UGH. That article…..flames….on the side of my face….!!

I actually commented on that article, noting that it was the 18 or so months spent living at my mom’s post-college that made it POSSIBLE for me to be living a semblance of an adult life now. Because I delayed “independence” for a short time, I can now live entirely on my own, pretty much debt-free. Had I not done so, I’d either:
a) be moving back in with my mom NOW, due to the crappy economy, or
b) Just barely be hanging on in the roommates-and-ramen

Her response was basically, “oh I don’t mean people like YOU. And also, you probably are wrong about your actual lived experience.”

So the whole thing is just a big ol’ nostalgia wank for the “nobility” of her years of pseudo-poverty. 10 bucks says she just had better sex back then.

Boomers are almost as insufferable as upper-class members of their parents’ generation, the ones who were too young to lose anything in the Crash and got to ride the Keynesian rocket of the 1950s/60s.

Housing, insurance and education have all been outpacing the rate of inflation for decades while wages have remained nearly stagnant. The economic analysis of the whole situation should be really cut and dried.

Of course, one of the problems going forward is that many of the parents of the current crop of 20-somethings are losing their homes to foreclosure, so that old standby may not be as easily available going forward.

BTW: I think this is totally ableist too. Not everyone can work 2 jobs or 16 hour days, so yes, some of us folks in the only jobs avaliable these days will have to live at home. Not to mention there’s widespread discrimination against people with physical, mental and invisible disabilities.

I refer you, smugly I might add, to Nestor, and then fall silent.

Excellent and well said.  Historically, age at marriage or establishing one’s own home has varied depending on economic factors.  It is worth noting that these were at their lowest point during the period 1945-1975, since which they have gradually risen.  It is interesting that people insist on using this very aberrant period as their baseline “normal”.  In the early days of Puritan settlement in Massachusetts, the average age of marriage for men was 30 and for women about 25, as that was the point at which men’s fathers retired and they could take over the farm.  In the early 20h century the age at marriage was also higher than it was in the latter part of that century and young adults routinely lived with their parents until marriage and sometimes for a few years after.  This latter was quite common among the working classes, who could not afford a home of their own (even a rented apartment) for some time after marriage.  This highlights another fact, which is the use of the middle/professional class as the baseline for normal, as opposed to the much more numerous working classes and poor.

The AFL-CIO did a great report on how much harder it has become for 20-somethings to achieve financial security and all these other traditional markers of adulthood.

http://www.aflcio.org/aboutus/laborday/upload/laborday2009_report.pdf

I quit college for a year and my first grown up job paid a luxurious $15,000 a year.  You can bet your ass I lived at home.  Not only did I not pay rent but my parents paid my car insurance, and I simply did without health insurance until I was in graduate school.  When I moved out they were shocked (shocked!) that rent in my new town had increased from the quaint 1975-era rents they so fondly remembered.  My share of a 3-person apartment with no insulation in a shady neighborhood was more than they ever paid for a nice studio or even one-bedroom, and it was far less than I’d pay for a studio or shitty one-bedroom.  During my undergrad years tuition nearly doubled while financial aid did not really increase apace.  Insurance was laughably out of the question until I became a grad student and the shitty but highly subsidized student insurance became available.

Now I’m almost 30 and the only part of her glamorous 20’s lifestyle that doesn’t ring true for me is that I have fantastic furniture, but I still live with the college roommate and our ex-roommate makes ends meet by having a friend live in his living room.  Also I haven’t even started paying for my education yet, so yay that.  I haven’t even read the article yet and the author can still suck it.

I’ll add that the routine assumption that even in the mid-century people over a certain age never lived with family didn’t hold nearly as strongly as you’d think.  Another observation from “The Apartment”, which is a movie but also a snapshot of certain assumptions about life in 1960—-the working class characters in that movie by and large live with extended family.  Fran lives with her sister and and her cab driving brother-in-law.  A tertiary character who is a phone operator lives with her mother in the Bronx, even though she’s clearly in her early 30s.  Movies tend to overrate how rich people are, so it’s worth noting that it even trickled up to Hollywood folks that working class mores about living with extended family might not be so strict.

Wait, I exaggerate, I’m not sure I made that much.  Or maybe it was that much in a year but I only worked part of the year.  I can’t remember anymore.  I know once I got back into school my income went to about $6,000/year, so I think my savings only lasted a year or so.

Reading Nelle’s remarks about disliking her parents and how kids today do like their parents was part of the key to understanding the point she didn’t manage to make.  Probably because it was too painful for her to put into words- too many unwanted kids in that generation.

Funny thing- when you choose to have children, and aren’t forced into it due to lack of BC and other choices, it’s a lot easier to love them.  I think a whole lot more parents today have children today because they want to have children, and not because “that’s what happens when you get married”.

Yeah, the assumption that there’s always a yawning generation gap between parents and kids is another example of how Boomer experiences are assumed to be universal.

This article really makes me upset. I’m a 27-year-old living with my parents while going to school part-time in search of a better-paying job. I loathe people like this author, these people who are completely out of touch and yet pretend they know everything about everything.

Yes, I’m SO SURE I want to be in my parents’ house, you condescending windbag. I’m furious, and plan to do a full takedown of this article. Yeah—I’m gonna get medieval on this woman’s ass. (Which seems to be interchangeable with her head as far as I can tell.)

Oh! That was the original point I wanted to make, rather than babbling on about my own early 20’s.  I have many European friends and they really don’t get the American “You’re 18 you’re out the door!” ideal.  Since their cultural narrative doesn’t include being a failure and a child for living with your parents until you have a specific reason not to, they seem to be able to enjoy it much more.  My parents were always helpful to me in their own way, but sticking around the house after 21 makes them and us look bad so of course there’s some pressure to get out, ready or not.  My Bosnian friend finds such attitudes silly.  There’s something for the sink-or-swim method of learning to live on your own, and I’m glad I did move out, student poverty and all, but there needs to be more room in our culture for the fact that YMMV.

Smarmy article lady is also forgetting about the ubiquity of credit cards.  My aunt is a Boomer, and she tells the story of how, when she was in college, she wanted a credit card.  She had to write home to ask her parents to co-sign, which they refused.  I got my first credit card with something like a $3,000 limit when I was a sophomore in college, and my parents didn’t have to sign anything.  The amount of credit card ads/applications that inundated everyone’s mailbox in college was also stunning.  A former roommate of mine got herself into some serious credit card trouble and had to move back home while her finances recovered.

And now that I think of it, I seriously doubt that my parents graduated college with the level of debt that my friends have. My grandparents couldn’t pay for their kids to go to school, so my folks got by with summer jobs and financial aid.  My best friend graduated a small, private college with $30,000 in debt.  I got lucky and graduated with $15,000 in student loan debt.  Since that was five years ago, I’m sure the debt level has risen for students graduating today.

Not to mention health care costs.  My brother didn’t have health insurance, and a trip to the hospital landed him deep in debt.  His company recently laid him off, and now he’s living with my folks, working fast food, trying his best to get back on his feet again.

The only reason that I myself didn’t end up living at home when I was broke and unemployed the first six months after college was because I was lucky enough to have a boyfriend who let me move in and didn’t mind shouldering most of the expenses until I got on my feet again.  Well, that and stuff like gas and groceries got put on my credit card.

Smarmy asshat really is clueless.

Indeed, I have to wonder if people who think that living with your parents after becoming an adult is non-negotiable aren’t speaking from a very narrow upper middle class perspective in general.  When I was a kid, both of my parents went through stints of living with their parents after they were divorced.  If you step outside of the world of status markers and fear of appearing too working class, the benefits of living with your parents in some situations are kind of obvious.

My Aunt got divorced when I was about eight, and moved in back with my grandparents (her parents). My father, her brother… talked about how, since she had done this, she and her son were completely screwed, and would always be losers. Even as an eight-year-old I thought that was just amazingly strange and wrong. Seems like a similar judgement to that of this Salon writer.

I’m 39, so not Baby Boomer.  I’m Gen-X, the child of these type of people.  I got no college education from my divorced parents.  I got very, very little help when I got pregnant at 19 and married.  My then-husband and I struggled every day to do anything more than keep a roof over our heads and food on the table and clothes on the back of our daughter.  For damn near 20 years, we did this.

Now, I have no savings, no house, no new furniture, I struggle to simply survive.  I have a roommate and I live on a futon in my 9 yr old son’s room.  I’m going to college now and I live on the $24,000/yr (gross) that my pink collar job with 20 yrs of experience earns me.

I’m happy, don’t get me wrong, but this kind of self-righteous bullshit pisses me off and makes me want to scream—and makes me want to get in touch with her kids to compare notes.

“sharing living quarters with a pile of friends”

Maybe some landlords and certain neighborhoods were willing to tolerate dens of free-floating youth back the 60s and 70s.

Just try doing that anywhere today. 

I lived on $15K/yr in my 20s (grad school), which basically covered the decade of the 90s. But I lived in a seedy college town (Iowa City) and its suburbs, in shitty apartments with furniture from dumpsters and Goodwill. And I was privileged to receive the occasional cash infusion from my parents.

By the end of the decade, shitty apartment complexes were requiring CREDIT CHECKS and even old ladies renting their basements were issuing detailed application forms for leases.

If the Boomers want to see younger adults strike out on their own, they’re going to have to make a world where that’s actually possible. Life needs to me not only less expensive, but generally freer. The US is a lot meaner and stricter a place than it was even in the early 90s.

For example my parents in 1972 bought their first home, new construction in a brand new subdivision though considered in the far flung suburbs at the time.  A split level, about 2000 sq ft, hardly luxurious but very nice.  It was around $45,000.  Now they combined were making like $15,000 a year.  Which means the house was three time there annual salary.  What kind of home can most people buy for three time a family income these days?

Another big things that changed is that there ia a huge stratification of housing compared to when my parents built.  In my old subdivision they were people of various wealth levels.  My parents were strictly working class but across the street there was a mid level manager at a large corporation.  Their house was nicer sure, but it wasn’t like it is today with a McMansion in a subdivision of McMansions.  It wasn’t until the 1990s that we got these very stratified subdivisions.

I really don’t understand this “extended adolescence” thing.  I work in a lab with a lot of undergrads trading lab work for credit.  Most of them also have jobs (some 20+ hours a week) and have had jobs since they were teens.  Most have now or have had fairly stable romantic relationships.  A surprising number of them also do quite a bit of volunteer work on top of their jobs and full course loads.  How exactly are they failing to be mature and responsible?

Waspie - don’t forget the zoning!  If you’ve got students and/or illegal immigrants, you’ve got zoning laws that restrict the number of non-related people who can live in a single residence.  Here it’s not strictly enforced unless you give them a reason, so I know one guy who gets the 70’s style den of free-floating youth, which basically meant his rent quadrupled from the time his lease-free roommates moved out until the time he found replacements who didn’t move in, paint half a wall, and flee without paying any rent.

Now my mom was always helpful, but not so helpful that she’d cosign anything until I proved myself with a few years of not-getting-evicted.  After that the cosign requirement became a formality, but before that, neither I or the two guys I lived with had parents who were willing and able to commit to our leases in the event that our precarious lifestyles didn’t pan out.  But many “student” places here assume mommy and daddy have your back: not only are they priced pretty steep, but they often have income and credit requirements that no new student is going to be able to meet on their own.  And landlords around here are far more familiar with their rights than students are with their own, plus I imagine it’s a lot harder to walk out on a lease without consequences now than it was 40 or even 20 years ago.  Collections people are pretty good at finding you, and that credit score number is precious.

I graduated college spent a year working for about 20k and fell back into grad school.  I luckily found a nicer position before the collapse basically cut the available money in half and found myself matriculated with a relatively nice job.  I know I am fortunate and by no means the norm.  I’m a damn doctorate holder and I make less than a great deal of MBAs.  I love my folks and would have no problem living with them until they died or my family grew to be an issue fitting in a house together. 

Boomers have this idea that because their wages beat inflation handily the rest of us should have no problem doing it.  Every decade inflation roughly increases by a factor of 50% (if rising at 3% which is generally considered average).  Yet the income rates rise in that same decade by roughly 25-30%.  Each decade we spend stagnating we fall further behind in wages.  Minimum wage should be up in the teens if it were trying to beat inflation and arguably this has to do with the shift to stock market support and away from direct ownership by the capitalist class.  They’re less interested in the welfare of others as their stock portfolios stretch across countries and continue to grow.  So there is a much more palpable difference between the previous generation of capital and this one though obviously they’re both not perfect or really interested in the welfare of others.

wapsie says: By the end of the decade, shitty apartment complexes were requiring CREDIT CHECKS and even old ladies renting their basements were issuing detailed application forms for leases..

This!  Add to this situation that many of the large companies that mass-hired dozens/hundreds of college grads no longer exist.  My first job was with a huge company that basically guaranteed your ablity to get an apartment, car loan, dept store charge cards - all the things you need to start your life as an adult.  Doesn’t happen anymore.

To be somewhat fair to Boomers, this was a Salon article, the forum of choice for self-absorbed, overprivileged twits.

Here’s another reason that Lady Plentymoney seems to have forgotten: a generation ago and back, you didn’t need a college degree to get a living-wage job. You could get a union job at the factory, or in a skilled trade, with a high-school degree or less. You could go into the military even if you didn’t finish high school or if you had a mild juvenile record. You wouldn’t get rich, but you’d have a stable living with a decent wage and a pension when you retired and you could take care of your family. This was especially true for African-Americans.

Between Reagan’s union-busting, tougher requirements in the military and the collapse of manufacturing in the US, all that’s gone.

What the fucking fuck?

I am 40. When I was a 20-something, the *exact same* articles were being printed about how kids nowadays are moving in with their parents rather than being financially independent. WHY IS THIS BEING TOUTED AS A NEW THING????

To the best of my knowledge, the *only* generations that were able to move straight out of their parents’ houses and into independence were the generation that fought WWII (and in part it was because they fought WWII that they pulled it off), and the boomers, who were their children. And maybe the cohort in between who were too young to fight the war but too old to be the children of those who did. Starting from Generation X, no generation has been able to move out of their parents’ houses and straight into apartments right after college, unless their family is rich.

Where is this “kids nowadays are staying home” so called “news” even coming from? This has been normal for 20 years!  If the FORTY YEAR OLDS lived that way when we were 20, how can this possibly be defined as a new trend, and why are boomers being allowed to bloviate about kids these days when they’re so far removed from being kids? (Answer: only boomers read newspapers.)

As a boomer with two college grads living at home, I have to say this woman has no clue what is going on in the real world. Both my kids are desperate to find jobs, but they are competing with people with years of experience for entry level positions. Even if they do find something I have no idea how they are going to enter the housing market. We’ve been sold a bill of goods for the last 30 years and now payment is due and today’s 20 somethings are stuck with it. Me providing them with housing seems the least I can do.

Which is why I saw red when I read this smarmy, self-righteous screed from some Baby Boomer.

Self-righteous Boomers have definitely been quite annoying lately, these types of articles have been a dime a dozen. It honestly makes me want to scream, “Want to see Millenials gain some financial independence? How about you retire so there are actually some decent jobs out there.”

I would say that grouping of people right now from about 30 down to about 15 are the ones who are really going to be screwed the worst because with the lack of jobs they are really having to delay things that previous generations have not.  I know too many 27 -28 year old who are still in that crap entry level job because there is just no where to “move up the ladder” as they say. Plus they still have school debt.

I can honestly say I only know one under thirty who has been able to buy a home, they just happen to have had their seven year of schooling and living expenses paid by a private benefactor. Amazing how quickly you gain independence when you don’t have $50,000 of tuition hanging over your head.

Of course once the Boomers retire it will still be all about them because the rest of the population will be paying the high price for their care, but at least then the kids of today will have some career options once they get to the working world.

”This, despite her preening, is exactly the “extended adolescence” that she shames young people now for engaging in”

Yep,
Which of these is extending adolescence?

25 yr old who eats ramen to afford an apartment or the 25 yr old who lives with parents to afford diapers for their child

”I will point out that for all her preening, the Salon author didn’t actually achieve the financial independence and adulthood she’s so sure about”

And you can bet that if she came up short one month, the first national bank of mom & dad was ready to make a “loan”

And its guaranteed that mom & dad’s income was what the landlord used for the credit check

Enough with the baby boomer bashing: I have a Greatest Generation father who doesn’t understand why I could never afford to buy a house, when he had the benefit of a 2%(!) mortgage from the VA, and one of those middle class jobs that could keep a whole family on just the one salary during the boom years of the ‘50s and ‘60s.

I hit the beginning of “adulthood” in the recessionary ‘70s, and the only apartment I could afford was a bathtub-in-the-kitchen shotgun, left over from a 19th century slum, with a boyfriend or roommate, at that. I earned exactly half the salary of each of the two boyfriends I lived with—including with the one who shared the same profession.

My father didn’t understand why I didn’t move into something “nice.”

He retired with a house free of a mortgage, a pension from the business he’d worked for less than ten years, a full Social Security check, Medicare and healthy 401ks.

I’m 60 in a rent-controlled kinda slumish apartment, the rent of which eats up about 3/4 of my income right now, no pension available from any of the jobs I’ve held over the last 40 years, my savings went to pay the medical expenses not covered by health insurance, health insurance which I no longer have since it was raised to $1,000 a month for me alone.

People my age, and younger, are being thrown aside by companies hiring a cheap twenty-something, and find themself stranded and “too old” to be taken on elsewhere. Ask my brother who at 57 was laid off from the company he’d worked for 17 years, and has now been unemployed for over a year. He’s hoping for something at half the salary in the fall, in another field, and hoping that will cover the mortgage (they had to take out a second to hurricane-proof their 60 year old home.)

His partner, who is nine years older, and working for the same corp for 30 years (no pension attached) can’t afford to retire or they’ll lose the house for sure. But he has had his hours cut because the business has lost money during this recession.

Neither my brother nor his partner have pensions, their 401Ks have been devastated, and as I said, there’s a second mortgage on the house.

At some point my brother will lose his Cobra health insurance, and won’t be able to be put on his partner’s plan, because they’re forbidded to marry in their state, despite the fact they’ve been together for 34 years.

And the Obama administrations is working toward cutting Social Security, and raising the age of getting it (which may or may not affect me immediately.)

My sister, the doctor, will be just fine during the retirement years, so she’s as smug as the writer of that loathsome piece, but the priviledged baby boomers are just that: a priviledged few.

I do some counseling, and I can’t tell you how many of the baby boomer generation I’ve talked to who are in even more dire circumstances.

Laid off, age discrimination, predatory mortgages, foreclosures, no pension, savings gone, no health insurance, business going bankrupt.

That asshole speaks not for baby boomers, but the priviledged few.

It also took me nearly 20 years to pay off my student loans—but my sister, the doctor, paid hers off in five or so, living rent free with her older partner who also had a mortgage-free house.

My father couldn’t understand why I didn’t, despite the low salaries of the publishing world.

So the privileged few will always look down their noses at those of us who struggle. Even though we’re now in the majority, with the middle class destroyed in America.

The US is a lot meaner and stricter a place than it was even in the early 90s.

This nails what has been bothering me for a week:  what has happened to ourselves when we are so uncaring to our people?  Why are we so tough, so mean and unfeeling?

The unemployment of the last three years is historically horrifying, millions of American lives have tumbled completely out of control and crashed, yet we still have no industrial policy, no path forward at all to get Americans back to meaningful employment that pays.

The author’s stance highlights something that’s bothered me for a very long time:  why is it we seem blind to limitations that can be put on people, that problems and pain can create horrible burdens that perhaps others are not tangled with?

It seems like to have any chance in America you better be way above average on a number of fronts, if you’re overweight or unattractive or unaccepting of the status quo, whoops, ‘n god help you if you’re not super-intelligent or have problems.

Just to put it out there, articles like this basely bewilder me, I don’t know what it’s like to have parents that helped or created a family or what it’s like to have a real father.  A man who never played catch with his son, not once, he loved golf but never once asked me to play.  He used to get free buckets at a driving range if balls were collected, so he made me his ball boy after school.

It go so very, very worse than that.  I blundered into my tweens and was shattered by life, in many ways I’ve never gotten over it, I doubt I ever will.  I’m lucky to be alive, let alone in the five fucking levels of adulthood.  How come authors can be so obtuse to human variance when writing trash like this?  It hurt me.  Oh well, fuckup, we’ve become very good at deciding your American experience is nothing to think about it.

I am often a combative person—I have not forgotten what happened, heh, not hardly—but at least still my internal compass steadfastly wobbles back to kindness, caring, helping and understanding.  Every day American society makes me feel a little more lonely and lost.

I’ll add that the routine assumption that even in the mid-century people over a certain age never lived with family didn’t hold nearly as strongly as you’d think.

I think that this was more common in NYC and some other large eastern cities than elsewhere in the Post-War era owing to a lack of (affordable) housing.  Several factors contributed to the historic shift in marriage and residence patterns during this time.  The GI Bill was a biggie, giving veterans (a large segment of the male population) money for college and a home, along with FHA loans for new homes, explosive growth in new industries like electronics and petrochemicals which created high demand for both blue collar and professional workers, and strong and growing unions.  All of this meant unprecedented prosperity for young people looking start out on their own.  By the late 1970s this was already cooling down and by the 1980s the age of marriage was rising significantly.  At this time wage stagnation (or decline) was offset by the ready availability of easy credit which allowed people to live on their own.

A note to those trashing the Boomers, as someone born at the end of the Truman administration, I would like to say that most of us think that the views in that article are horseshit and are well aware of the economic realities of the world today.  The author is expressing the views of the affluent and privileged few who have no knowledge of the real world.  Both my younger sister and I had to rely on our parents for help at various time up through our 30s, though we never had to move home.

judy, absolutely none of that excuses picking on young people for their poverty.

I flinched when I saw that Salon article. Crap like that makes me sorry to be a Boomer.

I had to live at home for about two years between college and my first apartment, strictly out of financial necessity. It sucked. I remember seeing my father go off to his factory job in the freezing cold night while I stayed home, jobless, and the guilt and shame were overwhelming. I was inches away from joining the Air Force when I finally got an offer for an extremely crappy job, which I jumped at. Even after that, it took 18 months and another job before I could finally afford a car and an apartment. I would never judge anyone else in that situation, and anyone who does is an ass.

Which is why I saw red when I read this smarmy, self-righteous screed from some Baby Boomer.

#30

Enough with the baby boomer bashing: I have a Greatest Generation father who doesn’t understand why I could never afford to buy a house, when he had the benefit of a 2%(!) mortgage from the VA, and one of those middle class jobs that could keep a whole family on just the one salary during the boom years of the ‘50s and ‘60s.

What if we just abandoned the idea that generations are separate, unitary, and inherently opposed to each other? I wonder if it might give people a more holistic view of time, history & change. I also wonder if it might help us feel connected to our own pasts, and our own futures. In a sense we are our own sons and daughters, as we recreate ourselves over and over.

The debate always seems to be about upper middle class and above baby boomers vs upper middle class and above Gen Xers.  I am a baby boomer, b.1953 in a working class family and for me and my friends, the story was a bit different.  We left high school, got low-level blue collar jobs and did what we needed to do.  From age 17 to age 22, I was a construction laborer, then a carpenter.  I lived with my girlfriend who was a waitress, and between us we paid the rent and kept food on the table.  I finally got a night job working as an orderly at a hospital and went to college (junior college first, then a state school) in the daytime.  After completing three years toward my degree, I got a job as a technician at a geotech firm and finished my degree at night.  I was 30 before I got my first salaried job; 35 before I bought my first house.  Now I’m 56 and working in middle management and make a decent living.  There’s nothing unique about my story, most of the people I grew up with have lived similar ones.

Maybe it is tougher now, art least during this recession, but this crap that Gen Xers and Millenniums spout about how all the baby boomers had it so easy; that everything was just handed to them on a silver platter is a crock of sh*t.

Fuck you, corwin.

When I was in grad school, I lived off my $15k/yr stipend and did other odd jobs for extra cash.  All in all, about $18-20k/yr.  My already tight budget was overwhelmed after a car accident required, car bills, medical bills, legal bills, and increased insurance costs.  With a huge amount of shame, I asked my father for some cash ($400?).  I received a giant lecture about how my generation didn’t know how to budget their money and he made me write down how every penny was spent, sure he’d find some glaring reason why I could not be financially independent.  I marked every penny for three months and sent it to him.  One $10 movie and a $6 book was the only “waste” he could find.  He was certain I was doing something “wrong” and eventually decided that the $550 I spent a month on rent was too much (“rent should never be more than one week’s pay!” he’d say.)  Well, maybe in some towns you can find a place for $370, but my $550 rent (including utilities) was already by far the lowest of anyone I knew in my town and a fraction of what friends in other cities paid.  The rest of grad school was just a constant (and hypocritical) stream of conversations with my father blaming my financially tight life on my “too-nice” apartment (with its “too nice” roaches, broken AC, and doors too warped to close, I guess) while simultaneously pointing out that he was able to BUY a house when he was in grad school with his stipend.  To him, this was proof that he was better with money.  To me, this proved just how different housing prices were between his days in grad school, and mine.  Heck, not only did he own a house, he was married, and had a kid.  Diapers, food, crib, stroller, clothes, doctors visits, much less a bedroom…I’m still so far off from being able to afford a kid.  maybe when I’m 40…

The author is expressing the views of the affluent and privileged few who have no knowledge of the real world.

That’s the real takeaway, imo.  It’s no use blaming one generation or another for what really is the fault of the corporatist upper class: unless you’re rich to start with, odds are you haven’t “made it”, and you’re not an adult according to the people who make the rules.  That includes Boomers whose 401(K)s took nosedives, Xers who’ve been bounced around from career to career and don’t have savings to start with, and millenials like me who have the highest college graduation rates and loan debts ever and are entering a job market awash with generational flotsam the corporations have already thrown away.  We’re fucked, all of us together, without some serious restructuring of our economy.  Arguing about Boomers taking jobs from millenials or vice versa is pointless when the system has been dismantled out from under us all.

orogeny: I suspect that it is practically impossible to reproduce your upward mobility—however slow it was—today. To put it simply: what you did can’t now be done. And that’s why your generation *as a whole* looks privileged to those of us born after 1960. Because even though you had to work very hard, there was an actual pay-off for it.

But I’m sure you won’t listen to any of the facts advanced here that show that your date of birth gave you great fortune and great opportunity. You’ve got a nice self-congratulatory story there, and facts would only ruin it.

@ Alara - exactly, I was thinking the same thing.  This is NOTHING new.  I graduated college in 1991, smack in the middle of the recession.  I did not move out of my big, beautiful home, (uh, why would I?) and neither did my brother and neither did any of my friends.  I don’t know what planet people are living on who felt that they were pressured by society to be out of their parents homes by 21, but I grew up on LI and that simply was not the culture there in the early 90"s.  My brother moved out when he married.  I moved out when I was making decent money and got an apartment several years later, after the worst of the recession was over.  I could have moved sooner if I wanted to live with a guy, but in my 20’s I didn’t want to.  It wouldn’t be until my THIRTIES, when I finally would live with a man. 

Let me tell you, i had the greatest 20"s in the world.  This woman is smug, ignorant, but most importantly, she’s wrong.

“When I was a kid, both of my parents went through stints of living with their parents after they were divorced.  If you step outside of the world of status markers and fear of appearing too working class, the benefits of living with your parents in some situations are kind of obvious.  It can be a bulwark against loneliness for all parties involved.  It can save everyone money.”

Indeed.  One of my erstwhile coworkers spent a shift lamenting the American habit of kicking your kids out to make their own way once it was legal to do so.  He was Peruvian and felt the local custom he’d grown up with—you spend an extra 4-6 years sort of easing them into adulthood until they were ready to marry and shack up in their own place—was far superior for all involved.  I can’t say I’d have welcomed the situation, but I know a number of my friends from high school probably would have stuck close to home and had things a bit easier psychologically if they’d felt that was a socially acceptable option.

WORD.

This reminds me of the teabaggers complaining about people living off the government when they use the roads and sewers and benefit from government programs like everyone else.  Show me someone who prides themselves in their independence and rugged individualism and I’ll show you 1,000 more people who have made that “independence” possible.  I think it’s time for individuality and self-sufficiency to be retired from the list of American ideals, since there is absolutely no such thing, even for those of us privileged enough not to have a disability.  The celebration of those traits has done a lot more harm than good, and seems most often to be used as an excuse (as it was in this article) for why the haves have more than the have-nots.

@ wapsie

So, my Gen Xer son, age thirty, who left home at 19, worked construction, in restaurants,as a software helpdesk drone and finally got into network administration, without going to college and now is making a nice living as a business analyst for a fortune 500 company did something that is impossible for others?  Sorry, I know it can be done…he’s got quite a few friends who have similar stories.

I graduated from college in 1988, went to Japan, taught English, made $35K year in 1988 dollars and lived just fine, haven’t lived at home since. I’m just shocked that every American can’t follow my fine example. I’m sure Japan would welcome several million American college grads every year.

#39

Maybe it is tougher now, art least during this recession, but this crap that Gen Xers and Millenniums spout about how all the baby boomers had it so easy; that everything was just handed to them on a silver platter is a crock of sh*t.

orogeny, it seems to me that there are real, long term economic changes that have occurred between the 1950s and 2010, and further that these changes make certain American folkways, which made sense during the 50s & 60s, hard for most folks of any class to achieve.

Consider the first graph at this link: “Initiative Blog: Cost of Education vs. Income Over Time”. While wages have remained basically stagnant since 1978, the real cost of education has risen steadily.

Or, consider the change in the Debt-to-Income Ratio from 1983 - 2004. As you can see, this ratio rose steadily over those 20 years for all economic classes.

In short, while the complaints of Generation X may be annoying, in my opinion they are grounded in provable economic realities.

BTW that’s household debt-to-income ratio, not governmental or corporate debt.

I’m a Gen X’er and many of my friends are still stuck in entry level jobs - or maybe one level up - even after being there for ten-fifteen years. There’s just so little room for advancement. Forget wanting promotion, these days we’re happy just to be employed. It’s amazing to compare our parents’ definition of being middle class at our age- they bought new cars, had summer rentals on private beaches and so on - compared to ours, which is just keeping our heads above water.

I got the whole “why don’t you grow up” routine from my parents into my early thirties because I rented and didn’t have kids and was always struggling. I finally had to point out that my Boomer parents still defined adulthood as beginning at marriage, and that kids in my family who married got major down payments on houses and help with grad school and babies. Because that was how my parents’ generation saw it, you helped young couples starting out. Those of us who didn’t marry? We didn’t get shit. That made a huge difference in our standard of living right from the start between the marrieds and singles and it’s still visible more than a decade later.

I’m a Gen-X’er (39), and my Boomer parents had absolutely no trouble putting up one of the three kids whenever we needed somewhere to go.  I did it after I left the military and picked up my undergraduate degree, my brother did it after he graduated with his undergrad and was looking for work.  In fact, the entire family did it.  An uncle of mine built an apartment over his welding shop for his son (who stayed there for several years, all of his first marriage and two kids).  My other uncle’s children stayed on at his house for a few years after school until they moved out on their own.  After my grandfather died one cousin or another was stying with my grandmother to help her maintain her big house and have a place to stay until they had their lives sorted out.

My own parents stayed with dad’s parents until their own house was built (which was carved out of the family farm and only about 100 metres away).

Hell, many of my neighbours did the same. 

I think the big difference was that I grew up among working class/lower middle class families in a rural setting.  There was an expectation among many that a child (well, to be honest, a son) would pick up the family business of the farm or fishing, so there’d be nothing wrong or unusual with seeing them stay close by, wheterh on an adjacent house or int he same one (if large enough).  My generation was really the first where a large portion of us ended up moving far away from the family home, and even then there’s an understanding that if we land on hard times we can come back.

Amanda, I made no excuses for the author “picking on young people”—in fact, said that she was speaking from a privilege not shared by many baby boomers, who have had the rug pulled out from beneath their financial and working lives in this decade.

I’m tired of the pro forma attack on “baby boomers”—especially those who are facing old age with few to no resources compared to the “Greatest Generation,” who benefitted from the GI Bill, and Rooseveltian programs.

The only attack I made was on those so privileged, they’re blind to the realities of this age of economic desperation that devastates across the generations.

@ athiest

Yes, the cost of education has gone up, depending on where you go.  Community colleges are still a bargain, and there are still state schools that are not that expansive.  UAB, here in Birmingham, costs about $15,000 per year, all expenses included, without taking into consideration any scholarships, grants and loans available.

The debt to income ratio is simply a measure of responsibility and the ability to defer gratification.  Asking for sympathy because you put yourself in too much debt too be able to live on your own is like killing your parents and then asking for mercy because you’re an orphan

I can only hope that either my son will able to afford to move out or that he’ll be able to take our old broke asses in, honestly. I have often bemoaned waiting to my 30s to have him, but if he was a teenager now, I’d be freaking out about the lack of opportunity he’d be facing.

Not that I can safely assume it’ll get better by the time he’s 18, but right now, dumping on young adults is about the blindest and stupidest thing to do. I thought I had it bad in 93 with an English BA and loads of college debt, but that was practically the golden age in comparison to now.

My boss has kids about the same age as mine, and still wants to believe that they’ll be ok if they just go to college; me, I’m not going to put my son through the college debt hell I faced. If he can’t find a way to get it paid for, he’ll learn a trade or find some other path. Anything’s better than graduating with that elephant on your back.

@ purpleshoes

So, are you saying that working menial jobs and deferring gratification until he managed to achieve some level of success is just a matter of luck?  That that option is only available to a select few?

Veronica your post is very thought-provoking in several ways.  Good information about the lack of promotions, and the difference between what was middle class and what is middle class now.  Though, I think that we are using middle class too broadly.  Sounds to me as if you are lower-middle class.  But more and more of the formely upper middle class and middle class are falling into the lower middle class every single day.

And that is also a very interesting point about the privilege of marriage.  Though, you already have to come from privilege to be getting big down payments for houses (and they gotta be big these days) as a wedding gift.  But if they’re only passing that privilege onto the married offspring, I don’t know what to say about that.  What year are we in again?

Orogeny, you are getting on my nerves.

First, define “nice living” .

Then go back and look at my post.  My father, with a high school diploma, becamse the corporate VP of a major stock brokerage.  Do you understand what that means in terms of remuneration?  I am venturing that you do not.

It means that he was making 250 a year back in the 80’s when 250k was actually some money.

You simply cannot do that today with a high school diploma, by moving up the ranks of a company.

They do not promote, and often won’t even hire people with anything less than a BA and BA’s are becoming more and more common each day.

I don’t know where your son got his computer training, but if he landed a job in computers at a big company with a high school diploma?  Luck was involved, but something more as well.  And no, it wasn’t hard work.  You know who works hard?

The woman who holds down three jobs of manual labor.  Something W calls “uniquely American”.

The maid who lifts extremely heavy mattresses every day in a hotel.  So get off of your pedestal. 

And your son is only 30.  HE may get weeded out.  HE probably will at some point, because that’s the new America.

Come back and talk to me when he’s 43 and jobless.

Tell me about all the companies lining up to give him a job.

You better get your nose out of the clouds because it’s going to end up in dirt one of these days, and that’s a long fall.

It’s worth pointing out that the author of the piece also disses Boomers, who she characterizes as too indulgent of their children, which is why she believes young people are spoiled.

However, she had her college education paid for her, so she can fuck off very much.

I’m tired of the pro forma attack on “baby boomers”—especially those who are facing old age with few to no resources compared to the “Greatest Generation,” who benefitted from the GI Bill, and Rooseveltian programs.

Please point to where I did this.  I pointed out that this woman characterizes herself as a Boomer, and therefore this blinds her to privileges she had that younger generations of her class do not.  Which is factually accurate, not a slam on anyone.  Growing up in the era of social investment in the next generation made a huge difference.

“sharing living quarters with a pile of friends”

Just try doing that anywhere today. 

THIS.

Around my school, a studio apartment costs* $435 a month—-and they only allow one person to live in a studio apartment. Larger apartments have a maximum of two tenants per advertised bedroom, unless the rent is by the bedroom, in which case it’s per person rather than per bedroom, and the price goes up markedly. Meanwhile, at the university itself, half a (tiny!) dorm room costs $400 a month, which nets you a seventy square foot rectangle, no privacy, and a communal bathroom and kitchen shared with about a hundred people.

It would be very cost-effective to split a two-bedroom apartment eight or ten ways, and those people would actually have more space and share bathroom and kitchen with fewer people than is the case in the dorms. But they won’t let you do that. They write the rules so that nobody can rent a place to sleep at night for anything less than about $380 a month, not including utilities.

*these prices are a few years old, actually.

I’m currently commuting to school, 50 miles each way, in a decade-old minivan that is really not the best at fuel efficiency. It’s cheaper than any rent I can find, and the people I live with are so very much better.

Living with my mom in my early 20s saved my ass in a long run kind of way.  Because of the lower rent I paid, I was able to afford a new car, albeit the cheapest model on the market.  But still a little more a month than a used one.  Because I wasn’t routinely facing massive, unexpected mechanics bills, I was able to take a job that required a long commute.  Which made more affordable housing available, and stability in the job until I got promoted.  At what point, I was able to upgrade and start living more as an adult.  But without that new car, a lot of this was far from certain.

Here’s another reason that Lady Plentymoney seems to have forgotten: a generation ago and back, you didn’t need a college degree to get a living-wage job. You could get a union job at the factory, or in a skilled trade, with a high-school degree or less. You could go into the military even if you didn’t finish high school or if you had a mild juvenile record. You wouldn’t get rich, but you’d have a stable living with a decent wage and a pension when you retired and you could take care of your family. This was especially true for African-Americans.

Heck, you could get a job outside of these blue collar industries without a college degree.  My dad (who was raised by a single mom in a south bronx housing project) got kicked out of design school, but still managed to get an entry level job at an ad firm.  Which led to an in-house job in the marketing department at one of the biggest companies in the world.  Where he eventually became Director of Marketing before he retired.  But you can sure as hell bet that by the time he retired, you couldn’t get an internship at the same company without an ivy-league (or similar-level) MBA. 

On another note as well, this concept of moving out ASAP is incredibly western as well.  A few years ago, I went to a friend’s wedding in singapore, where, even though they all had good jobs and money (my friend was an Italian lawyer who I met while I worked in Italy, and she was marrying another lawyer who she meet when she was getting her PhD in London), the groom’s side of the family/friends at the wedding (all part of the Indian minority population), ALL lived at home with their parents.  Including married people.  Wives tended to move into the husband’s family house.  I spent a some time explaining the “unusual custom” of not living with your parents in the US, and they were all pretty shocked by my living alone in big old NYC.  Not even in a bad/patriarchal way, but the general response was “don’t you get lonely living all by yourself?”.  I quickly assured them that I only lived 5 blocks from my parents (true) and spent a lot of time with them. 

The “lonely” thing is what got me though - the custom of families staying together was so ingrained and normal that it was hard to even conceptualize living on one’s own.  Whereas, here in the US, it’s considered “healthy” to want to get away from your parents as quickly as possible.  You know, those parents who (hopefully) spent your entire life until that point caring, feeding and nurturing you.

This article also made me just livid. I have been trying to get a job since may. I apply to two or three jobs a day. I have gotten two offers that pay in the low 20s. To compound my problem, my parents live rurally and the closest large city is Minneapolis, over 3 hrs away. I would love to not live at home, but I dont have a choice. It is so embarrassing and stressful and anxiety producing. My relatives all take turns calling me an idiot and a slacker. I get so sick of people shitting all over gen y as if we are just these spoiled brats lucky enough to graduate into the worst economy in decades and have our classmates go to Iraq, etc. Participant ribbons my ass.

#56

The debt to income ratio is simply a measure of responsibility and the ability to defer gratification.  Asking for sympathy because you put yourself in too much debt too be able to live on your own is like killing your parents and then asking for mercy because you’re an orphan

orogeny, how can you be so sure that the debt-to-income ratio is only a measure of sociological change? Is is not just as possible that the ballooning household debt in every economic class comes from people trying their best to keep up a standard of living, but finding it harder and harder due to changing economic reality?

And furthermore, even if one were sure that the ever-increasing debt comes solely from sociological changes, then what would that mean? Why is Generation X sociologically different from the Boomers, in that scenario? Were the Boomers too-permissive parents? Is Generation X the victim of increasing chemical pollution in the water?

Finally, I feel I should tell you that your metaphor about people going into debt being like people who kill their parents, seems very overemotional, overwrought, and peevish. Is that really how you want to express yourself on this blog?

@paradox

I was just wondering about that this morning.  Some teabagger running for governor is proposing putting welfare recipients in converted jails and teaching them about hygiene.  Somehow good hygiene is going to pay them a living wage, cure mental health issues and make up for a shitty school system?  What happened?  Did this society always have a complete lack of empathy or do people feel like it is getting worse lately?

I’m 44 now, and living the “American Dream,” a house larger than I need, a nice car (but not luxury), finally paid for, now worth 1/4 of the total payments made, divorced, shared custody, and struggling to get debt free.  Baby Boomers oblivious of their great fortune of their birth really piss me off.  Sure, to do it all over again, I wouldn’t have gotten in over my head, but I wasn’t planning on getting divorced, as we lived like the good little dual-income consumerists we’re expected to be. 

I was able to escape the “shame” of living with my parents by joining the Air Force, as my small home town had no high-tech entry-level jobs to speak of.  I grossed a whopping 9,500 dollars my first year in the AF, but, just like living with generous parents, having shelter and food taken care of, I was able to live comfortably, but certainly not luxuriously.  And I was one of the lucky few who already owned a car.  In essence, I moved in with Uncle Sam until I finished my degrees, said my thanks and jumped into the civilian job market with comparatively little student loan debt, several years of valuable experience under my belt at the ripe age of 30.

I’ve been fortunate, not everyone can or want to take the route I did, and it is particularly galling to read things from people who obviously lack the self-awareness to recognize the stark differences in socioeconomic circumstances facing today’s young adults compared to just a generation ago.

@ AnglScarlett

Here’s the advantage that he had…he worked the helpdesk at a software company whose software was used by the company for which he works now.  During that time he worked the helpdesk, he got a reputation as a problem solver who made the clients happy, so they moved him into a job that was more network/server oriented…working with the same clients.  2 years ago, the software company had to lay people off and my son, being single with no dependents, was a candidate for layoff.  He contacted the companies that were his clients and managed to land a pretty good job ($60K+bennies) with one of them.  Sure, there was some luck involved…but as the old saying goes, luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.  His hard work both on the job and on his own in expanding his knowledge is what made it possible. 

Your surprise that someone could “land a job in computers at a big company with a high school diploma” indicates that you may not know much about that industry.  I know quite a few people who have really good IT jobs who don’t have college degrees.

The fact that a majority of Americans still buy that if you work hard and play by the rules you’ll have a good career and life, is the reason why Socialism isn’t taking root.  It should be by now.

It’s the fucking Horatio Alger shit.  And, in my opinion, the greed of American culture.  BEcause so many people truly believe they are going to make it big someday, they vote for policies and things that benefit the 2percintile.  I read the most fascinating book “death by a thousand (tax) cuts”, and in it, they had a study that showed that 20 something percent of Americans believed they would someday be in the two percentile of top earners, and listen to this, 30 something percent believed they already were.

It was then that i knew this country was doomed, and I read that towards the beginning of the Bush years I believe.  Nothing that has happened since has made me change my mind.

God it’s just so stupid.  You aren’t going to be in the two percentile, okay?  Please, get it through your head, and neither are your kids.  They aren’t.

I’m 50 and can pay for my expenses on my salary…because when my mother died I took half my inheritance and bought a house for cash.  I later had to take out a small mortgage, but it’s around $12,000.  And even with that, my safety cushion is the rent my roommate pays, which is about to go away as of October because she was fired from her consulting job and can’t collect unemployment.  I have no idea what she (or I) are going to do when that happens.

The author of that article has no idea what it’s like to be in the real world.  None.

Amanda, I read my comment again, and can’t imagine how you interpreted it as an excuse for a writer “picking on young people.”

Especially since I wrote:

<blockqoute>My sister is as smug as the writer of that loathsome piece, but the privileged baby boomers are just that: a privileged few.

I do some counseling, and I can’t tell you how many of the baby boomer generation I’ve talked to who are in even more dire circumstances.

Laid off, age discrimination, predatory mortgages, foreclosures, no pension, savings gone, no health insurance, business going bankrupt.

That asshole speaks not for baby boomers, but the privileged few. </blockqoute>

This infighting between generations, instead of against those who created the financial crisis (especially Republicans and their enablers) serves no purpose but to distract from those who would continue the destruction of the middle class and the impoverishment of most of the American public (count in Obama’s cat food commission to slice and dice Social Security, which I’m fighting although it may not apply to my age group, but those younger.)

Ah, one more thing the baby boomer generation is facing: no health care, at a time in their lives when they’re likely to face more health problems.

But I doubt the writer of that loathsome piece is without healthcare, either.

One privileged idiot’s opinion is just that.

Wow, “adults” who construct and view themselves as the children of other adults, in “families”? Um . . . . yuck?  It’s an issue that would be much more productively discussed with a therapist than on a letters thread. And no, it’s not about where you live physically out of economic necessity. It’s about differentiation and the ability to recognize and own unhealthy developmental delays.
Do you discuss politics with Dad and Mom? Current events?  Maybe over dinner?  Watch TV together? Little wonder we have individuals above the age 18 who can be engaged by what is on their television screens, who sincerely believe they are citizens of a nation, engaged in a political process, and working for change by electing the next charismatic, criminally-disordered democrat. You are a culture of children in families, indeed.

I think the author of the article also neglects to acknowledge that the signifiers of adult life that became popular after 1945 and before the 80’s was predicated on a wealth of cheap petrolum.  The affordable house in the suburbs, plentiful, cheap food and other goods, affordable transportation.  As others here have noted, that time period is most likely going to be a blip on the history radar.

@ purpleshoes

You lost me on the “Typing Eagle” thing… isn’t a Typing Eagle someone “who seems to completely ignore the existence of apostrophes and capital letters?”  My typing sucks, but it’s not that bad.  And how does that relate to economics?

On your other point…since life isn’t fair, you should just sit at home with your parents until the perfect job comes along?

And fuck you, jcmiller.

@ athiest

“your metaphor about people going into debt being like people who kill their parents, seems very overemotional, overwrought, and peevish. “

LOL…just a bit of hyperbole.  I’ve always heard that phrase described as the definition of chutzpah; seemed pretty harmless to me.

I am pretty peevish, though.

The fact that a majority of Americans still buy that if you work hard and play by the rules you’ll have a good career and life, is the reason why <strike>Socialism isn’t taking root. </strike> we can’t have nice things.

jcmiller = 3/10

By casting the entire situation as a matter of desire and choice, the author missed the big picture

‘Sup, every media story about personal finances?

orogeny -

I am a year or two older and started out a bit better off, but I have never owned a house or a new car.  This is what I get for getting a Ph.D. in anthropology just as the academic job market went south (only 20% OF Ph.D. graduates that year got tenure track academic jobs).  I live comfortably now, but still cannot afford a house or new car.

As to the arguments over who had it “easier”, there is some justice on both sides.  On the one hand, views of the Boomer experience tend to be rather rosier than the reality and usually reflect upper middle class and better experience.  On the other hand, there were far more and better jobs available to HS grads when I graduated in 1970 than there are today.  It was still possible to get a job which would allow you to support a family on one income with a high school diploma (I knew guys who did it).  It was also far cheaper to go to college than it is now as state governments provided twice as much support per student for higher education than they do now (the biggest reason why tuition has risen faster than inflation), there were far more student grant programs available to a wider range of students, and the federal government directly administered student loans at about half of the already low prevailing interest rate (I remember grumbling in graduate school when they got to 3%).  That gradually changed over the course of the 70s and came Tto an abrupt end in the 1980s as a result of Republican economic policies.  Today the rate of intergenerational mobility in this country is half or less of what it was 30 years ago (currently at or below 2.5% moving up one or more stage in the conventional 9 stage ladder based on income).  GenX had it harder than my generation in many ways, and the Millennials have it harder still, coming out i the worst economy since the Great Depression.

“Why Are More People Doing [thing obviously motivated by financial need]” “Answer: because they ~feel~ like it ” is a more shopworn genre than “female and/or minority politician does their job: SCANDAL”.

“noting the answer to the question, “Why don’t people grow up faster?” is incredibly, stupidly simple—-because they are no longer any jobs for people in their early 20s that provide the means to be a full adult.  Full stop.”

So the 30 year old Ecuadorian busboy at your local slacker bar isn’t a full adult.

You’re talking about recent college graduates.
And the answer to the question why they haven’t grown up is that they haven’t needed to.
They’re the children of Yuppies who never grew up but fell in love with money.

Wow, “adults” who construct and view themselves as the children of other adults, in “families”? Um . . . . yuck?  It’s an issue that would be much more productively discussed with a therapist than on a letters thread. And no, it’s not about where you live physically out of economic necessity. It’s about differentiation and the ability to recognize and own unhealthy developmental delays.
Do you discuss politics with Dad and Mom? Current events?  Maybe over dinner?  Watch TV together? Little wonder we have individuals above the age 18 who can be engaged by what is on their television screens, who sincerely believe they are citizens of a nation, engaged in a political process, and working for change by electing the next charismatic, criminally-disordered democrat. You are a culture of children in families, indeed.

What’s kind of pitiable is how the above person plainly gets all of their opinions fed to them by TV, and is in no way conscious of this, and probably never will be.

I’m sure Japan would welcome several million American college grads every year.

Oh come on.  I think you’re extrapolating from your own obviously very nice experience a bit too hard.  I (heart) Japan as well, and will most likely be moving there in a few months if this job offer pans out, but I think that’s just silly.  I know tons of people who went over to teach English, and while it could be a great short-term solution for the adventurous, for every person who went over and lived happily ever after, one would get completely fucked and slink home ashamed and broke.  The vast majority just filled out their contract had a pretty good time and came home to the same situation they left, economically speaking.  Plus, the xenophobia.  My contract for example makes it plenty clear that I’m not welcome to stay forever, even though they’d probably have more trouble replacing me at the price they want, because PhDs willing to take this kind of gamble are a little rarer than BAs or BScs.  For the average college graduate, Japan’s probably not the best place to pin your long-term hopes.  However, in the short term teaching English in Asia is generally pretty sweet, just be careful about who you sign up with  

Plus where would they put them all?  And also, America is supposed to be the place people come to because their own country’s opportunities are limited.  We shouldn’t be giving that up so lightly, and if we do, for the love of God lets find a place slightly more welcoming to outsiders than Japan.

UAB, here in Birmingham, costs about $15,000 per year, all expenses included, without taking into consideration any scholarships, grants and loans available.

The debt to income ratio is simply a measure of responsibility and the ability to defer gratification.  Asking for sympathy because you put yourself in too much debt

Telling people that they’re obligated to take on fifteen thousand dollars worth of debt a year if they want to succeed and in literally the next sentence saying how they deserve no sympathy for taking on too much debt is pretty impressive; nice to see that Pandagon is attracting the higher-grade trolls.

Orogeny:

Here are some advantages your son may or may not have had, but are pretty common in the stories I’ve heard from non-degreed IT professionals:

* They had more access to computers growing up than most people in their age cohort
* They had more access to informal educational opportunities (e.g., good libraries whose books on computers weren’t woefully outdated) than most people
* They lived in a place where there were a lot of IT jobs available, because new businesses were starting and old businesses were increasing their computer use
* They started their careers during a time when there weren’t enough people with degrees in CS to handle the increased demand
* Their own interests and skills happened to coincide with what was in demand at the time
* They are from a background that enabled them to easily “look the part” of an IT professional
* They got their big break via family or friends

This isn’t to say that every IT professional without a degree had all these things happen to them, but it’s pretty rare for someone not to have any of these privileges.

Oh, orogeny.

I’m definitely not sure how your son (allegedly) got those jobs without a college degree - I have exactly one friend who’s gotten a job recently without a degree, and he is a hospital orderly.  He’s certainly not going to advance without a degree of some sort, be it LPN, RN, or whatever.  And if he’s going to do that without acquiring student loan debt, he’s going to have to save for a very, VERY long time.

At my university, they want people with bachelor’s degrees for IT departments, administrative assistants, secretaries, lab techs…pretty much everything beyond janitorial staff.  My boss insisted that our lab tech work unpaid for six months before we’d hire him…for <30K/year.  He was straight out of college, and my boss had been insisting upon at least a bachelor’s degree (from a “good” school, even) and experience.  The tech is damn lucky to have been hired.  He wants to go to grad and/or med school, but he’s not going to be able to do the latter without a HELL of a lot of debt. 

I don’t know the exact salary of my boss’s admin assistant, a woman in her mid-40s, but I do know that she spends most of her “free” time working a second job at a department store in order to make ends meet.  There’s really no advancement opportunity at either job.

You said your son worked in construction for a while to save up.  Have you looked at the construction market these days?  People who’ve worked in construction for 30 years can’t find jobs. 

It really does all come down to luck these days.  I’ll probably be fine for the rest of my life.  But, you know why that is?  I had very well-off parents, who lived in a nice area, so I went to a great public high school and had time to indulge/excel in a bunch of extracurricular activities.  So, I got into a really “good” college, and graduated without debt because of said parents.  And, because of that, I again had a chance to do a lot of (non-work) activities that made me attractive to med schools; plus, I knew people who knew people who got me in the door for summer lab jobs at various places.  And due to all of that, I got a full scholarship to med school - though my parents would have been able to pay for it with no problem.  On top of it all, I found and married the love of my life, who is an attorney with a great resume.  He doesn’t come from quite as privileged a background, but he was still upper-middle class and is really damn smart.  Which is also the luck of the draw. 

Even in my privileged circles, I know a lot of people who have just been killed by this recession.  We have friends with Ivy League undergrad and law degrees who worked 100-hr weeks before the recession and still got laid off.  Some have yet to be re-hired.  Two of my friends from med school, who also grew up upper-middle class and went to great schools, graduated with a combined $500K in med school debt. 

Look, I know I was born on third and didn’t hit a triple.  That’s how I’ve stayed out of debt and gotten on my way to a good, stable job.  Your son was ridiculously lucky to find a good job without a degree. 

Luck is everything these days, no matter how much the lucky seem to think it’s their natural superiority.

Kyso, I’m pretty sure vanya’s post was deadpan, and the whole point is that their good experience wouldn’t scale….

I read the most fascinating book “death by a thousand (tax) cuts”, and in it, they had a study that showed that 20 something percent of Americans believed they would someday be in the two percentile of top earners, and listen to this, 30 something percent believed they already were.

Lottery Effect. People are willing to effectively throw away money in exchange for a long-shot hope, to make a dream seem the slightest bit more realistic, and it’s true in making things comfortable for the rich they hope to be or think they are, as well.

One wonders what is wrong with a society where such a far-flung hope has such value. We are perhaps lacking realistic hope of happiness that doesn’t revolve around a higher income.

(Personally, I wonder why they feel they *need* to make being rich more comfortable. I’d think that having X million dollars after tax is pretty damn comfortable enough, and anybody with X million dollars after taxes who sits around going “Life would be wonderful if only I had X + Y million dollars due to not paying taxes” is not going to have thier happiness deficit solved by adding more money.)

I used to work in Marketing for Estee Lauder and their entire IT department was from India and a few Middle Eastern countries.  And very recently so.  Definitely degreed.  But I would imagine being recent immigrants they were a bargain.  I doubt Estee is the only company doing this.

Anyway, if your son got a 60 k job at 30 years of age with a high school diploma the way you describe, he’s an exception and there is no way “many of his friends are in similar circumstances”  unless many of those friends have college degrees.

Statistically, that’s just the way it is now.  If you are going to tell me “don’t believe the statistics, believe me, the anonymous internet commenter” then you are talking to the wrong person.  I deal in facts.

Further, I wonder whose job he took?  If his is the now typical American experience he was hired, young, undegreed, and with only moderate experience, to replace an older, highly experienced, must more expensive worker.

Yeah I know.  Not your son.

But regardless, that’s the American experience now.

The thing is?  You don’t stay 30 forever.

@ Kyra, well said.  I agree completely.

All the jobs my parents did before college no longer exist.  And I’d be competing with them for any of the jobs they took during or after college.

When an entry-level job’s gross pay is about equal to an entry-level apartment - let along health insurance, car or transportation, etc.  Ugh.

“Community colleges are still a bargain,”

*laughs hysterically*

My dad retired a year ago from the comunnity college that he had worked at his entire career.  (wish I could say this opened up a job for someone, but considering the looming economic crisis the time, I think they just reduced the number of positions)

When it came time to have his retirement party, my dad dug out all kind of old course catalogs and pamphets for my sister to use to decorate.  My sis and I thought it would also be fun to use some of these to toss up stats on the slideshow we were making.  Total number of students taught, changes in tuition cost over the years…that sort of thing.

So we went looking through the paraphenelia for tuition costs for that first year.  and looking.  and looking.  and looking

But we were stumped.  We couldn’t find any tuition fees listed.  There were lab fees and the like, but no straight up “this is how much it costs per semester credit” listed.

And then…the lightbulb went on…

“Dad,”  we asked “did it cost anything to go to Crafton when it first opened?”

“nope.”

“Wha?  was this normal?”

“yup”

So, seriously? FUCK OFF

I get that not all schools were like this.  I get that it quickly changed.  I get that community colleges are still a steal compared to four year universities - trust me, as my father’s daughter I know this last very well.  I also know there are privileges involved in having the support and opportunity needed to go to school even part time and not use that time to work - no matter the dollar cost (or lack thereof).

But there is no fucking comparison between 3+ hours at a min wage job per unit and nothing.  nada.  zip.  zero.  NOTHING

It’s not just that there is a world of difference between FREE and $100 per class for the person having to come up with that money, it’s also that there is a huge gap in the philosphies and priorities of society that offers a community college for FREE and one that charges a semi-affordable tuition fee.

Dan, my point was that you don’t HAVE to take that on as debt.  Between grants, scholarships, and (shudder) work, it is possible to get a college education without going significantly into debt.  It might take more than 4 years;  you might have to give up living on campus and belonging to a fraternity, but it can be done.

I’ve got to say, though, y’all have convinced me.  All you Gen Xers and Millennials are screwed.  You’ll never get a good job, there’s no chance at all for you to work your way up into a good job, the world is just against you.  Anyone of your cadre who does succeed obviously did it by luck or influence, because hard work and sacrifice is no longer worth even trying because it will never lead to any kind of success.  Live your lives with that as your guiding principle; it will serve you well.

Screw you guys, I’m outta here.

Oh, by the way, purpleshoes…you’re a supercilious twit.

The “30 year old Ecuadorian busboy” may be living with 3 other recent immigrants in a one-room apartment—I know of two such immigrant families myself.

Again, I doubt that’s a lifestyle choice, or refusing to be a “grownup” but reflects the economic situation: no work at all in their home countries, high cost of living in this one, even with or without all three working.

And Seth’s punitive tone is obnoxious, especially in an economy when there are 6 job seekers for every job, no matter how menial.

orogeny, if it’s so easy to get a college degree why is it that your son had to make due without one?

Yeah, I thought that story smelled.

“Screw you guys, I’m outta here. “

We can only hope.

You know you’re real problem is orogeny? - you seem to be forgetting that this is an and/both blog, not an either/or blog.

So the whole idea that you and yours could have worked hard AND have been privileged and lucky and outliers to the trend is apparently completely beyond your comprehension.

You sound like a fucking Horatio Alger novel for crissakes.

Because his son doesn’t exist, at least not the version he’s presented here.

Also, “Screw you guys, I’m outta here.” I know orogeny claims to have left, but if he returns, you must read every one of his posts in an Eric Cartman voice. Everything he says will make perfect sense.

....and my problem is apparently that I can’t properly distinguish between your and you’re - doh!

No, orogeny is a liar, in my opinion.  He or she’s got one story of a superson who defied all odds and through sheer will and charisma, got a good (60k ain’t a great job by any stretch of the imagination) with only a little ole high school diploma.

But, orogeny later regals us all with just how simple it is to get a college degree without incurring any debt!

why didn’t superson get a college education then?  Well, who knows.

THe only question I have left is; is orogeny being paid to post this horseshit, or is it a freebie?

Because it is horseshit.

Just when I thought I was out… they pull me back in. 

@ jenniegadget

I’ve never heard of a FREE community college.  I paid when I went.

@angiescarlett

He went to a junior college for a year and hated it.  He simply didn’t want to go to college.  I have told him many times that he should go ahead and get a degree, just as a backup, but he is convinced that it is unnecessary.

@ arnold - yep!

Orogeny, you’re an idiot.

Between grants and scholarships and working—college students don’t need to get college loans?

Where? On Mars?

Because I’m a baby boomer who knows the dif between college costs now and then.

Even as an adult now I couldn’t afford the local University’s tuition alone, no less housing costs and food. Last I heard it was $300 a course (although it’s probably gone up recently.)

The local community college? $100 the course, but to get the full degree they have to transfer to the U for the last two years.

So go elsewhere, please, we don’t need you to be abusive to people who have to live in the reality of this economic mess our country is in.

orogeny if your son existed I’d feel sorry for him because if he’s “convinced” that a college degree is unnecessary in this day and age, he is in for one hell of a hard-knock, and my guess is it’s coming soon.  And he learned that from you.

But I don’t believe your horseshit for one minute. 

And if you never heard of free community college?  Then you are ignorant of what the past in this country was like, and since we are comparing the past to modern times, that makes you ill-equipped to engage on this thread.

I really feel like I should correct something.  60k is not a great salary where I live.  But my NY-centric mindset is showing there.  Certainly in parts of the country where housing is much less expensive and so is everything else including food, that is a lot more money than it is here.

Thanks, Angl, I was going to say something to that effect.  60K where I live now would put me pretty high on the hog.  But when I lived in NJ it would have been peanuts.

The only attack I made was on those so privileged, they’re blind to the realities of this age of economic desperation that devastates across the generations.

I pointed out that this woman characterizes herself as a Boomer, and therefore this blinds her to privileges she had that younger generations of her class do not.

judibrowni, sometimes it’s not about you or your generation, but you keep seeming to go out of your way to find offense at what Amanda writes here sometimes. 

So please get over yourself, or you can help us underprivileged by telling us:

What’s it like to stand there and have the universe revolve around you?

“Then you are ignorant of what the past in this country was like, and since we are comparing the past to modern times, that makes you ill-equipped to engage on this thread.”

This.  seriously.

(at least in Cali) Community colleges are not considered part of the University system - for adminstrative purposes, they are part of the K-12 system.  This is because they were originally conceived as sort of an extension of the adult education classes that most local school districts have.*  Charging excess fees would have been like charging kids to go to high school.  If they were a bridge to “real” college - well, then, so were high schools.  But over time, they have shifted much more towards the bridge idea and the extension concept is often scrapped.

*This actually makes me curious about the cost of various adult ed classes, both now and then - if there are any.  (although I know the adult ed classes that meet that the library I work at cost money - but they are also run through the local community college and not the [City] Unified School District.)

I have a close friend whose story resembles Oregony’s tale. So I believe that she’s not making shit up about her son. But here’s the deal - this was something that was possible when IT was still taking off. My friend got a job without a college degree because he took up a night shift at an ISP right when ISPs were a brand new thing and internet was just taking off. He’s in his 30s and makes $90K a year now, but lives in a city where that salary is very affordable.

The thing is, he’s smart enough to know that he got very lucky and he won’t be able to move ahead in career without a degree so at age 35 he’s going back to school now.

Oregony, the reason your son was able to do what he did was because he got into a career field that was just about to boom and was desperate for people with a certain skill sets and a very high learning curve in technology. But if he tried to do the same now, he’d be bang out of luck. IT isn’t booming as it used to and companies can easily hire folks with a Masters degree in India etc for a lot less than they’d have to pay a high school grad in US.

My friend and I work as IT engineers in a big software firm. I have coworkers in the 30s age group who joined the company with just a high school degree. But guess what, none of us will hire a high school grad anymore unless s/he comes with at least 10 years experience in the field.

Just got off the phone with my non-existent son.  Had to show him this thread.  We had a good laugh about some of the comments.

Jenny & Angel,  I know nothing about community colleges in California, but in Florida in 1972 Valencia Community College charged tuition.  In Alabama in the ‘80’s Jefferson State Community College charged tuition.  Right now, Jeff State costs ~$3K per year to attend.

Judy, I wrote “it is possible to get a college education without going significantly into debt.”  that is significantly different from “Between grants and scholarships and working—college students don’t need to get college loans,”  as you misquote me.  At $15K per year, someone working full time at night and getting whatever grants and scholarships might be available, one could get through school with maybe $10-15K in debt, maybe less.  A $15K student loan debt is not that onerous…I had about $6K when I finally graduated.

Comment #101
“The ‘30 year old Ecuadorian busboy’ may be living with 3 other recent immigrants in a one-room apartment—I know of two such immigrant families myself.
Again, I doubt that’s a lifestyle choice, or refusing to be a ‘grownup’ “
——

I quoted the the author of the post, on what it meant to be a “full adult” noting that her definition would exclude a 30 year old non-college graduate. My definition doesn’t. I thought that was pretty clear.

I’m not bothered by Mammoni, but the combination of pseudo-leftist moralizing and self-pity of the Free, White, and 21 with a college degree crowd is a bit much.  I worry about the middle-aged and working class before I worry about earnest spoiled youth.

And those immigrants were adults at 17, just as your grandparents were.

@ittef

He got the good job, the one where he’s finally making decent money, 2 years ago.

I’m squarely in the middle of GenX, and I’m quite lucky. I went to college debt-free, because my parents were moderately well-off, and because I had two grandparents die within a year of each other when I was 15; both left me enough money, combined with what my parents had saved, that I was able to graduate from college without debt. Also, my alma mater, one of the best private schools in MN, cost a total of about $60k. Its tuition has tripled since I graduated. I never had to live with my parents, but they helped me out by gifting me their old car + a year’s insurance (a Toyota with 90,000 miles on it which I kept for another 7 years). As it was, I struggled to find a good job, and didn’t make more than 30k a year until I was almost 30.

Now I’m in pretty good shape, because both my wife and I have well-paying, stable jobs, and we were able to buy a house back before the housing boom, for less than 3x our total income. Now that wouldn’t be possible.

Also, and this is a *big* deal; both of us are in excellent health. Neither has had any serious illness or injury requiring hospitalization.

Furthermore, I lived in a city where rents were low in the early 1990s; I didn’t have to pay more than $300/month for several years after graduation.

So, I’m in good shape, but unlike orogeny, I recognize that there’s a great deal of luck that plays into my current stable financial situation.

Purpleshoes…In the identical spirit. I wish you luck, good health and success in all you endeavors.

orogeny, as is well known, CUNY was free in the 1960s.  Many of my high school teachers got their educations that way.  That means that they started out life with little to no debt despite low salaries.  That makes a huge difference. 

That community colleges near you were not free doesn’t change that fact.

For what it’s worth, I’ve actually seen what Orogeny is talking about. Well, except the fact that these days most of those jobs are outsourced. Virtually all of them actually. And as such, there’s no more route from one company to another.

And if you’re really that valuable, forget about being promoted or rewarded for your work. You’re not going to get raises, because a “competitive wage” does not demand it. And if you’re good at your job, you’re actually more valuable to the company where you are than in potentially any other position. We’re talking about a situation where the number of promotions due to skill in a current position might be in single numbers.

You’ll see people make the jump to management, but often that’s because they have outside management experience and they’re either fishing for a promotion to a management job, but again, that’s outside their direct work-performance.

The economy really doesn’t work the same as it used to. And you know something, that might be something that we really have to live with. I mean with technology changes and changes to how business works, it might not be a genie we can pop back in the bottle. But the LEAST we can do is change our social interactions and how we culturally look at these things, and understand that changes in the economy by and large WILL result in..this.

@Norsecats

I have never in anyway indicated that there are not people who are lucky, that benefit from a relative connections or influence.  My argument is with those who seem to think that that is the only path to success; that hard work, sacrifice and initiative cannot lead to financial independence.

...and now I realize that they way I wrote that I made it sound like everyone talked about them like they were high schools for adults - which isn’t what I meant.

All I meant was that they had - and have - goals beyond simply being a bridge from high school to university.  And if one is going to bring up community colleges low tuition costs, and what that means about opportunities, it’s important to keep those other goals in mind too - and what it means for us to charge anything at all for classes like ESL and basic computer skills for adults.

So Orogeny the detail that you listed about him being a software helpdesk drone, then network admin and then finally business analyst ... was all that horseshit too? In IT, all that is what is called experience in the field.

Ittef:Not anymore. I did helpdesk for 8-9 years.

I’m not even allowed to put the details on it on my resume. The experience is basically worthless.

That is reality.

@karmakin

I couldn’t agree with you more.  That’s the one argument that I regularly have with my son…he may be doing OK now, but his career path is really limited by his lack of a degree. He has good job security, but there’s not a lot of room for advancement.  I wish he’d go for a business degree; he’s already technically competent but a degree like that would open a lot more doors.  I suspect that one of these days he’ll go back to school.

I know that a degree, any degree, really matters.  Heck, my degree is in Geology/chemistry, and I’m the Webmaster at a college.  My degree has noting to do with what I do, but the college wouldn’t have hired me if I didn’t have it.

@94: My bad, that’s what I get for reading comment threads before my coffee

But I am going, even though I’m pretty sure Japan’s economy is currently about as fucked as ours.  We all take our chances, and in five years I’ll either be a good example or a horrible warning.

@ittef

What do you mean?  He worked on the helpdesk and was moved up into a more responsible position that involved more network/server stuff…a higher -level helpdesk position that involved actually going on site to troubleshoot problems.  Two years ago his employer started laying people off and he talked his way into a job with one of his clients, with a 40% raise.  Hie works in the cement industry, hardly a cutting edge business.  All of this has occurred in the last 5 years or so.

Right now, in the current recession, there is no question that jobs are extremely difficult to find.  This discussion started off with the idea that Gen Xers are (and have been) for years)  staying at home with their parents because they can’t afford to live out on their own.  This is not something that has just come about in since 2008…it has been talked about for a decade or more.

A business degree WOULD help…the problem with our economy is that it does over many other things. Would it open more doors? Sure. But to be honest, so should massive amounts of experience, understanding the workflow in an business, etc. Those things should be worth more. 

You are overeducated for your job. From what you said, that’s simply the way it is. Your education has absolutely nothing to do with what your job is. In fact that’s a major problem. Economically, we’re overeducated.

My job, at least a large part of it was analyzing and helping with people’s workflows. And I can tell you from my experience that we’re employing a lot of college/university grads to do things that really don’t come close to requiring that level of education. Specialized training, yes. Maybe a few weeks or so.

The point that everybody is making, is that the economy is not the same as it was. The opportunities for advancement are much diminished than what they are. Education is not the same golden ticket as it used to be. The costs of going through college make working your way through it much more difficult (not including increased demands as well)

Things are just not the same. So when an article that comes along and compares the old and the new. Yeah. People get pissed. And it’s not a “lack of hard work” or anything like that. It’s simply that we have too many people, both educated and uneducated, for the amount of labor that we need as an economy.

It’s a structural problem. And no individual anecdote of one person who found a path up the chain (which like I said. That path is much rarer these days) changes that. And we fight to change the structural issues. That’s the big thing of the progressive movement if you ask me right now.

I’m not sure if you CAN change it however. If that’s the case, we’ll have to get used to the fact that we’ll have huge groups of people living together with much less, that debts will be higher, that people will live with their parents longer (goes in with the first, really), that we’ll drive old clunkers longer, etc. All these things that people socially frown on, we’ll have to stop doing that. Because the conditions that cause these things, namely paranoia about inflation caused by full employment, is what brings about these things.

I have never in anyway indicated that there are not people who are lucky, that benefit from a relative connections or influence.  My argument is with those who seem to think that that is the only path to success; that hard work, sacrifice and initiative cannot lead to financial independence.

It typically takes both, no?

It’s not a coincidence that those “self-made” IT professionals tend to be white guys from middle or upper-class backgrounds—the sort to whom people say “I didn’t know you didn’t have a degree until you told me” because they know talk right and look right.  It’s not a coincidence that the jobs that give them experience in the field aren’t typically ones that are publicized. 

There are lots of people who have a hard enough time being considered for those sorts of jobs even *with* a degree.  (Which is not the same as saying to them “you only got the job because you’re a white guy” as if they just had everything handed to them without having to lift a finger—it’s just that they had opportunities and privileges which meant that their hard work and initiative was more likely to get results.)

Atrios pointed out that the people who are preening about financial independence at an early age often were capable of this because they didn’t have to borrow to get through college.

Absolutely.

Both of my parents attended the same private Jesuit university I did, but they were in college in the late 1950s and early 1960s.  My mother told me tuition for one semester at Saint Louis University in 1960 was about $500, and that the full cost of living for most undergrads was around $3,000 per year - tuition, room, board, books, fees, and miscellaneous expenses all included.  When I was an undergrad in the late 1990s, my tuition per semester at this same school was around $6,500 per semester, and total cost for a first year on-campus student was around $18,000.  Today, just slightly more than ten years later, tuition at that same school $16,000 per semester.  From the time I graduated in 2000 to today, my school’s tuition has nearly tripled.  An incoming oin-campus freshman will pay more than $40,000 for their first year, which is only a little less than the first-year cost of the more presitigious Washington University a few miles to the west.

And this is happening all over, with even a lot of state schools now facing really big tuition hikes due to state budget crunches.  I don’t understand why the rise in tuition costs is substantially greater than inflation rates.  On the current trajectory, if I were to have a child today, by the time that child reaches college, the cost of an undergraduate degree at a Top 100 university will be nearly one million dollars.  Not hyperbole.  If you have a kid today, and you want them to attend a high tier private university, the cost of their education will be around a million dollars.

It’s absolute insanity.

re: non California community colleges and their fees:

Crafton opened in 1972 and began charging tuition just a few years after that.  So it’s extremely possible that Florida community colleges had only recently began charging tuition back in 1972.  Old tuition info for community colleges is hard to find on the internets, but from what I can tell that seems to have been the nationwide trend: lots of new community colleges in 1960s and 1970’s , most or all of them being free until at least the 1970’s, and then everybody is charging fees by the 1980s.

(but then again, Florida’s community colleges had to be forcibly desegrated at one point, and it’s possible that had icky implications for charging students to attend)

@jfpbookworm

If you want to call being white and getting a decent high-school education luck, I guess I agree with you. 

If I was debating this issue with folks from Appalachia or the inner city, I would not be taking the same position.  There is no question that in “life’s lottery” some people are screwed from the get-go.  If the only successful person you see is the local drug dealer; if you left school after 8th grade to go work the fields ‘cause that was what daddy did, you’re going to have a lot harder time making it.  Those are the people I feel sorry for…not some middle class 20-something who still lives at home because it’s just too tough out there.

orogeny, I am saying what a lot of people on this forum have been trying to explain to you. Your son was very lucky in getting into IT when he did. It’s an area that was seeing a huge growth at the time when he joined the software helpdesk. Now he has years of experience behind him which is helping him land jobs that provide a living wage. That privilege is an exception, not a rule. If a high school grad, who graduated now or a couple of years ago, tried to find an IT job they would find it near impossible to do so now. IT is no longer growing as fast as it was a decade ago ... well the technology is still growing a lot, but employers can easily hire more experienced folks outside of US and have little reason to hire high school grads anymore.

Your son’s experiences do not apply to what millenials in their early 20s are going through now.

Orogeny,

I’d also agree with the commenter to come back and discuss your son when he hits 40 and up. 

As someone who has worked in IT in various contexts for over a decade, one factor you also seem to be ignoring is the increasing trend of outsourcing IT jobs to inexperienced school grads and moreso….offshore in foreign countries with far lower labor costs.  There’s also the factor of job discrimination which in the IT field means that anyone hitting 40+, no matter how competent and excellent their work record, will be terminated because they’re assumed to be “behind the times” because of their age.  Read about several such age discrimination lawsuits that have happened in the earlier to mid-part of this decade and as someone who has worked in law firms….saw some of the details in those suits that clearly point to the companies feeling perfectly justified in firing any IT personnel hitting or exceeding 40 years of age both because they’d save money and because being older means they “cannot keep up with the latest technology trends”.....assumptions that I find as a 30 something to be total and complete utter rubbish. 

Especially considering IME, the older employees have on average…a much better understanding of command-line interfaces and how the operating system ties into the hardware being used than younger/offshore employees who came of age after Win9x and who were often better at taking certification tests than troubleshooting, diagnosing, and fixing computers/networks/software projects. 

It is a reason why one high school classmate* friend who never got his BA tends to be wary of candidates who play up certifications like MCSE and prefers candidates who have the analytical skills to do IT work by testing them with a test PC/network and seeing how they go about trying to fix it.  He also prefers candidates with a BA/BS degree(Regardless of major) as he found that was a good way to filter out candidates with weak reasoning and critical analysis skills needed for the jobs he is hiring for. 

* Disclaimer: He dropped out of college after a semester for financial reasons as well as finding himself in demand for high-paying positions.  However, he still intends to finish up his BA and despises people who disparages those who want to pursue higher education in ways orogeny has been doing.  Like myself, he finds this to be another manifestation of the widespread and longstanding anti-intellectualism plaguing the US.

@exholt

Please read post #131.  I agree completely about the importance of a degree.

Murrow Fan

I had my ten year college reunion last year.  We were all boggling at how much the cost to attend our private, snobby four year college had risen.  In just 10 effing years.  It was pretty insane.  Including room and board it was something like $60,000 a year, I think.  Which was a good 50% increase from when we all started.

Granted, those numbers are a little misleading, as my college has fantastic fin aid, so part of the point was to charge the kids who can afford it a lot and then essentially offer reduced tuition to everyone else.  Very few of us actually had to pay $40,000 a year - with all the grants I got, the cost for my family per year was closer to $20,000 - which is what I would have paid to go to a UC at the time.

But still - it’s not like they wouldn’t have raised it to $60,000 unless they thought they could get away with it.

“I don’t understand why the rise in tuition costs is substantially greater than inflation rates. “

Oh, THAT has a simple enough explanation - and can be seen in the way that state school’s tuitions are rising faster than private schools tuitions.  There is less government funding for higher education.

I’m currrently getting my MLIS from San Jose and my parents boggled when they heard my per class tuition - about $1,400.  (I have a grant to pay for all of it, thank god.)  But the program I’m in isn’t state funded, because it’s all internet based, and that isn’t part of what they are allowed to use state funds for.  or something.  So that’s the average actual cost of each class (minus the massive infatructure that’s already in place that is partially state funded).  When budget crunches cause San Jose to raise tuition fees, it barely makes a ripple on ours - but the state subsidised tuitions creep closer and closer to what ours are.

@jennygadget

I don’t see your point.  A long time ago, some community college in some communities didn’t charge tuition.  So?

I’m pretty sure Salon’s Editors are choosing and assigning “controversial” subjects in hopes of generating lots of letters/comments, and thereby charging more for their obnoxious ads.

Their subjects are becoming more and more shallow, dumb and dictatorial every day, which seems to irritate most readers and generate a lot of comments. the people who agree with whatever the stupid “permise” of the article is:
“22 year olds are lazy moochers,
“Everyone” loves Julia Roberts,
Obama gets free books!,
“My Grocery Store Rebellion” (nasty, rude)
or… “The school district hired a pretty young (cheaper pay) woman instead of older ME ME ME!”

I assume they are trying to compete with the massive amount of drivel Huff Post shovels into Its pages.

If not for Glen Greenwald, I wouldn’t bother with the crappy magazine.

Oregony,

You’re arguing against a strawman.  When talking about cultural trends, it is ridiculous to assume that people are saying that literally every single last person in their 20s is exactly like we’re describing.  That’s preposterous. 

Yes, there are 20 somethings somewhere in America getting jobs in IT that pay well with high school diplomas.  For fucks sake.  The fact that your son did it means nothing.  Not everyone is your son, with your son’s brain and your son’s opportunities and your son’s ability to communicate and your son’s means.  Just like the earlier commenter said, we can’t send every college graduate to teach English in Japan, just because some schmuck said he did that and now has financial independence.  We can’t send everybody out of high school to go work on a helpdesk, just because it worked out eventually for your son and his buddies.

I’m definitely not sure how your son (allegedly) got those jobs without a college degree - I have exactly one friend who’s gotten a job recently without a degree, and he is a hospital orderly.

My own son, who dropped out of college his freshman year, followed a similar path to Orogeny’s and is now the systems administrator for a software/business consulting firm.  It does happen, more so in IT than elsewhere, but is fairly rare.  My son also had the advantage of a father and grandfather with graduate degrees who were computer savvy (more the grandfather than father) and access to computers in the home during high school (he is now 37 and they were not widely available before then), as well as going to a good high school.  Orogeny’s experience is not unique, but it is not as common as he seems to believe.  It has also become much less so over the past thirty years.  It is always dangerous to extrapolate from our own personal experience to national trends as everyone’s experience is ultimately unique, though it may share elements with others.

I think that allowing one person to take over the thread with a Horatio Alger horseshit story is a mistake.

My parents paid for my college, I had no debt.  I lived a rip-roaring 20’s of fun, fun, and then more fun.  I fell in love at 30 with my boss, who made mega-bucks and I became enaged to him and lived with him for years. 

I didnt know a money problem until I left him, afterwhich I had several bad years.  Bad meaning, I couldn’t buy a lot of shit and never got to go out.  Out of nowhere, I went out and started my own business.  In evening networking events I met and hooked up with (professionally) the creative directors of a couple of fairly large ad agencies on LI.  Due to freelance work they contracted out to me, for the first time in my life, I hit 6 figures last year.  I have lived the 6 figure life before, because of my father and my fiance, but this was the first time I ever earned that kind of money.

I took an office in my brother’s beautiful office building.  His very succesfull business (his dad made big bucks and paid for his college too!) took a big downturn and he too, experienced his first few bad years.  It’s turned around now, and while working out of an office in his builidng, I began doing marketing, writing and PR favors for him.  Somewhere along the way our respect for each other grew into something that as siblings, we really never had; mutual professional admiration.  We decided to start our own business, just he and I, above and beyond each of our individual businesses.  Don’t know where that will lead, but we already have some promising accounts.

WHY CAN’T EVERYONE DO THAT?

1) We’re both conventionally good-looking - in fact, my brother is movie star handsome, I’m just pretty.  He’s the beauty in the family, we always kid.  If I hadn’t been conventionally pretty in my 20’s, I doubt my very succesful boss would have fallen in love with me.  I don’t even kid myself about that shit, and I can go into details of why I know these things, but I’ll save it for my book.  If I weren’t conventionally ok looking even today I don’t know that I would had some of the same opportunties during networking.  I think that my brother is especially so handsome that he has had a lot of sales opportunites he wouldn’t have gotten otherwise.  Let’s be honest about this.  As someone in my 40’s now it gives me no great pleasure to say this; looks help you in this life. 

2) We’re white.  You’re a damned fool if you think this isn’t perhaps the single biggest privilege you can have.

3) We had incredibly privileged childhoods, and early adulthoods.

4) our parents paid for our educations, sending us into adulthood debt free and with a valuable education.

5) we are both healthy and neither of is disabled.

6)  we both have very outgoing personalities - he can sell horseshit to a horsefarmer.  I’m not bad myself.  Neither of us is shy.

I am sure that sitting outside of my life I could spot a dozen other reasons.  And with all of that, we both had a few bad years, and are both well aware that we can again. 

ANd I have never once thought to myself, through my whole life; Why Can’t Everyone Do thisssssss.

Jesus, grow some empathy.  Someday it may be you.  Life turns on a dime.  It could be me.  It could be anybody.

So, are you saying that working menial jobs and deferring gratification until he managed to achieve some level of success is just a matter of luck?  That that option is only available to a select few?

abso-fucking-lutely yes.

example: my boyfriend got a fully-paid-for education at one of these private tech colleges; he has never worked in what he studied, because there just weren’t any jobs. So instead, he’s worked construction, delivery, kitchen, etc blah blah; never in all this time was there any “opportunity” for advancement, and this is in ND, the state where crude and ethanol flows and which is probably the only State that wasn’t hit by recession. He now works 2 almost-minimum-wage kitchen jobs, because he’s got it into his head that a year or two from now, he’ll buy a house. He will not be able to keep this pace for longer than one or two years either, because his joints are giving out, and he hasn’t had health-insurance since he was like 13.

He’s 31, and will not now, not ever, reach the glorious spheres of Middle Class, unless I manage to convince him to leave the country with me.

Somehow, this has turned into a debate about my son…and I can’t help defending him.  The initial point that I was trying to make was that (before this terrible recession) it was possible to leave home after high school or college and make one’s way through the world alone; that the reasons cited by Gen Xers and Millennials for continuing to live with their parents rather than going out on their own were not credible.  Right now, in this unique economic downturn, it may not be possible to find a job, but that is a condition of this recession, not economic normality. 

When I was 22, in 1975, the unemployment rate was around 9%.  I lost my construction job and it took me several weeks to find a new one, but I did.  A construction project (one of a VERY few in the area at that time) started a few miles form where I lived.  Every morning at 6a.m. I was sitting on the steps of their trailer, waiting for the superintendent to arrive so I could ask him for a job.  It took a week, but finally he said the “if I was going to be there every morning anyway, he might as well hire me.”  I worked there for the next year and a half and ended up as the labor foreman on the job.  I didn’t have to move back home because I lost my job. 

My point is, if you want to be on your own, it is possible, it just depends on how motivated you are to be there.

And this country has grown meaner even since the early 90’s the above commenter is right.

And it’s growing meaner still.

Our system of capitalism was always harsh, but now with globalization, it is disatrous.

It is not humane. 

And socialism should be making a rise.

But it’ snot, and it’s because too many believe the American myth, and too many are so greedy, and too many are ruled by hate and not empathy.

And I’ll get off my soapbox now.  But I’ll tell you, whether I become a homeless person or i keep doing better and better, I will be more a socialist (though I am for a mixed economy, not straight socialism) than a capitalist and at the end of the day, I know that’s what’s right.

Murrow Fan,

There are several reasons that college tuitions have gone up so much.  One is that colleges that cost more are considered more prestigious, and get more applicants.  Sad but true; it’s one reason my college raised tuition in the 1990s.

Another reason is that government support is way, way down.  This directly affects public universities, but it affects private universities as well, because they also get government money, mostly in the form of research grants.

Another reason is that college administration has exploded. 

Another reason is that colleges these days provide a lot of the amenities that we might expect to find in three star hotels.  Things like free internet, palatial recreation centers, better dorm furniture, et cetera. 

As for jennygadget’s point, the point is that folks who went to college in the ‘60s paid far less, even adjusted for inflation, than college students and their families pay now.  Most college-educated young people start life with huge debt these days, and the early baby boomers did not.

I just went to look up what tuition costs at my alma mater.  I graduated from the Johns Hopkins University in 1998.  I had many jokes about the fucking $100,000 education that I had received with my fellow graduates.  That $100,000 education (which my parents paid for, because they could afford it) is now at least twice that.  At *least*.  In 12 years.

And I did get a good money-making job right out of college, because I moved to the SF Bay Area and had minored in Computer Science.  1998 was a good year to get a CS job.  Sure, my entire division was fired in Dec. 1999 and most of them have non-CS related jobs now, but that’s just incidental, right?  I was lucky in that I didn’t like the job and applied to grad school a year *before* the huge influx of .com people.  But as it turns out, local governments?  Totally not hiring right now either.  Oh, they advertise the jobs, I’ve applied for everything I’m even vaguely qualified for, but I also know people who actually work for the gov’t, and they’re on a hiring freeze.  They’re required by law to advertise the jobs, but they can’t afford to fill them, because no money.

But it’s totally my fault I’m not “working hard enough” to be employed, right?

Because of the conditions Amanda describes so well in her post, I’m not inclined to judge anyone of any age for living anywhere with whomever.  Where I get judgmental with unemployed young adults living with their parents is when said young adults also don’t lift a finger to help around the house and continue to operate as though they’re children and Mom is just supposed to do all the cooking, cleaning, and laundry.  Living at home *can* be an impediment to developing maturity and independence in 20 somethings, though it doesn’t have to be. 

Speaking of which, I’ve seen a couple of comments here comparing the American practice of expecting kids to move out when they hit adulthood with other cultures.  The romanticized view of traditional extended families living under one roof ignores the buttload of sexism that keeps those arrangements functioning.  Moms doing the laundry and cooking of adult sons.  Girls and women pressed into care-taking roles of children and elders whether they want to or not.  Say what you will about the “sink or swim” ideal but IMHO it’s been good for gender equality.

You’ve got a degree from Johns Hopkins, plus a graduate degree and you haven’t worked since 1999?  Yes, it is your fault.

“I don’t see your point.  A long time ago, some community college in some communities didn’t charge tuition.  So? “

Coming from the person that has been spending the entire thread using anecdotes to argue that statistically measured trends don’t exist (or are just a result of laziness, or something) - that’s just freakin’ hilarious.

I mean, even if that hadn’t been a complete misrepresentation of everything I’ve said, that would still be just ridiculous: “You have facts!  But only about some colleges!*  I have facts about one single college!  That don’t actually contradict anything you’ve said!  Therefore I am right and you have no point!”  wtf?

*This would be the remotely intellectually honest person would not have lied and reduced everthing I’ve said about the origins and trends of the <href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Community_Colleges_System#History”>entire community college system</a> of one of the most populous and most influential states in the nation to “sone colleges”.  Possibly also not ignored the fact that another highly populous and influential state was mentioned.

Between grants, scholarships, and (shudder) work, it is possible to get a college education without going significantly into debt.  It might take more than 4 years; you might have to give up living on campus and belonging to a fraternity, but it can be done.

BWAHAHAHAAAHAAA!!!!!

no.

My point is, if you want to be on your own, it is possible, it just depends on how motivated you are to be there.

Yes, orogeny, that’s the reason people are having trouble: they’re just not motivated enough.

When unemployment is high, a lot of these “success stories” are really zero-sum games, here. A lot of people got laid off from a company you talked about, and one of them managed to “talk his way” into another job. What about the rest of those employees? Were they just not “motivated” enough? What if one of them was motivated enough? That just would have meant he’d have taken the job your son got, leaving your son… where, exactly?

One of the side-effects of the housing bubble is that it made a lot of long-term economic planning useless: housing prices in many neighborhoods shot upwards and only moderated a little bit—what you could buy for $X in 1998 buys a lot less now, even post-bubble-burst, and salaries haven’t even kept pace with that. So the salary that you though would buy you a nice place actually buys a heckuva lot less. Honestly, I’ve had to re-assess my professional and material goals to deal with this new reality: I have to both adjust my expectations about what lifestyle I see myself living as well as start pursuing more remunerative lines of work, which I can do because I’m still young and have a good academic and professional pedigree which allows me to do that. But, honestly, “people should just be motivated enough to make more money” isn’t a policy solution. An honest day’s work should be able to support someone, and that work should be widely available.

Incidentally, I’ve lived in college towns for pretty much all of my adult life, and one of the benefits of that it that it allows for a lot of leeway in terms of tolerance for group living, so no matter where you are in life, economically, you can pull that off. So as far as I know, that’s always an option, but I’m at least open to the possibility that this isn’t available to everyone in all places.

There are just so many things wrong with that article—almost all of which were canvassed by Amanda’s post and the comments.  But it seems worthwhile to tie them together and augment them a bit.  It would be worthwhile if someone (looks sheepishly in Amanda’s direction) would pull all these these points together, along with the supporting data that I am too lazy to ferret out, in a single piece and demand that Salon publish it as a rejoinder to that craptastic piece. 

1.  Cost of Education:  It is not simply that the cost of education has far, far outstripped inflation while forms of financial aid that do not involve a lifetime’s worth of debt peonage have been phased out.  It’s that the amount of education necessary to try to secure a middle-class-looking level of income* has increased,  thus adding to the price of entry into the middle class.  An undergraduate degree is the bare minimum.  Increasingly an advanced or professional degree is the necessary, but not sufficient, condition on entry to middle-class self-sufficiency as portrayed in the dipshit Salon piece.

*I use this phrase advisedly, as raw income figures, when viewed without regard to the level of debt required to reach them, are very misleading.  The staggering amount of debt that young and not-so-young people get into in order to secure a middle-class income greatly erodes the actual living standards of folks born—roughly—- from about the mid-sixties onward.

2.  Cost of Housing:  The same goes for the cost of housing—except that this factor is all the worse because it hits everyone regardless of education level.  In the long real estate bubble period, the cost of housing has vastly outstripped inflation, while real wages have remained, at best, flat. 

3.  Inflated Education Costs + Inflated Housing Costs = Increasingly debt-driven national and personal economies.  Simply put, post-boomers have had to rely on expensive money (consumer debt) in order to pay the already inflated costs of housing and education.  This compounding factor further erodes real income and has a corrosive effect on the economy as a whole. 

To the extent that personal economic illiteracy and less-than-responsible choices by post-boomers have added to these problems (and I’m sure they have), these pathologies are in no small part attributable to the increasing necessity of credit for younger peoples’ existence. 

4.  The type of personal economy described above can be readily generalized throughout the economy as a whole.  As shit became too expensive for folks to buy without credit, one of the only things that has kept the appearance of an economy going in this country has been consumer spending, which has only been possible as a result of expanding personal credit—which has become an “industry” all by itself.  But it’s elementary that an economy kept afloat by purchasing at prices that peoples’ real income won’t support is not an economy that is sustainable.  And the only thing that has kept it going this long has been a series of financial bubbles enables by the banksters and their accomplices in various branches of the government.  Of course these bubbles have exacerbated the purchasing-power problems identified above, as well as enfeebling the global economy, causing a vicious cycle at th personal and national economic levels from which we may not emerge in our lifetimes.         
 
The sum is that the post-boomer generations have come of age in an era of scarce jobs and eroding purchasing power, in which the acquisition of a lifetime’s worth of debt—unpayable for a significant number of us—is the price of entry to a middle-class income that simply does not buy what a middle-class income bought from the fifties to the mid-seventies or so.  To compound the indignity, we keep hearing from members of the generation that was the beneficiary of an expanding economy based on manufacturing, in which education and housing were vastly more affordable, and heavily subsidized, about how irresponsible we are.  To be surprised that such a FYIGM article generates an inter-generational flame war is to pile naivete upon a foundation of entitled arrogance.

@ jennygadget

I still don’t get your point.  The community colleges of “one of the most populous and most influential states in the nation”  didn’t charge tuition in the past.  Right now, local residents can attend for ~$20 per unit…still pretty darned cheap.  So?

@tyro

Can we get one thing straight?  I have said repeatedly that the current conditions, this terrible recession that we are in right now make this time unique.  There are virtually no jobs, the housing market sucks, etc.  The issue of young adults continuing to live at home with their parents covers a much longer time span.  Right now, there a re plenty of good excuses for not getting a job.

@ Sebastian, excellent post.

But I know this guy who knows this guy who totally has no debt and got through college working at McDonalds, but you know, like really hard cause he worked double shifts, not like the lazy kids today, and now he makes 100 grand, so that trumps your egghead studies and statistics.

To the extent that personal economic illiteracy and less-than-responsible choices by post-boomers have added to these problems (and I’m sure they have), these pathologies are in no small part attributable to the increasing necessity of credit for younger peoples’ existence.

There’s another aspect of economic illiteracy that’s hurting young people which is, honestly, not even their fault: the fact that the professional choices they make end up sending them into economic dead ends, when this didn’t used to be the case before. It used to be that basically any college degree got you white collar work which allowed you to at least support yourself relatively modestly. Or you could work your way up from the mailroom. Or the fact that working in the mail room was not the end of the world, and you could still have a family with a spouse doing equivalent work. But now a lot of “get your foot in the door” jobs (helpdesk, admin, mail room), will stall you in that position forever. And certain “white collar” fields that take college graduates with liberal arts degrees just don’t offer much in the way of advancement or decent salaries—but the tuition costs the same as the students with engineering degrees, and the debt load will kill you. And, honestly, it’s a bit much to expect an 18 year old to make the “right” decision, which will in a lot of ways determine your economic outcomes…. Not to mention the fact that what is the “right” decision in one year might be the exact wrong decision 10 years later.

I’d even be willing to accept those outcomes if, at the very least, we stopped claiming to have or want a largely middle class society. I mean, if an education and honest work isn’t going to be able to support a middle class lifestyle, then we should just admit it: shut down colleges, stop making promises of the virtues of hard work, make loans the sort of rare things resorted to only by large institutions and maybe a few established businesses, etc. Because right now we are preaching the “middle class” gospel but largely refusing to support policies that are going to support that.

“As for jennygadget’s point, the point is that folks who went to college in the ‘60s paid far less, even adjusted for inflation, than college students and their families pay now.  Most college-educated young people start life with huge debt these days, and the early baby boomers did not. “

Just to be clear - I’m also pointing out that this isn’t just something that happened because, you know, things change.  It was a huge, deliberate (at least on some people’s parts), philosophical shift.  California community colleges weren’t just free because golly gee, why not?  The state’s adopted and well publicized Master Plan in the 1960’s was for CA’s community colleges to be free and open to everyone.  Which was deliberately in line with the 1947 Truman Commission (which also called for community colleges across the nation to be free - if possible) and huge part of the CA K-university school system that - at the time - was considered to be the envy of most of the nation.

You can agree or disagree with the change, argue that it never could have been supported in the long term - whatever - but to pretend CA’s education system wasn’t nationally influential at the time, that the change it didn’t happen, or that the change wasn’t deliberate is just willfull ignorance.

You’ve got a degree from Johns Hopkins, plus a graduate degree and you haven’t worked since 1999?  Yes, it is your fault.

No, asshole, what I said is that the people in the division I worked for all got fired in 1999.  I went on to spend 5 years in one government job, 2.5 years in another, and then, lucky me, got laid off 9 months ago!

But hey, it’s all okay because I can’t get a retail job because they take one look at the Master’s degree and hire a college student instead!  Because I’m one of the eighteen resumes they have, and they think I’m going to leave at the hint of something better, and plus, they can pay the kids less.

BOTH/AND.  Jesus you’re thick.

Tyro in my opinion the elites have discovered that due to globalization, they no longer need a strong American middle class consumer.

They can sell their baubles all around the world especially in emerging economies.

This realization is going to cause more pain, suffering, and death in this country than most have yet grasped.

It’s why we must raise taxes on the rich and stregthen social safey nets across the board.  Instead, we are cutting taxes on the rich and slashing and decimating existing social safety nets.

People are going to suffer, and they are going to die, and more and more are not going to live even marginally decent lives.  More and more will lives of pure drudgery and misery. 

Well, that’s just my opinion and I realize it’s a bleak outlook.  It’s why I don’t take anything for granted.  I pretty much know the rug can be pulled out from under anyone tomorrow.  Unless you are one of the elite.

But the Muslims are buidling a Mosque and the Mexicans are coming. 

And you know what?  That’s just enough to distract just enough people.

you know, oregeny, you’re right.

And on that note, we should totally start charging everyone tuition* for high school, yes?  After all, $400 a semester is practically the same thing as free.  And we can always have assistance for the people that can’t afford it.  There’s no major philosophical difference between the two scenarios, right?

*technically, community colleges still cannot charge tuition fees in CA.  So they call them something else.  Because if one IS going to start charging tuition fees, it’s best to make it all nice and confusing and less politically damaging and pretend that we are still adhering to that 1960’s Master Plan even though clearly we are not.

@mimi

Sorry, I should have assumed that you had been employed until recently.  As I said before, right now in this recession, I can understand not being able to find a job.  I wish you luck in your search.

I am 53 years old and a college professor, the son of a college professor.  That means I became independent in the early 80s, right smack in the middle of the Reagan recession, a tough time but nowhere near is hopeless as at the moment.  As a student I was worthless, mainly concerned with having as much sex as possible (which turned out to not be all that much in spite of my efforts); and to consume as much cannabis as my lungs would allow.  Somehow I did just enough to get by, and then, somehow, about 1982, while I was in my second attempt at earning a doctorate, I kind of got my act together.  In the mean time I listened to crap continuously from my parents about how noble they were at my age—at least compared to me.  And yet, by any objective measure, in pretty much the same job, I have been about an order of magnitude more successful than my father ever was.  He was actually a very nice man and I miss him—he would be pushing 90 now.  But in my business there are certain objective measures for professional success.  What I guess I am trying to says is that there is one thing you would think a Baby Boomer might have learned growing up it is not to engage in generational judging.  First, the way we remember our own youth is deeply flawed.  Second, who the fuck are we to criticize young people for being young?  Third, it was really annoying when it was being done to us.  But apparently some of us didn’t learn it.  Perhaps the Law of the Universe is that the amount of douchebagery over time remains constant.

Anyone of your cadre who does succeed obviously did it by luck or influence, because hard work and sacrifice is no longer worth even trying because it will never lead to any kind of success.  Live your lives with that as your guiding principle; it will serve you well.

you’re quite the arrogant douche-canoe to be reading about people working 2-3 jobs and baraly making ends meet, and then accuse them of being lazy and not even trying.

This actually makes me curious about the cost of various adult ed classes, both now and then - if there are any.  (although I know the adult ed classes that meet that the library I work at cost money - but they are also run through the local community college and not the [City] Unified School District.)

I went to a community college in California, and they definitely have tuition. I was luckily poor enough to get a full tuition waiver, but I still had to take a $3000 student loan; on top of the 1 1/2 jobs I was working.

A $15K student loan debt is not that onerous…

in what universe is that true? I’m still not done paying that $3000 loan, and I haven’t been in school since 2005.

If you want to call being white and getting a decent high-school education luck, I guess I agree with you.

um… d’uh? that’s what white, male, middle-class privilege MEANS. And the vast majority of 20-somethings-are not white middle-class dudes, or have other disadvantages your son clearly didn’t have.

Somehow, this has turned into a debate about my son…and I can’t help defending him.

no, it isn’t about your son; it’s about the fact that you are being an asshole and assume that just because your son got lucky in addition to working hard, then everybody who wasn’t as lucky was not working hard at all.

In short, it’s about you and your asshole attitude.

My point is, if you want to be on your own, it is possible, it just depends on how motivated you are to be there.

bullshit. tell me, just how much more “motivated” does my boyfriend have to become to make it into the middle-class (should he take a 3rd job and stop sleeping?)? is more “motivation” going to make his joints work better? i think not.

you’re a privileged ass, and clueless about the realities of life.

And socialism should be making a rise. But it’ snot, and it’s because too many believe the American myth, and too many are so greedy, and too many are ruled by hate and not empathy.

it’s not because there’s too many morons like orogeny, still believing the myth of the american dream

Between grants, scholarships, and (shudder) work, it is possible to get a college education without going significantly into debt.  It might take more than 4 years; you might have to give up living on campus and belonging to a fraternity, but it can be done.

Possible?  Sure, if you happen to be one of the 0.1% of the population that qualifies for a full tuition scholarship it might be possible, but even then, most full scholarships don’t usually include the cost of room and board, which means that you need to get a full scholarship to a school close enough to commute from your parent’s house, and your parents need to be willing to feed and house you while you are in school.

The only other way in which someone can attend a decent four year school and graduate debt-free is by having parents who are affluent enough to pay for it.  And with the rate at which college costs have been increasing, I’d hazard to guess that less than 1% of American families can afford to pay the full cost of their children’s college education today.  The average cost of an undergraduate education at one of the top 100 private universities in the country is probably around $200,000 (tuition, fees, books, room, board, etc.) for the incoming Class of 2014.  By the time children who are born in 2010 reach college age, it will be nearly impossible for anyone who isn’t a millionaire to be able to pay for their children’s college education entirely out of pocket.

In the last 50 years, the tuition at my alma mater has spiked from $1,000 per year to $32,000 per year.  If tuition continues increasing at that same rate, by 2060 the tuition will be more than $1,000,000 per year.  In one century, tuition at the same school will have become 1,000 times more expensive in 2060 than it had been in 1960.

I don’t see how you could be any more clueless about the economic realities of college education costs today compared to a few decades ago.

The reason that this issue predates the Great Recession is that the dismantling of the middle class has been going on for far longer.  In the 1970s, this was largely because of the oil crisis, worldwide recession, and massive inflation, but in the 1980s it became national policy.  <cough>Reagan!</cough>  Even later baby boomers have done far less well than early baby boomers.  In the supposedly affluent 1990s, college tuitions, housing costs, and health insurance skyrocketed.  With regard to housing, a lot of that can be attributed to income inequality: very rich people in the housing market in the 1990s put upward pressure on prices, at the same time that mildly redistributive policies such as rent control were being dismantled.  (Boston is exhibit A where this is concerned; rents doubled and tripled there in the ‘90s, and rent control in the city and environs was eliminated.)  It may have been easier to get a job, even a good job, in the 1990s, but even a good job then, especially in cities like Boston, New York, and San Francisco, might not have paid the rent on an apartment.  Having roommates or living with relatives were often the only options in places like that.  There are single people in Boston who are in their 40s and 50s who are still living with roommates.

“too many morons like orogeny, still believing the myth of the American dream” 

It’s amazing…I’m a pretty big lefty, pro-gay marriage, anti-war…got maced at the RNC in Miami in ‘68.  hated George Bush, voted for Barack Obama, but I still believe in this country.  If that offends you, Jadehawk, then I really feel sorry for you.  Living in a country that you hate must be a miserable experience.

<blockquote>A $15K student loan debt is not that onerous…

in what universe is that true? I’m still not done paying that $3000 loan, and I haven’t been in school since 2005.</blockquote>Well, plenty of people borrow $15k for a car. In fairness, 15k of student loan debt isn’t onerous if your education gave you an entry-level middle class job. If it gives you a low-paying retail job, then, yes, it’s onerous, but that’s the problem: spending all that money for school is sending people into the workforce with not that many middle class jobs to absorb them, and the situation has been like this for quite a while. Under those circumstances, it makes a lot of sense to use time at home to pay off your loans instead of rent.

Not to mention the fact that what is the “right” decision in one year might be the exact wrong decision ten years later.

Word.  Back in the late 1970s, computer tech was the hot new field; Nintendo and other new high-tech companies (especially game companies) were firing like mad, and it seemed like a safe bet.  It wasn’t even a half-dozen years later that the practice of hiring the “old hands” and hiring new people right out of tech school started, and it’s only gotten worse.  What seemed like a good, safe career tanked.  Guess all of those techies should have checked their crystal balls better.

I know we’re talking tech jobs, but Time magazine online has an article up the difficulty in recruiting general practitioner doctors - most med school students are going into specabout ialities because they need to make the big bucks to pay off their student loans.  There should be a national system for recruiting doctors to serve as GPs in exchange for payoff of their loans.  Teachers and other public-good professionals should get the same deal; someone upthread mentioned people being more willing to go into teaching if they didn’t have huge student debt to pay off.

I guess I’m trying to say the obvious - that the high cost of education is impacting society in many, many critical ways, and it’s only going to get worse if we refuse, as a country, to invest in our future.

Much of this conversation reminds me of a self-satisfied, smug student who took it upon herself to write a letter in the student paper at my university who lectured all those students who had student loans (which was the vast majority of us) about how stupid we were.  She even had the math: calculating how much you earned over the summer working at $15 an hour (early 90s in Canada) with apart time job over the school year, why you didn’t need loans at all!  Clearly we were all just lazy or something.

A followup letter pointed out three salient points she somehow overlooked.  Primary among them was that $15/hour was three times the minimum wage in the province at the time, and the only undergrad summer students who could make anywhere near that level were the lucky few (and this would measure in a few dozen across the entire province) who had summer jobs at one of the working mines, or, and far more likely, someone who worked for a family business, giving them both an advantage in actually finding the job and really just having the family pay for their university education while giving the offspring the delusion they’d entirely earned the money.(1)

1.  Note that I don’t see anything wrong with the idea so long as the person doesn’t delude themselves into thinking it isn’t a subsidy; I went to school with kids from one rich family and obviously they had their university paid for, but the general family rule was they had to work over the summer to get it.  The work they were actually doing wasn’t worth anything near what they were getting, but they were well aware of it.

ving in a country that you hate must be a miserable experience.

oh, let’s see. staying here means no health-insurance, no job, no safetynet, no education, and a literally crumbling infrastructure, living in apartments from which I can be kicked out because the landlord doesn’t like the stain in the carped that I didn’t put in there, etc.
going back to the country I grew up in would mean: automatic public health insurance, no exceptions, no “pre-existing conditions”, no deductables, no payout limits, etc; free education; unemployment money, and retirement money, and money in case of inability to work;

yeah, I fucking hate it, but I don’t have a fucking choice about it right now. And assholes like you who pretend it’s all fucking peachy and a little bit of ellbowgrease can get everyone a secure job fucking piss me off. It’s a lie that you’re perpetuating, and that’s making it really fucking hard to change this country for the better.

so get off your fucking high horse, and admit to the undeniable reality that sometimes, no amount of ellbow grease is going to be enough, and stop spreading that lie. The fewer people believe in it, the more likely it is that something might change for the better

Oops, that should have been “firing the ‘old hands’”.  Preview, I thought you were my friend….

Jade, I guess the country you were born in isn’t one of the ones currently talking about slashing their own social safety nets?  I am even more perturbed by what is going on in some other countries, because it almost seems as if the ruling elite, the mulitinationals, whoever, have gotten together and decided to bring back serfdom everywhere.  Maybe those stories are overblown in the American press?  I really hope that is the case.

My point is, if you want to be on your own, it is possible, it just depends on how motivated you are to be there.

Yes, motivation and effort matter.  So do luck and background and just as much.  Today there are about five times as many applicants as there are jobs.  No amount of motivation and effort is going to overcome those odds for everyone.  That is simple probability theory.  further, as an empirical fact, it is twice as hard to get ahead now than it was thirty years ago (whihc is what the decline in intergenerational mobility measures).

It is also a fact that the cost of college is much greater controlled for inflation than when we were there and there are far fewer resources available to students to pay for it other than high priced loans than there were then.  Working is not going to solve the problem either, as wages are typically depressed in college towns owing to the surplus of desperate students looking for work and wages have not kept up with inflation since we graduated high school.  It now normally takes two incomes to maintain the same standard of living that one provided then.

I have been teaching college for more than 20 years and have seen it get increasingly more expensive and more difficult for my students to afford it.  Now most of my students are working (often two jobs) and still have to take out massive loans.  There are very few scholarships available and many of them do not even cover tuition.

jadehawk #176:

It’s no wonder that so many delusional wingnuts can’t understand the irony of the cliche phrase, “pulling oneself up by their bootstraps” - literally interpreted, it is physically impossible to pull oneself up by their bootstraps.

Jade, I guess the country you were born in isn’t one of the ones currently talking about slashing their own social safety nets?

it is, but even if the most libertarian plans were realized, it still would cover SO much more than the American system (one state there even declared university tuition unconstitutional!)

Yeah, all of Europe is, for reasons completely beyond my comprehension, trying to Americanize itself. But even at its worst, it won’t be as bad as the US is now, for a long time.

“Didn’t have to borrow to get through college”—yes indeed.  As I have often remarked, I am Older than nearly everyone, and what I have seen is that when I grew up, it was possible for a student to put him or herself through college (I did it), and when my oldest kids were young it was still possible for a family to help put a kid through college, but now it is just about impossible unless one’s parents were in a position to save a huge amount of money while raising kids.

That said, my youngest* is in fact putting himself through college, but he’s going very slowly, and taking full advantage of community college courses, which can yield transferable credits a lot less expensively than a four-year school.  And also, he’s exceptionally hard-working and determined.

Just another way in which our country has gone down the wrong road.

*My youngest is 50 years younger than I am, so he’s younger than some of my grandchildren, one of whom is also putting himself through.  But the days of knowing you could do it, of just going in in the fall and paying for the year with your savings and your summer earnings—those days are gone.

literally interpreted, it is physically impossible to pull oneself up by their bootstraps.

Which is apt, since no one ever got where they are “all on their own” (libertarian fantasies aside).  All of us got where we are in large part owing to the investments of our local, state, and national governments, the efforts of our parents, teachers, preachers, and many others who shaped and nurtured us as we grew up, as well as friends, colleagues, and bosses who have helped along the way.  If we get ahead, it is because we stand on the shoulders of giants.

AnglScarett:  Yeah, com to think of it, I bought a $200 stereo with my student loan check at the beginning of my first semester; therefore the fact that I ended using my shiny new credit card to buy ramen noodles and tuna at the end of the school year—as now have $100K in student loans from professional school, plus a >$200K mortgage on a tiny row house in a formerly up-and-coming corner of the ghetto, at age 46, is really all my fault. (And, frankly, I consider myself lucky). 

Never should have bought that student-loan stereo.  Should’ve dropped out of college and lived the good life along with the sons of Orogeny and DrDick.

Jade, that’s good to know and I personally think you are lucky to have the possible choice of moving back, under the right circumstances.

oh, and since we were talking about grants for college…I’m actually hoping to go back to university this winter; and I’m even poor enough to theoretically qualify for grants (which still don’t even cover all tuition). so how did the school react to that? by pretty much accusing me of lying and insisting that I somehow prove to them how I managed to survive on as little money as I did. *rolleyes*

Yeah, all of Europe is, for reasons completely beyond my comprehension, trying to Americanize itself.

That is because your elites are, at the bottom, just as greedy and selfish as ours are and, having seen how ours have managed to steal so much, want the same.

LOL @ Sebastion, that last paragraph cracked me up.

Jade, that’s good to know and I personally think you are lucky to have the possible choice of moving back, under the right circumstances.

indeed; though, it’s one of those “choices” that would be REALLY hard to pull off right about now

Should’ve dropped out of college and lived the good life along with the sons of Orogeny and DrDick.

Please read more carefully.  As I said there, it is possible, but rare.  He was damned lucky and had a number of advantages that a lot of people do not have.

I noticed the comments section for the “lazy 22 year olds” article is ALSO being kept going by a couple of “I did it with gumption and elbow grease, and BY GUM, so can everyone else!” quasi-trolls.

You know what this reminds me of?  My father-in-law had a stroke and now has no ability to form new memories.  Every time we go out to breakfast with him he is surprised and horrified that his standard two-eggs-potatoes-and-toast will cost $7.50, and no Dad, this is not an expensive place to eat—the money is different now. 

But HE has an excuse.

Kwillow, I wonder how many of them are telling the truth?  It’s interesting how few people want to acknowledge the help they have had.  I am the first one to say that there’s nothing so special about me, I’ve been really lucky, and I’ve known some bad times too which I’m glad of, cause I may know them again.  And when I had bad times I had a family which served as a support system sometimes quite literally. But some people just won’t tell the truth, and maybe don’t even know the truth.  If your parents didn’t beat you as a child, you have an advantage right there.  That’s just a fact.  That doesn’t mean that no one who is abused as a child can be successful, but not being abused, is an advantage.  I mean it can be something as simple as that.  People just don’t get it.

My experience has been that you can’t even get a job in wait staff without years of experience, much less as anything other than min. wage, no chance of advancement, and not full-time (forget benefits!) - maybe if you work three jobs like that, but all three jobs want you available evenings, weekends, holidays, etc. as a recent college grad. I was lucky in that I did do the moving out at 17 and the most time I spent back at home was a few months in between semesters. But I also did that via stripping while getting my associate’s degree, then getting a very decent paying job that also provided financial assistance to go on for my BS. And even now the very decent job I’m in is experiencing layoffs, not replacing positions, etc. - so anyone freshly out of school with the same degree does not have the same opportunities I had in the same area. So yes, I completely understand living at home in those circumstances.

I don’t quite get the people I know who are content to live at home like they were as teenagers - the situation isn’t like they’re renting out the room but still have responsibilities as an adult, but rather don’t want to work so don’t, accept the same privacy standards they did as teenagers, don’t help out in the house, etc. They’re a minority of people I know returning home, but still boggle me much moreso than 22-25 year-olds getting rid of college debt and such.

AnglScarlett,
Having been shuffled around the country for long term temporary assignments by my employer, I have shopped in grocery stores around the country.  Almost without fail, over the last decade, food was not cheaper in the areas where housing was (usually huge amounts not so) compared to where I live north of Boston.  And compared to Japan, UK and Germany?  I shutter to think what feeding my two teenagers would have cost me in any of those places.

I never had to live at home after college, but only because my parents paid for my education (under the condition I spend freshman year commuting rather than living in the dorms, that made it affordable for them to do). I got out with zero student loans.

If I had loans, or graduated a year later when the economy went to shit? I’d probably be at home.

Oh, and the trope of how if you live with your parents even in you’re early 20s you must be a basement-dwelling, WoW playing lazy ass seems to be more widespread in small town America or in the suburbs of small to medium size cities.

My sister lies in New York, and it’s not shameful at all for kids to move in with their parents there even when they have a pretty good entry level job out of college due to the crazy cost of living. I imagine L.A. would be the same way.

A few years ago, a higher-up (I think the Chancellor) of one of the local universities took this matter up—I suppose because his background was in economics. He himself had worked his way through university as a gas station attendant. He simply calculated what wage that attendant would have to receive today to do what he did, no extras. To his horror, it came out to a little shy of $20/hour. Know any gas stations that pay $20/hour to their attendants? I didn’t, either.

Ben, yeah that must be it.  Because I was really surprised to read about people who felt their towns or the culture or whatever, put pressure on them to be out of the house by 21.  That just wasn’t the case on LI, one of the most expensive suburbs in the country.  This was in the early 90’s.  It just wasn’t like that.  It was really the norm to be at home until you had a good reason to leave.  Marriage, or you just wanted more privacy, or if you had a bad home enviroment I guess.  THose were some of the best years of my family life really.  We really had fun with each other back then.  Great memories.

My experience has been that you can’t even get a job in wait staff without years of experience, much less as anything other than min. wage, no chance of advancement, and not full-time (forget benefits!)

That makes me think of a friend of mine who was recessioned out of really good white collar job as a grant writer a little more than a year ago.  Before that job, she was doing whatever menial jobs were available, including working as a Starbucks’ barista for about 2 years.  Given the huge cost of COBRA for her, she recently decided she would just go back to Starbucks for now, because while the pay is crap, they are one of the only companies in America that offers health insurance coverage to part-timers making just over minimum wage.  She left that job in 2006 with a great reference and on really good terms with her store manager, but when she went back in to try to get re-hired, she was told that corporate HQ in Seattle had ordered a hiring freeze against all former store-level employees, regardless of whether they left the company in good standing or not.  No idea what the rationale was for that, but it’s more evidence of just how lousy things are when an experienced grant writer with a Master’s Degree can’t even get her old job slinging coffee at Starbucks back right now.

Yup, my brother in law is from LI. He got an accounting job out of college but didn’t move out until his marriage to my sister. Same w/his brother who is a lawyer and did the same thing.

I’ll admit that part of the reason I moved out was due to cultural pressure. I could probably at least own a small home rather than rent by now if I saved up for a down payment by living with my parents after school, or at least have a better standard of living, but I didn’t feel like having to explain it to every fucking person I met. Irrational, but there you go.

There’s also a gender aspect I believe hasn’t been touched on yet—living with your parents is seem especially seen as shameful in this culture if you’re male.

note: Not everyone here is ‘middle class’. And not everyone has the same abilities. Depression can often cause ‘demotivation’. I think there’s just not enough to go around. I admit I’ve been unemployed[by my standards- by gov’t standards I’m employed because I work a few days a week] for a year. I have a masters degree. I have internships. I have a little work experience. In the past, that would have been good enough for a job. Right now, you can’t get jack or shit.

“There’s also a gender aspect I believe hasn’t been touched on yet—living with your parents is seem especially seen as shameful in this culture if you’re male. “

Sadly yes.  Attendant to that is the fact that the best/easiest ways to help out while living at home tend to involve “women’s work” and many young men are reluctant to do these chores because they’ve been socialized otherwise and because they already feel emasculated.

That just wasn’t the case on LI, one of the most expensive suburbs in the country.  This was in the early 90’s.  It just wasn’t like that.  It was really the norm to be at home until you had a good reason to leave.  Marriage, or you just wanted more privacy, or if you had a bad home enviroment I guess.

Yeah, well, some people just don’t want to live in the same expensive suburbs as their family, though. I’ve definitely seen some recent-immigrant-families have a certain bias in favor of the kids staying at home until they get married, but for many of us, the pattern was “leave for college, find a job where you can when you graduate (and live with a house full of roommates in order to afford it).” If I wanted to live in my parents’ expensive suburb, I’d have had to live at home, too, but I knew I didn’t want to live there. Truthfully, I did regard people who lived at home after graduating college as people from families who just didn’t want to leave the nest or people who just thought that living at home was better than living on your own (because their mother did their laundry and cooked for them), mostly because of my graduating class in (a fancy) college, none of us did that, regardless of background.

It’s interesting Tyro, that you took the time to regard people who made a different choice as anything at all.

I never did.

I was really happy.  It was a good time of my life.  Like I said, I have great family memories of that time.  I never thought to “regard” anyone who made another choice in any way at all.

Maybe that’s what happiness causes; a lack of regarding others in a judgemental manner.

By the way my mom was a professional and nobody’s servant.  But that’s what happens when you “regard” things you don’t really know about. 

I wouldn’t trade those years for anything.  That’s what matters.

Ben, generally I think that is true (the gender aspect).

But as far as I knew, there really was no shame in it for my brothers either.  Well, actually my younger brother was still college at the time.  But my older brother wasn’t.  I never knew him to even indicate anything like that was going on.  ANd he married a very beautiful, great girl that he met while still living at home.  they’re still married today. I don’t know, it definitely differs though, geographacally and maybe other factors too.  I have no difficulty believing men are judged more harshly in that particular case though.

Speaking as a person who was very lucky in the birth lottery, whenever I hear somebody talk about how they were self-made, I usually think bull shit. Nearly all self-made people were born into at least upper-middle class families and benefited a lot from that. Most of them had connections to. My life is a lot easier than it would have been otherwise because I hit the jackpot in the birth lottery. I am not a self-made person.

But as far as I knew, there really was no shame in it for my brothers either.

Well I was speaking of areas outside of places like NYC.

You would think since our entertainment centers are in NY and LA there wouldn’t be so many TV shows/movies featuring a main “loser” character who is male and lives at home. I could list out half a dozen off the top of my head!

Ben D

The other thing I’ve noticed, though, was that guys would be more ok with holding out until they got better offers, and women wouldn’t be as sure they were coming.  Although that seems to have changed somewhat in last year or two.

Also, women seem more likely to feel added stigma if they dodn’t have a certain amount of basic furniture for their new place (not fancy stuff, just the minimum to make it look organized and “normal”) - while my younger brother didn’t even have a dresser for years.  (but maybe that was just him)

Also, women seem more likely to feel added stigma if they dodn’t have a certain amount of basic furniture for their new place (not fancy stuff, just the minimum to make it look organized and “normal”) - while my younger brother didn’t even have a dresser for years.  (but maybe that was just him)

That is most certainly true, Jenny. It’s also more acceptable for male apartments to be disheveled.

And no, it’s not just you. I didn’t have a dresser until five months ago. This despite my small closet (I kept summer clothes at my parent’s house in the winter and vice-versa).

AnglScarlett, well, people from different families have different expectations. And, I grant you, when I saw everyone I knew (including my own immediate family) doing one thing, and saw other people (including my extended family) doing another thing, when I saw people living at home, I figured, “ah, they must be doing that because of reasons (X, Y, Z) that I have seen before.” But we are talking about people moving back home to be with their parents specifically for economic reasons. Sure, there are people who just do it because that’s a cultural expectation, but for the most part, I look at it as a matter of, “why would you want to do that voluntarily?” Yes, I’m sure it makes sense to you. But as Bill Murray said in Groundhog Day, “some people like blood sausage.”

“You would think since our entertainment centers are in NY and LA”

yeeeaaah….the entertainment put out by those entertainment centers don’t really reflect the way most of the people there live.

AnglScarlett - I think there was some shame for my older brother, but he’s not very social so he doesn’t care as much.  I felt a lot of shame (I live in SoCal) and my younger brother…he and my parents are unable to live together.  So that wasn’t ever happening for any decent period of time.  We both felt a lot of pressure to move out not long after we both moved back the first time.

(partly because my older brother was still at home, and THREE adult kids at home is quite a lot.  esp when your eldest is married and pregnant and really needs a decent bed when she comes to visit,).

Our attempt to do so put me dangerously into debt - which is part of why my parents at least put very little pressure on my once I moved back the second time.

women seem more likely to feel added stigma if they dodn’t have a certain amount of basic furniture for their new place (not fancy stuff, just the minimum to make it look organized and “normal”) - while my younger brother didn’t even have a dresser for years.  (but maybe that was just him)

Generally the expectation is that a man needs a woman to add those “domestic” touches of furniture, so he’s supposed to have an apartment more or less devoid of furniture other than a couch and a bed until he gets married.

So, weirdly, the expectation is that a man should not live at home with his family, but the place where he lives should be as un-homey as possible until he finds a woman to do all that stuff for him.

Tyro, I’m sorry to hear you regard your family as blood sausage.  Even though I have a very different experience, I empathize with you.

Jenny, it probably is more commonly felt or viewed as shameful to men.

BTW, Digby put up a really snarky really funny post about Amanda’s post. The snarkiness directed at the author of the original Salon piece and those who think like her.  I found it really funny.  I think it’s true though!  These people really are joyless.

There’s also a gender aspect I believe hasn’t been touched on yet—living with your parents is seem especially seen as shameful in this culture if you’re male.

I think that’s probably true, but that’s still a product of the patriarchy.

On average, males make more money than females, and as such, however difficult it is for men to have the means to live on their own, its even more difficult for females, who have less disposable income.

While I think it’s pretty much wrong to shame anyone, male or female, for experiencing financial difficulties in their 20s, males - and especially white males - aren’t being hit as bad by the current economic conditions as females and POC.  The current overall unemployment rate (U3) doesn’t paint the whole picture… break down unemployment by race and gender, and you’ll see the rates for the less privileged groups skyrocket compared to the overall U3, whereas white males unemployment rate is lower than the overall unemployment rate.  Almost everybody is getting hit hard by the recession right now, even white males… but compared to other races/genders, white males are being the least adversely affected.

MF—

Isn’t the unemployment rate for males though (all males, not just white) actually higher this time due to the nature of the recession (the collapse of male-heavy industries like construction jobs due to the housing market?)

MF - Bob Herbert wrote a clarion call of a column about the unemployment rate for black males.  It’s beyond shocking really.  Herbert is one of the best columnists in the country, but it seems that he is writing into the wind.  No one is listening.  The foundations of our society are incredibly shaky.

Also, women seem more likely to feel added stigma if they dodn’t have a certain amount of basic furniture for their new place (not fancy stuff, just the minimum to make it look organized and “normal”) - while my younger brother didn’t even have a dresser for years.  (but maybe that was just him)

That’s how it worked out for me and my ex - I was comparatively obsessed with making sure we had “appropriate” furniture and was a Craiglist junkie for most of our relationship as we cycled through tons of barely functional hand-me-downs, he’d put a small TV on top of a larger, broken TV and call it a day.  Years later I have a bed and he still sleeps on a mattress on the floor.  He often is derisive about my middle-class pretensions, but then again I think if he got up off the floor he’d be a healthier guy.

We actually had an embarrassment of riches in used furniture, being at the end of a long chain of inheritance.  Family members who would be reluctant to help with cash assistance had no problem going to great lengths to give us all the busted couches and mismatched dishware they could.  They felt warm fuzzies for helping us out, and I donated to Goodwill as often as I shopped there

And Baal, I find your story inspiring, I really do.  I too feel I am a lackluster student and hope that I also hit my stride.

shorter orogeny

If the pride and joy of my loins can do it, so can everyone else!

I have often bemoaned waiting to my 30s to have him, but if he was a teenager now, I’d be freaking out about the lack of opportunity he’d be facing.

My sons are teenagers, 18 and 14.  The 18 year-old scrabbled and scrabbled just to find a summer job.  Now he’s gearing up for his Senior year in high school and trying to find part time employment…and it’s not looking good.  We hope the economy is better by the time the 14 year-old is a Senior.

My husband yammers incessantly about “when you move out (and hurry up about it)” at the 18 year-old, but the fact is, he’s not going anywhere any time soon.  It’s really fucking SCARY out there.  When I was his age, I could be assured that I got any job I applied for.  Those same jobs are now going to middle-aged folks with kids to feed and mortgages to maintain.

WTF is up with these baby boomer truthisms articles ... is there a pledge drive on PBS or something?  First this BS and then a front page article in the Boston Glob Mag on how kids just get trophies for showing up and nobody keeps score anymore ... like they pulled this shit out of a 1998 file drawer and republished it.

Apparently I’m not the only one who gets the “When will you grow up?” question from their parents. Shockingly, $18k/year grad student stipend isn’t enough to save any money even in the Midwest. So when some asshole comes along and busts the windows out of my car, my parents give me the $400 to fix it. Yes, this is a huge privilege that I have and I am well aware of it. My parents are also well aware of it and eager for the day when I make enough to start saving. Unfortunately, a Ph.D in the sciences isn’t the money tree people think it is. Hopefully I’ll be getting this Ph.D in December. We applied for the Peace Corps, since I’d rather do that then spend 2 years in a post-doc.

What is a post-doc, you ask? It is 2 years of working in somebody else’s lab for maybe $40k. In the 1950s and 60s the average age a new scientist got her first lab and grant was 28. Today the average age is 40. This is mostly because we are not investing any money in the sciences - grants are INCREDIBLY difficult to get. Professors at R1 universities spend all their time chasing grant money. Which means they hire an army of underpaid grad students and post-docs to do the benchwork. We’re not underpaid because professors are assholes, we are underpaid because grants don’t allow for higher salaries. Oh, and the eleventy billion people from India and China who are salivating to take temporary jobs in America for $40k/year. My dad immediately got a tenure-track job complete with grad students upon getting his Ph.D in the 80s. He doesn’t understand that things just aren’t like that anymore.

This is also why I didn’t have a job in High School - McDonalds wanted work experience of at least three years!!! Oregon had extreme unemployment, thank you Ronald Reagan.

”that the signifiers of adult life that became popular after 1945 and before the 80’s was predicated on a wealth of cheap petrolum.”

Disagree
Oil was cheap when Heratio Alger was writing his fairy tales and Sinclair Lewis was writing the Jungle
It was cheap when my grandfather marched in the bonus army

What gave us the signifiers of adult life that became popular after 1945 was the New Deal, 50% union membership, and the GI bill

Even the oil shocks of the 70’s didn’t destroy that lifestyle

It took Regan to do that

” As others here have noted, that time period is most likely going to be a blip on the history radar”

<Sigh> Yeah, unfortunately, we are way past the point of no return

“The facts on the ground are grim. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 37 percent of all Millennials are either unemployed or out of the work force.”

37% 37 fucking percent.

I don’t care what your speshul snowflake son does, the fact is that 37% of my generation is currently jobless. So fuck off.

Oh, and as to grants for higher education? I live in Illinois, we have state grants called MAP grants that you can get if you show economic need, like a state based PELL grant. EXCEPT the recession has decimated Illinois’ economy so bad that the MAP program ran out of money. Now it doesn’t matter how much money you don’t have, once the money is gone for the year, anyone unlucky enough not to be part of the first group applying can just fuck off.

My non-biological father has decades upon decades of specialized experience in commercial construction, he’s one of the top guys at his company, and he was laid off all winter because there simply aren’t jobs. My family was helping me through school, I live at home (sort of, my husband and I live in an apartment attached to my parents house, so we could both go back to school and live cheap) and had to drop out of school with 3.9 GPA so I could look for a job. Right now I’m living off the money my husband’s wealthy parents give him, and we have just enough for food and bills (and I’m too proud to ask for more, as far as they’re concerned, my parents are still paying my share), we’re lucky that since my parents can’t help me directly with an influx of cash, they’re letting us live rent free til I can find a job.

Which I can’t, even fast food. Even fucking McDonald’s. Pre-recession if I applied for a fast food job I got called back the same day I applied, the day after at the latest. Now, nothing.

So seriously, I don’t care how awesome your kid is.

37% of my generation is out of work.

And your kid’s awesome job he got without a degree? He probably got it because the company hired him for less money after firing some shmuck with a degree who commanded a hire pay rate.

”I used to work in Marketing for Estee Lauder and their entire IT department was from India and a few Middle Eastern countries. And very recently so.  Definitely degreed.  But I would imagine being recent immigrants they were a bargain.”

I was with EL’s IT dept for 18 yrs, when I was outsourced about a year ago, the people doing what I used to do make less then a third of what I made

Did you work in the GM building? I moved out to LI about 10 yrs ago, but if you were in GM before that you probably know who I am

He probably got it because the company hired him for less money after firing some shmuck with a degree who commanded a hire pay rate.

Or knew somebody that worked there. Quite honestly that’s pretty sure how I got hired at my job, though it wasn’t explicit.

There’s a lot of luck involved in life. There’s merit and hard work, too, but don’t fool yourself for even one second and think that luck doesn’t play a role.

Just being born in a developed first-world country, for one, is huge. And you had nothing to do with that. Nothing.

Oh, and husband who is lucky enough to still be in school with his parent’s paying his tuition and living expenses so he has no debt, he’ll be graduating in 1.5 years with a degree that was supposed to be recession proof, a B.S in Biology and a teaching certificate so he can teach high school biology.

Except, before Congress passed the emergency funding, Illinois was poised to layoff 20,000 teachers this summer. It’s still uncertain how many of those teachers will be able to stay employed, or how new grads entering the field will be able to find employment.

So yeah, don’t want to hear a word about how lazy and unmotivated my generation is. We didn’t tank the fucking economy, we just get to live with the long term consequences.

So fuck off.

Finally, someone said it.  I’ve restrained myself all day at this fucking bootstraps-motivation-hard work-“Privilege, what privilege?” bullshitting.  I wanted to see how long it would take for people to stop engaging as though something was gonna get through.

Goddamn, that’s parents, not parent’s. I’m so furious with orogeny’s smarmy lecturing that I can’t think straight. Like, the veins in my neck are bulging in anger, I feel like a puffer fish, or Henry Rollins.

“37% of my generation is out of work.”

That’s just…I have no words.

“He probably got it because the company hired him for less money after firing some shmuck with a degree who commanded a hire pay rate.”

And this - YES.  By all accounts I’m doing great now (and, really, compared to so many people I know, I am doing fucking fantastic), not only do I still have a job - with health care no less! - I got a promotion recently!  Er, sort of.  I’m doing the duties and I get the title, but I don’t get the pay.  Legally this is only supposed to last a year - but it’s been six months and there is no talk of doing interviews.  Quite the opposite.  I could complain in another six months, but all that would get me is the same pay, the ill will of my employers, and loss of experience and title.

And that’s in government work - where the laws are written as to make this illegal (in an attempt to stamp out nepotism and political favors).

I love my job and it’s exactly what I was working towards.  But I’m under no illusions that I was definitely the best choice for the job.

AnglScarlett,

Yeah, I think it’s one of those things that, as most everything does, gets played out in variations according to personal dynamics, but there is a definite trend towards men being considered especially mooching and immature if they live with their parents as adults.

jefft452

Reagan was one of those arguing that it was just plain wrong for California’s community colleges to be free.  Not because CA couldn’t afford it, but because it teaches students bad lessons in life.  Or something.  I would ask ” then why bother subsidizing it at all?” but I rather suspect that’s the point.  I used to think my dad was a little crazy when he talked about the right wing wanting to do away with universal education…now I’m thinking maybe he wasn’t so crazy.  And knowing now what he knew then about the community college system, I definitely see where he was coming from.

jessi, my ears are steaming in solidarity with your bulgy neck.

Well, Emmett, you know what us filthy unionists say, an injury to one is an injury to all. I raise my fist to your steaming ears.

and jesslikewhoa?  thank you for reminding me of that depressing stat, I actually did need to hear it.

I work at a public library and that “promotion” was to Youth Services Manager - which includes programs for young adults, which includes not just teens but, you know, actual young adults.  Over the last year we have begun all kinds of programs to help adults that have lots their jobs and are looking for work again.

We have shit for those just entering the workforce for the first time.  I really do think I need to change that asap.

I’m also getting increasingly nervous about our upcoming annual college fair.  I know the chair is already worried about not as many reps coming this year.  And really, what good news can we give these kids about college and financial aid?

Jenny, you have the job I was in school working towards. Best of luck to you, I know that just like schools, libraries have been especially hard hit.

I have no idea what you should tell people in my age group, I keep reading articles saying that maybe college isn’t the best idea after all, and that people should look more toward skilled trades/trade schools. Which, as the kid of a guy in a skilled trade who spent the winter collecting unemployment, I can’t say I see the wisdom in trade school either.

My neighbor is a union residential electrician, and seems to be doing just fine despite the recession, as far as I can tell his wife stays home with their two kids (baby and a toddler.) They bought 2 new cars this year, just bought the house across the street a year or two ago, and seem to go out of town at least once a month.

Then again, not everyone can become a union residential electrician, if we all did, there wouldn’t be jobs there either.

Cooking classes that emphasize cheap, bulk, healthy ingredients (legumes, whole grains, easy to find produce.) Sewing and basic carpentry classes so we can repair items we already have, instead of buying new. Classes on growing and canning food from a backyard garden. Those are the only ideas I’ve got, I think the millenials will live much more like our greatest generation grandparents who grew up in the depression and lived lives of studied thrift, than our boomer parents who grew up in an incredibly prosperous time with access to abundant easy credit.

My mother can’t sew, and can cook just a handful of meals. My grandmother on the other hand made pretty much every meal from scratch, and my grandfather (union plumber) built their house with a few friends, and as a hobby built any solid wood furniture inside it.

I know I would love to have the chance to learn for free how to can, or knit and crochet, or restore/build furniture. I don’t know if that applies to anyone else though.

I’ve got to say, though, y’all have convinced me.  All you Gen Xers and Millennials are screwed.  You’ll never get a good job, there’s no chance at all for you to work your way up into a good job, the world is just against you.  Anyone of your cadre who does succeed obviously did it by luck or influence, because hard work and sacrifice is no longer worth even trying because it will never lead to any kind of success.  Live your lives with that as your guiding principle; it will serve you well.

Look, prick.  I’m a teacher with three years of experience, a BS in Physics and a BA in Mathematics, and five papers co-authored.  I’m also living in a one-bedroom apartment and paying off student loans and not doing much of anything else other than pay shit off for a while.  Plus, New Jersey just decided to fuck over teachers because that works when you’ve elected a Repug piece of shit as your governor and a lot of people think that we’ve all got bootstraps to hoist our keisters out of debt because we’re MURICANS!

I personally think that you are full of shit if you really think one person’s anecdote about how speshul they are ZOMG means anything because they have a great job and no college degree and why can’t anyone else do it too?[/mouthfart]  No one said any of of what your screed appears to accuse them of, and the fact that you think they did makes me wonder who the hell helped your son learn to read, because it obviously wasn’t you.

Regarding college debt, the situation certainly has gotten worse compared to when I was applying and attending college in the mid-late 1990’s.  With the luck of attending the high school I did and demonstrating deep financial need, I was able to attend college on a 75% scholarship that covered room and board at Oberlin which ended up making it cheaper to attend than going to my local SUNY/CUNY schools due to the deep budget cuts and other financial problems the state/city systems were facing. 
With the scholarship and having valuable academic/IT skills as a result of the high school and the friends I hung around with, I graduated debt free and gained some valuable work experience during my college years. 

Many younger friends from similar or even better family socio-economic backgrounds who entered just a few years after I did weren’t so lucky.  They either had to postpone college, take out exorbitant loans, and work 30+ hours a week during the school year in addition to the summers….assuming there were jobs to be had.  The most successful among this cohort is still far from paying off his college loans 5 years out despite having graduated with a CS degree and working for one of the most well-known computer technology companies…..and he was one of only 25% of the CS students who were able to land a job related to his field upon graduation.

I’ve also seen quite a few college classmates from privileged upper/upper-middle class backgrounds who are now facing financial stresses because they along with their parents are being economically dislocated as a result of lost jobs, businesses, and overextended mortgages.

I have no idea what you should tell people in my age group, I keep reading articles saying that maybe college isn’t the best idea after all, and that people should look more toward skilled trades/trade schools. Which, as the kid of a guy in a skilled trade who spent the winter collecting unemployment, I can’t say I see the wisdom in trade school either.

Unless policy changes are made to encourage the creation of jobs in both the public and private sector without the demonization of such policies, neither option may be viable for most….unless the student concerned comes from an securely elite well-off family who has a “family business” position for him/her to fill upon graduation.

It wouldn’t be an internet blog without nitpickers qouting out of context, taking umbrage at what hasn’t been written.

And it wouldn’t be a lefty blog permeated with Gen X, Y, Z or whatever else the young whippersnappers are calling themseves, if there wasn’t Boomer punching, as reflexive as the Hippie Punching by the right and “centrist” Dems.

However, AGAIN, there’s so much suffering in the Boomer generation, if slightly different suffering than yours, that I would think your blood lust might be sated.

For those who still want to punch, I suggest it would be more productive to aim fists at the out-of-touch elite who are thrilled to have the generations fighting over crumbs, rather than looking upwards at the wealthy and powerful who have destroyed the middle class for all of us.

I’ll readily admit that my current financially dire straits are due in large part because I personally screwed up. But to pretend structural factors haven’t played a role in my transition from ungrateful privileged brat to someone who’s racking up $22,000 in debt per year and still struggling to pay my rent because I can’t find a minimum wage job even though I’ve applied for 10 in the past two weeks and am still applying everywhere I can…well, that would be to commit the same stupid errors in thinking that made me an ungrateful privileged brat in the first place.

I would never have been so naive and so thoughtless as to lose my full-ride academic scholarship if I had known how difficult it really was for other people to get ahead out of sheer hard work, or if I’d known how hard “hard work” actually is. My parents paid their way through college - I assumed I could do the same if worst came to worst. Well, worst came to worst and I was completely wrong. Now I’m fucked and I don’t know what to do besides work my ass off and hope to god I can get a scholarship to grad school so I don’t have to choose between unmanageable debt and being lucky enough to get a decent job in this financial climate as a freshly-graduated BA when no one’s hiring. Anyone who thinks financial aid and a job are enough to pay for college and achieve a middle-class living these days is off their rocker.

I also wouldn’t have been so stupid if I hadn’t been raised in a privileged bubble that just-so-happened to burst under me during my freshman year of college. I was raised by upper-middle class Republican parents during the 1990s and assumed life would always be as easy as it was for the first 18 years of my life. I assumed I was successful because I was smart because that’s what I’d been told all my life…in reality that wouldn’t have meant much if I didn’t have the (racial and economic) background to look the part and sweet-talk teachers into accepting my many late assignments yet still giving me an A. I rejected right-wing politics before I was of age to vote but fell hook, line, and sinker for the biggest wingnut lie of them all: that I was someone special to whom different rules applied than the rules everyone else had to live by.

I sure didn’t expect my dad’s business to fail in this economy, leaving him with a $30,000 middle-management job that doesn’t even cover the debt they accumulated during the flush 90s (debt I had no idea our family was racking up, because we never had problems with money until now) much less the expense of supporting 3 other family members (me, my younger brother, and my mom). I didn’t realize how close to impossible it would be for my mom to get a job now, with 20 years out of the workforce. But then again, I didn’t even consider that she might need a job…because we were so special we could afford a 1950s lifestyle that my friends’ families couldn’t afford, forever.

Now I know a better, and I appreciate the lessons my financial hardship has taught me. I don’t mean to suggest that I should have been allowed to continue to go to school for free…but it’s fucking rough when failing a single class at age 18 or 19 is the difference between a free education and $20,000/year in debt at a public university (which doesn’t cover rent, electricity, or food), especially when there’s hundreds of other undergrads seeking that on-campus secretary job and almost as many over-qualified college-educated people with work experience applying foroerve to suffer some consequences for by poor commitment to my classes…but really, does our society think it’s a good idea to dump life-changing debt on a clueless kid for getting a couple too many Bs and for screwing up a single upper-level math course? And if you think what happened to me is fair (because maybe it is)...what about the overwhelming majority my peers who didn’t screw up at all but just had to pay that $20,000/year (at a second-rate public university) from the start to even have a hope of attaining the minimum level of education necessary to make a living wage?

Our country needs to do something about rising tuition costs, student debt, unemployment, and privileged stupidity…or you’re going to see lots more kids like me figuring out the hard way what it’s like to be poor and maybe never recovering from that. So much for the American dream of middle-class kids having upward mobility…these days it’s much more likely to be downward mobility.

jessielikewhoa, no need to reinvent the wheel.  Check with your local County Extension service (trough the landgrant university) they probably already have classes like those mentioned, for free.

As for the trades, well, they’re not all that great for everyone in them.  We’re seeing many who can still make it, even when unemployed, due to benefits and the higher wages of union workers.  but that Ponzi won’t last forever.

Rev, I think that your story shows that we might become a stronger generation. I am probably older than you[26] and my student loan debt is outrageous, but at least we’ll know that bad things can happen to good people- after all, they happened to us.

And it wouldn’t be a lefty blog permeated with Gen X, Y, Z or whatever else the young whippersnappers are calling themseves, if there wasn’t Boomer punching, as reflexive as the Hippie Punching by the right and “centrist” Dems.

Yeah, well I’m enough of a Boomer that I was marching against the Vietnam War at an age when most of my peers were learning their times tables,  I volunteered for the doomed McGovern campaign at the age of 13 so I’m not some snotty brat from the above alphabet you cite.

I’ll be the first to remind you that if Amanda flails at someone of subset B from Set A, it is the height of stupidity to mistake such criticism as being against those in Set A, including you, moi, and millions of Boomers who aren’t assholes like the writer of the Salon piece.

However, AGAIN, there’s so much suffering in the Boomer generation, if slightly different suffering than yours, that I would think your blood lust might be sated.

Yup, that’s all we do around here, gloat over the sufferings of others, Amanda, Jesse and Pam should subtitle it, “The Schaudenfreud blog”.

For those who still want to punch, I suggest it would be more productive to aim fists at the out-of-touch elite who are thrilled to have the generations fighting over crumbs, rather than looking upwards at the wealthy and powerful who have destroyed the middle class for all of us.

I’d be willing to bet garbage to doornails that the wealthy and powerful would be willing to go along with your suggestion as long as they aren’t touched themselves.

Phylosopher, for real? That would be AMAZING. All I really want in life is to be able to build and restore furniture.

Hmmm, I’m doing better than orogeny’s son.  I’m a couple of years older than him, graduated from collage with only $3k in debt (went to UPR), then got a full scholarship for grad school at one of the top 5 universities in the USA.  I now make low six figures at a software engineering job at a profitable Silicon Valley not-a-startup-anymore, where I was one of the first 40 employees in a company that’s now about 250 people in two countries.  I’m debt-free, and I save more than 20% of my income.

And I still think orogeny’s full of it.

Yes, there are some people who “make it” at my and orogeny’s son’s age.  They’ve got some extraordinary combination of talent, luck and initiative.  The fact that your orogeny’s son learned network administration on his own is pretty telling in this regard—to learn stuff like that on your own you have to be a computer enthusiast, and you have to have a particular kind of smarts that’s in short supply and high demand.

This is a story that repeats itself throughout the computer industry, which is full of people whose families got their first personal computers when they were pretty young (I was a late starter at age 12), and got their computer skills from learning computer stuff for fun.  The story even has two variants: (a) older folks who cut their teeth on BASIC and assembly on the very first personal computers in the 80s (which normally put you immediately in a programming environment when you start them up), and (b) younger ones who did so by installing and playing around with Linux in the 90s (which I guess is orogeny’s son’s case).

People like this have done pretty well, but they’re actually a small minority of the folks born since the 1970s, which gives the lie to orogeny’s “everybody can do it” story.  It’s more like “talented computer enthusiasts can do it.”

Yet from what orogeny’s tale about his son, it doesn’t sound like he’s doing particularly well for that demographic.  Network administration is a pretty low-end IT job.  “Business analyst” is above that, sure, but it’s also low-to-mid—though I’d say it’s a much safer and interesting job than network admin (less chances of getting outsourced; larger variety of problems to work on; the problems can sometimes be moderately interesting).

Also, I get the impression that the Fortune 500 company in question is not a software company—and this is again a low-end indicator.  Most of orogeny’s son’s coworkers are probably better educated than him (but not as smart), only started learning computers much later than he did, and don’t really enjoy working with them very much.

Here’s the problem.

I first noticed it around..2000-ish or so. It might have been before that, or whatever. The local chain grocery store (I was living in a rural area where there was like one largish grocery store in about a 30-minute drive radius. It was insane.) put up a big public display applauding their cashiers for making a new scans per minute metric. I think it was 80 or so. In a few months, there was another display, showing a few who made a metric of 120. There was only a few.

There was also less lanes open.

Those two things are entirely related.

For much of the actual working class, it’s all about meeting specified and trackable goals. And everything else goes out the window. This stampede towards absolute productivity and eliminating waste is at the core of the great recession. What we’re seeing for the most part, is companies using this as an excuse to cash in on productivity gains. That’s why profits are up even as sales are so low.

This is THE problem. This is the reason why Obama didn’t push for single payer/public option..the economy simply couldn’t withstand the massive productivity and efficiency gains in the health sector. And fixing it isn’t just a political problem…

All the solutions…there’s a lot of people..average, regular people who are going to be very upset with them. You could do massive direct government hiring…but you need to give those people breaks, or pay them if it’s storming or whatever. Or you make a stronger maximum workweek and lower it. Again, the idea that those lazy kids/whatever racial group won’t have to work as hard…it just pisses people off.

This isn’t some fake, Fox News trumped scandal. These are real, common, very popular tropes among the general population. And that’s the problem.

Nothing short of a complete change of the nature of work, why we work, what we get for work, is going to get the job done. And yes, the change is as much cultural as it is political. And that’s what makes it so tough to change.

FWIW, what I’d do is set a living wage on a maximum workweek, create a new department to monitor this, with a set goal of X employment, and automatically adjust the wage/workweek on a quarterly basis to always be automatically pushing things back towards equilibrium.

If big business doesn’t want to be paying more people more to get the job done, they need to be working together to make sure that unemployment doesn’t get too high. It puts the ball almost entirely in their court. Either do what we give them money to do, or they don’t make as much.

WHAT DIGBY SAID:

“Amanda is righteously pissed off at this sanctimonious boomer twit railing against “kids today” for refusing to grow up and be adults in their 20s as she apparently did. As I tweeted her, even when we baby boomers were young there were always these throwbacks lecturing people their own age about how “irresponsible” we all were for not getting our MRS degree and failing to start measuring the drapes for Barbie’s dream house the day we graduated from college. They were already 25 years out of date at the time.

Nobody with any sense listened to them then and nobody should listen to them now, for the same reasons. Not only were they uptight, conservative creeps, many of them were also privileged princes and princesses who had plenty of money and lots of support from Mommy and Daddy in the not-so-economically vibrant 70s—- not all that different from today. (And of the working class wingnut types, many were screwed economically by those times and blamed the social revolution—- also not all that different from today.) The rest of us rejected everything the bourgeois prattlers were peddling and never looked back.”

Read the rest, it’s essentially another aspect of what I’ve been saying (only, of course, better expressed) and I got Boomer punched for saying so here.

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2010/08/teabag-boomers-were-always-insufferable.html

This is pretty much my life. I graduated from college in 2008 and haven’t even had a close brush with employment since - and by that, I don’t mean “first real job”, I mean “Plan Z.” I searched high and low and I’m trapped in a funhouse mirror image of adolescence and a combination of inexperience and overqualification that apparently makes me unemployable. I eventually interned until I couldn’t afford to do so anymore, and absolutely nothing came out of it. I live in one of those redder states orogeny mentioned that’s less dramatically affected by the economic downturn - people move here to escape bleaker circumstances from up north and out west… but I’m also black in one of those redder states.

My parents didn’t attend college and thought of it as almost a talisman that warded against a lifetime of physically taxing menial labor, a series of dead end minimum wage positions, being pressed into military service by poverty, and/or indefensibly vast stretches of hardcore unemployment - the key to gaining a true foothold on the middle class existence that unionized federal work gave us a tenuous grasp on. So, understandably, they put all they had towards my college education - I was admonished against working and attending school simultaneously because they wanted me to concentrate on my studies. Unfortunately, what we thought was a sure thing… by that time, had actually become a gamble, we put all our chips on it, and we lost. Everyone is in crushing debt, our dreams are dashed, and our household is coming apart at the seams. I’m the first woman in my immediate family to avoid teenage pregnancy and complete college, and simultaneously, an abject failure who doesn’t have enough experience to wait tables, or enough connections to get one of the pink-collar clerical positions that I held before college. The regionally prestigious name on my diploma garners looks of shock, but only enough interviews to count on one hand in almost two years, most of which were for positions that did not require it. I aspired to be an impudent and dissolute hipster, (I dreamt big, yo) fueling the economy through conspicuous consumption - I was ready to be a cog in the wheel, but the damned machine wouldn’t keep going long enough for me and the rest of my generation to get on. Apparently, I have to be the textbook definition of a loser, even after “delaying gratification” and following the right wing’s prescription for minority socioeconomic ascension to the letter. However, I will not self-flagellate… this ain’t my damned fault. It’s my responsibility, but not my fault.

Nearly all self-made people were born into at least upper-middle class families and benefited a lot from that.

Indeed.  While Bill Gates’ story reflects the possibility to exponentially increase one’s wealth with a strong business acumen, he didn’t go from rags to riches.  While his parents might not fit most people’s definition of “wealthy”, they were solidly upper-middle class, and I have trouble believing he would have had anywhere near the kind of the financial success he has had if he had grown up as a poor inner-city kid.  And even after you acknowledge that Bill Gates is not as self-made as he is frequently made out to be, the simple fact is that even with a similar amount of resources available as Gates had growing up, 99.99% of people won’t achieve anywhere near the level of financial success that he has achieved.

Jeff - no I was in the Melville offices.  I worked there for under a year, or maybe just about a year.  It was weird because they had no desk for me in marketing when they first hired me so I was downstairs, really in the basement, which is where the IT dept is located.  So I sat in that dept, but separate from them for about three months.  Then I was moved upstairs.  The whole time I was looking for something else and when I found it I left. I do miss the company store though!

I’m really sorry to hear about your job, that sucks especially since you were with them for so long.  :(

Jesus christ, judybrowni, out of however many Boomers in this thread, you’re the only one who feels put upon.  That strawman is looking pretty tattered.

FWIW, what I’d do is set a living wage on a maximum workweek, create a new department to monitor this, with a set goal of X employment, and automatically adjust the wage/workweek on a quarterly basis to always be automatically pushing things back towards equilibrium.

I’ve wanted to ask about this for a long time, but never found a forum to do so, b/c I thought it was a stupid question.  My formal econ knowledge is pretty slim.  IS there a theory or system that would support what you’re proposing?  Spreading the work out and deliberately lowering productivity to increase employment?  France went to a 35 hour workweek years ago.  How did that work out for them, practically?  It seems like if the system were stable, people would find a way to fill the time—more volunteering, which is good for the community, more recreation, which is good for the economy.  People want to work and feel a sense of contribution, so even a reduced workweek would improve morale and whatever other factors measure the emotional health of Americans.  It seems to make sense, but I’ve never seen anyone propose it, so I was suspicious it’s actually a terrible idea.  The main hitch seems to be getting from here to there.

Jesus christ, judybrowni

Lest you take my frustration to be “Boomer punching”, I refer you to my prior comment:

It’s no use blaming one generation or another for what really is the fault of the corporatist upper class

judybrowni, you took Amanda’s criticism of a Boomer git, as my grandfather would’ve called her, and taken it as a swipe at all Boomers everywhere.

Read the rest, it’s essentially another aspect of what I’ve been saying (only, of course, better expressed) and I got Boomer punched for saying so here.

You weren’t Boomer punched here, so please take your pity party somewhere else, please.

“My son won an Olympic gold medal in the 100m sprint! He trained really hard.”
“Yes, I’ll bet he did. Well done to him!”
“And luck didn’t come into it!”
“Well, except in that he had time and encouragement to train, and never got an injury.”
“Are you calling my son LAZY? Everyone who works as hard as him can win that same medal!”
“That’s not actually possible because only one of them is given out every 4 years.”
“DEFEATIST!!”

Judybrowni, the problem here is that this isn’t a thread about the general topic of economic hardship. This is *specifically* a thread about the ways in which the economy has made it harder for young people to manifest the markers of “adulthood” that were commonly accepted by the generations who came of age from 1940-1960, in response to a person, who happened to be a Boomer, writing a smarmy, self-congratulatory screed about kids these days.

Unless you are bringing in the economic hardship of Boomers to illustrate a related point—for example, if older people were inviting their children in or moving in with their children because *they*, the older people, couldn’t make ends meet—your invocation of Boomer economic hardship is off-topic. We’re not discussing “how hard it is for everyone”, we’re discussing how much harder it has become to look like a grownup.

So firstly, you’re off-topic, secondly, no one is claiming either that all Boomers are bad people or that all Boomers are sitting in the catbird seat—simply that Boomers had, on average, an easier time of it buying houses and getting decent jobs when they were 20 somethings—and thirdly, centering a conversation that isn’t about your problems so that it’s all about your problems is a symptom of privilege, and in our society, Boomers have a great deal of social privilege in comparison to the other generations, because the size of the demographic has meant that whatever the Boomers need, society is *more likely* to talk about their problems or try to cater to their needs.

No one is here to “punch Boomers” (what does “Boomer punching” even mean? Is there a specific way of attacking Boomers that is unlike, for example, attacking Gen Xers, or attacking Millennials? Can you Gen X punch someone?) But in general the Boomers did economically better *while becoming adults* than the generations that came after them, and pointing out how many of them live on cat food and ramen noodles *now* is not what this discussion is about. We’re not talking about how hard it is to be an older person in today’s economy.

FDR wasn’t cold in his grave before conservatives started working to systematically dismantle all the gains the working class had made. Didn’t some republican just apologize for the Southern Strategy the other week? Apology not accepted.

judibrowni, Amanda referenced ONE Baby Boomer, let’s go to the tape:

Which is why I saw red when I read this smarmy, self-righteous screed from some Baby Boomer.

OMG, she criticized a female Baby Boomer, she must be criticizing all female Baby Boomers!  Even judybrowni whose been everywhere and done everything in the cause of feminism and un-self-righteousness!

Please get over yourself, or, as my mother would put it, don’t bullshit a bullshitter.

Amanda #12: Yes,yes yes! The whole universal assumption chaps my hide.  I believe my deep dislike of them started with hideous show thirtysomething
Then the tiresome,fawning way the MSM breathlessly covers every so called “milestone” these whiny fucks hit just annoyed the shit out of me.
Generation Y kids face not just a few bumps on the road but mountians. But bootstraps you spoiled little brats! Also: I hope to hell I never hear about Woodstock again. We were at Ozzfest last night (New Jersey) and the muddy grounds provoked comments about Woodstock. I was like Fuck Woodstock and the Boomers! (Our music is better too) 
Proud 45 year old Generation Xer.

My dad immediately got a tenure-track job complete with grad students upon getting his Ph.D in the 80s. He doesn’t understand that things just aren’t like that anymore.

My dad got a tenure-track job in the mid-60s before he’d even completed his Ph.D.  Scratch that—he was offered MORE THAN ONE tenure-track job, and got to pick which one he wanted.  I think he understands that times have changed, though.

Orogany: piss off. Just cause your son was able to do it doesn’t mean everyone can. If you’re a woman, disabled, a non white person, etc the odds are tilted against you, *and* this gives an advantage to white males. You can work your ass off and still be drowning in debt.

Judybrowni, FWIW I agreed with your first original post in this thread. My Boomer parents and in-laws are dealing with the other half of the economic vise—retirement savings gone during the Bush recession so retirement now is no longer an option, age discrimination that makes it impossible to get a new job when laid off after 50, underemployment at physically demanding jobs that don’t go well with declining health (not that all boomers’ health is declining, but my father-in-law’s health happens to be).

They don’t get smug about people my age struggling and having to move home. My brother has had to do so, and my brother-in-law wasn’t able to move out until his late 20s, despite both of them having college degrees and being willing to work hard at patched-together part time jobs. Their parents don’t think they lived at home out of laziness. They understand how hard things are.

Frankly, the only reason I’ve been able to do this well (buy a townhouse, get married) before 30 is that I went to college on scholarship, worked at paying, government-funded internships in the summers, got lucky with a job offer in a crummy job market when I graduated in 2004, and happened to live and work in a very inexpensive area. I don’t discount my hard work in school, but I have a lot of friends who worked just as hard and still couldn’t find anything but part-time service jobs after graduation, and couldn’t make those pay rent because they had student loans to pay. My lack of education debt is the biggest factor; the lucky job offer is the second.

Most of us don’t love having to live at home. But we do what we have to.

Hm, I want to point out something that always bothers me about “working through college”: it can be super useful to have something on your resume, for sure

Working through college doesn’t really pay for college. At best, it gives you some social and professional capital that helps you get a job or admission to graduate school after you finish. I had some pretty well paid summer jobs throughout college, and at best they paid for my computer, a discount vacation, and a summer language program. Using your work money to pay for college will likely at most cover the cost of your books. That $10/hr job in a lab or a writing clinic might cover your food. If you et admitted to a college with need-blind admissions, you are fortunate but will still likely finish with about $25k of student loan debt. How is it that people don’t think this through?

I have no idea, Tyro. I had plenty of jobs during college, and some good summer jobs[during grad school, I went to summer school], but I’m still in huge debt since uh…you know, college costs tens of thousands of dollars.

What I mean to ask is how people who claim you can “work your way through college” don’t think this through.

jennygadget: I know what you mean. I lived in or around NYC most of my life and NYC in movies is either more ideal or more depressing than the actual NYC.

“either more ideal or more depressin than the actual NYC”

LOL that is so true, but I never thought of it that way.

I think a lot of these articles conflate two separate issues: extended family households and delayed adulthood. Extended family households were the norm for my grandparent’s generation. If you left home it was because you took a job that offered housing such as the army or schoolteaching. When my Grandmother became a classic Rosie the Riveter during WWII she lived with a couple of cousins, and after the war my Grandparents took in a couple of adolescent cousins through young adulthood and college, and grooming children to take over the family business or farm was fairly typical.

I’m sure someone has probably commented on this, but it drives me absolutely crazy when people say, “your generation is so spoiled- look you have cell phones and computers!” we didn’t have those things- we didn’t think those things were necessary.  You could just give them up!

If I didn’t have a cell phone, I wouldn’t have a job.  When I first started “being an adult” aka looking for work, I lost two jobs because I didn’t pick up the phone and reply fast enough.  That’s the world we live in.  Eventually, I’m going to have to switch my totally practical cell phone to some sort of smart phone because I get these elaborate text messages from my bosses regarding work.

My Nephew lives on his own and has a job that pays well at 19.  In fact, he’s being paid to go to school.

He also works extreme hours in the summer, had to go to basic training, had to serve aboard a ship for nearly two years before being trained as a medic, and will have classes as well as duty time when basic training wraps up in the fall and he doesn’t have to care for injured recruits 24/7.

Did I mention that he had to compete with good grades and recommendations for his Coast Guard slot?  In other words, not a typical option for kids his age.  He does have a good time getting paid to do something he loves and to go to school while his friends from high school are racking up debt.

Boomers have a great deal of social privilege in comparison to the other generations, because the size of the demographic has meant that whatever the Boomers need, society is *more likely* to talk about their problems or try to cater to their needs.

Witness attempts by Boomer-laden faculties to end tuition benefits for kids of faculty now that 1) they don’t need it anymore, 2) gen-xer’s kids are reaching college age, and 3) boomers want to raid that benefit for more retirement money for them.

And talking about biting the hand that feeds you… the author has written a fluff piece commenting on an article in the NY times (remember this is not her own research) for a blog that people look at using computers.  I don’t know because I wasn’t there: did newspapers 30 years ago pay writers for commenting on another article in the another newspaper?  You would think she’d have a little more respect for the medium in which she makes her living.  But hey, we’re all spoiled by having computers.

Thanks, snowmentality, for the reality check.

One of the reasons I resent reflexive Boomer Punching is because I’m supposed to somehow bear responsibility for anything said or done by everyone born within 20 years of my birth.

No matter if they’re Republican Boomers, rightwing nut Boomers, spoiled, self-involved, rich-bitch Boomers, Tea Party Boomers: all conflated into Boomer Punching of those of us who were liberals, life-long Democrats, come from lower-middle class working people who voted against and worked against the very financial crisis supposedly “caused” by Boomers, or whatever other sin.

Which makes about as much sense as blaming Your (whichever you are) Generation for the neo nazis, white power assholes, Young Republicans, for the wreckage caused or about to be caused by everyone hatched within a decade of your birth.

(By the by, it was Reagan who began the pamper-the-rich taxation plan, and “deficits don’t matter” pattern and was, of course, one of the Greatest Generation, as was Bush the First, Nixon and so on and so forth.
Didn’t vote or campaign for any of those bastards, and did something to Nixon, personally, which would require an entire diary, but it did check a goal of his second campaign for President.)

Late to the party but wanted to add that the lottery that orogeny’s son won is available only to sons, never daughters.  Our nightmare of an economy demands that young women go to college if they want a chance to get a job that will keep them alive & fed in the United States.  Not a job, just a chance of maybe getting a job.  The allegedly self-made substratum of IT, where you fool around on your computer and teach yourself marketable skills, is open only to men.

No matter if they’re Republican Boomers, rightwing nut Boomers, spoiled, self-involved, rich-bitch Boomers, Tea Party Boomers: all conflated into Boomer Punching of those of us who were liberals, life-long Democrats, come from lower-middle class working people who voted against and worked against the very financial crisis supposedly “caused” by Boomers, or whatever other sin.

Gee, was that what Amanda said about the author of the Salon piece, was the Boomer “blamed” for anything except being a privileged twit who was ignorant of the economic realities of the day?

“Detach yourself, Archie, personal resentment of a general statement is a barbarous remnant of a fetish-superstition.”

  “If a man constructs a dummy, clothes and paints it in exact outward resemblance of yourself, and proceeds to strike it in the face, does your nose bleed?

Rex Stout: Fer-de-Lance

And ditto for access to the vanishing, but not yet 100% gone, well-paying union jobs that don’t require a college education.

I don’t mean to suggest that I should have been allowed to continue to go to school for free…but it’s fucking rough when failing a single class at age 18 or 19 is the difference between a free education and $20,000/year in debt at a public university (which doesn’t cover rent, electricity, or food), especially when there’s hundreds of other undergrads seeking that on-campus secretary job and almost as many over-qualified college-educated people with work experience applying foroerve to suffer some consequences for by poor commitment to my classes…but really, does our society think it’s a good idea to dump life-changing debt on a clueless kid for getting a couple too many Bs and for screwing up a single upper-level math course? And if you think what happened to me is fair (because maybe it is)...what about the overwhelming majority my peers who didn’t screw up at all but just had to pay that $20,000/year (at a second-rate public university) from the start to even have a hope of attaining the minimum level of education necessary to make a living wage?

One interesting observation a few East Asian international students and college classmates have all made is how the US is starting to resemble their own high-stakes educational systems where there were practically no second chances if you screwed up at any point along the way from Kindergarten till college graduation*.  While they felt the academics of mainstream US K-12 schools were not as rigorous as those in their home countries, they felt the US system offered many second chances for those who made mistakes at younger ages and thus, was much more humane….a positive that has increasingly been tossed aside over the last two decades. 

It was the fact that the US system offered second chances which allowed one Japanese college classmate a chance to get a high school education and graduate from college with honors after he was expelled and permanently banned from further education of any kind in 7th grade because he was involved once in an schoolyard fight that was mild by US standards.  This also caused his working-class parents to completely disown him out of deep shame at the education system’s evaluation of his conduct.  If he wasn’t offered this second chance, he said he would still be working odd jobs in factories for a pittance that he was doing for several years before he had a chance encounter with a concerned benefactor who provided him support to get a high school and college education in the states. 

* One slight difference is that getting into college, especially a topflight one in some of those countries is considered such a big deal and so taxing that the college experience is almost treated as a vacation or not taken nearly as seriously by the students as their US counterparts.  In Japan, acquaintances graduating from topflight universities recounted experiences of how only 1/4 of the registered students would show up regularly in classes in their first 2 out of 3 years and schools would make room assignments accounting for that….which meant that on exam days when everyone showed up…students would be so crowded that some would be spilling out into the hallways.  Moreover, a few college classmates/acquaintances who taught in Chinese universities have said that students who flunked too many courses were still allowed to graduate with a lesser “graduation certificate” because most Profs/admins felt that it would be a waste to expel students who worked all out to pass the highly cutthroat national college entrance exam just to get in…. 

Indeed.  While Bill Gates’ story reflects the possibility to exponentially increase one’s wealth with a strong business acumen, he didn’t go from rags to riches.  While his parents might not fit most people’s definition of “wealthy”, they were solidly upper-middle class, and I have trouble believing he would have had anywhere near the kind of the financial success he has had if he had grown up as a poor inner-city kid.  And even after you acknowledge that Bill Gates is not as self-made as he is frequently made out to be, the simple fact is that even with a similar amount of resources available as Gates had growing up, 99.99% of people won’t achieve anywhere near the level of financial success that he has achieved.

Actually, Bill Gates’ family would definitely be considered low-end wealthy or the upper-end of the upper-middle class at a minimum considering how he attended exclusive private schools in his formative years and reportedly had a large trust fund worth somewhere in the neighborhood of $1 million.  If the latter is true, that was a lot of money when he was a kid. 

Moreover, his father was a prominent attorney in the Seattle area and his mother served on the board of directors of some organizations and had a father who was a bank president.

It’s just like an obesity thread what with the one jerk who overcame the odds insisting that if you don’t manage it it’s because you’re lazy. Also with the blaming of a systemic problem on the actions of individuals. Telling poor college grads they’d totes be all set if they just “delayed gratification” is exactly as helpful as posting “PUT DOWN TEH CHEEZBURGER FATTAY,” which is to say, not helpful at all. And it makes you an asshole.

I guess some folks are so secure that they don’t know that some jobs don’t even take paper applications anymore, and the applications are so long that you use up your little hour on the library computer for just one or two.

One interesting observation a few East Asian international students and college classmates have all made is how the US is starting to resemble their own high-stakes educational systems where there were practically no second chances if you screwed up at any point along the way from Kindergarten till college graduation

Yes, because they all came over here and made it that way.

Yes, because they all came over here and made it that way.

That’s right, because the American educational system is totally dominated by East Asians. Everywhere you look you see East Asian elementary school teachers, secondary school teachers, deans of colleges, principals, superintendents…

...oh, wait. You *don’t.*

I’m sorry, we white Americans have fucked this up all by our lonesomes. While some disciplines have a disproportionate number of East Asian *faculty* at the university level, the people in charge of colleges are still pretty overwhelmingly white… as are the people in charge of the K-12 system.

Dark Avenger, you apparently haven’t read any of the thread where I got Boomer punched although I’d written that the bitch was a lone wolf over-priviledged and loathsome and not representative of Boomer thought in general.

And haven’t read the other general reflexive Boomer Punching, not to do with me directly.

But it wouldn’t be the internet, if nits weren’t picked (incorrectly) and quotes taken out of context.

And Boomers reflexively Punched.

And of course, because nits will be picked, whether or not they even qualify as nits: by “bitch” I meant not Amanda, but the author of the What Shitty Economy? Twentysomethings Are Lazy Hobos piece.

Entomologista @282 - that’s sounding pretty xenophobic and I think it’s the curtness that does it. You might want to elaborate if that’s not how you’re trying to come across. I mean, you make it sound like the US education system is run by a secret cabal of Asian elders.

I’m one of the lucky Millenial success stories, and I can count my breaks:
1) 27 y.o. so at the top end of the Millenials, managed to get into a lot of things before everything blew up.
2) White, straight, male.
3) Grew up and was educated in Europe so it wasn’t back-breakingly expensive.
4) Through college, was heavily supported by my parents on fees and living expenses. I worked during vacations, but not term-time.
5) Dual citizenship allowed me to emigrate to the US.
6) Got a well-paying job through a connection with a former student of my mother’s.
7) Bought a house with help on the downpayment from my parents, and the last piggyback loan my credit union would ever issue.

Had I been missing any one of these breaks that were completely out of my control, I wouldn’t be where I am today. So I don’t have the right to look down on people who aren’t doing as well as I am.

(I provide this as a data point, not because I’m looking for some kind of success/humility cookie.)

judybrowni, your complaining about Boomer Punching is sounding a lot like “pity the poor mans” or “white people can’t catch a break”. The Boomers, as a group, RUN THE SHOW. We all get that there are members of that group who aren’t as fortunate as others, just like there are men who don’t consciously take advantage of the patriarchy. I’m thinking of things like how the proposals to change Social Security will kick in explicitly AFTER the Boomers all retire, leaving Generations Jones and X to their catfood.

In short, not ALL Boomers are in positions of power, but with few exceptions, ONLY Boomers are in positions of power, and that advantages Boomers over the rest of us.

Dark Avenger, you apparently haven’t read any of the thread where I got Boomer punched although I’d written that the bitch was a lone wolf over-priviledged and loathsome and not representative of Boomer thought in general

judybrowni, you came out swinging because Amanda intimated that a particular Boomer writer mightn’t be the sharpest tool in the shed for her demographic:

Enough with the baby boomer bashing

And haven’t read the other general reflexive Boomer Punching, not to do with me directly.

Yes, well I see you didn’t read between the lines to figure out that I’m a younger Boomer than you who has been a few places in life as well.

I don’t see anything but your excessive sensitivity and thread-jacking to make it all about you, or offer anything from your own experience instead of taking to the attack.

Perhaps instead of throwing your fellow Boomer to the wolves perhaps trying to be sympathetic and serve as an advocate, even for your misguided fellow Boomer would be a better defense against Boomer bashing in the first place.

But it wouldn’t be the internet, if nits weren’t picked (incorrectly) and quotes taken out of context.

You’ve demonstrated this same pattern in the past on a different topic, and that’s something else you can chalk up to teh Internets.

And of course, because nits will be picked, whether or not they even qualify as nits: by “bitch” I meant not Amanda, but the author of the What Shitty Economy? Twentysomethings Are Lazy Hobos piece.

If anyone said you did, they’d be a fool, so you win on points for today.

Pepito, Louis Pasteur said it best:

“Fortune favors the prepared mind”.

Woo-hoo!

@286: I suppose people who aren’t knee-deep in the shit that is academia probably don’t understand my bitterness. No, I do not think the Five Asian Bankers, or whatever, control academia. Far from it - international workers are exploited the worst. The only reason they are here is because in the 1990s academia lobbied the government for an increase in visas for temporary skilled workers, since they were sick of paying American scientists a living wage. Which means there are a lot of people here who are used to working insane hours because that’s just how it is done in their country. And that means the rest of us get “persuaded” to work more hours as well. You know how there is always a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth because of a supposed shortage of people in the sciences? That’s a goddamn dirty lie. Academia is a giant clusterfuck of too many scientists and too few grant dollars.

And this problem isn’t unique to STEM fields. The university system would collapse if suddenly forced to pay all the adjuncts who teach English 101 a living wage. The grad student union at my school just recently made the university insurance pay for prenatal care. In 2009! Academia only survives because of the extent to which it is allowed to exploit people. I guess the moral of my story is that academia exploits everybody who isn’t a tenured professor or administrator, it’s just better at exploiting international workers. And academia also uses international workers as a tool to further exploit American workers.

Entomologista, believe me, I sympathize completely with your plight and the state of the biological and chemical science career paths, but this is a moment where really your choices are either to light a match or curse the darkness. Now, unless you’re a grad school superstar headed for the tenure track, you can still find a job at an IP law firm which will pay for you to go to law school so you can become a patent lawyer, or you can go to med school. Or you can try to find an analyst position in a venture capital firm. There are options. That your field got really screwed by some specific policy decisions doesn’t mean you have to accept a fate of postdoc he’ll.

Yes, because they all came over here and made it that way.

FYI, the classmates and international students I mentioned were mostly undergrads or terminal Masters students and were studying mostly non-STEM fields (i.e. Poli-sci, IR, Anthropology, Education, etc).

Moreover, in addition to the glut of special visas you are referring to is also the widespread perception with some basis in fact that most US-born undergrads…even in the STEM fields are not considered as prepared for graduate study in their respective fields due to inadequate preparation in lower-level math and science courses in K-12.  When we have large numbers of college first-years at many schools taking remedial mathematical courses such as multiplying fractions….much less pre-calculus….this is a serious problem even at the top-tier institutions. 

However, from what I heard from friends who are grad students in STEM fields….this preparation gap is mainly in the early undergrad years and by the time students are admitted to MS/PhD programs…the gap has usually closed….and sometimes the US-born/raised students are able to use advantage of not being raised in such a stultifying academic environment where rote memorization* is emphasized at the expense of creativity and critical analysis skills to greater advantage. 

* Dozens of East Asian grad students and colleagues who attended undergrad in their home countries have mentioned this as one of the negative points of their education systems.  Nearly every one of them felt this was one critical area where the US education system outshines the ones they grew up with and something their respective nations’ educational systems should emulate.

exholt, in at least some places, it is quite a bit worse than “remedial mathematical courses such as multiplying fractions.”  IME, there are quite a few students who have trouble with place values and multiplication tables, cannot do long division, and apparently never encountered perimeter or area before.

exholt, in at least some places, it is quite a bit worse than “remedial mathematical courses such as multiplying fractions.” IME, there are quite a few students who have trouble with place values and multiplication tables, cannot do long division, and apparently never encountered perimeter or area before.

Though this is shocking in my mind considering I was in great disbelief when I actually met undergrads at various universities including top-tier institutions who had problems with multiplying/dividing fractions or high school math, I shouldn’t be too surprised considering the decrepit state mainstream US K-12 education has been due to 4-5 decades of neglect from government and society at large outside of those seriously concerned with education issues. 

And this is not strictly a public school problem considering I’ve encountered many private school graduates who’ve had similar issues in college and the workplace….sometimes with near-disastrous results….

I’m mainly a liberal arts-type, but the lack of basic mathematics is really frightening to me.  It is such a good introduction to logic, and absolutely necessary for responsible and informed consumer choice.

While I certainly don’t believe that it is the most important factor, the decline in educational standards is another reason to expect young people to stay at or move back home.  The “grown-up” world doesn’t provide much help or understanding for learning things as you go (and almost invariably making mistakes along the way).

Oregony, the reason your son was able to do what he did was because he got into a career field that was just about to boom and was desperate for people with a certain skill sets and a very high learning curve in technology. But if he tried to do the same now, he’d be bang out of luck.

I did helpdesk for 8-9 years.

I’m not even allowed to put the details on it on my resume. The experience is basically worthless.

Yup. Mr Kristin has worked helpdesk for about the same number of years. And we’ve been horrified to find out over the past couple years that as expenses go up and his pay doesn’t, he has pretty much zero prospects for advancement that don’t involve certification or a Master’s. Which, since we’re having trouble making ends meet, how the hell is he supposed to afford to get?

IT companies are ditching lower-skilled US positions as fast as they can. They just don’t exist anymore. Hell, try getting hired for an entry-level helpdesk job now. Good luck with that.

I think there’s just not enough to go around.

There’s plenty to go around. It’s just that the privileged few are increasingly hogging all of it instead of letting it go around.

Also, MissPrism @256, I am pleased to present you with this internets, hand-polished to a glossy shine.

I actually know a few guys (keep dating them, somehow) who are in IT/software type stuff without a bachelor’s degree.  To a man, they are all abnormally smart (I mean really, could play ball with the smartest grad. students I’ve dated/been friends with) and all pretty freaked out about how their lack of degree puts them in danger if they lose their current job/seek promotions from within.  One is actively taking/validating classes, the other two are planning to.

AnglScarlett @251

”I’m really sorry to hear about your job, that sucks especially since you were with them for so long.  :(“

Thank you
But I have to admit that we were decently treated through the whole thing (well, except for the whole losing my job in the middle of a recession thing)

We got a much more generous severance package then most other companies were giving at the time

”no I was in the Melville offices.  … so I was downstairs, really in the basement

By the time I moved out to Melville I was dealing with more with systems then people, so we probably never met, but I knew all those guys in the basement, small world

”The whole time I was looking for something else and when I found it I left”

You wouldn’t have been looking back in the old days when Estee was still running things, It was a great place to work back then (and during Leonard’s time too).  I’m happy in my new job because it reminds me of the old days at EL

”I do miss the company store though!”

Me too!  Did you ever get a chance to go to the Breast Cancer sale?

”I actually know a few guys … who are in IT/software type stuff without a bachelor’s degree.  To a man, they are all abnormally smart”

Or just old, I sure aint abnormally smart

I got into IT pretty much by accident (I started as a draftsman, drawing parts for helicopter engines) back then degrees in IT were less common and it was an easy field to break into and do on the job training

Not having a degree has prevented me from progressing beyond low middle management, but I never really wanted that anyway (A lot more work for a tiny increase in my standard of living – no thanks)

As far as finding a job goes, when you have close to 30 yrs in IT, age discrimination is a bigger fear then the lack of a degree

Or just lucky, unless 28 now counts as ‘old’. I dunno, maybe needing bifocals counts for something?

“Or just lucky”

I think that being in the right place at the right time is pretty much the definition of luck

It was easier to start out back when I got into it then when you did
so I’m guessing on the talent to luck scale you are closer to the talent side then me

Amanda - I haven’t read through all the comments here yet, but wanted to post my own. I am a “boomer,” and I heartily agree with what you have said in the above post. I first saw the NYT article, then a friend sent me the Nelle Engoron piece. Today I came across your post in trying to find out more about Engoron.

I made the exact same point to my friend that you have made here: the notion that people at age 22 (or 18 or whatever) need to prove themselves “adults” by leaving their family’s home is a relatively new one, and I believe it was the product of the growing affluence of the middle class in post-WWII America. Now that this country’s middle class is fading fast, and good jobs for just about anyone are few and far between (boomers included, obviously), generations within families are beginning to live together once more, out of economic necessity. It’s seems likely to be a growing trend for the foreseeable future.

Self-righteous attitudes seem to grow within every generation as it ages, sadly. My parents’ generation (the depression kids) had plenty of negative things to say about my generation, who had everything handed to them (in their view—never mind that they were the very ones who provided for us).  Now boomers are being critical of young people who find themselves living at home as adults—and certainly not by choice, in most cases. Your generation will find things wrong with the next generation too, I promise, and they’ll get mad at you in return. 

It’s simply easier to chastise and find fault with others than to acknowledge our country’s social and economic problems—and our individual responsibilities for them.