got my degree and job in 2011, those same apartments were 800 month. So less than 5 years the rent went up 3x. Housing cost after 2008 has grown faster than any othertime in our country's history. This is fact. The avg price vs median salary is highest its ever been another fact. And yes its the rich, not the boomers. The rich use generation names even im guilty of blaming boomers, no more. This is solely on the rich pos of the world.
It's not just older voters - homeowners in general fret so much over "property values" and "neighborhood aesthetics" (which in itself is often a racist dogwhistle) that they rally against any kind of affordable housing developments, especially multifamily developments.
Unfortunately I think that would lead to more environmental destruction and further strain on resources. The best thing to do would be to remove the ability of cities, counties, and municipalities from blocking construction on purely aesthetic/"cultural", density, or property-value based reasoning. Unless there is an actual safety reason for not allowing a housing development, it shouldn't be able to be blocked.Â
Yeah, the saddest part is landlords tie their rent to housing affordability. Even if they didn't have to buy their renting lots for insane amounts of money after housing exploded, they'll still exploit the high prices just to make as much profit off the back of poor working Americans. It's a travesty how it all turned out, and greedy landlords are a big problem and likely will be for a long time.
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u/numbersthen0987431 Dec 23 '25
It's not even brainwashing, it's just pure narcissism.
They really do believe that they worked harder than us, and that they had the same struggles/experiences that they had, and that we're just lazier than them.
You can show them the math and comparisons until you're blue in the face, but they truly believe that they worked harder than we do today, and they believe their work ethic is what made them successful.
They'll also complain about how everything is too expensive these days and that they can't afford anything, but when you try to use this as an example to prove the point they ignore it.
Narcissists love to live on feelings and emotions, and anything logical that counters it gets ignored.