Angry Middle Class Americans Are Quietly Giving Up on Their Own Country

Added: 2026-06-03

[00:00:00]Oh yeah, it's definitely getting real.

[00:00:01]Middle-class Americans are just having a tough time. They can't even recognize America anymore, man. Like this uh video we're about to get into another one by uh Homestead Journeys, man. So many people are just giving up. Just giving up on everything. Let's go ahead and take a look.

[00:00:18]>> So serious question. How am I supposed to explain to my children one day that they probably by the time they reach my age that I am now, uh they probably won't be able to afford themselves or their life?

[00:00:28]Millions of Americans are literally giving up. Like day by day, they're saying, "I'm done. I'm quitting. I'm not doing this anymore." Because we're all tired of it. On the realest note ever, the fact that everything in the freaking store is $5. Good luck trying to get like I'm a single man and it still is about a hundred bucks if you're trying to eat some healthy quality foods. Like just to get out the store, then you go and get your gas. It's five bucks at a minimum. Like everywhere you go. So here's the thing. I'm making more money than I have ever made in my life, y'all.

[00:00:55]Like for real. For real. I thought that if you made this kind of money back when I was younger, like 10, 15 years ago, I thought that dang, you really might have made it if you made this kind of money.

[00:01:03]So, it's the fact that I don't even know how anybody making less than say 25 an hour can afford to live in America right now. Like, you go getting a car payment, dude, that's $600. That's not even with the insurance. Okay? You go trying to get a house, they are seven, eight times the average income. So, like the bare minimum house is 400,000. I'm just trying to say, dude, something's got to make sense because it's Memorial Day.

[00:01:25]All right. And I'm going to work because if you don't go to work today, you're going to end up spending money that you didn't have to spend. Like I'm It's just you got to stay ahead. And if you slip up, if you take a single break, gosh, dude, you're eating with the wolves, you >> man. You just doing more than that, man.

[00:01:39]You got to work every single day of your life, dude. Like that's what the way they got the American system built. You can't even enjoy a holiday or a weekend off, man. You got people fighting for overtime. All right. You got people leaving their jobs to go find jobs, hoping and depending on overtime. That's when you know the situation is bad. I know somebody personally and she highly depends on at least 10 to 15 hours of overtime at least three weeks out of a month to make her ends meet. It's serious.

[00:02:07]>> Like that's how America has become.

[00:02:08]>> Anyone else feeling more depressed than normal lately? I'm just curious. Like just this like blooming depression. And it's not like boohoo lock yourself in a dark room depression, but you can feel something's off. My take is this. I just filled up my gas tank and for $30 >> [ __ ] the the the feeling that you get is when you actually get hungry and you have to decide what you going to do.

[00:02:26]Either go get takeout, go cook, you you start to get depressed with that thought like, damn, it's not even fun to even go to the grocery store right now. When you look when you're constantly looking at your gas tank, that meter, and you're like, [ __ ] [ __ ] [ __ ] [ __ ] It's not even fun to be on the road anymore. It's not even fun to commute to work anymore.

[00:02:45]You get what I'm saying? It's just those the the thought of having to make a purchase decision is really bad.

[00:02:51]>> I got a day's worth of gas in my truck essentially. And I'm realizing more and more of how [ __ ] our economy is. I went through this last recession deal that we did in the early 2000s and it [ __ ] sucks. And this is all the signs of what it was. I mean, how many people out there right now have no credit card debt because you don't need to live on your credit cards? I make more money today than I did 5 years ago by far.

[00:03:11]Yet, I am broker like tremendously broker than I was 5 years ago. if I would have made this money five years ago, holy [ __ ] like life would be amazing, but it's like it's not enough.

[00:03:20]And now all of a sudden, you kind of like feel like a failure and you start to get in your head of like, why am I constantly stressed? I mean, are you driving around with your your check, you know, your fuel light on? Or are you giving up your health insurance because you're trying to cut corners somewhere just to get some more money and cash flow somewhere? I don't know, man. I will say this. I think it's going to get a lot worse, way worse, way worse than this before it ever gets better. I think you're going to see a lot of people struggle with addiction. I think you're going to see a lot of people struggle with mental health. Like, it's going to get [ __ ] crazy. Uh, kind of like it did back then. And I don't mean to be like some like like sounding alarms or whatever [ __ ] but I'm just like I'm watching more and more people just using credit cards on [ __ ] and just not having money all of a sudden and never >> not even that. No, come on, man. You know what? You don't really want to spend that hard on cash money right now.

[00:03:57]You just want to be like just in case I need real cash, I'm go ahead and put this on a credit card. I'll figure it out later. You are literally just, you know, pushing pushing that to the side.

[00:04:06]>> Slow down the spending. And now all of a sudden it's like we didn't even slow down the spending and you're just broke.

[00:04:10]I don't know. I hope that I'm wrong. I hope that this is just a little phase. I guess we'll find out. I just want to let you know if you're struggling right now, you ain't alone.

[00:04:16]>> When do you think they'll get it? When do you think they're going to understand that people cannot afford the lives that they want? They can't afford the children. The generations will continue to get smaller. People will continue having fewer children. When do you think that's going to happen? Like it's not a matter of, oh well, this is like a minor dip. It's a matter of the fact that people can barely make it work on their own. Or if you're in a situation like myself, I'm finally making really good money. I'm not going to immediately funnel that to a freaking kid. No, absolutely not. And yet the cost of living is still insane. Inflation's still insane. House housing still insane. And it's like they just think that they can continue to escalate on every front and everyone's still going to comply. Like what do you think is going to happen? It's going to collapse.

[00:04:54]>> I just don't understand why this is all coming as a surprise for them. They just think they can squeeze more and more and more. Everyone's increasing their prices on every front and saying why isn't anyone having children? Gee, I wonder.

[00:05:04]>> I need to rant about the cost of rent in Michigan. So, I'm getting ready to sell my fourbedroom, one and a halfb home in Michigan.

[00:05:12]>> Um, and currently my mortgage payment is around $2,300.

[00:05:15]>> Oh my goodness.

[00:05:15]>> I thought about buying. The market to buy is absolutely psychotic. And so, I thought, well, maybe I'll just rent for a year or so.

[00:05:22]>> Any of y'all just recently or just thought about purchasing a home, like you might want to really do a lot of research. And I only just start with insurance researchers, too. So, if I had to teach you anything about the home buying process the hard way from what I've learned is that if you're in a specific zip code and you need certain insuranceances, well, at least down here in the south, but anywhere really, make sure you go get a average or, you know, some quotes on said zip codes or maybe even a, you know, that that house that you might be interested in before you even start that process because I tell you in home insuranceances are not fun.

[00:06:02]They're not fun and they're hot >> and save some money and that will be great, right? No, absolutely not. Because what I found as I'm looking at the cost of rentals is that for a two-bedroom apartment, they want often between $2,300 and $2,800.

[00:06:17]And no, I'm not [ __ ] with you. Who is paying these costs? Well, in one city in particular, which is Ann Arbor, I'm sure it's out of state parents that have quite a bit of money that are sending their teenagers to University of Michigan. And that has something to do with driving up the cost of rent there.

[00:06:31]But even in the cities that are surrounding there, the rents are psychotic. And I can also tell you that even an hour away prior to buying this house, I rented for a year and the cost for a two-bedroom apartment was [ __ ] $2,000.

[00:06:44]>> I can pay this if I have to. But what the [ __ ] do they expect people to do who can't? All of the people that help our society operate who make 50 $60,000 a year or less in many cases, they need a place to live. And I am honestly just on a daily basis increasingly more and more disgusted.

[00:07:02]>> It's so bad like the people that are making trying to get started with 50 60 $70,000 and they're in this in this middle class uh kind of just like handcuffed kind of bracket where they can't qualify for any assistance, but they also have they're working their ass off. And these are just sal mostly salary managers and salary people and they're struggling just to kind of like having to go put in the time, having to raise a family, having to at least get a reliable vehicle because that's what you need to, you know, actually do the job.

[00:07:35]But they do not get any assistance. No welfare, no EBT, none of that [ __ ] housing assistance, nothing because they have been price they worked themselves out of those benefits. And so yet they are check to check. It's really a bad American dream. what this country has become. Because I can tell you in that same city in Ann Arbor, Michigan in 2011, I paid less than $700 for a one-bedroom apartment pretty close to downtown. And literally 15 years later, it's quadrupled. I mean, I don't know. I can tell you right now that the wages sure haven't quadrupled. So, good luck.

[00:08:10]Like, I don't know what we're going to do.

[00:08:11]>> Grocery update, West Virginia version.

[00:08:14]So, I'm from outside of Philly and groceries are high. They're high everywhere. Um, I needed to drive down to my in-laws today to drop off um, some supplies for them. They're elderly. And I decided to stop at Aldi and then Walmart and make sure that they had enough groceries. Um, and they're they're homebound and they have caretakers that come in and take care of them. So, I spent $175ish dollars um, at Aldi and I literally got like the cheapest stuff possible. I bought pasta, pasta sauce, peanut butter, jelly, um, really basics like the little uh, little turkey ground turkey chubs like the little, you know, one pounders. Um, I did buy that. I did splurge and bought a pack of steaks, but they were like the chopped like the thin chopped steaks that you would make like a salsberry steak or something like that. Um, instant mashed potatoes, canned vegetables, things that were easy for their caretakers to kind of put together and, you know, reasonably healthy. $175 for five bags of groceries. Not even, you know, anything extravagant. Like, are you kidding me?

[00:09:08]Are you serious?

[00:09:09]>> I had to go to Walmart, which was a block down, and the Walmart was insane.

[00:09:13]So the register like was it the scanner like it was it was all not working very well and then the uh the credit card the debit card machine wasn't working guy the work the worker guy was like so nice. He was like the nicest dude and he was just like oh you have to put it in and out three times and then swipe it.

[00:09:27]And I was like what like >> damn you got to make love to that damn credit card machine man. That's what she said. You got to put it in and out and swipe it. Damn.

[00:09:36]Well you got to take me to dinner first.

[00:09:38]>> Do I have to do a little spinny dance too? And you know he's just laughing.

[00:09:41]He's like yeah these have been broken for a they don't want to fix them and they don't want to pay us to do checkout. He's like, "They're busy being billionaires."

[00:09:48]So, I'm like, "Yep, yep, yep. That's about right. That's about right." And that was $140. $140 for a box of coffee, the store brand, um dog food, two cans of uh fruit, like canned peaches and canned pineapple, and a rotisserie chicken.

[00:10:05]What? $140.

[00:10:08]So, I spent between 310 and 320 today and did not really get much.

[00:10:12]>> Nope.

[00:10:13]>> That's insane. That's absolutely insane.

[00:10:15]And the thing that struck me was, I mean, this is this is, you know, definitely Trump country and I'm in West Virginia. We we know that's a red state.

[00:10:23]And everyone, it was crowded. It was definitely crowded and everyone was like buying their groceries and you could tell everyone was just very much sticking to their list. They were not deviating. They were focused on the prices. You could see it. You could you could see it.

[00:10:34]>> I have not been on here in so long.

[00:10:38]Oh [ __ ] >> I just need to get my voice out.

[00:10:44]>> It is ridiculous how our economy is today.

[00:10:49]>> I work a full-time job. I have a six-year-old kid. I'm married. You think I should be living the high life, right?

[00:10:56]Wrong.

[00:10:57]Everything's going up in price. And the expectation of us to spend money, money, money, money, and no wages are going up.

[00:11:04]Nothing is going up. It's just getting to the point where it's like, why aren't we angry?

[00:11:11]Why is no one doing anything?

[00:11:14]It's honestly just so frustrating to sit here and worry about how I'm going to have my kid act like pretend everything is fine, but it's not. I It's so expensive to get my kid into anything.

[00:11:28]It's so expensive to basically have a job. My job requires me to drive my own car >> and they pay me $600 a month as an allowance for my car. I'm spending about $100 in gas a week just to do my job.

[00:11:43]Just to go do my job.

[00:11:45]Are they giving us raises? No. No. No.

[00:11:48]No cost of living adjustments. My husband and I, we would love to have a house. We would love to have a backyard.

[00:11:54]We would love to do all these things, but it it's not possible at all. The trickle down economy is not working. The poor are getting poorer. The rich are getting richer. And people aren't angry about it. Celebrities are >> Yeah. I mean, we don't really have uh place to voice. We can go to social media and voice voice, man. But that [ __ ] is getting drowned out by all the other distractions. UFOs, this UFC fights on the lawn of the White House.

[00:12:22]The straight the straight of hard moves, man, was a whole popular thing. No one's really talking about it now. It's not like it's everywhere now. It's It's always something else. It's always something else, man. And that's because I ain't going to lie, us Americans, we have a short attention span.

[00:12:38]>> Buy my merch. Buy my tickets to my concert. Only gone. No one's buying tickets. Yeah, we're struggling to buy food. As a younger millennial, I'm really beginning to question >> how the hell I'm supposed to even pay to get to the concert. Gas is hot.

[00:12:51]>> And we're going to call it a day, you know? I mean, I know the vast majority of us have woken up thankfully and we've realized that we've been sold a lie. um pretty much our entire lives and that this American dream is not it's not attainable. It's not attainable. Uh it was attainable for the older generations as we know uh they were able to work there 40 hours a week and reap the benefits. Um whereas we >> we have to work two to three jobs just to achieve the same results. And uh I'm in a position where realistically I will have to get a second job in order to better my situation >> potentially even maybe get a third to help pay down my my debt. And I'm not doing it. I'm not participating in this.

[00:13:30]>> You're young enough. Do it now. I'm telling you now. If you're young enough to hustle and hustle and hustle, you might as well hustle in now. Hustle and do it.

[00:13:37]>> I'm not I'm not doing it. I'm exhausted.

[00:13:40]I'm exhausted. I've worked since I was 14 years old. I think most millennials are in the same boat. We've been working forever and we're burnt out. There's been many phases throughout my life where I've had to work multiple jobs just to get by. Just to get by. And I have nothing to show for it. I don't have a house. My car I've been driving the same car since I was in college. So, 10 years, over 10 years, um, it's falling apart. I can barely afford groceries. I'm living with my parents because I can't afford to rent on my own. People say, "Oh, we'll just get roommates." I'm 30 years old. I shouldn't have to live with roommates.

[00:14:09]I'm an adult. I was able to live on my own before. Not anymore, though.

[00:14:16]All of our clothes are plastic. All of our food is poisonous. It's toxic, and we're paying top dollar for it. Um, I don't have healthare because when I was laid off, obviously I lost my insurance and I found a way to work for myself, but I can't afford I can't afford healthare. Um, if I do need something, I'm paying out of pocket. Um, the list just goes, it's never ending.

[00:14:36]And I think we're all just at a point where we're done. We're exhausted. I I seek seclusion at this point. I want to go like live off grid somewhere and just never talk to a soul again. I'll get a tiny home and just live in the woods. I want to be left the alone. I don't care anymore. I I don't I just don't care anymore. And I'm like, at what point do we like band together and try to fix this or or what? Or >> Yeah, we're not we're not going to be able to band together. But we we feel the shift, guys. This y'all don't snap.

[00:15:04]Look, just go into the internet and vent a little bit before it gets super real.

[00:15:08]Before it gets real, before you have to feel like this car isn't worth it, that you're giving up on life. Don't do it just yet.

[00:15:13]>> Do I give up and just go get my tiny home in the woods? I I don't know.

[00:15:16]>> Well, let's start this rand off right.

[00:15:18]Iinging hate this country. I cannot be the only [ __ ] one who has considered himself a patriot their whole life and supported their country that hates it here. I hate it here. I'm about to lose my [ __ ] Only income for a family of five. I can break my back, work two jobs when I have to, work side jobs. I make pretty good money as a carpenter for the union, believe it or not. You know, over a hundred grand a year where in the area where I live in, and it doesn't mean [ __ ] Can't buy a house because I can't afford $4,000 a month mortgage payment.

[00:15:42]What what what makes this the greatest country? Because I'm about to flip out.

[00:15:45]I can't do it anymore. I can't do it.

[00:15:46]and I got nothing to look forward to but paying bills and dying. Meanwhile, these can [ __ ] rip off the country, get free housing, freeing food, this and that. And I'm over here breaking my back to even have Christmas or do anything.

[00:15:58]And this is the greatest country in the world. It's not I can't do it anymore. I cannot be the only one who's literally about to just go buck wild crazy and do some drastic ass [ __ ] and just say it all.

[00:16:09]>> So, please tell me how it makes any freaking sense that as a stay at home mom, I had $500 in food stamps. I had health insurance for my entire family and we got seven grand back on taxes. I go back to work, I lose my food stamps, I lose my health insurance, and we're only getting $100 back on taxes. Huh?

[00:16:20]Huh? And this is why people don't want to work because why am I working my butt off and losing all that stuff and still living paycheck to paycheck when I was living paycheck to paycheck before, but I at least had food stamps and health insurance and got seven grand back.

[00:16:31]>> Yeah. How's that math mapping? Yeah.

[00:16:33]>> So, I've got to pay my taxes, make sure they get in on time so I don't get in trouble. And I got to make sure I drive a speed limit. And I got to make sure I'm on time to work every day. And I got to make sure I put in enough hours at work. I got to make sure that I reach a certain age before retiring. I got to make sure that I have enough money in my 401k to survive. I got to make sure that I make 114,000 as a single adult in New York State to make sure that I survive.

[00:16:48]But they and take all of our money to pay people to and if they don't buy them there.

[00:16:57]But make sure you pay your taxes.

[00:16:58]>> So, can somebody please explain something to me? What the [ __ ] is going on with energy in Virginia? Because something to me is just not making sense. Every single electric bill I'm getting is looking like this.

[00:17:07]>> Oh, god damn. Damn, dude. 1381 for an electric bill. What the you got going on? you I mean bro are you bro are you um farming for crypto up in that bad boy like what are you crypto mining is what they call it >> electric bills are looking how is it humanly possible that I was using 1,500 and less kilowatts every single month in 2025 2024 and 2023 but somehow I'm using 5,000 kilowatts of energy now in 5,000 4,000 4,000 4,000 the last four months >> something doesn't make sense bro and every time I call Dominion energy they tell me that I'm tripping I I I need somebody to help me understand how a human can use 5,000 kilowatts when I'm never home. Never home. I don't use TV.

[00:17:49]I don't use heat. I don't I don't understand. But this this is getting to the point where I can't like I'm I don't know what to do with this [ __ ] bro. Somebody help me.

[00:17:59]>> I can't keep doing this. Like, what the is even going on?

[00:18:02]>> Damn.

[00:18:03]>> Everything that's happening and having to still go to work every day and pay bills and rent and stress out money and go to work and pretend like everything is normal. It's just not normal and I don't know how much longer I can do this. It's like eating me from the inside out. Why are we doing something?

[00:18:17]What the guys?

[00:18:19]>> Hey, so Duke Power reported profits of $5 billion yesterday. Five billion. And now they're pushing to raise energy rates here in North Carolina by 18%.

[00:18:30]>> Damn. They made $5 billion and still want to raise energy prices by 18%. Not No, bro. Not even just like something under 5%. I'm talking double digits >> 18%.

[00:18:44]>> They are really giving the the the the people around in that area the big one.

[00:18:48]All right. They really giving them a big giant one too with no jelly raw. Right.

[00:18:55]Can you can you imagine that conversation at the board meeting? Yeah, we just recorded record profits of $5 billion. Well, what's next on the agenda? I don't know. Let's raise the energy rates by 18% to make it 7 billion next year. Right. Energy is not a luxury. like it's it's not a subscription. It's not a Netflix that you can just cancel yet. Here we are again just flat out bending over for these monopolies. Just bending and there's nothing that we can do about it, right? Yeah. You know, you could go off the grid. Yeah, sure we can. Sure we can. But with all the advances in society and where we're at these days, you know, how far we've came, so to speak, why the would we want to do that?

[00:19:31]Like why the would we want to go back and living in huts with no electricity?

[00:19:35]Man, you get the people that tell you to go do this, tell you to do things that they don't even want to do. To be honest, there's a very select handful of people that are able to live in tiny homes and go off-rid and do all that stuff. But you talking about the average person?

[00:19:51]We're not doing that at all. Hell no. We need lights. We need energy. We want a little bit of AC. Like, god damn. If I'm going to bust my ass 50 to 60 hours a week, at least I can come home to some sort of air condition. Okay? like me give me something to look forward to come home to or something along those lines. But bro, the the Bills for them to talk about raising those rates by 18% after recording such a giant profit.

[00:20:15]Look, I don't know what their P&L looks like behind the board, but charging people extra is insane. By 18% is insane. Not just a little bit, man. I don't know what y'all gonna do in North Carolina, but you know, somebody has to say something for that. Like I'm pretty sure there state regulations, right, that uh like restrict the the the the the amount that one thing can go to. It's kind of like how rental rates and things are. But is there such an such a thing for these u electricity companies in these areas that run the monopolies and territories? It's crazy, man. But let me guys know what you think and where you're watching from. I'll see y'all on the next video. Don't forget to hit the like button and subscribe.