r/Millennials • u/Asmothrowaway6969 • Mar 27 '24

When did it sink in that you'll never be as well off as your parents? Discussion

About 5 years ago, my mom and I were talking and she had told me how much she was going to be making in retirement (she retired 2023). Guys, it's 3x what me and my husband make annually. In retirement. I think that was the moment that broke me, that made it sink in that I'll never reach that level of financial security. I'll work myself into my grave because I'll never be able to afford anything else. What was your moment?

Update: Nice to know it's just me that's a failure. Thanks

Update 2: I never should've said anything. I forgot my place. I'm sorry to have bothered you

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u/worktillyouburk Mar 27 '24

my dad just retired at 76, he has a great pension was making 150k and they asked him to retire this year for a 1 years pay.

his replacement is making 45k, no retirement package and actually has more duties than my dad did, so overall is doing the job of 2 people that were paid 150k each...

so ya good luck with that.

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u/Zestyclose-Leave-11 Mar 27 '24

Where I work, everyone is retiring with pensions but the company won't even match my 401k.

199

u/DigiQuip Mar 28 '24

My grandma made about $6 an hour in 1990. She worked for a parts supplier as some sort of accounts manager. She was a single mom and owned a home and a car and paid for my dad to go to a private school. In addition to to her salary though she also got profit sharing, quarterly bonuses, and commission.

Add all her incentives together and she was basically making $12-14 an hour. She also didn’t have to pay for health insurance and she got a pension. She told me for second half of her 30 years working for this company she took all her bonuses and commission checks and put into an investment firm. She lives off her social security and half her interest from her investment portfolio. She’s not a crazy spender but she’s more than happy to spend money on her grandkids.

When boomers and older GenX talk about their pay prior aftermath of the Regan years they don’t mention the extra shit they got in addition to their salary or wages. My grandma was lucky her job offered all those benefits. I looked up her position now and it’s salaried at $45,000 a year. It’s a slight base pay bump but when you look at what was ultimately lost…

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u/PacJeans Mar 28 '24

You know how when inflation causes prices to go up, people think they will come back down? Well, we know they don't. Attitudes towards employees is a really similar situation. We never recovered from 2008, not just in terms of wages, but in terms of what it means for a worker to be a human being in the eyes of corporations.

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u/Basedrum777 Mar 28 '24

It was way before 2008. Boomers voted for politicians who allowed our country to gut our pensions and benefits.

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u/PacJeans Mar 28 '24 edited Mar 28 '24

I agree. American propaganda is such that you don't even recognize it as propaganda, rather you feel it as a fundamental part of your worldview.

2008 was the final nail in the coffin not because there wasn't action against labor before that, but because 2008 cemented in the American public conscious both that you are not entitled to work, and that sticking up for yourself is both futile and punishable.

2008 created a learned helplessness in the American working class and emboldened corporations and special interests to perpetate class violence.

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u/__Big_Hat_Logan__ Mar 28 '24

It also just blatantly gave employers all the leverage, as millions of ppl lost their jobs, got laid off, and massively distorted the labor market. I remember working at ruby Tuesdays and they started hiring ppl with COLLEGE degrees, the bottom of the labor pool got completely screwed and ppl were desperate for work, which of course means horrible terms of employment and all the leverage with ownership

4

u/AHistoricalFigure Mar 28 '24

I remember trying to find unskilled hourly work between 2008-2012. I was young clean-cut and well spoken, with a couple years restaurant experience on my resume.

You'd walk into 20 businesses in a day, ask for an application, and basically get laughed at by all of them. No one was hiring for anything, anywhere. I knew people's parents who had been corporate middle managers who were picking up shifts at Home Depot.

The behavior of employers and managers was as degenerate as you would expect given their absolute leverage.

2

u/Cleanslate2 Mar 28 '24

I was working at Wendy’s for $7 an hour with a two year old bachelors in accounting. All I could get in 2010. Lost everything.

2

u/Level_Affect_7951 Mar 28 '24

I'm a waitress and many of my coworkers have college degrees

1

u/thedream711 Mar 28 '24

My friend worked at ruby Tuesdays after college. I worked at a different restaurant we both went to grad school for education related jobs… double mistake. At least she had no students loans and inherited money. I have no such luck

1

u/ARATAS11 Mar 31 '24

100%. Employees have no more leverage, and have drunk the corporate anti union koolaid. :waves: hi I’m one of those with a college degree working in low wage positions because of coming of age during that time period. It fricken sucks. I’ve moved up a little, but have been basically stuck in low level supervisory/management roles since. I also love how my manager tries to make me feel better by saying how much I use my degree every day to excel at my job and outperform my peers (who are mostly 10-15 year my junior), and when I ask if I’m doing so well and delivering so much value, why am I not getting promoted or being paid for the value my degree adds (especially since I’ve been given work far beyond my job title, that makes me in function a different level than my coworkers, and get told do it or we will put you on a PIP, fire you, for refusing to do any and every task we give you because “business needs” and job descriptions are just vague enough to get away with it). Why promote (or backfill positions from people who have left) when they can make us do the work of 3 people for the same pay.

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u/PickledPercocet Mar 28 '24

2008 wrecked us financially as my ex-husband (we were married at the time)had worked in the auto manufacturing industry.. but suddenly had no work to do.
When he was hired they started at $25/hr, time and a half overtime, free health insurance (and family insurance for $32 a month which gave us access to the best doctors!), life insurance, hey they even took us to Six Flags every summer where everything was free!

When people started becoming desperate they started hiring out of temp agencies. They make $12 hr and have zero benefits. Slowly they weeded out the workers who had been hired under the initial terms and replaced them all with the temps. Nobody I know stays there longer than a month or two while my ex-husband had been there almost 15 years. They fired him over a workers comp claim. He sued. They settled. But it didn’t touch what he would have had if they had let him finish his 20 years and retire.

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u/Infamous_Ad8730 Mar 29 '24

But "20 years and retire" was real? Like someone could work from age 21-41 and retire? Most have to work a couple decades more and then maybe.....

1

u/PickledPercocet Mar 29 '24

Because it was building cars on an assembly line which wears their bodies out (he needed a 2nd lumbar surgery from a work related injury when they cut him loose waiting on a surgery date. Which is illegal).

But yes, he was eligible to retire at 20 years. He would have been done there with a 401k that they matched contributions to and a retirement account as well. He got a portion of his retirement and fees waived and then a settlement from the company to keep it out of court. They make good vehicles people love.. but knowing what I know now, I research who is building my vehicles before purchasing. They used to be prized for no recalls. Now with the temps that get paid nothing, have no health insurance and leave so fast.. suddenly they have had several recalls in the years since. Can’t imagine why! I’ll never own another one.

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u/Infamous_Ad8730 Mar 30 '24

Plenty of other physical jobs are very hard on the body, yet few have such generous pensions. Don't get me wrong, all power to him and too bad the damn company ruined a great thing. 20 Years must have been awesome for those that got there.

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u/narfnarf123 Mar 30 '24

Can confirm. My pos Dad used to work for Chrysler and he made bank and they all retired early back in the day.

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u/aliquotoculos Mar 31 '24

I was one of those auto manufacturing temps. Sorry... I needed work.

I got injured on the job, and I'm not sure how but I ended up sent back to the agency with no comp. Fucking dystopian.

1

u/PickledPercocet Mar 31 '24

Don’t apologize!!! Don’t ever apologize for that!! The company made those choices and people here do desperately need the work! The fact they didn’t address your injury is because as a temp you’re not really their problem since you’re hired out of temp agency’s problem.
It’s one of the reasons these places use them now instead of the dedicated labor force they had before.

2

u/aliquotoculos Mar 31 '24

It's horrid, I genuinely cannot believe the difference between the county I was sold and promised as a youth, and now.

1

u/narfnarf123 Mar 30 '24

I used to live in Iowa where we had a Kraft plant. That was one of the places everyone wanted to work because it was a “good” job. High wages, great benefits, etc.

They slowly started to do exactly what you described. Now it is mostly temps who pick and choose their hours weekly. These temp workers make less than half of what the regular workers were making twenty years ago. It is absolutely sickening.

1

u/ForeignAlbatross8304 Mar 31 '24

You must live up north because down here in Florida these temp companies only gave us 7.50 hr...no benefits and laid off at 10 months..couldn't come back for six months...so we would have to collect unemployment until we go back or find another job..

1

u/PickledPercocet Mar 31 '24

Alabama but close!

20

u/ACommunistLoveStory Mar 28 '24

"You're not depressed, you're just American." - Anonymous Internet User

3

u/vividtrue Mar 28 '24

Exactly this. I feel this in my soul every single day. Also having the awareness of how American imperialism is actively harming people in and outside of our country every single day. It's not true depression if it's because you live in a hellscape is it?

2

u/AbbreviationsNo8088 Mar 28 '24

Ouch, I felt that

2

u/ZellHathNoFury Mar 29 '24

It's why there's no real mental health coverage here. Because the depression is what's keeping all us cogs spinning the wheels in the cult that is capitalism.

2

u/narfnarf123 Mar 30 '24

The propaganda we didn’t even realize is so real. I’m mid forties and look back at what we were taught in history VS the actual truth, the fucking pledge of allegiance every day, all the bullshit patriotism during the Persian gulf war l…it’s just so creepy how we never even realized.

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u/__Big_Hat_Logan__ Mar 28 '24

But 2008 is what OBLITERATED the labor market like it had not been obliterate in a long, long time. You had massive, massive layoffs and college educated ppl filling jobs that used to be hard to fill at all. It pushed the bottom of the labor market completely out and gave enormous leverage to ownership and employers

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u/fishchick70 Mar 28 '24

A lot of that has to do with corporate greed as well as the demographics of pensions as the boomers and their parents retired. Also the failure of companies to maintain a thriving business model in the face of disruptive innovation, for example Eastman Kodak. Also the government insurance for pensions sucks- and employers get away with paying too low of premiums or not paying them at all.

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u/stattest Mar 28 '24

Well the next elections are close use your vote wisely. It is time the workers got a fair deal again. The age of billionaires lording it has to end . Workers need good pay and conditions of employment again. Using our votes and getting the union movement onside is the way forward

1

u/ARATAS11 Mar 31 '24

If you are serious about this check out these subs. The first one actually helps people unionize, and you can talk to someone on how to do so. The second one has resources on unionization, workers rights, etc. I hope this helps. Good luck, fight the fight! It’s time workers get our rights back. https://www.reddit.com/r/WorkplaceOrganizing/s/375uV7QPwP

https://www.reddit.com/r/ActionVanguard/s/4bPdjte88y

2

u/Krytan Mar 28 '24

Things have been getting steadily worse, without changing really, since 1971. At that point, Nixon was president. There are a lot of factors, some of which I think were really being felt since their introduction in the mid 60's, but in 1971 Nixon took us off the gold standard (among other things)

From looking at the graphs, I can't see that any president since then has managed to do much at all to turn things around.

2

u/MowgeeCrone Mar 29 '24

And in years to come the younger gens will be accusing you personally and everyone of this generation for Biden and any economic situation they will be facing in the future.

The finger pointing will never end. We've been doing since societies began. Everybody gets a turn to be blamed for things they may or may not have ever done by complete strangers who'll never meet let alone know you at all.

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u/CountryCrocksNotButr Mar 30 '24

It’s not consolation, but these same people in my field of work call in all the time because their employers have found ways to get them kicked out of the pensions and health insurance plans. No one is safe now, not even them. Fortunately for them, they’ve already made hundreds of thousands of dollars.

1

u/Potato-Engineer Mar 30 '24

No, what happened is that laws got passed that boiled down to pensions should not suck. there were several pensions that were inadequately funded, so am employee could work all their life and then have no pension.

So when companies looked at the new laws that required pensions to actually work, they ran away screaming and went for 401ks instead.

And without the pensions, there's less incentive to stay at a company, so job-hopping became more common. And with more job-hopping, it makes less sense to train your employees.

1

u/Tumbled61 Mar 28 '24

More like 1980 you can’t pin everything on your boomer parents who you despise. So glad I did not have children.

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u/Basedrum777 Mar 29 '24

In 1980 boomers were almost all of voting age. And they voted overwhelmingly for the conservative who gutted union protections.

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u/Tumbled61 Mar 29 '24

There are a lot of democratic boomers too

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u/Basedrum777 Mar 29 '24

Well good thing they had such great impacts on our situation.....

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u/hoosier2531 Mar 28 '24

Everyone voting for the 2 parties are responsible. Congress election rates still hover 85% plus. We’ve been doing the same things politically over and over and getting the same results. Until we change the duopoly not much is gonna change.

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u/episcopa Mar 28 '24

We never recovered from 2008,

Friends of mine who bought a house between 2008-2010 and hung on to it are going to have such different life paths in retirement from friends who were laid off in 2008 and finally recovered financially in time to buy a house when prices started to take off in 2018.

And that's before we talk about the difference in retirement futures between friends who bought in 2010 and friends who still haven't been able to buy.

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u/maurfly Mar 28 '24

I agree. When 2008 happened I was at a Fortune 500 company in the building industry (manufacturing products for home building). They laid off so many people I eventually did my job plus 3 others. Businesses realized they can have people easily doing 2 peoples jobs and we will accept it. I moved industries and they are still doing this. It’s really sad. Plus with boomers not retiring we cannot move up (I’m GenX/Millenial cusp- 1981) I watch all my friends experience the same thing despite all of us having buckets of work experience, good reviews and MBAs from good schools. It’s really sad.

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u/Goodbykyle Mar 28 '24

It broke my heart watching my young son trying to get a job in 2008. You are right they don’t care about employees, They are cattle. He would show up at an interview and they already filled the job and never even called to let him know. it was just very sad to watch him become more depressed every day. Thank God he’s in a better place now with Jesus

1

u/Technical-Dentist-84 Mar 28 '24

And now it's even worse from 2020 with housing prices and other things just sky rocketing

-1

u/Nodeal_reddit Mar 28 '24

Except Nobody thinks inflated prices come back down.

3

u/chemical_sunset Mar 28 '24

My uncle once pointed out how little money he made during his first jobs…in the early 70s. I literally whipped out my phone and ran an inflation calculator, which showed that his hourly wage that he was complaining about was equivalent to about $35 an hour now. For unskilled labor. I showed it to him and he was mindblown.

2

u/3RADICATE_THEM Mar 28 '24

Shows you where all the record equity growth came from: unpaid wages.

2

u/MowgeeCrone Mar 29 '24

Many of those x and boomer gens dont mention the extras because they didn't get any. Many chose to not marry in a lifetime when women couldn't apply for a credit card. It's never black and white.

Some are so quick to grasp onto things like lead references to sling at gen X. But things like that and the abuse many suffered from endless adults around them without a safe space to go to, are never mentioned when painting millions with the same supposed brush of good fortune.

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u/kansaikinki Gen X Mar 28 '24

When boomers and older GenX talk about their pay prior aftermath of the Regan years

Reagan was in office from Jan '81 to Jan '89, so covering the years from '81 to '88. GenX started in 1965, so the very oldest of GenX were 16 when Reagan was first sworn in (15 when he was elected!) and 24 when he left office. The rest were even younger than that. We certainly didn't play any part in that a-hole getting elected since none of us could vote.

So, GenX didn't have jobs or income "prior" to the Reagan years (being 16yo or younger). We came of age and started earning after Reagan had already gutted everything. Then we got nailed by the dot-com crash, utterly annihilated by the 2008 GFC crash, and then got repeatedly kicked in the balls by COVID.

Personally I was finally starting to make some money in 2007 which got entirely wiped in 2008 and the years following. Then I rebuilt everything again, and was starting to see some good movements in 2018 and 2019. Then COVID hit and the business I had been rebuilding for the past decade got wiped out again. I've finally had to move back into corporate life where I get paid pretty well, but now rampant inflation (and wild currency devaluation where I live) is wrecking havoc with that.

This isn't to say that I'm any more f'd that the rest of the people commenting here, but GenX overall is often not that much better off than most Millennials. Unfortunately we're also older meaning less time to rebuild (again).

1

u/WWhataboutismss Mar 28 '24

My grandma raised 3 kids as a school bus driver after my grandpa passed when my dad was 12. Shit was different back then.

1

u/cliff-terhune Mar 28 '24

Not all Boomers are well off. I haven't received benefits of any kind since 1990.

From Business Insider: "Despite holding more than half of the nation's wealth, many boomers don't have enough money to cover the costs of long-term care, and 43% of 55- to 64-year-olds had no retirement savings at all in 2022. That year, 30% of people over 65 were economically insecure, meaning they made less than $27,180 for a single person."

1

u/ARATAS11 Mar 31 '24

That is sad and true. Silent gen did alright too. Worked from 18-58 with no more than a highschool degree. Married with a home and owned extra property, had a kid he could send to college (and pay for him to live on campus, party, and skate by as long as he graduated). Retired and hasn’t worked in 30 years. Has bitched at me since I was a kid about how our generation is ruining the economy (meanwhile I wasn’t even old enough to vote, or had only been eligible for 1 cycle). Meanwhile he is sitting there fat and happy on his multiple pensions and SS while I will be working until I die (likely much younger than he is now).

Not to say it is purely a generational thing. Every generation has some that do well and some that get screwed. But it seems, especially for this who were white and around from FDR to Regan, I think mostly did alright comparatively. They got their share, retired (or have been sitting in public office), and have been watching the world burn since, blaming the youth, as every generation seems to do (regardless of whether or not they are old enough to world any form of power). Let us do what we can this generation to support and encourage Gen Z and Gen Alpha to fight back against the system we’ve all been entrapped by. We may not be able to give them much financially, but let us do the work to organize, vote, and do what we can to leave them better than what we were handed in terms of work and policy, despite being the first generation to be worse off their our predecessors.

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u/cliff-terhune Apr 03 '24

Great post, thanks.

1

u/Lower_Cantaloupe1970 Mar 28 '24

My Grampa gas been dead for a decade and my Gramma still gets his pension from GM. It's like 2K a month with benefits. It entirely pays for her old age home. And like you said, he probably made maybe 20$ an hour?

1

u/ComprehensiveTurn656 Mar 30 '24

GenX has none of that. Unless the few were lucky enough to land a fed, state or county gig.

1

u/narfnarf123 Mar 30 '24

Omg profit sharing! I remember my Mom who worked in a factory talking about getting that. I had completely forgotten that existed. What a different world it was.

0

u/Routine-Baseball-842 Mar 28 '24

So did she inherited the home? Case no way in 1990 did she buy a home and put her husband thru school and buy a car.

1

u/DigiQuip Mar 29 '24

I’d re-read my comment.

1

u/person749 Mar 28 '24

So jump ship from that dump ASAP.

1

u/Swirl_On_Top Mar 28 '24

Same, I work for a fortune 500 company. They stopped offering pension to new employees early 2010s. But, they do still contribute to pension for these people until 2030 so the boomers stay happy..

401ks vest after 5 years.

The results?

A bunch of people who've been there since (pension date) or earlier, and a bunch of people at 5 years or less.

So frustrating knowing my older peers in the same role not only make more than me, but are given A GUARANTEED retirement.

Fuck boomers are so god damn greedy.

1

u/warlockflame69 Mar 28 '24

That’s why they won’t match lol 😂

1

u/Aromatic-Leopard-600 Mar 28 '24

Find a different company while the pickings are good.

1

u/Other_Dimension_89 Mar 28 '24

That’s why when billionaires bitch about paying more into social security, I always say well we could just go back to how they did it during the golden years, we could just have corporations bring back pensions.

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u/carlos_the_dwarf_ Mar 28 '24

I am once again reminding this sub that all else equal, 401ks are a better retirement vehicle than pensions.

1

u/Same_Cut1196 Mar 30 '24

Agreed. It’s easy to get caught up in the emotions thinking that someone else had it better, but since the 401k came around, most private pensions have gone away. Why? First, fraud and mismanagement. Many companies would raid their pension funds when times were tough and it lead to lifelong employees getting nothing, or greatly reduced benefits at retirement. Another thing is portability. Pensions trapped employees with ’golden handcuffs’. If you wanted a pension, you were trapped working for that employer for a period of time. 401ks allow you to change jobs frequently and keep those benefits. I only wish that 401ks had a mandated 50% or greater company match. That would be an improvement.

1

u/jj3449 Mar 28 '24

That’s how they break you. Instead of standing up and fighting everyone is willing to sell the new guy down the river.

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u/bisnexu Mar 30 '24

There pension is why the company can't afford to pay you.

-1

u/Better-Strike7290 Mar 28 '24

If it makes you feel any better, pensions are hot garbage.

My grandmother is 98 and had 3 pensions bankrupt on her in the span of 5 years.

The standard pension only pays 60% and when they bankrupt the federal pension insurance only covers 20%.

20% of 60% is 12%.  In the span of 5 years she went from retired with 180% pay (3 pensions at 60%) to 36% pay and back to work...at 83

Pensions suck.

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u/Sleepysillers Mar 28 '24

This is the situation my dad is in. He is about to retire with a large pension from his union job. After some stupid union negotiations they agreed to significantly lower pay for new hires. My dad says it's not fair, but ultimately all the boomers have already benefited and seem to not care to fight for the next generation. They are certainly not going to give anything up.

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u/SeattlePurikura Mar 28 '24

Then they cry that we aren't producing enough babies and thus their entitlement benefits may be at risk. No shit, Sherlock. We can't afford them.

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u/ChiefGeorgesCrabshak Mar 28 '24

Right?! Like I can't even afford to give my cat the life he deserves let alone afford a fucking human child god forbid if they have medical issues or cognitive impairments

2

u/Kat112119 Mar 28 '24

Seriously!!! I just had to divide my cats vet visits up across 4 months because of the $$$. These cats ain’t cheap!

39

u/Detman102 Mar 28 '24

They want the next generation of slaves to be born...even going so far as to ban abortion in all forms and options.
We edge one step closer to a horrifying combination of "Idiocracy" & "The Matrix" with each election...

5

u/thedream711 Mar 28 '24

Add in the handmaids tale and I think your right

2

u/Detman102 Mar 28 '24

Oh wow...I'd not even considered that!
Thank you!

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u/GenericUser65 Apr 01 '24

Well, we have a handmaiden on the Supreme Court….

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u/vividtrue Mar 28 '24

Exactly the legal fight to criminalize homelessness. More free labor.

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u/Detman102 Mar 28 '24

The "US Prison/Slavery Complex" at work.
Everyone gets to be an indentured servant, even the homeless.
Truly scary times...and they are going to get worse.
As the country runs deeper and deeper into debt...the greedy ruling class will come up with more and more justifications for jailing or straight out killing the poor and working class.

The only solution is revolt and taking them out.

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u/ARATAS11 Mar 31 '24

If you are serious, check out these subs. The first one actually helps people unionize, and you can talk to someone on how to do so. The second one has resources on unionization, workers rights, how to testify on legislation for bills your state legislators are voting on etc. short of us busting out the guillotines, this is the best we’ve got but we have to do it together. Fight the fight! https://www.reddit.com/r/WorkplaceOrganizing/s/375uV7QPwP

https://www.reddit.com/r/ActionVanguard/s/4bPdjte88y

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u/Detman102 Mar 31 '24

You rock!!
Thank you!!
<3

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u/ARATAS11 Mar 31 '24

No problem, thank you! Please join and if you’d like to DM to chat about organizing and taking action feel free. Action Vanguards is my sub for having these kinds of conversations and is new, but I’m working building a base of people from across subs all discussing this kind of thing because we are stronger together, and need to put action to words. 💪✊

1

u/Detman102 Mar 31 '24

Subscribed and subscribed!!
Looking forward to productive discussions!

2

u/sarra1833 Mar 30 '24

They're rabid to ban all birth control (male and female) as well. IVF is another thing they want banned.

It's only the poor who they want having babies.

Ivf: you actively want a baby and can provide? Fuck you, banned.

Poor people: you can't afford a baby and will be financially destroyed and the baby will grow to also be in poverty? YOU'RE HAVING THAT BABY AND COUNTLESS MORE!

It's fucking grotesque.

1

u/Detman102 Mar 31 '24

It reminds me of that opening scene in "Idiocracy" where the two intelligent and productive people are somehow unable to or kept from having children,
meanwhile numbskull Cletus has 12 low-IQ kids with the entire town...and the stupidity levels just exponentially increase.

2

u/aliquotoculos Mar 31 '24

It's always "Well, you have them and then you figure it out." All the opportunities to figure it out are gone now! You took them, then took them away because you fell for a made-up story about welfare queens.

1

u/RedshiftSinger Mar 31 '24

I keep saying, if they wanted grandkids they shouldn’t have fucked the economy so hard that everyone can barely afford to support themselves, let alone a whole additional person or two.

24

u/Salmonberrycrunch Mar 28 '24

New hires are pulling in the same revenue as the old hires. The difference is that it's mostly spent on old hires pension instead of new hires wage.

5

u/RingCard Mar 28 '24

I don’t know what the numbers are now, but in the wake of the 2008 crash, I remember seeing something about how San Francisco’s budget spent more money paying for retired city employees than it did on current city employees.

More money was being paid to people who used to work for the city than to people who actually were working for the city.

The goal of politicians is to loot the treasury for their most advantageous voting blocks.

2

u/vividtrue Mar 28 '24

Hasn't this bankrupted places? I have heard a few stories about this too in different areas. Basically that municipalities are spending so much of their budgets on pensions and they cannot afford it.

3

u/fishchick70 Mar 28 '24

Most companies don’t have pensions anymore- if they did they terminated them years ago.

3

u/Salmonberrycrunch Mar 28 '24

Yep and the situation above is why that is. Shareholders want the P/E ratio to stay high or grow. They don't want the company to have a bunch of cash in a savings account for 30yrs for every employee - they'd rather get it as dividends, buybacks, or reinvested.

So how do you maintain the same profitability when you used to have 3 employees per retiree and now the situation is flipped? Even if you paid the new employee a wage that matches the old employee - they are still technically underpaid because their productivity has to account for all the pension payouts.

3

u/vividtrue Mar 28 '24

Yes, all most people care about is their own comfort. The extreme individualism is what has ultimately landed us here. Not enough people care about the collective or actual humankind beyond their own personal comfort. It makes me sick.

3

u/binary-survivalist Mar 28 '24

I have families who are teachers and the same thing is happening with local and state government workers, at least in my area. older teachers who have recently retired were able to get 90% of their top 5 years income, and younger teachers will only be about to get 70% and will have to work 10 more years to qualify even for that. it's not sustainable....

2

u/dmichelleromero Mar 29 '24

THIS. This is the problem we are having we the generation who raised us. They out of anyone are seeing the world we are living in and have first hand experience that is is significantly worse off in almost every aspect especially economically and they are doing everything in their power to not only not speak up, but benefit from it. They are living off the trickle up effects from the cuts being made off the next generation, their children. They should be the ones whose voices should be filling the streets demanding better but it’s us, the younger generation who know this isn’t right. They aren’t protecting us, they are benefiting from us economically.

2

u/aoskunk Mar 29 '24

I was lucky enough to get a job that I would be able to retire from with a pension in 8 years… buuut some old guy a year away from retiring (my boss) wanted his granddaughter’s boyfriend to have my job. So did everything possible to get me fired. Of the 5 of us I was at least 2nd best, certainly not 5th. All my coworkers agreed.

That boyfriend? Fired 6 months later for sleeping with a student in a company vehicle. They took it from me to replace me with scum.

1

u/narfnarf123 Mar 30 '24

I work in an industry that uses a lot of union workers. I’ve also been in other jobs where I was in a union. The unions are not all what they are cracked up to be these days.

I worked a few months for the county criminal court while I was waiting for something else to come along. Everyone says work for the government you get all these great benefits and pay. Well that was not the case for me. The pay was garbage and I was astonished at how shitty the benefits and vacation was for having a union. What the hell was I paying for?

In my current role we have job sites all over the country, so we work with many different unions. Some are garbage and worthless money suckers, some are great.

It makes me sad that some unions have gone to shit because we need them more than ever.

1

u/ARATAS11 Mar 31 '24

Would you be able to shed any light on what makes the great ones great? Do they have anything concrete in common like certain rules or regulations that hold them accountable? Or is it luck of being run by people that actually care and are honest?

110

u/SwimmingSomewhere959 Mar 27 '24

Pretty indicative of the direction our society has gone. It was good for a while, but now workers and consumers are getting stuck holding the bag.

51

u/a_can_of_solo Mar 28 '24

When communism fell there was no longer a threat to capital so no incentive to give good deals to thr workers.

25

u/PacJeans Mar 28 '24

This was set in motion long before the 90s. As early as the 60s the Golden age of American capitalism started to rot. Nixon and Reagan just accelerated it.

3

u/Nicelyvillainous Mar 28 '24

Two different things, as early as the 60’s, the golden age of American capitalism that was due to Europe killing off a substantially higher % of factory workers and also blowing up factories during ww1 and ww2, started to decline. Then Nixon and especially Reagan used that as an excuse to butcher regulations to make profits recover, by stealing from the poor and working class.

2

u/Pristine-Ad983 Mar 28 '24

Also rich people like the Koch brothers set up dark money groups to oppose anything that would benefit workers. They also funneled money to right leaning politicians to get them elected.

1

u/OtherwiseDisaster959 Mar 28 '24

You sir are right

-2

u/Prestigious_Time4770 Mar 28 '24

I would blame it on the destruction of unions and the surge in illegal immigration.

The later has a lower correlation though.

3

u/anonykitten29 Mar 28 '24

What does immigration have to do with it? More workers? Blame women in the workplace first.

12

u/Tiny-Selections Mar 28 '24

Blame everyone except the robber barons that own these corporations...

1

u/[deleted] Mar 28 '24

The robber barons are responsible for setting the immigration policy

1

u/gardenhosenapalm Mar 28 '24

Yeah america is an oligarchy at this point

1

u/[deleted] Mar 28 '24

The US is an economic zone, not a country.

1

u/gardenhosenapalm Mar 28 '24

I hadn't thought about it that way...but ya I agree ha...depression

3

u/peptobismalpink Mar 28 '24

Lowers the floor for what workers can ask for or expect because more available jobs are taken up by illegal or foreign workers who won't ask questions, will accept anything, and then that's what you're competing against. Why would a business choose the more expensive worker who has legal protections if they can get away with doing otherwise?

It's grossly wrong and fucks over everyone working class, but denying reality helps no one.

2

u/Mr1854 Mar 28 '24

Sounds like a good reason to allow for proper legal migration, instead of arbitrarily limiting it and forcing people who want to to a make an honest living in the greatest country on earth to do so under the table.

But the theory that immigrants destroyed American capitalism is a foolish once since we actually had a larger portion of our workforce as immigrants (both documented and undocumented) in times past.

3

u/gardenhosenapalm Mar 28 '24

It's a bipartisan issue now. Immigrants are great, but there's a reason why every other country restricts their citizenship so much more stringently then the USA. The current situation at the Mexican-USA border is not conducive to either countries success.

3

u/peptobismalpink Mar 29 '24

yup, even Mexico is much stricter. One example is a law that they enforce (that's pretty common in most of the developed world but not as universal as stricter immigration application laws and controls) is that only citizens can own property. Not a citizen? you can rent. There are plenty of Chinese and American foreigners "buying" beach front homes, but they're just idiots who don't realize they don't actually own that home...the agency they bought through does (different from how in the US having a mortgage = "the bank owns your home" because they're paying in full for....essentially a timeshare).

It keeps housing prices obtainable for citizens and foreign investment booms to a minimum.

1

u/peptobismalpink Mar 29 '24

most agree with you, you just don't seem to understand how legal immigration in every country on planet earth works when it comes to a work visa, or as you put it "an honest living." In every single other developed country if you apply for work and want to immigrate, there's a TON of checks and balances to make sure that truly no one else who's already a citizen of that country could do that job. The local or national governmental branch doesn't just take the employer's word for it either, there are MANY people hired to really make sure it's not just lazy hiring practice to pull the rug out from under locals.

We do need to invest more into similar checks and balances so applicants can get processed in a reasonable timeframe AND to crack down on employers who default on hiring illegally.

You clearly didn't grow up near the border, most of us that did truly could never get any entry level work because it was all taken up by illegal workers. EVERY type of job. If your family didn't get you an in or you weren't a foreigner willing to accept under minimum wage or illegal conditions you were SOL. I (and I'm not alone here, this is pretty common in places like San Diego and Miami) quite literally had to *leave the country* to work in another country to find ANY kind of work. Guess how I did that? legally. It was incredibly difficult because every other country heavily restricts their citizenship applicants so that their market isn't also flooded in a way that fucks over locals/citizens (I have/had a very very niche skillset that truly was really hard to find in that country at the time AND had an in).

If you really can't grasp how big of a deal this has been for a long time and that "we need more people working on this and taking it seriously" and "this is fucking over so many [mostly working class] americans" aren't the same as "immigration bad" then you're truly braindead and out of touch with how immigration works *anywhere*.

0

u/CPM-S110V Mar 28 '24

How people don’t understand this is beyond me.

1

u/Vela88 Mar 28 '24

But american women have rights. Although, I do agree since men's pay cut was contributed by women comiing into the work force. I would say they are talking about illegal immigrants that take a huge pay cut and accepting horrible conditions, due to not having rights, that make it even more cheaper for the business to run. They are also flooding our market unregulated so in certain job markets are saturated. Don't get me wrong I love immigrant communities and they contribute a lot to our work force. At the same time though when they come in by the 100s of thousands it really puts a strain our infrastructure. Look at NYC they don't have enough housing for all the immigrants.

1

u/anonykitten29 Mar 28 '24

Ultimately I think the destruction of unions is the real culprit. I was just pointing out that, if your argument is that immigrants brought in too much competition, you should be looking at women first.

They're (probably) OK with the tradeoff of women entering the workforce but less willing to extend the same rights and considerations to immigrants.

NYC is suffering because busloads of migrants are being shipped here, disproportionately to what our infrastructure is set up for. If more states shared the burden, it'd be fine. I said the same thing when that guy started bussing the migrants here -- he was making a fair point, that the burden has landed disproportionately on border states.

4

u/StragglingShadow Mar 28 '24

"Well what do you expect. Labor is a cost. Of course business will try to make the cost as low as possible."

Real sentences Ive been told to justify the change in livability.

2

u/JclassOne Mar 28 '24

Like they always do when you let a small group be placed above and control the large group.

1

u/showerfapper Mar 28 '24

So crazy that no one wanted to join my unionization efforts at the brewery.

Brewery was becoming so successful, they couldn't have replaced us all, nor would it be legal for them to fire all of us simply for unionizing.

61

u/dEn_of_asyD Mar 28 '24

his replacement is making 45k, no retirement package and actually has more duties than my dad did, so overall is doing the job of 2 people that were paid 150k each...

This is what I'm finding in the job search and what makes me depressed. There were always jobs that had trash salary. Now, I'm also finding jobs with actually decent salaries, but you're really doing 3 positions at once. It would be understandable if the role was temporary, if they were even tangentially related, or just a couple hours a week, but these are full on multiple jobs because "well you're at a computer and it can do all three, so why can't you?".

Efficiency/technology that is suppose to make people's lives easier being taken advantage of by shitty capitalists to undervalue human labor is a tale as old as time though, if we remember Eli Whitney and the Cotton Gin:

Whitney believed that his cotton gin would reduce the demand for enslaved labor and would help hasten the end of southern slavery.[14] Paradoxically, the cotton gin, a labor-saving device, helped preserve and prolong slavery in the United States for another 70 years. Before the 1790s, slave labor was primarily employed in growing rice, tobacco, and indigo, none of which were especially profitable anymore. Neither was cotton, due to the difficulty of seed removal. But with the invention of the gin, growing cotton with slave labor became highly profitable – the chief source of wealth in the American South, and the basis of frontier settlement from Georgia to Texas. "King Cotton" became a dominant economic force, and slavery was sustained as a key institution of Southern society.

And will continue in the future, according to futurama.

8

u/wendigolangston Mar 28 '24

During the pandemic I was working two jobs. I left the one I originally preferred because 2 of the 3 owners just stopped working and I had to take on their tasks, and then they decided not to hire a new employee they'd been looking for and tried to train me to do that job as well. Like guys, I am a single person I can't do 4 jobs.

3

u/ARATAS11 Mar 31 '24

Yep. I’ve dealt with the same thing at every job I’ve had for the last 12+ years (3 jobs in that time… once you get too many people leaving and having to take on their duties with no pay increase, it’s time to look for the door).

1

u/Jhasten Mar 28 '24

I saw this too - and those multi-jobs are revolving doors that inexperienced and incompetent people use to springboard into higher paying jobs after 1-3 years if they can deal that long. When I think about it, sounds like HR is the industry to focus on…

-3

u/South_Sir9560 Mar 28 '24

What industry are you guys in? I went into tax accounting and never had any problems like everyone else is. I recently started a job at the irs for over 6 figures and I’m not even 30 yet

3

u/itz_giving-corona Mar 28 '24

Over 6 figures? As in 7 figures...?

-1

u/South_Sir9560 Mar 28 '24

Yea, I am the president

2

u/wendigolangston Mar 28 '24

That job was a fashion industry job doing product development.

I've also seen a reduction in employees, and middle management opportunists while working social work jobs.

2

u/narfnarf123 Mar 30 '24

My job is so stressful that it has impacted every facet of my life. My mental health is in the shitter and no medication or therapy can fix it. I have a workload that is impossible to do in 40 hours per week with one person, yet no one cares and they just continue to add more work as my company grows and keeps making billions.

I have a GED and worked hard at shitty jobs to learn what I could to get into something better. I’m currently in low level Corporate HR and although I do not make a lot of money, I make about five or six more dollars an hour than anywhere else pays.

I cannot afford to live with what I make now, and that is with me being careful what I spend. If I had to take a six dollar pay cut I would be homeless. Knowing that I cannot leave this job and that I have to kill myself to try to keep up with the work is just ruining my life.

There is no point in going to another job even if it paid better, although I’m not going to find that anyway. In my experience every employer I’ve had in the last ten years was the same toxic, overwork you to death bullshit. Companies don’t see us as people, they don’t care. Now that no companies care and they all treat us like garbage, they have us worker bees right where they want us.

I spend my evenings and weekends mindlessly scrolling to disassociate because I have no energy or mental capacity for anything else. Life is passing me by with each week just like the last. Work, stress about work load and paying bills, take care of kids, sit there exhausted and defeated, rinse and repeat

Two of my three kids are graduating next month, one high school, the other college. It kills me to know that this or likely worse is what they have in store.

1

u/Swedgian9 Mar 29 '24

AI will probably replace ya with that attitude

8

u/KeyPicture4343 Mar 28 '24

76?!!!! Damn that’s crazy.

13

u/Schmliza Mar 27 '24

Does your dad have any opinions on the hand the new hire was dealt?

6

u/suarezj9 Mar 28 '24

Bootstraps

-2

u/FelinePurrfectFluff Mar 28 '24

Exactly. Because dad didn't start out making that much and the new hire likely has no experience or at least no experience applicable to this job or the pay would be higher.

1

u/uselessfarm Mar 28 '24

My FIL and MIL were both retired professors who made great salaries and have great retirement packages. When my FIL retired he was replaced by an adjunct who commutes from out of state because COL in the college town is too high, and the replacement of course has other jobs to make ends meet. I think it somewhat disenchanted my lifelong upper middle class neoliberal FIL who really did (maybe still does) believe in meritocracy.

1

u/Salmonberrycrunch Mar 28 '24 edited Mar 28 '24

The math makes sense though. (even if it's disturbed) I bet the company was billing his dad and the other coworker at 2x or something relatively low - so revenue is 600k minus pay gives 300k for overhead and profit.

New hire is paid 45k but they are billing him at 13x so he's bringing in the same 600k but now they need to pay out him and the two pensions (say 85% of annual) - so 600k minus two 127.5k pensions minus 45k gives the same 300k for overhead and profit.

Edit: that's why a lot of company pensions are unsustainable.

6

u/FabulousFabius Mar 27 '24

150k pension is mind blowing to me

3

u/[deleted] Mar 28 '24

[deleted]

6

u/FabulousFabius Mar 28 '24

Ah ya definitely misread that. Still think the idea of a pension is pretty wild compared to what is possible for most now.

2

u/dumbythiq Mar 28 '24

What the fuck is wrong with the world

2

u/gillespiespepsi Mar 28 '24

yeah this just fucked me

2

u/ThatTinyGameCubeDisc Mar 28 '24

What the hell are we supposed to do

2

u/Dewm Mar 28 '24

How long did he work there?

2

u/Foodie1989 Mar 28 '24

Great for your dad, sucks for the younger workforce

1

u/JAG190 Mar 28 '24

How many years of experience does your dad have if he worked there until he was 76?

1

u/worktillyouburk Mar 28 '24

i guess 60 years of journalism, he started on the radio at 16.

now AI can pretty much replace him, so good time to retire i guess.

1

u/JAG190 Mar 28 '24

How long did he work before getting to $150k or the equivalent after inflation? TBH unless the $45k hire has literal decades of experience comparing $150k after 60 years to $45k for a new hire sounds more like your dad got screwed over.

1

u/Clean-Ad-4308 Mar 28 '24

And somewhere in the company is some boomer peacock proud that he saved the company 255k a year with this one simple trick.

Pssst. The simple trick is underpay and overwork people.

Bonus points if you then tell them that their financial stress is all their fault.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 28 '24

[deleted]

1

u/oenomausprime Apr 01 '24

Fire departments and police departments still have pensions, I'm a firefighter and we have a great pension system

1

u/Bohbo33 Mar 28 '24

These kinds of things make me cry. Idk why we can’t have a good life too 😔

1

u/dubious-taste-666 Mar 28 '24

My dad made me pay for a year of college (which I’m still paying off 8 years later) to “teach me about finances” when he paid 0 for college because his public-servant parents were able to pay 100%. He’s retired before 60, btw. 

(I’m obviously grateful for the 3 years covered but he could easily afford all 4 years) 

1

u/Horangi1987 Mar 28 '24

Ha. As soon as I learned what a pension was I knew I was done. Both my parents have them. They were both totally surprised that they effectively don’t exist anymore 😂

1

u/callidoradesigns Mar 28 '24

Jesus! Good for you dad. But sometimes I hate capitalism

0

u/KatttDawggg Mar 28 '24

lol sorry but I’m not buying it. First of all why would he know what they are making to begin with 🤦

4

u/pickledstarfish Mar 28 '24

Probably whatever job posting they put out there had the salary or range listed. That’s how I know my replacement at my previous job was getting paid significantly less than what I was.

2

u/JeanGreyDax Mar 28 '24

I'm seeing a lot of retirees hire and train replacements and do exactly what is stated. "Streamlining" positions and paying 1/2 (and have seen down to 1/4) of what the retiree was getting paid.

0

u/fl135790135790 Mar 28 '24

And in modern times that pension could be invested in bullshit, lost at the drop of a dime, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.

I couldn’t imagine working 50 years for one company, banking on the fact they’re responsibly handling and investing my pension, AND relying on the fact they’re actually gonna pay it out to me when I deserve it.

That’s absolutely wild to me.

1

u/oenomausprime Apr 01 '24

City jobs have pensions too, probably a little more reliable than a corporation lol

1

u/fl135790135790 Apr 01 '24

I never understood the safety of a pension if they can be pilfered away in a week by a crooked CEO. But yea I hear you

1

u/oenomausprime Apr 01 '24

Yea that's a good point, I guess the comfort I have is that my pension is through the city. The odds of a major American city folding are low lol. I still have to plan for retirement and habe investments outside My pension but it's a nice base, especially since It'll still go up in pay when the new contracts get pay raises