As an elder Millennial I’m sympathetic to my generation’s raw deal in certain circumstances, doubly so with Gen Z. But turning toward soft communism (guy is taking pages straight out of USSR’s playbook) really does concern me. It isn’t lost on me that so few people of my generation and the next generation are truly educated on the horrors of collectivism.
His administration isn’t going to destroy the city, but I wager that it’ll do enough damage that it’ll take many years to recover.
When I first heard that joke I didn't get it. Now, I get it all too well. The aristocrats get to do what they want without consequences, and that's the joke.
Let's add the decay of an education system that omitted much of the history you and I were taught. Consider also, the movement that marginalized what middle class we have left...I like to think of it a mile wide and an inch thick. Cheap goods from other countries...further destroying American middle class. The evaporation of religion. The youngsters are voting from bad to worse and based on anger and emotion. What's happening is a full court press to destroy...everything. Sound familiar? Look to the tenets of Marxism, Leninsm, Stalinism, Maoism...add you own "ism" if you like. In the military we call this full spectrum warfare. Heavy emphasis on control of information and PSYOP.
Too much for Monday? I'm just getting warmed up. Be well and find peace even if its for a few minutes.
100%! What we have now is a corrupt capitalist system. It’s been revealed: rules for thee but not for me, not just for covid but for politicians and insider trading, the healthcare benefits they get.. overpriced college tuition, a shrinking number of employers to choose from (all merging and growing to near-monopoly status), tech policies that are deeply out of touch with any appreciation for what makes us human.. Its not the innovative, open, competitive, consumer- focused, small-business driven environment of 10 years ago and prior.
We abandoned capitalism and let it run amok into something else - culminating in the covid era collusion btwn govt and business, which was terrifying and arguably fascism. So.. yeah. Let him win! And force the pendulum back in favor of people and the real deal on democracy (no censorship!) and capitalism (not oligarchy).
This is a great take. My fear is Hochul will keep him on a short leash -when he fails he'll use that as a crutch. My next fear is that people will buy into it.
Yes.. people will buy pretty much anything. I don’t live in NYC so easy for me to be nonchalant. Also may I recommend seeking greener pastures to my NYC friends?
Yep! It's funny I moved to NYC for 2 years...loved the food but that is where it ends. We now live in NC- I keep reminding my neighbors we didn’t take "commie" values with us haha
I agree with you....let him win. He won't get his looniest policies/ideas enacted, but it might be a nice pendulum swing back toward a more normal and decent kind of society. I was willing to vote for Bernie Sanders and if he were younger, I would vote for him again. I'm not a New Yorker....so it's easy for me to sit here and ponder about the plight of the city that never sleeps.
It's not going to swing back until inequality is addressed though, since that's the root cause here. The congealing of a new aristocracy. And given that it's driven by investments and not income, redistribution is really the only tool.
I’d also like to provide Monica’s subscribers with a reading list to help us understand how we got to this point and why our economy is in the shape it’s in and young people face the daunting future they face:
• The Great Risk: The New Economic Insecurity and the Decline of the American Dream by Jacob S. Hacker
• Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class by Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson
• Tales of Two Americas: Stories of Inequality in a Divided Nation by John Freeman
• Stayin’ Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class by Jefferson R. Cowie
• Pivotal Decade: How the United States Traded Factories for Finance in the Seventies by Judith Stein
• Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street Fought to Save the Financial System and Themselves by Andrew Ross Sorkin
• All the Devils Are Here: The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis by Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera
• The Great American Stick Up: How Reagan Republicans and Clinton Democrats Enriched Wall Street While Mugging Main Street by Robert Scheer
I agree with you to some extent but I think that some of the discontent is the product of a generation that expects more without the work ethic, delayed gratification, and hard sacrifices that previous generations made. Combine that with media messages that condone and value victimhood, and here we are. Sure college costs and student loan debt are excessively high, but no one was willing to say no to insane tuition inflation. As long as the government took the risk, folks were happy to take on debt that made no sense given the expected future salaries. Not to mention college being pushed to every student without regard to their ability to to benefit. Housing has always been an investment to some degree but that doesn't fully explain the inflation in that sector. Maybe not everyone has a right to exoect affordable housing in the most desirable locations. I commuted an hour and a half each way because I couldn't afford something in prime Manhattan locations. And nowadays remote work gives people better options on where they need to live. Just some thoughts.
I’ll push back—in 1980, 50% of age 25-35 folks were homeowners. Today it’s 28%. Work ethic does not explain that drop, especially when you consider that younger generations have more education. Yet we have older folks out here calling for property tax cuts.
The 75 year funding gap on Social Security is $28 trillion. Actuaries have sounded the alarm since 1999 about the 2030 cliff…but nothing has been done. Older generations still run the show politically. There are many more examples such as the gutting of state funding for higher education after 2008. But you get the gist.
I agree that there are many contributing factors that can be hard to isolate. Prior generations may not have splurged on luxuries in order to have a downpaynent for a house. Younger generations who feel that the system is rigged decide to splurge and delay or forgo homeownership because they never think they will be able to afford it. It's great that our standard of living has increased over the years but much of what we spend our money on these days could be skipped in favor of building future wealth.
Prior generations also had access to (and were willing to live in) “starter” homes that barely exist anymore. My parents’ house was 900 square feet when they bought it.
They also somehow managed with one car/family, though again there’s some circularity here — they didn’t necessarily need two cars if they could get by with one wage-earner (and hence commuter).
Similarly, they prepared and ate the vast majority of their meals at home — again more feasible when the wife (and of course it almost always was the wife) was a homemaker. The amount today’s young adults spend on DoorDash or UberEats is staggering. And while part of that may be related to time pressure, many of them also never learned (or can’t be bothered) to cook for themselves.
As you say, many interrelated contributing factors.
Those modest homes of the past are something many ignore. My maternal grandparents raised 3 girls in the 40's and 50's in about an 800sqft home. I spent much time over there when I was growing up. The kitchen was tiny but we ate quite well as both were excellent cooks. I find it ironic these days to see so many large kitchens where not much cooking gets done. Not only is the cost of a modest home low, but utilities and upkeep are lower. Replacing a 1000sqft roof is much cheaper than replacing a 3000sqft roof.
Let me counter here--I think older generations had a much better environment that was conducive to more prudent spending habits than today's generations do. Without internet, people had to leave their homes to spend money. Cash was more commonly used, which researchers have linked to better spending habits. There was no "buy-now-pay-later" option.
Today we have the internet. Smartphones are ubiquitous and credit is easier to come by. Are today's generations truly more profligate than their forbears or do today's younger folks live in a time where vices are more easily accessed? One hint: the fastest rising smartphones use is among the 65+ generation.
Splurged on what? The old avocado toast? Or are younger generations saddled with student loan debt right out of the gate?
The price of homes has far outpaced most people’s ability to save for them. This isn’t just for millennials and younger (though I’m a millennial homeowner). I know a handful of boomers who sold or lost their homes in the Recession and haven’t been able to buy since. The 20% down may have worked when most homes were $200k and under, now homes tend to start at $450k. Wages haven’t doubled. And because it takes so long to be able to afford a house, now first time homeowners need larger spaces because they’re mid thirties and have children.
What’s more is that eventually millennials will need to retire and draw social security. How much will they need from the public coffers and how much were they able to save on their own? Most millennials are making minimal contributions to their 401ks or Roth, if they are doing so at all. And forget having pensions.
This critique of the younger generations (IE, 'no one wants to work any more' and similar) has been delivered every generation going back as far as Plato. So I don't think it's a reliable explanation for a change since 1975 or so.
There was an attempt at Social Security reform under George W Bush but it was killed by the other side that claimed they were pushing grandma off a cliff. In my opinion Social Security should allow people to invest a portion of their payments in IRA type funds which would help them build wealth. The current system is unworkable because there aren't enough workers paying in to cover the costs of current retirees. If we transitioned to individual accounts with a guarantee that the government would cover the funds promised to existing retirees we would give younger workers to gain more.
I mean that's fine...but again, the median age on both sides are boomers. This just falls at the feet of boomers, who could not come together and make a difficult political decision.
Here is the thing, Gothamite. For one, the "work ethic" was used against us. It always encouraged us to work very hard for comparatively little in return, when those who made the most did so far more based on luck (including nepotism or "gaming" the system) than they did through old-fashioned hard work. Now we're at a point where hard work for low compensation is totally the norm. If they want hard work out of us, give us a guarantee to work we are good at and find personally fulfilling, something we would put our all into even if we weren't getting paid while actually paying us what it's worth, and you would see a big difference. If work is not rewarding, people are not going to do it -- not because they're lazy but because they do not like being taken advantage of. A system where someone else earns far more from your work than you do is not exactly good incentive to get the best out of you.
For another thing, automation and AI are now advanced enough that we do not need to work as many back-breaking or soul-sucking hours to get a job done as we would have even 20 years ago. We should be expected to work hard and competently while we're on the job, of course, but not have to work so many hours that it destroys our physical and mental health since we cannot have a life beyond the job, and an average of 40 hours per week for 4 decades can take a major toll on your body and leave you in bad shape by the time you're middle-aged (or even before that if you get injured on the job). And we need to use automation to improve overall working conditions so that arduous or unpleasant work is less arduous and unpleasant.
And as you noted very well in your comment, the purveyors of the system duped us into thinking exorbitant college loans and putting your all into a certain low-tier job would eventually pay off, We all know the end result of that. The system encouraged us to take on all forms of debt, including both college and credit card debt, and when the worst predictably happened the government consistently bailed out the wealthy while leaving millions of us out to rot.
Does everyone have a right to expect good and affordable housing in good areas? Yes, because we all deserve to feel secure and that the system expecting us to put so much into it is willing to help us lead the best life that modern technology can provide without relying on luck. It's producing far, far too many losers for anyone to convincingly promote the "work hard, and you'll do well" narrative any longer. And it was primarily designed to serve those who owned the most and had to do the least amount of work anyway.
I agree with what you said about remote work, so we need to insist that the system rewards people who do that kind of work much better than it currently does. There are many jobs that do not require physical commutes, and the system needs to break the habit of requiring this unnecessarily simply because those in charge are used to doing it a certain way.
I get the younger generation going for this, but please explain the older, rich New Yorkers who think Mamdani is a kind of savior. As an example, check out Mandy Pitinkin's gushing endorsement.
They move to NYC (along with their trust funds and college degrees) from other states. They buy apartments with their parent's money in Manhattan, DESPERATE to fit in with the tough, local, NYC crowds. They get tenure-track jobs in NYC colleges or museums and live the lives they threw all their money, social capital and influence around for, and they would kill someone before they would back down from it. They feel it's owed to them. Voting Mamdani is their way of not feeling guilty about any of this. Hypocrisy doesn't even cover the grotesque and disgraceful ways they conduct their lives. Many of them decided not to have children because it was bad for their art careers and they are simply the most arrogant ego maniacs that exist in this world. But alas, Monica is right, we can't just keep being mad at these people. We have to do an about-face and simply change things.
I really wonder how accurate the polling is. I have received dozens of calls that appear to be polling requests (always same exchange numbers) but I never answer. I don't know exactly why but I suspect I am wary of questions worded to get a specific result. I think it may be similar to what happened with Trump and Hillary (many "shy" Trump voters. It will come down to turnout and how many anti Mamdani voters of either party can hold their nose and pull for Cuomo. Lord, if both parties could have produced serious candidates during the primary process who addressed the populist/affordability issues but with effective responses. But give Mamdani credit. He managed an energy and personable public persona that doesn't come along very often. Even Obama wasn't as likeable as a campaigner (but more likeable than Hillary, who he sarcastically said was likeable enough")
Good god do I hate this type with every fiber of my being. They’re a cancer on the SF Bay Area as well. I hope they do get socialism, and get rounded up into hard labor camps as a result.
How do you figure that percentage? Do you need more examples than the college professors and museum workers? There are chief officers in my non-profit company (making over $200K/year) who voted for him, none of whom are actually from NYC. The two who are from NYC did not vote for him. They have big educations and big jobs but lack the knowledge of politics, finance and history to make an educated vote in this election. The human situation is grotesque, with the excesses of the Left being at the center of its stage.
Stop the big money controlling the system by making simple changes. This will restore the middle class.
- Stop allowing REITs to trade on the Stock Market.
- Stop allowing Big Pharma from advertising.
Paid Trolls speaking Talking Points is not Free Speech, they are Commercials laundered through people.
- Regulate the Talking Points the same way that you regulate any Commercial.
None of those changes require new laws, they simply need regulators to do their jobs.
Do those three simple things and you solve 90% of the problems. The rest will be obvious to fix once we re-industrialize America and people can work in real middle class jobs.
Since GenderRealistMom asked her question I just realized that my list of three points were me assuming that people had read many of my previous comments on earlier threads. This point may need more explanation.
"Paid Trolls speaking Talking Points is not Free Speech, they are Commercials laundered through people.
- Regulate the Talking Points the same way that you regulate any Commercial."
Here is a question I asked on an earlier thread. I suspect that people missed that one since I posted it late in the conversation.
I will be in the minority here but there is much self blame to go around too. Why buy so many coffees instead of making your own? Why all this other consumption instead of saving? Why the self entitlement? Why get a degree that's useless instead of learning a trade? Why obsess over "influencers?" Why not get some roommates? Why go on all these vacations?
I heard GenZs explained it this way: no amount of coffee money they save will make a dent as to how much they'd need now to buy a home, or pay off their student loan debts. So talking about saving nickels and dimes to them is just us being tone deaf.
If only anything Mamdani is going to do would help with any of that.
The sad truth is that we’re broke and nobody has a solution because being broke means hard choices and voters don’t like hard choices they like pretty lies. That’s how we got here after all.
Mamdani is a predictable consequence of the inevitable systemic failures of unfettered, unregulated late-stage capitalism. Time to readjust how we do business with one another.
To the contrary, it is the excess of regulation and regulatory capture, along with the financialization of the economy via endless debt and money printing that have caused these problems. This is not “late stage capitalism”, because it is not capitalism at all.
You're defending a theoretical ideal of "pure capitalism" that's never existed. Successful firms will naturally seek to eliminate competition through regulatory capture in capitalism - that's not corruption, that's optimization.
Nordic countries prove the point: they combine capitalism with democratic regulation and achieve better outcomes than the US across every metric. The financialization you blame on "money printing" actually stems from deregulation - we removed Glass-Steagall then acted surprised when speculation exploded.
Mamdani's appeal isn't ideological, it's mathematical. When your system guarantees that eventually everyone but the wealthy few gets squeezed, democratic socialism becomes survival strategy, not fringe politics.
How is it not capitalism's "true form"? Capitalism has boom-bust cycles built into it which gradually wipe out small businesses, concentrating economic power in fewer and fewer hands. "Money is speech" we are told, so the oligarchs are then free to buy as many politicians as they like in a free market.
Nah. You can do both of those things without government ownership of the means of production. (Even though medical care and education should absolutely be run by the government because of inherent market failures- that's a separate argument.)
But if he’s going to tax the very wealthy to help pay for things, they are the exact people that are going to peace out of New York City when they see which way the wind is blowing and then what will he do?
Hi, Monica. You did a very fine job of elucidating all the problems going on in the country that resulted in support for Mamdani. And also the widespread working class support for socialism -- with me being among them. This is why, as you likely know from reading some of my articles, that I disagree with this statement of yours: "So what you’re about to read isn’t an indictment of classical liberalism or capitalism. Placed against socialism, communism, and all other “isms,” I believe capitalism remains the best vehicle for enabling opportunity for the greatest number of people."
Except that a system based on private ownership of the industries, services, and automation; which commodifies virtually everything; which requires people to possess money in order to have anything or do anything, and provides a hugely varying amount of it to different people; and forces us to work as many hours as we can as opposed to only as much as necessary to get a job done to acquire "enough" of it; that encourages avarice and high stakes competition between us; that moves no resources unless there is enough money to "pay" for them; that commodifies even human labor based on how hard we work or what we are capable of doing; and worst of all, which turns advancing automation into a problem for us rather than a boon for humanity -- has brought us to this situation.
It is not something that "true blue capitalism" has mutated into, but the natural evolution of this system as automation becomes more advanced, money becomes increasingly useless as a tool, and a system based on commodification and barter makes less and less sense. Karl Marx predicted this, and he turned out to be correct, which is why supporters of capitalism vilify him and try comparing what he proposed to some type of autocratic state-based system established by several nations in the 20th century that bore no resemblance to what Marx and Engels promoted but were inappropriately connected to Marx's name.
Not all Western values were intended to stand the test of time. We should embrace those that are beneficial in a timeless manner and dispense with those designed to work in an earlier era but make no sense in the current one. Capitalism was born in the pre-industrial era, where we lacked today's technological capacity to mass produce an abundance for all and replace the requirement of people doing endless hours of tedious & dangerous drudge work with robotics, AI, and other tech. During that previous era of real scarcity, money, profit, and commerce made sense. It no longer does, and everything it entails becomes more and more pointless, and exponentially less capable of helping us sustain ourselves. During the present era the current billionaire class of employers are requiring the labor power of human beings less and less -- yet continue to own virtually all the automation and AI software themselves. That situation is not sustainable.
The system you did a good job of critiquing in your article is not something different from capitalism, but simply the form that system has taken as a result of the present level of technology. It was never designed to thrive as a viable system for everyone in a post-industrial era. It served its purpose by allowing the Industrial Revolution to occur, but this game-changing gain for civilization then immediately necessitated its replacement by a more advanced, post-money, post-work, and post-commodity type of economic world order.
That has no relation to what the former Soviet Union had, which was still fully class-divided and relied heavily on a form of currency. The phenomenon you discussed, and what we are seeing, are the death throes of the capitalist world order, and its solution is not an attempt to return to a previous phase of capitalist production that led us to this one in the first place. That is why while I do support social democratic reforms, I do so only as a short term step towards a better world order, not an ultimate one, since history has proven that it doesn't last.
As an elder Millennial I’m sympathetic to my generation’s raw deal in certain circumstances, doubly so with Gen Z. But turning toward soft communism (guy is taking pages straight out of USSR’s playbook) really does concern me. It isn’t lost on me that so few people of my generation and the next generation are truly educated on the horrors of collectivism.
His administration isn’t going to destroy the city, but I wager that it’ll do enough damage that it’ll take many years to recover.
We are trending towards an aristocracy, and those have a great number of horrors of their own.
The aristocrats… there is a joke in there somewhere…
When I first heard that joke I didn't get it. Now, I get it all too well. The aristocrats get to do what they want without consequences, and that's the joke.
Let's add the decay of an education system that omitted much of the history you and I were taught. Consider also, the movement that marginalized what middle class we have left...I like to think of it a mile wide and an inch thick. Cheap goods from other countries...further destroying American middle class. The evaporation of religion. The youngsters are voting from bad to worse and based on anger and emotion. What's happening is a full court press to destroy...everything. Sound familiar? Look to the tenets of Marxism, Leninsm, Stalinism, Maoism...add you own "ism" if you like. In the military we call this full spectrum warfare. Heavy emphasis on control of information and PSYOP.
Too much for Monday? I'm just getting warmed up. Be well and find peace even if its for a few minutes.
100%! What we have now is a corrupt capitalist system. It’s been revealed: rules for thee but not for me, not just for covid but for politicians and insider trading, the healthcare benefits they get.. overpriced college tuition, a shrinking number of employers to choose from (all merging and growing to near-monopoly status), tech policies that are deeply out of touch with any appreciation for what makes us human.. Its not the innovative, open, competitive, consumer- focused, small-business driven environment of 10 years ago and prior.
We abandoned capitalism and let it run amok into something else - culminating in the covid era collusion btwn govt and business, which was terrifying and arguably fascism. So.. yeah. Let him win! And force the pendulum back in favor of people and the real deal on democracy (no censorship!) and capitalism (not oligarchy).
This is a great take. My fear is Hochul will keep him on a short leash -when he fails he'll use that as a crutch. My next fear is that people will buy into it.
Yes.. people will buy pretty much anything. I don’t live in NYC so easy for me to be nonchalant. Also may I recommend seeking greener pastures to my NYC friends?
Yep! It's funny I moved to NYC for 2 years...loved the food but that is where it ends. We now live in NC- I keep reminding my neighbors we didn’t take "commie" values with us haha
Nice! Atlanta is purple so we don’t get as many of those comments. Wouldn’t mind more!
I agree with you....let him win. He won't get his looniest policies/ideas enacted, but it might be a nice pendulum swing back toward a more normal and decent kind of society. I was willing to vote for Bernie Sanders and if he were younger, I would vote for him again. I'm not a New Yorker....so it's easy for me to sit here and ponder about the plight of the city that never sleeps.
It's not going to swing back until inequality is addressed though, since that's the root cause here. The congealing of a new aristocracy. And given that it's driven by investments and not income, redistribution is really the only tool.
I write about Economics (and economics) all the time.
I’d also like to provide Monica’s subscribers with a reading list to help us understand how we got to this point and why our economy is in the shape it’s in and young people face the daunting future they face:
• The Great Risk: The New Economic Insecurity and the Decline of the American Dream by Jacob S. Hacker
• Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class by Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson
• Tales of Two Americas: Stories of Inequality in a Divided Nation by John Freeman
• Stayin’ Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class by Jefferson R. Cowie
• Pivotal Decade: How the United States Traded Factories for Finance in the Seventies by Judith Stein
• Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street Fought to Save the Financial System and Themselves by Andrew Ross Sorkin
• All the Devils Are Here: The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis by Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera
• The Great American Stick Up: How Reagan Republicans and Clinton Democrats Enriched Wall Street While Mugging Main Street by Robert Scheer
Money and Government -- Robert Skidelsky
Bullshit Jobs -- David Graeber
I agree with you to some extent but I think that some of the discontent is the product of a generation that expects more without the work ethic, delayed gratification, and hard sacrifices that previous generations made. Combine that with media messages that condone and value victimhood, and here we are. Sure college costs and student loan debt are excessively high, but no one was willing to say no to insane tuition inflation. As long as the government took the risk, folks were happy to take on debt that made no sense given the expected future salaries. Not to mention college being pushed to every student without regard to their ability to to benefit. Housing has always been an investment to some degree but that doesn't fully explain the inflation in that sector. Maybe not everyone has a right to exoect affordable housing in the most desirable locations. I commuted an hour and a half each way because I couldn't afford something in prime Manhattan locations. And nowadays remote work gives people better options on where they need to live. Just some thoughts.
I’ll push back—in 1980, 50% of age 25-35 folks were homeowners. Today it’s 28%. Work ethic does not explain that drop, especially when you consider that younger generations have more education. Yet we have older folks out here calling for property tax cuts.
The 75 year funding gap on Social Security is $28 trillion. Actuaries have sounded the alarm since 1999 about the 2030 cliff…but nothing has been done. Older generations still run the show politically. There are many more examples such as the gutting of state funding for higher education after 2008. But you get the gist.
I agree that there are many contributing factors that can be hard to isolate. Prior generations may not have splurged on luxuries in order to have a downpaynent for a house. Younger generations who feel that the system is rigged decide to splurge and delay or forgo homeownership because they never think they will be able to afford it. It's great that our standard of living has increased over the years but much of what we spend our money on these days could be skipped in favor of building future wealth.
Prior generations also had access to (and were willing to live in) “starter” homes that barely exist anymore. My parents’ house was 900 square feet when they bought it.
They also somehow managed with one car/family, though again there’s some circularity here — they didn’t necessarily need two cars if they could get by with one wage-earner (and hence commuter).
Similarly, they prepared and ate the vast majority of their meals at home — again more feasible when the wife (and of course it almost always was the wife) was a homemaker. The amount today’s young adults spend on DoorDash or UberEats is staggering. And while part of that may be related to time pressure, many of them also never learned (or can’t be bothered) to cook for themselves.
As you say, many interrelated contributing factors.
Those modest homes of the past are something many ignore. My maternal grandparents raised 3 girls in the 40's and 50's in about an 800sqft home. I spent much time over there when I was growing up. The kitchen was tiny but we ate quite well as both were excellent cooks. I find it ironic these days to see so many large kitchens where not much cooking gets done. Not only is the cost of a modest home low, but utilities and upkeep are lower. Replacing a 1000sqft roof is much cheaper than replacing a 3000sqft roof.
Let me counter here--I think older generations had a much better environment that was conducive to more prudent spending habits than today's generations do. Without internet, people had to leave their homes to spend money. Cash was more commonly used, which researchers have linked to better spending habits. There was no "buy-now-pay-later" option.
Today we have the internet. Smartphones are ubiquitous and credit is easier to come by. Are today's generations truly more profligate than their forbears or do today's younger folks live in a time where vices are more easily accessed? One hint: the fastest rising smartphones use is among the 65+ generation.
Splurged on what? The old avocado toast? Or are younger generations saddled with student loan debt right out of the gate?
The price of homes has far outpaced most people’s ability to save for them. This isn’t just for millennials and younger (though I’m a millennial homeowner). I know a handful of boomers who sold or lost their homes in the Recession and haven’t been able to buy since. The 20% down may have worked when most homes were $200k and under, now homes tend to start at $450k. Wages haven’t doubled. And because it takes so long to be able to afford a house, now first time homeowners need larger spaces because they’re mid thirties and have children.
What’s more is that eventually millennials will need to retire and draw social security. How much will they need from the public coffers and how much were they able to save on their own? Most millennials are making minimal contributions to their 401ks or Roth, if they are doing so at all. And forget having pensions.
This critique of the younger generations (IE, 'no one wants to work any more' and similar) has been delivered every generation going back as far as Plato. So I don't think it's a reliable explanation for a change since 1975 or so.
There was an attempt at Social Security reform under George W Bush but it was killed by the other side that claimed they were pushing grandma off a cliff. In my opinion Social Security should allow people to invest a portion of their payments in IRA type funds which would help them build wealth. The current system is unworkable because there aren't enough workers paying in to cover the costs of current retirees. If we transitioned to individual accounts with a guarantee that the government would cover the funds promised to existing retirees we would give younger workers to gain more.
I mean that's fine...but again, the median age on both sides are boomers. This just falls at the feet of boomers, who could not come together and make a difficult political decision.
https://www.aei.org/research-products/report/what-if-george-w-bushs-social-security-reforms-had-passed/
Here is the thing, Gothamite. For one, the "work ethic" was used against us. It always encouraged us to work very hard for comparatively little in return, when those who made the most did so far more based on luck (including nepotism or "gaming" the system) than they did through old-fashioned hard work. Now we're at a point where hard work for low compensation is totally the norm. If they want hard work out of us, give us a guarantee to work we are good at and find personally fulfilling, something we would put our all into even if we weren't getting paid while actually paying us what it's worth, and you would see a big difference. If work is not rewarding, people are not going to do it -- not because they're lazy but because they do not like being taken advantage of. A system where someone else earns far more from your work than you do is not exactly good incentive to get the best out of you.
For another thing, automation and AI are now advanced enough that we do not need to work as many back-breaking or soul-sucking hours to get a job done as we would have even 20 years ago. We should be expected to work hard and competently while we're on the job, of course, but not have to work so many hours that it destroys our physical and mental health since we cannot have a life beyond the job, and an average of 40 hours per week for 4 decades can take a major toll on your body and leave you in bad shape by the time you're middle-aged (or even before that if you get injured on the job). And we need to use automation to improve overall working conditions so that arduous or unpleasant work is less arduous and unpleasant.
And as you noted very well in your comment, the purveyors of the system duped us into thinking exorbitant college loans and putting your all into a certain low-tier job would eventually pay off, We all know the end result of that. The system encouraged us to take on all forms of debt, including both college and credit card debt, and when the worst predictably happened the government consistently bailed out the wealthy while leaving millions of us out to rot.
Does everyone have a right to expect good and affordable housing in good areas? Yes, because we all deserve to feel secure and that the system expecting us to put so much into it is willing to help us lead the best life that modern technology can provide without relying on luck. It's producing far, far too many losers for anyone to convincingly promote the "work hard, and you'll do well" narrative any longer. And it was primarily designed to serve those who owned the most and had to do the least amount of work anyway.
I agree with what you said about remote work, so we need to insist that the system rewards people who do that kind of work much better than it currently does. There are many jobs that do not require physical commutes, and the system needs to break the habit of requiring this unnecessarily simply because those in charge are used to doing it a certain way.
I get the younger generation going for this, but please explain the older, rich New Yorkers who think Mamdani is a kind of savior. As an example, check out Mandy Pitinkin's gushing endorsement.
They move to NYC (along with their trust funds and college degrees) from other states. They buy apartments with their parent's money in Manhattan, DESPERATE to fit in with the tough, local, NYC crowds. They get tenure-track jobs in NYC colleges or museums and live the lives they threw all their money, social capital and influence around for, and they would kill someone before they would back down from it. They feel it's owed to them. Voting Mamdani is their way of not feeling guilty about any of this. Hypocrisy doesn't even cover the grotesque and disgraceful ways they conduct their lives. Many of them decided not to have children because it was bad for their art careers and they are simply the most arrogant ego maniacs that exist in this world. But alas, Monica is right, we can't just keep being mad at these people. We have to do an about-face and simply change things.
Perhaps some of them are not even voting for Mamdani but just saying publicly that they are to score the "good person" points.
Oh gosh I wish but I know many of them (from my former life as a leftist) and they are hard core, deluded and very happy to be deluded.
I really wonder how accurate the polling is. I have received dozens of calls that appear to be polling requests (always same exchange numbers) but I never answer. I don't know exactly why but I suspect I am wary of questions worded to get a specific result. I think it may be similar to what happened with Trump and Hillary (many "shy" Trump voters. It will come down to turnout and how many anti Mamdani voters of either party can hold their nose and pull for Cuomo. Lord, if both parties could have produced serious candidates during the primary process who addressed the populist/affordability issues but with effective responses. But give Mamdani credit. He managed an energy and personable public persona that doesn't come along very often. Even Obama wasn't as likeable as a campaigner (but more likeable than Hillary, who he sarcastically said was likeable enough")
Good god do I hate this type with every fiber of my being. They’re a cancer on the SF Bay Area as well. I hope they do get socialism, and get rounded up into hard labor camps as a result.
You are describing real people, but like 0.01% of the New York population? So not enough real people to matter
How do you figure that percentage? Do you need more examples than the college professors and museum workers? There are chief officers in my non-profit company (making over $200K/year) who voted for him, none of whom are actually from NYC. The two who are from NYC did not vote for him. They have big educations and big jobs but lack the knowledge of politics, finance and history to make an educated vote in this election. The human situation is grotesque, with the excesses of the Left being at the center of its stage.
Another wise, clear-eyed post. Thank you, Monica, for helping me see what is happening so much more clearly, as you always do.
Stop the big money controlling the system by making simple changes. This will restore the middle class.
- Stop allowing REITs to trade on the Stock Market.
- Stop allowing Big Pharma from advertising.
Paid Trolls speaking Talking Points is not Free Speech, they are Commercials laundered through people.
- Regulate the Talking Points the same way that you regulate any Commercial.
None of those changes require new laws, they simply need regulators to do their jobs.
Do those three simple things and you solve 90% of the problems. The rest will be obvious to fix once we re-industrialize America and people can work in real middle class jobs.
I am very ignorant about economics. Can you please explain in simple terms what's wrong with REIT? (I am being sincere, I really have no idea)
I talked about this in an earlier thread. See if that helps you understand what's going on.
https://monica697.substack.com/p/my-conversation-with-a-wealthy-friend/comment/152238205
Since GenderRealistMom asked her question I just realized that my list of three points were me assuming that people had read many of my previous comments on earlier threads. This point may need more explanation.
"Paid Trolls speaking Talking Points is not Free Speech, they are Commercials laundered through people.
- Regulate the Talking Points the same way that you regulate any Commercial."
Here is a question I asked on an earlier thread. I suspect that people missed that one since I posted it late in the conversation.
https://monica697.substack.com/p/my-conversation-with-a-wealthy-friend/comment/158496923
You are seeing the same thing in SF and going to be an ugly primary as his supporters strongly identify as anti-Zionist, and he has gazillion dollars to fund his campaign https://missionlocal.org/2025/10/pelosi-challenger-saikat-chakrabarti-launches/
I will be in the minority here but there is much self blame to go around too. Why buy so many coffees instead of making your own? Why all this other consumption instead of saving? Why the self entitlement? Why get a degree that's useless instead of learning a trade? Why obsess over "influencers?" Why not get some roommates? Why go on all these vacations?
I heard GenZs explained it this way: no amount of coffee money they save will make a dent as to how much they'd need now to buy a home, or pay off their student loan debts. So talking about saving nickels and dimes to them is just us being tone deaf.
Yep, because it's so hard to have some financial discipline. Better to just be envious and jealous of others.
You are confusing the lifestyle of the gen z with parental money for the gen z that is actually poor. Two different groups.
If only anything Mamdani is going to do would help with any of that.
The sad truth is that we’re broke and nobody has a solution because being broke means hard choices and voters don’t like hard choices they like pretty lies. That’s how we got here after all.
Mamdani is a predictable consequence of the inevitable systemic failures of unfettered, unregulated late-stage capitalism. Time to readjust how we do business with one another.
To the contrary, it is the excess of regulation and regulatory capture, along with the financialization of the economy via endless debt and money printing that have caused these problems. This is not “late stage capitalism”, because it is not capitalism at all.
You're defending a theoretical ideal of "pure capitalism" that's never existed. Successful firms will naturally seek to eliminate competition through regulatory capture in capitalism - that's not corruption, that's optimization.
Nordic countries prove the point: they combine capitalism with democratic regulation and achieve better outcomes than the US across every metric. The financialization you blame on "money printing" actually stems from deregulation - we removed Glass-Steagall then acted surprised when speculation exploded.
Mamdani's appeal isn't ideological, it's mathematical. When your system guarantees that eventually everyone but the wealthy few gets squeezed, democratic socialism becomes survival strategy, not fringe politics.
💯
This was always where capitalism was going to lead. There was never going to be another outcome where everyone wins somehow.
Capitalism and aristocracy are entirely compatible.
How is it not capitalism's "true form"? Capitalism has boom-bust cycles built into it which gradually wipe out small businesses, concentrating economic power in fewer and fewer hands. "Money is speech" we are told, so the oligarchs are then free to buy as many politicians as they like in a free market.
What's the solution? Because it obviously isn't Mamdani. How do us average joes fix this?
Wealth taxes and redistribution. Otherwise the rich will stay rich and continue the concentration of wealth.
So you're saying socialism.
Nah. You can do both of those things without government ownership of the means of production. (Even though medical care and education should absolutely be run by the government because of inherent market failures- that's a separate argument.)
But if he’s going to tax the very wealthy to help pay for things, they are the exact people that are going to peace out of New York City when they see which way the wind is blowing and then what will he do?
Hi, Monica. You did a very fine job of elucidating all the problems going on in the country that resulted in support for Mamdani. And also the widespread working class support for socialism -- with me being among them. This is why, as you likely know from reading some of my articles, that I disagree with this statement of yours: "So what you’re about to read isn’t an indictment of classical liberalism or capitalism. Placed against socialism, communism, and all other “isms,” I believe capitalism remains the best vehicle for enabling opportunity for the greatest number of people."
Except that a system based on private ownership of the industries, services, and automation; which commodifies virtually everything; which requires people to possess money in order to have anything or do anything, and provides a hugely varying amount of it to different people; and forces us to work as many hours as we can as opposed to only as much as necessary to get a job done to acquire "enough" of it; that encourages avarice and high stakes competition between us; that moves no resources unless there is enough money to "pay" for them; that commodifies even human labor based on how hard we work or what we are capable of doing; and worst of all, which turns advancing automation into a problem for us rather than a boon for humanity -- has brought us to this situation.
It is not something that "true blue capitalism" has mutated into, but the natural evolution of this system as automation becomes more advanced, money becomes increasingly useless as a tool, and a system based on commodification and barter makes less and less sense. Karl Marx predicted this, and he turned out to be correct, which is why supporters of capitalism vilify him and try comparing what he proposed to some type of autocratic state-based system established by several nations in the 20th century that bore no resemblance to what Marx and Engels promoted but were inappropriately connected to Marx's name.
Not all Western values were intended to stand the test of time. We should embrace those that are beneficial in a timeless manner and dispense with those designed to work in an earlier era but make no sense in the current one. Capitalism was born in the pre-industrial era, where we lacked today's technological capacity to mass produce an abundance for all and replace the requirement of people doing endless hours of tedious & dangerous drudge work with robotics, AI, and other tech. During that previous era of real scarcity, money, profit, and commerce made sense. It no longer does, and everything it entails becomes more and more pointless, and exponentially less capable of helping us sustain ourselves. During the present era the current billionaire class of employers are requiring the labor power of human beings less and less -- yet continue to own virtually all the automation and AI software themselves. That situation is not sustainable.
The system you did a good job of critiquing in your article is not something different from capitalism, but simply the form that system has taken as a result of the present level of technology. It was never designed to thrive as a viable system for everyone in a post-industrial era. It served its purpose by allowing the Industrial Revolution to occur, but this game-changing gain for civilization then immediately necessitated its replacement by a more advanced, post-money, post-work, and post-commodity type of economic world order.
That has no relation to what the former Soviet Union had, which was still fully class-divided and relied heavily on a form of currency. The phenomenon you discussed, and what we are seeing, are the death throes of the capitalist world order, and its solution is not an attempt to return to a previous phase of capitalist production that led us to this one in the first place. That is why while I do support social democratic reforms, I do so only as a short term step towards a better world order, not an ultimate one, since history has proven that it doesn't last.