Is it just me or i feel life is getting more difficult these days?

Bills went up, pay did not keep up.

There's a whole lot of awful going on.

My dad used to rant about how government should be run like a business, no, no dad, it really, really should not. Businesses do not care about people, businesses don't want anything but money, your money, and they will twist, turn, manipulate, lobby, and flat out steal or harm people to get it.

So the next time you call 311, the non emergency police line, or God forbid 911 remember, your call is very important to us, a representative will be with you shortly. If you'd like to take a brief survey after the call just stay on the line. If you'd like to talk to our chat bot Sally just say, hey Sally!

im putting groceries on credit. i had a great credit score till this year, i havent even tried making payments on certain things including ER bills. only a matter of time before im bankrupt, and i am also disabled. i have given up on having a future and I'm only 32.

Thirty-something Norwegian here. I am born into a rich, relatively functioning social democracy with a good welfare state. Buying my own home was a real struggle, even with a good salary. Many of my peers will never own, my younger friends will struggle to ever own, or never.

Unfortunately the welfare state is eroding, prices for everything is increasing heavily, and the private sector is a growing leech on the state.

It’s both: it’s just you and it’s everyone else. In the modern age of relatively fast technological development, people tend to get overwhelmed by change in their later years. But also things are getting worse for almost everyone[^1] under late-stage capitalism.

[^1]: Almost everyone living under capitalism, that is. In China most people’s lives have been getting easier.

All of the things that were supposed to help us by making our lives easier really helped them and now our lives are harder. I don't see an end to that.

You're correct OP. I think the difficulty of modern times is multifaceted. A lot of other comments here speak to various parts of it these days, but I want to add one I've noticed related to this issue.

Pre mid-2000's, technology worked for us. If you look at the hayday of tech (1980 thru early 2000's), it seemed like every tech innovation was aimed at the consumer. The tech got better and we did too. The tech worked for us.

Nowadays (and I think I can see all this turning course around the time of the 2008 collapse), tech is not for us. The consumer has become the product, and tech is built around working through us instead of for us. Manipulating us instead of helping us. It sucks.

I have no doubt that if the washing machine was invented today instead of like ~100 years ago, they would be the size of car, and only installed in corporate offices. You'd have to go to an office to get your clothes washed. Consumer-level washers wouldn't be a thing. They'd tie it to work like healthcare. It seems like no one is interested in making quality consumer devices. The consumer devices we do have are designed to become obsolete quickly without any repairability, so you buy another fast (i.e. all modern cars).

So yea, I think when you add this on top of everything else, it help explains what is amiss with life today. My 2c

I think about it this way.

In 1995 I could leave the house with nothing in my pocket except $10.00 and have a great day. Ride the bus with cash, get food with cash, buy stuff with cash. If I needed a ride there were free phones to car services in most stores.

Today, if I go out the door I need cash, a credit card, and a phone.

OP, it’s also going to sound like a cliche, but touch grass. The cancer-like tech companies want to replace your sense of community so that they have more power over you. F them, join a local group, and find yourself feeling more powerful when you have a real community behind you.

Every time your life gets harder, some rich persons life gets easier. Welcome to capitalism.

Yep. The Amish were right.

Life isn't that bad yet but owning things is starting to become impossible. You used to buy and own things now you are more and more only allowed to rent them. Be it movies, video games or your house.

Good time to unplug.

It's definitely getting worse, you're not imagining it.

yeah it's intentional.

oligarchs are hoarding the resources and getting people to distract themselves by pointing at each other while they stockpile their bunkers.

Yeah, i mean we make more stuff than ever before per capita and all that, and yet we still have to fight harder and harder to survive. How so? We'll these fucking billionaires are also richer than ever before. Crassus' wealth is estimated at like $2B in today's dollars. Rockefeller is estimated at like $300-400B. Musk is more than double that. It's very clear what's happening, the rich use the capitalist surplus as a weapon to extract more wealth from the poor.

It's really hard to tell what was just younger kids not being exposed to the world vs. things actually getting worse. I was a kid during '08, and things didn't really change for me at home cuz my family was always very frugal, especially my dad.

Climate change has empirically gotten worse tho. Inflation, enshitification, food quality, all of it SEEMS worse but it's hard to quantify it you know?

I think this is due to increased alienation. We've become more isolated and distanced from one another and, more importantly, more distanced from our own creative self. This is what happens when production is largely automated but humans are still involved - we turn into small faceless gears in a big mechanism.

Sounds like things have been good for you in the past. I am happy for you, and wish you a return to the good times.

They say happiness is all about expectations, but I haven't expected anything good and I am still disappointed.

They broke the social contract. The thing that a polite, cooperative society is built on. So now we see what that means as more everyday folk realize it over time.

They like to say we are doing better than ever because the the numbers and technology are great. Yeah, I might not be starving, but what's the dignity in a rising tide of techno-feudalism and serfdom? And the technology that, in another society, could have freed us from long hours is instead being used by the ruling class to further exploit us.

I believe it's a mix. Both 'nostalgia goggles' and straight up facts.

What I mean is that, when we were kids or teenagers we didn't see things the same way our parents did. They were the ones struggling, and we were pretty much just playing around and complaining of mundane stuff. So it's hard to tell how much 'easier' life was back then... we were just young.

But at the same time I do completely agree that the advancement of technology and growth of USA giant corporations really fucked a lot of things up badly. While back in the day we couldn't find answers or information to everything so easily, we lived a more 'natural' life, where everyone actually expected things to take a while to happen: you had to wake up, literally read the news if you wanted, take the car or bus to the job, and just then you started working, and while working you had to do some research and so on.

Nowadays things either happen immediately or you're tagged as lazy or something like it. You wake up with a lot of e-mails or message notifications on your smartphone, and people expect you to answer these demands ASAP. It's not expected anymore that we do each thing in it's own time anymore, and the volume of work is much bigger because you're expected to solve problems much faster. This volume of demand and unrealistic expectations definitely generate stress and anxiety, which are huge health issues nowadays.

And the fact that we now realize, thanks to the amount and speed of information we have today, how the industry leads are fucking everyone up without consequences doesn't help in the slightest, since it leads to a feeling of being powerless and exploited.

No, you are not alone. I have the same feeling.

I was born in the 60's and feel ya. Funny that there's a lot of people who never knew life before internet like we never knew life without television. My take on it is we are bombarded. We see everything that happens all over the planet as soon as it happens. Yet our ability to affect things is still the same. That I feel makes us feel small. Spend less time looking at screens

Also middle aged and my only real issue is how stupid everyone is

They don't read. They don't research. They don't question... not in a "conspiracy theory" way, but they don't see a headline and go, "is that true?"

They're morons that feed off negativity.

They'll post an article about something terrible but then I'll look it up, find out it's bullshit, and then post the data that shows it's bullshit and instead of everybody being like, "oh thank God, I was worried there for a second" they go, "Fuck you. Obviously everything is shitty and how dare you even try to point out that it's not"

What the fuck is wrong with people these days?

You are definitely not alone. Ordinary people should stand against imperialist and extreme capitalist system .when you vote ,you should not let bastards politicians exploit you by your weakness

Yes it is, we are being squeezed! We have less ways out. I'm far better than I ever was, actually have better health, and fitness. Yet, it is hopeless.

I feel the same way, so many things are objectively worse. Cost of living up, government services and safety nets going away, taxpayer money funneled to billionaires, scammers, and wars. Technology is getting more expensive and more invasive. Everything is a scam or a trick now even from previously reputable businesses. The environment is being ravaged and natural resources are being used up and none of the big players doing most of the pollution care, they only care about revenue. Ethics and accountability are down, grift and cruelty are up.

Yeah it's sucks. I feel like everthing I do or will do need to be optimazed instead of done for sake of doing.

Can definitely relate. Am in my early 50's. Canadian government sold out Canadians, and now the country is a complete shithole. We're actively looking to leave Canada.

You could post this exact question at literally any time in history and get a whole host of agreeing answers. That's a basic sanity test you should use to determine that this is a question incorrectly put.

tbh a large part of it probably has to do with you getting older and looking back in the good old days in rose tinted glasses

some parts of the world got better now compared to few decades ago, while others have gotten much worse

I think you are slow on the uptake. It has been this way for a while.

Think of every day as a tiny knife, stabbing you.

(I forgot who said that in their routine and I don't want to look it up but it's somebody. Accordion lady? I refuse)

Def not just you, it's everyone some people are just better at ignoring it. I've always been raised around computers myself, but we're talking Windows 3.1 and 95 lol. I do indeed think it's the tech though. People have alter egos they try to pretend is real on social media. News travels faster with it, real or fake. Music you'd have to buy, listen to the radio, or watch TRL or 106 in park. Things are so immediate these days. People used to read, learn, etc. I got kids, and a large chunk of the shit they tell me they've learned was from TikTok. It truly is a different world, and it is stressful. It's hard to keep up, but you're here, and you're doing just fine.

Don't worry, it gets worse.

Yes, but not in the imprecise terms you'll find tossed around in mainstream sources of information.

Key Lemmy-grade terms:

1. Surveillance Capitalism ---> Technofeudalism
2. Personalized pricing
3. Bureaucratic Friction & sludge (customer service best practice)
4. Administrative Burden (government, business adm & customer service)
5. LexisNexis Risk Solutions, RealPage
6. Rent-seeking behavior; economic rent
7. Whiteness theory

Competition (& ranking) is great. Competition over every little thing is bad.

I'm sure many people can relate. I'm not sure how helpful this is. You sound like you're not from an area currently in a state of war or suffering from famine. So you're probably somewhere where you could try to talk a therapist.

As someone who is also middle aged, I’d say some of this is very possibly looking at the past through rose-colored glasses. Personally I don’t think my life say 15 years ago was significantly less competitive, stessful, etc.

What is different though… I make over double what I made 15 years ago. I’ve had steady progression in my career from 15 years ago. But financially I am not better off than I was then (in terms of how much I have left at the end of the month). Which makes sense, in that while my salary has gone up say 5% per annum, the real cost of living has exceeded that rate.

I had that life for a bit but changed my job. You should explore your options. Get out before it kills your soul.

Move to a calmer city, get a job that pays less but allows you to breathe. Or anything. Just make changes.

Its not normal to feel like that and it's your own choices that is doing it, probably a desire for money or status.

Yep. It's all over for humanity. Enjoy whatever you can before it all goes up in flames.