I'm getting increasingly angry and depressed for our children's future.

[WhenWillTheShitEnd]

To think that my hard working son, who gets minimum wage is now strugglying to make end meet because of an egotistical, corrupt, millionaire/billionaire pervert is giving me sleepless nights. To think that the whole world is being held to ransom by men like Trump and Putin is making me so depressed and angry that its affecting my every day life. I feel so utterly helpless. We are all recycling, being told not to use our woodburners etc, while the like of the US and Russia are pumping colossal amount of CO2 into the atmosphere with their bombs. I'm so FUCKING ANGRY.

Ok so perhaps the days of large numbers of employees in those two areas are going to reduce, much the same as happened in Printing for example. That doesn't mean there is doom in every industry.

My industry for example AI is and has been being used for many years to automate scheduling - which is brilliant, good for the client, good for us. It's moving into dimensioning - again good for the industry and good for all who coordinate together. And behind both of those is an industry that is growing. Autodesk who create the programmes we use is employing people to integrate AI into drawing programmes, people to test the integration, people to market the changes, people to set up the exhibitions to sell the plug ins to the industry etc etc.

AI isn't new, it's been here for many years predictive text is AI, Google search is AI, reordering in supermarkets has been using AI, so many things have been using AI unnoted for years and years.

As with all progress there are industries that will decline and are declining and new ones that are booming.

Notice the change and change with it.

Your first post was about struggling to make ends meet. But people who lived like that pre-capitalism had far harder lives and worse standards of living than almost anyone in the modern world now.

Or if your idea is to live like that but with the benefit of modern medicine, supply chains, internet, just out of sight, then what you are really seeking is a sort of aristocratic lifestyle. Organised around your aesthetic and moral values, supported by the work of others in a system you wouldn’t dirty your hands with yourself but which makes your lifestyle liveable.

When the news gets too much, I cut it out for a few weeks. I can’t influence world events, so it’s sometimes helpful to have a break and make my world small and focused on things closer to home.

Not everybody is ready to face existential angst at 7.23 in the morning OP, give them a chance!

I am minded to think of billionaires as a sort of parasitic species that must be lived with, and try and focus on living well and kindly with my community.

Out of curiosity, what are those areas in your opinion?

With my own children, I'm really pushing them to be competitive — to go hard in the areas where AI falls short and get really good at the stuff it just can't do.

As with all progress there are industries that will decline and are declining and new ones that are booming.

Which ones are booming that are going to offer large scale human employment opportunities?

I don't know what you mean by large scale but at a scale to match those whose roles are declining obvious areas are those who are honing and training AI, cybersecurity, renewable energy - design, production, sales of, mental health, anything linked to self improvement and education, organised socialisation, governance and legislation. How many areas do you want?

Honestly I suspect you are asking in the hope I can't think of anything to prove a point.

Anyone who wants to sit in their own doom is welcome to but if you do you can't then wonder why some people are successful. Jimmy Carrs podcast is exactly the issue people are jealous of where he has reached but unwilling to wake the journey he has to get there.

It is a scary time. It concerns me that no one seems to stand up to trump. I think there should be an upper age limit for presidents running the country as the man does not seem to be sane. Sending more people to get hurt is not ok. I don’t know what he thinks he will gain but he will continue to tell us how amazing America is and that it’s all down to him, in a narcissistic way. He seems to think he can run the world but is ruining it. I would definitely think twice about having children if that was the stage of life I was at.

my dc are still young but the only plan I have for them is to do well in school, try & get a decent career & then emigrate. It helps they have European passports.

As with all progress there are industries that will decline and are declining and new ones that are booming.

Hasn’t really helped wage stagnation though.

No, I'm asking because I'm curious what you think, since you seem to have thought about it, and I guess I'm also interested in why or whether you really think that new opportunities are scalable to replace lost ones in human terms.

My 3 are a bit older - one is finishing a PhD in clinical psychology, one is about to start their medical residency (US) and one has an MBA and works in the music industry for a startup. All jobs/professions I would have considered very secure five years ago, but not so much any more.

As I said earlier, DH and I are lawyers, but I think twice before I encourage students to do law now as increasingly the stuff young lawyers used to do is done by AI. And if we're not training young lawyers, we ultimately won't get experienced ones, which I find concerning.

I've listened to Peter Thiel and the Palantir guys and Sam Altman and I certainly haven't gotten the impression that human capital is of much importance to them. I also listen to Scott Galloway and Kara Swisher who are very interesting on both the opportunities and the costs, and none of that has left me hugely optimistic, unfortunately.

And expect to travel half the work.

Young people around here feel poor if they aren't travelling abroad 3 times a year.

It is not "normal" historically to have educational opportunities, a fulfilling career, a range of job opportunities good health with access to even basic healthcare, or to own your own home which isn't overcrowded

Is it normal to go backwards though? Or to pay higher taxes but get less back compared to your parents generation?

It’s bizarre to argue that someone shouldn’t be angry if they expect healthcare or a home when they have grown up with it.

And generally it’s those who have a home, a decent pension etc telling everyone else to be less entitled!

my 2 young adults don't want children either...both are A sexual....im dissapointed but glad at the same time

Historically speaking it’s perfectly normal to be able to walk around, go over the next hill, find some unoccupied land, and build yourself a life out of the resources around. Historically population was a damn sight lower. Some people just want to pick on one or two times in history and claim it as normal - specifically the Victorian period just after Enclosure when people had been kicked off the only form of sustenance known to humans and left to starve until the factories opened with 14 hr shifts, hurray see the plebs have nothing to whinge about. They deliberately pick on the times when the rich had every advantage to oppress the poor and did so mercilessly in a conquered country.

We work far more now than we did in those times, and pay taxes. If we don’t see some return for that from the inheriting elites there will start to be issues, as every society that has tried that has found out. You need consent, or rule by power, and rule by power alone never lasts.

This may be of interest.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/apr/01/billionaire-wealth-tax-trump

True except that these resources are much more unevenly distributed now than in the 1970's. YOU may be doing fine (as am I) but many people in the UK are not, and inequality is even worse in the US. But the billionaires have scammed us to belive its immigrants that caused it.

The good news is we can still vote and take part, like our lives depend on it - because they do.

I don't, and I'm a 'crafty' person. Making things yourself takes a lot of time and the materials usually aren't cheap and often aren't easily or locally available. If you have a ft job you probably don't have time. And if you don't have a job, making stuff yourself is unlikely to pay enough if you sell it, or fully clothe or feed you if you keep what you make. I can spin wool from fleece to make yarn and knit or crochet clothes. It's a hobby - it wouldn't make a ft job or be particularly affordable or practical for clothing my family.

I totally agree, factor in how hard and expensive it is to leave home, to rent a crappy flat even. Learning to drive is expensive, getting a decent job without experience, getting a degree without massive debt. Everything has turned into a making maximum money opportunity these days. My daughters both say they don't want children and I don't blame them. When I read threads on here asking should I have another child I think why would you bring another child into this world. It's bollocks.

Historically speaking it’s perfectly normal to be able to walk around, go over the next hill, find some unoccupied land, and build yourself a life out of the resources around.

Land may be unoccupied. But in a lot of the world it is not unowned. And that's before you invent "money" which makes it possible to prevent people from supporting themselves on Someone Elses Land.

It very much depends on your mindset. Those who can compete well will always succeed.

One of the big issues these days is that many are happy to embrace victimhood rather than taking any personal responsibility.

Teach your children resilience and they’ll do just fine.

All hard times do are create different opportunities. If you’re not alert to those then you will of course get left behind as has always been the case.

I’m quite certain my grandparents had similar feelings when my parents were born in the early years of WW2. We forget just how austere the post war years were. Fortunately they were offered the opportunity to attend grammar school and climbed their way out.

My parents were facing similar in the 1970s, fuel rationing due to the Suez crisis and the long drawn out battle with coal miners. Massive inflation and shortages. The three day week was no fun without minimum wage. And benefits were pretty meagre. They may have been able to buy houses but only based on one income so renting was common. The rental market would shock even the most resilient student nowadays. Central heating was non existent and inside bathrooms and toilets were a pretty modern concept. Watch a few episodes of “Call the Midwife” to see what people were finally emerging from.

My DS has had a privileged life compared to my childhood and I was one of the lucky ones. I do worry that we haven’t made it hard enough for him to be resilient and ambitious enough to make his own way in life. But that is on us and not the result of the world around us.

There won’t be jobs being replaced on a large scale because AI and automation will be able to almost every job a human can do. Employers first and most important priority is money - they don’t care that AI may not be quite as effective or accurate as some of their human employees. The job just needs to be done and cheaply, with no NI to pay, no pension, sick pay, training, maternity leave.

The number of mortgage repossessions have risen dramatically over the last year, expect that to increase, and the unemployment rate.

People on threads like this encourage their kids to do manual jobs as they are (currently) safe, but those jobs have always been lower paid so how are our kids going to have good quality of lives and buy their own homes if they can’t save for deposits?

People on threads like this encourage their kids to do manual jobs as they are (currently) safe, but those jobs have always been lower paid so how are our kids going to have good quality of lives and buy their own homes if they can’t save for deposits?

Some would rather have a regular £100*/week for 30 years, than £1,000/week maybe-on-average-in-between-redundancies-and-bankruptcies ...

Generation rent were flagged as a thing 15 years ago. The strategising suggested that as we move into a renters world, the shift of capital associated with homeowners releasing equity would fundamentally change how disposable income is distributed across the demographics.

*for example.