Passive aggressive complaints

Let’s be honest. Things are not as bad as the complaining people want it to be. How many of you were better off under Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama? I’m not mentioning Trump or Biden since they’re too close in time.

So c’mon, raise your hand and tell me about how good everything was when those former guys were in command?

No emotional outbursts, you have to document how good things were with solid sources. Obscure TikTok videos, YouTube videos etc, left wing/right wing media outlets and etc don’t count. It has to be peer reviewed scientifically verified sources.

This is really a generational question.

My son (26) and DIL make over 100k combined.

They are nowhere close to being able to afford even a fixer upper home in ANY slightly decent town within a 3 county range. They pay $2200 a month for a small apartment.
My house, bought 10 yrs ago at $352K, is now worth more than double that. But let's not talk about the explosion in property taxes and homeowners insurance costs.

But the equity in the house means we're ok.

If you are NOT a Gen-xer or Boomer, you likely are doing waaay worse than we were at their age, under those administrations.

So it's VEREY bad for VERY many people. Mostly under 45.

If you are going to be honest ... Let’s be relevant.

If people are complaining it has to do with current situations .....which would dictate that the comparisons are appropriately in line with the dissatisfaction.

Things became incredibly better under President Reagan. That's probably why he won his 2nd term by a historical landslide. The other names listed were all just bumps in the road until we came to President Trump's term. A lot of people did a lot better under Trump. The last 4 years have probably been the most disastrous this nation has ever seen save for the Civil War years. Our govmint seems to be at war both with the people and with the US Constitution. I suspect the individuals who do not see that are in delusion and have absorbed too much propaganda from our "main stream" news sources as well as our current govmint.

Ecclesiastes 7:10 says, "Say not, 'Why were the former days better than these?' For it is not from wisdom that you ask this." The NLT says, "Don’t long for 'the good old days.' This is not wise." Looking back and pining and trying to capture some past time that was "so great" is foolish and a waste of time. It doesn't matter who was in office in the past, or whether things were better in someone's opinion; the wise thing to do is look ahead and try to deal with the present in the best way possible. We can learn from the past, but trying to recapture it is foolhardy. This is the scriptural way, and it's the smart thing to do.

I've said this before, for close to 30 years i literally see no difference in my day-to-day life in regards to my standard of living. In fact it has increased since i was in college. But it makes no difference who is or was President in my day-to-day life.
What i have noticed is how society has embraced some insane ideas and has confused language and some ideas for the sake of "Progressivness" which started about 10-15 years ago when Obama made it official with this bathroom legislation.
Which has led us at this point in time into the clown-world where we are literally living in the movie Idiocracy.
So Trump, is the blunt instrument to this imbalance but again it has no bearing on my economy. It has effected language and in-turn it has affected quality due to DEI hires, but other than that, my day-to-day economical situation is just fine.
Economy will get effected eventually if we let DEI unchecked though. Which is why again, Trump is the right instrument for that.

That's the first thing I recall you saying that I can agree wholeheartedly with.

Spending time griping about the present and dreaming about the past is something the Israelites did a lot back in Moses' day. And we all remember what happened to them. Of course they were griping about God directly... We only complain about him indirectly by complaining about our situation. But it's still not very effective.

I will say this: there sure is a lot more going out to eat these days. We couldn't afford that back when I was a kid.

There sure is a lot more access to information these days. I would never have been able to buy a smartphone back when I was a kid, even if they existed.

You can use the pet groomer method if you want. There are three pet salons within just a few miles of where I live. And I live in Southwest Tennessee, where non-essentials like that are always more rare than what you find on the coast. If even Southwest Tennessee has them in such numbers, I would say we are doing pretty well these days.

This thread has got me reminiscing...

Back in the day, "they are poor" meant something like, "they may have enough cans of beans to eat this week, but they are going to have to hustle if they want to keep eating next week."

These days, "they are poor" means something like, "they can't afford unlimited data, so depending on how much they have been using their smartphones this month, it might take somebody in their family a few minutes to download that funny TikTok video on slower data."

Going on a backpacking trip down memory lane...

I remember back in the day I used to be a magnet for old computers. The place where I was gainfully employed, friends, friends of friends, random acquaintances, anybody who had an old computer, they seemed magically attracted to me and curiously disposed to give me them.

I made it a hobby to clean them up, reinstall the OS and drivers, install some useful free programs and games and give them to poor families who needed only a basic computer to get online and check email and stuff.

My greatest haul was one time when a sysadmin was cleaning out his garage. He gave me 11 computers, plus assorted monitors, keyboards, mice and other stuff. His wife sure was glad to see all that stuff go. Four of them worked straight off and I got parts from enough of the dead ones to get two others running. That was fun.

These days I can't give away desktop computers... Or laptops... Or tablets... Or even cheaper smartphones. Everybody wants the latest iPhone and nothing else will do, no matter how relatively poor they are.

You can't even give away a can of beans or corn or chili these days. If it's not a whole turkey or ham, nobody wants it.

So...

Yeah, I'd say we're doing pretty good these days.

I grew up dirt poor. Every president has left me better off than his predecessors. Harris/Trump won’t change that. To me the economy is the most important thing, even if that sounds selfish.

I'm actually way better off now than I was in 2019. Not because of anything Trump or Biden did, but because I made a decision to leave all and follow Him. If God is for us, who can be against us? Romans 8:31 He has blessed me above and beyond anything I could've hoped for. Even when the odds said I should've been out for the count, He worked miracles and rescued me.

Everyone always praises Reagan, but I'd say that was the worst time of my life. It was a time of great struggle. My family wasn't doing well at all and we didn't like Reagan. Clinton wasn't great either. I did better under Bush than any of those presidents.

You have not been affected by inflation in any way?

One would have to determine exactly how much influence and what type does the president have over the economy.

Not really sure we can consider "economics" a science either, it is debatable.

So let the Tik Tok, You Tube etc., videos role...

I have no idea what inflation is ... thank God!
My situation has only been improving since college and now i can do things that i couldn't do in college. Like, me and the whole family were able to eat outside in restaurants for the whole summer with very minimal cooking at home because we wanted to enjoy the beach and the sun. That was just restaurants among other things.
Now, you might be saying: Are you a millionaire?
I wish.
I don't even have a million dollars.
What i don't have is debt!
This gives me a lot of flexibility because i know the cash flow that comes in every month and i am able to live my life around that, almost like a millionaire ... thank God again.
So, i have no idea what inflation is. I know that the meat and dairy has increased in supermarkets, but so has my salaries while i paid off all my debts in the past, which allows me more cash to save and spend.

You don't need a lot of money to live a full life anyway. But as i've said in USA, only if you have mental or physical problems, would be a reason for someone to be poor, because there's money to be made everywhere here.

Yes I have had heard it from family members that they found it a challenge under Reagan.

He did cut domestic spending, decreased corporate tax, worked against unions and increased military spending so depending which side of the fence one was on, one either prospered or was more impoverished.

I think that the comparison needs to be made across generations, so yes hopefully if one has made good life choices they should be able to see a positive outcome in a country like the USA once one is done college.

For the sake of discussion, apart from data lol, I would say that many people have a higher standard of living which is accompanied by personal debt.

I would say unless you are a very good investor, willing to take risk that savings are being affected by inflation.

I don't know anything about stock market either. I'm old school like that, for better or worse.
I know real estate investment but i don't like to play educated guesses in the casino ...errr ... i mean stock markets.
I know you can make millions in stocks, but it's just not for me.

USA is blessed with abundance despite the doom and gloom news we hear daily.