It's official: boomerang kids won't leave in this economy (judgment, buy, sell)

[Costaexpress]

Originally Posted by usayit

I cannot agree with this. There is a lot of variables that are not being considered.

How about those families in which the sole earner reaches retirement age before the spouse? (Age gap) Spouse looses medical benefits? Spouse also wouldn't qualify for medicaid. Spouse also would also have to stop paying into their retirement vehicle. Who's going to support the spouse?

How about older families? My financial adviser just had his first baby at 54. Are we going to start legislating that people stop having babies at 45 to make sure they are old enough to support themselves when forced retirement kicks in?

You assuming that life didn't hand the family a short deck and working later is a viable option. Forced retirement just took that option away.

Some older families have kids still in college at that age. They need to work in order to support them.

How about the business that has a long working relationship (and investment) in their workforce... a workforce that can't be easily replaced (skills/professional)?

The list goes on and on.... and on.

I think its unethical to take something away from a population and hand it to someone else because of entitlement. Taking things away from people will not solve the problem. Especially taking things away that they worked hard to maintain throughout their lives. Rarely in any situation is taking away someone else's right (short of harm) is the solution.

Why is there illegal immigration? JOBS!!! There are jobs.... just not the ones people want to be "entitled" to receive.


I am in need of a bigger home but can't afford it (5 person family in a 900sqft 2 bd house). My neighbor is in a 4 bedroom 2 bath 1600sqft house with only 3 people in it. I'd love to simply trade houses because I need the space more. lol.




There in lies part of the problem. Define low paying and dead end job. I'm sure your definition is different from each and every generation before you.

Yes, the fact that we have undocumented immigrants means that there are jobs. There is not shortage of jobs. There is a shortage of jobs people like to do.

[richardlong]

Originally Posted by Mandalorian

Half the problem is kids these days don't want to move.

You have to go where the jobs are.

That's very true. I live in Sioux falls SD and seriously upwards of 50% of 18 to 26 year olds here are like me moved as young adults here by themselves from other parts of the country for jobs, and that's the only reason we are here and if the job situation gets better where we are from we will go back home.

I know quite a few young adults from places like Detroit where there is no jobs at all that moved here by themselves with not a penny in there pocket an lived on the streets here for there first few months. Came here with nothing but a set of work clothes, a set of interview clothes, a resume, a cellphone, a switchblade an maybe 25 cents.That's how desperate they are for work.

[Jo48]

Originally Posted by Oldhag1

Less than 100 years ago multi-generational homes were the norm rather than the exception. Prior to Social Security, elderly parents or childless aunts and uncles who could no longer work needed to be taken care of. Also the older generation used to take care of the youngest generation so the family members who were the most productive workers could bring in support for th-e entire family. Working mothers are not as new as people think, daycare is what is new. The living arrangement where generations live separately, especially at such young and old ages, is a first world luxury.

You certainly don't have to go as far back as 100 years. My parents moved in with my widowed grandma when they married in the late 40s to pool their resources. When I was born, Grandma quit working (nanny/cleaning woman) and my Mom went back to work in the 1950s to supplement the family income. Day care? Grandma lived at home with us and was my "live in" babysitter. That was her contribution so to speak to the family.

After Great-Grandpa passed away, my Great-Grandma came to live us also until she died at 94 years old. Nursing home in the 50s? They might have had them back then, but could the average family even afford that? Plus, the mindset was different in those days. You took care of YOUR OWN.

Was it always wine and roses with those living arrangement? Of course not, BUT families learned to compromise and work out their differences for the greater good. I will say this much, I certainly was blessed growing up with not only Grandma, but also Great-Grandma. They both taught me so many things, including learning first had what it was like living in their times.

I sometimes think we are "poorer" in the today's society for distant family arrangements.

[GotHereQuickAsICould]

Originally Posted by ackmondual

When I talked about college with a HS guidance counselor, they discussed stuff about applying early, apply for several reach schools, safety schools, don't apply to too many of them since application fees get expensive (those on scholarships or are otherwise attractive students can get this fee waived), research the majors you want, perhaps in-state vs. out-of-state tuition.

Nowhere did they ever go into any detail with real numbers about your ROI, why you may be homeless if you choose a theatre major, put stuff on a spreadsheet so you can see your debt figures, earnings, and such. Hell, I'm sure you're aware... a lot of HS students graduate without even knowing how credit cards work. In a sit com, they and otherwise adults will think a $4000 spending limit means $4K of free cash! Even if they know they have to pay it back, they're unaware of high interests, and only make the minimum payment. Hell, they've already screwed up their financials, all before even taking on large student loans.

Exactly. We talked ourselves blue in the face trying to get our kids to consider engineering, nursing... professional degrees. Instead they got degrees in all sorts of interesting areas and ended up working part-time retail jobs before heading back to graduate school to get professional degrees.

We encouraged our kids to live at home and attend the local university. They all decided to go away to school because they wanted the "college experience" as if it was some sort of coming-of-age camp.

We tried over and over to get them to look at their budget and to see how long it would take to pay off the money they were borrowing to live in on.

Their high school counselors and teachers encouraged them to pursue degrees in areas of interest ("follow your passion"), in going away to college, and no one, and I mean no one but us tried to help them understand how long it would take to pay off $140,000 in college loans.

$140,000 is nearly $1,000/month for the next thirty years. Thirty years! With interest, they will end up paying over $300,000 for their bachelor's and master's degrees.

That's if they pay it on time and don't get behind and owe fines.

They are hardly the only ones. When two of them marry, they will owe $2,000 a month for the next thirty years.

So during the time when they should be raising a family, buying homes, saving for retirement, they are going to be working to pay off college loans.

It's a nightmare.

No wonder they're moving back home.

[mkpunk]

Originally Posted by Bronxguyanese

What are my suggestions?

Job situation in this country need to be improved. First off their should be a national retirement age. After a certain age people must retire so that jobs can be passed down to those coming of age. Two immigration needs to be overhauled, or an immigration quota needs to be implaced due to the fact that immigration harms the labor market. Three suburbs need to become sustainable offering jobs and housing for professionals who reside in the suburbs, on the flip side professionals don't need to live with mom and dad, or share an apartment with 3 people in an 1 bedroom in Boston that goes for 2.5k in rent. Last improve public education across the board. Have public education geared to more 21st century with stem options. Upon graduation of High school does who study stem can either enter the work force or work as an intern if he or she is continuing education. For those who plan on leaving home after graduating.

There are several problems with your suggestions.

1. As others mentioned your national retirement age while I agreed with it at some point is a problem for the same reasons others mentioned. There's older individuals who work to be active, older individuals working to pay for college (for their children), older individuals who lost their 401k and older individuals who had children late in life.
2. Part of the problem with immigration's current issue is the quotas. It's not legal immigration that is the problem (other than the H1-B visa jobs) the majority of the time most people say it's the ones who skate around US citizen background check laws and get jobs and migrants at the farms and in home improvement. Edit: the larger problem is not with immigration, it's jobs period. Many have be replaced by technology or by condensing job titles.
3. Why are people leaving the suburbs, because there aren't jobs. There never was. The reason people left the cities was lack of real estate and the costs to commute were lower enough to be worth the trad-off of the costs to live in the city if you could. Living in NYC has always been expensive, now the problem is the costs are no longer worth staying in the suburbs. I look at Phoenix, the jobs are in Phoenix, Tempe, Mesa and Scottsdale (four metro areas within five miles from each other.) The jobs in the suburbs are mainly doctors, city jobs (Arizona calls municipalities cities), school jobs and retail jobs. The majority of jobs are in the metro area despite a few that stray.
4. I do agree that public education should be fixed and I would to see the German system come to America (one with internships right out of high school and into college) but one of the problems is the same point what I said earlier is true. There's too many students because of the boomers and then the boomers' kids and perhaps grand-kids being in the labor force. As of right now there are too many college graduates for the demand of jobs even if they looked for 3.0 students or 3.5 students. Perhaps even if they looked for com laude, magna com laude and summa com laude.

Take a hard science degree, or earn a degree that guarantees a good paying job career instead of majoring in English.

I would say Technology, Engineering and Business are the three majors that make money.

Watch out for college debt, also try and learn to pick up a trade of some sort.

The problem is in school trades aren't an option (another problem with schools,) it's all about college prep.

If you are living at home with your parents and working, take the time to tackle your college debt which can rebuild your credit score and secure more financial freedom to a future apartment or house.

That's good if your job can pay for the credit card and college debts. If you make minimum wage, you may be paying a bulk of the income not going towards savings IF there is no rent and food expenses to pay off.

If you are working but working a dead end job or a low paying job, try your best to get out of the situation.

Easier to said than done. The problem is other jobs are looking for specific experience and don't want to train. Unless you were previously in the role, don't try it.

[NDak15]

Originally Posted by Mandalorian

Half the problem is kids these days don't want to move.

You have to go where the jobs are.

The bad economy aside, this really is the case a lot of the time. There are some states where people have a very blind loyalty and moving out of them is a major taboo. I lived in Montana and it was like this, even though quite a few of my classmates did have the sense to move since there were no jobs there.

[eskercurve]

I would welcome my kids back into the house so long as they held simple rules: share the chores and the mortgage, and for any relationships you have that decide to bring home, make sure he/she is clean; no one night stands, and do look for jobs if you don't have one already.

That's it. The rest of the world has one home to multiple generations. It's less wasteful, less isolating, and doesn't buy into the phony "American dream."

[ackmondual]

Originally Posted by Momma_bear

I don't understand why this is a huge problem. In many countries multi generational families are the norm. As recently as the 1940s it was the norm in the US. Kids moving out at age 18 is an historical aberration.

Yeah, just like how there was never a hard age for when people retire (counter example, vast majority of Americans did NOT retire by say... age 60), even though the law gives an 18yo the option to move out, be on his own, and losing other benefits (like not being on a parents' insurance; if he does something illegal, him, not his parents are accountable now), some kids just aren't ready to be on their own at 18. I've met several folks who stayed at home and didn't get their own place till they were 25.

[ohio_peasant]

Originally Posted by Ralph_Kirk

The anomaly was the post-WWII economic boom. ...

It was in that atmosphere that we Boomers developed the idea that was normalcy--the way the world was. In fact, it was only a bubble that couldn't possibly last... And most of us Boomers haven't caught on yet that the current problems are not a matter of bad governmental decisions--they are a matter of how the world really is when it has come back to "normal."

Excellent points here. Expanding on the analysis, it seems to me that the capacity of industrial capitalism, and its reward to workers/consumers, expanded unequally. The mills, mines and railroads on the early and mid 19th century were staggeringly successful innovations, but the economic benefits to mass consumers lagged. They were catching up by the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but were derailed by WW1, and even more massively by WW2.

The post-war boom in America, the surprisingly quick rebuilding of Europe and Japan, and the equally surprising rise of Asia, were, I think, the result of capitalism's pent-up promise finally trickling down to the masses. So we had 30 years of consumption-growth that outstripped production-growth, because there was so much latent production contained in the capitalist system.

By the 1970s we returned to equilibrium. To continue further rapid growth, we would need more innovation in capitalism, and when such innovation happens, inevitably again there's a lag between production-capacity and consumption. One possibility is that this is already happening, in the form of globalization and the tech boom; but consumers in the 1st world aren't yet feeling the benefits, because of the aforementioned lag. It might take another 50 years.

There is however another possibility – for some a very disquieting possibility, which asserts that the entire 20th century was a historical anomaly, and that mass prosperity is itself unstable. Broadly prosperous societies overconsume and ultimately decline.

Originally Posted by kwhitegocubs

Sorry, the posts about global normalcy and the impossibility of sustaining the policies and economy of the 1940s to 1970s doesn't really hold water at all.

First, GDP - adjusted for inflation - is still MUCH higher now than it was in 1970. What's changed is the distribution of income and the share of the economy going to returns on capital instead of wages.

Yes, GDP is much higher now than in the 1970s, but what about annual GDP growth? I would argue that the post-WW2 GDP growth – and other measures of prosperity – were unsustainable without return to wealth concentration.


Pray tell, why is broadbased prosperity natural, or for that matter even desirable? Most people can not manage wealth or substantial property. Feudal societies were stable in various forms for thousands of years. Feudal societies invented writing, mathematics, metal tools, build roads and irrigated the land. I am not persuaded that a feudal order, with lords owning essentially everything, a smattering of gentry underneath them, and peasants without property forming the vast majority, is not the preferred social structure.

Originally Posted by kwhitegocubs

Second, not all other nations have suffered the identical effects from globalism that we do. Germany, for the most obvious and well-worn example...

As Ralph_Kirk pointed out in his excellent post, Germany was obliterated in WW2. It retained its culture and work-ethic, but had to start its infrastructure from scratch. It received an artificial boost. Wait another 2-3 generations, and reexamine what happens to broadbased prosperity in Germany. And while we're at it, let's examine what is happening in England - a society in many ways more stratified than the US.

Originally Posted by Jo48

You certainly don't have to go as far back as 100 years. My parents moved in with my widowed grandma when they married in the late 40s to pool their resources. ...

I sometimes think we are "poorer" in the today's society for distant family arrangements.

Originally Posted by stan4

The rest of the world has multigenerational households.
It used to be the same here.

Originally Posted by Oldhag1

Less than 100 years ago multi-generational homes were the norm rather than the exception. Prior to Social Security, elderly parents or childless aunts and uncles who could no longer work needed to be taken care of. Also the older generation used to take care of the youngest generation

Yes, yes and yes.

My proposed solution is for extended families to live in compounds. By this I mean adult brothers and sisters, their wives and husbands, the various children, the family patriarch and matriarch, and associated unmarried/widowed elderly relatives. Put a clan of 25 in a 5-bedroom McMansion, with the basement converted into additional bedrooms. Then band together 10 such clans, and call it a village. 10 villages make a borough, with its farmers' market and community stores. And together, everyone is called by their proper term: peasants.

[freemkt]

Originally Posted by usayit

There in lies part of the problem. Define low paying and dead end job. I'm sure your definition is different from each and every generation before you.

Low paying job: A job that pays less than $10 per hour.

Dead end job: A job that lacks a feasible advancement path