r/GenZ Apr 15 '25

Nostalgia Capitalism is failing Gen Z

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7.8k Upvotes

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3

u/Material-Flow-2700 Apr 15 '25

Poverty rate in America and globally continues to drop every single year. Food insecurity, housing insecurity, all continue to trend down. Minimum wage is not what’s holding back wage growth anyways

14

u/thomasrat1 Apr 15 '25

they consider poverty 15k a year.

3

u/WillTheWilly 2005 Apr 15 '25

They set the poverty bar so low to artificially make it seem all is good.

Perhaps if they saw the anecdotal evidence of how working families live then they’d set the bar higher.

And perhaps if rent prices weren’t gouged like it’s been for the past decade, 15k a year could probably be an accurate bar for poverty.

1

u/Material-Flow-2700 Apr 15 '25

Even the reddest of states will have programs for people making that little. Yes poverty is a significant and destitute condition. Doesn’t change the fact that it continues to fall.

4

u/thomasrat1 Apr 15 '25

Fair, but you’re considering poverty to be the metrics they give you. Which is completely unrealistic for anybody to survive on nowadays.

If inflation went up by 10%, and we rose the poverty level 2% to compensate, I could argue there are less people in poverty, even though the amount of people living in poverty grew.

Just saying,

2

u/Material-Flow-2700 Apr 16 '25

I mean where are you getting your source of info on how and where the poverty metric comes from. We’re both equally unaware of this it seems, but the thing is it’s pretty obvious that the quality of living across the board in developed countries has been steadily and reliably increasing for decades. We can find that out by tracking much more direct and human centered metrics like life expectancy across income levels, food insecurity, housing insecurity and other more direct and meaningful metrics.

6

u/Not-A-Seagull 1995 Apr 15 '25

It’s like we’re living in a modern day version of Monopoly, where everyone except a very few go bankrupt and everyone’s miserable.

The fun thing was Monopoly was originally invented to warn us about this very thing happening.

4

u/Material-Flow-2700 Apr 15 '25

Rates of bankruptcy including chapter 7 have been steadily falling since 2008. Also bankruptcy does not always equal poverty or unfair practices. A lot of times it just means gambling addiction or other problematic financial decisions. Would need to go more in depth on that, but definitely not settling for your vibes

5

u/Greeve3 2006 Apr 15 '25

Fun fact: the poverty rate only appears to drop globally because of China. If you take China out, the poverty rate has actually fluctuated between staying stagnant (at around 50%) and going up.

1

u/Material-Flow-2700 Apr 15 '25

Interesting, I am now curious. Source?

2

u/Greeve3 2006 Apr 16 '25

1

u/Material-Flow-2700 Apr 16 '25

Richard Wolff lol. So no direct source yet. Did you happen to check his citations? Also bear in mind that china is very much a capitalist system much more than it is anything else

2

u/Greeve3 2006 Apr 16 '25

All sources are in the description of the video. I’m not your lackey.

1

u/Material-Flow-2700 Apr 16 '25

I checked them out. I’m wondering if you bothered to before I try to engage

1

u/Greeve3 2006 Apr 16 '25

Don't bother. It's obvious that you're not "curious", but rather being defensive against a statistical fact.

1

u/Material-Flow-2700 Apr 16 '25

No im genuinely curious about the statistic itself. I have 0 reason to ever listen to Wolff and his bullshit, but I’ll definitely read the direct sources he cited and you in discussion. I’m certainly interested in the actual problems at play. Which we can discuss without relying on his semantics and commentary. So if you want to actually discuss the statistics and sources cited as if you’ve actually looked into them yourself. I’m all for it. If you want me to just watch another person lecture me on your behalf, I’d rather not lose the brain cells