Gaslighting? Did you read the article? It doesn’t say that the economy is fine. It’s about how social media makes people feel shitty about how much money they (don’t) have, because they see so many people living glamorous lives online.
this post was submitted on 13 Mar 2024
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Roughly 43% of Gen Z and 41% of millennials struggle with comparisons to others and feel behind financially
This is the kind of attribution they are making, that its just a psychological condition and not an actual endemic issue that needs to be addressed.
I can definitely see why the term "gaslighting" was used
"Sir, 50% of the population has this virus called COVID."
"It's just a virology condition and not an actual endemic issue that needs to be addressed."
To know how endemic it is to younger gens, we would need a baseline and to know the prevalence in prior gens.
I suspect that the progression of social media and influencers has amplified a false lifestyle perspective — the same as tv and ads/consumerism would've amplified them for prior gens — but I haven't seen any large cross sectional or generational studies; only ones that are, at best, anecdotal.
Purchasing power of different generations tells you everything you need to know - there's zero ambiguity in this - things have objectively got far worse and far more unequal since the 70's.
In a for profit world tech isn't it mathematically straightforward that 50% is financially behind the other 50%?
It also says that people are doing far better than they think according to those who actually service these customers.
Well I'm not young but I haven't been able to afford to go to the dentist in twenty years so I'd say that's quantifiably shitty.
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Our entire economic system is out of balance, debt is rampant in the midst of late-stage capitalism, and they come up with the term "money dysmorphia". 🤡
newspeak
Its balanced exactly as the owner class wants: conveying all wealth and value into their coffers.
We pretend its broken, but its doing exactly what the elites want it to.
You're not getting paid too little, you are just money dysmorphic, get back to work
It has to be either or. There can't possibly be multiple factors in play at the same time.
There are definitely multiple factors.
But money dysmorphia isn’t one of them.
This is a muddled message. Are we caught up chasing an illusion, or are we just more acutely aware of our poor condition?
It reads like it is saying the former, but then quotes statistics that reflect real loss of buying power. On the coasts 100k is no longer a large income. People really do live paycheck to paycheck while carefully managing their spending.
I'm inclined to at least partially acknowledge the gaslighting comment as plausible.
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Median roperty prices have increased more than 600% relative to median wages in the past 50 years where I'm from. Now, on 2 incomes, I'm trying to buy a modest apartment in that pumped market, and I'm bidding against downsizers and investors that were the beneficiaries of all that growth after buying a house that cost less than my deposit.
Now these motherfuckers call us lazy and gaslight us, saying everything is fine? Noah, fuck the boat - we're building guillotines.
I've just come to the conclusion I will never own anything new or at all really.
Don't give up yet, all it takes is a little billionaire blood on the street and things will change.
Someone please punch the writers for this shit.
Only 14% of Americans consider themselves wealthy
Only 14%? I'm shocked it's that high!
I thought "Wealthy" was when the passive income of the money you already have, pays more than you typically spend.
Basically when you can "Live off the interest alone."
I thought “Wealthy” was when the passive income of the money you already have, pays more than you typically spend. Basically when you can “Live off the interest alone.”
I see your version of more of "Financial Independent". Aka "Fuck you money". At that level you don't need to work anymore for a decent life, but you're not living in what most would consider wealthy luxury. If you need a refresher on "fuck you money" I refer you to this primer (language warning).
"Wealthy" is when you have "Financial Independent", and you don't have to look at prices of anything before you buy it. At the lowest tier of "wealthy" $100 is like $1. To the highest tier, there is no likely object on Earth that is outside of their reach.
I don't know why you're so upset at the article. Every time I compare myself to the Joneses I feel all sorts of inadequacy. /S
The issue is not with people feeling inadequate. The issue is fully with wealth inequality.
In fact, more than half of Americans earning more than $100,000 a year say they live paycheck to paycheck, another report by LendingClub found.
I think it'd be interesting to see what would happen if some states had personal finance classes in their curriculum and some didn't, see if there is a measurable impact down the line.
Personal finance classes probably would have a non-negligble impact on the people that just mindless spend and don't save for retirement etc.
But I would think also that the wildly inflated housing and child care costs and the inelastic demand between the two means just an unexpected health emergency or unanticipated home maintenance spending would leave a family in debt and living paycheck to paycheck until its paid off.
If you're making $100K you probably have a college degree and therefore student loans to pay as well.
The problem isn't 40+ years of stagnant wages and corporate greed, it's because people need classes on how to be poor correctly.
That's how you sound right now.
The article stated that half of the American population earning over $100k/year lives paycheck-to-paycheck. They're spending everything they're making, aren't directing funds towards building a cushion.
I am sure that there are some pathological cases where a individual winds up compelled to do that. But I think that it's pretty safe to say that rather more than half of the $100k+/year population can probably manage to put some level of funds away.
You can pull in a whole lot more than that and still go through it.
https://bestlifeonline.com/broke-celebrities/
Though Depp is undoubtedly one of the most prolific actors in Hollywood, the fame and subsequent fortune accumulated by the star led to his ultimate downfall. According to his agents, he's earned around $650 million dollars throughout the course of his career—most of which he has already spent.
Building up a cushion and having it placed somewhere that's providing an effective return is also part of that, having some idea of how much one should put away and how much one should spend, make moves that make sense relative to the tax incentives that the government puts out for people. And while the US provides a number of programs and incentives that reward people for building a cushion, my impression is that it doesn't do a fantastic job of walking people through them and what makes sense to do in relative terms or where one should aim to be. My school certainly didn't cover any of managing one's finances over one's life, what's a reasonable thing to do. The only thing I recall them ever covering as regards personal finance was how to write a check and how to balance a checkbook. As I recall, pretty much everything I picked up in my early life was from my parents. I'm going to bet that not everyone's parents does that. So...what happens to people where that doesn't happen? Okay, maybe some people are self-driven, start from a base of zero information and go out and dig up material online (and manage to filter out some of the bad advice). I bet that that's a long way from everyone, though.
Pretty shitty of you to compare the spending habits of celebrities with normal people, there isn't an intellectually honest bone in your body and I legitimately don't understand how you can look at yourself in the mirror every day.
Well, my own observation shows me that most people don't know the first thing about basic finances: compounding interest, budgeting, critical thinking when seeing advertisements, and the cost of take-out vs making dinner are some examples.
For gods sakes, check your credit card and bank balances once in a while!. smh.
That's textbook greed.
I've been living comfortably off of $200,000 for years.
I count myself blessed for having earlier made the realization that I value financial security way more than the shiny new thing. What I also realized that often it's not the shiny new thing where all my money goes to but it's the repeating expenses from that daily starbucks coffee to groceries and utilities. If you find a way to save there it'll start accumulating quickly.
That's a big if.
A huge percentage of Americans (my family included) live paycheck-to-paycheck. There's little or nothing left to save. They have everything from student loans to medical debts.
Criticizing someone for spending a few dollars a day on coffee to make their life a little more bearable is placing the criticism on the wrong party. You should be angry that anyone should have to make such unnecessary sacrifices. You should be angry that we can't all get the shiny new thing if we want it.
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Rightwing scum will do anything except admit their system doesn't work.
Are we still complaining about Starbucks? Let's call it $7 for a coffee. That comes to about $2555 a year. Sounds like a lot of money.
Say I wanted to buy a house. The median home price in the start of 2020 was $329000. End of 2023, it was $417,700 (down from its peak). An increase of $88,700. Assuming a down payment of 20%, your median down payment went up buy $17,740. Almost 7 years worth of Starbucks. In just 3 years.
But wait. Interest rates also changed. Assuming the same %20 down payment, your principle increased by $70,960. The 30 year mortgage over that time went up from around %3.72 to %6.66. An increase of about %2.9. The increased interest on the increased principle is about $2,057; so I guess your Starbucks habbit would cover that.
Of course, that is a strange metric. You pay the full %6.66 on the increased principle. The %2.9 is the additional interest you pay on the original principle. So your annual interest payments went up by $12,358 just for delaying your purchase by 3 years. If you cut off your 4.8 starbucks coffees a day addiction, you'll be able to afford this increase.
Hey, you do you. If $2555 isn't a lot of money to you then you're in the 0.1% of people. Most of us aren't in a privlidged position like that so being able to cut down in repeating small expenses like that is going to have a massive effect on our personal finances. 2.5k is about what I earn in a month. I like coffee too but not so much that I'd be willing to work for a month to pay for it. That amount of money covers my groceries for 4 months. Seems like better value for my money.
Overwhelming evidence suggests social media has a negative effect on self-esteem.
That's all they really need to say - it will clearly have an impact on how people perceive their own looks and lifestyle when they're likely doing fine. I'm not sure they need to invent a new phrase to describe it.
gestures rudely at "writers" behind this
I believe the article. My junior coworkers that are young fresh out of college grads landing 100k salary feel behind. Median us household income is like 78k. The article is about the psychological impact. Although I don't doubt that there's people struggling and inflation and wage stagnation are real, I think we shouldn't doubt that what this article describes as money dysmorphia isn't also real.
Yeah there are people who earn a lot but are absolutely shit at managing their income. No wonder large chunk of them are also influenced by what they see on social media.
Ah so I only think I can't buy something listed for $10 with only $5. Thanks for the tip. Gonna go put it into practice.
Ever heard of CREDIT? /s
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