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What do you think you could have done differently to have prevented all these problems? I don’t know about you, but I was going to work every day to pay bills, get an education myself, raise my kids to be hardworking and law-abiding citizens. I voted for the political candidates as best I could. What should I have done differently?
There's nothing that any one individual could do, to substantially affect society. But society, in the formbof public-sector and private-sector leaders, could have made different choices.
Examples:
1. Instead of squandering the late-1990s annual federal budget surplus, use it to reduce the debt, or to invest in infrastructure.
2. In the late 80s and early 90s, as the parlous predicament of the American blue-collar was first becoming obvious, adopt a German-style apprenticeship training program. Remember, that in 1988, the final bulge of the Baby Book was on the cusp of turning 30. They were young enough to be the vanguard of a new generation savvy in practical technology.
3. Revise the immigration system, to admit more (rather than less) people who are willing to join a jobs-corps, with a regimented path toward upward mobility. This need not be low-tech or menial. Examples include medicine in rural/disadvantaged communities.
4. Start a civilian employment program akin to the military, where participants learn employable skills, and graduates receive the equivalent bof a GI bill, towards higher education (and the equivalent of a VA loan).
Notice that whereas it's too late to follow the first two points above, it's not too late to pursue the second two.
Minimalism and reduced consumption is inevitable. I guess this is why the fed spent like crazy starting in 08 09 because most economists with a Brain knew ahead of time the fertility rate is going to continue to drop like a rock and there's so many structural problems that I am not sure we can do anything about it at this point.
If Japan is a roller coster that has slowed down from 100mph to 50mph this country will slow down from 70mph to 20mph. It is going to be a slow gradual contraction which could become very painful and hastened if any of our fundamentals go out of whack. If all the fed can do is raise or drop interest rates this is not going to end well.
Yep... I am seeing some amazing 25 to 30 year olds/couples doing very well...
There will be very large gaps between the haves and the have nots.
There will be those who did all the right things and do really well and live better than any generation before, and there will be those who did all the right things and are living in abject poverty and lower than any prior generation with more diseases, higher stress, lower life expectancy, higher drug addiction (already seeing this in the opioid crisis #s in the MidWest).
The margin for error is becoming very very slim. This will show up in our macroeconomics in about 25 years if not sooner. By then I will hopefully be out of here and retired. I am not sticking around for the end game.
Minimalism and reduced consumption is inevitable. I guess this is why the fed spent like crazy starting in 08 09 because most economists with a Brain knew ahead of time the fertility rate is going to continue to drop like a rock and there's so many structural problems that I am not sure we can do anything about it at this point.
If Japan is a roller coster that has slowed down from 100mph to 50mph this country will slow down from 70mph to 20mph. It is going to be a slow gradual contraction which could become very painful and hastened if any of our fundamentals go out of whack. If all the fed can do is raise or drop interest rates this is not going to end well.
Regardless of what the Fed's intentions were, they succeeded in exacerbating the gulf in wealth by essentially funneling the majority of the world's assets into fewer and fewer hands, as we enter a stage of economic development that will significantly decrease human economic viability until perhaps every single human labor category is replaced through automation.
It was theft on a scale never seen before. Now we will find out if people choose to work together to build a new society and economy predicated on human labor capital obsolesce or if they will choose to ironically use millennial and Gen X created technology to murder and control their own children.
When I was in college and graduate school I was working part-time jobs, but as it turned out was working at least 40 hours a week. In fact I found an old pay stub from my senior year at the state university, I worked 53 hours at $3/hour - no overtime rate was required then. That was the year I moved out of my parents' home and got an apartment for $150/month, tuition was about $1,500/year. I just looked up the current resident tuition there, and it's $6,564, a bit over 4 times higher. You could say that a person working the same number of hours would have to make about $12, just over the minimum wage there now (California). That's really not true, however, because other needs such as textbooks have gone up far more, and rent in that area is about 15 times higher now. Statistical data can be selectively used to demonstrate any point someone is trying to make.
Still, I see people managing to get degrees online while working full time, including several friends and relatives. Having that work experience upon graduation makes a big difference in starting a career or being promoted. The problem is that working and going to school would impact the 6 hours per week spent on social media by that age group. We didn't have that distraction.
A biggie I see here is that at your rate of pay, you would come close to making your monthly rent after only one week of work. Rent $150, pay $120 week is good. Now in NJ min wage is $8.60, which would be about $350 or so, but apartments average over $1000 even in crappy areas. You’d have been able to pay rent with most of your pay left over, while today you wouldn’t have nearly enough for food, car insurance etc let alone tuition.
I love when people reference the 15% interest rate on a home 30 yrs ago like the price of the home was the equivalent to today's median wages. smh
Clueless
Quote:
Originally Posted by aslowdodge
But let's look at the cost of higher interest rate. Back in those days I had a house I paid $165K for in Roseville, Ca
I had a loan at 17% I think. Payments on $132K loan are $1881 a month at that interest rate.
The same house today is worth about $400K. A loan for $320K at 4.5% today for that house is $1621 a month.
Today the payment is $260 a month less than it was back then. In other words the payment was 16% more back 30 years ago. Minimum wage has tripled since then. Average wage is more than double.
I'm not saying life is easier, but for you to discount the effect of interest rate with a smh shows you aren't thinking of the whole picture. People who mention housing bubble often say increasing interest rates will shoulder part of the blamce.
I hear younger people freaking out sometimes because interest rates are going up and the good old days of 3% are gone. I laugh because rates are still extremely low at below 5% and we may never see these rates again in a long time. I personally am trying to borrow as much as I can to take advantage of the low rates to use to invest.
I got 17% for my first house and didn’t think once about blaming any previous generation for my situation. I did what you did; worked hard, and if that wasn’t enough, worked harder.
There's nothing that any one individual could do, to substantially affect society. But society, in the formbof public-sector and private-sector leaders, could have made different choices.
Examples:
1. Instead of squandering the late-1990s annual federal budget surplus, use it to reduce the debt, or to invest in infrastructure.
2. In the late 80s and early 90s, as the parlous predicament of the American blue-collar was first becoming obvious, adopt a German-style apprenticeship training program. Remember, that in 1988, the final bulge of the Baby Book was on the cusp of turning 30. They were young enough to be the vanguard of a new generation savvy in practical technology.
3. Revise the immigration system, to admit more (rather than less) people who are willing to join a jobs-corps, with a regimented path toward upward mobility. This need not be low-tech or menial. Examples include medicine in rural/disadvantaged communities.
4. Start a civilian employment program akin to the military, where participants learn employable skills, and graduates receive the equivalent bof a GI bill, towards higher education (and the equivalent of a VA loan).
Notice that whereas it's too late to follow the first two points above, it's not too late to pursue the second two.
I agree that society’s leaders could have made different choices and that most individuals can’t do much. That is why I am asking—I don’t feel guilty about things’ be the way they are and I don’t understand the hostility to the Boomers in general. The subsequent generations are doing the same things we did: going to work, getting an education, paying bills and raising families. For some reason, though, they seem to think we had more power over things than they do. It is almost as though they think we deliberately sabotaged them, when the opposite is what I see.
I don’t agree with more immigration of unskilled persons until we get our own citizens provided for, though. I agree with you ideas for training and educating people.
I have a great work ethic and s great job. The fact remains cost of living has risen much more than wages over the decades I’ve been working. Housing costs and health costs are a much larger percentage of income than in years past. And the amount of student debt for these good jobs is crippling kids today. They can’t start investing, buying homes etc till they’re middle aged, that simply was not the case when I went to college.
Glad you have a good work ethic. Many don’t. That is just a fact. Try to hire an out of work, recent college grad to do any sort of manual labor and my point will be proved. Be attentive to all the times you have heard of some 25 yr old, not working, living with mom, and spending all his time playing online games.
If one chooses to attend a school with a crippling tuition, then that is a choice. There are always alternatives, yet too many students only want to go to the best(most expensive) college. Again, a choice freely made.
Quote:
Originally Posted by markg91359
My wife and I bought her first home about two weeks after we got married at the ages of 24 and 26. We bought second and much bigger home two years later.
Health costs would have killed us over the years because I am self-employed, but for the fact my wife took a government job and always provided health insurance for us through her work.
People can talk about all the opportunity that supposedly exists for the younger generation until they are blue in the face. It doesn't change the fact that educational costs are much higher, housing costs are much higher, and health care costs are much higher. Life isn't fair and no one was ever promised a rose garden. However, that doesn't mean its ok to leave one generation with a weed patch.
Frankly, as I approach my fifty-ninth birthday, I feel a sort of shame about the world we've left the younger generation. We could have done a better job with all of the things I mentioned above. We dozed. We allowed these things to happen around us because we had completed our own education, we had bought our own homes, and, in many cases, we had good health insurance. We were the ones on watch and I feel at times as though we dropped the ball.
What’s with the ‘we’ bs? You can feel all the shame you want. I have lived a productive, active life. I believe I have usually been a positive influence on those I was involved with, and the same with wherever I lived at any particular time.
There are more opportunities in education and employment than ever before. The internet has presented entrepreneurial options that never existed before. If a generation of spoiled loafers can’t find that perfect job by the age 23, too bad. Work harder. It’s that simple.
If you feel so much shame, take out a second mortgage and make a LARGE donation to your local university. They can name a scholarship after you. Problem solved.
Glad you have a good work ethic. Many don’t. That is just a fact. Try to hire an out of work, recent college grad to do any sort of manual labor and my point will be proved. Be attentive to all the times you have heard of some 25 yr old, not working, living with mom, and spending all his time playing online games.
If one chooses to attend a school with a crippling tuition, then that is a choice. There are always alternatives, yet too many students only want to go to the best(most expensive) college. Again, a choice freely made.
What’s with the ‘we’ bs? You can feel all the shame you want. I have lived a productive, active life. I believe I have usually been a positive influence on those I was involved with, and the same with wherever I lived at any particular time.
There are more opportunities in education and employment than ever before. The internet has presented entrepreneurial options that never existed before. If a generation of spoiled loafers can’t find that perfect job by the age 23, too bad. Work harder. It’s that simple.
If you feel so much shame, take out a second mortgage and make a LARGE donation to your local university. They can name a scholarship after you. Problem solved.
The problem is explained in great detail by me and by others. You have chosen to deny it. Many deny it because they like to believe they were just "so much better pulled together" than today's young people. Its so satisfying to blame someone else rather than talk about fixing a problem. Its even more satisfying to forget about breaks you got earlier in life that made living expenses and education more affordable and made the difference for many.
Yet, some oldsters will continue to put on rose colored glasses and try to pretend that today's young people have it better than any other generation. That's the BS.
Perhaps, the problem is too complicated for me or anyone else to feel personally ashamed. However, what cannot be denied is that during the last forty years when most of us have been in charge of this country college tuition has soared, medical costs have become unmanageable, and rent has made living away from home impossible for many in their early twenties.
In the end, some will understand. Others will dwell in ignorance.
Location: Formerly Pleasanton Ca, now in Marietta Ga
10,351 posts, read 8,569,440 times
Reputation: 16698
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ranredd
I hear you..... but you just told me that putting 80k down NOW is better than putting 30k down THEN. Again, 80k now when the purchasing dollars aren't near as powerful as there were when putting 30k down.
Plus, we've become too accustomed to these low interest rates. Borrowing a lot now and expecting rates to go back to double digits or even high 8's is like expecting single incomes to be the norm again.
So I repeat.....smh
Yes but 80k now is at today's pay which is higher, not pay from 30 years ago. I don't know about single incomes being the norm. Back in those days lots of families had 2 incomes, both my parents worked. It sounds like you don't think rates will ever hit the 8's or higher. Maybe, but a lot of people might not agree and who wants to wait until it's too late?
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