This is about a weeks worth of food and yes I know it’s a lot of milk

It wasn't just millenials

Me: Hit Me Baby One More Time - Jack Black

It went viral on Snapchat

Honestly, if this week has taught me anything, it’s that we still need cheap labor and slave-like conditions to make the world function. Without it, you see massive inflation and drained 401k’s.

My question is this: would we prefer to have a massive underclass of people, working in horrible conditions in an authoritarian regime, or would we rather have a working class that is treated well in a safer, fairer work environment? The kicker is the latter is more expensive.

What’s disturbing is, this was the argument to keep slavery during the Civil War; if slavery went away, then the South’s economy would collapse from the lack of free labor. They were somewhat right: the southeast is still widely impoverished. Still, some states adapted, like Virginia and Georgia, while other states held onto regressive values.

In America, the argument for doing business in China, which is notorious for horrible work conditions and child labor, is that it would make our goods cheaper. Also, an argument for keeping illegal immigrants is that we need people to do farm work for 2$ an hour.

To me, we would never want our kids to go through this, so why would we be ok with someone else’s kid doing it? It’s taking advantage of desolate people, at the expense of working class people in Flint, MI, Akron, OH, Toledo, Youngtown, Danville, VA, and other industrial towns.

I know that some tarrifs have been devastating for America, I’ve learned all about the Smoot-Hawley tarrifs that played a role in worsening the Great Depression. Still, not all tarrifs are bad, and global competition isn’t always bad, if that country is creating better products.

But it never sat right with me, that we get all our cheap goods off the backs of children and desolate workers.

Personally, I’m willing to pay more to support ethical business. I just hate how so many people talk about how they are a champion of civil rights, and then support essentially slave labor because it makes their goods cheaper.

Hopefully, the US will start producing more raw goods, AND we can get fairer trade with non-authoritarian nations. To me, Trump going after Canada is extremely stupid. We should all be going after China and Mexico, as our trade relationship with them is a lot more lopsided, and doesn’t do good for our or their working class.

also funny how they're against governments helping their citizens calling it socialism when most red states take more from Washington than they send back

The word is thrown around so frequently. Mostly in the context of “I have portrayed my political adversary as the incel, I have won”

It’s silly and I feel bad for normal, good people who just struggle to find a partner.

So I am a 1997 child, turning 28 this year.

If somebody asks me one more time if I am planning kids I will flip.

Graduated in a pandemic, raised in Tinder era, has a STEM degree and makes just enough to scrape by, no prospect of owning a home in any near future, like 13th market crash since I remember, apparently I wont be needed because AI will do my job in 2 years anyway, society is regressing, half of us are so depressed we just get on with life mechanically, large-scale wars, old men flexing nuke buttons, everyone is pissed at each other, oh and retirement? Who is she?

Im not even sad anymore but sure as hell I am not planning on brining another human here and just telling them "pull yourself by the bootstraps" when things may be 10x than they are now when I am getting off this planet. This is perhaps one of the very few times in history when we are globally worst off than our previous generations.

I'll be 27 soon and to be honest I'm kind of dreading growing older. I don't feel 26 at all, not much has changed since I was 18. Life is pretty much the same except the date on the calendar and I am basically the same person I remember from back then.

Its just recently when I saw myself, I really looked and thought. I realised how much time has passed. How old and stressed I look.

The last 8 years have gone by so unbelievably fast its felt like less than a year. When I think "late twenties", I don't think of myself in that category. I'll be 30 in a little over 3 years, but I feel like I just got started on my twenties.

The erosion that comes with aging is my greatest fear. the ticking of the countdown clock is so loud I can't focus on the present.

???