Unless artificial intelligence can come and save us, I believe we are doomed. The gap between the wealthy, middle class, and the poor is astronomical. It’s soon to be only the wealthy and the poor; the middle class will be destroyed.
Everyone knows that prices have gone up and wages have stayed the same. This is all while qualifications for jobs have increased but the education required does not reflect in wages. There are jobs out there that pay $15 for a bachelors degree that cost $100,000 or more. A studio apartment that cost $700/month in 2016 is now $1200/month in 2023. Food, gas, rent, bills, and everything in general costs significantly more while no one is making more.
People in the US are TIRED. In my opinion, 8 hours a day, 5 days a week is overworking our population based on the technology we have available. And that is for the average citizen, blue collar workers work 10-12 hour days 5-6 days a week and still have trouble paying bills. Most jobs available today are either physically, mentally, or soul crushing to work at. Along side that, we’re being underpaid and getting no time to do what really makes an individual happy. We’ve created a culture in America that promotes greed, corruption, and to be cold blooded in nature.
The American dream is dead, mostly dead. Yes you can save up money and start your own little business but if you dare to have any originality in your product or service, companies with billions and trillions of dollars will screw the crap out of you, and your original idea is theirs now. It’s true, most of the businesses in the US are run by just 25 companies. Those 25 companies use their trillions of dollars to pay off politicians, so they essentially run the government. They have monopolized the entire country and there’s nothing we can do about it. If they even get a hint of competition best believe they’re going to steal your idea or have you killed. We are workers. There’s no way around it. We do not own anything, we simply work for these companies and spend the money we make with these companies.
Nepotism. You can’t really blame any one parent for looking out for their kids but when you look at successful people in your community, you should look at the environment they grew up in, whose their daddy. Most people are products of their environment, and tend to get opportunities based on said environment. The nepo kids are greedy, selfish, spoiled, and cold blooded, just like there parents. They don’t have a solid grasp of what reality is for most people and failed to develop empathy as a child. They only hangout with rich people and rich kids and wear rich clothes and live in rich houses. They see a direct correlation with hard work to success without seeing the correlation with opportunities to success. They think all poor people must not work hard, and when they have the chance to give an opportunity to someone who didn’t start on their “level”, they don’t, because they don’t look, act, talk, or dress like them. Nepo kids are thrusted into positions of power and thus the cycle continues, the rich stay rich and get richer.
Corruption. All of these companies are exploiting someone in someway. The banks control the stock market and insider trade to generate billions in “free money.” Do you own a product? That product was made with child labor, slave labor, inhumane working conditions, etc. Corporations own the government and won’t allow changes to be made for the betterment of society. Hell we still have $7.25 minimum wage. We are truly owned by these companies and there’s nothing we can do about it and no where we can go.
Mental health. Everyone is depressed and a lot of people commit and think about committing everyday. The jobs we work provide no purpose and no meaning to life, that our souls crave so deeply. We have completely rid ourselves of “community” and most of us don’t have friends or simply don’t have the time for friends. We can’t find out who we are as an individual because we don’t have the time and resources to do so. Therapy is very expensive and deep connections with others is very rare to come by nowadays. Working 40 hour week’s minimum definitely has a big impact on this and I’m tired of acting like it doesn’t. The amount of people that have Stockholm syndrome about work is insane. For the average person, time allotted for work way more than 40 hours considering the preparation for work and commute. Not to mention other responsibilities outside of work like the existence of kids in your life. After everything in the day, most people have barely anytime for themselves or to do something that makes them happy and that’s really depressing to me.
There are a million other reasons I could go into like health care, the ratio of student loan debt to salary, the public education system, the lack of empathy I see radiating from society, everyone only cares about themselves, the type of entertainment we produce, values evaporating, climate change, just SO MANY THINGS.
When does it all collapse? What will the future look like? What can we do to fix this? Overall what’s the solution? I’d love to know your opinion.