My biggest fear in life is waking up on my 50th and not owning a house, not having a family, and not having a ordinary job... because so far is how my life is going.
I currently live with my parents, have negative net worth, have no friends, no girlfriend, no job, and can't afford to buy a new PC, and my current one is trying to die on me, and I need it to do the occasional odd-job that shows up.
For hundreds of years, we've been taught that it is "I versus Everyone Else" in economically liberal societies. To think that will go away, and not go into hyperdrive, when people are desperate, cold and hungry seems unrealistic to me.
I truly want my assumption to be proven wrong, though.
What job do you want? What's preventing you from getting a position somewhere in that field?
I'm assuming you're putting a lot of work into achieving your goals, what are the obstacles you're coming up against?
So that might be his biggest obstacle.
There are so many substandard developers making $100k in the u.s. that would never be able to find job elsewhere in the world, those of us who live in the U.S. should really be grateful despite all of its shortcomings.
That may still happen, Generation X doesn't get to claim that one as solely their own.
That being said, kids have something else to replace that fear with nowadays: the constant potential threat of a possible school shooter.
The Wikipedia article has details: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_and_cover
I agree that it was more prominent in the public imagination, and you're right that "duck and cover" videos and similar were part of what kept it there, but I would dispute that the threat is any less 'real' now than it was in the 80's.
Looking around the world, I'd say there are currently three regions of instability that could lead to nuclear weapons used in anger (I'd add a fourth one if Trump is elected US President, and I'm not joking about that, the guy has already called for killing innocent people to further his own goals (killing the families of terrorists), and I could see Trump and Putin being a toxic combination in terms of diplomatic action).
The three regions I'm referring to are:
1. North Korea.
2. Middle East.
3. India and Pakistan.
North Korea are clearly threatening to develop nuclear weapons, and have a powerful ally in China, which allows them to get away with it so far. Even if the weapons are developed as a form of self defence, the question is what the leadership sees as valid threats, and considering their somewhat ruthless approach to their own people, I wouldn't put it past the North Korean government to do something reckless beyond their own borders.
The Middle East appears to be a huge mess, I'm sure I don't need to explain how chaotic the region is. Isreal are the only country in the region with nuclear weapons at the moment, but with the activity in the region it never seems far from disaster. Even if Isreal didn't push the button themselves, other more radical groups may go down that route. Russia's support for Assad and Turkey's membership of NATO are a bit of a concern when viewed in combination.
India and Pakistan are both nuclear powers, engaged with a minor conflict with each other over their borders. Things appear to be settling down recently but if either side gets a war-hungry government then work on developing a peaceful resolution could be undone.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India–Pakistan_border_skirmish...
During the Cold War there was a really good chance of that happening, and there were several instances where equipment malfunctioned (and showed impending missile launches when where there was none) and the only thing that stopped it was the right general making a smart call that it wasn't real, or several other close calls, from global destruction.
North Korea isn't likely to bring that about. The Middle East isn't too likely to bring that about. India and Pakistan aren't going to bring that in either.
Russia is still capable to do that, but I think they're not too serious about their desire to actually go into war and are more taking advantage of NATO's unwillingness to go into war to make a few small land grabs (that was a little scary, though).
The tension and complex web of polar opposite alliances across the whole world just isn't there like it was in WWI, WWII, and Cold War days. It could still develop in the next decade or two, sure, but I really don't think we're there right now.
For all the ills that Capitalism might have, I do think it's helped tie all the countries that participate in it to each other's fates, to a certain extent, and they don't want to see the other countries fail (or attack them directly) since it will now affect their own economy, probably for the worst.
Trump is a wild card, but I think assuming he won the nomination he'll calm down his rhetoric, since he needs to in order to win the moderate vote anyway. If he actually made it into office, then that's admittedly a wild card. I'd like to think that he didn't actually believe that shit he said and will be more concerned with internal politics than foreign, and/or will head the advice of people who have been there a lot longer. Hopefully.
Which I would actually consider worse than a nuclear wasteland in some significant ways.
Take every odd job that shows up, and amass some savings towards a long-term goal. Travel the US, or the world if you can manage.
Making friends is easy, keeping them can hard. Join some local clubs/organizations and put yourself out there.
Fear can be a motivator if you let it, use it to help you avoid the undesirable outcome.
Some of these sound like platitudes, but they do hold substance. It's easy to find yourself in a situation that seems hopeless. What you do from that place is important.
A rich man asked a Zen master to write something down that could encourage the prosperity of his family for years to come. It would be something that the family could cherish for generations. On a large piece of paper, the master wrote, "Father dies, son dies, grandson dies."
The rich man became angry when he saw the master's work. "I asked you to write something down that could bring happiness and prosperity to my family. Why do you give me something depressing like this?"
"If your son should die before you," the master answered, "this would bring unbearable grief to your family. If your grandson should die before your son, this also would bring great sorrow. If your family, generation after generation, disappears in the order I have described, it will be the natural course of life. This is true happiness and prosperity."
An executive from America was standing at the pier of a Mexican village, taking a much needed vacation. It was his first in more than 10 years. He noticed a small boat docked with just one fisherman on board. Inside the small boat were several large yellow fin tuna. The executive complimented the Mexican fisherman on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took to catch them.
The fisherman replied, only a little while.
The executive then asked, why didnt you stay out longer and catch more fish?
The fisherman replied, I have enough to support my family for a little while.
The executive then asked, but what do you do with the rest of your time?
The Mexican fisherman said, I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take siesta with my wife, and stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine and play guitar with my amigos, I have a full and busy life.
The executive scoffed, I am a Harvard MBA and could help you. You should spend more time fishing and with the proceeds, buy a bigger boat. With the proceeds from the bigger boat you could buy several boats, eventually you would have a fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling your catch to a middleman you would sell directly to the processor, eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product, processing, and distribution. You would need to leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Mexico City, then LA and eventually NYC where you will run your expanding enterprise.
The Mexican fisherman asked, But, how long will this all take?
To which the American replied, 15-20 years.
But what then?
The American laughed and said thats the best part. When the time is right you would announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich, you would make millions.
Millions.. Then what?
The American said, Then you would retire. Move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take siesta with your wife, and stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your amigos.
But at the same time this shouldn't preclude a conversation about why, given the massively increased pool of wealth that has been created in the last few decades, the poor and middle classes are expected not to share in it.
It's definitely healthy for me to recognise that I as a middle class westerner live better than almost everyone in a developing economy but if the answer to "where has all the new wealth gone?" is not "too the poorest economies!" then I think it's only natural to feel cheated if the answer is "be happy with what you have and stop asking questions!"
It's definitely healthy for me to recognise that I as a middle class westerner live better than almost everyone in a developing economy but if the answer to "where has all the new wealth gone?" is not "too the poorest economies!"
Luckily, the answer is "to the poor and middle class".
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/01/13/this-...
As you would be the first to agree though, wealth increases need not be zero sum. For the most part, growth in developing and middle income countries isn't at the expense of wealthier countries at all.
On the other hand, rising costs of London property - referenced in the article as a key concern of "millenials" - is pretty close to a zero sum game, and it's generally not poor and middle class people, and certainly not the lower deciles of world income, that are winning it.
Actually I'm trying to change the subject from money. Who cares about green pieces of paper multiplied by chained CPI [1]? What matters is goods and services.
As noted above I don't think you can name a single good and service that the bottom has less of, beyond maybe obsolete goods like land lines or investments like "shares in BRK.A" or "land in central London".
The graph I link to demonstrates things are definitively not zero sum - virtually everyone has experienced gains.
[1] Chained CPI is meaningless over time, since the basket of goods changes every year. Not to mention the biggest contributors to CPI growth - health care and education - are not hedonically adjusted.
It might be open to question how many young people with much less living space than previous generations actually are worse off given that thanks to economic development they'll live longer and have access to digital goods that didn't exist and more opportunity to avoid expensive housing through increased relocation opportunity than their elders did at the same age. But then again, if I wanted a graph which indicates a large fraction of people in countries like Britain who would be considered low-mid income by national standards are actually worse off, I could always use yours...
If you are simply advocating in favor of ending left wing policies like exclusionary zoning and buying elderly votes with cash taken from the young, I agree with you.
Which didn't strike me as the sort of sentiment you'd tend to disagree with either.
[1]by implication they're arguing they'd be less bothered if their purchasing power wasn't growing due to outsourcing competing with their job, since at least that'd be helping poorer people out.
Also important to remember that almost everyone on this site is going to be way above average income wise.
Sometimes I get the feeling like you were responding to, and then I remind myself that I grew up with next to nothing. I was lucky enough to realize in college (computers were just becoming ubiquitous when I started college) I had a knack for programming and it was the right time to have that knack. I have had experiences I never thought possible when I was a kid.
But there is a benefit to the feeling - the drive work hard.
Agreed. It is precisely because I found myself on a trundling career that had little in the way of prospects after graduation (and that job I found by literally showing up on doorsteps and being a general pain in the ass), no hope of ever owning property in London, being stuck in a squalid flatshare, and having nothing to lose that I gave it all up (not that there was much to give up), started a company, lived in a squat, and a decade on employ 50 people and own (well, the bank owns me) the roof over my head.
What was it Baldwin said? "The most dangerous creation in the world, in any society, is the man with nothing to lose."
This world is currently producing vast numbers of young people with nothing to lose. Some despair, others start businesses, others start criminal enterprises or join IS.
While there's something to be said for the motivation that the total absence of prospects can grant, it's a generally crappy situation which would better be served by reducing wealth inequality. Dare I say "Universal Income".
I agree with the sorts of benefits that this feeling can induce in the best of cases.
On the other hand, I don't think that everyone really understands what "hard work" means. To the self-entitled it means "got a college education" and "show up for work every day". Well so did everyone else.
I don't know, I have mixed feelings about this. I realize that this generation is getting stiffed in a sense, by circumstances beyond their control. But hey, we aren't growing up having to go to war in Europe, or during the Depression, or the Bubonic plague for that matter. So we've got that going for us, which is nice. Ever rising economic standards on a magnified level (meaning every generation is richer than the previous, not just by overall trend) doesn't seem plausible over the long-term. We need to get used to that.
Killing off unions and free trade has been awesome for those at the top, but shit for 99% of the population.
https://img.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/files/2016/01/...
"From 1948 to 1979, productivity rose 108.1 percent, and hourly compensation increased 93.4 percent. From 1979 to 2013, productivity rose 64.9 percent, and hourly compensation rose 8.2 percent." http://www.epi.org/publication/raising-americas-pay/
Figure 3: (1979 - 2013) Top 1% up 138% Bottom 90% up 15%.
The data you are citing is restricted to a slice of the top 20% of the world. Indians and Chinese (i.e. the bottom 50% or so) don't count?
Also note that you cite data on productivity for the economy as a whole, but hourly compensation only for "production and nonsupervisory workers". That's a weird comparison to make - what if the increase in productivity was caused primarily by people outside this narrow group?
So, it says just about nothing about the US income distribution.
PS: I suspect that bump is basically China + India, and the Dip is the US/EU middle class. Yes, outsourcing and free trade is great for other people.
It's not great for wealthy people who were enjoying economic rents by excluding desperately poor people from the global economy. So what? Do people earning $2,000/year (1/10 of what a poor American consumes) not count?
Of note the rich got a free ride while breaking the US middle class. That's actually bad for long term economic growth. It also entrenched and entrenched authoritarian governments around the world ex: China.
etc etc.
Or: "It sure does cause people to work harder."
Both of these sentences cannot be true at the same time.
/drove a checkout part time for 4 years a while back, proud of my scan rates. There is an art to it the mastery of which brings great satisfaction.
PS: I am sure the company’s bottom line loved your metrics. But, again that’s just driving corporate profits not middle class incomes.
I agree. Going to college and showing up is baseline. I do think that kids today come across as entitled, but I'm sure I was the same way at 18 years old.
Having grown up helping my dad do labor type work for 2-3 jobs while trying to make ends meet, I know hard labor work. That is something I never want to have to do again.
Is this generation getting stiffed? There really are more opportunities now than ever before. College is simply not required for anything in IT. The rise of free online education is amazing. $5/month gets you a server on the internet that lets you start any business you can come up with. Many of the traditional barriers are gone. What has changed though is that people are required to be self reliant, which can be a tough thing for many.
IMO, the main people getting stiffed are the poor and blue collar workers. The people who would never have gone to college regardless of cost. The people who would have had great lives in a factory situation.
This is fairly myopic and complements the common tech-centric sentiment seen around here of "Why don't you just teach yourself to program and pull in six figures? You can do it for free!"
> What has changed though is that people are required to be self reliant, which can be a tough thing for many.
Our current upheaval in economic relations makes it next to impossible for many to plan to make a living in the long-term. Pulling a jack-of-all-trades switch up every few years is less self-reliance and more desperation.
> IMO, the main people getting stiffed are the poor and blue collar workers.
This has always been the case. The problem now is that what were once secure, well-paying white collar jobs no longer are. As time marches on, these degree holders are not seeing fair compensation or opportunities for a career. These people are being driven into being the new poor and blue collar working classes.
And that's always been a shit place to be.
Those are the fears of someone who has never had to worry about their next meal, a roof over their head, whether they can afford to see a doctor or if their kids will have a better life than they did.
There are plenty of people in Generation Y who would recognize that this person has been driven somewhat delusional through boredom and wealth.
At least in my case, it isn't so much that an average life is "bad"; I am obsessive about personal development, and I push myself extremely hard. Ending up "normal" would basically mean my work had been futile, which would be pretty depressing.
That's not what it's about. I'm a Millennial and whilst I would never word it like the author did, I understand where they're coming from.
The issue is with one of courage vs. conformity. The author fears those things because they see the paths that are expected of them, and doesn't like where they lead. If they were happy to live a simple life (and there's nothing wrong with that, if that's what you want) then they wouldn't have those concerns.
Speaking as a Millennial in my 30s I've realised I'm prepared to give up on quite a lot in order to keep my own dreams alive. I'm not ready to 'settle down' into a life I do not want. My opinion may change as I get older, but for now I would rather avoid the trap of a huge mortgage and the lifestyle that must be maintained to support it (i.e. reduced career options, reduced travel options, etc...). It's not about entitlement, it's about recognising I have options.
>I worry I’ll never afford my own home, or always have to flatshare
>Salaries don’t, and never will, reflect the rising cost of living
>My degree was a waste of time
But i guess wanting to be a grown adult without having to have rommates is entitlement.
Retirees capturing more wealth than an entire generation of working college graduates? Dont be ridiculous, thats not entitlement.
“I worry that I’m never going to live up to my own expectations. I live in terror that I will wake up on my 50th birthday in a perfectly ordinary house, with a perfectly ordinary family and unremarkable job – living an unremarkable, ordinary, average life.
If these are your biggest fears in life, take a step back to realize what you've got. Entitlement and bizarre expectations about what "life" is are to blame here. Not every one is above average.