What stage capitalism

If it makes you feel any better, just think of all the libs that have been owned.

American dream: 80-yo hobbling upstairs with a cane delivering food to an unemployed 25-yo with $200 in the bank who spends $25 of it to get Wendy's from Doordash. I just want an economy that makes sense.

You have to work for your retirement if you want to have it. (/s)

America is increasingly becoming third world. It reminds me of my home country, where many elders still work to the bone.

At what point is it stopped being called capitalism and start being called slavery again?
- More like techno-feudalism or techno-sharecropping than slavery...
- Well it's not slavery - you still get paid.
  It's just that everything you're paid and probably more will get sucked back into the economy to pay for necessities to live, and if you don't make enough money to afford that then you die.
  But they aren't killing you directly, so not the same thing.
  
  "You load 16ton what do you get?"
- Once we are living in Freedom Cities and essentially serfs without the protection of federal law.
  They are going to sabotage any people outside these city-states to force people to submit and live there as slaves rather than starve
  Look up Dark Enlightenment, and Network States. This is not conspiracy, the VP is vocally in favor of these ideas
  
  guns
- When they stop paying

Become? Always has been.
- People really fall for the "America used to be great" propaganda, huh?
  Did no one learn anything in middle school history? We definitely covered ✨the 1900s✨, which featured multiple world wide depressions/ressessions that the US was not exempt from, two world wars where millions of people died, the great dust bowl and famine, and plenty of corruption. Most of which happened just before or during our grandparents lives. It's not like we're talking about the colonial era of this continent or something.
  
  At least part of my education starting at the turn off the century, we were taught these things happened but that once they were over it was a solved problem, never to happen again.
  For me there was a narrative that post 1950 the US was the pinnacle of humanity, the best place on earth. Cold war, Vietnam, Korea, all things on the other side of the world from our walled garden. Civil rights was just a few people in the south having disagreements and 9/11 was either swept under the rug or passed off as some dumb dirty Arab who was irrationally angry and lashed out.
  It took me moving to the big bad city for college, where I was supposed to be shot every 5 minutes and robbed of everything including the clothes on my back, to have that world view crack enough to begin questioning what I was told. When I did, I was instantly ostracized from my rural upper midwest hometown and became barely tolerated by my family.
  The blinders are very real and it's too easy to ignore uncomfortable truths

They're entrepreneurs! They're being their own boss and improving their lives through freedom!
- I can see a "feel good" headline
  80 Year old woman still hustling - you can't slow down this granny!

Post Mortem Stage Cap

I've seen this several times in Florida (retirement capitol of the US). Often times it's couples trying to drive around doing deliveries. They don't even know what a GPS is so they take forever and a day. But then they finally arrive and your anger turns to sorrow when you see these frail old people just trying to survive.
- I've noticed that more and more seniors are entering the labor force after retirement and it doesn't have to do with keeping busy. One of my local grocery stores had a woman who would work a few days a week but she quit during Covid. Ran into her on another occasion. She said she quit because she was just doing it to keep busy and she wasn't going to work if she didn't have to. I don't see that anymore. If I make a comment about "keeping busy" to anyone who says they're retired they admit they can't keep up with insurance or property tax increases without working. We're going to see more and more of this as social security dwindles and prices continue to increase.
  
  If you're not producing profit for your masters from cradle to grave, that's profit someone else could be making them. Have you said "thank you" once?
- Maybe I'm a bit of an optimist but my grandpa does door dash too, not necessarily for the money because he was lucky enough to have a good retirement net, but just because he fucking hates retirement and is so bored now that hes not allowed to do handyman things anymore (doctor and grandma said he's too old to be running a table saw or climbing a ladder) so he does door dash.
  We did make him go pass a driver's test before we let him though haha
  
  he fucking hates retirement
  Yet he doesn't give up all his assets and money to prestige. Doesn't he want the full non-retirement experience?
  
  Sounds like your grampa would love a part-time job at a hardware store.
  
  People choosing to stay in the workforce until they almost tip over is great if that's what they want. There's definitely something to be said for keeping some sort of structure. If seen retirement degrade way too many people.
  Being forced to stay in the workforce needs to die a swift death.
- And that's why the elderly have become the largest and fastest growing segment of the unhoused
  
  as social security and welfare are dismantled before our eyes (across both Dem and GOP administrations), homelessness will certainly rise especially among the elderly. i for one won't let my parents die in the street but caring for them full time means never having time or money to have children of my own.
  capitalism has taken so much from us.

This is going to be even worse if/when Musk and trump dismantle Social Security. The adult middle class will collapse entirely when their seniors will lose their homes and food, and their children are still at home because they can't afford to live on their own.
Couple this with smaller family sizes, this could mean two single child adults might have to support four living senior citizens (both sets of parents) while also raising children of their own.
- People are going to die because they'll have a heart attack or something while exerting themselves at work...
  What a nightmare :/
- while also raising ~~children~~ wage slaves of their own.
  FTFY
- Kt looks like they have no other option that legalize euthanasia
  
  If we're euthenizing the ultra rich then I'm probably on board
- This is called the sandwich generation (when you have to take care of both adults and kids on your own). It's a thing!
  
  Yeah, my mom grew up in a house with her parents and a grandparent of two. And her cousin. That was the 60s and 70s. Guess we're bringing it back!
- I fucking feel this.
  I'm in a situation where in my family I'm the one who's going to be taking care of my parents as they get older because my only sibling (older) is entirely unreliable and financially unstable.
  Then my fiance is ALSO being expected to take up that responsibility because all her siblings went and had 2-4 kids and "can't afford" or "won't have time" to help take care of her mother who is already aging.
  So we're having to plan ahead as 25 and 30 year olds to be able to help and support 3 elders. This basically defaults us to not being able to have kids.
  
  Just don't help them. It's their fault for not planning ahead. You already paid them with your love
  
  My girlfriend is taking care of her parents with her father having a couple of weeks to live and her mother being so anxious that she can't be trusted to take care of him (give him morphine, start preparing a second dose thinking she didn't give him his dose yet, change his fentanyl patch and doesn't remove the old one)... Her sisters are pretty much nowhere to be found, as if their boyfriends were unable to take care of the kids for one fucking evening.
  They'll let their father die a painful death without seeing him, but at least they will have enjoyed the last few days of the ski season!
  
  Then my fiance is ALSO being expected to take up that responsibility because all her siblings went and had 2-4 kids and “can’t afford” or “won’t have time” to help take care of her mother who is already aging.
  Your fiance's siblings are stupid for turning down the free live-in childcare.
  
  Or like, you could just have kids. Don't Darwin yourself over the stupidity of others
- You are very optimist people will still have kids in this situation.
  
  pregnancy prevention is expensive and abortions are becoming illegal i think we'll see more kids

"Couldn't even tip I was so upset"
- Haha I was going to comment the same thing. Delivery took too long 🤣

For the OGs here, this is what George W. Bush would call "uniquely American" with pride. The rest of us...not so much pride.

We are into shit stage capitalism.
- And for some reason people still refuse to unionize :(
  
  The amazon warehouse near me went for a union vote, and they voted against it 🙃
  I almost took a day off work just to go yell at them, but decided against it.

Lpt: pretend you're a frail old person so then you get more tips whwn people feel bad.

As if there was ever a time where there wasn't someone who was too old working to earn some money. United States has never properly taken care of its populace why are we pretending that they used to.

Hurry up nan me foods gettin cold

I bought a 4 plex apartment building, hoping it can pay itself off before my parents and certain other indigent family members need it. I don't want them moving in with me.
- hoping it can pay itself off
  You mean hoping your tenants can pay it off for you?
- And I’m hoping that “pay itself off [quickly]” doesn’t mean “I’m charging out the ass for rent”.
  
  You already know exactly what they mean.
- Wannabe alert
- This guy bought a building, get him! Those are only for conglomerates.

I'd blame a lot of this on the destruction of our communal living patterns. We used to live in extended family groups. It was reasonable and expected to live with your parents and siblings. If you did leave the family home it often was just to build a home on the same property.
But then the idea of the nuclear family was popularized, probably to make more money and sell house, and here we are.
To be clear since what I said has been immediately misinterpreted, family centric living patterns were torn apart by capitalism. It heavily favors capitalism when we are separated from each other and lose community. This wasn't a benign social shift
- This is nonsense.
  In Western/Central Europe and Scandinavia, smaller families are the norm, yet nobody sees 80 year old people working.
  This is entirely the fault of unchained capitalism, corruption and half a century of lobbying against the working class.
  
  Sweden (I'm using them as an example) has a comparable employment rate at every age group than the US?
  In the US about 41% of people 55 and older are working, compared to almost 38% in Sweden.
  Edit: I did my math super wrong. Sweden doesn't have "much more" people at that age working, they have slightly fewer.
  
  Let's not be unreasonable, there can be multiple causes and multiple solutions.
  Those countries also used to have a more communal structure amongst families and that still was dismantled.
  But they actually implemented social programs and living wages making it not an issue.
  Also yes it is capitalism fault. It all is, including the dismantling of our communities to favor more isolated living. It's design to separate us and disempower the worker.
  
  We have something called pensions.
- For what it’s worth, I agree with you.
  But I still don’t want to live with my narcissistic MAGA parents, so…evidently things have gone really far sideways and it’ll be hard to rebuild that social fabric.
  
  I don't want to live with my autistic parents either
  
  Honestly same. I haven't spoken with my dad in months thanks to his MAGA views. I blame this "fuck you I got mine" as a result of community destruction
- More productive generating more money than ever before.

Pics or it didn't happen.
Sorry this is weak, even for armchair activism.
- I can totally believe it. There's an old guy at my job too and it's manual labor

Take solace in the idea that, statistically, she likely voted for Trump.
For everyone who wants the fucking numbers: https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/04/09/age-generational-cohorts-and-party-identification/
And the quote:
About six-in-ten voters 80 and older (58%) identify with or lean toward the GOP, while 39% associate with the Democratic Party.
Keep the downvotes coming, and don't forget to worship the elderly just because they got old. Surely they aren't voting against the best interests of humanity.
- statistically, you have terrible opinions. 1 out of 1 comments I've read of yours have been awful
- Remember, everybody who fails to die sooner will get old and have to put up with the same problems young people chose not to address because "eh those are old people problems and old people suck"
  In other words "it will happen to youuuuuuuuuu"
- Go fuck yourself. Anyone mocking the suffering of someone is human garbage
  
  I'll openly mock anyone that is a detriment to humanity and then has to suffer the consequences of their actions.
  It's like RAAAAIIIINNNNN~~
- Go on... Tell me more about these statistics. Did elder women have over a 50% chance of voting for Trump, or am I gonna see goalposts move?
- In Germany there was/still is this scam happening, called "Enekltrick", where people (mostly men) impersonate grandchildren to get into the pockets of the elderly, and a rap group made a song about it.
  
  I think in that context I kinda get the resentment but if you really wish for someone to suffer as idk some kind of punishment, that's pretty fucked up
  
  I can't tell if that song is for or against the grandchild scam, it seems to just kinda state that it exists.
- Would agree after you showed your work. Not sure what the odds are for '"80 year old woman" are.