[Broussebar]

I wonder if the fact that we spend the last 50 years or so having policies erroding all our social benefits might have a role in the deterioration of overall living conditions.

But off course no, it's because our grandparents were more loyal to their companies.

[angra_mainyu]

Well, my family came up in a different country (not the US) and the two key things that enabled their rise from poverty were a literal obsession with working/putting in hours and entrepreneurship/"the hustle".

In my own life I have seen the enormous, overwhelming, and abundantly clear difference from when I self-commiserated, lamenting my own misfortune to embracing hardship, explicitly forbidding myself from whining, throwing myself into hard work, foregoing any kind of social life for a few years and eventually it all paid off, only getting better when I decided to be an entrepreneur.

But all my effort is nothing compared to the hard work my dad had to do, and even less compared to that of my grandfather's.

[ctrw]

Those policies were all put in place scant years before they started being repealed. It wasn't until LBJ that social benefits were passed en mass.

The new deal was all about giving people work, not free stuff.