The subreddit r/antiwork is a weird mix of people describing quitting their jobs and posts about how the country is going down the toilet. As you might imagine, it’s very popular in the third year of a pandemic that seems to have no end in sight.
This post from u/awms11 is about how “The USA is on the verge of collapse” and it sparked quite a conversation in the comments about the future of America and the world.
They start off by saying they’re in their 30s and most of their friends live at home and are struggling.
“I don’t know anyone my age who has a comfortable life with a house and can pay all their bills,” they write. “We all came from middle-class suburban families. Most of us went to college. We ate our veggies and prayed to Jesus. And I know way more people are even worse off. Homeless camps are set up at every overpass in my city. It was rare to see a homeless person where I live when I was a kid. Now they’re everywhere. It can’t be their fault. It’s not a ‘bootstraps’ problem.”
They write that the sense that “something really big is about to go down” and that housing and the cost of living is not matching up with people’s pay:
There is no way any of this is sustainable. Everyone pretends they’re fine. No one is actually fine except for the boomers with juicy pensions who pretend like they’re just better at working than everyone else.
Part of me wishes the collapse would start now so we can get it over with. But I know it won’t be pretty. I wish there was a way to salvage everything without anything catastrophic happening. But I’ve thought about it back to front. There’s no other way. There just isn’t.
Their story is one a lot of people can relate to. Folks from all over the world chimed in to say it’s not just USA. In other countries, this has been the situation for generations. Others are declining at about the same rate as the USA or are just slightly behind their American exceptionalism. But maybe the scariest comments are about how much worse it might need to get before anything really changes.
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