Wait... there are people that work at McDonald's?

Just like walmart ect, the middle class doesn't care much about their kids if they make a life from them selves or not. It is all about million dollar homes, expensive cars, titanic trucks and suvs, and expensive week long vacations twice or three times a year while people who actually work for a living would be lucky to get even one vacation a year. My generation doesn't have a future and never will as this country is hopeless. The education system is a complete joke now days and getting semi decent jobs require masters degrees in addition to several years experience for entry level positions. I will be happy when no longer people think about life in only monetary terms. This country would have had a decent chance had it returned to the values that first built this country. Greed kills!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKQs-jDI7j8

I think that image was a bit too optimistic. I haven't seen a McDonalds with white employees in the past decade.

nforce4max wrote:

Just like walmart ect, the middle class doesn't care much about their kids if they make a life from them selves or not. It is all about million dollar homes, expensive cars, titanic trucks and suvs, and expensive week long vacations twice or three times a year while people who actually work for a living would be lucky to get even one vacation a year. My generation doesn't have a future and never will as this country is hopeless. The education system is a complete joke now days and getting semi decent jobs require masters degrees in addition to several years experience for entry level positions. I will be happy when no longer people think about life in only monetary terms. This country would have had a decent chance had it returned to the values that first built this country. Greed kills!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKQs-jDI7j8

If only you visited Russia, you would have seen how far this sh*t has gone here. Teachers get $200 a month as a starter up to $400 after 30 years of hard work, same thing with medics. My mom is an excellent teacher of English (you can judge by me) and $350 is all she gets. When my father left and we didn't get any help, she had SEVEN years with no vacations, not even a weekend out somewhere. No I have a job as a 3D-modeller and my father died, so the money he left and the money I make can be enough for us to have one vacation a year and that's enough. And by the amount of Porsche Cayenne on the streets - I see at least 10 every day - you can tell that we're in a big mess. Our fellow students go to your country (assuming you're from USA) to work at a cafeteria for a summer, they work 7 days a week and come back HAPPY they had a chance to. It's our country that has no future, not yours.

RacoonRider wrote:

nforce4max wrote:

Just like walmart ect, the middle class doesn't care much about their kids if they make a life from them selves or not. It is all about million dollar homes, expensive cars, titanic trucks and suvs, and expensive week long vacations twice or three times a year while people who actually work for a living would be lucky to get even one vacation a year. My generation doesn't have a future and never will as this country is hopeless. The education system is a complete joke now days and getting semi decent jobs require masters degrees in addition to several years experience for entry level positions. I will be happy when no longer people think about life in only monetary terms. This country would have had a decent chance had it returned to the values that first built this country. Greed kills!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKQs-jDI7j8

If only you visited Russia, you would have seen how far this sh*t has gone here. Teachers get $200 a month as a starter up to $400 after 30 years of hard work, same thing with medics. My mom is an excellent teacher of English (you can judge by me) and $350 is all she gets. When my father left and we didn't get any help, she had SEVEN years with no vacations, not even a weekend out somewhere. No I have a job as a 3D-modeller and my father died, so the money he left and the money I make can be enough for us to have one vacation a year and that's enough. And by the amount of Porsche Cayenne on the streets - I see at least 10 every day - you can tell that we're in a big mess. Our fellow students go to your country (assuming you're from USA) to work at a cafeteria for a summer, they work 7 days a week and come back HAPPY they had a chance to. It's our country that has no future, not yours.

I didn't say that it was all peaches and cream but said it from the perspective of how people in my country feel. If you were here back in the 1950s and 1960s it was a different world when America was in its golden age. Since then we have only fallen and America is in its last days before it is swept away into the pages of history. As for your country things will get even worse than they are now and there will be no where to run to. Europe is bankrupt and Asia has enormous problems. America's decline is the result of generations of corruption in government and big business slowly eating away at the foundation of this country. As for your country the sad truth is that for a short time it had a chance to be truly free had it not been for the excrement of this world Vladimir Lenin. He should have been shot at the very moment he had entered Russia instead of being allowed in.

I've lived 15 years in Canada, 10 years in the US and 5 in China. From my point of view it's pretty obvious which countries are going down the shit hole and which ones are on the rise. Despite what you may read about the "communist" party of China, western governments are the true masters of propaganda. At least in China nobody really trusts the government, but in the U.S. the average Joe is content with outsourcing, declining wages, declining standard of living and freedom being taken away in order to protect them from "terrorists".

You're totally right about a masters degree and 5 years experience being necessary just to get a job that barely sustains a traditional middle class lifestyle. I come from an upper middle class family. I have a bachelor in EE from a state university and a few years experience. The best I could manage in the US were shitty paying 80 hour a week jobs in the boonies, or unreliable contract work. The sad reality is that jobs for many people have been outsourced and will never come back. I recognised this trend early and got the hell out, rather than become part of the working poor.

Wow you live in China now? I have a friend who wanted out of Australia and he moved to China to teach English. I believe his second interview got him work. He has a girl now, kid on its way.

I used to work in IT sales for a while and really felt the pinch so I retrained and switched careers. So far so good.

One thing I see in Australia is that most people enslave themselves through consumption (got to have the latest gadgets) and this obsession of having to own a home. If you refuse to follow the masses life is very good to be honest.

I'm speaking as a citizen of the United States who has never been overseas so some of what I say may be irrelevant to you, the reader.

Even in the glory days of this country, we had troubles and we were pissing off other countries around the world. As such, we've brought it upon ourselves to have some pain. However, between over-sheltering an unprepared generation that's now learning about life after they've already been hurled into it, a number of half-baked political moves that sounded good explained on TV and a mass failure of consumer responsibility, we're hurting worse than before.

Then again, if things were peachy 100%, we wouldn't be able to enjoy fringe-haired pasty boys singing manufactured lyrics about political corruption. I'm not such a big fan of emo music singing about capitalist pigs and wars for oil but shoot, at least we have something that managed to displace this glut of songs about love.

Anyways, life has never been peachy. However, if we all cry together, we get nothing done. We also become blind in our collective search for "what's right" and how to make this country better. Ultimately, it's up to the individual to do well for themselves. If we were all to work hard, contribute what we can in trade for another contributing something else, and obey our obligations, things would be quite nice for us whenever it's time to call the day over. Unfortunately, it only takes one foul person to bump an otherwise graceful system carried out by many. I could also argue that with the dollar in the USA being a fiat currency, we could probably fix some of our problems with inflation through a well executed propaganda campaign but that's a short sighted solution with limited potential and would only go to supplement the proper solution I outlined in this paragraph.

Another issue is expectations. While it's important to further the knowledge of the masses, we must also be realistic; save certain things for the college level where the knowledge is taught to willing pupils who have the capacity and desire for further information. When well to do parents with a multi-bedroom house and multiple cars are unable to figure out a middle-schooler's homework, it's possible we're expecting a little bit too much. You can only push youth so far before they give up. Mandate the basics, leave the higher up material for those who can show they want it.

Moving to another country simply expecting things to be better only works if you're in a hellhole like Somalia; not in a place where the poor have access to internet, jailbirds have television and government mandated rights, and a healthcare system that, at worst, will bump down your credit if you're unable to pay the fees but still provide basic care for a condition that requires hospitalization.

With that said, aren't parks, crosswalks, nationwide internet and TV, education, highways, and a force of people willing to die for you nice luxuries?

GXL750 wrote:

Screencap of an old commercial from the 1990s. Such bright futures imagined! […]
Show full quote

Screencap of an old commercial from the 1990s. Such bright futures imagined!

What you're not taking into account is that many of the people in upper management at McDonalds started out at the store level, did well, and got the attention of higher ups in the company so being on the McDonalds crew isn't as bad as it seems.

I'm not one to "shut up and take my medicine", and if anything people need to make more noise not less. Right now a lot of the noise you hear comes from special interest groups, not from the average working Joe. There will be no change unless people organise and demand protection from abusive practices of financial institutions and large corporations. Why should I do what's good for the country (hard work) when my employer is effectively committing treason by outsourcing, insourcing, offshoring and offering sweat shop like working conditions? They force Americans to compete against 3rd world labour. This is effectively turning the US into a 3rd world country. It's been a slow transition over the last 30 or 40 years, but it's getting there. I say if the bastards don't want to build factories in the US, and don't want to hire Americans, they shouldn't be allowed to do business in the US either. Hang them from the street lamps.

This is how I do the math: A $36,000 a year job in Texas with an 80 hour work week is about 8 bucks an hour (minimum wage) no matter how you cut it. I didn't spend tens of thousands of dollars and countless man hours on higher education to work like a slave for a slave wage. So I took the appropriate action and did what I had to do to protect myself (moved). I like to think of it as the "reverse brain drain". People come to the US because they believe they can have a good life if they work hard. That's why my father immigrated to the US, and it worked well for him. Why shouldn't it still be that way?

Because a bunch of greedy baby boomers decided to buy stuff they didn't need with money they didn't have. They ran up the debt and flushed America down the toilet so they could have their McMansions with granite counter tops. That's only the tip of the iceberg, I could write a book about all the damage they've done. Baby boomers are the stupidest, laziest, and fattest generation in American history, and with their greed they killed the goose the laid the golden eggs. I say they dug the hole, so let them lie in it. I don't plan to come back to the U.S. until all the boomers are dead, assuming the U.S. isn't a complete shithole by then.

I agree with you Mau1wurf, Australia is a good place to live if you keep things simple and avoid debt whenever possible. I cant understand why people here spend 50k on their weddings, buy brand new mega cars, etc.

RacoonRider, come and live in Australia, and bring your Mum!

Anonymous Coward wrote:

I'm not one to "shut up and take my medicine", and if anything people need to make more noise not less. Right now a lot of the noise you hear comes from special interest groups, not from the average working Joe. There will be no change unless people organise and demand protection from abusive practices of financial institutions and large corporations. Why should I do what's good for the country (hard work) when my employer is effectively committing treason by outsourcing, insourcing, offshoring and offering sweat shop like working conditions? They force Americans to compete against 3rd world labour. This is effectively turning the US into a 3rd world country. It's been a slow transition over the last 30 or 40 years, but it's getting there. I say if the bastards don't want to build factories in the US, and don't want to hire Americans, they shouldn't be allowed to do business in the US either. Hang them from the street lamps.

This is how I do the math: A $36,000 a year job in Texas with an 80 hour work week is about 8 bucks an hour (minimum wage) no matter how you cut it. I didn't spend tens of thousands of dollars and countless man hours on higher education to work like a slave for a slave wage. So I took the appropriate action and did what I had to do to protect myself (moved). I like to think of it as the "reverse brain drain". People come to the US because they believe they can have a good life if they work hard. That's why my father immigrated to the US, and it worked well for him. Why shouldn't it still be that way?

Because a bunch of greedy baby boomers decided to buy stuff they didn't need with money they didn't have. They ran up the debt and flushed America down the toilet so they could have their McMansions with granite counter tops. That's only the tip of the iceberg, I could write a book about all the damage they've done. Baby boomers are the stupidest, laziest, and fattest generation in American history, and with their greed they killed the goose the laid the golden eggs. I say they dug the hole, so let them lie in it. I don't plan to come back to the U.S. until all the boomers are dead, assuming the U.S. isn't a complete shithole by then.

Word for word you almost summed up how I have been feeling for the past few years. I am starting to really hate this country because of the greed and corruption. As for the baby boomers, they have dug their own graves and now it is time that they sleep in them. I see very little to no incentive for people of my age to invest in the effort to make anything of them selves anymore except for the one rare individuals that decide to leave. Where I am jobs are almost impossible to obtain while rich upper class masons drive their $60k new trucks and cars on everyone's rear end at 90mph.

I can't say that leaving the US is for everyone, but I think it's foolish to limit yourself to one country if there are opportunities elsewhere. I would totally not recommend China to the average person, as most foreigners who try to live here run away screaming. I'm good at dealing with technical problems and know how to get things done, so I am able to make a comfortable life for myself. China has a lot of serious issues but the one thing it doesn't have is baby boomers, and this provides me with a great deal of personal satisfaction.

What will you do when there are dead bodies in the streets and the country has gone to hell, this country is on borrowed time. Things won't be nice when it becomes our turn and unlike Europe it will be a blood bath.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_l4juTddLJk

http://www.thetrumpet.com/article/9951.18.0.0 … t-visit-detroit

nforce4max wrote:

...and unlike Europe it will be a blood bath.

Don't count on Europe avoiding that sort of thing in the coming decades either.... see France in 2005, or the UK just last year. The underlying causes may be different, but "no-go zones" already exist in every major European city, with no signs of letting up.

the no-go zones in west europe's city mostly thanks to immigrants from middle-east, africa & pakistans,
they flee from their country but want to implement the same thing into european city, which that made them flee in first place.

Joey_sw wrote:

the no-go zones in west europe's city mostly thanks to immigrants from middle-east, africa & pakistans,
they flee from their country but want to implement the same thing into european city, which that made them flee in first place.

Ooh, careful with this -- you don't want the the thought police to brand you a "racist" and all that. ;)

I can't really blame the immigrants for their way of life: they're only seeking the "path of least resistance" - a life of maximum comfort, while still cherishing the only cultural values they know. Simple human nature.

The problem lies with the 'host' countries that seem to welcome this erosion of progressive, Western values in the name of multiculturalism.. they'll be the ones on the forefront when push comes to shove.

VileRancour wrote:

progressive, Western values

🤣

The kind of problems we have now in Europe remind me of what led to WWII.