27. All the policies and infrastructure that made it possible for you to buy a home, get a degree, and retire are all long gone.
“All the policies and infrastructure that made it possible for you to buy a home, get a degree, and retire are all long gone. Pensions have ended, most unions have little political power anymore, and most jobs that people have in 2017 aren’t unionized, in part because so many have been raised to believe that unions are bad. Forgetting that unions are the reason you were able to make a middle-class wage doing labor.
Most people these days work behind a food/retail counter. They make minimum wage or slightly higher, have to deal with their unpredictable hours getting cut, work their asses off, and many do not have a union that could lobby for a livable wage. Many of these people have college or advanced degrees. This is the 2017 equivalent of the manual labor job at the plant, but there’s no one to lobby for them. Does this sound like someone who can take time off and have a kid? Buy and maintain a house? Pay if 5-6 figures of debt? Is this the society we want to have? This is not sustainable!”
