American greatness was long premised on the common assumption was that each generation would do better than previous one. That is being undermined for the emerging millennial generation.
The problems facing millennials include an economy where job growth has been largely in service and part-time employment, producing lower incomes; the Census bureau estimates they earn, even with a full-time job, $2,000 less in real dollars than the same age group made in 1980. More millennials, notes a recent White House report, face far longer period of unemployment and suffer low rates of labor participation. More than 20 percent of people 18 to 34 live in poverty, up from 14 percent in 1980.
They are also saddled with ever more college debt, with around half of students borrowing for their education during the 2013-14 school year, up from around 30 percent in the mid-1990s. All this at a time when the returns on education seem to be dropping: A millennial with both a college degree and college debt, according to a recent analysis of Federal Reserve data, earns about the same as a boomer without a degree did at the same age.
[...] Like medieval serfs in pre-industrial Europe, America's new generation, particularly in its alpha cities, seems increasingly destined to spend their lives paying off their overlords, and having little to show for it.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 07 2017, @04:00AM
I won't use myself as an example here, but I know plenty of people who meet that stereotype. Broke, in hock up to their ears, and no prospect of getting out.
Then again, I know quite a few who managed to break the pattern. Constructive jobs, paying well, controlled or nearly nonexistent debt (yes, without being a trustafarian) and in many cases staying far the hell away from the property market unless they find something that justifies the expense, maintenance and lack of flexibility.
The difference I see is that the ones on the successful end tend to have solid long term planning capabilities, solid work ethics, and an ability to say: "No." No, they won't buy the newest shiny-shiny from BananaCorp. No, they won't buy a house just to say that they have one. No, they don't need additional debt just because the saleshole dangles a pretty car in front of their noses.
Those that are married also tend to have better marriages, because they don't have constant moneypanics eating away at them.
I know this will sound to some like a sort of neo-retro appeal for old-fashioned values, but it's really not. If anything, we need to spend more time teaching ourselves (because lord knows the older generations aren't) life skills. And navigating the world of constant marketing is a life skill.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday February 07 2017, @08:01AM
It's true that the American lifestyle is very wasteful, and a whole lot of could be done to make life more efficient, without sacrifice. The typical dwelling is extremely poor at maintaining a comfortable indoor climate without expensive, energy intensive, and wasteful methods. A ballpark analyses of my family's energy usage showed about 50% of the spending on electricity and gas went to heating and cooling. That's after I had done much to cut electricity usage. The 2200 sq ft house used to consume about 10,000 kWh per year, now it's down to 5000. I changed all the lights to CFL and then LED. I got low power computers that take only 30W max, and made sure they would hibernate. The CRTs are all gone, replaced with flatscreens. Finally ditched the pre-1996 inefficient fridge. Discovered that the gas dryer uses 5W electricity 24/7 just to power the control panel, and immediately put it on a switch. Don't have any cable TV boxes. Those things take 12W all the time, to sit there on standby. Most of all, I set the A/C to 83F in the summer. Tried to set the heat to 68F in the winter, but that provoked a lot of whining.
It is also true that the rich have hogged up most of the wealth, and greed is a big problem.
The pressure to buy your way out of whatever real or imagined problems you have is intense and all pervasive. Can't find a job? Go to college! Can't afford college? Take out a student loan! You can't get away from the incessant advertising.
But other problems somehow just can't be resolved, don't get any attention, and are even deliberately neglected. For example, traffic lights are still brainless. All the time I see cars waiting for nothing, no traffic passing through the intersection, because the traffic light is red on the road that actually has the traffic at the moment, while the road with the green light is empty. It wouldn't take much in the way of AI to just change the light in obvious cases like that. Instead of working on this problem, at the behest of scummy private businesses cities have tried to monetize it with red light cameras. They've created a perverse incentive to make traffic lights even worse, in the hope it will provoke more violations which they can then blame on the car owners.
Another example is copyright. Among the many problems with copyright, there is just no good reason for copyright to last as long as it does. Hella long copyright is a total screw job of the young, who cannot reasonably be expected to benefit from copyright until they are older, if ever. Most will never write a bestseller or hit song. The few who do probably won't until they are older. Meantime, they find that nearly everything they need for their education is all locked up, and they are expected to pay, pay, pay for access and permission and so on at the time in their lives when they can least afford it.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Tuesday February 07 2017, @12:44PM
Did you calculate the payoff time for those capital expenditures based on a dollar a watt per year?
I'm imagining one of those $20 air conditioner disconnect switches for that 5 watt clothes dryer and at $5/year of electricity it'll take more than 4 years to break even because where I live every watt of electricity replaces like .7 watts of heat in the winter (although gas heating is cheaper than electric) plus you got the labor cost of installing it. Due to AC disconnects not being built to flip on and off like light switches and Chinese mfgr quality, that disconnect is not going to survive four years anyway.
Some stuff like insulation is hard to mess up economically. If it physically fits and you can correctly install it, it'll pay off rapidly.
The real killer for cable isn't the $10/yr of electricity but the $1200/yr and higher of service.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday February 07 2017, @04:30PM
The dryer is gas, not electric. It plugs into a regular 120V outlet only to run the controls, and I have plenty of cheap power strips with switches. Was shoddy design on Maytag's part, having the control panel take 5W even when supposedly "off". Thought Maytag was better than that. What tipped me off was that the panel was warm to the touch.
Forgot to mention one more huge power saver: don't even use a dryer. Use a rack. Easier on the clothes too. Problem is, the women don't like it. Complained that the clothes dry all stiff and wrinkled, that it increases the amount of mold indoors, and takes more space. I use a rack for all my clothes, and whatever of theirs I can slip on to it. Seems even the most liberal are all for the environment, until they're asked to dump the clothes dryer. At least we all agree on not using those terrible fabric softener sheets, many of which use phthalates.
I'm a cord never, despite family pressure to sign up. We compromised on Netflix. I'd rather not have that either, but at least it's a lot cheaper than cable. Just incredible how people are such suckers for such terrible deals for entertainment. I really don't understand why anyone who isn't rich pays $50/month or more for cable TV. Sure, they complain about the expense, but they still won't quit the cable company.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday February 07 2017, @04:43PM
It plugs into a regular 120V outlet only to run the controls,
Ah understood. Spin the drum too of course.
Complained that the clothes dry all stiff and wrinkled,
Hard water? I hang stuff outside sometimes. Might fade from sunlight or get dusty before its even dry but I never ran into wrinkly-stiff
An interesting concept to think about when the weather allows it is tumble dry is about the same as hanging the laundry outside and uses no energy to heat (well, if its cold or hot out the HVAC will work harder...)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 07 2017, @10:50PM
Gas should be all you need. Use an alternator to power the spark plugs or glow plugs.
As a nice option, you could have a starter motor instead of a crank or pull cord. This will require adding a battery.
The same goes for ceiling fans, blenders, etc.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by AthanasiusKircher on Tuesday February 07 2017, @04:37PM
As much as it pains me to say this, I have to agree with VLM here. The cost of many "energy saving" upgrades frequently demands an excessively long payoff time. Not saying you didn't do those calculations, but the inefficiency in American homes isn't generally fixed because it just costs so darn much to do so.
You mention that heating/cooling is the biggest cost, and you're absolutely right. But even seeming "no brainers" to improve that often have really long payoffs. Several years back, I bought a home and my agent made a big deal about how the home we were looking at already had all the windows "upgraded." (I was looking in a neighborhood that had mostly older homes.) To me, that was a nice feature, and I could understand the efficiency, but only later did I realize what it actually meant -- some previous owner had basically sunk a bunch of money into an improvement that he'd likely never earn back. Windows are huge leaky stuff in old houses, and they're a major contributor to increased energy costs. But if you live in a reasonably temperate climate, it may take 30 or 40 years in energy savings to recoup the costs of replacing all those windows in an older house.
And most home buyers just don't care about that stuff. They care about minor aesthetic stuff -- a fresh coat of paint, new bathroom and sink fixtures, granite countertops, etc. Those sorts of things will generally give you a return many times over when you go to sell a house. But ask an agent about other stuff like installing a new heating/AC system, or a new roof, or upgrading electrical stuff or "energy efficient improvements" like you discuss or whatever -- but the vast majority of buyers don't care about the structural stuff. You'd be likely to get a fraction of your money back when you sell for investing in stuff like that.
I'm not arguing one shouldn't invest in energy-efficient upgrades. I'm just pointing out WHY U.S. houses are so inefficient -- it often simply doesn't pay to make them more efficient. There are some upgrades you can do which will pay off in the shorter term, but many people don't distinguish between them by doing a long-term payoff calculation.
As for your rants about "dumb" red lights and copyright... yeah, lots of stuff sucks. But I'm not sure how these connect to the larger thread. I'll join with you about complaining about long copyright terms, but that's often not the biggest cost for educational materials today. If your professor is assigning you to read some 40-year-old novel or something, you're probably not going to be paying a bundle for it. Even for more rare stuff, you can probably find a "used" copy somewhere for cheap if it's commonly assigned for college classes.
In this case, the problem isn't the length of copyright, but rather the textbook market, which is driven by continuous "new editions" which tend to be made just different enough to be incompatible with older versions. As someone who has actually taught in colleges, I share this frustration -- because I don't want my students to have to pay a lot for books. So I try to find older materials that are still in print when possible or use free stuff online or distribute my own materials. But in some cases if a university wants to use a standard textbook for an intro class or whatever, they're caught in a bind -- sure, you could theoretically tell students to buy an older and cheaper used edition, but eventually stocks of those run out within a couple years after the new edition has come out.
Admittedly, some of this could be fixed with MUCH shorter copyright terms. If we went back to the original terms of the Copyright Act of 1790 with a 14-year default term, then older editions of textbooks would eventually lapse if the original author died. (Even the 1790 term allowed a 14-year renewal if the author was still living, and 28 years is a long time in the textbook market.) That would allow free copies of the older versions -- and for the many fields where a textbook that's 15 years old wouldn't be too horrible, there would at least be options.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday February 07 2017, @08:11PM
America is seriously warped towards favoring the more expensive (and therefore more profitable to the seller) solutions. Double pane windows? Far less costly to install those when the house is built, not refit the house years later. Failing that, it's a lot cheaper to use drapes than upgrade all the windows. I've had these door to door sales idiots pitch me prices of $10,000 to replace the 10 single pane windows and 2 glass sliding patio doors the house has. One offered to knock it down to $6000 if the doors were omitted. I ran the numbers, and came up with $700/year on heating and cooling expenses. If the windows cut heating and cooling by 50% like they claim is possible, that'd save me $350 a year. More like, the savings will be no better than 25%, for $175/year. So yeah, paying back $10 grand would take almost 60 years, far too long. I agree that's the kind of profiteering envirocrap that gives environmentalism a bad name. I concluded the price would have to be $2000 or less before it was worth doing. Even a 12 year payback time is still a bit too much for me. Will the A/C last 12 years? Maybe not. Odds are the replacement will be more efficient. A/Cs were 6 to 8 SEER up through the 1990s, before people got serious about efficiency. The new minimum was set to 13, then I understand raised to 14 recently. And 16 SEER is fairly common now. My current unit is an old 10 SEER beast that is probably going to die soon. A change like that changes the calculations on paying back the window job.
The red lights and long copyrights are just some more examples of low hanging fruit that isn't being picked. Housing design is total crap, full of idiotic design elements that waste energy and money. No less a person than Benjamin Franklin complained over 200 years ago about the inefficiency of the fireplace, and here we are today still building them into houses with hardly any change in design from then. As built, they aren't serious methods of heating, they're entertainment devices that satisfy our love of watching the pretty flames. Something like 90% of the heat they generate is sent straight up the chimney. We could adopt an idea from Korea, and run the chimney under the floor to the other side of the house before sending it up to the sky. Get a lot more heat out of the fuel that way.
Another huge problem is the way houses are constructed, and the prejudices against more efficient manufacturing methods. In those areas where bricks are fashionable, it's nuts to have bricklayers spend days laying itty bitty bricks one by one. Could at least use cinder blocks. Or make the walls off site, as big concrete slabs with a brick pattern or whatever else is wanted, and truck them in, the way strip malls are often done. Even crazier is the fashionably steep and complicated roof line. That's pure display, trying to show off how rich you are. Then these home remodelers want to pervert environmentalism into more display. Brag to the neighbors about your new double, no, triple pane windows!
I hope the pressure on millennials pushes them into getting smarter and pushing home builders into dropping some of the bull.
When I was a grad student, I did a little teaching. The pay was insultingly low, of course, only $10,000/year for 20 hours a week. When my alma mater comes calling for donations, I tell them I already donated in accepting such low pay. Anyway, I had my nose rubbed in the textbook racket, so yeah, I know very well what you mean. Academic publishers don't stop there, they also screw researchers and the public hard. We pay for research through grants and financial support of universities, then these parasites get to paywall the results? If their work is accepted, researchers have to turn over all copyright to the publisher in exchange for the privilege of getting published? Yeah, will take more than shorter copyright terms to fix these issues. As if jacking textbooks prices up and letting publishers gouge everyone isn't enough, schools have hiked tuition and cut pay. And some still indulge in other money grabs such as overly strict parking enforcement. If you have a car and it is not parked entirely within the painted lines, if a bumper is so much as a millimeter over, bam, parking ticket! Perhaps there's some sense in going after the students rich enough to have a car, but it's still unfair. Where it got ridiculous was the enforcement of a technicality. It wasn't officially a parking spot if it didn't have painted lines on both sides, and on an end spot, the painters had skipped the curb. Need a copy of your transcript? Ka-ching, that'll be tens of dollars please! How about requiring all freshmen to live in the dorms, then gouging them on room and board? How about the scholarship that has so many conditions that it is merely bait to reel the student in, and once in, the student finds it impossible to maintain the conditions and loses the scholarship? Think you're going to shop around for a better deal, transfer to another university? Say goodbye to half your credit hours!
Heck of an unofficial education in greed. It is little wonder there's been a backlash against universities. Perhaps the ugliest part is the media perverting it into a backlash against education. The narrative of the next generation going to Hell thanks to a disdain for science and education makes great copy. It's the same with housing. People dig in their heels over stupid proposals that sound green but aren't green at all, and the media paints that as shockingly unenvironmental folly. Because you didn't bite on the triple pane windows, you want the ice sheets to melt and the coasts to drown, oh and the economy to crash, you heartless selfish bastard. Meanwhile, the much worse crap that builders and cities do gets overlooked, not least because the media knows who owns them.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday February 07 2017, @08:17PM
It's true the ROI is not there for double- and triple-paned windows. They don't give you a great R value and they cost an arm and a leg. There are other simpler things you can do like storm windows, insulated roller shutters, awnings (to cut down on solar gain in the summer), or plain old heavy drapes (to cut heat loss in the winter. Other things have a much better break-even time. Insulation in the walls & attic and general weather-stripping will not cost much and will immediately save you a ton of money, no matter what your HVAC is. After that changing your HVAC from, say, fuel oil or natgas to a heat pump will save you tens of thousands of dollars (it heats you in the winter and cools you in the summer) and will last forever; the upfront cost is higher, though, because of the excavation that can be required. If you can manage that, though, the ROI is something like 4-5 years if you switch from oil heat. Solar/wind/micro-hydro is the last, though, ironically what people think about first when wanting a green home. But if you pay high rates for electricity the ROI is good there, too. Again, it can be a high upfront cost even if the break-even time is not long.
So, if you make some or all of those modifications, you'll break even in ~5 years and have gravy for 25 years after that, which can be a nice retirement nest egg if you invest the savings in a solid index fund.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Friday February 10 2017, @01:45AM
Just to be clear -- I wasn't arguing that there aren't energy efficient choices that are cheaper and have a reasonable ROI. I was just saying that the reason American homes often lack a lot of efficiency is because people make poor choices in new construction and then fixing them is much more expensive. Or people live in older homes and upgrades are often a lot harder (read "expensive") to do.
I'm completely familiar with the trade-offs you're talking about. I have someone in my family who works in heating and HVAC and does lots of installations, even in new homes... and you'd be amazed at people who refuse to pay a few thousand extra to get something that would be paid off in energy savings in 3-5 years and after that it would just be free money. Instead, they'll spend a few thousand extra on some fancy fixtures or whatever.
So yeah, I'm all for finding upgrades that work. But there are lots of reasons for inefficiency, and a major one is that people tend to be stuck with the choices in the homes they buy, because it's often a lot more expensive to retrofit stuff.
And I also know first-hand the issues when it comes to buying and selling. A few years ago I was faced with a choice about whether to replace a failing HVAC system in a house I knew I was likely to need to move out of and sell within a year. In that position, you're screwed no matter what you do. There's no debate about "if I fix this, I'll save money in the long run," because you're not in the house for the long run. But if you don't fix it, an inspector might flag it, and you'll need to do a concession in price to get rid of the house... but if you do fix it, there's no way you'll get the money back that you've invested in sales price. "Recently renovated kitchen"? Big bucks in sale price. "New HVAC last year; much more efficient"? Not so much.
So, my perspective is not so much coming from someone who is likely to spend 20 or 30 more years in a home and can be rational in trade-offs, but rather the fact that the average person in the U.S. tends to own a home for something like 7 years before selling. And buyers often will not be willing to pay a premium for all those "energy efficient" things that you built in that might save them thousands in the long run.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Wednesday February 08 2017, @03:58AM
All the time I see cars waiting for nothing, no traffic passing through the intersection, because the traffic light is red on the road that actually has the traffic at the moment, while the road with the green light is empty.
That might be because the signal set is on a "nudge" phase. This allows bicycles, motorcycles, and other hard-to-detect vehicles to proceed through the intersection.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Thursday February 09 2017, @03:32PM
there is just no good reason for copyright to last as long as it does.
The rationale for three-generation copyright [copyrightalliance.org] is supposed to be that those heirs who knew the author personally are in the best position to carry out the author's will with respect to the publication and/or exhibition of a work.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Thursday February 09 2017, @07:28PM
Woof, what a seriously hackneyed, biased, and glib read of loaded propaganda that link was. "baseless accusations", "irresponsibly spreading a false narrative", "paramount importance"... Yeesh. That's great material for training people to be skeptical. Though I suspect it won't hold up over the decades. Hundred years from now, the overwrought appeal and logic will look laughably weak, worse than a snake oil sales pitch sounds today.
However, terrible though their arguments are, I don't see how they could have argued their position any better, as copyright is indefensible.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Wednesday February 15 2017, @11:42PM
On the topic of copyright also being a form of serfdom affecting authors' early careers and impairing their ability to afford housing:
copyright is indefensible
What's a better way to fund the production of original works of entertainment? The free software community has shown itself adept at producing works of practical use, such as computer programs and encyclopedias. I haven't seen a lot of success at producing entertainment, such as music, feature-length or serial motion pictures, and video games that aren't clones of a tabletop game or other video game. Is crowdfunding the only viable option?
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Thursday February 16 2017, @05:53PM
Various forms of patronage seem most likely. Crowdfunding is one form. A show like Star Trek Continues demonstrates that can work and platforms like Kickstarter and Indiegogo are viable. Humble Bundle shows it can work for computer games, music, and books. There's also government patronage. That's how we have PBS and Sesame Street and agencies such as the National Endowment for Arts. Art schools are another way. For instance, the music schools of universities often hold free concerts. Most orchestras are based in large cities, from whom they receive a great deal of support. Also patronage by the rich still works. Cable TV and streaming services such as Netflix could be considered a subscription based form of patronage. I've noticed that Netflix is branching out and has started producing "Netflix Originals." Still another source can be contests and prizes, things like America's Got Talent as well as more of a straight game show such as Jeopardy and The Price is Right, and reality shows such as Survivor.
Another model is ad supported art. Broadcast radio and TV demonstrate that revenue from advertising works, that it can be enough to support a station and a network which produces TV shows. Newspapers and magazines have been finding it harder to get subscription money from readers and have had to rely more on advertising. They've been learning that though print is inexpensive, websites blow print away when it comes to cost. Been trying to impose the subscription model on their websites and running into resistance. Advertising has also run into problems, with web advertising being so intrusive and resource intensive that viewers have been driven to installing ad blockers.
Closely related to advertising is endorsement.
Yet another form of patronage is straight up charity and begging. PBS often begs for money, twisting arms a bit by interrupting the current show for a fund drive and refusing to continue the show until some funding goal has been met.
All these models can be improved and expanded. Certainly it seems a bit unfair that pirates can start profiting from brand new content within hours of its release, thus "stealing" anticipated profit from the originators. Cue Jack Valenti complaining that the VCR is to the movie industry like the Boston Strangler is to a woman home alone. They conveniently overlook the artificial scarcities they deliberately created in the first place, crap like not releasing a movie on DVD until months after its debut in theaters, releasing new books only in expensive hardback editions first then in cheaper paperback editions a year later, and market regionalism as if the Internet isn't global. Technology has now made it impossible to impose much of that. That's what gives big league pirates the opportunity to profit. They try an artificial restriction anyway, one that used to work before the Internet and gigabyte sized hard drives and CD-Rs and mp3, and pirates dive right in and plug the gaping hole in availability they tried to manufacture. Serves them right. Their proposal to deal with it is to view these advances as problems rather than blessings, accuse the entire world of perpetrating piracy, run propaganda campaigns to fool and brainwash people into accepting their proposition that copying is stealing, and demand that no one use the technology and that governments outlaw it and spend millions on enforcement, all so that they won't be put to the trouble of adopting other business models. That's right, don't use that engine that came with your car, instead, you should hitch your car to a team of horses because not doing so is so unfair to horse breeders and feed growers! And then they shamelessly use the technology themselves! The ungrateful, greedy entertainment industry leaders conveniently forget that the technology to record, broadcast, and play back information enabled the creation of their industry in the first place.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Sunday February 19 2017, @04:35PM
A show like Star Trek Continues demonstrates that can work
Until CBS shuts it down. A practical replacement for copyright needs to coexist with incumbents' copyrights, or it won't be adopted short of violent revolution.
Cable TV and streaming services such as Netflix could be considered a subscription based form of patronage.
No, those are forms of paywalls, using copyright and anticircumvention statutes against those who share works with nonsubscribers.
market regionalism as if the Internet isn't global.
The English language isn't global. Nor is the particular censorship and age rating regime of the United States.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bradley13 on Tuesday February 07 2017, @02:46PM
I know quite a few who managed to break the pattern. ... The difference I see is that the ones on the successful end tend to have solid long term planning capabilities, solid work ethics, and an ability to say: "No." No, they won't buy the newest shiny-shiny from BananaCorp. No, they won't buy a house just to say that they have one. ... I know this will sound to some like a sort of neo-retro appeal for old-fashioned values, but it's really not. If anything, we need to spend more time teaching ourselves...life skills.
Absolutely right. Lots of people malign the millennial generation for being entitled, for being snowflakes. It's not maligning them, though, when it's the truth. People are living at home a lot longer, refusing to take responsibility for their own lives. Work ethic? They've never held a job. Ability to say "no"? Why, when mom'n'pop pay for everything you want.
Of course, this behavior is enabled by those helicopter parents who never let their kid experience a disappointment, who cannot bear to let them grow up, so they deliberately fail to help their kids transition to adulthood.
To take an example: I have an acquaintence whose older son dropped out of college twice, changed majors repeatedly, and finally - in his late 20s - finished his undergraduate degree. He lived on his parents' pocketbook the whole time. A bit of time flipping hamburgers or stocking shelves would have shown him just why he might want to finish that degree. Or not, which would also have been fine; his choice. His parents enabling a decade of immature behavior? That was no service to anyone. Also: where was his self-respect? His parents are nearing retirement age, and someone spent a large part of what they should have saved towards retirement.
Anyway, there you are, in your late 20s: You've never held a job, never earned your own living, never filed taxes, never had to deal with insurance, organized a plumber for a leaky faucet, or any of the myriad other details of adult life. Really, it's bizarre. It's no wonder there is now such a thing as an "adulting school".
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 07 2017, @08:20PM
> People are living at home a lot longer, refusing to take responsibility for their own lives.
Actually laughing out loud here.
I know lots of people who are mortified about having moved back in with their family after college. But they don't have a choice, literally, since bankruptcy is out, their jobs barely cover student loan payments, food and transportation (yes they almost all work - I can think of one who's been unemployed for a year but that sucker got way too narrow of a degree), and poorhouses have been outlawed.
Where I live, mean housing costs exceed 40% of the mean take-home wage of all workers. That's almost half of all income in my city going into housing. For millennials not living at home I think I remember a newspaper claiming > 50% of take-home wages went to housing costs! In generations past this was dramatically lower. It's literally unbearable.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 07 2017, @08:48PM
Right. Literally unbearable. Every single one of them tries to bear it, but literally can't. They hang themselves. Shoot themselves. Drown themselves. Every single one of them. Because literally, it is impossible to bear the strain. And that's the ones that just don't go completely, apeshit, bugfuck insane from it all.
It's a generational bloodletting on an epic scale!
Literally!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 08 2017, @03:37AM
While some of the more idiotic ones may have suicided (you didn't apparently, so not literally all the idiots did). A lot of them literally moved back home with mum and dad, like literally for real, moved back home with mum and dad when they literally couldn't bear the cost any more.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 08 2017, @03:59AM
So, this is kind of off-topic, but you're off on the idea of what "unbearable" means. It's not a synonym for "unaffordable".
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 07 2017, @03:19PM
Dropping the fucking cable tv can save thousands a year. Some cell plans are wasteful as hell too.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Pino P on Wednesday February 08 2017, @04:14AM
Dropping the fucking cable tv can save thousands a year.
I don't see how, particularly when cable companies toss in basic TV at little or no additional charge to Internet subscribers. Without home Internet, it's much harder to find and keep a job. Or should people rely on library and restaurant Internet?
Some cell plans are wasteful as hell too.
Does "wasteful as hell" to you include anything with a data plan? Because people who drop cable are going to need one.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 07 2017, @06:13PM
>...and an ability to say: "No." No, they won't buy the newest shiny-shiny...
THIS one thousand times this. Not to blame advertising in particular, but we in the West are bombarded with examples of how we will 'Be Better People' after buying X.
We will be healthier, more alert, more beautiful, safer, admired & envied, etc. All based on a projection of lack and being left behind. This is where a lot of our money goes.
The discipline to ignore that and be OK with oneself is paramount to real wealth. Not saying one must live in a hut- DO STRIVE for a better life, but do so at the most advantageous times of life. Dropping thousands into shiny-shiny, spinners, or whatever will deny you that excellent place you want to be later. Plan for later- you will be the envy of others, guaranteed ;)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 07 2017, @08:12PM
You don't get it!
The spread is a bell curve.
The mean has shifted left.
The right-most, those with self-control, prudence, thrift(!), foresight, planning, intelligence, schooling, contacts, social skills, etc. are fine.
But where the line on the bell curve for 'poverty', on the left, used to have 20% of the 18-34s.
Overall, humans haven't gotten stupider or smarter, not much. But the social situation has changed dramatically and that dollar axis just seems to keep sliding...
This is the point of statistics. Maybe eating oranges gives +5% cancer rate; if so, you'd know many orange-eaters who were cancer-free. Effects must be measured in aggregate, as local jitter overcomes all the small impulses.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 07 2017, @08:43PM
Your point being what? That prudence, self-control and all the rest of it are desirable? They improve life outcomes? We knew that.
How does your observation (inasmuch as it's not speculation) translate into a proposal different from the GPP's? "Hey kids, think about your expenditures and try to match them to your financial capacity!" Or are you arguing for some kind of law banning under-30s from getting credit? Because that would surely prevent a lot of misery (and cause plenty more).
So it's tough to be young and in debt. It's easier to be in debt than it was in previous years owing to lots of people doing PR work for the Bad Decision Fairy. This whole thing seems to motivate more people learning life skills - as the GPP was saying.
So what's not to get?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 08 2017, @06:02AM
You are mistaking effect for cause.