Posted on 09/03/2019 10:14:51 PM PDT by Windflier
"College Student: My Generation Is Blind to the Prosperity around Us”
I’m sitting in a small coffee shop near Nokomis trying to think of what to write about. I scroll through my newsfeed on my phone looking at the latest headlines of political candidates calling for policies to “fix” the so-called injustices of capitalism. I put my phone down and continue to look around. I see people talking freely, working on their MacBooks, ordering food they get in an instant, seeing cars go by outside, and it dawned on me. We live in the most privileged time in the most prosperous nation and we’ve become completely blind to it.
Vehicles, food, technology, freedom to associate with whom we choose. These things are so ingrained in our American way of life we don’t give them a second thought. We are so well off here in the United States that our poverty line begins 31 times above the global average. Thirty. One. Times. Virtually no one in the United States is considered poor by global standards.
Yet, in a time where we can order a product off Amazon with one click and have it at our doorstep the next day, we are unappreciative, unsatisfied, and ungrateful.
Our unappreciation is evident as the popularity of socialist policies among my generation continues to grow. Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently said to Newsweek talking about the millennial generation, “An entire generation, which is now becoming one of the largest electorates in America, came of age and never saw American prosperity.” Never saw American prosperity! Let that sink in.
When I first read that statement, I thought to myself, that was quite literally the most entitled and factually illiterate thing I’ve ever heard in my 26 years on this earth. Many young people agree with her, which is entirely misguided. My generation is being indoctrinated by a mainstream narrative to actually believe we have never seen prosperity. I know this first hand, I went to college, let’s just say I didn’t have the popular opinion, but I digress.
Why then, with all of the overwhelming evidence around us, evidence that I can even see sitting at a coffee shop, do we not view this as prosperity? We have people who are dying to get into our country. People around the world destitute and truly impoverished. Yet, we have a young generation convinced they’ve never seen prosperity, and as a result, elect politicians dead set on taking steps towards abolishing capitalism. Why?
The answer is this, my generation has only seen prosperity. We have no contrast. We didn’t live in the great depression, or live through two world wars, the Korean War, The Vietnam War or see the rise and fall of socialism and communism. We don’t know what it’s like to live without the internet, without cars, without smartphones. We don’t have a lack of prosperity problem. We have an entitlement problem, an ungratefulness problem, and it’s spreading like a plague.
Very good
This is most amazing. 26 years old and viola! He gets it. Now with the way his generation treats views counter to their own, he may need to keep it to himself or start carrying a firearm. I lived long enough to see things developed, color tv, cell phones, computers that don’t fill a room, etc. I think he has a huge and valid point. They also didn’t learn you have to work to get those finer things and Freedom Ain’t Free.
The disease is called “Affluenza”.
The good news is that it contains its own cure. The bad news, the cure won’t be fun.
Jordan Peterson talks about this a lot.
And “near Nokomis” probably refers to Lake Nokomis, in Minneapolis. So even a millenial in Liberal land gets it.
Write a book!
Not trying to pour cold water on your idea cause I think the kid may be a little sharper knife in the drawer than most his age. The question to me is would any left leaning kids his age read it? Their parents apparently didn’t.
Hmm. You may have a point. I have the impression that few of them read books for pleasure. Maybe a magazine article would be better.
Many do not know true personal hardship.
Wealth doesn’t make you happy, relative wealth to your neighbors does. There are two ways to boost your social rank: climb up, or bring many others down. Leftists are people that find it far easier to bring others down.
When I was their age, I couldn’t carry a phone, the internet, a tv, a radio, a business directory, a calendar, a global map, stock reports, weather reports, thousands of store catalogs, an encyclopedia, a camera, and a thousand other things in my pocket all at the same time. Smartphones alone make millennials one of the richest, most privileged, most prosperous generations there is. And that’s just ONE thing.
most of that generation have no real access to any substantial amount of that wealth though... it’s an other people thing for them alien to their personal experience
their actual living standard in general is like Eastern Europe under Communism
“most of that generation have no real access to any substantial amount of that wealth though... it’s an other people thing for them alien to their personal experience”
Bingo. Except for the few high paying jobs in tech, they are struggling. I know engineers and actuarial scientists who cannot afford to live without room mates into their early 30s. Costs have outpaced salaries by a huge margin.
I was able to put the down payment on a modest house and put myself through college working as a driver with reasonable hours before the age of 25. Never happening in today’s economy...
If they're so poor then why are they so fat?
Poor people in the U.S. live better than kings did 200 years ago.
> If they’re so poor then why are they so fat?
Because they’re so poor they can’t even afford real food, and instead they get these fattening, low-nutrition food substitutes. That’s why poor and fat trend together now.
> Poor people in the U.S. live better than kings did 200 years ago.
A wild exaggeration that tells me you don’t have much experience interacting with the poor.
The lives of the poor in the US may include things like electricity, refrigeration, air conditioning and modern communications, but in all other aspects of life there is no serious comparison to be made.
“Poor people in the U.S. live better than kings did 200 years ago.”
Poor people in the US today live better than 95% of the people on the planet today.
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