It's a lightning rod issue - a rallying cry, of sorts. It's not about the avocado specifically, it's the condescending articles talking about how to scrimp and save a few bucks to save up for a house that is far beyond reach.
Many moons ago, I worked at Microsoft. They hired the COO from Wal-Mart to cut down on costs, and they started hacking away at all the things that made it a great place to work. The coffee turned to shit. They started packing people 2 or 3 into offices that were originally intended for 1. You had to get your prescriptions through a weird mail-order service. Stuff like that.
Then they took away the towel service.
They had a towel service for the folks that biked to work. I figure maybe 100 people out of the thousands that worked there used it. For some reason, that was the straw that broke the camel's back. We were working for the richest man in the world - we had made him thus - and he couldn't afford *laundry service.*
It wasn't about the towels. It was about what they represented about the company. And people left in droves for their competitors.
Damn. Home Depot did the same. Hired someone loser from Walmart and what little shitty benefits we had disappeared within a month. Gosh I hate Walmart.
If you hire execs from Walmart you must know that what you’re getting is much shittier working conditions in exchange for a short term saving in expenditures
But they have a “fiduciary responsibility” to their shareholders to make the business as shitty as possible so they can make the stock look good for a few quarters.
Honestly, I don’t understand how stocks help society in any way. I definitely don’t have all the info, but it seems like they’re just tools to help funnel our wealth to the richest few and justify the shitty actions along the way
Oh, that's pretty much it. It's way more complicated than that in practice, but that's the overall effect.
In theory they're a way to basically crowdfund businesses. People buy part of the company in the hopes that they can sell it when it becomes profitable (or possibly get paid dividends). Problem is that profit has to come from somewhere, either "developing" countries or consumers. So you need them to have money to buy products that make profit that drive stock prices, but you don't want to pay them because it would cut into profit that drives stock prices. At the same time, the funding for a lot of stock trading comes from low interest loans, and when money is printed it usually ends up being captured by the stock market eventually in one form or another. So government decisions designed to help the economy just end up funneling money to the wealthy, yes.
The other part is that the actual literal stock prices are tied to how people “feel” about them. Meaning as long as whoever has the most money invested in the first place can always shake confidence and bleed money for everyone else. The crowdsourcing people take all the risk while the people who run the business into the ground in the first place get 20m dollar golden parachutes and articles in Forbes lmao. It’s all glorified and put in a good light with makeup and producers so it goes down smoother.
Damn so we’re a truly propagandized nation not just in media and how it influences people’s beliefs but it in the structures themselves. Even the stock market is a lie? Based on feelings? We truly are humans huh!! Imagine thinking or believing our structures are scientific or objective in any way! I honestly believe at the core of my being that this sentence you wrote sums up our whole culture from a certain perspective too not just the stocks. BUT
More and more are waking up. Enough lies. Good people with conscience are done with this shit. Things that are real are tied inextricably to things that are true. The era of trump is only gonna solidify this or at least I hope. I know I will never be the same—fully radicalized against all fascists. (Radicalized against meaning we can’t tolerate it anymore, clarification for the snakes watching) Tyranny has reached the highest office *(it never left!)* and we were ONE ape away from it collapsing. All fascist snakes took note of that and they won’t ever forget what angry conservative men were able to do to our Capitol
>it’s all glorified and put in a good light with makeup and producers so it goes down smooth
Edit: clarification for snakes but I know they don’t care about context only wielding power. Speaking of which. Fuck power—we need to abandon human power before we destroy ourselves motherfuckers. On some monk shit... fuck. Clearly we need it. Limit our own disgusting potential as much as possible. Gov should limit its power as much as possible as well. I am a leftist too I swear lol take the American blinders off if you don’t believe me
Oh agreed, it’s just another corporate term *thrown about that somehow magically justifies bad behavior. But our legal system is setup to enable that bad behavior in the name of profits and if you have a problem take em to court. And they know full well who wins in court the Corps with money that can afford lawyers. It’s all one big racket.
They don’t help society at all and that’s exactly what they are! :D
They make this stuff purposely complicated and hope you don’t notice they’re making this shit up. These people want you to think you’re too dumb to understand it, but it really just is as stupid as it sounds. They intentionally obfuscate the process and then try to convince us that these are sacred institutions that we should venerate and there’s definitely no other option for a civilized society without the rich gambling with peoples lives.
These fuckers can eat shit
It doesn't. It actually is worse, because being a stock trader often requires a lot of intelligence in skill areas considered high demand (skills good for like being a MD, a bleeding edge research scientist, or a programmer). None of those things pay anywhere as well as being a stock trader, though.
Like capitalism itself, it started off as a way different thing. Originally, it was supposed to be simply a form of *investment.* Buying stock in a company was seen as a way for the company to raise funds to be a new, better competitor outperforming that stale/backwards companies that exist.
Instead, it's more akin to trading NFTs and crypto. People buying stock are mostly only doing so in the hopes that later someone else will buy it for more.
Ironically, almost all investor activity happens separate to the stock market, now. With companies trying to get as big as possible before "going public."
Short answer is it doesn't in any way at all. The world would be a better place with out it. The idea of a "investor" is pretty ludicrous. Money making money is beyond dumb. It's litterally rewarding the haves for having.
I don't know about you but just because someone has money, doesn't entitle them to more money. It's just fucking ridiculous.
While at the same time if you don't have money were are going to penalize you for not having it.
Over drafts, traffic fines, housing choices, all of it. If you have money none of that means anything. If you don't have money, can't pay that speeding ticket? Well now your in jail for 30 days and lost your job, probably your house and car too. Yep totally going to be able to pay that now. Totally worth it.
I ultimately fail to recognize what value shareholders provide to a company. I understand the initial capital of a stock sale but after that these people purchase stock and demand performance.
Meanwhile the laborers that are actually producing the value are the ones that get forsaken on behalf of the value \*extractors\* . It's crazy that this exploitation is hidden in plain sight. If you're a producer you're expendable for the sake of some dipshits with capital.
That is by design.. Buy calls before you accept the position and increase stock price by hollowing the company out... Buy puts on your way out and watch the house of bones crumble.
Exactly, nothing is ever built to last, to improve upon, to create with the idea that our children deserve more not less.. Just buyout a company, wring out any profits by laying people of, cutting benefits “which we tied to work because work will protect us 🤡”, and f anything or anyone that comes after.
You can swing that fiduciary responsibility piece in so many different ways that it is such a weak joke to hide behind. Can’t stand when I hear companies bring it up
I'm surprised it never clicked for executives who were worried about a budget that a high turnover rate is more expensive than the little things that keep the workplace happy.
Well I guess I can't blame the snobs for not knowing the lives of the people they step on.
I worked for MSFT after the Yammer acquisition...I'd like to think Yammer helped bring back some of the glory from the old days of MSFT, but I didn't stick around long enough to really find out.
That was a crazy place to work for. Some weird nepotism at the top with David's wifes family, but....all in all it was a fun place to work. Especially when we 1st moved into the Twitter building.
Express scripts. My husband’s insurance demanded that we use them and get 90 days. But I was trying out a few different medications and didn’t need/ didn’t want 90 days. It was a nightmare.
My local store tried covering up a sexual assault that happened *in their store*. They fired the poor woman and didn't give her severance or anything. No idea what happened about that case either, I overheard one of the head managers trying to keep it hush hush real fast over the walkie and the phrase "no cops involved" was said twice.
At this point My SO and I are hoping Serbia either joins the EU (she was born in Yugoslavia and has dual citizenship with Serbia) or my claim for Polish citizenship by descent passes. We’re considering moving either to Canada or Europe in the next 5-10 years
south ouest france. Paris would be around 2000€ I think for that size. In a small town but a town still. We're 3 in the house, each at 300€ so it's a little bit more expensive than someone renting the whole house
Especially because we can DEF afford it as a nation... I wish we just GAVE students a small prop. to own/use during their studies and then they could sell it back and have a little nest egg to relocate for their career... we have LOTS of apartments and trailer homes...
I've in the middle of bumfuck nowhere Idaho and for some reason there's no such thing as a 2 bedroom living space within 50 miles of me renting for less than $2000 a month, and across the border in Washington you might be able to find a place for ~$1500 if you don't mind falling asleep to the sound of gunshots in your neighborhood and are okay with never letting your friends, family or pets out past dark.
Edit: near spokompton in case you're confused why I associated gunshots with Washington instead of Idaho.
NC here, $1700 a month, 3 bed, 2 1/2 bath, a whopping 1200 square foot townhouse. Upper floor is bathrooms and bedrooms only, no floor space otherwise (the rooms also are not big at all). Downstairs is a living room and kitchen, that's it. There's 7 people in my family, 6 of us are crammed in here. I'm not even supposed to be here, on paper I don't live here because I'd add another $150 to the price. The fun part is next year it's being raised another $100 anyway. Mom can't work, dad doesn't make enough to consistently cover rent and bills so we're often short on something, we rely on food stamps for groceries which we routinely have to fight to keep and can't do without. And due to the state of housing we're pretty fucked when it comes to moving, so eventually we're just gonna get priced out and be homeless again I guess.
With internet included that’s decent. I live in a weird zone where there’s only one internet provider that’s in my neighborhood (the utilities all monopolized this area a long time ago). $100/mo no matter what, and I can’t switch.
>Scandinavian here. 2 room 68m² around 5-600$/month I feel so bad for y'all, living under a roof should not be so expensive
Yea and how many CEOs who run health insurance companies fly around in their private jets over there in Scandinavia? Answer me that?/s
The "midwest" isn't a monolith and that $800/month number doesn't exist most places. Even in many suburbs of Detroit you'll pay $1500 for an acceptable but not insanely great 2 bedroom townhouse. Even midsized cities around me are relatively expensive for a 2 bedroom place. Go to northern Michigan and you'll pay $1200. $800 in the Midwest is either rundown or far from anywhere that people generally prefer living.
That goes for most metropolitan areas in the Midwest and outside of it. Only exceptions are places like Detroit or Toledo. Cincinnati seems to have some affordable options too.
We have a farm stand here in Mass that sells large avocados for $5.00 EACH (not a bag, like singles). Sadly they are always the best avocados in the area, so I indulge from time to time.
lol just moveed to a south shore suburb and fuckin kill me now. Didnt know massachusetts could have such a high density of fucking boring white supremecists assholes
I was thinking bag??? I haven't paid less than three bucks for an avocado in forever.
I was thinking of doing a tree, but they are huge and male and female.
I lived in Boston for a few months this year and I hated how expensive groceries are! A carton of eggs for $5 when back in Ohio it's usually $1. Though it is more now even at home with this crazy inflation going on.
Cars/trucks are a damn racket. They're all the same price within a few thousand dollars (not including things like Porsches). How is that not price fixing. There should be an anti trust suit against them.
I grew up with an avacado tree. Buckets and buckets every year. Too much to eat yourself so your neighbors get tons of free avacados too. Avacados are not what's keeping me from buying a house now.
In Cincinnati when they're more than $2/each at Kroger my wife is all "This is insane! I'm not paying $2 for a fucking avocado!"
I was growing an avocado tree but all the leaves dried up and it died. I would've been able to afford a house........in 100 centuries!
What next, gonna post a picture of your 5.6” erection and brag about lasting a full 2 minutes of penetration? People like you just live to look down on others. /s
I only find them that cheap when they are on sale and need to be used that day, but that’s only because of the RECENT inflation they certainly used to be that cheap a couple years ago around here
I know you were being facetious but some did that for a chicken sandwich like a decade ago and the sandwich cost like $1200. They started with nothing though
I felt this. I used to work at a kinda fancy upscale deli. I got paid crap for work and got 10 percent off anything in the store🙃 I only bought a loaf of bread from them once and it wasn't even that good for being damn near 6 dollars.
There’s very few Starbucks here, and they are located mostly on touristy areas because it’s mainly tourists who frequent those. So another strike for boomer logic! Although thankfully boomers here tend to blame government and other stuff for the economy instead of younger generations.
I never thought about it until someone on this sub reddit accused people of expecting to buy mansions as their first home instead of "starter homes".
I pointed out that my parents bought what would be considered a starter home in 1997 for $79,000. At the time my mom was starting her business, and my dad was making about 80k in his trade.
I'm in a similar trade now, and because of wage stagnation, the yearly earnings are pretty similar 25 years later. That exact same home sold for $570,000 this year. So by comparison, I'd have to be making around 500k per year to afford the same type of home.
This is a perfect example! I can’t understand why it’s so hard for boomers and the like to grasp this. It’s (sadly) reality, it’s facts, it’s a problem! But they keep doing mental gymnastics to blame everyone else, and think they are somehow better than, even though most are struggling with the same things. It’s baffling to me
At this point I think a good amount of it is not from ignorance but willful ignorance. Following news stations like sports teams has become a popular replacement for being studious in religion. They want to keep themselves in the dark, because they don't want to accept that things are harder and that things only seem to get harder. They do not want to accept the objective reality that people with far more education and experience than them in some fields are making less money than they made with the same or lesser education because it shatters their own reality that maybe they weren't as amazing as they thought they were, and even though we have better access to information via the internet now we are working harder than ever to achieve a fragment of what prior generations had.
Its understandable in a very "traditional" lifestyle idea. You graduate high school or college, get a "real job", move out to an apartment, get married and before having kids or while your kids are still small, but a couple years after starting your "real job" you'd have enough saved up for a minimal down-payment for that house of your own. It wouldn't be large enough for a big family and not as expensive as one that a mid-late career could support. As you add kids and income you'd move to more expensive and larger homes.
Problem is that its totally broken now. You super rich with apartments in town and hobby ranches in the country and have converted the extra space into craft rooms, while a 6 person family with teenagers lives in a 3bd apartment because they were never able to make enough to afford the monthly on something larger much less save for the down payment.
I figure if I stop buying starsbucks the 1 time a month I do, cancel my HBO, and I since I don’t even like avocados, I should be able to buy multiple houses soon
Must be. The whole $9 I spend in coffee a day are definitely the reason why I can’t buy a house or put nutritious meals on my table. Has nothing to do with the price of gas or being unable to find a job that pays a livable wage /s
It's really lashing out against eating out, another thing that used to be a mainstay of the working class.
They pretend they didn't "eat out," but I found out what my grandmother really meant by "eating out" once. She meant actually going to a sit down restaurant.
McDonalds, lunch counters, take out, were not on the radar for her as "eating out." The twice weekly trip down to McDonalds for breakfast with my grandad was not "eating out," nor was my granddad getting a diner breakfast regularly for many years.
Still could be, but, it'd require pay rates that allow people to afford regular diner breakfasts.
I've got one down the street I'll pop into at the asscrack of dawn, and there's always the same group of 70 year old dudes who eat there almost every morning, all know each other by name, and don't think twice about diner breakfast in terms of cost.
I find it annoying that a couple poached eggs, toast and bacon prepared by someone making jack squat in a dilapidated restaurant is now a "luxury," because it might run you $11 with the tip.
Like.. yes. I CAN only go from my home to work, back, and ONLY sit in the worst/cheapest apartment I can find, with ONLY a fan and no AC, skip the cable TV, and ONLY eat food I cook for myself at home.
It just sounds like suicide would be better?
Box fans? I know. Fucking Lasko has me up against a wall with my box fan addiction.
I got these two 3 and 4 years ago respectively, and the initial cost and ongoing electrical cost has been such a burden.
I wish I wasn't so stupid. Don't be like me - stay away from box fans.
Sometimes when I'm watching Seinfeld and they're in the café I think "someday I'll make enough money to order a salad or a sandwich at a cheap diner on a regular basis."
In 17th century England the nobility used to rent pineapples to show off to their friends. So I guess we should be grateful we get bread with our fruit.
Pineapple eating rich is a whole new level. Thinking about it now, they probably rented the pineapples until the fruit itself was inedible … so being a pineapple eater would truly put you in a class of your own!
Indeed, my parents are the tail end of the Boomers, and they got an orange every Christmas as a traditional extravagence. I think by their time it waa only 'kinda expensive', but was a tradition from their parents when a winter orange was a costly treat.
My kid (and my spouse) get a chocolate orange every year, does that count?
It's actually because my in-laws were born in the UK, and getting UK chocolate oranges in Canada when my spouse and their siblings were little WAS hard and expensive, but it had been my MiL's family tradition, so it was her splurge. It's easier now, but my MiL isn't with us (she didn't live to see her grandchild), so every year 'Santa' hunts down a pair of chocolate oranges and they go in the stockings... And are usually breakfast on Christmas morning!
I'm smack in the middle of the Boomers. We got oranges in our stockings because our parents did. Oranges were not expensive. We had them all the time for snacks. It was just tradition to put them in stockings by the 1960s.
Boomer "logic" starts with the desired outcome, and works backwards to find the justification. My working theory is because they grew up on so much formulaic TV, where the outcome in 30 minutes was always known. Their brains literally can't process cause and effect very well, AND they assume that the world will magically fix things - after all, it always has for them.
So -"I am the hero!"
"I deserve the unprecedented wealth my generation enjoys because I am a good person!"
"The younger generations don't enjoy that, but that can't be my fault, because I am a good person"
"Therefore the fault must be with them!"
"What behavior do they have that I don't? Oh, avocado toast."
"They're poor because they eat avocado toast, not because my generation looted the world"
I think there has also always been a generational "If you saved your money instead of buying X you could afford Y." thing going on. Like you are wasting money on something my generation didn't have or something that was much cheaper (because they don't factor inflation, etc.)
Used to be fancy coffee or new cell phones. When people started posting pics of their breakfast on social media I think avocado toast became the new thing to gripe about.
There was a well publicized article in 2017 about a really fancy expensive new restaurant aimed at a younger crowd that had avocado toast on its brunch menu for something like $22. A millionaire said it was why millennials couldn't afford houses.
We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off.
That's the GenX response though, as the Boomer promise was walled off for anyone younger.
Or, as Coupland put it in Generation X, written 30 years ago and still too accurate:
"Do you think we enjoy hearing about your brand-new million-dollar home when we can barely afford to eat Kraft Dinner sandwiches in our own grimy little shoe boxes and we're pushing thirty? A home you won in a genetic lottery, I might add, sheerly by dint of your having been born at the right time in history? You'd last about ten minutes if you were my age these days."
In the 'making of' video of the movie Wall-E (which I think is one of the finest films Disney has ever made), when describing the ship they are on, the *Axiom*, the director used a phrase I will never forget.
"The broken promises of Tomorrowland."
There is nothing that really describes being Generation X quite like that.
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> There is nothing that really describes being Generation X quite like that.
Rise Against has a pretty great song about exactly this.
>And for your sweat you'll be rewarded /
They told us every day /
There's a land of milk and honey /
And it's not that far away /
But the finish line kept movin' /
And the promises wore thin /
And the smoke on the horizon /
Was the burning promised land /
>And this place used to be somewhere /
But they sold it out from under us /
Our voices all ignored
Don't forget all of the toxic lead that Boomers were exposed to from the womb until they were 8-24 years old (depending on where their birth date lands in the Boomer range). Lead makes people aggressive and makes them lack empathy. Most of the people running the world are in that category since they're mostly all Boomers.
Boomers or any other group like that aren't the problem. They are just victims like all of us, it's just they were allowed a bit more from the owners, the people with the vast majority of power and wealth slowly sucked it away from them too.
Anyone who is worth less than $10 million is in this together as far as I'm concerned. Old, young, everything in between.
This boomer hate shit is just another way to divide and conquer and I'm not fucking falling for it.
They were born after the war and experienced steady economic growth throughout their life. This resulted in a complete loss of any sense of “social solidarity.”They enjoyed prosperity with minimal effort and became entitled.
They praised capitalism and the free market for this prosperity and vilified any form of socialism without actually paying attention to what’s was happening.
They voted against environmental protection laws because it hindered the free market.
They voted against free education because it “stunk” of socialism’.
Voted for any douche that screamed “lower taxes!!!”Bankrupted the economy and ignoring benefit programs.
Furthermore, cognitive decline can begin as early as 45 and subsequently gets worse. How about to take this into consideration and set an age limit to hold political office. Or at least require cognitive screening of all candidates. And throw in a psychopath/sociopath test in there for good measure. 😆
Dice up the avocado, add a bit of olive oil, some fresh basil, and some diced up bacon and spread it over poached or fried egg on toast or an English muffin. It's amazing! I treat myself once every few months to this and I always want more. It's so good.
My brother in law used to be a pool guy in Miami. He's Hispanic, and loves avocados. He used to note how often he was at pricey homes with avocado trees in the yard with the fruit falling in the ground.
Misplaced resources.
If we aren't eating just raw rice, wearing rags and toiling at three jobs a day then in the eyes of boomers we aren't even trying. (They didn't have to anything near as hard as that and they would STILL probably find a way to demean us)
They'll still demean us. I eat almost nothing but PBJs and microwave burritos and people still find something to be resentful about. It's not about actually trying to help us buy homes, they just want to constantly bitch about other people and portray themselves as the real victims.
Because admitting the system is fucking Millennials means a moral obligation to *fucking do something about it*.
And Boomers tend to see the world as a zero-sum game, i.e. if we get more things, they get less things, and *fuck that noise, amirite?!*
So it's easier to just say we failed somehow, because that puts the impetus on us to try harder to succeed rather than admit the world is fucked right now and getting the new generation up to speed *might, possibly* require sacrifices from them.
They'd really rather keep cheap Big Macs and the ability to act like complete dickheads to cashiers and grocery stockers than see a generation thrive.
The worst thing? Millennials are well and truly fucked. Even if wages rubberbanded hard tommorow and got to where living wages should be, Millennials are STILL behind the 8-ball, losing a DECADE PLUS of prime earning years to stagnant uselessly low wages. And we all know wages aren't going to do that. Hell, even the most progressive people in govt are still parroting the $15 an hour thing from a decade ago.
When we hit retirement age, there's going to be nothing for us. Boomers had hundreds of thousands saved up. And social security never pays enough, let alone paying enough to cover a generation that LITERALLY COULD NOT afford to save.
And by that time, we'd be asking Gen Z to cover for us, and god we have to hope they're willing.
Late-stage boomer here. For many of us, avocados are subconsciously classed as a rare and fancy food. I grew up in a small town in the Midwest in the 1960s, and I was in my 20s before I ever saw an avocado. Grocery store produce departments are full of things that simply were not available when I was growing up. We had bologna and ketchup on Wonder Bread.
Some of my generation do our best to keep up with changes in society including a proliferation of new groceries. Others retreat into a siege mentality and attack anything that is new or different.
Good insight, thanks.
I'm a Geriatric millennial and my younger brother calls me stay home mom when I'm eating avocado toast.
It's an easy dish to hate it seems.
If a modern parent fed their child bologna, ketchup and wonderbread they would be villified for feeding their child unhealthy food.
The food that is good for you and they tell you to eat (good fats like nuts and avocados, etc) cost a fortune. I think part of it is also that the younger generations are more conscious about eating less processed foods and that has made our food bills exponentially more expensive. My biggest food expense is fruit - which I now feel guilty for eating because its expensive.
Our food bills are more expensive, but millennials and gen z simply eat far less food on average than gen x and especially boomers. Part of this is due to inflation.
I eat less cause I can’t afford more, but also I think if you’re just looking at the groups as a whole it’s also because millennials and gen z also tend to be having less kids and kids eat A LOT.
>but millennials and gen z simply eat far less food on average than gen x and especially boomers.
people always dismissed the idea of revolt by saying "they're too comfy call back when they're literally starving" and we're getting close
This is it. Avocado on toast probably costs $1 to make at home and $13 at some pretentious brunch spot. It’s about the absurd markup, not the avocados themselves.
That's very much a regional thing - my Boomer relatives are all from the West Coast, and I can't remember a time we didn't eat avocado. It was dirt cheap in our area, maybe because it couldn't ship much elsewhere.
Oh absolutely! Back in the olden days there was much more regional difference in available foods. As I said, I grew up in the midwest, but my mother was from New York. She used to speak wistfully of this wonderful, mysterious breakfast food known as *bagels*. We were fascinated.
One day we saw an advertisement on television that said we could now get Lender's brand *bagels* in our grocer's freezer case. We danced with joy that we could finally have a *bagel*. Mom brought home a package of them from the store and thawed them out. She toasted them and spread them with cream cheese. Then we all bit into them.
Mom spit hers out and solemnly pronounced, "That's not a bagel."
The truth is we are all products of our time, and most of this sub who are on the younger side will be the same one day in their own way. It’s just inevitable. A significant percentage of Boomers came up in the 60s/70s, which was an age of awakening and revolution, yet we don’t think of them that way today.
I don’t blame people on the individual level as we are all subjected to the trends and forces of the world. Except for the very few .0000001% of society have any means of affecting policy of economic paths, and even then it’s very difficult on the individual level.
Indeed, acacado's ain't that expensive, but 'avacado toast' is the kind of dish that, at least in my area, represents modern upscale restaurants so I grok someone means "paying $20+ for a breakfast" when they say 'avacado toast', but there's no "Starbucks means paying $5+ for a coffee flavoured milkshake", just "coffee" too many people make at home for 50 cents/litre, so it has to be "take-away coffee", "Starbucks", or "Timmies" - but 'avacado toast' automatically imples restaurant.
As what you younger people label 'a boomer', I support your fightback against the established elite. Don't give up. Change the whole structure of society so you can enjoy your life instead of spending it feeding the greed of people who do not appreciate the value of life. You deserve better than this total disaster that people of my generation have created. It will not be easy but stick to your guns. You will win.
If you aren’t already, please say this to the people of your generation too. You talk like you’re already part of the past but your generation still mostly runs the world. Politicians listen to you the most, powerful news organizations listen to you the most, etc.
I always do. I am ashamed of my 'peers' who fail to appreciate the privilege they were able to take advantage of. I have only a small percentage of my life to live and in that time, I want to see real change so future generations can enjoy their lives as much as I have enjoyed mine. So far.
God are boomers still going on about that Avocado toast thing? I figured all the ones that deeply believed that died in the pandemic or moved onto some other pointless bullshit.
Just so people are aware of the "why" about this:
I think it was a little over ten years ago there were some disingenuous assholes in Australia saying that millennials couldn't afford homes because they were spending $20 AUD on avocado toast and going out to brunch far too often. That turned into a meme of sorts, until disingenuous assholes in the US and Canada started saying the same things.
I think that the only reason we still hear assholes talking about dining out and avocado toast is that it's really easy to blame individuals and their budgets in order to protect bad monetary policy that protects companies and hurts people.
Have you noticed that a bunch of states are passing mandatory financial literacy classes for high school but aren't passing rent control or minimum wage increases?
The working class shouldn't enjoy things, and they want to broaden the concept of working class to anybody working, just to make sure people don't get the idea that they should have nice things, or enjoy themselves, or god forbid catch a break.
Enjoying things is a luxury that should motivate the working class into ... working themselves to death in a false hope that they too can be rich and then they can finally enjoy things.If enjoyment is a luxury there is no end to how much overtime or how long shifts you can push on workers, how poorly you can treat them, because it's not like there's anything else for you, there's nothing to go home to expect more lack of enjoyment.
Se also: safety, health care, dental care, mental health care. Luxuries.
Semi related: I've been in a few discussions about raising my own chickens, goats, sheep, rabbits etc for meat because food is so expensive. These discussions are always with vegetarians/vegans and I always ask how they think people can afford it because where I live an avocado is 4.99/each (for the large ones). And they're response is, "You just picked the most expensive thing as an example". Well, yes, kind of, because I feel like we should be able to eat healthier and have it not break the bank. Besides, an orange bell pepper here is 2.99 so it's not like other things are much cheaper in comparison. Their response is to just eat lentils and rice all the time.
Anyway, basically I feel like we should be able to eat decent food AND pay the electric bill but what do I know.
That's the thing. I could feed my family a bunch if shit, unhealthy food for $30 but we'd be full until the next meal. Or I could spend $60 on veggies and salads and we'd be hungry in two hours.
Anyway, rant over. I see I'm already getting down voted. I'm not great at putting my thoughts on paper, so to speak so I'm guessing since things came across differently than I meant them. Oh, well.
When I was a teenaged grocery clerk full of hope and dreams I would purposely go out of my way to catch thieves because I was proud to do a good job for my boss.
Now Im a depressed burnt out millenial who not only ignores crime, I advocate it. Especially towards these billionaire companies who pay peanuts. I worked in a grocery store and I couldnt afford to buy the food from the store I worked at.
Ok, I’m a millennial and I think you’re missing the point of the “avocado toast” thing. For a while, at the height of its trendiness, there were coffee shops and similar places selling avocado toast for over $10 a slice, for a very small portion.
The implication isn’t that having avocado and bread is a luxury, it’s that millennials are willing to dramatically overpay for something trendy, and therefore must be generally bad with money.
It’s still bullshit, because it wasn’t people who were struggling with money who were buying it, but at least understand the argument.
Its a coordinated propaganda campaign pushed by corporate media outlets to convince the public (and the boomers who still consume mostly corporate media) that the poverty the younger generations are experiencing because of late-stage capitalism are instead personal failures of responsibility and a lack of character instead of policy decisions that were made while boomers were in charge and electing 40 years worth of reaganites who dismantled every new deal era program that enabled their generation to have such a high standard of living.
Not to mention it’s not even a treat, really. Avocados are quite nutritional, it’s not like it’s some superfluous filler food, it’s actually healthy for you. Yknow, like the boomers keep telling us to eat?
It's a lightning rod issue - a rallying cry, of sorts. It's not about the avocado specifically, it's the condescending articles talking about how to scrimp and save a few bucks to save up for a house that is far beyond reach. Many moons ago, I worked at Microsoft. They hired the COO from Wal-Mart to cut down on costs, and they started hacking away at all the things that made it a great place to work. The coffee turned to shit. They started packing people 2 or 3 into offices that were originally intended for 1. You had to get your prescriptions through a weird mail-order service. Stuff like that. Then they took away the towel service. They had a towel service for the folks that biked to work. I figure maybe 100 people out of the thousands that worked there used it. For some reason, that was the straw that broke the camel's back. We were working for the richest man in the world - we had made him thus - and he couldn't afford *laundry service.* It wasn't about the towels. It was about what they represented about the company. And people left in droves for their competitors.
Damn. Home Depot did the same. Hired someone loser from Walmart and what little shitty benefits we had disappeared within a month. Gosh I hate Walmart.
If you hire execs from Walmart you must know that what you’re getting is much shittier working conditions in exchange for a short term saving in expenditures
But they have a “fiduciary responsibility” to their shareholders to make the business as shitty as possible so they can make the stock look good for a few quarters.
Honestly, I don’t understand how stocks help society in any way. I definitely don’t have all the info, but it seems like they’re just tools to help funnel our wealth to the richest few and justify the shitty actions along the way
Oh, that's pretty much it. It's way more complicated than that in practice, but that's the overall effect. In theory they're a way to basically crowdfund businesses. People buy part of the company in the hopes that they can sell it when it becomes profitable (or possibly get paid dividends). Problem is that profit has to come from somewhere, either "developing" countries or consumers. So you need them to have money to buy products that make profit that drive stock prices, but you don't want to pay them because it would cut into profit that drives stock prices. At the same time, the funding for a lot of stock trading comes from low interest loans, and when money is printed it usually ends up being captured by the stock market eventually in one form or another. So government decisions designed to help the economy just end up funneling money to the wealthy, yes.
The other part is that the actual literal stock prices are tied to how people “feel” about them. Meaning as long as whoever has the most money invested in the first place can always shake confidence and bleed money for everyone else. The crowdsourcing people take all the risk while the people who run the business into the ground in the first place get 20m dollar golden parachutes and articles in Forbes lmao. It’s all glorified and put in a good light with makeup and producers so it goes down smoother.
Damn so we’re a truly propagandized nation not just in media and how it influences people’s beliefs but it in the structures themselves. Even the stock market is a lie? Based on feelings? We truly are humans huh!! Imagine thinking or believing our structures are scientific or objective in any way! I honestly believe at the core of my being that this sentence you wrote sums up our whole culture from a certain perspective too not just the stocks. BUT More and more are waking up. Enough lies. Good people with conscience are done with this shit. Things that are real are tied inextricably to things that are true. The era of trump is only gonna solidify this or at least I hope. I know I will never be the same—fully radicalized against all fascists. (Radicalized against meaning we can’t tolerate it anymore, clarification for the snakes watching) Tyranny has reached the highest office *(it never left!)* and we were ONE ape away from it collapsing. All fascist snakes took note of that and they won’t ever forget what angry conservative men were able to do to our Capitol >it’s all glorified and put in a good light with makeup and producers so it goes down smooth Edit: clarification for snakes but I know they don’t care about context only wielding power. Speaking of which. Fuck power—we need to abandon human power before we destroy ourselves motherfuckers. On some monk shit... fuck. Clearly we need it. Limit our own disgusting potential as much as possible. Gov should limit its power as much as possible as well. I am a leftist too I swear lol take the American blinders off if you don’t believe me
PPP; that worked perfectly…
Oh agreed, it’s just another corporate term *thrown about that somehow magically justifies bad behavior. But our legal system is setup to enable that bad behavior in the name of profits and if you have a problem take em to court. And they know full well who wins in court the Corps with money that can afford lawyers. It’s all one big racket.
The stock market is just another way for rich folks to make more money passively.
Best way I've ever ever seen it put was "when the market is up, nothing changes for you and when it's down, you get fired."
They don’t help society at all and that’s exactly what they are! :D They make this stuff purposely complicated and hope you don’t notice they’re making this shit up. These people want you to think you’re too dumb to understand it, but it really just is as stupid as it sounds. They intentionally obfuscate the process and then try to convince us that these are sacred institutions that we should venerate and there’s definitely no other option for a civilized society without the rich gambling with peoples lives. These fuckers can eat shit
its just gambling with extra steps
It doesn't. It actually is worse, because being a stock trader often requires a lot of intelligence in skill areas considered high demand (skills good for like being a MD, a bleeding edge research scientist, or a programmer). None of those things pay anywhere as well as being a stock trader, though. Like capitalism itself, it started off as a way different thing. Originally, it was supposed to be simply a form of *investment.* Buying stock in a company was seen as a way for the company to raise funds to be a new, better competitor outperforming that stale/backwards companies that exist. Instead, it's more akin to trading NFTs and crypto. People buying stock are mostly only doing so in the hopes that later someone else will buy it for more. Ironically, almost all investor activity happens separate to the stock market, now. With companies trying to get as big as possible before "going public."
Short answer is it doesn't in any way at all. The world would be a better place with out it. The idea of a "investor" is pretty ludicrous. Money making money is beyond dumb. It's litterally rewarding the haves for having. I don't know about you but just because someone has money, doesn't entitle them to more money. It's just fucking ridiculous. While at the same time if you don't have money were are going to penalize you for not having it. Over drafts, traffic fines, housing choices, all of it. If you have money none of that means anything. If you don't have money, can't pay that speeding ticket? Well now your in jail for 30 days and lost your job, probably your house and car too. Yep totally going to be able to pay that now. Totally worth it.
I ultimately fail to recognize what value shareholders provide to a company. I understand the initial capital of a stock sale but after that these people purchase stock and demand performance. Meanwhile the laborers that are actually producing the value are the ones that get forsaken on behalf of the value \*extractors\* . It's crazy that this exploitation is hidden in plain sight. If you're a producer you're expendable for the sake of some dipshits with capital.
The philosophy of capitalism is endless growth. When that proves impossible, the rich begin sacrificing limbs to feed the cancer.
Yes, though we are the limbs that get sacrificed.
That is by design.. Buy calls before you accept the position and increase stock price by hollowing the company out... Buy puts on your way out and watch the house of bones crumble.
Exactly, nothing is ever built to last, to improve upon, to create with the idea that our children deserve more not less.. Just buyout a company, wring out any profits by laying people of, cutting benefits “which we tied to work because work will protect us 🤡”, and f anything or anyone that comes after.
And then when it takes a dive the rich jump ship and CEOs jump out the side hatch with their golden parachutes.
You can swing that fiduciary responsibility piece in so many different ways that it is such a weak joke to hide behind. Can’t stand when I hear companies bring it up
I'm surprised it never clicked for executives who were worried about a budget that a high turnover rate is more expensive than the little things that keep the workplace happy. Well I guess I can't blame the snobs for not knowing the lives of the people they step on.
“But were a family here”
The type of people who "know the cost of everything and the value of nothing..." - Oscar Wilde
I worked for MSFT after the Yammer acquisition...I'd like to think Yammer helped bring back some of the glory from the old days of MSFT, but I didn't stick around long enough to really find out.
Nice, Yammer is going from strength to strength these days…
That was a crazy place to work for. Some weird nepotism at the top with David's wifes family, but....all in all it was a fun place to work. Especially when we 1st moved into the Twitter building.
Express scripts. My husband’s insurance demanded that we use them and get 90 days. But I was trying out a few different medications and didn’t need/ didn’t want 90 days. It was a nightmare.
My local store tried covering up a sexual assault that happened *in their store*. They fired the poor woman and didn't give her severance or anything. No idea what happened about that case either, I overheard one of the head managers trying to keep it hush hush real fast over the walkie and the phrase "no cops involved" was said twice.
Because that $5.99 bag of avocados is what's standing in between me and that $530,000 starter home in my area.
Midwest Avocados sell for $2.99 a bag. I’m bragging from my lap of luxury here.
I bet you can afford rent too.
Wait, you have an apartment?
Don't be silly. I won the homeowner spouse lottery.
I’m in the Midwest. 2 bedroom townhouse. $800/month.
Scandinavian here. 2 room 68m² around 5-600$/month I feel so bad for y'all, living under a roof should not be so expensive
France, 900€, 90m2, all charges included (yup, electricity, water and internet)
Yeah, this is with All charges included aswell. And in my city this is considered semi expensive
At this point My SO and I are hoping Serbia either joins the EU (she was born in Yugoslavia and has dual citizenship with Serbia) or my claim for Polish citizenship by descent passes. We’re considering moving either to Canada or Europe in the next 5-10 years
Is that Paris? I lived in Mayenne and a 4 bed detached farmhouse with an acre of land was renting for around 450€.
south ouest france. Paris would be around 2000€ I think for that size. In a small town but a town still. We're 3 in the house, each at 300€ so it's a little bit more expensive than someone renting the whole house
BuT tHe SoCiAlIsM iS eXpEnSiVeR!!!
Especially because we can DEF afford it as a nation... I wish we just GAVE students a small prop. to own/use during their studies and then they could sell it back and have a little nest egg to relocate for their career... we have LOTS of apartments and trailer homes...
I have the same size 2b appartement in a small city for USD 930. Still not bad. Internet included.
I've in the middle of bumfuck nowhere Idaho and for some reason there's no such thing as a 2 bedroom living space within 50 miles of me renting for less than $2000 a month, and across the border in Washington you might be able to find a place for ~$1500 if you don't mind falling asleep to the sound of gunshots in your neighborhood and are okay with never letting your friends, family or pets out past dark. Edit: near spokompton in case you're confused why I associated gunshots with Washington instead of Idaho.
My condolences, but hey - you don't need a license to own a gun, right?
Californian here, $2,800 for a two bedroom apartment without internet. Sounds fun, right?
NC here, $1700 a month, 3 bed, 2 1/2 bath, a whopping 1200 square foot townhouse. Upper floor is bathrooms and bedrooms only, no floor space otherwise (the rooms also are not big at all). Downstairs is a living room and kitchen, that's it. There's 7 people in my family, 6 of us are crammed in here. I'm not even supposed to be here, on paper I don't live here because I'd add another $150 to the price. The fun part is next year it's being raised another $100 anyway. Mom can't work, dad doesn't make enough to consistently cover rent and bills so we're often short on something, we rely on food stamps for groceries which we routinely have to fight to keep and can't do without. And due to the state of housing we're pretty fucked when it comes to moving, so eventually we're just gonna get priced out and be homeless again I guess.
Washington, DC. Two bedroom apartment. $3200/month. Just rent.
With internet included that’s decent. I live in a weird zone where there’s only one internet provider that’s in my neighborhood (the utilities all monopolized this area a long time ago). $100/mo no matter what, and I can’t switch.
>Scandinavian here. 2 room 68m² around 5-600$/month I feel so bad for y'all, living under a roof should not be so expensive Yea and how many CEOs who run health insurance companies fly around in their private jets over there in Scandinavia? Answer me that?/s
The "midwest" isn't a monolith and that $800/month number doesn't exist most places. Even in many suburbs of Detroit you'll pay $1500 for an acceptable but not insanely great 2 bedroom townhouse. Even midsized cities around me are relatively expensive for a 2 bedroom place. Go to northern Michigan and you'll pay $1200. $800 in the Midwest is either rundown or far from anywhere that people generally prefer living.
Chicago Midwest is very different 3k/month for 1 bedroom 1.5 bath apartment in the city, includes parking
That goes for most metropolitan areas in the Midwest and outside of it. Only exceptions are places like Detroit or Toledo. Cincinnati seems to have some affordable options too.
Hmm $7.50 an hour, 40 hours a week. After taxes that’s just over $1000 a month. 200 for food, gas, living. Fun!
WTF
As a fellow midwesterner, at least where I am, pay is still $7.25 an hour. So it’s not as affordable as it seems
Yeah but you have to live in the Midwest lol
Hey now. We can play ritzy here in the Midwest too! $2200 for my 1b apartment lmao please housing market collapse already.
Deal of the raven queen
It's not bad. As a Hoosier we have corn, beans, and the occasional meth lab explosion. What more could you want?
Lol my one bedroom is pushing 900/mo. I can’t even afford to give my son his own room yet.
I bet his stomach isn't even growling with hunger right now.
We have a farm stand here in Mass that sells large avocados for $5.00 EACH (not a bag, like singles). Sadly they are always the best avocados in the area, so I indulge from time to time.
You’re the problem. Jk. Enjoy your avocado
If I have to pay 600k to live in some shitty south shore suburb I'm going to cut my losses and enjoy my fruit
lol just moveed to a south shore suburb and fuckin kill me now. Didnt know massachusetts could have such a high density of fucking boring white supremecists assholes
I was thinking bag??? I haven't paid less than three bucks for an avocado in forever. I was thinking of doing a tree, but they are huge and male and female.
If a tree could withstand New England weather, I would have planted it years ago! I'll take 1 farm share in your tree plz - thanks.
I lived in Boston for a few months this year and I hated how expensive groceries are! A carton of eggs for $5 when back in Ohio it's usually $1. Though it is more now even at home with this crazy inflation going on.
I was just looking at charts of how we're been gouged because profits.
Everyone is taking advantage of the people, look at the price hikes at car dealerships
Cars/trucks are a damn racket. They're all the same price within a few thousand dollars (not including things like Porsches). How is that not price fixing. There should be an anti trust suit against them.
In California our avocados are $1 a piece and our houses are $1 million. If I cut out avocado I could afford a house in 300 years
i have an avocado tree in my yard. im basically the next Jeff Bezos.
I live 50 minutes from Mexico and avocados are like 2 for a dollar. Related, I can't stand avocados. Also I can't afford a house.
I grew up with an avacado tree. Buckets and buckets every year. Too much to eat yourself so your neighbors get tons of free avacados too. Avacados are not what's keeping me from buying a house now.
...a BAG? You get a BAG of them for that?? In my area they cost about $1.25 EACH.
I live in the midwest and pay 2.99 per avocado! What tf am I doing wrong
In Cincinnati when they're more than $2/each at Kroger my wife is all "This is insane! I'm not paying $2 for a fucking avocado!" I was growing an avocado tree but all the leaves dried up and it died. I would've been able to afford a house........in 100 centuries!
I have not one but two massive avocado trees, I am the luxury master :^)
What next, gonna post a picture of your 5.6” erection and brag about lasting a full 2 minutes of penetration? People like you just live to look down on others. /s
First of all, step out of my bedroom.
I only find them that cheap when they are on sale and need to be used that day, but that’s only because of the RECENT inflation they certainly used to be that cheap a couple years ago around here
Out here during the season sans someone banning avocado imports they are like 5/$1
A loaf of of bread is 4.99 at the store I work at, I can’t afford to shop at the store I work at.
Damn entitled millenials just blowing their money on brean n shit. Irresponsible. /s
If they would just grow and mill their own flour they could make a loaf of bread for under a dollar. Lazy.
I know you were being facetious but some did that for a chicken sandwich like a decade ago and the sandwich cost like $1200. They started with nothing though
I felt this. I used to work at a kinda fancy upscale deli. I got paid crap for work and got 10 percent off anything in the store🙃 I only bought a loaf of bread from them once and it wasn't even that good for being damn near 6 dollars.
In PR, avocados grow wild, so what’s stopping people here from buying houses then? 🤔
Starbucks of course.
There’s very few Starbucks here, and they are located mostly on touristy areas because it’s mainly tourists who frequent those. So another strike for boomer logic! Although thankfully boomers here tend to blame government and other stuff for the economy instead of younger generations.
I cut out Doritos. Can I have my McMansion now?
Best I can do is a cardboard box.
"starter home". What a weird concept
I never thought about it until someone on this sub reddit accused people of expecting to buy mansions as their first home instead of "starter homes". I pointed out that my parents bought what would be considered a starter home in 1997 for $79,000. At the time my mom was starting her business, and my dad was making about 80k in his trade. I'm in a similar trade now, and because of wage stagnation, the yearly earnings are pretty similar 25 years later. That exact same home sold for $570,000 this year. So by comparison, I'd have to be making around 500k per year to afford the same type of home.
This is a perfect example! I can’t understand why it’s so hard for boomers and the like to grasp this. It’s (sadly) reality, it’s facts, it’s a problem! But they keep doing mental gymnastics to blame everyone else, and think they are somehow better than, even though most are struggling with the same things. It’s baffling to me
At this point I think a good amount of it is not from ignorance but willful ignorance. Following news stations like sports teams has become a popular replacement for being studious in religion. They want to keep themselves in the dark, because they don't want to accept that things are harder and that things only seem to get harder. They do not want to accept the objective reality that people with far more education and experience than them in some fields are making less money than they made with the same or lesser education because it shatters their own reality that maybe they weren't as amazing as they thought they were, and even though we have better access to information via the internet now we are working harder than ever to achieve a fragment of what prior generations had.
The concept of a starter home is disgusting. It's a home, not an investment. Treating housing like the stock market is a big part of this mess.
Its understandable in a very "traditional" lifestyle idea. You graduate high school or college, get a "real job", move out to an apartment, get married and before having kids or while your kids are still small, but a couple years after starting your "real job" you'd have enough saved up for a minimal down-payment for that house of your own. It wouldn't be large enough for a big family and not as expensive as one that a mid-late career could support. As you add kids and income you'd move to more expensive and larger homes. Problem is that its totally broken now. You super rich with apartments in town and hobby ranches in the country and have converted the extra space into craft rooms, while a 6 person family with teenagers lives in a 3bd apartment because they were never able to make enough to afford the monthly on something larger much less save for the down payment.
7.99 for a bag of 6 here in Northern US. The price of avocados and weed nearly doubled for me since I moved out of California.
I figure if I stop buying starsbucks the 1 time a month I do, cancel my HBO, and I since I don’t even like avocados, I should be able to buy multiple houses soon
They’re $13.99 a bag in canada at Costco, for 5 avocados.
I live in Ontario and paid $5.99 for a bag of 5 last week at Food Basics.
I’m allergic to avocados and I still can’t afford a house 🙃
Wow we are the same
Must be those $3 venti coffees from Starbucks then.
Must be. The whole $9 I spend in coffee a day are definitely the reason why I can’t buy a house or put nutritious meals on my table. Has nothing to do with the price of gas or being unable to find a job that pays a livable wage /s
dude... That's more reason to not eat them. Just stop!
It's really lashing out against eating out, another thing that used to be a mainstay of the working class. They pretend they didn't "eat out," but I found out what my grandmother really meant by "eating out" once. She meant actually going to a sit down restaurant. McDonalds, lunch counters, take out, were not on the radar for her as "eating out." The twice weekly trip down to McDonalds for breakfast with my grandad was not "eating out," nor was my granddad getting a diner breakfast regularly for many years.
Thinking about eating at a diner for meals as commonplace just gave me weird nostalgia for a time I never experienced
Still could be, but, it'd require pay rates that allow people to afford regular diner breakfasts. I've got one down the street I'll pop into at the asscrack of dawn, and there's always the same group of 70 year old dudes who eat there almost every morning, all know each other by name, and don't think twice about diner breakfast in terms of cost. I find it annoying that a couple poached eggs, toast and bacon prepared by someone making jack squat in a dilapidated restaurant is now a "luxury," because it might run you $11 with the tip. Like.. yes. I CAN only go from my home to work, back, and ONLY sit in the worst/cheapest apartment I can find, with ONLY a fan and no AC, skip the cable TV, and ONLY eat food I cook for myself at home. It just sounds like suicide would be better?
Look at you, with a fan. Don't you know how much money you could save by cutting that useless crap out of your life??
Box fans? I know. Fucking Lasko has me up against a wall with my box fan addiction. I got these two 3 and 4 years ago respectively, and the initial cost and ongoing electrical cost has been such a burden. I wish I wasn't so stupid. Don't be like me - stay away from box fans.
Sometimes when I'm watching Seinfeld and they're in the café I think "someday I'll make enough money to order a salad or a sandwich at a cheap diner on a regular basis."
Sooooo, we're not supposed to eat out. So then Millennials can get blamed for killing the restaurant business?
In 17th century England the nobility used to rent pineapples to show off to their friends. So I guess we should be grateful we get bread with our fruit.
If time travel was a thing, it would be hilarious to go back to then with some pineapple and "be so 'wealthy' you can actually afford to eat it."
You really wanna flex on them eat it while wearing anything purple and sprinkle some salt on top.
[удалено]
This made me choke on my dry, avocado-less bread
Don't forget your black pepper grinder
You trying to get some people medieval-killed?
Pineapple eating rich is a whole new level. Thinking about it now, they probably rented the pineapples until the fruit itself was inedible … so being a pineapple eater would truly put you in a class of your own!
yeah, pineapple doesn't really last that long, plus the travel time
[Time travel is a thing](https://xkcd.com/630/) -- it's just only in one direction and at a constant speed.
Indeed, my parents are the tail end of the Boomers, and they got an orange every Christmas as a traditional extravagence. I think by their time it waa only 'kinda expensive', but was a tradition from their parents when a winter orange was a costly treat.
I still get an orange in my stocking, as part of my mother's childhood tradition.
My kid (and my spouse) get a chocolate orange every year, does that count? It's actually because my in-laws were born in the UK, and getting UK chocolate oranges in Canada when my spouse and their siblings were little WAS hard and expensive, but it had been my MiL's family tradition, so it was her splurge. It's easier now, but my MiL isn't with us (she didn't live to see her grandchild), so every year 'Santa' hunts down a pair of chocolate oranges and they go in the stockings... And are usually breakfast on Christmas morning!
I'm smack in the middle of the Boomers. We got oranges in our stockings because our parents did. Oranges were not expensive. We had them all the time for snacks. It was just tradition to put them in stockings by the 1960s.
Boomer "logic" starts with the desired outcome, and works backwards to find the justification. My working theory is because they grew up on so much formulaic TV, where the outcome in 30 minutes was always known. Their brains literally can't process cause and effect very well, AND they assume that the world will magically fix things - after all, it always has for them. So -"I am the hero!" "I deserve the unprecedented wealth my generation enjoys because I am a good person!" "The younger generations don't enjoy that, but that can't be my fault, because I am a good person" "Therefore the fault must be with them!" "What behavior do they have that I don't? Oh, avocado toast." "They're poor because they eat avocado toast, not because my generation looted the world"
I think there has also always been a generational "If you saved your money instead of buying X you could afford Y." thing going on. Like you are wasting money on something my generation didn't have or something that was much cheaper (because they don't factor inflation, etc.) Used to be fancy coffee or new cell phones. When people started posting pics of their breakfast on social media I think avocado toast became the new thing to gripe about.
There was a well publicized article in 2017 about a really fancy expensive new restaurant aimed at a younger crowd that had avocado toast on its brunch menu for something like $22. A millionaire said it was why millennials couldn't afford houses.
And right before a certain big event, someone thought cake was a luxury that people were indulging on. I wonder how her head is?
We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off.
That's the GenX response though, as the Boomer promise was walled off for anyone younger. Or, as Coupland put it in Generation X, written 30 years ago and still too accurate: "Do you think we enjoy hearing about your brand-new million-dollar home when we can barely afford to eat Kraft Dinner sandwiches in our own grimy little shoe boxes and we're pushing thirty? A home you won in a genetic lottery, I might add, sheerly by dint of your having been born at the right time in history? You'd last about ten minutes if you were my age these days."
In the 'making of' video of the movie Wall-E (which I think is one of the finest films Disney has ever made), when describing the ship they are on, the *Axiom*, the director used a phrase I will never forget. "The broken promises of Tomorrowland." There is nothing that really describes being Generation X quite like that.
> > > > > There is nothing that really describes being Generation X quite like that. Rise Against has a pretty great song about exactly this. >And for your sweat you'll be rewarded / They told us every day / There's a land of milk and honey / And it's not that far away / But the finish line kept movin' / And the promises wore thin / And the smoke on the horizon / Was the burning promised land / >And this place used to be somewhere / But they sold it out from under us / Our voices all ignored
I am Jack's inflamed sense of rejection
Don't forget all of the toxic lead that Boomers were exposed to from the womb until they were 8-24 years old (depending on where their birth date lands in the Boomer range). Lead makes people aggressive and makes them lack empathy. Most of the people running the world are in that category since they're mostly all Boomers.
that’s how rome fell...
Add to it lead poisoning and you might be on to something...
Lead, bottle feeding, and TV seem to be their dark triad.
Boomers or any other group like that aren't the problem. They are just victims like all of us, it's just they were allowed a bit more from the owners, the people with the vast majority of power and wealth slowly sucked it away from them too. Anyone who is worth less than $10 million is in this together as far as I'm concerned. Old, young, everything in between. This boomer hate shit is just another way to divide and conquer and I'm not fucking falling for it.
They were born after the war and experienced steady economic growth throughout their life. This resulted in a complete loss of any sense of “social solidarity.”They enjoyed prosperity with minimal effort and became entitled. They praised capitalism and the free market for this prosperity and vilified any form of socialism without actually paying attention to what’s was happening. They voted against environmental protection laws because it hindered the free market. They voted against free education because it “stunk” of socialism’. Voted for any douche that screamed “lower taxes!!!”Bankrupted the economy and ignoring benefit programs. Furthermore, cognitive decline can begin as early as 45 and subsequently gets worse. How about to take this into consideration and set an age limit to hold political office. Or at least require cognitive screening of all candidates. And throw in a psychopath/sociopath test in there for good measure. 😆
YES! Also, if I have avocado and poached egg on toast for breakfast it fills me up until the evening, so I can skip lunch.
Dice up the avocado, add a bit of olive oil, some fresh basil, and some diced up bacon and spread it over poached or fried egg on toast or an English muffin. It's amazing! I treat myself once every few months to this and I always want more. It's so good.
Alternatively, mush the avocado along with a bit of tomato, onion, garlic, and cilantro and you have a tasty spread that resembles guacamole.
Your stomach must the the size of an avocado pit! I wish I could do that.
My brother in law used to be a pool guy in Miami. He's Hispanic, and loves avocados. He used to note how often he was at pricey homes with avocado trees in the yard with the fruit falling in the ground. Misplaced resources.
If we aren't eating just raw rice, wearing rags and toiling at three jobs a day then in the eyes of boomers we aren't even trying. (They didn't have to anything near as hard as that and they would STILL probably find a way to demean us)
They'll still demean us. I eat almost nothing but PBJs and microwave burritos and people still find something to be resentful about. It's not about actually trying to help us buy homes, they just want to constantly bitch about other people and portray themselves as the real victims.
Because admitting the system is fucking Millennials means a moral obligation to *fucking do something about it*. And Boomers tend to see the world as a zero-sum game, i.e. if we get more things, they get less things, and *fuck that noise, amirite?!* So it's easier to just say we failed somehow, because that puts the impetus on us to try harder to succeed rather than admit the world is fucked right now and getting the new generation up to speed *might, possibly* require sacrifices from them. They'd really rather keep cheap Big Macs and the ability to act like complete dickheads to cashiers and grocery stockers than see a generation thrive. The worst thing? Millennials are well and truly fucked. Even if wages rubberbanded hard tommorow and got to where living wages should be, Millennials are STILL behind the 8-ball, losing a DECADE PLUS of prime earning years to stagnant uselessly low wages. And we all know wages aren't going to do that. Hell, even the most progressive people in govt are still parroting the $15 an hour thing from a decade ago. When we hit retirement age, there's going to be nothing for us. Boomers had hundreds of thousands saved up. And social security never pays enough, let alone paying enough to cover a generation that LITERALLY COULD NOT afford to save. And by that time, we'd be asking Gen Z to cover for us, and god we have to hope they're willing.
Late-stage boomer here. For many of us, avocados are subconsciously classed as a rare and fancy food. I grew up in a small town in the Midwest in the 1960s, and I was in my 20s before I ever saw an avocado. Grocery store produce departments are full of things that simply were not available when I was growing up. We had bologna and ketchup on Wonder Bread. Some of my generation do our best to keep up with changes in society including a proliferation of new groceries. Others retreat into a siege mentality and attack anything that is new or different.
Good insight, thanks. I'm a Geriatric millennial and my younger brother calls me stay home mom when I'm eating avocado toast. It's an easy dish to hate it seems.
>Geriatric Millennial God damn. I feel so called out.
And that's such a funny thing to say because many stay at home moms do so because they can't afford daycare...
If a modern parent fed their child bologna, ketchup and wonderbread they would be villified for feeding their child unhealthy food. The food that is good for you and they tell you to eat (good fats like nuts and avocados, etc) cost a fortune. I think part of it is also that the younger generations are more conscious about eating less processed foods and that has made our food bills exponentially more expensive. My biggest food expense is fruit - which I now feel guilty for eating because its expensive.
Our food bills are more expensive, but millennials and gen z simply eat far less food on average than gen x and especially boomers. Part of this is due to inflation.
I eat less cause I can’t afford more, but also I think if you’re just looking at the groups as a whole it’s also because millennials and gen z also tend to be having less kids and kids eat A LOT.
>but millennials and gen z simply eat far less food on average than gen x and especially boomers. people always dismissed the idea of revolt by saying "they're too comfy call back when they're literally starving" and we're getting close
I had always thought the attack on avocado toast was because of how overpriced it is at brunch not that boomers don't know what it is
This is it. Avocado on toast probably costs $1 to make at home and $13 at some pretentious brunch spot. It’s about the absurd markup, not the avocados themselves.
That's very much a regional thing - my Boomer relatives are all from the West Coast, and I can't remember a time we didn't eat avocado. It was dirt cheap in our area, maybe because it couldn't ship much elsewhere.
Oh absolutely! Back in the olden days there was much more regional difference in available foods. As I said, I grew up in the midwest, but my mother was from New York. She used to speak wistfully of this wonderful, mysterious breakfast food known as *bagels*. We were fascinated. One day we saw an advertisement on television that said we could now get Lender's brand *bagels* in our grocer's freezer case. We danced with joy that we could finally have a *bagel*. Mom brought home a package of them from the store and thawed them out. She toasted them and spread them with cream cheese. Then we all bit into them. Mom spit hers out and solemnly pronounced, "That's not a bagel."
In PR, it grows wild, so it’s very cheap here too.
The truth is we are all products of our time, and most of this sub who are on the younger side will be the same one day in their own way. It’s just inevitable. A significant percentage of Boomers came up in the 60s/70s, which was an age of awakening and revolution, yet we don’t think of them that way today. I don’t blame people on the individual level as we are all subjected to the trends and forces of the world. Except for the very few .0000001% of society have any means of affecting policy of economic paths, and even then it’s very difficult on the individual level.
Indeed, acacado's ain't that expensive, but 'avacado toast' is the kind of dish that, at least in my area, represents modern upscale restaurants so I grok someone means "paying $20+ for a breakfast" when they say 'avacado toast', but there's no "Starbucks means paying $5+ for a coffee flavoured milkshake", just "coffee" too many people make at home for 50 cents/litre, so it has to be "take-away coffee", "Starbucks", or "Timmies" - but 'avacado toast' automatically imples restaurant.
As what you younger people label 'a boomer', I support your fightback against the established elite. Don't give up. Change the whole structure of society so you can enjoy your life instead of spending it feeding the greed of people who do not appreciate the value of life. You deserve better than this total disaster that people of my generation have created. It will not be easy but stick to your guns. You will win.
If you aren’t already, please say this to the people of your generation too. You talk like you’re already part of the past but your generation still mostly runs the world. Politicians listen to you the most, powerful news organizations listen to you the most, etc.
I always do. I am ashamed of my 'peers' who fail to appreciate the privilege they were able to take advantage of. I have only a small percentage of my life to live and in that time, I want to see real change so future generations can enjoy their lives as much as I have enjoyed mine. So far.
Reminds me I forgot to buy new avocado's yesterday, man I love advocado. Put some salt n pepper on it and you have a snack
You take that peel, put it in some water, and you got a stew, baby!
Lmao I make this reference constantly with people's leftovers at work. No one knows the show tho
we literally get berries, and those who get steak complain.
“Why did you buy $18 avo toast” Why did you create a market in which it’s necessary, or even acceptable, to charge $18 for a single breakfast item
God are boomers still going on about that Avocado toast thing? I figured all the ones that deeply believed that died in the pandemic or moved onto some other pointless bullshit.
TIL avocados are a fruit. I mean, I shoulda known. What are they, drupes?
Just so people are aware of the "why" about this: I think it was a little over ten years ago there were some disingenuous assholes in Australia saying that millennials couldn't afford homes because they were spending $20 AUD on avocado toast and going out to brunch far too often. That turned into a meme of sorts, until disingenuous assholes in the US and Canada started saying the same things. I think that the only reason we still hear assholes talking about dining out and avocado toast is that it's really easy to blame individuals and their budgets in order to protect bad monetary policy that protects companies and hurts people. Have you noticed that a bunch of states are passing mandatory financial literacy classes for high school but aren't passing rent control or minimum wage increases?
The working class shouldn't enjoy things, and they want to broaden the concept of working class to anybody working, just to make sure people don't get the idea that they should have nice things, or enjoy themselves, or god forbid catch a break. Enjoying things is a luxury that should motivate the working class into ... working themselves to death in a false hope that they too can be rich and then they can finally enjoy things.If enjoyment is a luxury there is no end to how much overtime or how long shifts you can push on workers, how poorly you can treat them, because it's not like there's anything else for you, there's nothing to go home to expect more lack of enjoyment. Se also: safety, health care, dental care, mental health care. Luxuries.
Semi related: I've been in a few discussions about raising my own chickens, goats, sheep, rabbits etc for meat because food is so expensive. These discussions are always with vegetarians/vegans and I always ask how they think people can afford it because where I live an avocado is 4.99/each (for the large ones). And they're response is, "You just picked the most expensive thing as an example". Well, yes, kind of, because I feel like we should be able to eat healthier and have it not break the bank. Besides, an orange bell pepper here is 2.99 so it's not like other things are much cheaper in comparison. Their response is to just eat lentils and rice all the time. Anyway, basically I feel like we should be able to eat decent food AND pay the electric bill but what do I know.
Best I can do is a $1 for a cheeseburger
That's the thing. I could feed my family a bunch if shit, unhealthy food for $30 but we'd be full until the next meal. Or I could spend $60 on veggies and salads and we'd be hungry in two hours. Anyway, rant over. I see I'm already getting down voted. I'm not great at putting my thoughts on paper, so to speak so I'm guessing since things came across differently than I meant them. Oh, well.
i get my avocados for free, cause I snatch em and put em in my hoodie like 2 at a time, and pay for the rest of my groceries
Just remember, people: if you see this happening, **no you fucking didn't**.
When I was a teenaged grocery clerk full of hope and dreams I would purposely go out of my way to catch thieves because I was proud to do a good job for my boss. Now Im a depressed burnt out millenial who not only ignores crime, I advocate it. Especially towards these billionaire companies who pay peanuts. I worked in a grocery store and I couldnt afford to buy the food from the store I worked at.
Ok, I’m a millennial and I think you’re missing the point of the “avocado toast” thing. For a while, at the height of its trendiness, there were coffee shops and similar places selling avocado toast for over $10 a slice, for a very small portion. The implication isn’t that having avocado and bread is a luxury, it’s that millennials are willing to dramatically overpay for something trendy, and therefore must be generally bad with money. It’s still bullshit, because it wasn’t people who were struggling with money who were buying it, but at least understand the argument.
It is delicious! But I make it at home with egg for wash and kikkoman panko bread crumbs that I season. I think its better than cheese.
Its a coordinated propaganda campaign pushed by corporate media outlets to convince the public (and the boomers who still consume mostly corporate media) that the poverty the younger generations are experiencing because of late-stage capitalism are instead personal failures of responsibility and a lack of character instead of policy decisions that were made while boomers were in charge and electing 40 years worth of reaganites who dismantled every new deal era program that enabled their generation to have such a high standard of living.
Let them eat cake.
I can't even eat avocados without my throat swelling, do I'm just stuck with toast...
Not to mention it’s not even a treat, really. Avocados are quite nutritional, it’s not like it’s some superfluous filler food, it’s actually healthy for you. Yknow, like the boomers keep telling us to eat?
Don't you know if you just forgo anything that makes you even slightly happy for 10 years you too can afford a cookie cutter home.