That is certainly not the experience of most people 30+ years ago.
Such comparisons ignore that things got better for a long time and then many people believe this trend reversed. If you lack certain things and the trend is to make such things more affordable, then this makes it easier to chase dreams. If the reverse happens, then it is harder.
If the amount you can save is less than the rise in housing prices, then if you cannot afford a house today on your current salary, you will be able to afford it even less tomorrow, despite your saving. Then you need a yearly salary increase just for housing to stay as unaffordable as it is today, and a far bigger salary increase to make it more affordable. If those salary increases don't happen, then it can be equally true that you are wealthier in some ways than your parents, and still feel like you are circling the drain, rather than making progress in life.
And if lots of things are getting just a bit more expensive than the growth of salaries each year (on average), then that would feel like death by a thousand cuts, in other words, a feeling that something is wrong without ever having a clear casus belli. Then I would expect people to blame one of the cuts that is slightly deeper than the rest, which can then be dismissed as being wrong, but the reason would then not be that the price of burritos is actually fine, but that the price of thousands of things are slightly wrong, combining into a big wrong.
A second issue with such a comparison is that studies have shown that happiness due to wealth is more about one's relative position. This makes perfect sense in many ways. If you are the richest man in a medieval town where everyone is almost unfathomably poor by modern standards, including that 'richest' dude, then that guy would likely end up with a one of the most beautiful women in the town and be respected by everyone. And if they would die of a disease that we can easily cure or prevent today, they would never be aware that this technology would exist in the future. No one in my childhood was upset over not having one of these not-yet-existing smartphones.
It seems that women's standards have increased by a lot, and way faster than how men have improved, so most likely we have a women's affordability crisis that is just as insidious as the housing affordability crisis, but cannot be admitted to by mainstream people due to ... reasons.
And the standards for raising children have also increased a lot, while the ways to meet the standards have become commercialized, so it become very hard to afford children if you want to also meet societal standards with regard to how to raise them.
My suspicion is that many young people are already experiencing a strong sense of dread (often subconscious) at how milestones that have been considered at the core of human existence for most of human history now seem totally out of reach, and the anger at burrito prices is more an immense anger that even something relatively minor, but meaningful to their lives has become hard to afford: 'we can't even have that?!'
Aapje58
1d ago
Even if that's the case, that's a completely different claim to the claim that Mossad and Shin Bet rigged the votes without the EBU's knowledge.
Who is claiming that? EBU rules are that government funding may not be used to campaign for their country, nor may they (or the artists) engage in 'canvassing.' Israel had spent a more modest amount previously and after considering the results a success, they stepped up the spending massively. This money seems to mostly have come from a fund to promote Israel internationally, run by the foreign ministry of Israel. Netanjahu also personally called for people to vote the maximum number of times, which is canvassing and thus not allowed.
Also, a large amount of the controversy is that EBU knows this, but refuses to punish Israel for breaking the rules.
See: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/11/world/europe/eurovision-israel-gaza-netanyahu.html
Your summary seems to be nothing more than a straw man argument, that gets pretty much all of the controversy wrong.
This just reinforces his point though. He is way more successful than the average, who generally want to have more children than they actually have, yet he still fails to match his parents.
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