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[Hiiri]

So it has come to this then. We should abandon the quest for knowledge and culture and enlightenment in favor of the quest for the dollar, because our society is geared such that knowledge don't pay the fucking bills.

Wait, what? The peasant class has always been the necessary cog in the machine. Just because your children might be those "mere peasants" in the future, doesn't mean the quest is over.

[Frumple]

Though it's not like having a trade is exactly solid, either... know more than a few mechanics and electricians out of work in the area I'm in, and one of my family members (who's both a car and motorcycle mechanic, on top of a few other things) spent a good amount of time unemployed relatively recently (and ended up having to move a few hundred miles away to find steady work -- as something else ). We can't outsource that sort of job, but there's only so much of that sort of worker we need, overall. And it's very much a dead-end job for most, from what I've seen and heard. Steady work may be better than nothing, but... yeah. Knowing if you stick with it you're probably going to die (/retire) making as much (or barely more) as when you started (with inflation still doing its thing, mind) isn't exactly heartening.

It damn sure helps, though, if you've got some degree of technical training and/or trade experience tucked away somewhere. That and night classes or whatev' can get you through tougher times and still keep the future kinda' open. Been eying something along those lines myself for the last while, but the job market in my area is just... ugh (unless you're willing to work with the prisons and, well, I'm not. Ethical concerns, which are a goddamn pain in the arse.). And the logistics of moving are kinda' daunting at the moment.

[RedKing]

So it has come to this then. We should abandon the quest for knowledge and culture and enlightenment in favor of the quest for the dollar, because our society is geared such that knowledge don't pay the fucking bills.

Wait, what? The peasant class has always been the necessary cog in the machine. Just because your children might be those "mere peasants" in the future, doesn't mean the quest is over.

If the rational choice is to eschew college because it isn't worth it, then the only people going to college will be the irrational. Which doesn't bode well for the higher sciences. Moreover, I'm not busting my ass (and eventually watch my kids bust their asses studying) so they can be "mere peasants". Fuck that noise.

[MorleyDev]

If you go to University and study something not or tangentially related to your desired career, that immediately puts you at a disadvantage compared to everyone else going for that career who picked something relevant. If you don't know what you wanna do when you leave it, University is not the best place to start looking. You've kinda already picked your path by then.

So going to university if you want to be a Teacher, or if you want to be an Engineer or Doctor or a Programmer or a Pharmacist: That makes a lot of sense.

Going because you don't know what you want to do and like the idea of fucking around and studying something that sounds fun for a few years...well, enjoy your debts. Unfortunately I can say a LOT of people go to university for the latter. Doing it for the experience never made much sense to me.

[SalmonGod]

The problem is everyone is talking about the crunchy details of the problem and not the base of it.  The system doesn't fucking work for us.  We could make it work under previous conditions, but the world has changed.  The population has grown and technology has advanced.  There isn't as much work to be done, and most people aren't cut out for the work that's left.  Like I said before, we're on our way to a point where the only work we will have is hard science, design, and culture.

It doesn't help that the whole thing is imbalanced towards the needs of the upper classes.  They have all the resources for job creation, and they only hire people for work that either serves them directly or makes them more money.  So we're ironically kept from tending to each other's needs just because the 99% can't get past the idea that they need the 1% to pay them to work, even if their work has nothing at all to do with the 1%.  A more equal wealth distribution would help things immensely, and that's just not going to happen without a political revolution enabling government to redistribute or a straight up angry revolution.

But that still doesn't change the fact that we're going to have to find a different way of doing things as we move forward.  We need a new form of economics that isn't work = pay = survival, because the people abandoned by that system is going to become a larger and larger majority as civilization advances.  We're going to transition to an economy based on cooperation and mutualism, one that allows people to simply live and care for themselves and each other when society doesn't have a specific calling for them, or everything is going to collapse.

[RedKing]

If you go to University and study something not or tangentially related to your desired career, that immediately puts you at a disadvantage compared to everyone else going for that career who picked something relevant. If you don't know what you wanna do when you leave it, University is not the best place to start looking. You've kinda already picked your path by then.

So going to university if you want to be a Teacher, or if you want to be an Engineer or Doctor or a Programmer or a Pharmacist: That makes a lot of sense.

Going because you don't know what you want to do and like the idea of fucking around and studying something that sounds fun for a few years...well, enjoy your debts. Unfortunately I can say a LOT of people go to university for the latter. Doing it for the experience never made much sense to me.

Herein lies the problem -- the system is geared towards getting into college right out of high school. When most people still don't really have a solid idea of what they want to be. Or think they do, but haven't gotten enough of a real taste of it to realize that they don't. I know a LOT of people who went to school to be teachers. Then they went out and did their student teaching, and came back and said "No fucking thanks. I'll pay back the scholarship rather than commit to a 4-year teaching stint." and changed their majors.

If you take a few years off coming out of high school, it's ridiculously hard to get into college. Admissions officers assume there was some kind of "problem" behind that. It's harder to get recommendation letters, you have to go back and get a fresh set of SATs/ACTs, etc.
Plus, what are you going to do in the meantime? You don't have a degree, and as we pointed out jobs are scarce without one. You could go backpack Europe for a few months or work in the Peace Corps I suppose, but that doesn't necessarily help you figure out what you want to study. And then when you do go and study, and get your degree and get out, you're at an age disadvantage to your graduating peers.

Which may not be as big a problem if you're graduating at 25 instead of 22. But it's something I was keenly aware of getting my Master's at 33 when many of my classmates were 24-26. Employers are going to see that as extra years of work they can't squeeze out of you before retirement.

So it boils down to the same problem: if you don't take the direct, DO NOT PASS GO, DO NOT WASTE TIME ON LIVING route to your career path, you're kinda terminally fucked compared to those who did. Whether you "wasted" it in college or outside of it.

[alway]

The problem is everyone is talking about the crunchy details of the problem and not the base of it.  The system doesn't fucking work for us.  We could make it work under previous conditions, but the world has changed.  The population has grown and technology has advanced.  There isn't as much work to be done, and most people aren't cut out for the work that's left.  Like I said before, we're on our way to a point where the only work we will have is hard science, design, and culture.

It doesn't help that the whole thing is imbalanced towards the needs of the upper classes.  They have all the resources for job creation, and they only hire people for work that either serves them directly or makes them more money.  So we're ironically kept from tending to each other's needs just because the 99% can't get past the idea that they need the 1% to pay them to work, even if their work has nothing at all to do with the 1%.  A more equal wealth distribution would help things immensely, and that's just not going to happen without a political revolution enabling government to redistribute or a straight up angry revolution.

But that still doesn't change the fact that we're going to have to find a different way of doing things as we move forward.  We need a new form of economics that isn't work = pay = survival, because the people abandoned by that system is going to become a larger and larger majority as civilization advances.  We're going to transition to an economy based on cooperation and mutualism, one that allows people to simply live and care for themselves and each other when society doesn't have a specific calling for them, or everything is going to collapse.

Very much this. The equations of production and labor are changing. We're moving away from the classical economic equation of "Product = Labor + Capital" and into "Product = Capital." Outsourcing is only a minor thing; it's simply a scapegoat. If outsourcing were the problem, there would be no problem. The real issue is automation and related technologies. You shouldn't be terrified when you hear of a factory moving to China, you should be terrified when you read this: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/08/01/us-foxconn-robots-idUSTRE77016B20110801 1 million robots to replace workers at Foxconn. Hundreds of thousands of jobs completely written out of the production line. And it isn't just manufacturing and assembly jobs. Any well defined task can easily be automated using today's AI techniques; as can be seen with self driving cars.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505125_162-57559700/could-a-robot-do-your-job/
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/its-a-man-vs-machine-recovery-01052012.html

[MorleyDev]

In the UK people often take at least a "gap year" between College (16-18) and University, and people going to university at age 25 or 30 is pretty common. I'm going mostly of what I've witnessed in the UK. I don't know what it's like in America, with no experience both with their education system or jobs. Either or Both could be a lot worse.

In the UK I know many people who've managed to get jobs at a warehouse or supermarket during this time, since they don't tend to care that you plan on leaving in a year or don't have a degree. Not exactly satisfying, but it's work. The people I know who don't have jobs and complain about not having them, seem to consider sending out CVs and calling up places to ask about work a "once a blue moon when the cat turns white and the cow doth crow" type thing.

That gap year gives you time to look into your longer term options, consider whether University or something else would be best for you, and not be completely broke. Sure, constantly trying new things and experimenting to see what interests you around a boring-ass-job takes effort and energy, but if you're complaining about the effort and energy required to find something you'd like...well, maybe that says it all really.

Though I guess our "College" does let you figure things out a bit more, since you go from a rather wide spread GCSEs to some very focused but generalised areas. Those two years are quite useful for that narrowing of focus.

[anzki4]

Here in Finland all males pretty much have to take a gap year, due to military conscription. Of course you can postpone it until you have graduated from university, but most just get it out of the way as soon as possible.

[Truean]

I have no idea what to say for the Gen Y, who will have to tighten the belt to the point that it cuts them in half....

Well, the military part of the industrial complex is in full swing at least.... Or at least it was last I checked.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Actually, yeah, going into the Navy for American kids right out of high school wouldn't be a terrible idea in this god forsaken mess we're in. Navy doesn't have the "boots on the ground" casualty approach the Army does, and certainly not what the crazy Marines do. You will be stuck in a crappy low job for the duration which would be repetitive and often intentionally pointless. However, say this with me now: VA benefits.... Yeah.

Keep in mind, the recruitment posters are a total lie. It sucks; you will hate the hell out of it. You will either be on some ship or some port, who the hell knows where. Your chances of being stateside are slim.

The thing about being in the USAF, is that you have tons of downtime waiting for shit to hit the fan. There's a ton of waiting, even after the menial stuff you have to do. Read ... read like hell. That's about the best advice I've got and I know it sucks.

Other than that: a few things about budget (translation, we live worse than our parents did):
Never ever buy a new car. It loses value faster than an ice cream sandwich in the arctic. Even a car that is 2 or 3 years old, if checked out by a good mechanic is loads cheaper. Same goes for most longer term durable goods actually (tech being the exception). Tragically, this means we're scavenging off stuff other people got new.... How messed up is it that the last generation had sports cars built for everybody, as the Ford Mustang was originally designed to be affordable on a secretary's salary and specifically marketed to women....

Same goes with food and clothing being off-brand.... Entertainment is also kind of necessarily done on the cheap, which is giving rise to a surprising comeback in board game culture, of all things.

I also disagree that outsourcing isn't a problem:
China is building basically a new country and will overtake us in a few years economically. Yeah, really. We're letting our country fall to pieces around us. It is not a coincidence that China is where the industrial production/labor jobs are moving....

Automation is going to become a problem, because we're either going to go all Star Trek utopia with this, or we're going for the opposite which is a dis-utopia. SalmonGod kinda touched upon this a bit already.

That said, we've got like 30 million people in the US who need to be put to work and paid to be doing ... something. The irony is, we could totally find something for them to do. Hell public works projects, though expensive as hell, could revamp our dying infrastructure. That article is from 2008, and yeah we've known about this problem for decades but have done exactly nothing about it. This despite the fact that, due to there being a ton of combined sewers in the US, we are often literally drinking our own waste whenever it rains a few inches (and that's one of many reasons why bottled water is a billion dollar industry). We don't have robots to fix any of these problems and I imagine developing, building, and paying for those robots woud be more expensive than paying workers....

Frankly, we've become a nation of cheapskates to the point where we're disgusted by human waste from the town upriver being dumped into our public drinking water intake, but not enough to actually do a damn thing about it, and certainly not enough to pay to fix it.... Yes, taxes are misspent, the solution is to hire people to fix the misspending. No, it shouldn't require that, but it does, because ... reality.... My parents shouldn't have to hire the kids next door to take the dog out 5 times a day, because he's been housebroken, doesn't have a medical problem, isn't that old, and has no reason not to wait, but if they don't then he'll crap on the floor.... Then again, I'm talking to the nation that will hire security guards for commercial stores, but won't hire the equivalent of security guards for the public treasury, even though the treasury is far more likely to be stolen from and far more lucrative to steal from than the store....

TL;DR: First of all, read, please. Second, as long as enough people are still comfy, nothing will change. That comfort can't hold up forever, and when it breaks, no idea what's gonna happen or how to fix it.

[SalmonGod]

That comfort can't hold up forever, and when it breaks, no idea what's gonna happen or how to fix it.

And that's what I think Gen Y and the tail-end of Gen X (as I'm somewhere right in the middle there) is waiting for.  We feel the tensions rising.  Discontent spreading.  I've been feeling it since shortly after graduating high school.  I've noticed others tuning in at an ever accelerating rate, but mostly among my age group.  The whole world is simmering.  You can already see the fringes of civilization boiling.  There's riot police fighting in the streets in multiple places around the world every single day.  I don't know when or how long it's going to be, but it's only a matter of time before the right spark makes this whole situation explode.  I've been resigned to this for a few years already.  Older generations are just too damn stubborn.

The big question is when and what's going to be left.

[Scoops Novel]

Here's the thing, we'll be stuck with older generations longer then any before us, and thanks to the birth rate in the western world, could quite possibly be a minority for longer then any of those before us. Are any of you noticing that? And as for them being stubborn, how much, and at what cutoffs, do the older generations perceive this sentiment? We're not going to get to the heart of this by talking about we young un's alone. Damn it this would be the perfect time for the older internet users to step forward.

[SalmonGod]

That's what I mean.  What's going to be left?  A better society?  A re-doubling of the same old with some minor reforms?  A sci-fi dystopia?  Back to the stone age?  One thing I am sure of... the longer we wait, the more likely it's just going to be a dead world, and the spark will be the day that everyone sees evidence of environmental collapse right at their front door.  When increasing drought, disaster, extinction, and toxicity makes everyone finally realize that all the luxury the world can offer that they've been raised to live for has been used up.

[XXSockXX]

I don't see a spark causing a huge collapse. Not really even a hint of that so far. Might be because I live in a country that still has a somewhat stable economy and a more or less functional welfare system. Also a country where people rather grumble how they can't change anything instead of protesting.
I don't worry too much about demographics either. There are already people not much older than me in the government, so it's not like only the elderly make politics. There are many old people, and somebody has to look after them, but that also creates lots of jobs, at a time when other job sectors are shrinking. Maybe birth rates will increase slightly, probably not, at least not enough to keep population stable. This means we have to find new ways to finance our welfare state, because we can't afford to lose it either. We might see more immigration in the future, which would increase population, but could also cause other problems.

[darkrider2]

Maybe its just me, but I think my generation has a general sense of helplessness and that's there's nothing we can really do to change the situation.

The Previous generations are in control of the country, and apparently oblivious to us.
If your parents are rich you can get anything, if not you're screwed.
You need to go to college, but the money you get out won't be greater than the input.
Business runs government.
Being cool requires brand names that are hilariously overpriced.
Our Healthcare is dystopian compared to other countries.

... etc

I can see only two outcomes. Either the old white guy generation dies out and we slowly come into power, or there's a revolution after some form of spark.