this post was submitted on 28 Dec 2023
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It very much varies depending on where you look, but your timescale is skewing your comparison. If you were to look at the Japanese economy today compared to the past 50-100 years, it would look like everything is amazing because of the massive economic boom in the 80s. But that only lasted about a decade before stagnating for the past 30-40 years, and that stagnation has become so bad that Japan is very much at risk of deflation destroying their economy. The life expectancy in the US has fallen several years in a row since COVID.
There have been major improvements in society in the past century, but that means little to the man who can't afford insulin anymore because the pharmaceutical company decided to increase the price by 1,000% because the US government won't do anything to stop them, or the millions of Americans saddled with absurd amounts of college debt that will even follow them through bankruptcy - the only form of debt that does - because they changed the laws in the past 15 years to ensure that it does. In the US, generations post Baby Boomers are objectively doing worse than their predecessors across many aspects used to measure quality of life - largely those related to finances in any way, shape, or form. I just watched a video about the infantilisation of Millennial women that spent a long time talking about how the entire generation's inability to hit the same metrics considered for "success/adulthood" in life compared to their parents has given rise to stuff like the use of "adult" as a verb instead of a noun (adulting - a thing you do on occasion instead of a thing you are).
Noteworthy quotes from the video relevant to this discussion:
The rest of the video isn't really relevant to this topic, but it's an interesting watch with a good perspective on the experience of Millennial women so I'll link it here. It even has stuff like a section about how all this affects queer women specifically and how the LGBTQ+ community has a different sense of time compared to cis/hetero people due to the environment they grow up in.
Also, as an elder millennial (I'm 36 but hang with a handful of late 30s early 40s peeps) we're pushing 40 or are beginning our 40s, but we're still stuck in effectively entry level work. All the meaningful or well paying positions that aren't being gutted or automated are still being held down by our parents and in some cases grandparents. We can't move up because our parents destroyed the concept of retirement to support eagle fucking corporate freedom.
I see alot of shit talk about millennials still doing "silly" stuff like drinking and video games or whatever instead of building homes and breeding - it's all we can afford and we can't get those jobs that make you FEEL like an adult who's ready to "step up life."
Meanwhile, they're trying to automate all the artistic and creative work so we're stuck with only menial low paying work to choose from.