better than our parents?
I hear the comment all the time of 'we are the first generation not to do better than our parents.'
Well, John, I daresay I'm about 20 years older than you, having been born in the middle sixties. Here is my spin on it:
The boomer generation, as a whole though not in all specifics, have spent their lives spending money they did not have. Is a 'millenial' worse off than his or her parents? Or will he be? I don't know. What does it mean to "own" a 400,000 dollar house, when you have less than 10% equity in it, because you continuously refinance to support a lifestyle of consumption? What does it mean to have NOTHING saved for retirement, when you are in your fifties or older? Is this 'well off'?
It was the boomer generation who gave us leveraged buyouts, pension fund raids, and the like. Their money has gone into consumption, not investment and wealth building.
We have SERIOUS issues in the USA right now. But I do not believe that it has always been rosy and is now crappy. Consider: One thing that made houses affordable in the 1950s was rising productivity of workers, and the selling of unfinished 'cape cod' style houses. How many newly built houses are 1200 square feet and have one bathroom?
I live in a ranch house built in 1962. It now has a finished basement (probably finished sometime in the seventies or eighties) and it now has two bathrooms. But I'm sure that the original house had one bathroom for the first twenty years or so of its life.
Part of the problem we have in America is that it is no longer possible to live the kinds of lives our parents lived in some instances because the choices they made aren't makable any longer.
I don't know how people afford their educations anymore. I worked my way through school about the time you were born and it was tough, very tough. It is harder now. Of course, I also think you have to ask "how many people do college on the cheap?" Go to a community college for your lower division courses, and transfer to a better named school for your junior/senior year. I did this. I got out of college owing -- wait for it! $600 in student loan debt. It *IS* true there was more financial aid then then now. But -- if the baby boomers are having trouble paying to put their kids through school, why isn't there clamoring for schools to be more efficient with their money? To have more endowments for lower income people? I don't know why there isn't more recognition of this UNLESS consumers of the education system (parents, mostly, because they pay for it) WANT education to be expensive to keep the 'riff raff' out.
It is my opinion - and folks, please don't flame me for my opinion - that an awful lot of the unbelievable fall in the standards of living of so many has come from a number of factors: Over consumption to start with (buying on credit means you don't 'own' the thing); fall in income may be related to lack of desire to improve your lot in life (as a nation rises up the food chain you MUST be better educated to succeed); and other out of control things that can happen (an uncovered large medical expense can EASILY bankrupt you).
Unfortunately, medical expsnses ae one of those things that we have little control over. I would like to know, however, how much of the percentage of cost of health insurance and health care comes from things like medications that are to correct problems that lifestyle changes could cure, or whether in other countries folks simply 'live with it.' (Irritable bowel syndrome, for example, can be a misdiagnosis of celiac sprue, Crohn's disease, or sedentary habits, but large numbers of expensive medications are sold to 'cure' it).
Nothing is easy, nothing is free....tanstaafl!
Nate
I hear the comment all the time of 'we are the first generation not to do better than our parents.'
Well, John, I daresay I'm about 20 years older than you, having been born in the middle sixties. Here is my spin on it:
The boomer generation, as a whole though not in all specifics, have spent their lives spending money they did not have. Is a 'millenial' worse off than his or her parents? Or will he be? I don't know. What does it mean to "own" a 400,000 dollar house, when you have less than 10% equity in it, because you continuously refinance to support a lifestyle of consumption? What does it mean to have NOTHING saved for retirement, when you are in your fifties or older? Is this 'well off'?
It was the boomer generation who gave us leveraged buyouts, pension fund raids, and the like. Their money has gone into consumption, not investment and wealth building.
We have SERIOUS issues in the USA right now. But I do not believe that it has always been rosy and is now crappy. Consider: One thing that made houses affordable in the 1950s was rising productivity of workers, and the selling of unfinished 'cape cod' style houses. How many newly built houses are 1200 square feet and have one bathroom?
I live in a ranch house built in 1962. It now has a finished basement (probably finished sometime in the seventies or eighties) and it now has two bathrooms. But I'm sure that the original house had one bathroom for the first twenty years or so of its life.
Part of the problem we have in America is that it is no longer possible to live the kinds of lives our parents lived in some instances because the choices they made aren't makable any longer.
I don't know how people afford their educations anymore. I worked my way through school about the time you were born and it was tough, very tough. It is harder now. Of course, I also think you have to ask "how many people do college on the cheap?" Go to a community college for your lower division courses, and transfer to a better named school for your junior/senior year. I did this. I got out of college owing -- wait for it! $600 in student loan debt. It *IS* true there was more financial aid then then now. But -- if the baby boomers are having trouble paying to put their kids through school, why isn't there clamoring for schools to be more efficient with their money? To have more endowments for lower income people? I don't know why there isn't more recognition of this UNLESS consumers of the education system (parents, mostly, because they pay for it) WANT education to be expensive to keep the 'riff raff' out.
It is my opinion - and folks, please don't flame me for my opinion - that an awful lot of the unbelievable fall in the standards of living of so many has come from a number of factors: Over consumption to start with (buying on credit means you don't 'own' the thing); fall in income may be related to lack of desire to improve your lot in life (as a nation rises up the food chain you MUST be better educated to succeed); and other out of control things that can happen (an uncovered large medical expense can EASILY bankrupt you).
Unfortunately, medical expsnses ae one of those things that we have little control over. I would like to know, however, how much of the percentage of cost of health insurance and health care comes from things like medications that are to correct problems that lifestyle changes could cure, or whether in other countries folks simply 'live with it.' (Irritable bowel syndrome, for example, can be a misdiagnosis of celiac sprue, Crohn's disease, or sedentary habits, but large numbers of expensive medications are sold to 'cure' it).
Nothing is easy, nothing is free....tanstaafl!
Nate
