"I got used to living in an unstable situation and figured somehow it would work out"
That last bit is illusory thinking.
Also, I'd beg to differ on your suggestion that these people aren't choosing their life every single day. I'd suggest the opposite is true for most of us (leaving aside those who through incapacity have diminished options). Every single day you don't make an effort to look for work, don't volunteer for something, don't organise an activity, don't spend some time learning something, don't go somewhere to meet people, don't go on a date - you are making a choice. Living with your parents and (more importantly) living off your parents well into your fifties is not an accident. You can't accidentally do that. That is directly the result of daily choices and illusory thinking.
And while we can agreee that the term "parasite" is pejorative, I find it is deserved- at least from the perspective of the parent (who in this case is probably as much to blame for this situation).
My daughters are 20 and 18 and the expectation has long been set in our family that they will be moving out once they're in stable employment (and by that I mean any job that can pay their bills, not their dream job). When both kids are out of the house, we'll downsize and share some of the cashed out equity to help them get started on the property ladder. Then they're on their own. In our family we refer to this as "The Plan". They've been hearing about the Plan (and been onboard) since their early teens.
Japan is about 20 years ahead of current US/EU monetary policy. This is coming to America and it's not an accident and it's not people getting lazy and stupid. Things have gotten more expensive, more unequal and more competitive. And at least Japan has strong safety nets, America doesn't.
I never said people were lazy or stupid nor did I imply it. However to claim as some are, that people don't have choices in life is just plain wrong. You might not like the choices you have available but you've got them. And you're free to choose your path from among them.
Don't get me wrong and conflate what I'm saying with some kind political ideology. All I'm saying is that people are faced with personal choices and need to own their choices and the consequences of their choices.
Not the OP, but do they expect to go to college? Do you plan to cover their college costs?
If the answers are yes and no, they will come away with anywhere from $20,000 to $200,000 in student loan debts. I'm not sure how it could be more crippling...
You may have set the expectation that they will go out and live on their own, but were one of them to come to the point of becoming homeless (whatever the cause), would you let that happen to them? If one developed a crippling disease which didn't let them work a full time job, but also didn't kill them outright, what would you do then?
Intentions are great, but reality tends to kick intentions to the curb.
Having a manageable student debt is undoubtedly more important than the "college experience" IMO. College is really really important for the education; if you make the most of it and obtain the skills to make money, you ensure a much more sustainable and enjoyable quality of life.
With respect to disease and circumstances truly beyond their control then we will do whatever is necessary at that time. However they are exceptional circumstances.
With respect to homelessness my response will be measured against their attempts to exit those circumstances (irrespective of how they got there). So if they are addicted to a substance (for example) then if they are actively trying to shake that addiction (or showing a true willingness to) then I will help them do so.
My view of parenting is that our goal should always be to try and raise resilient, independent kids. It is not to provide an infinite bank for those that aren't interested in owning their own lives.
The problem is that easy student loans has made it so people who should have never gone to college are now going and flunking out after a few semesters of partying and now have 10s of thousands in debt with nothing to show for it.
Combine easy money with indoctrination telling kids that they will be losers if they don't go and you have the current situation
Most people won't have scholorships, or at least not enough scholorships to cover their entire tuition.
> telling kids that they will be losers if they don't go
It's worse than "mere" peer pressure. A 4 year college education is all-but-required for entry level white collar jobs anymore. A college degree is this century's High School Diploma.
Meanwhile there are tons of trade jobs that don't get filled because there's a stigma against it.
And they frequently paid really low wages, since they're expected to be filled by immigrants, both legal and illegal. $10 an hour seasonally to pick onions? $15 an hour for a professional welder? Those are near-poverty level wages.
Have you met any 20-somethings in stable employment? Unless your daughters are supermodels or have PHDs in biotech they are in for at least a decade of contract work and constant job-hunting. Even those at their dream jobs know they stand on the knife's edge. And the property ladder, the average home price in my area is over 500k and closer to 1m if you want to be in driving distance of any "stable" job. Even with the 20% down payment only top earners even qualify for a loan. I hope you are ready to co-sign their mortgages.
Most of my friends in a major field of engineering or computer science are just fine as well (IT-degrees and almost comp sci degrees don't fair as well).
The world is not as dismal as it may seem for millenials. It's just that demand for STEM +CS continues to grow while the demand for other fields is stagnant, relying on people leaving the workforce to create new openings.
That means you weren't around for the dot-com bust in 2001 or so. Yes, things are good right now but the situation can go south very suddenly and with very little warning and stay bad for several years.
EDIT: In hindsight, I see the irony of that statement. But I also know we don't get involved with the sort of schenanigans that hurt firms in the last crisis.
Even if your present employer is stable, it seems likely that tens of thousands of us will be competing with you for your next job, and bidding down its wages.
In making high-dollar salaries, we're doing better than most, but don't confuse $150k Senior Engineer positions for 25-year-olds at 5-year-old companies with long-term stability.
I also took out a sizable chunk of student loan debt for my degree, and have paid it off already, so now I'm debt-free and employed. Nearly every one of my friends and peers are in a similar boat. No apocalypse here, yet.
I also grew up in a non-nuclear family with a single mother and 2 siblings.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/crea-march-figures-1.4073540
For a 400k loan, with 100k down, a Canadian bank will want to see an income of at least 80k/year before taxes. That number (80k) puts one in the top 10% of earners. So to buy the average house (500k) one must be in the top 10% of earners. To buy the average house in a city you better earn closer to 180k, putting you well into the top 1% of earners. So for the vast majority of young people home ownership isn't a reasonable option even in the long term.
Anyone can play around with the numbers here: https://tools.td.com/mortgage-affordability-calculator/
The example I always return to is the military. An officer in a nation's military should be able to buy a house and have a family in a degree of comfort. That was my grandfather. Today, officers rent apartments in full knowledge that home ownership will never happen so long as they remain officers. An RCAF pilot, an elite officer in any military, earns between 75 and 100k. With a young family and perhaps a student loan, that fighter pilot won't ever own a house. It is worse for naval officers, who generally need to live near cities/ports.
Toronto’s Housing Boom Refills Empty Nests, Driving Prices Even Higher | March 12, 2017 https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/12/world/canada/torontos-hou...
Granted, we're smart folks, who could finish a bachelors in four years, and got degrees in subjects that lead to well-paying careers. We also chose to live in a part of the country that isn't stupid expensive.
If you're a first-time home owner, you can get an FHA mortgage, which has a low down payment and low interest rates.
Real estate inflation is a problem, but if you live outside of the ridiculous areas, that million dollar house is only 100k-250k. Which is entirely feasible on an engineer or developer salary in those same areas.
I don't make half of what I could make in SV or NY, in gross terms, but for where I am, I'm very comfortable.
Median tenure is falling I believe. And employees in their mid-twenties and thirties have way lower tenure than those in their fifties. I think it's about 3 years as opposed to 10 years. Job-hunting is much more prevalent.
With respect to jobs, I totally agree that the definition of "stable" has changed from my parents' era to my children's. And we are lucky we don't live in the US. Our social services, while not what they were, are still ahead of your. But if you can start life without a huge debt, then that is the best way we can help them, and in those circumstances "stability" can be defined more flexibly.
But that doesn't mean that the population of unemployed and unmatched people can shrink. Only that it can churn.
Also, I have no idea what you mean by my idea being based on prejudice. Prejudice against what, who?
Frankly I see this sentiment alot with today's millennial generation (really anyone from early 20s to mid/late 30s). Everyone thinks they'll have that dream job, life, marriage, kds, etc.... even the uber drivers and starbucks baristas. The "oh things will work out" attitude is especially prevalent given the popular parenting slogans of the past few decades: everyone's a winner; every child is special; you can do whatever you want if you put your mind to; etc.
Disgusting. I am one of the oldest millennials (born in 82) and my age group was the last to have it somewhat easy. People born in 92 are in a pressure cooking from every angle.
The only answer is to transfer wealth from baby boomers to millennials through inflation. I have zero idea if it will happen, but as the pressure builds on this generation, they will surely look for political solutions, one of which is printing money.
Like whatever the reason for it: bad parenting, trashy culture, Bill Clinton, or maybe - maybe - that their parents pissed away the legacy of their forebears and the birthright of their progeny - whatever the reason, there are consequences to flushing an entire generation of people down the toilet. Consequences like mass revolt and death. It's really not good to leave large numbers of people with little to lose.
I agree that some of the blame should be directed towards the prior generation; I was trying to allude to that with my criticism of their parenting technique, which I think is inherently hypocritical, given the advantages they enjoyed that kids today don't have.
Unfortunately that mostly means that our kids will likely have it worse, not better. Starting with baby boomers we simply had too few children to keep growing GDP. GDP, and economic activity in general shows a remarkable and extremely direct relation to two things : total amount of energy used, and total amount of people. For the first time in over 70 years, both are stagnating, slowly.
And it's too late : to fix the population growth rate, gen X should have been having lots of kids one to two decades ago, and that has decidedly not happened. For the foreseeable future, we'll have to do more with less, both in terms of energy, but especially in terms of labor available.
You might say "but machine learning", "but robots", etc. Well that's exactly what they said in the 80s with the car plant closings. That was patently false. Then they said it again with Japan crashing and then stagnating. Again, not true. Now we're saying it about ourselves (but doubly so for China). I don't think this time it will be right either.
Well, I do remain hopeful that we will reach an inflexion point at which such technologies will make labor immensely cheap. If you think about the very basic requirements for having ever increasing population and GDP: you need young people to keep your factories running, working your farms and running your investment funds etc. Once most of these things are automated, labor productivity would have reached the point where there won't be a need for ever-expanding population to achieve the same standard of life.
And the problem isn't keeping GDP growing, it is growing it enough to pay for spending obligations.
And we sort of obviously don't have resource problems, we have a problem with matching supply and demand.
The likely fix is rampant inflation. Erases debt, erases the value of property relative to wages, etc.
Of course our neoliberal, hyper capitalistic society doesn't help either...
The people that came into power dismantled them, no the generation.
The people in power before them, and after them equally were for dismantling things.
Its the generation that votes/puts people in power in a democratic political system. Politicians are representatives of the people i.e. generation.
> The people in power before them, and after them equally were for dismantling things.
Nope. The New Deal was the opposite of dismantling: using government resources to kickstart the economy. And then the Great Society programs to enable higher standards of living for all.
In an ideal world. In practice they're in the pockets of many interests (including their own), and people only get to vote 1 in 4 years or so, and only accept a candidate "wholesale". How many promises did Obama broke to the people that elected him? How many will Trump?
>Nope. The New Deal was the opposite of dismantling: using government resources to kickstart the economy. And then the Great Society programs to enable higher standards of living for all.
The New Deal was rather the exception, after a near fatal crash, and under the pressure of a unionized America and an increased communist global influence, where the ruling classes had to show that they were for more than exploiting too. Similar things happened all over the world and established the early welfare state, but not because the 1930's generation was somehow special in voting for better people.
Do you seriously think its "generations of people" that do stuff to other generations?
The ones making the calls for all those things were the 0.1% then and are 0.1% now, regardless of whether they are 30 year olds or baby boomers.
And yes generations do decide on a lot. For instance, the baby boomers instituted social welfare programs that generation after them paid for, but the programs won't be funded long enough to take care of the next generations? Sounds like the biggest ponzi scheme in the history of Mankind.
One thing that I always found interesting about the greatest generation vs the boomers is the shift in attitudes towards wealth, one's civic duty, etc.
The finance industry is a nice microcosm to study this shift... 40-50-60 years ago banker salaries and the enviability of their jobs were both low. Top grads from the ivies would sneer at their classmates for going into finance over something like the diplomatic corps. Today that's 100% reversed.
I always felt that the "professional services" industry is basically a giant con perpetuated by lazy boomers because it's an easy, optically nice appearing, way to shift money into one's own pocket. Collectively, they've created these upper-income professions that serve little to no value, solely in place to fund "elite" society. The result is that the greatest minds of my generation are wasted in the pursuit of making silly and irrelevant powerpoint decks (Consulting) or rent-seeking in the capital markets (Banking). And look, it's even infesting technology as evidenced by the legion of irrelevant startups. Why work hard at something difficult when you can roll the dice with someone else's pension funds (and if that fails, onwards and upwards to HBS)?
The reason people make a lot of money in any case is because they can eliminate the information asymmetry associated with them delivering value.
In finance the people that are paid well are the ones who can show with clarity that they delivered dollars to the bottom line. Investment bankers show it through the huge fees they earn by winning contracts with companies IPOing etc.
Portfolio managers show it through pointing to their measured performance and showing their AUM gains. AUM x Fees = revenue.
People in big corp have a much harder time showing how their individual production helped the bottom line. Engineers have a REALLY REALLY hard time with this. Those engineers that do are making ridiculous money because of the scale that they can add value.
Its the parents and age 40+ that think everything will just 'work out' for them, because they're 'hard workers', who are themselves stuck in manual labor/retail and do not have any career or education outside of that. They ignore job trends and stick to what they've been doing, then cry when they're retired after 5-8 years of working there, scapegoating with leftist politics and 'millenials who don't know anything.'. Even my own parents succumbed to that one. If I had my own kids, I would tell them that things /will/ work out for them, if they put in the effort, because I know my parents were quite wrong. On the flip side, even if you don't get what you want, atleast you put in a lot of effort, and that will get you something.
This is all about Neoliberalism then isn't it. Privatize everything and then the privatized companies are highly competitive and only want the best and couldn't care less about the middle or the bottom. It's not about jobs, it's really never been about the jobs that's just rhetoric. It's about profits. And profits are stuck in large consolidated corporations that pay as little as possible to the middle and the bottom, preferably on contract or the "sharing" economy of contractors. For full-time employees with benefits they just want the top which is often overworked. I mean the economy was engineered to be like this specifically for the benefit of those with money.
There's no reason to lionize these people and act like "society rejected them." It's just (comparatively) easy to not work in the modern world, in first world countries, and these people didn't.
I don't think there's that much more we can say.
You don't need a LinkedIn profile to be a
- plumber
- electrician
- nurse
- teacher
- truck driver
The list goes on.
Note that none of the jobs you list would ever allow someone with a criminal record. A minor felony conviction (drunk driving, drug possession etc) closes all of those doors.
In contrast, the people who learned at the hands of mentors always showed more interest in actually becoming good at the trade, and favor practicality over theory. They will usually work to fill their own gaps in knowledge, and become some of the lynchpins on any development team.
I'll take an earnest, self-taught person coming up from the QA department every day over a greenhorn fresh out of college.
Neither of those things are "minor felonies". They're misdemeanors, and don't close all those doors. Felony convictions hover around 8.6% of the population based on a cursory Google search, and most non-drug related felonies are serious business.
If you do get convicted of a felony, yes, your life as you know it is over (can't vote, can't own guns, etc etc) However, the two offenses you state are not felonies, unless you've hurt somebody while drunk driving or you possess enough drugs to indicate intent to distribute.
At the same time, it seems a bit much to say "your life as you know it is over". Lots of people don't vote or own guns anyway.
Uhm, that's not the only problems you face. If you're not aware of it: you don't get a lot of federal benefits, credit etc is screwed, noone will rent you their apt etc., unemployable for almost every job except janitor etc.... your life is over.
FTFY.
If an interviewer criticized my lack of a LinkedIn profile, that is a warning sign to me.
I think people here really overrate how open the trades are. Most of the "can't fill" positions are for things like underwater welding, or high risk/niche occupations. Your local tech school generally produces more than enough electricians and plumbers for most local markets.
Sure, you don't need a LI profile to get a dead-end job.
I keep hearing this. Have for years. I don't expect it to actually happen anytime soon. We're still stuck in the "assisted cruise control" and "lane keeping" age, a good decade after the technologies were first introduced into consumer cars.
Let me know when the self-driving cars can do even level 4 automation on more than the well marked, sun-drenched California roads. Then we can talk about the immanent automation of all of the trucks.
Nursing, plumbing, and electrical work are all stable, rewarding jobs. Nursing has no career? Get real. Nursing has as much career progression potential as a software developer: nurse -> administration/policy/public health; nurse -> manager; nurse -> nurse practitioner; nurse -> anesthetist.
The best you can get without a degree is leading your own team of nurses, which basically means deciding shift patterns. My dad sorta invented his own job (back in the '70s when the world was more flexible, let's say) and "escaped", but most people he knew are still there doing shifts.
"You can be a nurse, but you're never allowed to pursue any certificates or a BSN"
Do "real jobs" lose their authenticity once someone tries to improve themselves?
I'm pretty sure the only people who ever say that are people who were raised to hate themselves if they aren't at least in the upper-middle class. There will always be teachers making $50k per year and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. In fact, if you look closely, all across America there are millions of people earning less than $60k per year. Guess what? They're doing just fine. They're content with life. They aren't toxic as*holes who can't live with themselves because they don't make X thousand dollars per year and live in Y school district.
They may have made some mistakes, but in previous generations a few mistakes now and again was not a life sentence. A few years off the books wasn't a big deal in the 80s or 90s. Now any gap in your linkedin profile is interrogated. In Japan and elsewhere, anyone with a blot on their employment record is doomed. And heaven help those with any criminal convictions. Our societies today deliberately push away so many people. It is improper of us to then say that it is entirely their fault or that they suffer illusions. The illusion is ours, that by shunning and dispossessing people for slight imperfections we only amplify them.
Once upon a time there was a net of reasonable jobs that didn't pay well but allowed people a life, low-level government jobs that took anyone willing to work hard. But has anyone here looked at how hard it is to become a postal worker or to join the army? Ability and willingness is no longer enough. (I have relatives in the Canadian Armed Forces. The application process takes at least one and sometimes many years.)