When asked to detail what would make a better life in three to five years, 60% of US adults said greater financial security
Americans may seem increasingly divided on beliefs and values, but in a new survey of more than 30,000 adults from across the country spanning generations and economic classes, a majority of Americans agree there’s a significant barrier to achieving a better life: the rising cost of living.
When asked to describe what a better life in three to five years would look like, 60% of Americans said they wanted greater financial security, according to a survey that was conducted by the McKinsey Institute for Economic Mobility and the WK Kellogg Foundation in mid-April.
In interviews that accompanied the survey, respondents often defined financial security as being able to afford basic necessities without worry.
I spend quite a lot of time in the US
I’m there because I have to be
People are on edge. Everyone is only a tiny mishap from absolute ruin, and the kicker is that it’s not just the “poor”
The wealthy, the “successful”, they’re all a broken leg away from losing their job and being saddled with some insane burden that will quite literally ruin them
And that’s the people “on top”
It’s literally impossible for me to imagine what life is like for those who are for the thousands of bigoted, stupid, hateful and profoundly ignorant reasons are cast aside and ignored by the white cunts who don’t realise that they are next to fall, when just being white isn’t enough
Pretty much anyone who didn’t buy property at least 10 years ago is on the ragged edge today.
Biggest barrier to better life: capitalism.
Idk, man. Capitalism has been really good at generating vast surpluses of commodities for consumption. One could argue that it’s too good at making a better life for a subset of socio-economic insiders. It creates a vicious cycle of overconsumption that favors early adoption, such that everyone has an incentive to industrialize without consideration of the long term ecological costs or geopolitical tensions.
There’s a whole book on the subject, in fact. It’s in German, but you can get translations in virtually any language. Check out “Das Kapital”. A bit of a dense read (god help you when you get to the bit about making a coat). But it seems to suggest capitalism is a stage of human development that all societies have to pass through eventually.
The trick is getting through the industrial phase and on to the socialist phase in an orderly manner, rather than getting trapped in a cycle of increasingly fictitious surplus production that inflates exchange value at the expense of use value.
I’ve read it, but it’s been a minute. I’ve long-known we’re at Marx’s collapse stage. Holding two contradictory feelings in balance while living through it is the trick.
I mean, say what you will of Marx, but he failed to predict the stabilizing influence of Keynesian Economics (or maybe he did predict it and I’m just forgetting where it’s mentioned).
We’re definitely in crisis, but I might argue we’ve been existing in a state of crisis for a long while. It’s just been a long slow burnout rather than a sudden cathartic drop.
The inflation on luxuries has far outpaced the ‘normal’ rate.
Tickets to the 1960 World Series were about $10.00, 2025 prices were over $500.00.
Same thing with concert tickets, or other live shows.
Ticketmaster and LiveNation are predatory and ruined the music scene. Same with every other unregulated large company
Ticketmaster and LiveNation are predatory and ruined the music scene.
They took advantage of a market that was relatively easy to corner. Big centralized music venues aren’t easy to manufacturer. Smaller venues experiencing exploding real estate costs aren’t competitive. Talent is far more fungible than the venues or the marketing teams or the financial networks that handle payment processing.
The dirty secret about someone like Taylor Swift is that she could have been anyone. She’s a good singer, but not that good. And she’s got a massive team behind her handling the promotion and the touring. She’s been more than willing to play ball, so she gets to headline all the most expensive events. But if she ever gets out of line, her brand tanks and a new pretty blonde starlet emerges with a deafening audience of enthusiastic online fans.
So long as musicians don’t control their own labels, their own venues, and their own promotional organizations, the simple talent for making music isn’t enough to generate and command a large audience.
I used to go to concerts quite often. I can’t even understand how anyone can justify let alone afford most tickets these days. Like who are all these people paying $1000s for World Cup tickets?
Smaller acts are still $30. They aren’t on ticketmaster.
You can get good seats for big bands cheap, too …if you wait till last minute or you get lawn seats.
I got lawn seats to Offspring last year and honestly was the best time I’ve had at a concert.
Lawn seats are great. I just wish the venu we typically go to sold season lawn tickets.
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I think it’s important for people to understand that (fairly recently) they changed the definition of “inflation”.
It used to be used as shorthand for “money inflation” which is when they supply of money increases which raises the prices of goods. This is what we saw when it would take literal wheelbarrows full of money to buy a single loaf of bread.
That is not what is happening here.
Now they say “inflation” and mean “prices went up”. There’s no increase in circulating money that causes it. All the money is being hoarded by oligarchs, and because no one else can afford to buy as much as they can, the oligarchs raised prices on everything so we had no choice but to spend more and get less.
The reason isn’t “inflation” or any abstract concept, the reason is greedy oligarchs who think we won’t or can’t fight back.
So stop fucking acting like this is a complicated thing that we need to figure out how to stop, we’re being price gouged by every industry and they’ll keep doing it till we make them stop. They’re doing it intentionally, and they’ll keep lying about it.
Because if enough people realize the only reason prices are up is because no one is reigning in corporations…
We might elect someone who is willing to reign in corporations.
You had me until that last sentence. When it comes to politicians, I’ve become very jaded. I’ve yet to see the first politician acting solely for the good of his people. Sure one can point at Bernie or Mamdani, but there is a reason they don’t make it to the very top. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to see Mamdani as POTUS, but either that will not happen or he becomes corrupted well before that.
The reason politicians with better social policies don’t make it to the top is the Overton window. If more people voted for representatives that supported such policies, then more would rise higher because there would be fewer elected representatives who did not support such policies. This isn’t complicated.
If voting was ineffective, the Republican party would not invest so much time and effort into preventing people from doing it.
Anyone who discourages people from voting is aligned with the goals of voter suppression.
If voting was ineffective, the Republican party would not invest so much time and effort into preventing people from doing it.
Voting is effective, sure, in determining which of them are to be bribed the coming years.
Overton window, sure. Not at all due to people becoming weary of millionaires asking for their vote while claiming to be just like them.
Anyone who discourages people from voting is aligned with the goals of voter suppression.
Anyone who encourages people to vote for millionaires is a class traitor. Look, I can be edgy too.
Politicans are not born…
They’re elected.
What you’re doing is like an incel bitching about “all women” just because you had bad luck and dated 3 psychos in a row. The problem is never “all ____”, it’s always the ____ you’re choosing.
Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to see Mamdani as POTUS,
Congrats, you agree with the head of the DNC, whose said multiple times we need presidential candidates like Mamdani.
Do you understand that? What that means?
That the DNC and progressive voters agree that a progressive candidate has the best shot at winning?
You’re being manipulated by the oligarchs into hurting our best chance in generations to win a battle in the class war.
Because you’re “jaded” which is really the same as “manipulated into being too exhausted to try”
Wake the fuck up, it’s all hands on deck and ignorance isn’t a valid excuse.
Go ahead, name one. That would immediately invalidate my claim.
EDIT: forgot the in- lol
Go ahead, name one
Name one what?
Good dem? Ok, Mamdani.
What the fuck are you even talking about?
the first politician acting solely for the good of his people
at
the very top
who is
willing to reign in corporations
FDR
Fucking easy, but if you didn’t know that and assumed I somehow knew what you were asking for…
I’m not going to accomplish anything trying to help you understand anything
He did it to staunch rising* willingness too support communists.
Interesting answer. I’m not that familiar with pre-nixon presidents, I’ll do some reading on FDR. Thanks for the tip!
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The worst part is that it’s becoming more and more apparent that it’s all by design. Now that we’ve reached the supercharged AI era, they can manipulate society in real time, and before we know it, we’re already in the chute, heading for the incinerator without even being aware of it even happening.
Idk about the whole “without being aware” bit.
But we’ve got a full-court press from national media telling anyone who is still tuned in that prices are going up and quality of life is going down because of those Evil Foreigners and Greedy Lazy Immigrants. So long as it’s not Me And My Friends getting thrown into the incinerators, the sight of people being rounded up and murdered in concentration camps or carpet bombed into a fine powder gets maybe 20-30% of the audience to give a shit.
And if you’re part of that minority cohort, you’re not going to win any elections (or so they tell me) so you need to sit down, shut up, and support the people doing mass arrests / mass murder correctly. Maybe that means only targeting the brown people. Maybe that means only targeting the non-Christian or non-Jewish people. Maybe that means laughing up your sleeve when the police come for the rednecks and the bumpkins, because they asked for this when their state broke 60/40 for team red rather than team blue. Idk. The important thing is that you’re always okay with at least a little bit of industrialized horror inflicted on the right group of people.
And, more importantly, that you’re always more afraid of the Evil Foreigners than you are of the home-grown billionaires and trillionaires. We need those home-grown oligarchs to fight the foreign oligarchs. Otherwise, the news says we’ll all be murdered in our beds by an invading army of North Koreans and Cubans like in that movie Red Dawn.
When has this never been the case.
But not why the costs are rising?
I mean you can uselessly shout “Groceries cost too much!” when you don’t understand “record profits” and government printing money. Nothing’s going to change when “do something!” is clueless.
I’m going to have to put my funeral on a credit card, and my estate is going to be a gamecube.
Are we great again yet? We had an economy that was the envy of the world toward the end of 2024. What happened since, I wonder?
It started failing in 2023, that’s when the tech layoffs started and jobs being shipped to india
Water is wet.
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yeah… no shit…
Biggest barrier to the life they used to have a few short years ago.
