The Difference between a 23YO American in 1980, and a 23YO American in 2025

[Wicked Blue]

68. It's not what "we" did, it's what "they" did

Last edited Fri Jul 25, 2025, 02:58 PM - Edit history (1)

But I competely agree with the rest of your post.

The decline began with President Ray-gun. The rich became "in" and working people were "out" as far as the media were concerned.

After fucking with the California system of public education as governor, Ray-gun got rid of free tuition in the state colleges and universities. All of a sudden poor and lower middle class folks lost the opportunity to get degrees and a shot at good white collar jobs.

The cancer spread to other states around the country. Free tuition disappeared. Low cost tuition, like the $200 per semester I paid at Rutgers, was gone. The price of a college education got higher and higher, becoming unaffordable for most. And Congress passed a law that made it impossible to declare bankruptcy to get out from under staggeringly large student loans.

Lots of middle class kids went into the IT field, one of the few areas where they could get decent jobs and hope to pay off those loans.

Then two things happened. Congress passed a law exempting companies from paying overtime to IT employees, so businesses could force people to work insane hours with no extra pay. Big tech firms also persuaded the federal government to loosen regulations on H1b work visas for tech workers.

Soon tech companies were laying off many of their IT people, saying they earned too much, and replacing them with foreign IT workers as cheap labor. One American IT person might be replaced by two or three people on work visas making far less money than their predecessors, and willing to work longer hours. This began driving IT salaries down across the board.

Back when this was happening, overseas companies supplying tech workers began providing them with cheap barracks style housing, so they could save much of their earnings and return home wealthy by their home countries' standards.

And like many other college graduates, laid off IT workers were stuck with those gargantuan student loans, unable to afford having children or buying homes. I know someone who graduated from law school nearly 20 years ago, who has barely made a dent on his loan and will likely be paying it for the rest of his life. And this is just for law school, he got his BA on a scholarship.

The goal of the oligarchy is to undo the entire New Deal and force the vast majority of Americans into menial work that does not pay benefits.