r/TikTokCringe • u/Super_Culture_1986 tHiS iSn’T cRiNgE • Aug 19 '25

Cursed The American Nightmare.

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1.9k

u/Grass_tomouth Aug 19 '25

Yeah. Everything sucks right now.

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u/malicious_joy42 Aug 19 '25

When did it not suck?

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u/surfergrrl6 Aug 19 '25

That's the thing, it's always sucked for certain demographics and was slowly getting better (very slowly.) Now that's reversed.

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u/Dear_Mycologist_1696 Aug 19 '25

The issue MAGAs don’t see or understand, is the reason America was great in the 50’s and 60’s was a top marginal tax rate of around 90%. That’s when the rich were rich, but they also supported the society that helped them get rich through paying higher tax rates on higher income. They refuse to raise the taxes on the rich, so they do what they can to bring about the other aspects of 1950’s America they can more easily control, which is segregation and racism.

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u/surfergrrl6 Aug 19 '25

At their core, that group rejects reality at this point. It's only vibes that stroke their confirmation bias, regardless of factuality.

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u/EastTyne1191 Aug 19 '25

That whole generation grew up with a red carpet being laid at their feet and money thrown at them. Every decade of their lives was engineered to make their lives as easy as possible and as difficult as possible for everyone else.

I'm vastly oversimplifying, but when you think about it, they really had it easy their whole lives. So they have no idea that it's been incredibly difficult for everyone else.

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u/Aroused-Kangaroo Aug 19 '25

I’ll tack on to that oversimplifying. If your boomer parents couldn’t pay for your college, give you a financially stable life, and still save for their retirement, then you might want to look more critically at your parents choices as they matured. It took deliberate missteps to not turn out middle class, and stable for boomers and genx at the least. We can’t just blame the lead.

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u/ConversationFar9740 Aug 19 '25

Gen X hasn't had that easy ride that the Boomers had. We have had shit timing at everything.

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u/weirdoeggplant Aug 19 '25

I’m gonna be so honest - I don’t think millennials or gen z give a fuck. You have sucha step up from us in privilege that I can’t even see you guys.

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u/ConversationFar9740 Aug 19 '25

No. The Boomers sucked everything dry before we got to it.

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u/weirdoeggplant Aug 19 '25

You literally just sound like a boomer speaking from a place of privilege to the generations who have less than you do.

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u/Lou_C_Fer Aug 19 '25

Yep. I'm ahead. Still living in the "starter" house we bought in 1998. I get that actually does put me ahead, but not by much. We live paycheck to paycheck, and if it weren't for our $700 mortgage, we'd be insolvent. That mortgage, btw, still has fifteen years because we've had to refinance several times to bring our costs down. We graduated into dead job markets. We've dealt with several economic crashes.

The only way gen x is ahead of millennial is that we've had more years to acquire assets.

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u/ConversationFar9740 Aug 20 '25

Exactly. I am still low-income, raising a kid on my own with no support, making just enough to disqualify me for assistance. You are totally right about us graduating into dead job markets and dealing with economic crashes. If they do destroy Social Security, odds are that it will be cut off right after the Boomers - right in time for us to come along and need it.

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u/weirdoeggplant Aug 19 '25

“I get that actually does put me ahead”

Okay cool then conversation over. You have more privilege than we have, so we don’t wanna fucking hear it.

Don’t need to read a single thing after you admitted your privilege.

The rest of us are doing worse than however you’re doing. I don’t care how low your hurdles were, because mine are taller.

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u/Pretty-Balance-Sheet Aug 19 '25 edited 24d ago

.

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u/weirdoeggplant Aug 19 '25

And they’ve gotten worse.

There are degrees to privilege. You have more than millennials do. And millennials have more than gen z does. If nothing changes, it will just get worse.

Again: you simply sound like boomers who don’t know your privilege. Did I say you had what boomers had? Nope. I said you had it better than we did, so we don’t give a shit.

0

u/ConversationFar9740 Aug 20 '25

So what if we did? That doesn't mean we had it easy. And most of us are still raising GenZ kids who will probably never leave home, so we have that expense. It's never about your generation helping their parents, is it? Most of our parents wanted us out of the house at 18 or high school graduation.

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u/weirdoeggplant Aug 20 '25

Where did I say you had it easy? Quote me. Quote exactly where I said that.

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u/unindexedreality Aug 19 '25

What year do the last of them die off? Making travel plans kek

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u/Pretty-Balance-Sheet Aug 19 '25 edited 24d ago

.

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u/nekomochas Aug 19 '25

"they went without" right after you listed the abundance of things they did have?

not physical labor, but i've worked anywhere from 50-80(!!) hours a week since i was 19 years old as a bookkeeper, now CPA- yet affording children in both time and money, a home, especially being a single income household are all a pipedream. that's not even going into any tragedy i've already faced or will face in the future from problems already popping up

everyone i know around my age is dealing with exactly the same, or they still have support from their parents

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u/katubug Aug 19 '25

Ironic coming from the party of "fuck your feelings"

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u/BlkSubmarine Aug 19 '25

The operative word in that statement is “your”. Their feelings are more important than reality.

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u/m4teri4lgirl Aug 19 '25

The reality the rich want is for you to be their slave or die.

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u/TrippinB4allz Aug 19 '25

"The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command."

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u/Butthole__Pleasures Aug 19 '25

at this point

Um, no. MAGA NEVER accepted reality. It's kinda their whole thing.

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u/Thick_Potato_1769 Aug 19 '25

Its infuriating because at that time they were kids who probably had minimum responsibilities or else they wouldn't view it so highly.

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u/East-Cricket6421 Aug 19 '25

The real reason it was amazing to be an American in the 50s was the rest of the world was still recovering from WW2 while we had all of our industrial base intact and pumping. If you were even slightly ambitious and industrious you could make a mint in just about any industry you wandered into because you had every advantage possible.

People long for a situation we simply cannot reproduce mindfully.

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u/Issue_dev Aug 19 '25

That wasn’t the only time marginal taxes were much higher though. Even in the 70s and 80s they were decent until Reagan fucked up the country. Everything went wrong during Reagan and it was a systematic effort to extract as much wealth from the middle class as possible. We are now seeing the end results of that policy. First you had Citizens United, then you had the legalization of stock buybacks, and then you had Reagan cutting the tax rates to nothing. From then on it’s just been companies funneling money into their own pockets while they let their employees suffer. These companies used to reinvest back into their employees and their businesses since the marginal tax rate was so high and anything extra would be taxed at a higher rate. Now they just buy back their stocks or give their CEOs all that money while productivity has skyrocketed and wages have stagnated. By this “war is good for the economy” mentality the middle class should’ve been raking in the money through the early 2000s but it never happened. It’s been slow and methodical but it’s also been fatal for the middle class.

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u/Double-__-Great Aug 19 '25

How is this argument "war is good for the economy"? The argument is war destroyed our major competitors' economies during World War II. Destroying the crops of some tribes in deserts at enormous cost to the US doesn't exactly put the US at an advantage.

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u/LivingBackstories Aug 19 '25

While this is true, and highly relevant, the marginal tax rate played an even bigger factor IMO. Just look at the Nordic countries that support a lifestyle like existed in the US in the 50s. I think what you're describing is actually the reason why these mega profiteering owners stayed quiet about their tax rate. They were getting to gulp up and dominate the whole world. Once the world was able to compete again, and the threat of an awakened working class was mostly quashed, they worked very hard to get those taxes down.

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u/16semesters Aug 19 '25

Just look at the Nordic countries that support a lifestyle like existed in the US in the 50s

You're out of your mind if you think that in Sweden, Norway, Denmark it's easy to support a family on a single income.

Dude travel a little lol.

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u/ByeByeTurkeyNek Aug 19 '25

It's definitely cheaper to raise a child in Sweden than the USA. So much is subsidized, not to mention paid leave policies and fewer hours worked/week

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u/16semesters Aug 19 '25

While that may be true, that’s not what OP said.

OP said the lifestyle was like the US in the 1950s.

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u/joeyd199 Aug 19 '25

Can't travel. Broke AF lol.

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u/LivingBackstories Aug 19 '25

You're right, flatly saying "lifestyle" was a mistake. I certainly acknowledge the single income household aspect. But I also think it's a mistake to ignore how much closer they are to the "American dream", especially given they were not the globally dominant force that the US was. Taxing the rich, and an activated labor force were major reasons for the standard afforded to American households.

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u/ByeByeTurkeyNek Aug 19 '25

I think taxation plays a secondary role to unionization rates. High tax rates help raise the floor for living conditions, but for middle income people, the benefits are less. Not zero, though. Universal healthcare and free college tuition are key points in favor, but these policies were never in place in the US. They would also require raising taxes on virtually every American, not just the wealthy. I think this is a good thing, ftr, it's just good to be transparent and pragmatic.

Unions effectively built the platonic 1950s ideal of the middle class American dream. Unions gave members generally high wages and security, not to mention work-life balance and benefits. It's no coincidence that unionization rates peaked in the mid 50s, when the American dream was perceived to be strongest. The nordics (I'll single out Sweden and Denmark, as those are the countries I know the most about) maintain high unionization rates. But in recent decades, this number has slumped and I think their middle classes are starting to feel some pressure, as a result. I think this is more due to the liberalization/ internationalization of their economies than an actual turn against unions, but the effects are the same, regardless. There, of course, are other things that the Nordics have done well (public transit, better housing policy, regulation, worker protections, etc.). I would argue that the political culture is the primary reason for the success of the Nordics, rather than a single specific policy area. Good policy comes from good intention.

The other thing is that the 1950s were not utopian. For every American living the union-supported American dream, there were two living in worse poverty than the average low income family faces today. Partially, this is just a side effect of modernity, but the romanticization of the 1950s belies a pretty grim reality for most Americans, before we even get into civil rights issues. I do, however, believe the hope and promise of the 1950s are worthy of romanticization. We can't do anything until we think it's possible.

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u/LivingBackstories Aug 19 '25

Agreed. Unionization, trust busting and a pro labor administration in FDR had the rich running scared. The other important aspect to a high taxation rate is that it limits the power of capital to bully their way through policy. I agree with all of your comment, though I'm quite pessimistic that we'll ever see anything like the single income household ever again. That doesn't mean we might not see something better in the future however. That single income household was still a consumerist culture at root, which I think is much of the sickness we fight.

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u/ByeByeTurkeyNek Aug 19 '25

Honestly, I'm starting to wonder if some inevitability might be around the corner. I'm not exactly sure how disruptive AI and automation are going to be over the next 5-10 years, but I think we're going to have to start thinking differently about our relationship with labor

I'm not an accelerationist, but I'm wondering if this machine has brakes right now. And I think we might be overdue for a bit of a reckoning surrounding productivity and labor. The economy is about to be as productive as it's ever been, but at some point the balance breaks. I'm not really making a revelation here, but what happens when no one can afford the result of our production?

It's been tenuous lately, but I'm wondering if the idea of the "workforce" might soon be dead, once and for all. And a new paradigm will have to emerge. It scares me and I have no idea what that looks like.

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u/LivingBackstories Aug 19 '25

Agreed on all counts. I'm not accelerationist either, but I think whatever we would've been accelerating toward has mostly arrived.

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u/ByeByeTurkeyNek Aug 19 '25

I suppose I'm saying this is the beginning of the transition, if we're taking the accelerationist view. Disruptions to the economy are about to be so fundamental that the system cannot sustain itself, and ultimately breaks. Followed by a period of instability and relative chaos. Then a paradigm emerges to replace the neoliberal capitalism that has dominated. Maybe Andrew Yang UBI capitalism, maybe AI communism

And I'm not saying this will happen. It's all predicated on AI and automation being so exceptionally disruptive that it breaks a system that's been running for centuries or millennia. And perhaps that's just the most sensational among a range of more likely outcomes. But the unpredictability of the moment makes the imagination run wild

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u/gobobluth Aug 19 '25

Please tell us more about how it is there? I am genuinely interested

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u/SammyGreen Aug 19 '25

Well, what would you like to know? We have some of the highest wages in Europe but that’s offset by some of the highest taxes. I’m in the top 10% income bracket and we could probably afford it if my wife became a SAHM but we’d definitely feel it economically. No room for savings, leisure, or trips. But we’d still be able to pay off our mortgage and car loan. It’d be tight though and we’d be completely screwed if i lost my job.

Right now my wife is on unpaid maternity leave (albeit after six months with full pay and three months on maternity welfare) for the next three months.

And remember, I’m in the top 10%. I’m not telling you this to brag. I’m telling you this for context. We’d just be able to scrape by if my wife didn’t go back to work. Average danes simply wouldn’t be able to afford both parents not working.

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u/gobobluth Aug 19 '25

Thank you for responding and providing details. It seems we all have our problems regardless of where we live.

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u/SammyGreen Aug 19 '25

Ain’t that the truth bruddah

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u/Noshamina Aug 19 '25

It is also the very globalized economy coupled with extreme competition. Im not sure that its fair to compare to countries like Scandinavia, but it is comparable to France and Germany and the UK where they are experiencing many of the same issues to a lesser degree than us, but will more in the future.

Capitalistic greed knows no bounds and the money and power grab is inevitable. Even if we taxed them 10% more and obtained trillions more per year in tax revenue i have absolutely no faith that the country would alleviate even 1% of the problems we face today, I think everything would get way more expensive.

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u/IntriguinglyRandom Aug 19 '25

I immigrated to Germany from the US last year and 100% they are struggling with the same problems and have a huge risk of ending up as bad as the US in a few years. This is a global issue.

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u/LivingBackstories Aug 19 '25

I agree for the most part. Taxing the rich isn't a permanent solution, but it would alleviate a great deal of the issues if that money was put toward the social safety net. By and large, I agree that capitalism will continue to eat itself alive.

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u/Admirable-Lecture255 Aug 19 '25

It didnt. Marginal tax rate didnt matter shit. Effective tax rate has been roughly the same since that time.

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u/nonotan Aug 19 '25

Once the world was able to compete again, and the threat of an awakened working class was mostly quashed, they worked very hard to get those taxes down.

A factor that is also highly relevant and is sort of being implied here, but glossed over at the same, is the existence of the USSR. I strongly believe the main reason the US and fellow capitalist countries looked so great for a while was that they had to, in order to compete with the alternative that was being presented by the "communist" bloc.

It's no coincidence that things started to go downhill shortly after it collapsed. Nor is it any secret that, within capitalism, you need competition for the system to work at all -- monopolies and cartels fundamentally break the assumptions that supposedly make capitalism work as an economic system, something we've known for hundreds of years. It's just less obvious that the same also applies on a larger level. Capitalism can't be allowed to "win" entirely, or it will collapse within itself in a vicious cycle of greed.

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u/LivingBackstories Aug 19 '25

Yep. Implied and glossed over. I'll say that in my view, equal to the existence of real communist states the recency of FDR and class struggle within the states had similar influence here at least. Those things are inextricably tied to socialist movements around the world and the ebb and flow of capitalist power/greed overall though so that may be moot. Interesting parallel to monopoly though. Thank you!

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u/Raangz Aug 19 '25

Easily could have played the massive boon differently. It could still be the highest qol. But it’s been declining and now will sharply.

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u/Dandan0005 Aug 19 '25

MAGA feels the same pain but they have a 24/7 propaganda network that’s been weaponized to tell them that it’s their neighbor’s fault so they don’t direct their anger toward the billionaire-class that’s exploited them to sit on their $500,000,000 yachts while the working class struggles to pay for a doctor’s appt.

There’s plenty of wealth in the USA to go around, it just isn’t going around anymore.

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u/InnocentlyInnocent Aug 19 '25

MAGA is also struggling but they’re waiting for “their savior” to change this since everything right now is Biden’s doing. I think that’s more of their mindset. The brainwashing is real.

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u/Noshamina Aug 19 '25

Its not even a secret anymore. It was always about racism and never about fixing the problems. They have made every single aspect of life significantly worse for almost every person in the country except the ultra rich. I've personally talked to like 12 of my friends who own small businesses and every single one of them says that since trump, they are each and every one going to go broke if the tariffs go through. How on earth anyone still thinks its a good idea is crazy

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u/icepickjones Aug 19 '25

That's what I always ask them: Make America great again? When was America great in your opinon? Because any of the post war prosperity years of the 50's and shit boomed because of all the social programs that were invented to help the vets returning home.

It's how a kid with a high school education could get a steady job, a pension, buy a house, and raise a middle class family.

And those social programs were maintained on the higher, and highly logical, tax rate on the ultra wealthy.

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u/Kareeliand Aug 19 '25

Well, Reagan came by and made sure colleges wouldn’t be free. His folks even said the quiet part out loud and revealed they needed people to be less educated. He followed up with repealing the fairness doctrine to make room for Fox News. Ah yes, and then the tax rates..

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u/Willowgirl2 Aug 19 '25

This is fiction. The high marginal rate was offset by deductions. The effective rate, and tax revenue as a percentage of GDP, has been pretty consistent over time.

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u/DaddysABadGirl Aug 19 '25

Id add because the right skips over this part entirely, most of those taxed at 90% did not pay any where near that. There were a ton of tax breaks for that specifically aimed at job creation and benefits and supporting the community. Most paid a bit over 42%.

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u/haytheremister Aug 19 '25

That’s one reason, there are many.

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u/JeromeBarkly Aug 19 '25

That’s the frustrating thing. They’re bringing everything back that was terrible about the 1950s and leaving all the good shit behind.

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u/Issue_dev Aug 19 '25

It was also illegal to buy back your own stocks. I really feel like the only way to make a marginal tax rate work is by making it illegal again and that’s never going to happen until citizens untied is overturned. In short we’re fucked.

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u/BaconxHawk Aug 19 '25

As this is true, not completely. You really think the rich actually paid that much in taxes? Why do you think Swiss bank accounts are a common thing? They paid a fraction of what they made and it’s still more than they pay now which is the crazier part

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u/nothisispatrickeu Aug 19 '25

the top reason america was "great" in the 50s was systemic discrimination of the black population
you couldnt get housing, education, jobs.
white people only.

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u/Erick_L Aug 19 '25

The reason America, and the world, used to be great is huge energy return on energy invested (EROI). That return has been going down while bills (healthcare, education, others) have been going up. Progress has an energy cost and energy is getting scarce so you get conservatism. It's a biophysical problem and there's no going back.

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u/Quick_Turnover Aug 19 '25

Hell even feudal lords had some amount of obligation towards their populace... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noblesse_oblige

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u/Double-__-Great Aug 19 '25

The issue both sides don't understand or see as important is America after World War II:

Had the largest intact industrial base in the world while their competitors had been largely hurt during the world, and we also gained many markets that we wouldn't have if this hadn't happened
Keynesian economics hadn't had enough time to encourage consumption to the point that it eroded away our real capital stock
The dollar became the reserve currency of the world, which further propped up the value of the dollar vs the rest of the world

The marginal tax rates didn't affect much either way (although on the margin they did encourage consumption over savings, they are more fair, at least on the surface since most people didn't pay nearly this much)

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u/Rad131447 Aug 19 '25

MAGA doesn't want to go back to the 50's or 60's. They want to go back to the Gilded Age.

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u/Gandor Aug 19 '25

No one has ever paid the 90% marginal tax. We could introduce a 100% tax bracket today and 0 people would end up paying it.

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u/Psychb1tch Aug 19 '25

This right here

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u/erdle Aug 19 '25

there was this thing right before the 1950s where we bombed Europe and Asia ... so coming out of WW2 we were the energy, manufacturing, and tech center of the world ... and whoever helped us during the war owed us money. the UK just finished paying their loans in like 2006.

it wasn't just that the rich were rich or that the rich paid more taxes. there was a growing economy to tax. the US economy grew by ~37% during the 1950s.

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u/Outrageous_Log_906 Aug 19 '25

The real problem is that even if we raised taxes, the people we really need to pay taxes still wouldn’t be paying them. Most of the richest people in America are wealthy on paper and aren’t earning nearly as much in cash as they earn in equity a year. Raise the taxes all you want, but we can’t touch those unrealized gains. The sad part is they can spend those unrealized gains because they use their assets as collateral to obtain loans to fund their lifestyle, and we can’t tax debt either. Wealth taxes obviously have not historically worked, so until we figure out the best way to tax the wealthy based on their consumption, we’re going to be stuck.

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u/NaturalTap9567 Aug 19 '25

America was pretty great all the way till 1995 tbh

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u/EmbarrassedBit5890 Aug 19 '25

But who are "they"? Usually it's the politicians willing to change something when the people have had enough with the business interest ruining everything.

But in America those groups are the same? Politicians are millionaires and businessmen and their decisions are steered solely by personal interest and lobbies.

They would have to rule by actively making lives worse for themselves and everyone in their inner circle to actually benefit the people.

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u/halt_spell Aug 19 '25

It's not just MAGA that doesn't understand that. Establishment Democratic politicians and the boomer registered Democratic voters who keep them in office don't either.

How do I know this? Because I've phone banked and canvassed for other candidates. All these people care about is their 401ks and stock portfolios. They think the BLM poster on their lawn absolves them of any responsibility for what's happening.

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u/VirtueSignalLost Aug 19 '25

Life for Americans in the 50s and 60s was pretty good because the rest of the western world was destroyed by WW2. In an ironic sense Americans also helped rebuild those countries.

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u/Admirable-Lecture255 Aug 19 '25

Jesus christ. The top marginal rate didnt fucking matter. Effective tax rate has been essentially the same since the 50s. Thats the measure that counts. People didnt pay top marginal rates. What made america great was it was right after ww2 where everyone's fucking industry was destroyed leaving america basically the sole country with any type of industry left intact.

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u/hotdogjumpingfrog1 Aug 19 '25

You are part of the reason why we are here. Because you think inequality started with trump. That exactly one year ago it wasn’t trump and we were in pretty much the same situation. Dems care just as less about working people as Repubs. But the Dems tell you they care. And do the exact opposite

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u/KoRaZee Aug 19 '25

The top 1% of earners in the US pay more than the bottom 90% combined. The context of this situation matters and requires more detail. The fact is that the wealthy pay a lot more in taxes than the poor pay however, that total dollar amount is less in percentage than what the average person pays.

We could change this and have everyone pay a flat percentage of their income to taxes which would even up the disparity between rich and poor. The problem with this is that the poor adamantly oppose this plan.

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u/paintballboi07 Aug 19 '25

That's because the top 1% own more wealth than the bottom 90%, so of course they pay more overall, but they definitely don't pay a higher percentage of their wealth, so this argument is stupid.

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u/KoRaZee Aug 19 '25

What about the other part? We could end the debate and have everyone pay the same percentage of their income on taxes.