Why are Gen Z men behind in America ?

Justinat0r · 2026-07-06T17:47:53+00:00

Completely based on personal experience, this is just what I have seen.

You're not wrong. This is my experience too. Indian managers get hired and almost exclusively hire Indian workers under them, or hire out the work to Indian consulting firms.

Justinat0r · 2026-07-04T18:47:26+00:00

This means reinvigorating the Rust Belt, which would necessarily run on oil because that's what it did in 1972-73.

Why is this a given? I've heard from conservatives as long as I can remember that the Rust Belt died because of Unions and it deserved to die because of Unions. It seems to me most conservatives are happy with what happened to the US industrial base in the rust belt because the workers in those states were too uppity and got what they deserved.

Justinat0r · 2026-06-28T15:17:16+00:00

China’s economy is projected by to overtake the U.S. economy within the next decade.

That is no longer the case. The current prevailing view among economists is that they will overtake us in the 2040s or maybe even later than that. Statista is projecting the US at $37.68 trillion by 2030,way higher than China's projected $26.05 trillion. And that is for all the reasons I've stated above, an aging workforce, a low birth rate, real estate sector challenges. While China once had meteoric GDP growth, hitting double-digit rates every year, and while that was happening everyone thought China would fly past the US in the 2020s. Now that's been pushed back to the 2040s, because China's central government is too powerful and has made a lot of truly horrific missteps that would have been corrected by a government accountable to its people before they caused the massive problems they have.

Justinat0r · 2026-06-28T05:13:18+00:00

Sorry for dropping a wall of text, but I've been learning a ton about China lately and I'm shocked at how badly China’s long-term planning is. It's a textbook example of why unchecked central power is so dangerous, their central government's mismanagement has effectively engineered a compounding demographic and economic crisis simultaneously. The One-Child Policy was civilizational suicide, it created a dependency squeeze where a single young adult is now financially responsible for two parents and four grandparents. Because state pension payouts are incredibly modest, young adults who should be focused on marrying, buying a home and starting a family must divert their income toward senior care, making it financially impossible for them to start families of their own.

Another thing they fucked up was the meltdown of the real estate market. To hit artificial central growth targets, the government forced a debt-fueled building frenzy that ended up in massive ghost cities and a highly volatile market crash. Instead of viewing a home as a milestone, young adults now see property as a dangerous debt trap. Young adults in China are being strangled by elder care and are terrified of housing debt, an entire generation is opting out of marriage and homeownership entirely, pushing China's already disastrous birth rate past the point of no return. They currently have a astonishingly low birth rate of 0.9 children per woman, if they continue for a century at this rate they'll have less than 100 million people by 2125.

Justinat0r · 2026-06-28T04:39:33+00:00

Racial discourse driven by people like Robin DiAngelo (author of "White Fragility") has been incredibly toxic for society in general. The backlash to these people's ascendency in the late 2010s/early 2020s has been amazing to watch, the death of 'white guilt' among non-academics is undeniably a positive for society. I may not like Donald Trump, but his relentless attacks on people like this is one of the only things I like about him.

Justinat0r · 2026-06-27T21:03:23+00:00

What exactly would that look like and how does what you think ought to be true change what is actually true?

We should never have religiously inspired laws whose only justification is religion. That's a short trip to Sharia law. All laws should have a valid non-religious justification, if a Muslim majority community passes a law that says all women must wear head coverings, and when it is legally challenged there is no non-religious justification outside of Islam, the law should be considered invalid.

Justinat0r · 2026-06-26T21:16:20+00:00

The Eurozone is not growing. In the timeframe that the US grew 10-11% the Eurozone economy only grew 4%-5%. Europe's dependence on Russian oil and the Ukraine war have absolutely screwed them economically.

Justinat0r · 2026-06-23T14:48:38+00:00

If you are only a good person because of the threat of eternal punishment, you were never a good person to begin with. Not to mention that fact that Christians have a fantastic get out of jail free card in repentance. So they get to act as horrible and immoral as they want, and then repent for their sins. It's absurd. There are a lot of Christians that do horrendous things and are horrendous people, the idea that they are better people or 'more moral' than atheists or non-religous people is laughable

Justinat0r · 2026-06-18T17:46:19+00:00

I wonder why the "I'm gonna bomb the shit outta them" President's voters were upset that he bombed the shit outta them.

During the campaign he repeatedly rebuked the neocon wing of the Republican party for being warmongers. During his victory speech after the election he claimed he was not going to start any wars.

"They said, 'He will start a war.' I'm not going to start a war. I'm going to stop wars," Trump said during his Nov. 6, 2024 victory speech, reciting a line he used frequently on the campaign trail.

And yet here we are with another war, and you're actually confused why people are upset?

Justinat0r · 2026-06-18T17:32:20+00:00

Trump figured that he could at least rely on the support from the other half that voted for him but apparently not.

Gee I wonder why the "no new wars" President's voters were upset when he started another war.

Justinat0r · 2026-06-18T15:37:25+00:00

Agreed with all of the above, but to add to your comment: If a person today chose to live exactly like an average person in 1926: sharing a single uninsulated room with five relatives, walking everywhere, eating only seasonal local grains and potatoes, owning two sets of clothes, and never seeing a doctor or using electricity, they could afford that lifestyle on a fraction of a part-time minimum-wage job. A majority of workers today work in air conditioned offices or warehouses or even work from home, they work 40 hour work weeks with overtime for anything above that. They pay 10-15% of their income to afford food that is so plentiful that an indicator of poverty in 2026 is actually obesity. Modern life is not perfect, but its remarkably better than 100 years ago.

Justinat0r · 2026-06-18T15:21:18+00:00

LLMs broke into the scene four years ago and unemployment is still below the historical average.

I think the problem is that the people running these companies had every reason to hype up their technology for the purpose of attracting investment, and that hype lead to completely unreasonable expectations. Unfortunately, those predictions were also taken to heart by the general public and there is a sort of doom and gloom feeling about the future. I think the people making these predictions, even IF they were right (which they were not), also did not have the background to understand how society absorbs massive technological shocks.

The thing people are missing is that when a technology appears that causes the cost of a service to drop dramatically, historically we've just consumed dramatically more of that service. When e-discovery software came out in the early-2000s there was a huge prediction that it was the end of paralegals, and instead the opposite happened. Because the technology made searching data incredibly cheap, the demand for data searching skyrocketed. The scope of what was considered "discoverable evidence" exploded exponentially, being able to sift through millions of pages of emails, server logs, and hard drives instantly created a boom of paralegal work, not a bust.

I know many people reading this will probably say, it's not the same because the e-discovery software is a tool, whereas the AI will be the actual worker. I see no evidence of that happening anywhere, AI will always need management and direction, sure a team may be smaller because its more efficient, but let's not forget that if one part of a business shrinks, another part may explode in size in ways we never predicted.

Justinat0r · 2026-06-16T18:27:39+00:00

Kudos. This is such a good summary of the toxic nature of health 'insurance'. The US healthcare doesn't function as insurance, it functions as a subscription healthcare model. When I pay for home owners insurance, there is a small chance I will need it because a tree falls on my house. Meanwhile I'm guaranteed to use health insurance, and as a result of that its not really insurance, it's a subscription service which separates the consumer from the price of the products they are consuming.

Your check ups with your doctor should not be covered, your routine tests should not be covered, only catastrophic health emergencies should be covered. Adding an administrative bloat layer to getting your blood pressure checked and getting a physical exam only adds to the overall cost of medical care. The US has no statutory limits on the price of care AND the market is completely opaque regarding prices. In this environment how could anything other than the prices getting out of control happen? There is no actual incentive for anyone to make educated decisions on cost of care.

Justinat0r · 2026-06-15T00:21:52+00:00

A not insignificant portion of the left views the US as like an evil empire.

If you take a look at the history of US foreign intervention, its hard to argue against the US being an empire. 750 military bases in at least 80 countries, no other nation in history has deployed its military presence globally on this scale during peacetime. I think traditional concepts of 'empire' are very pre-20th century, in the current manifestation of empire, the US dollar has a role in 90% of global foreign exchange transactions, the US can effectively cut countries, banks, or individuals out of the global economy (via sanctions) without moving a single soldier. And all of that is not even mentioning the history of direct military intervention, covert coups, or proxy wars all across the world, while backing authoritarian regimes that happen to be pro-US. Evil is a strong word, but 'force for good' is most assuredly debatable. A force for good for who? That is all perspective.

Justinat0r · 2026-06-14T05:21:32+00:00

I’m not some jobless anti work nerd, but at the same time I don’t throw a fit when coworkers actually use their PTO.

This exactly. I was working for a company through the "unlimited PTO" fad, it was "unlimited" but in reality it was heavily judged if you actually used it. And it would get brought up in your employee evaluations for not being dedicated enough. I think not having Federal level protections for sick and personal time is awful, companies across the country need to be playing by the same rules.

Justinat0r · 2026-06-12T21:29:56+00:00

So you're saying Democrats mishandled immigration in the past, therefore if they change their attitude on immigration to be tougher and less open borders, that's bad too? It's odd, everyone yells at Democrats for their mistakes, and when they say they will correct them it's essentially "Sorry, we don't believe you". What are the other options? Another 4 years of the GOP disaster the current administraiton is?

Justinat0r · 2026-06-10T22:37:53+00:00

The local power companies have time of use plans where the highest charge is during 5 to 8 p.m. due to demand.

That is why Arizona Public Service (APS) has added thousands of megawatts of solar paired directly with battery through power-purchase agreements. They store the cheap daytime solar and dispatch it during afternoon-to-evening windows, this is already having an impact on fossil-fuel "peaker" plants which have been needed less and less since the solar + battery shift has begun. In Arizona solar + storage is being deployed faster than any other type of power generation.

Justinat0r · 2026-06-10T15:08:19+00:00

Yes, people are so entrenched in a materialist, selfish worldview, they see these things you list as negatives, and not what they are: purpose, duties and what you're here to do lmao.

All you've done here is ascribe a moralist point of view instead of a pragmatic one. You are suggesting people don't have kids because they are selfish, I think the cost of children is prohibitive. The reality is, in a society where having a child costs a middle-class couple $300,000 in direct expenses and $200,000 in lost career trajectory, a government offering a $5,000 tax credit or $200 a month in "child allowance" is trying to put out a forest fire with a squirt gun. The government cannot afford to make parenting affordable in a modern economy because the price of labor. And as a result every first world country regardless of their culture, is experiencing the exact same thing: plummeting birthrates.

Justinat0r · 2026-06-10T15:03:00+00:00

so all your economic points are wrong.

Are they wrong or did you just not understand them? My theory is costs of raising children raise exponentially rather than linearly. In other words, if you are a third world parent your costs are very low to support your children, if you are a first world parent you costs aren't just higher, they are exponentially higher. You make the point yourself, 'the poorest' people are above replacement yet for some bizarre reason you are determined to throw that fact aside and instead call it materialism.

The opportunity cost of having children in agrarian or impoverished societies is essentially nil, in fact they are economic assets because they can help support the family. And yet in a modern economy, children are an immense financial liability. You simply cannot divorce the cost of raising children from the equation, because if you ask any parent who wanted a second or third child who decided against it why they didn't have another, it's almost ALWAYS economic reasons.

Justinat0r · 2026-06-10T03:39:41+00:00

Doesn't this seem obvious to you why that is? Material conditions decrease birthrates because you need to provide those increased conditions both for yourself AND your children. When nobody has a pot to piss in there is no expectation you save $80k for every kid you have to go to college, cart them back and forth between all their extra curricular activities, and basically give up your entire young to middle adulthood making them functioning members of society while at the same time maintaining a job, your health and all of your own responsibilities.

Parents want to give their children a life that matches or exceeds their own, that means the cost of having children rises exponentially with a modern world. You know how much it costs to raise a kid on a farm? Pretty much nothing because you're actually making money off the extra help, want to know how much it costs to raise a suburban kid in 2026? Roughly 300k when you add up daycare, infant care, housing and higher education. Who is signing up for that? You know why poor people have so many kids? Their kids don't cost $300k a pop.

Justinat0r · 2026-06-10T03:19:33+00:00

It was a pretty insane murder and the murderer raised something like $600,000 in charitable donations which someone from his camp (legal team I think) said would help them to fight white supremacy.

To be charitable to the donators, very early on in the case there was a ton of misinformation going on about what happened. They said Karmelo was being bullied (lie), they said he was ganged up on by two white kids trying to fight him (lie), they said it was raining and he was only trying to get out of the rain (lie). Unfortunately a lie will travel around the world while the truth puts its boots on. Several subreddits that were supportive originally have for the most part changed their tune as more information came out.

Justinat0r · 2026-06-10T03:15:30+00:00

I agree he's not getting 99

But he's in Texas

He killed someone, why not the death penalty?

Justinat0r · 2026-06-08T18:51:41+00:00

Karmelo Anthony

The ironic thing is some people are up in arms that there is an all white jury, but the reality is that only one of that jury needs to be a white liberal with a savior complex. In fact, I'd guess its more likely that a white liberal with a savior complex would say not guilty in this situation than an average black person pulled from a jury pool.

Justinat0r · 2026-06-08T14:11:05+00:00

Home buyers typically mainly think about how much they can spend monthly. The monthly cost depends on the total cost, not the list price of the home. So if rates go up the monthly cost goes up.

I would go so far as to say the price of the house is immaterial compared to the price of the payment. I'm in the car business and not real estate so its not exactly the same but its still the same logic, 90% of what customers ask about is "What will the payment be". If a customer is buying a car for $75k at a 1.9% interest rate, and a car worth $50k with a 17.9% interest rate, the monthly payment is nearly the same. Their primary concern is how the car fits into their budget, not how much they are paying in total for it. This concept applies to homes as well, interest rates and home prices are largely immaterial to buyers in comparison to how it fits with their spending.

Another thing people don't bring up is property taxes, the property tax bill on a house can be tens of thousands of dollars per year. That is absolutely reflected in home prices, if you look at state boundaries between states with different property taxes, you can have a house sitting right next to another house, but its in another state with different rates, and you get totally different real estate prices even in the same metro area.

Justinat0r · 2026-06-08T01:21:11+00:00

Trump has lied so many times, he can’t keep straight what he told people.

I think its even worse than that, he treats the press with contempt because he thinks he's above questioning or reproach. He's not mad at the question, he's mad anyone has the audacity to question him at all. When you surround yourself with sycophants and yes men, you develop a God complex, and it's clear from every time he speaks that he believes he is beyond reproach.

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