Wow, just wow

^100%. And my dad would have laughed at me if I told him I had it tough back in 1982. He’d be thinking, “Try fighting the Japs then coming home to work 2 jobs to afford a row home in Camden NJ”

The country was better off in 1982 because the national debt was only a trillion instead of 38 trillion dollars, our industrial base had not been offshored yet, we did not have three decades of trade deficits averaging 600 billion dollars a year yet, the country was 80% White instead of 55% White and we did not have a large population of elderly Whites relying on underfunded Social Security and Medicare systems.

I visited no strip clubs in the eighties and can't make a comparison there, though my local Indianapolis strip clubs are worse than fifteen years ago. Anyone else have any thoughts on that?

^ Around here strip clubs were hot or miss. The combat zone was dying and with it, extras. Other mass clubs, except for the Fuzzy Grape, now Mario's and the now gone Magic lantern, were so strict that if you brushed a dancer tipping a dollar in a garter you might get man handled and thrown out. No Champagne rooms at all. Not even in Rhode Island.

Wrt to strip clubs: Fort Myers, ten years ago, had very good day shifts and excellent nighttime dancers. Now, it is pretty awful.

Wrt to recent grads:Our culture has done an unforgivable disservice to our young people, ie Zoomers and Millennials. These are a coddled generation of entitled assholes who expect everything handed to them with as little effort from them as necessary. They need to learn how to lose gracefully and grow from it, how to go without and make do, and true self-reliance without constant external validation.

Wrt: the state of the country. Absolutely America was better in the 80s than today. Democrats were still shitty but still sane. Patriotism was trending and Americans still believed in knuckling down and grinding it out. Media was always biased but still ethical. Now everything serves a chosen narrative, the lowest common denominator is the standard for everything, and individual profit (not always monetary) means everything while the greater good and the social compact have been utterly discarded.

It sucks, but it's the world we created. As for the interviewee telling the OP " I forgive you for not understanding my illegitimate worldview", I had something like that happen to me once and I read him the riot act before giving him 10 seconds to get the fuck out of my building before I really lost it.

Although I agree things were more challenging in the 80s compared to now, there is selective figures addressed by the OP. No wage increases in current times when it was well known the unions had a stronghold back then that wrote in their contracts wage increases indexed to inflation. Less unions today (thank god) to impose their will in the workforce has kept current wage increases muted. In other words just like Bird/Jordan era being compared to LeBron/Curry, you can’t because conditions were/are different. All I know is every generations youth complains about the economy and their job prospects, and never have I ever heard a young person say how great those conditions are. Even old people complain about as much or more as today’s youth because there is more old farts around witt their confirmation bias appeasing other old farts. It’s too bad we’ve become a society of witch hunters looking to diminish anyone outside their preferred group. Time would be better spent minding your own business and taking care of yourself without comparing to anyone else.

^Sorry that the posting of facts upsets you, but the idea all young people bitched about the economy is so wrong. We always knew we had a future. We always knew we would do well. We did things ourselves to save money, spent less at clubs and bars and did house parties where we all brought food and drink to share. We made do, knowing we could rely on ourselves. By 1982 I had had a job of some form or another for 15 years. I've been working since I was 9, selling Hallmark greeting cards door to door. Stop pretending that young people today haven't done jack shit to improve their lives and just don't work hard.

I am not witch hunting. I am pointing out the obvious facts and I don't even blame young people. I blame their shitty Baby Boomer and Gen X parents for half and progressives who fucked up public education beyond belief for the other half of this. I was raised by a union public school teacher and now I tell all my clients that one form of child abuse is letting a unionized public-school teacher teach your child. Caveat: I live in one of the bluest, most progressive areas on earth, so my view is tainted living among the fuckwads called progressives, who are as useful today as the potato blight was in 1840s Ireland.

How rich of you to criticize whole generations upon a topic you have zero experience in, parenting. Sorry to frame your complaints with facts, too, regarding how situations change and you can’t compare apples to apples different eras. No one has to go on a weaving rant pushing some narrative regarding another’s point of view. Uppity righteousness is what has gotten America in its current political climate. Too bad you have to pile onto it.

Federal minimum wage in 1982 was $3.35 , in 2025 it's $7.25 Average home price in 1982 was $83,900 in 2025 it's $512,800. As an old guy I know my college education in the 1980's was dirt cheap because I remember the loans. I wouldn't want to be looking at 4 or 6 years of college loans today. So I don't know if its easy street for young folks today.

It didn't matter how much gas cost, because most gas stations didn't have any gas. That's because born-again commie Jimmy "peanut brain" didn't want oil companies to make any money, he

Carter gave away the Panama canal, and let Castro send all his prison inmates and crazies come to America. He wasn't just incompetent, he was evil.

Kebg's data is factually incorrect.

Federal minimum wage is $9.50. National average home price is $435,331. You also need to examine loan rates with the homes: 1982 median 30 yr fixed rate was 16.73%, 2025 was 6.77%. Also, consider how much home that was buying. Average home in 1982 was 1500-1800 sf with central heating, no central AC, 3/2 beds/baths, wired for telephone only. Now you have 3,000sf and up, 4/3 with loft/den/flex room, central AC, prewired for Hi-speed phone and data in every room with more expensive materials, environmental, and inspection requirements. It's apples and oranges.

^Facts to a progressive are like a wooden stake to a vampire.

I thought for sure someone would call me a racist for listing one of the ways this country was better off in 1982 was this country still being 80% White then. I often like non-Whites on a personal basis. It is just that they often tend to support the same bad leftist political policies that ruined the countries they fled from.

As far as strippers go, I find I like the Hispanic girls and kind of wish some of them had been around here in Indianapolis when I was a young guy so I could have interacted with them when I would be their age. My favorite regular right now is a Mexican stripper named Rose and I plan to visit her club this weekend.

While I tend to agree with OP, every time I hear people my age complain about “kids these days”, I tell them they’re hanging around the wrong kids. Yes, we raised a generation of entitled pussies, but despite this there are still plenty of extremely intelligent, hard working young people who inspire me every day.
I hope OP didn’t hire that fag from Berkeley, and and at some point you need to realize that Ivy League educations are overrated. My company attorney might have just turned 35. He grew up in little Havana, served in the USMC, went to UNC undergrad on the GI Bill, then FIU Law. He has never been given anything, he’s never expected to be given anything, he has a work ethic that I cannot match, he has become a pillar in the community, goes to mass every week, and takes care of his abuelita. FIU might not be Cornell, but this guy is the real deal, who negotiates all my contracts like a fucking pit bull. There are more young people like this around, but you have to look hard for them because the crybabies make so much more noise.

"Times are fucking wicked easy now, so guys, act like fucking men and stip bitching."

I understand your point. It's kind of like strip clubs. We all share opinions as if there's a universal experience in clubs and with strippers. There are ideas that have universal appeal, but everyone is going to experience them in their own way. YMWV.

^/^^ Perception drives reality, which is why reality will always be different for each of us.

I'm glad I stayed in sales. I'm glad I'm retiring. I guess when your a lawyer you have options. Who the fuck cares who this dude wants to work for, do you want the job or not. In sales, I tell the new hires if they don't like their co workers, find something to hang onto because you won't sell much if you can only deal with people you personally like.

I wouldn't hire anybody from one of these Ivy leagues/stanford today. Go to the state school well and hope he doesn't present as a douchebag like this guy was

I was on a roll in 1982. First salary on a “real” job was more than my dad earned the day he retired, I’d moved on from HS friends who’d never considered college let alone professional school. I had no reason to think I’d be crazy rich but was confident I’d do well. OP’s interviewee and others in their generation may not be so sanguine about their own prospects over the next 40-50 years. I don’t blame them. Anyway, interview didn’t sound like a Love Connection

Coworker of mine, older immigrant engineer, bought his first home in 1983. Extremely happy with the mortgage rate. 15%. Had been as high as 18%.

"I often like non-Whites on a personal basis."

Very strange thing to have said.