One thing I have noticed is how prevalent the hustle culture has become among Millennials. LinkedIn is a hotbed of narcissism, and Twitter has a ton of self-proclaimed business superstars who have made money by having companies entirely dependent on using foreign labor and providing shitty service for customers. It's quite appalling how often you hear fellow Millennials go on and on boasting about their own "successes" or try to sell themselves without an ounce of honesty.
The hustle of creating "passive income" means that we are going to see a lot of sociopaths becoming landlords and doing the bare-minimum for those who rent from them, and the quality of services will continue to decline across all companies as there is no value in providing a good service, merely making money. The decline of quality we have seen from the boomer generation onward (yes, that includes you, Generation X, you aren't exempt from being self-destructive narcissists like your parents and your children) is going to ramp up significantly.
Some people will say, "blame the system, not the person," but for god's sake, eventually someone has to stand up and refuse to operate as basically a scam artist. For as many supposed "leftists" there are among Millennials, they sure have no qualms about taking the worst aspects of human greed and using that as their core business model.
Am I over-exaggerating here?
Truth is: Passive income only exists in scams or deflation.
In a normal human economy where perpetual inflation is not the goal, your savings would just sit there, and not spending money would increase your purchasing power over time. Since that's not possible, but everyone still intuitively wants it "passive income" to keep up with inflation has become the goal of all people with money.
However, since no one can passively gain income, even money lenders, everyone who is saying they have a mechanism is comitting to a scam.
The problem is, your criticism exists at all levels, including the ultra-wealthy, and for corporations. Since no one can save money to gain purchasing power, everyone has to try and make more money at greater than 3% a year to outpace inflation.
Your worried about something that already exists and will continue until regular deflation can occur.
I know you want to hit back with the fact that you don't want to just blame the system, and I get that, but literally nobody can adjust properly until the government stops printing money. And because the entire Fabian Socialist economic order is dependent on that; the moment it does, you will get a global financial meltdown worse than the fall of the Spanish Empire.
Now, I will say that I am basically doing that by simply saving tons of money to accrue large capital to wield as a large single investment. And I'm stacking metals and crypto, knowing that inevitably there will be corrections within the decade that will hurl their value up. But most people don't want to live like me, where they are saving 50% of their income. Most people actually can do that, they just aren't prepared to strip away all of their own private welfare programs and live with the responsibility of figuring out when and how to spend money. If you spend $120 a month on health insurance; you are so attached to that, you wouldn't consider saving $120 a month in the event you need health care. Nor would you be willing to risk only saving $30 a month for a while so you can spend it on other things. We've convinced people to bankrupt themselves for nothing.
I've tried to tell people this about myself. It seems I have the perception among many of being rich. Having real estate, or a sports car, or whatever will do that to your perception. The thing is, I'm not. I've only got regular job income on par with a lot of what these same people who think I'm rich have. My actual living expenses are just so low, but a lot of it is from leveraging responsibility and mindset. I guess similar to what you'd call avoiding private welfare. I do that down to a tiny level though, when it comes to recurring expenses I'll save $2 a month if I can. This mindset goes back to when I was barely an independent adult. Simple things like if there is something recurring I want to pay for, say it's $10/mo or $100/yr. I'm going to pay for the year, because that's $20 in my pocket. I may also think about if I really want whatever that recurring cost buys me. In a lot of cases the answer is really no. I'll hear people that buy a car and add on the wheel damage plan or whatever because it just made their payment go up a little bit. That little bit might be $500 in the end. Whoever is selling that plan is not doing it as charity. Why pay them to make money I could be saving?
Don't get me wrong, I don't really save 50% of my income in the most classical sense of the word. Maybe 30%. I don't know, I'd have to argue what counts as savings to really give a number.
I totally get it. But, I've explained like how ammunition works in Metro 2033.
In the game, they came up with the idea of ammunition was money.
You buy it to save it, and then use it all at once in a firefight you need to defeat bosses or large forces.
If you think of your budget like that, it makes a fuck-ton of sense on how to save money and why.
Unfortunately, keeping an eye out for someone stealing your money after you've earned it is the price you pay for having wealth at all. With power comes responsibility, with freedom comes vigilance.
As a guy who refused to get credit cards for a long time, I regret that decision now. First because cashback on spending gains me more "effective interest" than my savings and checking accounts do, particularly under inflation. Second, because I have a nearly perfect credit score now because I treat my credit cards like debit cards. I'm getting offers for personal loans with low interest rates and shit apropos of nothing. If I need a genuine infusion of capital, it's actually at my fingertips.
That doesn't mean I'm not stacking as you noted.
Gradually buy up the plots around your house and build a kingdom.