Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Lord Shonus]

I have no great opinion on the validity of the article MSH posted, but I am absolutely certain whoever put the web page together should be shot. It was bad enough having an autoplaying video reading the article to you - forcing you to read it through that sort of mess should be a crime.

[wierd]

I mean, their solution was immigrating. Pretty sure that's still a good option.

Well, immigrating + graduating without student loans (something that they've helped me and my brothers out with).

That and I'm not saying "do as they did" as much as I'm saying "you can break the system in your favor." The advice to set up a personal company and have yourself self-employed as a procurement software consultant would be some pretty terrible advice in the current era.

Also, all that article pointed out is "rent is hell, student debt is horrible, houses are expensive, education needed for employment is too much for too little."

No, the article pointed out that "social safety net that existed for the boomer generation no longer exists, or is purposefully designed to NOT SERVE you", "In aggregate, your cohort is in debt up to its eyeballs and cannot pay the bills, so creditors will view your cohort in disdain even if you are financially solvent-- expect high premiums because of this, even if you are lucky enough to 'make it'--", etc.

See for instance, the anecdote about the father who was earning the equivalent of 75k fresh from college buying a first home for 170k, where the reality today is that you will make under 20k fresh from college, and the average first time home close to work costs closer to a million dollars.

Strategies that worked for that generation simply will not work for this generation.

(Also, the prior article lamplit your aside--- white people statistically have "family holdings" they can leverage, like your "Vancouver real-estate")

[wierd]

You might be surprised.  One of the reasons why Canada's immigration requirements are so steep today, is to prevent people moving there for the public healthcare without also bringing in a parity value in disposable cash income.

EG, the status quo has changed there as well, Canada is much harder to move to today.  I have lots of job skills, and some personal cash savings, but I doubt I could successfully emigrate to Canada, despite being an American, and living next door.

For perspective:

There is a tiny island in the pacific. It's total population is around 70 people. It is VERY immigration friendly-- they WANT you to move there. They need you to have 30k of free assets, and a means of supporting yourself when you get there, and in return they will GIVE you land to live on. (granted, it has a bit of a soiled reputation, due to recent scandals that took place there, but for a single person with no kids, those shouldnt really concern you, just mentioning them for completeness) Most people the prior article is discussing could not afford the move, because they cannot save up the requisite 30k.

[smjjames]

And now most everywhere are cracking down on immigrants. /s

[RedKing]

Consider that your father was lucky to have been working in a field that had demand, was transportable, was something that could be done independent of a large company, and paid relatively well.

Consider the same scenario if he had been a sheetmetal worker, or an assembly line factory worker. They can't exactly "freelance".

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Certainly I am not against trying to break out of the shitty situation we're in. The thing is though, the people in power are absolutely against that, and oppose nearly every solution other than "suck it up and magically repeat the baby boom". When you're dealing with folks who oppose free college, basic income, affordable housing, reasonable job requirements, business regulations, worker's rights, accessable healthcare, having the only people who even have money left pay for social services, or even just maintaining what few benefits we have now...what's there even to do except throw the bastards out?

It's no surprise the plurality of millennials say they'd prefer a socialist government to a capitalist one under these circumstances. In this, of all countries! I was a goddamn libertarian when I first came to this forum in high school, now I'm all but ready to order a copy of Das Kapital!

We should break out of the shit, yes...but we should remember that we have an enemy in that struggle, one who seems almost entirely unwilling to admit the shit even exists, let alone do anything about it.

[redwallzyl]

Technically I could just walk over to Canada and never never pay my student loans back by never coming back. Probably a bad idea though but totally a thing. probably not worth it for 20k though.

[Reelya]

Yeah, Libertarian views are all well and good, except the core idea is clearly bullshit: "if we just take a hands-off approach to everything, everything will magically turn out as good as it could possibly be". Which, there's no reason to expect is true whatsoever. Pure personal autonomy is the "jungle" where animals eat each other. Yes, it's efficient because there are no "market distortions". However "efficiency" in no way guarantees you won't be eaten by cannibals, or kidnapped and sold to organ harvesters. Maybe society would be more efficient if we turned the most useless 10% of the community into burgers and spare parts? Why wouldn't it be?

Another key flaw is the idea that "minimal government" would actually be able to maintain control of law and order if it let private organizations gain as much power as they wanted. Organizations tend to grow bigger and merge together, over time. This is as true of the private sector as it is of nations and governments. If you let them, pretty soon you're going to have corporations 10 or 100 times as powerful as the government, and how the fuck are you going to police someone that much more powerful than the body that's meant to be policing them?

[Frumple]

Ha ha ha. Protip: Worry about it fucking now. Shit you do in college (or prior) has good odd to ultimately fuck you when you get out regardless of what or how well you do inside it. Zero exaggeration, probably better than half of the problems I've been having the last few years are because I cared more about my education and family than I did my resume.

At the absolute least make damn sure you're networking with teachers and whatnot to get your hands on some kind of in into whatever industry you're trying to enter. Grad (or whatever) degree may have been largely enough to get you a job a generation or two back, but it doesn't carry quite as much weight these days.

It's also pretty certain to not be worth as much as it was a decade or two ago, even if it gets you through a door. Wages and whatnot have been pretty stagnant for most of the population, but inflation et al have been cheerfully chugging along.

E: Or to put it another way: Anything your parents did or went through when it comes to employment? Throw it the fuck out when it comes to your expectations unless they're mid thirties or younger. Find out what's happening to people now, and then expect it to be worse when you get out of school.

[WealthyRadish]

I was a goddamn libertarian when I first came to this forum in high school, now I'm all but ready to order a copy of Das Kapital!

As an aside, Capital is one spicy meatball that's well worth a taste (Marx is a surprisingly hilarious and moving author, making it worthwhile whatever it is that you decide to take away from it), but you may need an appetizer first to get anything out of it. For me it was a chance encounter with Progress and Poverty that spurred an interest in economics, as part of research into a project dealing with rents in the early modern period. Progress is useful as an initial inspirational read because it has this wonderful optimistic liberalism about it (and it also happens to be an extremely American perspective, though this highly limits its scope) and possesses a general sense of infectious goodness. When that wears off, Marx is your guy to get mad again.

Wealth of Nations is also a popular place to start, since it makes sense to start at the beginning right?, but it's a work that requires extensive knowledge of subsequent developments in economics to read critically, and an uncritical read may be disastrous (any economics text needs to be read highly critically, but Wealth particularly so because of its numerous inaccuracies and tendency to birth neoliberals). Keynes' General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money is another good place to start, from a much more modern perspective (my research was primarily into the process of industrialization and systems of rents, so Keynes was a later read for me).

[RedKing]

BTW, McCain is headed home to Arizona as his condition worsens, removing him from the tax vote equation. Unfortunately, Rubio and Corker were easily bought (for the price of +$300 for the child tax credit, in Rubio's case) and I think Collins is still on the fence. Likely not enough votes to defeat the compromise bill.

[Frumple]

... hell, did they already get the compromise scam out? Looked away for a bit and the last I noticed the senate had done their thing but passed the hot potato of thoroughly nixing what little chances the GOP had of not making life long enemies of several of the younger generations back to the house. Hadn't gotten around to agreeing on exactly how they were intending to fuck more or less the entirety of the american population, yet.

I mean not worry explicitly about housing costs and stuff like that. Networking is a given, and I'm already doing research relevant to the field.

Eh. I'd still probably recommend whatever attention you can spare. Your money is pretty certainly not going to go as far as your parents' did, and the chances of the housing (and similar areas in terms of monetary costs) situation being better when you get out of school (and, beyond that, once you've been out long enough to be considering investments of that sort) is fairly slim. Population's not going to go down unless someone does something massively stupid, and so far as I'm aware even with telecom tech advancing flexibility in terms of positioning is changing for much of the country, and not in a way that gives as much of a range so far as choice and cost go.

Unless you're incredibly certain you've got a persistent position waiting for you that has the option of having options (minor hint: Basically goddamn nobody in your generation or mine or anyone younger has that anymore), you probably want to be doing whatever future proofing of your ass you can manage, more or less. It might not be the apocalypse en route, but so far as economy goes, unless you're real damn lucky any and every thing your parents went through is going to be harder for you on the net.

... mostly it's just a kinda'... I'unno. Just a sort of warning to be real sketchy about trying to apply anything related to previous generations to what's going on and what you're going through, unless they've actually been dealing with the whatever recently, and with a situation actually similar to what you're likely to. It's been one of the things the older handful have been having persistent trouble recognizing (and many of the younger ones right up until they walk face first into the fan propelled excrement), but there's a disconnect between what they experienced and what you're pretty certain to. Basing your concerns off their troubles is a good way to get bit in the ass a few years down the line, heh.

[smjjames]

His condition isn't worsening so much as he's suffering the effects of the chemo.

They still have one other Senator who may or may not be able to be there for the vote (due to removal of a melanoma or something or other from the nose), but that guy probably will.

While this might not affect the tax bill, there are duelling and opposing shutdown strategies which might end up leading to a shutdown because one bill the House doesn't want (or can't) to pass and the other the Senate doesn't want to pass or can't. Part of it is that they were (understandably) so focused on the tax stuff that they hadn't been paying as much attention to it as they could have. So, it could end up in a shutdown with near-zero effort on the Democrats part because it's all the Republicans doing. I guess they could slap on a continuing resolution.

... hell, did they already get the compromise scam out? Looked away for a bit and the last I noticed the senate had done their thing but passed the hot potato of thoroughly nixing what little chances the GOP had of not making life long enemies of several of the younger generations back to the house. Hadn't gotten around to agreeing on exactly how they were intending to fuck more or less the entirety of the american population, yet.

You mean the tax stuff? They finalized the comittee report (the compromise between the House and Senate on the bill) and are going to do their votes on it later this week.

[RedKing]

Would be kinda hilarious (in a "ha ha oh god everything is on fire, but that cinder looks like kinda like Elvis isn't that weird" way) if they were unable to pass the tax bill because the government shut down first.

[Max™]

I have no great opinion on the validity of the article MSH posted, but I am absolutely certain whoever put the web page together should be shot. It was bad enough having an autoplaying video reading the article to you - forcing you to read it through that sort of mess should be a crime.

What video? The images loaded weird because I didn't let it run css but damn.