Don't get me wrong, I think I know how reality works

It's not gonna change within a year or maybe 50..

But at some point people have to start and fight back

If we keep repeating "It's just how it is" shit will NEVER change

I refuse to accept shit as is, otherwise what's the point of everything

Learned helplessness?

Age has taught me that there are some things that no matter how vile, are just inevitable, and there are hard limits on how much one can do about them. When you have expended tons of energy and emotion on something only to see it revert each time, you start picking your fights to only those where you can make a difference.

Sometimes that is mistaken, because it was actually possible, but sometimes it is realistic

I am not sure *how* old these elderly people are but a good portion of elderly people aren't truly aware of "just how it is".

As just a surface example, I bought my home in 1999 for about $140k, and a home just like mine on my street recently sold for over $600k. My parents see this sort of thing on the news and are aware of it and will say things like "it must be hard for young people to buy a home if they are barely making $200k/year eh?" And I am like "oh mum they're lucky to make much more than half that" and they are just mind blown.

My parents were born before WW2 and grew up through the end of the depression and wartime rations so know hardship, but have lived their entire lives through fairly constant progress and prosperity. For older boomers they don't even know that pre war hardship, and comfortably retired they are all quite isolated from the experience of young adults. They cannot conceive of the concept 1st world society has unacceptably declined in recent years.

People who started out in the boom years before the Reagan/Thatcher reaction, when taxes on the rich prevented the emergence of billionaires and there was funding for social goods and services, have lost perspective. It's the baseline fallacy: they just assume what they had is normal.

And admitting things are different now would mean acknowledging that all the reactionary tax cuts and roll-backs of social benefits they voted for were at the expense of others. It would mean they were selfish. Not intentionally, of course: but they bought the BS.

@stux

Sounds like they might be comfortable people and the suffering hasn't reached them yet, maybe?

People have to get fed up, out of patience. High empathy people can get fed up with the suffering of others. Low empathy people have to suffer directly, or see people just like themselves suffering, before they can get fed up.

Maybe they feel powerless. Maybe they are lazy.
Hard to say.

But yes, it's a very common phenomenon.

Though i agree there's this: the older, the more wars experienced and the more war-weary.

Grew up during the cold war, had a glimpse, a moment of hope when the soviet enemy fell, lost that after during both Iraq wars, 9/11, Aleppo, Bucha, 7/10 and recently tRump and his maggats.

57, Seriously think i'm not going to make it to 60. Have hit the Hopium too often, it doesn't work any more.

My very comfortably off sister said a while back that she has no problems with people becoming wealthy. I forgot to ask her both whey she said it and why she meant it.

Wealthy people on a planet with BILLIONS in poverty ...

hit 'em with history? anyone within spitting distance of "elderly" was around for the reagan tax cuts (from 70% to 50%). if they're actually oldies, then they were around for kennedy/johnson cutting rates from 90% to 70%.

so yeah, no, that's not how it has to be.