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They can always dump the million dollar houses that cost them $100k back in the day, and move to a cheaper part of the country for retirement.
You may yet have the last laugh on this.
There were 78.5 million babies born in the USA between 1946 and 1964 (I'm one of them). The vast majority of the survivors (plus the net of immigrants over emigrants) will retire over the coming 15 years, and a large fraction of them will hope to sell their million dollar homes to --- well, to someone like you.
I've long thought that this age cohort could be screwed once again as there just are not enough well off families seeking to purchase those homes from the retiring boomers over the next 15 years. This makes me wonder even more if the run up in real estate prices in the past year or so is truly another bubble in the making.
The most educated generation?
The education that many Millenials received may have a degree attached to it, but it's still inferior to that of the previous generations. It's so specialized that their employment options are limited to the specific areas in which they trained...
Education isn't training, and education isn't supposed to provide specific job skills whereas training is supposed to do so.
Think about it this way: if you had a 13 year old daughter, as part of her school curriculum, would you prefer she have a class in:
You haven't been around long enough to know what "hard/hardest" is ... or, apparently, to have figured out there's no reason you should have it easier than anyone one else just because you have a college degree.College grads, including those with "MBA's" are allowed to work as "plumbers, HVAC techs, carpenters, and mechanics". They can start at the bottom and work their way up like the experienced in those professions do. Waving a piece of paper won't get you to the head of that line, however.Sounds like you might have to struggle to get by, just like most "blue-collar" people have since forever.
Revealing. If you study on this attitude, you may realize you haven't yet earned the right to classify yourself as "underemployed" ... and that hanging on to that attitude won't get you very far any time soon.Not necessarily. It remains true that those with college degrees, statistically, do "better" in the long run than those without. But the best gift of college is the opportunity to learn to think critically with a broader theoretical view of the world than many without will achieve at the same age. Good luck drawing on that reservoir of knowledge in the real world. Really.
Yeah, I have done a lot of "blue-collar" type work over the 40+ years since earning my B.A. and M.S. degrees. I never expected to benefit financially from them (and never used them professionally). I just went for the love of the learning at the time. Of course I paid for mine partly with veteran's benefits earned through military service ... and part by working full time while attending school and being a father and husband and buying a home. Graduated without debt.
Btw: no one needs college to gain the information and skills that path offers. It's just one way to get them. An expensive one. If it was a mistake for you to have paid, welcome to your first expensive mistake in life. You'll be lucky if it's your last.
Now, you can fume about my response -- or, conversely, you can think about it and take a lesson in critical thinking.
I think the theological place of eternal punishment just froze over. I actually agree with everything nullgeo just wrote.
1) My daughter graduated from an Ivy League school about 7 weeks ago and yesterday (literally) she started her first full-time job in an advertising agency in San Francisco, grossing $50K (she wasn't a tech major; she majored in pre-unemployment). She turned down 2 offers in NYC for about the same.
2) Her childhood friend (next door neighbor) just graduated from Cal Poly & got a job as an entry level HR person for an SF firm for $55K. The two of them will share an apartment in SF with a 3rd person:
3) The third roommate just graduated from one of the Claremont Colleges, and turned down a job in SF as a project manager for a language translation company that paid $55K because she didn't think she would be happy; her mom & dad are going to support her while she looks for a job in SF.
My daughter reports that her friends who graduated from her college with engineering degrees mostly are getting in the mid $80Ks while a very few extraordinary people are getting low 6 figures.
Rent is running about $1650 per bedroom in the 3 bedroom unit they will share (emphasis on safety & access to public transportation drove up the budget for renting an apartment). All of the parents of the 3 roomates expect to subsidize the kids this year. Going forward -- we'll see.
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Anyone who did well in Econ 101 knows that when the government subsidizes the price of a product or service, as a society we consume too much of it and producers produce too much of it. This is a distortion in the efficient allocation of capital. Sometimes we can justify this (e.g., subsidized vaccinations for children) whereas other times it is much more difficult (e.g. subsidies for oil production)
Regarding these distortions in the efficient allocation of capital, anyone with graduate-level econ under their belt can, with a few whiteboards & some not particularly advanced mathematics, prove that overall as a country we are worse off than we otherwise would be if we didn't have those distortions as measured by lower GDP. There are some who point out, quite rightly, that GDP isn't everything and it may not actually be the best measure of societal wealth.
Higher education is no different from other goods and services in this regard. By virtue of subsidizing the price of higher education in the USA, as a society we both produce and we consume too much of it – probably far too much. We see the results of this market distortion all around us: both the cost & the price of higher education go up much faster than the general price level, the competition to get into college is a blood sport, and far too many graduating college seniors across the country face a career path that starts with asking customers “…Would you like fries with that?”
As an aside, an interesting senior econ thesis topic might well be an estimation of just how much worse off we as a country are as a result of this distortion in the efficient allocation of resources. Just how negative is the ROI to the country? Most studies of the ROI to higher ed focus on the ROI to the student - that is, the ROI to the recipient of financial subsidies (Note: EVERY student receives a "scholarship" because the cost of providing that education is higher than the price). Those studies show the ROI is positive. But I haven't found a good study that focuses on societal costs - that is, because we subsidize higher ed, that money is taken from somewhere else (e.g., bridge & road repair, extinguishing the national debt, etc) and that somewhere else necessarily has an even higher ROI.
At the same time, most educators, college administrators and many parents take it as an article of faith that more is better – more financial aid is better, more alumni contributions are better, and more donations to the mission of the college are better -- and of course, more students attending college is better. When we point to individual students who benefit, we are all moved. We can all find stories of real lives that have been changed for the better as a result of the financial support we provide to students. Similarly, financial subsidies result in a benefit for faculty & administrators, but we usually don’t highlight that benefit, preferring to focus on the students.
There is a big leap, however, from the notion of a positive ROI to any individual deserving student receiving financial aid to pursue an education (and career) that she/he would not otherwise be able to pursue, and the macro view that we are introducing distortions in the efficient allocation of capital that ineluctably lead to a lower GDP and standard of living for all of us relative to a world without those distortions.
This brings to mind a conversation I had with the late Milton Friedman on this topic nearly 35 years ago when I was a grad student at the University of Chicago. He of course agreed with the observation of the market distortions and their consequences introduced by financial subsidies, but he also observed something else. He noted that throughout history, true advances in every discipline (arts, sciences, technology, engineering, medicine, government, etc) are the result of the efforts & breakthroughs of a tiny fraction of people engaged in that endeavor – and he went on to quip that college of course encourages a tremendous amount of indiscriminate breeding in a very discriminating gene pool, noting he had met his wife in college. He said subsidies for Higher Ed might not be a bad thing. Dr. Friedman then changed the subject; he knew which side of his bread was buttered.
I don't have the answer. I suspect it might include cutting back on the number of seats available across the nation for higher ed (as much as 20%). I also suspect it includes increasing the real price of college so that only those who can truly justify it to themselves undertake that endeavor. I also think that the role of the traditional residential liberal arts college needs to be rethought ("football for the alumni, sex for the students, parking spaces for the faculty"). It just seems wrong for so many students to saddle themselves with debt &/or forgo several years of earnings to pursue a college degree, especially if they really don't know why they are pursuing it.
with a couple key points. You say that:
1. things should be easier
2. technology makes (or is supposed to make) things "better"
3. college should make things easier
I suggest you:
1. Define "easier" and explain why "easy" = "good"
2. Define "better" and explain why technology is the path to "better"
3. explain (again) why "easier" is "good" and how college fits in that mix
Huh? Why would I explain these things when I said nothing about them? I never suggested that easy = good, etc. I said that technology and increased productivity should make life easier, what I mean by "easy" in this case is being able to subsist with less work. But not only have the hours people work not declined, people are working more today than they were decades ago. So what should have happened hasn't happened and it would be perhaps instructive to think about why it hasn't happened.
As for college, a college graduate should have it easier simply because they are more educated. Though, today's public universities hardly educate....so perhaps things shouldn't be that easier...
Young people are moving to California more for the lifestyle opportunities or if they are in the tech industry. If you are in tech and are the cream of the crop, California is the place to be. It's every techie's dream to live in the Bay Area and work for one of the major companies. I would say however that you have to really know your stuff to break into that market.
I'm not sure what you mean by "techie", but I can't think of a single computer scientists I went to school with that dreamed of moving to the bay area. And these were "the cream of the crop".
Regardless, the bay area does attract some tech talent but a lot of the middle-class tech jobs have left the area and have been relocated to lower cost areas.
User, you and I have locked horns on similar subjects as this before ... however, I think here you are making mostly very good observations ... surprise. I disagree, however, with a couple key points. You say that:
1. things should be easier
2. technology makes (or is supposed to make) things "better"
3. college should make things easier
I suggest you:
1. Define "easier" and explain why "easy" = "good"
2. Define "better" and explain why technology is the path to "better"
3. explain (again) why "easier" is "good" and how college fits in that mix
Now, I am sure you will have plenty to define and explain ...
Quote:
Originally Posted by user_id
Huh? Why would I explain these things when I said nothing about them? I never suggested that easy = good, etc. I said that technology and increased productivity should make life easier, what I mean by "easy" in this case is being able to subsist with less work. But not only have the hours people work not declined, people are working more today than they were decades ago. So what should have happened hasn't happened and it would be perhaps instructive to think about why it hasn't happened.
As for college, a college graduate should have it easier simply because they are more educated. Though, today's public universities hardly educate....so perhaps things shouldn't be that easier...
Oh user, of course you said something about them ... here are excerpts from your post:
Quote:
Originally Posted by user_id
People today should have it easier ...
what is all the technology, increased productivity, etc worth if it can't even improve people's lives? ...
As for college degrees, that too should make things easier ...
"People today shouldhave it easier" -- because why?
Technology "improv[ing] peoples' lives" isn't a valuation of "good"?
"College degrees should make things easier" -- again, because why? ... and circularly back to question #1.
"People today shouldhave it easier" -- because why?
Technology "improv[ing] peoples' lives" isn't a valuation of "good"?
"College degrees should make things easier" -- again, because why? ... and circularly back to question #1.
I've already answered this, people's lives should be easier in the sense that they should be able to work less while achieving a similar standard of living as those did in the past. Why? Because industry is far more productive today than it was decades ago.
I've already answered this, people's lives should be easier in the sense that they should be able to work less while achieving a similar standard of living as those did in the past. Why? Because industry is far more productive today than it was decades ago.
Ok, thanks.
But we still don't have an understanding of why peoples' lives should be easier ... why they should work less than those in the past. What's the benefit? I'm not saying there isn't one ... in fact I agree that people should work less ... I think work is grossly overrated. As is my tendency to dwell on, pre-neolithic people didn't work very hard. Contemporary stone-age clans and tribes have been observed in considerable depth. They go hunting and gathering and living primitively, but it isn't particularly hard work involving the hours and stress societies have demanded since.
Of course, a lot of readers poke fun at my references, ridiculing the idea that we should all return to the caveman existence. But, other than some good joking about that, I don't suggest any such thing. The bald truth is simply that, with the knowledge humanity has accumulated over the many of thousands of years since the Paleolithic transitioned to agriculture and written history, we know perfectly well how to live better than ever, in greater health and safety and general security, than technology's answers provide for us. Technology advances have brought nothing so much as unnecessarily bewildering complexities, each level demanding more and more "work" and pressure and competition and stress and all manner of toxicities than the last.
Simply put: we're not getting better or easier at all on the path we have committed ourselves to psychologically.
I've already answered this, people's lives should be easier in the sense that they should be able to work less while achieving a similar standard of living as those did in the past. Why? Because industry is far more productive today than it was decades ago.
Why should workers have it easier and have to work less for a similar standard of living as people had in the past? Because industry is more productive, why should people work less?
The answer to both questions, is they shouldn't. A company has the right to receive a certain level of production for the dollars they spend for labor. Eight hours has been the established full time work day for decades.
What more productive industry means, is that the company can expand and do more work for the same amount of work per worker. The average job has gotten cleaner, and less difficult, and the amount of production per worker has increased. However a company must figure how much work will be produced in an average 8 hour work per employee, to be able to control their cost of doing business.
Competition requires that they can produce goods for the amount equal to what their competition is spending.
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