Hasn't happened yet
Hasn't happened yet
139 comments
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I have heard this my entire life and now that I recently have kids and a home, I find it to be an insane take. If anything, the greater my knowledge of the world becomes the MORE liberal I am. I'm significantly more aware of rigged systems and injustice as I age.
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Reality has a liberal bias.
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My old man has told me this my whole life and I always tell him no, because I'm not a cunt. 42yo so far and still going strong.
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I'm more conservative than a lot of people here, but no, I'll never be a religious nut cheering on death. If that's conservative they can keep it.
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Boomers got more conservative as they grew older because they've been eating shovels of propaganda since reagan and never learned how to fact check like younger generations
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Don’t forget the leaded gas fumes and rampant racism!
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Don't belive everything you read online, kids!
Proceeds to freebase Facebook conspiracism like it's the 70's again
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I was actually more right wing as a kid. Now that I've learned some things about the world that's when I became a left leaning liberal.
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Went from voting far right in 2017 (fucking welfare abusers ) to far left in 2022 (fuckibg corporations costing three times more than welfare) kek
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greatest comeback
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I'm at a pretty low level of rightishness, but I fluctuate a bit. I've been socially left since my late teens and sort of homeless but libertarian economically. My personal ethics are definitely closer to some left-lib ideologies.
I'm really uncomfortable with subjective categories. My brain wants objective lines. I'm also extra empathetic. Working out a personal philosophy that fits both is kind of time consuming, but worth it because my brain really likes objective lines.
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I remember a high school friend's father saying something to me like, "You'll get more conservative when you start paying taxes." This was around 1993-1994 or so.
I'm 45 now, modestly wealthy, and pay plenty of taxes. I can't envision ever voting for a Republican for any public office ever again...and the current circus of bullshit around TFG just seals that deal for me.
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Same (though not American). I did the opposite. I started off conservative cause that's what my family and community was. Then found out that was hateful bullshit and am now extremely progressive. I'm happy to pay my taxes (and I pay waaaay more than average). I do sometimes wish they went to better things and weren't squandered as often (especially on MPs paying for $16 glasses of orange juice), but overall Canada does a decent job at using its taxes. It's impossible for taxes to go to 100% agreeable things, since there's no satisfying everyone. They're ultimately a net benefit.
I also don't have kids but am happy to see kids get the benefits of my taxes (and many other things taxes go to that don't directly benefit me). People who expect tax dollars to always benefit them are selfish and narrow-minded, which I think is the root reason some people don't like taxes.
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Even if conservatives go back to being about "small government", I can't see myself voting Republican. I don't think I'm anything. I can see "small government" working. But I can also see the democrats vision of "government should do things" working too. I can see either technique working. The problem is, back when Republicans used to promote "small government", I noticed after a while, they never made government smaller. When I confronted some of them on that, they used to say at least its not as big as what the democrats want. What the fuck does that even mean? Democrats, on the other hand, actually try to do stuff.
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They want small government for the rich and big government for anyone that's not a conservative pentecostal Christian. Simple. Lol
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The older I get, the more liberal I get.
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Same. I'm almost 42 and I've never been more liberal.
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Mid-40’s, same.
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49 here. Liberal AF.
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Same. Only getting more and more liberal as I get older.
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I hate it when boomers, specifically, say this. My grandfather, who is Silent Generation, will tell you that he’s gotten more liberal as he’s gotten older. Whenever I hear a boomer say this, it’s used as a shaming, like “you don’t understand now but you will when you’re older”. Turns out I haven’t gotten more conservative. I listened to minority populations and then came out and it’s turned me more leftist.
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Boomers, in general, are a generation of spoiled children that, for the most part, have never seen the true hardships of any other generation. "Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times." Boomers are the weak men that created hard times for the following generations, yet they keep living and consuming as if our world wasn't dying. "Fuck you, got mine" I guess.
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Yeah, same. It's also part of their mindset that "progressive = immature" which I've always found really confusing.
Yes, the idea that my taxes should be spent for the benefit of all is immature. Gotcha.
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GenXer. I've gotten more progressive. I used to consider myself a moderate dem back in the 90s. On the other hand, the 90s moderate dem is now considered a commie woke libtard, so shrug? Shocking that I want justice for all, fair wages, end systemic racism, end homophobia, etc. So librul! I'm destroying Western society! Oh wait, I'm a POC immigrant woman, course I'm destroying America!
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This is the woke agenda smh my head
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I've gained empathy as I've gotten older. The literal opposite of conservatives
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Young people tend to be more persuadable before 30, and tend to bake in their political views around that age. So big events in one's 20's tend to lead to lasting partisan affiliations for life after that.
FDR's presidency won over a lot of people to the Democrats in the 30's and 40's. Eisenhower's presidency shifted people over to Republicans in the 50's. Nixon pushed people away from Republicans. But by the 70's Democrats were losing a lot of voters, and then Reagan won a bunch of people over to the GOP. Then 9/11 won people over to Republicans, while the Iraq war pushed them away.
But each of these things had an outsized effect on those under 30. So Boomers who remember getting fed up with Democrats in the 70s and crossing over for Reagan (and then voting Republican in every election since) just thought it was the effect of age, rather than the effect of that particular political moment in 1980.
And even though this data and the analysis is mainly for Americans, it's probably reflective of how people shape their own political beliefs everywhere.
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Eat the rich at any age
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That might have been true decades ago, but now people have:
- Greater access to knowledge, and are forced to think more critically about what they consume.
- More extreme views, which picks off the weak.
- Most importantly, older people had stuff. They owned houses, had stable, life-long careers, and had settled down before they hit their thirties.
People in their mid to late thirties nowadays might have a fancier job title, but many of them are still struggling like they were before. It's hard to be protectionist when you have nothing but your life to protect...
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Add Less Lead Exposure. Empathy is a function of the brain and lead damages it.
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I think it's your third point, mostly. Maybe even as sharply stated as: boomers became more conservative as the system and status quo brought them wealth, comfort, and security, so naturally they wanted to keep that going. For the generations that have followed, the system and status quo have only continued to bring those benefits to the boomers, not to them, so they're less likely to trend conservative to perpetuate a system that has failed them.
Additionally, in the years since the boomers came of age, the political right has moved away from a traditional conservative platform to a very extreme and hateful version of itself. Even if many millennials had shifted slightly to the right as they aged, the party typically associated with conservatism has moved so much farther to the right that even with their gradual shift, these millennials are still far closer to the left, or at least to "not whatever the right is saying".
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More people become conservative when they have something to lose. Why would you want to conserve a status quo where you don't own anything of substance and probably never will?
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while the last point is perhaps the main determinant theory behind why many older people are not being owing more right wing, I'm a little confused by your first two points.
especially the fact that people have greater access to knowledge and are forced to think more critically. if anything, with the advent of the internet, echo chambers have never been easier, preventing critical thinking. this leads to a growing of extreme positions which further reinforces such views due to tribalistic fallacies in our thinking and the need for these tribal identities to distinguish themselves.
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I think it also depends on whether or not they were provided the education to use the internet well. If all people get is a vague "have at 'er!", of course we would have more echo chambers. Ever hear the saying "don't believe everything you read online?"
Properly teaching people how to verify their information sources and how to reflect on things would probably result in fewer echo chambers. "Huh. I don't want to keep looking like a fool who spreads obviously false things around."
There's also internal bias to think about here. If someone is already dead-set in believing only their current mindset, they're likely not going to be open to other sources. Instead, they're probably going to search for whatever will back up their claim. People don't usually try to prove themselves wrong in an argument.
This means that part of getting rid of echo chambers will also be teaching people to accept and acknowledge their own errors. We should be teaching people to go for the best answer, not to just prove themselves right. In this way, this problem also preceeds the internet. That mindset has hindered science for literal centuries. It even goes back to the first days of science in Greece. (Thanks for that attempted halt of progress, religion.)
It's easier to blame the internet than the people doing these things. Sadly though, it's in human nature.
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I also think having kids has an impact, which we're not doing as much.
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My kids made me more liberal....our conservative government cut property taxes to starve our public education system, I donated most of the rebate to my kids school, some of it went into their education fund.
People who aren't as fortunate as we are, deserve the same opportunities we have when it comes to public services.
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The older phrase used to be "You become more right wing when you get older", whereas it's quite likely it was missing the specific cause, which was "You become more right wing when you stop learning". [Edit] Typo
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That's an interesting thought actually. Makes sense
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41, stable finances, kid, decent job, and still BETTER DEAD THAN RED!
And just to be 100% clear, since I know that phrase meant something completely different 50 years ago, Republicans can get ass-fucked with a spoon
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I'm 44 and my wealth has increased a lot with age, but I still understand I'm financially closer to a homeless crackhead than I am to someone like Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk. I'm more mad than ever because I see how badly most people are getting fucked. And the whole destroying the planet for profit thing.
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Fury is my only policy.
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You become conservative when you lose ability to adapt and learn, thereby yearning for the days when you were you were younger and, as you mostly falsely remember, "times were simpler", which is a delusion caused by the different lifestyle and world perception you used to have. Now you're just older and scared because you forgot to keep up with the times.
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The older I get, the more socialist I become.
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My friends who have kids now did become more conservative. But most of them are very religious and grew up going to church every Sunday. So... I think they might have had a certain influence.
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After I had kids I found Satanism and became a communist. I have no idea what your friends are doing but they're doing it wrong.
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I'd guess those friends were always that conservative, it's just that now they have less energy and incentive to tone it down around friends...combined with having more to lose now.
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51, still not a conservative
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People become more conservative once they actually accumulate wealth that they can use, and don't want policies passed that will reduce that wealth.
Millennials and younger generations have not the opportunity to generate the same amount of wealth by their 30's or even their 40's as Boomers had.
Therefore leftism and liberalism will be more predominant in these younger generations.
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Anecdotal, but me (millennial), my boomer parents, and a number of my friends have been fortunate enough to collect varying levels of wealth. Almost all of us are relatively more progressive than 10-20 years ago.
Doesn't help that the conservative party in my country has gone batshit crazy.
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I don't believe this is going to be the case currently... the trend towards conservative was a fiscal phenomenon, as young kids who didn't have a lot of money and wanted a welfare state grew up and became financially independent, they wanted to keep what they were working to get. This would cause a self centric migration from trending democrat to trending republican.
That isn't how the partisan tribes currently work... They've become more of a "morality" enterprise, on both sides.
The choice is now if you think it's appropriate to ban huck finn and Tom Sawyer for the n word, or ban homosexual references. It's a question of do we spend taxes on blacks and the poor, or do we spend it on cluster bombs for Ukraine.
I don't think people will evolve from one side to the other the way boomers did. I think they're evolving farther from center, on both sides.
I don't like book bans period. I don't like the budget growing exponentially period. I don't like that 99% of the population increasingly wants the other half to be completely discounted... I'm essentially evolving towards not liking anybody at all.
I don't think "liberals" are going to become more "conservative" as they age, because that scale is divorced from party politics. Liberal is no longer a democrat trait, and conservative isn't purely republican. Both have adopted the entire con/lib scale in their own way. Democrats have conservative values, republicans have liberal values (the latter to a far greater degree, but I don't think it matters tbh). Just depends on what issue you're talking about.
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LOL is this where reddit's r/ENLIGHTENEDCENTRISM WENT? LMFAO
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Yes... but I'm probably not going to last long, as there's already a pretty huge bias here...
I have not received a wonderful welcome here with my lack of political affiliation, and your comment speaks directly to it.
I'm much less inclined to forums with a Republican bias though, so I'm here, and hopeful. If you want the wishy washy motherfuckers that flip flop their votes and basically decide elections these days to hear your side and not theirs, maybe you could be slightly less intolerant...
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Book bans are mostly a Republican policy https://www.nbcnews.com/data-graphics/map-book-bans-rise-rcna25898
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This was also my impression, especially after the republican primary debate where they were scarily almost all anti-helping ukraine.
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Ya know... that's not a bad point actually :)
Ill ponder that one. Definitely going to alter my perspective on Ukraine a little, but I'm not entirely sure how just off the cuff.
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I'm 43. I keep moving further left.
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First there would need to be something worth conserving.
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I'm still trying to get my own studio apartment
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Have you considered cutting out the avocado toast or inheriting a shit ton of money? It's really not that hard.
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I hear cutting down on Starbucks also helps. In fact, leading a life devoid of little pleasures can make you a millionaire in about......never.
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If there's one great way to turn people either hard left or hard right, that would be it. Impoverish them. Take away from them what their own parents took for granted.
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Again, this is not a boomer issue. I was told the same thing by Silents. I've only moved left-er.
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When are going to start referring to the by their proper name? The Worst Generation.
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And in my 40s I've started organizing.
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Hello fellow 38yo non-conservative person!
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Some do and some can see the issues of the current economic systems.
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Photo is replaceable by mine, hunched over the laptop when the Internet is down. Text in the Photo the same.
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I have become more conservative in my 30s.
Part of that is because it's difficult to keep getting worked up about social movements. About 20 years ago I was a vehement proponent of gay rights. Now my gay friends are married and I find myself indifferent to whatever new cause kids these days are talking about. I mean, I don't oppose it but I don't feel like it's my fight. (The big exception here is abortion, which will apparently be a fight forever.)
But the major cause of my conservatism is the realization that the first world in 2023 is the best place and time to ever live for almost everyone and that all this great stuff is built on a fragile foundation.
I used to focus on everything wrong with society and so I thought I saw the need for sudden, major change. Since then I've broadened my perspective so that I can see how much our society does do well, how much worse things can be, and how easy it is to make things much worse when trying to make them better. IMO the 20th century is proof that revolutionary change is generally a terrible idea even if the status quo is already awful - in that context, only a lunatic would want revolutionary change in a society that is already the richest and most free that has ever existed.
So now I call myself a lowercase-c conservative. I don't vote Republican because they're willing to break the system rather than concede anything to the other guys, and breaking the system is exactly what I want to avoid. I end up voting for moderate Democrats.
(I used to live somewhere where libertarians could get elected to local and state offices and that made things more interesting, but I'm in a solid-blue area now so the Democratic primaries are the only elections that matter.)
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Thats actually opposite for me. I remember being more conservative in my 20. I remember watching people like Amazing atheist, armored sceptic, shoe on head and some others that I dont remember. Now in my 30, I have actually softened up a lot and got more liberal views now.
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It's all nice and all, but where does the picture comes from?
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40 and still not anywhere close.
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In my 30s now. Def more conservative. Paying more than $10k in property taxes that go towards schools where the children that I don’t have go to.
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You live in a society???
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I'm convinced that people who think like this don't even know how a society functions. Like, i bet if he answers he'll come back with "no, i don't want stupid people everywhere i just don't see why i should have to pay for schools my kids don't use" or something like that. They're kind of predictable in my experience.
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taxes that go towards schools where the children that I don’t have go to.
The alternative is being surrounded by uneducated people, so this has never bothered me.
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Underrated point!!
Would you rather pay more and keep people educated and busy... or pay less and have them find ways to occupy their time 🚓
If OP didn't want to pay those extra taxes they should have settled elsewhere where there is no nearby school IMO
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There are more than enough conservatives with bizzare esoteric tendencies.
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Kinda true though, I'm conservative on my terms.
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Long form discussion of the issue by people on the field https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/politics-podcast-are-millennials-getting-more-conservative/
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I guess I became a less radical socialist... I guess they were kind of right?
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Bohemian Grove it is, then.
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Mmmm, really? Now explain trap music to me... 😇
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Anyway what's the image from?
It looks like a music video I want to see! -
139 comments
Translation: you'll become more conservative when you have children and own a home
Millennials: 😆
Zoomers: 😂
Alpha: 🤣
Whateverthefuckcomesnext: 💀
Too bad boomers ruined my best chance at that.
I have a child and own a home, and am a member of the lost generation. Fuck the Republican Party and any conservative who believes their selfish bullshit should outweigh the greater good of others.
Republicans are fascists, not conservatives.
Democrats are the conservative party.
I agree with everything you said except, im confused about the use of the term lost generation. That’s a generation born in the 1880-1900s.
Which is weird since conservative politics is all about cutting funds for schools, gutting the department of education completely, no pre k or free lunches for kids, and getting rid of a large portion of our law enforcement. Just doesn't make sense why any one who cares about education or safety would be conservative
Then why conservative when they actively hate children and society in general? It seems insane to lean that way.
Economic issues always come down to economic incentives. You care about property values because your home is an investment. You care about stocks because you have a retirement plan. You care about not being a burden on your children when you're old and having inheritance to leave behind when you die. You care about crime because you have things to steal and a life to lose.
I don't have property. I will never retire. I will never have children. I am nothing and no one and that will never change.
When I was younger I was a pretty typical liberal. By 30 I was a Marxist-Leninist and desired nothing but the complete destruction of the demon shithole country called Amerikkka. 😘
Not in my case. I grew up pretty conservative she moved right libertarian until learning economics in college which moved me left. I bought a home and have two kids and am squarely on the left. I care about schools and crime which is why I want more funding for education and programs that actually decrease crime.
Healthcare is the big one for me. We should not be forking over 20% of our paychecks for healthcare. People on the right are fucking nuts to believe that the cost is because of too much regulation considering we have the least regulation and pay twice as much with now limited options. We need Medicare for All.
Having to mow the lawn is the first step in the pipeline of fascism
You joke, but if you ever talked to a homeowner about their lawn and heard them complain about their neighbor's lawn...
Everyone knows it's a gateway chore
Wait is Alpha the next generation's name after Zoomers?
Yeah, for now. That might change. Millennial was originally Gen Y.