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.
Since the early 1980s, only about 6% of the labor force maxes out their Social Security contribution. $130k. Nobody is entitled to a 6 figure salary. You need the work ethic. You need the capability for critical thought. You need the job skills and knowledge. You need the high performance track record. 6% of Millenials will be successful like that just like 6% of Boomers were. What I see is a massive sense of entertainment. Most people don’t get that kind of compensation. They’re not smart enough to have the capability for critical thought that pays so well. Even if they have that ability, they may not have the work ethic to get the job skills and track record to justify that kind of compensation. I see lots of very average people with mostly useless college degrees and big student debt who won’t ever see that kind of compensation but feel entitled to it.
Here's the rub: in the areas of the country with the strongest economies and opportunities for jobs, you need a 6 figure income to afford a basic home. I live well over an hour from Boston in a suburb with iffy schools and no public transit, and yet $130K is about the minimum income to be able to afford a very small, old single family home. I see people whose home values have doubled or tripled since they bought as teachers, city workers, or police officers decrying younger people about how they're just entitled when they make 80K a year and struggle to afford a 1 bedroom apartment with a 3 hour round trip commute. It's frustrating.
F500's are aware and already are designing cheaper lower quality services geared towards Millennial/Gen Z. This is also one reason you see big time execs from the old school getting the boot. Not enough consumer dollars floating to the top for those kind of bloated low productivity high prestige roles anymore.
On the flip side, I don't think F500's are doing ENOUGH to account for this HUGE disparity in discretionary income. The drop off from Boomers to even Gen X is large and Boomer vs Gen Z is ENORMOUS....We're talking potentially in the billions of dollars less per year overall. Entire industries are dying such as retail/wedding industry as a result.
Here's the rub: in the areas of the country with the strongest economies and opportunities for jobs, you need a 6 figure income to afford a basic home. I live well over an hour from Boston in a suburb with iffy schools and no public transit, and yet $130K is about the minimum income to be able to afford a very small, old single family home. I see people whose home values have doubled or tripled since they bought as teachers, city workers, or police officers decrying younger people about how they're just entitled when they make 80K a year and struggle to afford a 1 bedroom apartment with a 3 hour round trip commute. It's frustrating.
Much of the high price of housing is a supply problem: not enough houses for the number of people who wish to live there.
Many communities and states actively put up roadblocks to new development. A common example is denying a developer's application to develop -- unless -- that developer "voluntarily" spends money on, say, parks & schools, and commits to build & sell numerous units below manufacturing cost ("affordable housing").
That drives up the average cost of manufacturing housing, raises the average price and restricts its supply to a quantity lower than it otherwise would be.
That is, many communities that face a housing crisis try to put out the fire by dousing it in gasoline.
Kodak is always presented as the poster child, but Kodak's situation wasn't so simple. Kodak was a specialized brick-and-mortar manufacturing company that was unique in several ways, such as having a division of blind people adept at working in the dark with light-sensitive material.
In order to shift fully to digital production, Kodak would have had to build out an entirely different manufacturing company that would have been "Kodak" only in name and executive management--similar to what happened to Polaroid.
So what ultimately happened to Kodak is what would have happened anyway for all the ordinary working people involved. There was no way to avoid screwing them.
Kodak defined its core competency as "expertise in silver halide technology." <sigh>.
They were a classic victim of "The Innovator's Dilemma." The profits in film photography were just too good to pass up and focus on low quality digitial - but low quality digital got better and better and better and better...
Kodak defined its core competency as "expertise in silver halide technology." <sigh>.
And General Motors defines its core competency as "expertise in manufacturing automobiles."
Quote:
They were a classic victim of "The Innovator's Dilemma." The profits in film photography were just too good to pass up and focus on low quality digitial - but low quality digital got better and better and better and better...
How do you think, physically, Kodak could have made that change? Kodak had factories. If Kodak had actually been a true camera company (which it had never really been) it could have contemplated making that change.
That's like expecting General Motors to become a food company.
1) process a large amount of complex information in any given subject, evaluate it/critically analyze it, put in in context, make it useful or valuable somehow (add value) [STEM, arts, and humanities classes]
2) be able to "read between the lines" of said information or communication they receive - related to the critical analysis piece.* [Arts & humanities classes]
3) independently complete complicated, multi-faceted projects or accomplish tasks without constant direction [STEM, arts, & humanities classes]
4) work with a diverse group of people successfully & be able to recognize & adapt to cultural differences [Arts & humanities classes]
5) communicate intelligently in writing and speaking in your native language & at least mediocre competency in another language [Arts, humanities classes]
6) demonstrate quantitative literacy; be able to solve quantitative problems [STEM classes]
It's funny how many people today only want to focus on #6... as if they will never have to deal with another human in their life, or interpret what another human communicates to them. *This is why subjects like literature are important. Often what people communicate on the surface is not what they actually mean. An educated person should be able to figure that out, and one way you practice that skill is by analyzing literature.
See how a liberal, well-rounded education is supposed to work? An educated person should be able to learn how to do almost anything & work with almost anyone. They should be able to do it given enough time and on their own through self-study. College is supposed to train & teach you to do these things. Odds are if you have a college degree on your resume, it's more likely you can do those things than with just high school alone.
If a university does not do those things it should shut down. And we have people here that don't think humanities education should exist.
It seems you divide the world of the educated into STEM, Arts, & Humanities. Where does Social Sciences fit?
Having the best and brightest people in our country go to college is absolutely what's good for most people. It's the top 20% that are going to come up with the top medical & technological advancements that are going to drastically improve the lives of the bottom 80%.
Pareto Principle.
Very true - but rather than 20/80, I'd say it is more like 1%/99% -- or even less. Throughout history, it has been a tiny fraction of extraordinarily gifted people (and some lucky ones) who have made true progress across all the disciplines of society.
And General Motors defines its core competency as "expertise in manufacturing automobiles."
How do you think, physically, Kodak could have made that change? Kodak had factories. If Kodak had actually been a true camera company (which it had never really been) it could have contemplated making that change.
That's like expecting General Motors to become a food company.
Hence, it is called the Innovator's Dilemma. It is tough. Most don't make it through.
Clayton Christensen, both a CEO and Harvard Business School professor, demonstrated how successful, outstanding companies can do everything "right" and yet still lose their market leadership – or even fail – as new, unexpected competitors rise and take over the market.
Here's the rub: in the areas of the country with the strongest economies and opportunities for jobs, you need a 6 figure income to afford a basic home. I live well over an hour from Boston in a suburb with iffy schools and no public transit, and yet $130K is about the minimum income to be able to afford a very small, old single family home. I see people whose home values have doubled or tripled since they bought as teachers, city workers, or police officers decrying younger people about how they're just entitled when they make 80K a year and struggle to afford a 1 bedroom apartment with a 3 hour round trip commute. It's frustrating.
To me, this is the nub of the problem in the HCOL areas.
I was in Medford two Thursdays ago. I saw several condos in real estate listings. Here's an example.
2BR/1BA and ~800 sq. ft for a cool $537,000. The unit is nice, but it's not high end. $450/month HOA on top of everything else. How much of that crap is the average person even going to use?
The unit sold for ~$110k back in the mid-1990s. That would have been a good starter home for a couple, and that's probably what it was used for. Today, it's nearly five times the price, but incomes haven't gone up anywhere near that much. Meanwhile, someone who bought back then basically lucked out and struck it rich.
A $110k house here in the mid 1990s might be $160k-$200k. You're tracking inflation, at best. In the "correct" areas, it's enough to bail out to Cheapsville on and still have a few hundred thousand left over for generational asset transfer. Most people would probably have never predicted such appreciation.
It really causes a lot of resentment among the younger crowd in the HCOL areas, as well as people from other places seeing others get a free ride to the top for basically being in the right place at the right time.
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.
