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posted by on Tuesday February 07 2017, @03:32AM   Printer-friendly
from the can't-get-ahead dept.

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.

Capital must be extracted.


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 07 2017, @07:06AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 07 2017, @07:06AM (#463933)

    It's all about the college. There are too many degrees chasing too few jobs. Not to say that there are no jobs at all, just that there aren't as many jobs that actually require degrees as there are students getting those degrees. But businesses still prefer degrees even for jobs where they aren't really needed. You have to get a degree to have a better chance of getting a job that doesn't really need a degree... because your competition has a degree. This isn't education, it's an arms race, and as in every arms race, everybody loses.

    There are only two real solutions here. First is to make college free for everybody. This is better than nothing, but it is basically saying that, as a society, we're going to treat four extra years of adolescence as a luxury we want everyone to have. With the decline in working population relative to non-working, largely due to people living longer after retirement but also waiting longer before they start working, this isn't necessarily wise. But it is a wonderful luxury to have. It is also going to end up disadvantaging the poor in unexpected ways. With even more people going to college (and all of them going to state schools, since that's where the free tuition would be) the value of a private (and expensive) education would be even more dramatic than it is now. Effectively, a state school degree becomes what a high school diploma was in 1950. If you want a better job, you're going to need grad school. Hey, that arms race is back, and it's even more expensive this time.

    The second option is to find ways to discourage college for people who aren't going into professional careers that actually require a degree. That means funneling them into vocational programs and apprenticeships.,and starting in high school, not after. A lot of the angst associated with teenagers is because they realize that their whole world is basically a nicely furnished prison. School is there as a daycare, not to learn. Give these kids something useful to do when they're 15 instead of making them wait until they're 18 (or more likely 22 or 23) and we'll have not only a better prepared workforce but happier kids and maybe even a little less school violence. And, it's open to everyone, regardless of their background.

    This also neatly explains why today's young people earn less than they did 50 years ago. They have four years less work experience, but no better job prospects.

    But housing prices have nothing to do with it. In fact, homeownership is actually a negative factor for wages (because of lack of mobility and high-wage, low-ownership places like New York). It isn't particularly grand as a way of saving money either. It is another luxury, one which gives you both stability and space, which are generally not things valued by millenials as much as by earlier generations. Essentially, the millenials traded the white picket fence for the college experience. And I don't really think most of them regret that. So why "fix" it at all? Mortgage debt is no more fun than student loans, but college is a lot more fun than an entry level job.

    It's not great that individually millenials can't choose as freely because of the college arms race, but collectively, I'm not sure it's all that bad.

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