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Houses as an example, are 66% Cheaper in Austin, which allows a young family to buy a home, that is beyond their dream in the Silicon Valley.
The median house price in Austin right now is $191,000. I can't begin to tell you how misleading that is.
As someone who has lived in Austin for 10 years and considered moving back there before choosing Sonoma County instead (last year), I'm begging you to actually go to Austin and look at the houses that are $191,000.
I think people are imagining these fantastic bungalow houses in a desirable part of Austin for $191,000 and it's just not the case. We were looking in Hyde Park, Enfield, Northwest Hills, Tarrytown, etc and I'm telling you that a 3 bed/3 bath that didn't need to be completely renovated was starting at $700k. Most of them were over a million. A house that was a perfect comp to the house we bought in Sonoma County (4 bed, 4 bath, 4000 sq feet, view of what the area is famous for, and almost exact proximity to city amenities) was literally the same price as what we paid for our slice of heaven here. And the property taxes there on the house of the same cost were more than three times (!!!) as much as here.
You might be able to argue that a family in their mid 20s, trying to buy a crappy starter home in a rough-around-the-edges part of town with a lot of problems that you are willing to live with in your 20s, can purchase THAT house cheaper in Austin than Silicon Valley, but as soon as that family is making six digits and wants to live in a nice, well built house in a quality neighborhood that feeds to the (VERY few) great schools in Austin, you'll be paying basically what we pay in the Bay Area (not including SF).
Don't just look at the median prices, go down there like we did and look for yourselves.
It is an epic bummer for a Millennial if they want to chase the plastic capitalistic carrot on the end of the stick.
It is clearly a game that is concentrating virtually all the wealth gained into the hands of an ever-smaller number of people at the top, holding the stick. Which is a sucker's game. Rigged.
To break free of it, one must turn from the materialistic Keeping Up With the Joneses paradigm, and embrace...something else. Millenials will have to figure out what that Something Else will be, but there are similar mass refutations of a BS system to examine throughout history. We might be coming into another one of those. The present system is grinding up way too many decent people into oblivion, way too fast. This country is having a helluva time trying to deal with the realities of global competition and its own uber-consumption disorder.
It is clearly a game that is concentrating virtually all the wealth gained into the hands of an ever-smaller number of people at the top, holding the stick. Which is a sucker's game. Rigged.
To break free of it, one must turn from the materialistic Keeping Up With the Joneses paradigm, and embrace...something else. Millenials will have to figure out what that Something Else will be, but there are similar mass refutations of a BS system to examine throughout history. We might be coming into another one of those. The present system is grinding up way too many decent people into oblivion, way too fast. This country is having a helluva time trying to deal with the realities of global competition and its own uber-consumption disorder.
It is clearly a game that is concentrating virtually all the wealth gained into the hands of an ever-smaller number of people at the top, holding the stick. Which is a sucker's game. Rigged.
To break free of it, one must turn from the materialistic Keeping Up With the Joneses paradigm, and embrace...something else. Millenials will have to figure out what that Something Else will be, but there are similar mass refutations of a BS system to examine throughout history. We might be coming into another one of those. The present system is grinding up way too many decent people into oblivion, way too fast. This country is having a helluva time trying to deal with the realities of global competition and its own uber-consumption disorder.
Well, I said your point was irrelevant because you kept mentioning simpler times so, naturally, I thought that was your point.
Simpler times is my point, right. But I didn't say that simpler times needs to be achieved by returning to a caveman existence.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gentoo
Neither did the rest of us.
?? So? It's the BB's who are being attacked as if they controlled the times by intention.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gentoo
I'm sure you have your reasons for using Wal-Mart as your example. I guess what is considered "crap" or garbage depends on one's perspective. For the two generations that came after you, realizing that we will not have what our parents had at the same age is what's crap.
Yes, I used WalMart as the epitome of crap and conditioning. How much "perspective" is required to recognize the worthlessness of the throw-away materialism we consume?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gentoo
However, who gets to determine what simpler? Why is simpler necessarily better?
Why is simpler better? Because 9 billion people can't have what 315 million Americans flaunt as a standard for living. In fact, it's questionable whether 1 billion could. And because essence is always more powerful, meaningful, and fulfilling than superficial fluff and distractions.
There are those on this thread that want to go back, to like it used to be.
They want the hunting and gathering age to come back. Where in the metro area, are you going to be able to go out and kill enough game to feed the family. You would have to be eating feral cats and dog, and there would not be enough of them to feed many people.
Just think about 60 years ago, it took 33% of all working people in the U.S. to grow the food people ate. Now with over twice the population, we can grow enough to feed the country and export with only 1.5% of the population involved in farming/ranching. People could not afford to eat today, if it took as big a percent of the people to grow the food today as it did 60 years ago. Labor costs would put food out of the reach of the majority.
Technology has been around as long as man has been. Just today, we have different technology. We have to consider, that experts tell us that in only 10 years when it comes to the jobs people will be performing half of them have not even been invented yet. That is how fast, that technology is changing the world.
I want to give an example of how things change.
In Oregon they have a long established cheese making company. A few years ago (less than 20), they had dozens of big strong men, that would release milk from overhead pipes into big vats. They would add a chemical, and then men would use big wooden paddles to stir the mix. It would turn to big curds over a lot of whey (liquid), they would then cut the curds into blocks, and then manually put the blocks into bags, and haul them to the aging room.
Just a few years ago they shut down a couple of weeks. All you see now is a series of tanks around the room connected by pipes, and then there is one machine. Three people men/women in white lab coats work off of computer screens, and only one man waits at the machine with a clear plastic bag in his hands collecting the blocks of cheese dropping from the machine, and places them on a rolling cart to take to the aging room when it is full. Three people operating computers, and one strong man to catch the blocks is all it takes replacing dozens of strong men while producing much more cheese than before.
The displaced workers were lucky. This cheese company used to send their cheese to the east coast to be packaged for sale. They added on and put in a packaging section, and put the displaced workers to packing cheese which is a lot easier job than they had before. The poor workers in the east, were out of a job however.
This type of thing, is happening all over the nation. Look at Detroit that has just announced they are going bankrupt. Michigan lost a lot of jobs, as they automated the auto manufacturing business. Today they can build more cars, and use less than half the former number of employees. One reason for the auto company bankruptcy, was the unions that were keeping them from modernizing to the extent they needed to do to stay competitive with cars made in other countries. The unions were fighting automation and the reduction of staff. Bankruptcy allowed the changes to be made, and the auto business is coming back, but with only a portion of the workers formerly needed.
The states that are booming, are the right to work states, where it is easier to automate. Some of the other states, are moving to right to work status as a way to survive.
These changes, are hurting the young today, reducing job opportunities, hold down wage increases, etc. It is making it harder, for young people to get a start, especially if they live in California with it's high cost of living.
It costs about 66% more to live in Silicon Valley than Austin Texas, and wages are no where that much different. In other words the young person today, will be many dollars ahead each month going to Texas. Houses as an example, are 66% Cheaper in Austin, which allows a young family to buy a home, that is beyond their dream in the Silicon Valley.
California companies are moving many of their facilities to Austin and other places in the U.S. where they can have as much as a 40% lower cost to do business, which all goes to their bottom line. If they don't do things like this, the stockholders will fire them to increase their dividends. This problem makes it that much harder, for young people in California.
That is why though their grandparents and parents moved to California for the opportunities, the young today are having to bail out to survive.
OT you are hilarious ... you say you are in your mid-80's ... yet you understand less than the Millenials. Your answer to everything is more productivity with fewer workers, and reduction of regulation in order to encourage more growth -- which is exactly what causes the problem we are discussing and chokes the availability of resources, drives up the prices of real estate, and creates more pollution. Endless growth is not a successful strategy for anything but cancer -- until it kills its host.
In Oregon they have a long established cheese making company. A few years ago (less than 20), they had dozens of big strong men, that would release milk from overhead pipes into big vats. They would add a chemical, and then men would use big wooden paddles to stir the mix. It would turn to big curds over a lot of whey (liquid), they would then cut the curds into blocks, and then manually put the blocks into bags, and haul them to the aging room.
Just a few years ago they shut down a couple of weeks. All you see now is a series of tanks around the room connected by pipes, and then there is one machine. Three people men/women in white lab coats work off of computer screens, and only one man waits at the machine with a clear plastic bag in his hands collecting the blocks of cheese dropping from the machine, and places them on a rolling cart to take to the aging room when it is full. Three people operating computers, and one strong man to catch the blocks is all it takes replacing dozens of strong men while producing much more cheese than before.
The displaced workers were lucky. This cheese company used to send their cheese to the east coast to be packaged for sale. They added on and put in a packaging section, and put the displaced workers to packing cheese which is a lot easier job than they had before. The poor workers in the east, were out of a job however.
This type of thing, is happening all over the nation. Look at Detroit that has just announced they are going bankrupt. Michigan lost a lot of jobs, as they automated the auto manufacturing business. Today they can build more cars, and use less than half the former number of employees. One reason for the auto company bankruptcy, was the unions that were keeping them from modernizing to the extent they needed to do to stay competitive with cars made in other countries. The unions were fighting automation and the reduction of staff. Bankruptcy allowed the changes to be made, and the auto business is coming back, but with only a portion of the workers formerly needed.
The states that are booming, are the right to work states, where it is easier to automate. Some of the other states, are moving to right to work status as a way to survive.
Cheese... A subject I know well.. SOOOO.. How does the cheese taste from the place in Oregon????? That is the real question. I suspect it taste just like any other factory cheese, now that the artisanal craft of the cheese maker is gone from the process!!!!!
So now you have a small company that used to make great hand crafted cheese, producing the same tasteless crap that the big multinationals like Kraft produce. Hellooooo.... they are doomed, the only way they can compete now is with a lower price... Next comes lower wages, less benefits, cutting corners on the quality of ingredients, all to compete in the arena of a lower price... Guess what? Play the game against the big boys and you are doomed!
That is a really really good example of exactly what America did wrong!!!! Exactly why we failed. We put greed and quantity over quality... Now we are fat pigs that eat cheap pig slop.
The only winners are the mega corporations....
I do not see how less policy, more automation, and bigger companies, hence a greater concentration of wealth fixes the problem... It is the problem.! Yes the motor city unions contributed to the failure of the Automakers... Remember Ford did not fail though.... WHY? They invested in innovative design and creating more fuel economic cars like Japan.
Plain and simple the ones that failed did so because of GREED.
But your point here is irrelevant. Barring some cataclysmic event, we're not going to go back to a simpler life you seem to be advocating. Because of this, we, Xer's, Millies etc. are looking at things from a realistic point of view in the world we live in today. Do I agree with you that our society is broken? Yes, you know that. However, human-beings have survived because we persevered and moved forward, not because we gave up. I believe certain parts of our system need to be fixed but to suggest that the only way to fix it is to scrap it, is not only unfair but also short-sighted.
Well stated...
I do not think Null or anyone was suggesting giving up though.
Possibly consider back tracking as a method to get back to a better path though. LOL
I see no way to win playing the game of wanting more material wealth. I quit the game in 2001. Had a great dream job in the 80's and 90's did well. Put my blood sweat and tears into it... Company got sold for a good profit, stock holders did well... (Which I was not one of.) Saw the changes that were coming... Went self employed. Play the game by MY rules...
Sure I have way less money, way less material wealth... But that is what "they" want you to chase after! Instead, I got to be a dad that was home to raise my kids. I gained the ability to be my own boss to have time for my family... By changing what one values the most you can have way more of what counts than the Boomers did...
I am not confident you can desire more material wealth and make changes to the system.... I believe it is a trap... I believe the only way to make changes is to reduce participation, to step off the wheel. Even stepping off the wheel in the slightest ways in-mass makes huge changes.
So my answer is consume less, but when you do consume, try to vote with your wallet and spend on what you think is good for you and the rest of us common folks.
I am confident our keepers can and will be brought to their knees with this method. I know several millennials doing this, not by choice so much but out of necessity. Unfortunate, but hardship is the engine behind change.
Great posts by TrueTimbers ... and a brilliant coincidence to share on this topic.
I was awakened in the middle of the night by the need to think through an unrelated mini-crisis that has been unfolding for a family member. Then, typically, couldn't sleep so opened the news page on the internet. And I link below the short article that jumped out at me from PBS ... directly relating to the OP's topic and my, True Timber's, and bigdumbgod's responses.
It is not a long piece to read. Mostly it contains some deep quotations from the "The Theory of Moral Sentiments", written by mid-18th century "Scottish moral philosopher and ... pioneer of political economy", Adam Smith.
The article itself discusses the issue of the true position of most Baby Boomers. There are so many great quotes to pull I just have to give you the opener and hope those interested will be motivated to read this entire piece:
Quote:
The American Dream of Retirement: Do You Have to Be Asleep to Believe It?
...the great majority of our potential "baby boom" retirees have little or no assets, nor do they have funds set aside to live on for even six months, let alone the rest of their lives.
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a brilliant coincidence ...
