Millennial here. Us, too.
Gen X checking in. What happens when I can no longer work or no one will employ me, but I cannot afford to retire?
I’ve been pondering this one myself for awhile. I knew a decade ago that, barring massive financial change, I would never be able to afford to retire. So these are the options:
- Work until I die
- Work until I can’t (or nobody will hire me/pay a living wage), live off of savings until I can’t, then die
- Stop working, live off of savings until I can’t, then die
The first two are the default and just kind of accepted by society as fair and just. The last one, strangely, gets all sorts of pushback, even though the only material difference is 20-30 years of mundane toil to make line go up.
Same and I was already homeless thanks to the W era and clawed my way back to mostly stable. It’s a traumatic experience I don’t want to repeat.
Alternate headline, sub header combo:
"Gen Z aware of main cause of homelessness.
Boomers and Forbes editors remain unconvinced"
I do not fear becoming homeless. The state should fear my homelessness as it will only signify the next phase of my radicalization.
Yeah the state doesn’t worry about the homeless as a threat to authority. Where have you ever seen the homeless in organised political action?
Sleeping rough is eye opening. But the folks closest to the atrocities are inevitably the ones who have the least power to stop them.
Only remedy for that situation is the kind of mass organizing of the lumpen proles that hasn’t seriously happened since the 70s/80s. Thanks to mass surveillance, brutal policing, and a corporate state increasingly run by algorithms, its harder and harder to see a world in which a mass movement can emerge again.
Doesn’t mean folks shouldn’t try. After 40 years of digging our own graves, we’re in one hell of a hole. But the only way out is to start climbing.
“some” …
EDIT: and yet another article that ignores the generation between millenials and boomers …
Hey, my partner may technically be Gen X but I’m pretty sure the entire generation is an urban legend.
Ah yes the generation that wasn’t even worth naming so they gave us a placeholder.
Growing up Gen X in the US was watching a slow motion train wreck where you’re able to see the causes, current wreck, and even look down the road to the future repercussions but everything you do or try to make things better for everyone is ignored, co-opted, or sidelined by the monolithic boomer voting bloc. And all the while you’re being gaslit by the beneficiaries of the current shitshow selling you an American Dream that never was true and hasn’t been remotely attainable since you joined the workforce.
Spent 6 years sofa surfing, its less a fear and more a reality for some. Sadly in most western countries homelessness is seen as a punishment and housing programmes stipulate no alcohol, no drugs, curfew. all of which put people back on the streets.
housing programmes stipulate no alcohol, no drugs, curfew. all of which put people back on the streets.
More often, its the risk of physical or sexual violence that pushes people out. Shelter work is grueling and the pay is shit. The only people in the business tend to be the the boundlessly charitable or the ruthlessly exploitative.
The Texas Youth Corrections System has a scandal every five years or so, in which this or that low level staffer gets strung up for trading drugs to inmates in exchange for pornography or sexual favors. Its a regular low-rent Epstein Island that the state administrators know and actively cultivate, but periodically have to run Limited Hangout on when the heat builds up too high.
