Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
If you have a good major in a rich, prestigious coastal area, you're likely to pull in some dough. If you have less in demand degree and are in Podunk USA, life is going to be harder.
I would trade the effing internet & smartphones for my father's college tuition, home price, and health care costs ANY DAY.
Whoop dee doo, we've got 140 characters, cat videos, never-ending online arguments, and pervs online who ask girls for naked pictures. Man oh man, how great is that! Oh sure, I can check my bank balance, buy airline ticket from home, and never really need to play trivial pursuit ever again. That's nice.
It's worse for the majority of us. For some select people that can get hired by google, facebook, etc... getting paid the 200K per year you need to live in the Bay Area, things are great. If you have a top 5-10% intellect AND some luck, things are good for you. There are 90% of us who cannot or will not do that. I suppose we're better off than people born in the U.S. before 1925 or so. However, if success in America ever was being debt-free and owning your own home... it does not look like Millennials will have a ton of success.
We've got better crap, I'll give him that. All the cheap Chinese crap goods and Korean TVs we could ever imagine. I suggest to Buffett that he take some Asian or Latin American -manufactured crap and choke on it.
If the internet is so great... answer me this: In what ways has it made human life unequivocally better? While I can think of a lot of things the WWW has changed, I struggle to think of things that it makes better. If anything, it's made things a lot worse. So those of you who agree with Buffett - explain to me what makes life with the internet better? I don't mean just faster or less paperwork or something. I mean a true improvement.
I'm young enough that I don't remember much about life before the world wide web. I remember when it started out and was kind of a domain for nerds, but not much before that.
Here are the things I can think of:
Don't need to waste stamps or money on Christmas Cards
Can more easily find out about good restaurants in the area & navigate to them
Pornography is free
Can more quickly answer someone's trivial questions
No more writing checks when paying bills
Recorded music/music videos are pretty much free; you only pay for live music now
On-demand TV/movies are better than waiting a week for new episodes - I'll admit that
Kind find the collective recipes of Moms around the country.
I question how much those things have actually improved life. Some things are somewhat more convenient or faster compared to the old days when they took several steps to accomplish. Other than that, not much good has come of it in my view.
Last edited by redguard57; 02-28-2016 at 05:38 PM..
I would trade the effing internet & smartphones for my father's college tuition, home price, and health care costs ANY DAY.
Couldn't you do this indirectly?
Get rid of your smart phone, get rid of your internet bill, get rid of your cable/sat with hundreds of channels, buy an older car that doesn't have all the features of newer cars, eat out way less like they used to do back in the day, get rid of Netflix, buy smaller home, etc. maybe the money you save will help offset your healthcare and tuition costs.
Quote:
Originally Posted by redguard57
Here are the things I can think of:
Don't need to waste stamps or money on Christmas Cards
Can more easily find out about good restaurants in the area & navigate to them
Pornography is free
Can more quickly answer someone's trivial questions
No more writing checks when paying bills
Recorded music/music videos are pretty much free; you only pay for live music now
On-demand TV/movies are better than waiting a week for new episodes - I'll admit that
Kind find the collective recipes of Moms around the country.
I question how much those things have actually improved life. Some things are somewhat more convenient or faster compared to the old days when they took several steps to accomplish. Other than that, not much good has come of it in my view.
Well you've got over 2,500 posts on this site in less than a year, so you might add social interaction to your list.
I just did my 2015 taxes from a guest house in Thailand, and late last year I signed up for a new healthcare plan with the fed exchange from a town in Borneo. I can easily manage all my finances and investments down to the penny despite not having a fixed address and not living in the United States where all my accounts are based.
Before I retired I was working as a software dev for a company 2,000 miles away. Sure I'd fly there every once in awhile but mostly was as effective an employee as anyone else sitting in a desk at their building, all because of fast internet.
From a business/research perspective the advantages of the web are far too numerous to list, they are things you don't even see yet benefit from. If you get sick and the cure is available due to a collaborative research effort made possible by the internet do you think about that when you pop the pill? Probably not.
What about shopping? I can't imagine how much time people save by just being able to easily order stuff online instead of driving around from store to store doing their comparison shopping or hoping to find a pair of those 31/31 pants that nobody seems to have on the rack.
Travel? Go compare fares across a dozen airlines and a hundred hotels using your smart phone while waiting in line somewhere, instead of showing up a travel agent's office and paying for them to do the legwork.
I would trade the effing internet & smartphones for my father's college tuition, home price, and health care costs ANY DAY.
Whoop dee doo, we've got 140 characters, cat videos, never-ending online arguments, and pervs online who ask girls for naked pictures. Man oh man, how great is that! Oh sure, I can check my bank balance, buy airline ticket from home, and never really need to play trivial pursuit ever again. That's nice.
It's worse for the majority of us. For some select people that can get hired by google, facebook, etc... getting paid the 200K per year you need to live in the Bay Area, things are great. If you have a top 5-10% intellect AND some luck, things are good for you. There are 90% of us who cannot or will not do that. I suppose we're better off than people born in the U.S. before 1925 or so. However, if success in America ever was being debt-free and owning your own home... it does not look like Millennials will have a ton of success.
We've got better crap, I'll give him that. All the cheap Chinese crap goods and Korean TVs we could ever imagine. I suggest to Buffett that he take some Asian or Latin American -manufactured crap and choke on it.
If the internet is so great... answer me this: In what ways has it made human life unequivocally better? While I can think of a lot of things the WWW has changed, I struggle to think of things that it makes better. If anything, it's made things a lot worse. So those of you who agree with Buffett - explain to me what makes life with the internet better? I don't mean just faster or less paperwork or something. I mean a true improvement.
I'm young enough that I don't remember much about life before the world wide web. I remember when it started out and was kind of a domain for nerds, but not much before that.
Here are the things I can think of:
Don't need to waste stamps or money on Christmas Cards
Can more easily find out about good restaurants in the area & navigate to them
Pornography is free
Can more quickly answer someone's trivial questions
No more writing checks when paying bills
Recorded music/music videos are pretty much free; you only pay for live music now
On-demand TV/movies are better than waiting a week for new episodes - I'll admit that
Kind find the collective recipes of Moms around the country.
I question how much those things have actually improved life. Some things are somewhat more convenient or faster compared to the old days when they took several steps to accomplish. Other than that, not much good has come of it in my view.
My first job in HS, I earned $1.35/hr, my son earned $12/hr. in HS My first job out of college, I earned $9600/yr, my son's first job out of college, he earned $65,000/yr.
I worked 35 hours a week during the school year and 84 hours a week in the summer to pay for college and my father contributed zero to my college education. My son worked sporadically a few hours during the school year and 40 hrs a week during the summer and I paid $40,000 so he graduated I think with $3K in student loans which he paid off in year one after graduation.
I paid $68,000 in a small town for my first house and my son paid $310K in Kirkland for his....the difference is he was able to buy his first house when he was 7 years younger than I was when I bought my first house.
And he had internet, computers, video games, more than 3 stations on TV, youtube...etc.
There's no comparison how much easier my son had it compared to how we grew up when it comes to material things, conveniences, opportunities. Plus, we didn't wear seatbelts and nobody cared.
When I was little we used to drive our piece of crap car with my three sisters in the back seat and me on Mom's lap in the front, nobody wearing seat belts and my Dad having a can of beer propped between his legs.
Probably the corporations realized that enough of paying for ignorance.
Its amusing to see people who have clearly have no idea of the developing nations like India, China etc give some random numbers out of frustration.
Grammatical typo.
Its amusing to see people who clearly have no idea of developing nations like India, China etc give some random numbers out of frustration.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
