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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, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday February 07 2017, @08:11PM

    by bzipitidoo (4388) on Tuesday February 07 2017, @08:11PM (#464247) Journal

    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.

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