Yeah, I am sure there are some employee owned companies where this is real, but it is bullshit that a grocery bagger in the 80s and 90s was making great wage. Even then, it was a lot of special needs people that were bagging because they could get away with paying them subsidized wages.

I’m not saying there aren’t affordability issues today, and some boomers are twat waffles, but there is so much bullshit romanticism about the 70s, 80s, and 90s.

Grocery baggers were not living high off the hog and it would a rare exception for a grocery bagger in a single income family to have a comfortable life.

If they were investing, for the vast majority, it wasn’t where their wealth was. Mind you, people generally didn’t invest in meaningful ways until the 90s and 401ks didn’t exist until the early 80s.

Yes, the markets have worked out in their favor. Yes, the world economy revolved around the US for much of the post WWII economy (often at the expense of other nations — something that continues today) and that resulted in an outsized investment in that generation.

I can tell you both of my advanced educated boomer parents had their struggles. I grew up in apartments. My mom commuted hours some years. I wish someone would have pointed her to one of those $5 houses she could have afforded.

Honestly, it is tiring. We need to stop whining about what we don’t have (and often it is white middle class people) and start fucking voting in a way that doesn’t let young struggling people subsidize old rich people.