The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
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User ID: 174
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
11hr ago
That's only half of individualism, though. Assigning everyone a role and holding them responsible for fulfilling is still collectivist.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
12hr ago
In my industry there is a saying about some people having X years of experience and others having 1 year of experience, X times. Teachers, by nature of the job, nearly always fall into the second pattern -- each year is the same as the last. And they get seniority pay increases because they're public employees with unions. Most jobs are not like that -- if experience people get more pay, they're expected to do a better job.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
12hr ago
Then don't be old and don't work and save for decades. Live now and create
Naa, I'm tired. Besides, if I did, you and yours would be complaining about old people hogging all the good jobs.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
12hr ago
The old (specifically, old fathers) had ALL the power and wealth in Ancient Rome. It's a terrible example for your position.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
16hr ago
The key word is 'feel'.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
16hr ago
They belong to you insofar as you can defend them. Historically, the old pay the young to do that (in various ways, not necessarily financial, but is a good chunk of the time). The fact they're currently refusing to (because they feel, perhaps correctly, they do not need to) and at the same time preventing any other independent development is, again, kind of the central issue.
Except none of that is happening. Taxes are paid by the "old" -- well, really, the middle aged, but our angry Zoomer doesn't make a distinction
I believe I've mentioned this before: when a society is in equilibrium old vs. young and to the degree that all modern development is zero-sum, TFR should be 2.0. Lower than that means the old aren't reinvesting enough (it's very clear that they're addicted to low-cost labor, hence their preference for infinity foreigners rather than focusing on domestic reproduction); higher than that means the young are burning through the capital too quickly and are on track to create this problem.
I do not find this claim compelling.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
16hr ago
This is how gen Z and alpha actually talk.
No wonder they're poor.
I just think that the pile of earnings I worked for when I was younger is my pile of earnings
There's a strong argument and a weak argument here. The weak argument permits sitting on bygone glory that can't be presently defended, but audits your earnings and finds that dotcom era webdev work was overpaid.
There's no argument at all for young people to judge the worthiness of work done by old people long ago with an eye to confiscating the fruits of their labor.
The strong argument says that even if you invented the transistor and capitalized completely fairly from that, evolution dictates that once you are done producing with that money and reproducing with your gametes, it is no longer optimal to allocate those earned resources to you. They should be dispersed, and do become dispersed, in the state of nature. That's how aging and death works.
Ah, but most of us aren't dead yet. And before you suggest "that could be arranged", you might want to consider that if you were in any position to arrange it, you wouldn't be poor.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
17hr ago
You are over 50 years old. Gen X is Boomer. Get with the new hip lingo.
You are a self-parody.
You just think young working couples, whom the world depends on, should be poor, while you sit around on a pile of „earnings” (which really do not survive worthiness audit anyway, although that's beyond the point), and stronger younger men are barred from competing for it except for through pandering to you.
I just think that the pile of earnings I worked for when I was younger is my pile of earnings, and do not somehow belong to the younger generation merely because they are younger. Your idea that we should have a world where only those who are on top at any given moment should have anything is dystopian.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
17hr ago
Social security tax hasn't increased since 1990.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
17hr ago
I'm not a boomer, and I don't have a pension. I was also never middle management, for that matter, although the idea that it is "half-UBI" for the old is pretty laughable. And I didn't expect your priors to shift because integer ones never do.
I make about 95th percentile income for my age group and I am old for marriage by historical standards. We don't feel like we can afford to have a baby right now. So that would be a take based in reality, yes?
No, it's really not. It's that word "feel" that gives it away.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
18hr ago
That's the Confederate battle flag. The Stars and Bars is a different flag and I expect a majority of progressives wouldn't recognize it out of context.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
18hr ago
The right's collectivism treats people as individuals when assigning blame, but that's as far as it goes. They tell you what to do and them blame you if you don't do it right.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
18hr ago
The 19 year old HBD posters would get the company in hot water with the EEOC.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
18hr ago
For those wondering about the whole fertility thing, why people aren't having children... this post gives you one underdiscussed reason. How much sharper than a serpent's tooth...
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
19hr ago
As I said above, the right is not about individualism. Just a different collectivism.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
19hr ago
The categories become much more relevant and legible if you accept the Milton and David Friedman model of Left and Right as being about collective vs individual responsibility and agency.
Seems wrong. The right sometimes talks about individual responsibility and agency, but they are right there complaining about opioids, OnlyFans, and FanDuel as if people don't actually have agency.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
21hr ago
Seems to me that if the DNC were to do a real autopsy of their performance in 2024, the last thing they'd do is make it public. This is BS of some sort.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
22hr ago
Greenwald is still on the left (though dissident), he's just also gone full Hamas.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1d ago
I don't think we should make Karen behavior illegal. The law isn't flexible or precise enough to diagnose it and curtail it without horrible overreach. I think we, as people, should call it out and shame it when we find it, across all of society.
Unfortunately Karens, by definition, are the arbiters of shame.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1d ago
but would abolishing qualified immunity in the US not just result in unlimited lawfare against any government officials enforcing anything with a political dimension, which would presumably lead to said government officials becoming reluctant to do so?
If so, mission accomplished.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
2d ago
That's a politicized-looking source
Your source just pulled a figure from the air.
Now WWII... WWII had at least a 17% military death rate. Not for the US, but overall for all soldiers. WWI, 12%
Comparing fighting in any of these wars with pregnancy (noting we are not, in fact in pre-modern times) and finding the fighting to be less onerous is not reasonable.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
2d ago
Apparently soldiers had a 1.8% chance of being killed in WWII, 0.5% in the Vietnam War.
No, 2.7% Rather higher than maternal mortality rates, even pre-industrial.
As for the rest, how about existing for years in, well, the jungles of Vietnam? Or some godforsaken island in the Pacific? How about the whole military training process, designed to break your spirit and break down your personality so you can be rebuilt into the military mold? Unwilling emotional bond with your squadmates? Yep, that too.
And you think Band of Brothers wasn't terrible enough? The original Easy Company had almost 47% killed in action.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
2d ago
The final recalcitrant juror is induced to change his mind not by the others successfully convincing him, but by the others socially ostracising and refusing to talk to him.
This is just reality. Argument rarely convinces anyone, unless you count the argument from authority and argument from force.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
2d ago
Or he's just saying that because it makes Trump happy. A happy Trump is a Trump more willing to provide sanction relief.
Median mortgage payment as a percentage of median income: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1RDJB
FRED doesn't have data further back, but it's worse 1981-83
That's one of many reasons boomers aren't impressed by the whining. Yeah, things are in fact bad now (though there was a lot of the same whining pre-COVID when they were not). But they were worse in the 1980s, when many boomers were trying to get their life started.
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