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…And then they mostly couldn’t be bothered to actually get college degrees despite how cheap they were, yet still ended up with good careers capable of supporting entire households with only one person working anyway.
Despite his cynicism, even Bernie manages to understate the problem here!
Just throwing out there, this was one generation out of however many to the dawn of time that was able to do this. And they did it on the backs of the hundreds of thousands of people that fought, starved and died to get unions established. For the vast majority of history, if you could work you worked man, woman & child because if you didn’t your family starved. Then people fought for generations to get unions established and they finally did it and one single generation got the advantages of it before the next generation decided they didn’t need no stinking unions as they were working white collar jobs and here we are. We’re not standing together so we’re falling together.
Hillary stole Bernie’s nomination and robbed Americans of his presidency
Hillary didn’t rob him of it; the Democratic Party robbed him of it.
AND she lost to Trump.
Because of America’s dogshit election system, she won the popular vote.
I’d give anything to go back in time and see how that election goes differently with an Approval Vote.
Honestly, a candidate like Trump was not an “if” but a “when”.
Even if the Dems had won that election, history has shown they they would not have made any real.changes. They would have done nothing to try and prevent something like the Trump Presidency from happening. They wouldnt have tried to fix the rigged gerrymandered districts, they wouldn’t have pushed for voting reform, they wouldn’t have tried to call put the insane rhetoric being put out by right wing propaganda machines, and they wouldn’t have instilled better checks and balances on the presidency that relied on more than the assumtions of common decency, respect, and tradition.
Nah, they would have rested on their laurels for electing the first female president, and be caught with their pants down when the GOP successfully harnessed the resentment of angry white men for being “under the rule” of a black muslim socialist for eight years, and a satanic pedophile child eating woman for 4.
I wanted to believe this during the 2016 party primary like I needed to breathe. Hell, I STILL want to believe it. But the reality is that the American people robbed us of his presidency.
2016 was one of the first elections where Gen X, Gen Z, and Millennials collectively outvoted the boomers and the silent generation, by the slimmest of margins. It goes without saying how much the older generation drinks from of the neo-liberalism kool-aid. A self-professing socialist was always going to be a hard sell.
As far as the 2016 Democratic primary goes, Bernie got 1820 pledged (elected) and 45 unpledged (super/unelected) delegates. To win by one delegate, he would have needed to get 518 additional super delegates to overcome Hillary’s pledged delegate lead over him. A win from him would have caused an outrage, since the unelected delegates would have overridden the elected (read: will) of the Democratic primary voters.
The most important thing American voters can do is to continue to demonstrably show how neo-liberal socio-economic politics is marching us to generational ruin to every voter you know, and then vote appropriately in every local, state, and federal election.
It was the Democratic establishment and the corporate media that stole it. The biggest thing they fear is a candidate that puts the American people over corporate interests.
Did she steal it tho?
The Bern caved, which was a cuck move.
I still support him but that was a clown mistake imho setting working and young people back a decade or so.
As much as I hate to say it, Democrats would’ve just lost even harder if the vote was divided. He did the right thing at the time, the democrat party never would’ve backed down on Hillary back then.
That entire election was egos that overestimated how things would go.
I love this guess parading as facts. We don’t know what would have happened and now there is no way to tell. But we do know that Bernie fed the 2 party system, which has been screwing wage slaves for most of the century. Trump won anyway, so the entire exercise turned out to be futile as we now know though. As long as people keep playing two party system aint nothing changing. Democrats can control both house and Presidency, and we are still getting fucked. Obviously this aint political party issue, since neither will improve anything for plebs. Last time something like that happened was when FDR was in charge lol
Image Transcription: Twitter Post
Bernie Sanders, @BernieSanders
The Boomer generation needed just 306 hours of minimum wage work to pay for four years of public college. Millennials need 4,459.
The economy today is rigged against working people and young people. This is what we are going to change.
^I’m a human volunteer transcribing posts in a format compatible with screen readers, for blind and visually impaired users!^
Can we keep the timestamp in when cropping a post from another website?
7:29 AM · Apr 24, 2019 for the record.
Sorry, Bernie’s full of crap. He’s deliberately twisting facts to misinform. He’s using today’s highest minimum wage to calculate paying tuition at levels of 50 years ago, and trying to imply that people only needed to work 306 hours THEN to pay for college tuition THEN. That’s just not true.
When I was working during high school / college, minimum wage was $1.50 / hr. That works out to $459 for 4 years of college education. Tuition at public institutions in the mid '70’s was $1210 / year nces.ed.gov That’s $4840 for 4 years at a time when my comfortably middle-class father was earning ~ $25 K / year. It was cheaper, but not by as much as Bernie claims.
Also, public colleges have always been subsidized by the state. You’d also need to look at the level of subsidy between then and now and whether we’re choosing to subsidize less.
Subsidy is about the same the most places… admin bloat though requires higher fees from students.
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Talked to a (old) boomer just yesterday during a BBQ. Everything from climate change denial to citing the Bible to … I don’t kinow, justify his hate of “weirdos” like gay and trans people.
But he did admit that young people have it harder than him and that he would not be young in our current time.
Finances aren’t the only difficulty in life. It’s not that simple and reducing down to just the financial aspect of life, while that aspect is important, is oversimplifying things. Don’t forget there were tons of poor boomers too. Only about 1/3rd ever saw a pension. Plus, try telling gay boomers, POC, women, people with mental and emotional issues, etc that they had it easier. They weren’t all middle class straight white men, and treating them as one homogenous group is disingenuous.
I’m (barely) in the boomer generation, and I have a daughter who is 25, so I see the situation she has compared to what I had. I also have boomer employees and coworkers with younger kids. The cost of buying a house and paying for education is for sure a lot higher now compared to wages, and those are big quality of life factors.
One thing I rarely see mentioned in these discussions is the availability of a safety net. My daughter has had to have a fair amount of help from us, as have most of her peers from their parents, and that sucks, but the fact of the matter is that it’s more of an option today than when I was young. Most of my friends have paid 100% of their kids’ education, and many if not most have helped with housing in one way or another. That was less viable when I was young. I was lucky that my parents paid for my education, but that wasn’t true for most of my peers at the time. When I left the house, it was made clear that there’s no going back.
I’m in no way trying to say we had it hard or harder, just mentioning that there are a lot of factors that go into the situation.
Oh, one other thing: I really believe that the current high cost of education is at least in part intended by older conservatives. Today’s conservative agenda relies on people voting against their own interests (it’s amazing that poor Midwestern farmers largely support tax cuts for the wealthy - it’s crazy). Making education something only wealthier people can afford and creating a giant media franchise that looks like news but is really conservative propaganda are two approaches to furthering that goal. We have to fix it, but there’s a bunch of people who actively don’t want to fix it because they’re happy with the situation.
I’ve been looking for work since losing my job in March. And all these lead-addled antiques keep saying, “nobody wants to work anymore.” These people couldn’t be any less attached to reality.
I can promise you this: for every boomer who says something like that, there’s another boomer who thinks that one is a douche.
Try researching your masters degree in a Library using Microfiche. First reply here on Lemmy, just wanted to say “hello”
Yall go to college? Lol
6 class days away from finishing my Associates Degree at community college. 😁
Halfway to Bachelor’s.
Congrats. That probably feels really good.
I never liked school. Authority, busy work, rote memorization. I always liked to learn ground up, with a purpose. And choosing what I wanted to be before i was even aware of myself felt limiting.
Perhaps I’ll go someday, I could never afford to not work, but today, I think I’d be pretty decent at school…go figure.
tbh, I wouldn’t trade my “education” for the world. If I could do it again, I’d do the same, i think.
I only started going when I was 28. I’m also a very independent learner, I was unschooled as a child, but I love it.
I’m the top student in most of my classes and I have straight As. It’s nice to prove to myself I’m able to succeed in school when I didn’t go when I was younger. You should give it a try, you might be surprised how much you actually enjoy it! I know I was.
Perhaps I will get around to it. I do think I’d enjoy it, but for something I’d want to learn, not for a job. Tbh, the schedule would be what got me. I don’t like em. I like flapping on the wind lol. I definitely understand your sense of pride in your accomplishment, you deserve it. (:
Yes something needs to change and I feel you are seeing the real panic of the right as more and more younger people can now vote and are just pissed as everything they are doing.
People have been saying this since the 60s. Lots of young people are still conservative and many areas are still solidly red. I don’t see a massive blue wave that garners a supermajority happening anytime soon.
Actually, it looks like this time it might be true.
Next is speculation on my part, but I imagine people are turning conservative more based on their wealth than their age. We saw a correlation between age and conservative sentiment because people tended to gather wealth as they got older.
But that link has been progressively eroded, so people are no longer switching. Essentially the conservatives are killing the golden goose in their incessant pursuit of consolidating wealth.
Yes, I have seen that point and also a paper discussing it, but I am a bit skeptical. It could potentially just delayed… which transitions well into your speculative point:
Next is speculation on my part, but I imagine people are turning conservative more based on their wealth than their age. We saw a correlation between age and conservative sentiment because people tended to gather wealth as they got older.
That is a very good point because inequality is killing wealth accumulation. It’s a very good working hypothesis imo.
I think the only solution to this problem is subsidies.
Subsidies knowledge works well around the world.
I think subsidies got us here in the first place. When the government pays for stuff it drives prices up.
Bernie sanders screaming into the wind yet again.
Bernie i love ya but nobody is gonna do the things you say.
They are way too reasonable.
Isn’t that kind of defeatist?
I don’t really have a horse in this race since I am not from the US.
It’s more cynicism than defeatism. People from the United States have pushed for these kinds of common sense reforms for our entire lives and we still have nothing to show for it.
That is what we are going to change
Then do it! I feel like I’ve heard this for so long, from all the parties, and just nothing gets done.
Do you realize who tweeted that? Because I feel like asking Bernie Sanders to just “do it” is very unfair. He’s been fucking trying for the past decade.
I used to like Bernie , I think he talks a good game to get people in but can be counted on to take a dive.
Take a dive, as in concede after losing the primary and supporting the Democratic nominee? That’s exactly what he said he would do all along. It’s a requirement to run as a Democrat in the primary and Bernie is a man of his word.
I’ll agree he is trying, but it’s so little, so slow, the whole legislature sucks at making progress.
Yeah, but again that’s not on Bernie. If we had more Bernies things would be different, but he’s literally trying to roll that rock up the mountain like goddamn Sisyphus by himself.
Idk. I just feel like your comment is ungrateful for his efforts. He’s an old man who deserves a rest from all this futility, but I get the feeling that he won’t stop trying to effect change until he dies or is too physically/mentally infirm to continue.
Not easier, simpler.
This is very smart of him to use generational terminology to engage with young voters. He’s looking at trends on social media. Maybe it will work for him. His main obstacle is that most democrats are moderate and don’t have a problem voting republican if they think the democrat is too far to the left. Maybe engaging with young voters in this way can help him get over that obstacle.
College prices went sky high when the government started backing student loans, they should have never done that.
Except the government has been backing student loans since the GI bill passed in 1944. College tuition started growing in the 80s and really took off on the 90s and 2000s. So of the government backed loans didn’t cause skyrocketing tuition for almost 2 generations, why did it start when millennials were just being born?
