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The boomers are not ruining the economy they are the economy
1 in 3 young adults under 30 live at home
Don't yell at boomers they are your next meal son
Their inner feelings of inferiority and their belief they won't live up to our goals or accomplishments?
-Dr Gordon PhD Clinical Psychology Class of 1963.
I blame the older generation when they deserve it, and that is to the extent that they've allowed us to be sold out, sacrificed on the altar of globalism and cosmopolitanism: the idea that you should forsake your people and culture and bring in an unending wave of immigrants who'll take low-paying jobs and drive down wages for everyone. And this further allows for the outsourcing of jobs overseas under the guise of neoliberalism, which is just the tyranny of the big business elites. This is what's really destroying the economy.
College attendance is at an all time high - the highest percentage of high school graduates ever that go to college. Too many people are going to college, and borrowing money for degrees that are nearly unemployable.
The cost of higher education is rising faster than inflation because of a) demand, and b) easy money. Colleges are luxurious places today - far nicer than when I was in school. Who is demanding this luxury? Not me. It is people the age of my children.
The largest reason for the rising cost of a college education is that states have been continually decreasing aid for higher education, and the slashing of various grant programs. Government aid has decreased, so more and more of the burden has ben placed on the students leaving many with no choice, but to borrow for tuition.
20-30 years ago working one's way through school was a viable option, for most people that's not the case anymore. Most community colleges are not luxurious places, yet in my state they still cost $5-6K/yr. The four year colleges are $11-12K per year. Costs double for those who aren't able to live at home. A part time job just won't cut it anymore for the students who aren't fortunate enough to have parents who can pay their tuition.
I suspect everything the OP said was a lie. But even within the lie, there is an attitude that matches a certain generation, one that is lost between the greatest generation and the boomers (BTW, I dislike the common definition of boomer since it covers so many years there is basically no common culture between early and late boomers; should be separated into two generations). That missing generation is the most pampered, self adsorbed generation out there. Too young to know the depression and WWII. To old to know Vietnam. They came of age when the US was flying high. Among the first gen when college really started flourishing. Bought houses when they were cheap and paid them off early because income increased faster than inflation. Got overly generous pension plans, but had little debt their whole lives. Incredible stock options.
My FIL is an example of that pampered group. Literally had no clue on the cost of anything in today's world. Constantly lectured us on our "luxury" $60,000 2 bedroom fixer upper because his house had only cost $20,000 in 1964. Had a company car his entire working life which meant he never paid a car payment, car insurance, or anything else the rest of us do. All I could do was laugh when he retired and actually had to BUY a car. He actually called us to complain that the car cost more than his house did. Well freaking DUH!
You should tell him the $20,000 spent on his home, had the buying power of $152,000 in today's dollars.
Yeah that is just plain ignorance to think that because they paid $20K back in the day for a house, a new car costing 20K is a ripoff. What they never watched commercials or game shows that showed the prices of new cars? 152K is a modest resold house today in most areas at worst, a tiny house in a high COL area. I'm assuming the poster's father-in-law 20K house is a modest resale if not modest new at the time.
If millennials would vote in the same numbers as retired people, they would earn the right to complain. But they don't. Our economy is, indeed, discriminatory to the young. But the young don't vote. And many people, young and old, vote against their own economic interest. As long as that's the case, these problems will persist.
How many high schools have civics as a course required for graduation? How about personal economics? It's no wonder voters are stupid. And with the rich able to buy Congress and the Republican party dedicated to gerrymandering and removing voting rights from the poor, this situation is only going to get worse in the future. Millennials need to figure out how they can influence the government. Until they do that, they will continue to suffer.
Yeah that is just plain ignorance to think that because they paid $20K back in the day for a house, a new car costing 20K is a ripoff. What they never watched commercials or game shows that showed the prices of new cars? 152K is a modest resold house today in most areas at worst, a tiny house in a high COL area. I'm assuming the poster's father-in-law 20K house is a modest resale if not modest new at the time.
Ignorance was exactly my point. His house is a pretty typical 2400 sqft 3 br, 2 bath, LR, DR, K, 2 car in a typical middle class neighborhood. Last numbers I saw, homes on his street are now going mid $200's. It's like he stepped into some kind of time warp and popped out today.
It's like in his mind the cost of everything is exactly the same as when he did it. Our DD just started college at a public institution. The conversation was hilarious when asked about the cost, when DD told him, "Granddaddy, that's per semester, not the whole four years."
If millennials would vote in the same numbers as retired people, they would earn the right to complain. But they don't. Our economy is, indeed, discriminatory to the young. But the young don't vote. And many people, young and old, vote against their own economic interest. As long as that's the case, these problems will persist.
How many high schools have civics as a course required for graduation? How about personal economics? It's no wonder voters are stupid. And with the rich able to buy Congress and the Republican party dedicated to gerrymandering and removing voting rights from the poor, this situation is only going to get worse in the future. Millennials need to figure out how they can influence the government. Until they do that, they will continue to suffer.
What else is new, young people never voted even when the voting age was decreased because they are often at college from age 18-23 and often have to vote by absentee ballots. Remember currently 70% of high school graduates go on to college and most are not within their district. A poor excuse, I'll admit BUT it is not like it is a change in historical trends. I am a millennial and do vote and i use my vote on the best of the few choices and dont want incumbents (the problem) so I can complain.
Bits and pieces of what I have to say have already been covered in this thread but I'll put in my $0.02...
After WW II, the rest of the industrial world was bombed to rubble and the United States was 50% of the world economy. The US had an enormous labor shortage. Any high school graduate could get a repetitive task job in a factory and get to the middle class.
When I entered the workforce as a software engineer in 1981, every corporation had a big technical library. I did telecom. The LSSGR published by Bellcore was a 6 foot rack of paper manuals that was very expensive. Everything was like that. If you didn't have access to that enormous and costly library, there's no way you could ever do product development or learn about a technology. This was an enormous trade barrier. Fast forward to 2015. Today, I use Google for everything. Virtually every telecom and internet standard is free and downloadable. Somebody sitting in China or India has the exact same access to the information as I do. Little surprise that most telecom development has been pushed to Asia where employees are paid 20 cents on the dollar compared to US engineering costs. I spent the last 5 years working for a Taiwanese company and now work for a Korean company. It's really tough to do product development in the United States. What happened in my little universe has happened in lots of other industry sectors. All consumer electronics come from Asia. Virtually anything you buy in Walmart from clothing to duct tape comes from China. I've been bumping into unemployed corporate attorneys who had their jobs doing patent/IPR work or reviewing corporate contracts pushed to India. If it's cheaper to do something offshore, it moves. Global competition has been brutal for what used to be middle class repetitive task factory jobs. The trend isn't encouraging that lots of high value-add jobs are also becoming victims of global competition.
The other big impact is automation. Unless you live in New Jersey, where can you find a full service gas station? They don't exist around me. We're expected to push a credit card into the gas pump and operate the pump ourselves. That's been rampant through the economy as technology has displaced jobs. Who has a secretary these days? Looking forwards, you can expect that many more jobs will be fully automated. You'll order using a touchscreen at McDonalds and a machine will cook and dispense your food. A robot will deliver your Amazon.com order instead of the brown UPS truck. Your routine doctor visit will be a chunk of software and your health insurance won't pay for a physician office visit unless the software says your problem requires human intervention.
Unless you're capable of creating intellectual property, the value of most jobs will continue to be diminished through these global competition and automation factors. You typically need to be about 2 standard deviations above average to handle an IPR value-add job and receive the science/technology/engineering/math training to do the work. That automatically excludes about 90% of the population. Even worse, the 0.1%-ers who have all the wealth today will be the ones investing in automation. They're only going to become wealthier and today's income stratification issue is only going to get worse.
If you're just entering the workforce today and you're not one of the lucky few born bright enough to handle the training and work requirements, it's not a rosy picture. An awful lot of 20-somethings won't be as economically successful as their parents. Such is the onward march of technology. No political party is going to be able to do a thing about it. It's already happened.
I entered the workforce in pretty tough economic times. Hyperinflation and a very high unemployment rate. I had the STEM skills so I had no trouble getting a good job and advancing my career. I suspect it's no different today for somebody like me. The problem is that there's now far less opportunity for the average person.
When I was 20, I knew lots of people who flunked out of college and were still bumbling around sponging off their parents and doing low end jobs. Most of them eventually manged to put themselves on some kind of career track. Quite a few of the lesser motivated ones got caught up in the Great Recession and became unemployed 5 or 6 years ago. If you think it's tough breaking into the workforce at age 20, try doing it in your 50's when your skills and work history aren't better than average. It's been a huge shock for a group of people who were on cruise control for a decade or two. I know lots of married couples my age where one of them has dropped out of the workforce completely. I think that's a big contributor to the big spread between the U3 reported unemployment rate and U6 which counts people who have given up.
So to rebut the original post in this thread, I think Millenials who are bright and motivated aren't all that different from what I experienced 35 years ago. It's the rude awakening for the average person that is now totally different. It's tough to learn the hard way that your job skills are only worth $10.00/hour to an employer.
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152K is a modest resold house today in most areas at worst, a tiny house in a high COL area. I'm assuming the poster's father-in-law 20K house is a modest resale if not modest new at the time.
