No this reasoning is flawed and used as an excuse for bad behavior. My father justified his alcoholism to himself by pointing out how independent all the kids turned out since he was useless, or how good we were with money because we could sense a scam from a young age as he was always trying to scam/manipulate us.

You can teach someone to cross the road by explaining the dangers and process to them, or you can teach them by driving enough cars into them that they either figure it out themselves (and carry the scars forever) or die. That doesn’t make you a good teacher

FYI this isn’t a term Americans know. I was super confused when I moved to the UK and kept hearing it mostly because people being made redundant weren’t technically ‘being made redundant’, if anything they were already made redundant (or just no longer needed for some other reason, or no longer affordable) and were now suffering the consequences. Idk, weird phrase, I’m going to go look up the etymology now. To be fair I suppose ‘laid off’ is pretty weird too

I’ve had it happen to friends and I’m pretty sure it happened to me once but at least in my case I think I was collateral damage. That said, without really knowing the strategies of that sort of thing hitting the wrong target seems like something that would happen fairly often if you don’t care about other people which, presumably, you don’t.

There’s something to be said here about how normal it is for people to be renting later and later in life. I totally get what you’re saying but it’s sad that it’s true.

Yeah I’m usually more interested in nutrients than calories. Otherwise I’d just have a Guinness for lunch

As an American who spent time living in the UK - ‘sandwich’ is a generous description of what you get in a £4 meal deal. Some meal deals have things made from actual food but good luck finding one of those at that price.