Why are we all so angry lately?

SV reX said:

In reply to alfadriver :

I agree that "work to live" is being re-evaluated, and it's long overdue. 
 

But I strongly disagree that consumerism is on the decline. As people are re-evaluating their desire to work, they are also buying stuff for their "new" lifestyles. The pipeline is jammed full, and there are far too few people producing. The supply chain issues you mentioned are being magnified by a serious uptick in consumerism. 

The reason I see a growing reduction of consumerism is the lingering "great resignation".  People have used the pandemic to realize what they don't need, which, I think, has lead to so many people not re-engaging in the workforce.  

Yes, there's a large demand of stuff, and it's really messed up the supply chain.  But quitting permanently also means a reduction of lifestyle.

this is from debt.org:

"A November 2020 Experian survey showed that 66% of consumers were spending the same or less during the pandemic than they had in 2019. About 33% of those surveyed said they put more in savings in 2020 than they did in the last year."

I know we were very much part of that.

wae said:

I've actually gone ahead and created a recurring appointment that blocks off 1130-1230 every day just to prevent that.

This is the correct way of dealing with that.  If you have an open timeslot on your calendar, don't get annoyed if someone tries to book a meeting during it.

Whew! Lots of great stuff in here, thanks for sharing everyone!

In reply to alfadriver :

Yes, I understand. But spending "less" doesn't necessarily mean buying less. 
 

That's an opinion survey. I'm not sure why. Experian should theoretically have access to facts, not opinions. But anyway..,

People think they are "spending less" because they are not commuting to work, buying work clothes, or buying lunch every day at restaurants. 
 

But at the same time, Amazon purchases are at an all time high, Home Depot had it's best year ever, new home purchases and car purchases are skyrocketing, and inflation is at its highest level since 1982. The dealerships I work for sold more cars last year than ever (approximately 17,000).
 

People have more money to spend (raises, bonuses, pandemic funding), and are spending less on the discretionary spending they used to do, but they spending more on things they didn't used to. They are not actually buying less. 
 

It's like saying "I spend less on fuel since I bought an electric car" without considering the $45,000 you spent on purchasing the electric car. 

The one thing that has kept us more than sane is finding the change that was really fun.  

It sucked bad that the world was locked down in 2020, as we had a big trip planned to celebrate 25 years.  But it forced us to find an alternative, which we liked so much that it's going to be a key to our retirement lifestyle.  

And the WFH thing for the last two years was stressful not seeing people, and meetings were random, the whole working thing seemed to be all of the time- I get that.  At the same time, it also has resulted in zero commute, giving me 1:30 a day extra.  So when we bought a travel trailer to renovate. we had the time to work on it, and managed to take a messed up old camper and turn it into a really nice restomod camper.

I'm not trying to downplay what has really, really sucked over the past 2 years.  But we did try to pay attention to the things that made our lives more enjoyable and focus on them.  And that has done wonders.

jharry3 said:

 

You haven't seen real anger yet.   But its coming soon...   

U.S. inflation rate climbs to 7.5% after another sharp increase in consumer prices - MarketWatch

...and although bond yields are up 3% today they're still 5.5% below the rate of inflation.  We're being forced away from building a responsible 60/40 or even 80/20 retirement portfolio.

Fun fact:  They keep changing how the CPI is calculated...using the mid's 80's methodology, we're north of 9% inflation  

In reply to alfadriver :

Buying a camper and renovating it sounds like an increase in your personal consumerism. 
 

Just saying! 

(and yes, I love that you did that!)

In reply to SV reX :

We will see how it goes.  When I look up credit card debt, we are still not back to pre-pandemic levels- and since most of the consumerism is on line driven- that would be all charged via a credit card.  

Expansions in one place are not quite the contractions in others.  yet.

Again, looking at the workforce, it seems that there's more people leaving than coming, and a lot of it is apparently permanent.  While some people may be spending more, there are people who have decided to live with less.   A lot of them.  

In reply to SV reX :

An increase in one spot was more than offset by the decrease in the whole- by a massive margin.  

In reply to alfadriver :

Credit card debt is still not a great measure of consumerism. 
 

Credit cards PURCHASES would be, but debt is not.  If people are buying more but paying promptly because they have more available money, it wouldn't register as debt. 
 

In fact, I know a lot of people who are intentionally choosing to buy down their CC debt with the extra available money. That would screw up that statistic too. 
 

There are also a lot of people who have been FORCED to live with less. That's not a choice to be less consumeristic, and it would force down some statistics. 
 

The people who are most likely to have credit card debt and answer Experian surveys are not the people who are unemployed. 
 

We shall see...

I don't know if I'm all that angry.

I am disappointed. Myself. Work. Americans. Humanity as a whole. 

I've bought stuff, but oddly enough - it's mostly used stuff.  I haven't made any major purchases within the last two years. The last bicycle I bought was delivered to me the week lock-downs started. My daily driver is a 2017 model bought used in 2018 and the loan was paid off last year.  I have no burning desire to replace it.  I'd like to buy a new (to me) van to build into a camper, but it's not a burning need.  Right now, I'm spending about half of my net income.   I buy everything using a CC, but like Bob haven't carried a balance in 20 years, other than a couple of zero-interest purchases.

I do believe many folks are angry from feeling left behind and not in control of their lives.  It has been proposed this is the reason for the proliferation of conspiracy theories. The idea of "knowing" something others don't or deny gives these folks some sense of purpose and meaning when they feel their day-to-day lives have none. To dismiss their theories is a dismissal of their lives, so they will latch on with their last breath. 

My own life leaves me little to be angry about. Good paying job. No debt.  No commute. I do sometimes miss the personal interaction with my coworkers. Especially since I don't really have much of a family. It gets lonely and I tend to crave some level of personal connections - I tend to watch a lot of YouTube and Twitch live streams.  Especially these days when I'm lucky if I can get out for a bike ride with my friends once or twice over the weekend.

As someone who occasionally rides a bicycle on the road (solo - almost always solo), I haven't experienced much of a change in anger towards me - but I have made it a habit for years to create as little anger towards me on a bike that I can with when, where and especially how I ride.

I have always generally tried to live by the "golden rule - treat others as you would like to be treated."  I say please, thank you, hold the door for strangers, and just try to be patient.  I try to avoid being in a hurry for anything.  If I'm being held up, it's my own fault for not leaving earlier. 

Faigue. the 24/7 fear porn wears one down. the black/white nature of every discussion is tiring and idiotic. The constant division over the most petty things. The silly restrictions/mandates/whatever that aren't actually based in factual science and if you even THINK about it you're a (insert current derrogetory term). 

Mostly, people are tired. You're not allowed to have open discussions on many topics that NEED open discussions. So people like me sit here and bottle it up, and hope like hell you make it through the day. Throw in clinical depression, anxiety and an inability to go and relax doing the things that help. 

So yeah. Fatigue. Depression. Anxiety and no outlets. What did you think would happen? Everyone start pooping rainbows?

In reply to alfadriver :

We never have CC deb. We haven't in 19 years. I know alot of people doing what we do so tha won't register at all. Terrible matrix.

I'm a holder of a pretty good temper, and really, there are only two things that stress me out- We (Canadians) are being led by a person who hates westerners, and somehow, people still watch The Big Lebowski.  Those two things would cause me more sleepless nights than anything else, except there isn't a damn thing I can do about either thing, so...

Streetwiseguy said:

I'm a holder of a pretty good temper, and really, there are only two things that stress me out- We (Canadians) are being led by a person who hates westerners, and somehow, people still watch The Big Lebowski.  Those two things would cause me more sleepless nights than anything else, except there isn't a damn thing I can do about either thing, so...

 

 

the amount of flat out lies being repeated in your media .... I don't know how you've lasted this long.

In reply to SV reX :

That's why I opened this with the great resignation.  To me, the number of people dropping out of the workforce is an indicator that they have realized that the extra work does not add to their lives.  Which is an indicator of consumerism.

dculberson said:

Snowdoggie (Forum Supporter) said:

Duke said:

Things aren't as good as the were during the good times in the past.  That's an important distinction.

Maybe you've heard me rant about the 1970s.  Leaving aside my feelings on the subjective aesthetic issues, the '70s were a pretty awful time in the world, purely from a politcal, social, and economic standpoint.  I don't think what we're going through now is any worse than, say, 1975-1979 were.

 

1975 to 1979 were my high school years. I don't remember them being that bad. Mom and dad both had good jobs. We lived in a very nice new two story suburban house that might have cost dad about $40,000 and dad owned another house that we rented out. Our family belonged to a local country club with an olympic sized pool where my sister and I would hang out during the summer. Kids at my high school were driving Porsche 914s, Camaros, Firebirds and Barracudas. there were also new Datsuns, Toyotas, Pintos and Vegas in the parking lot. I drove a 69 Mustang. My friend Rick got a new Corvette for his 18th birthday. We cruised the main drag and gas, even though it was up to $1 a gallon back then, was more reasonable that it is today. Everybody had dirt bikes and we rode on vacant lots and farmers fields with our Yamaha Enduros and Hodaka Super Rats. I had a Yamaha LT2 back then, in bright green. Our high school had a ski bus that went to places like Lake Tahoe and Kirkwood and lift tickets were $12.

Our community college was free back then except for a $5 registration fee. The University of California charged $450 per quarter. If your daddy was rich or you could get lots of scholarships, Stanford and USC were about $8,000 a year. Nobody had big student loans back then. It wasn't a problem.

We would watch Saturday Night Live and Belushi and Chevy Chase and the whole original cast was there. Movies were better. Not so politically correct, but actually funny. Music was better. Concerts were everywhere.

The 70's were a much better time to live that today. We were less angry and more happy back then, even without smartphones and the internet.

We actually looked forward to college and a career and a home in the suburbs filled with cool sports cars. What do kids have to look forward to today? Huge student loans and expensive apartments filled with roommates? Temp work and gig jobs plus a side hustle just to make your nut every month. Expensive leased EVs that look like appliances?

 

You're comparing being a teenager to being an adult, not the 1970s to the 2020s. Everything is easier, freer, and less stressful when you're a teenager. Especially growing up in a wealthy household in a wealthy area. I imagine some kids on the wrong side of the tracks had a very different take on the exact same time period in the exact same general area.

Nope. There is a lot more teenage suicide today than there was in the 70s. Even in affluent areas. Especially in affluent areas. The competition to get into good schools today is 10 times what it was in the 1970s. And now these kids are competing against kids from China and India and who knows where else. Not getting into the right school means not getting hired by the right company, or even not getting hired at all and getting stuck with a lifetime of student loan payments while working crap temp and gig jobs. Most kids in those neighborhoods would actually consider suicide above taking a blue collar job. That may not be right, but that's the way a lot of those kids think right now. We have work to do in that area. There is more divorce today and a divorce can move a kid and a single parent right out of that nice house and school district and right into a worst part of town. 

Back in the 1970s there were knife fights and pot in the bad side of town. Now there are gangs with guns and drug syndicates selling stuff a lot stronger than weed. In the old days you might get beat up or cut up. Now you end up with a bullet in your head. Again, things all over town are worse now than they were in the 1970s. The culture has changed a lot in 50 years.

Ian F (Forum Supporter) said:

My own life leaves me little to be angry about. Good paying job. No debt.  No commute. I do sometimes miss the personal interaction with my coworkers. Especially since I don't really have much of a family. It gets lonely and I tend to crave some level of personal connections - I tend to watch a lot of YouTube and Twitch live streams. 

I know what you mean. I have a great fiance, job, and house. I definitely miss the "stop and chats" as Larry David would call them in the office. But that's impossible unless I change jobs since they closed our office last year. 

I've been thinking about the consumerism stuff alfa was pointing out, we share one car since we both work from home. We still go to concerts and shows, but we don't go out to eat or bars anything close like we used to. So I think I could be ok making less than I do currently, but insurance is always a wonder since my fiance has RA and those meds are devastatingly expensive without good insurance and we pay nothing for them. 

"Your argument is weak..." has transitioned to "BLASPHEMER!  HERETIC!  MORON!"

Everybody needs to shut the internet off for a year and read a berkleying book. 

I think the thing that killed me the most was once the wife brought home the c from school. It was my second go-around so I knew what was coming for her. She was also high risk because of asthma and some other health issues. I couldn't talk about it here because that topic was shut down. I turned to the book of faces asking for the best things we should do to help her symptoms be the best they could. I didn't ask about the forbidden drugs. I merely asked what should we be doing now that we have it (again for me). The CDC said stay home until you need to be hospitalized. The state health dept beat the vaccination drum but offered no treatment options. 
 

know what I got? And immediate withdrawal from fb for violating their rules and a warning to not do it again or I'd have a ban fir 5 days. I had to turn to a local gun forum to discuss treatment options. That's when I knew we were berkeleyed.

hell this post may be my ban who knows. But when you're reaching out for help and are turned into a monster what else would you expect? I'm so ducking over this berkeleying bullE36 M3. 

In reply to bobzilla :

I'm definitely over it as well. But we've still been out doing stuff, just a little more cautious. We've only been to one concert (Gojira!), but we've been to a bunch of comedy shows. In the last two years, we've seen Dave Attell, Pablo Francisco, Brian Regan, Mark Norman, Jim Jefferies, Louis CK and that doesn't even include their great openers. 

In reply to z31maniac :

We are part of the unwashed masses so we can't go to shows. Or cruises. Nothing like segregating the population randomly

The harder I try, the harder I fail.

Everything I believe in is now considered wrong socially.

Never enough money and working too much, but really isn't that the same thing most people have been saying forever?

To much technology changing to fast. Can't keep up too hard to use and yet another expense.

bobzilla said:

In reply to z31maniac :

We are part of the unwashed masses so we can't go to shows. Or cruises. Nothing like segregating the population randomly

Not random, and there is nothing stopping you from getting "washed".

In reply to mtn :

Is "washed" a code for "vaccinated"?

Lets not go there.