Who's "we"?
Posted on 11/17/2014 11:28:21 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Do you want to know why Millennials seem so angry? We promised them that if they worked hard, stayed out of trouble and got good grades that they would be able to achieve the "American Dream". We told them not to worry about accumulating very high levels of student loan debt because there would be good jobs waiting for them at the end of the rainbow once they graduated. Well, it turns out that we lied to them. Nearly half of all Millennials are spending at least half of their paychecks to pay off debt, more than 30 percent of them are living with their parents because they can't find decent jobs, and this year the homeownership rate for Millennials sunk to a brand new all-time low. When you break U.S. adults down by age, our long-term economic decline has hit the Millennials the hardest by far. And yet somehow we expect them to bear the burden of providing Medicare, Social Security and other social welfare benefits to the rest of us as we get older. No wonder there is so much anger and frustration among our young people. The following are 24 reasons why Millennials are screaming mad about our unfair economy...
#1 The current savings rate for Millennials is negative 2 percent. Yes, you read that correctly. Not only aren't Millennials saving any money, they are actually spending a good bit more than they are earning every month.
#2 A survey conducted earlier this year found that 47 percent of all Millennials are using at least half of their paychecks to pay off debt.
#3 For U.S. households that are headed up by someone under the age of 40, average wealth is still about 30 percent below where it was back in 2007.
#4 In 2005, the homeownership rate for U.S. households headed up by someone under the age of 35 was approximately 43 percent. Today, it is sitting at about 36 percent.
#5 One recent survey discovered that an astounding 31.1 percent of all U.S. adults in the 18 to 34-year-old age bracket are currently living with their parents.
#6 At this point, the top 0.1 percent of all Americans have about as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent of all Americans combined. Needless to say, there aren't very many Millennials in that top 0.1 percent.
#7 Since Barack Obama has been in the White House, close to 40 percent of all 27-year-olds have spent at least some time unemployed.
#8 Only about one out of every five 27-year-olds owns a home at this point, and an astounding 80 percent of all 27-year-olds are paying off debt.
#9 In 2013, the ratio of what men in the 18 to 29-year-old age bracket were earning compared to what the general population was earning reached an all-time low.
#10 Back in the year 2000, 80 percent of all men in their late twenties had a full-time job. Today, only 65 percent do.
#11 In 2012, one study found that U.S. families that have a head of household that is under the age of 30 have a poverty rate of 37 percent.
#12 Another study released back in 2011 discovered that U.S. households led by someone 65 years of age or older are 47 times wealthier than U.S. households led by someone 35 years of age or younger.
#13 Half of all college graduates in America are still financially dependent on their parents when they are two years out of college.
#14 In 1994, less than half of all college graduates left school with student loan debt. Today, it is over 70 percent.
#15 At this point, student loan debt has hit a grand total of 1.2 trillion dollars in the United States. That number has grown by about 84 percent just since 2008.
#16 According to the Pew Research Center, nearly four out of every ten U.S. households that are led by someone under the age of 40 are currently paying off student loan debt.
#17 In 2008, approximately 29 million Americans were paying off student loan debt. Today, that number has ballooned to 40 million.
#18 Since 2005, student loan debt burdens have absolutely exploded while salaries for young college graduates have actually declined…
The problem developing is that earnings and debt aren’t moving in the same direction. From 2005 to 2012, average student loan debt has jumped 35%, adjusting for inflation, while the median salary has actually dropped by 2.2%.
#19 According to CNN, 260,000 Americans with a college or professional degree made at or below the federal minimum wage last year.
#20 Even after accounting for inflation, the cost of college tuition increased by 275 percent between 1970 and 2013.
#21 In the years to come, much of the burden of paying for Medicare for our aging population will fall on Millennials. It is being projected that the number of Americans on Medicare will grow from 50.7 million in 2012 to 73.2 million in 2025. In addition, it has been estimated that Medicare is facing unfunded liabilities of more than 38 trillion dollars over the next 75 years. That comes to approximately $328,404 for every single household in the United States.
#22 In the years to come, much of the burden of paying for our exploding Medicaid system will fall on Millennials. Today, more than 70 million Americans are on Medicaid, and it is being projected that Obamacare will add 16 million more Americans to the Medicaid rolls.
#23 In the years to come, much of the burden of paying for our massive Ponzi scheme known as Social Security will fall on Millennials. Right now, there are more than 63 million Americans collecting Social Security benefits. By 2035, that number is projected to soar to an astounding 91 million. In 1945, there were 42 workers for every retiree receiving Social Security benefits. Today, that number has fallen to 2.5 workers, and if you eliminate all government workers, that leaves only 1.6 private sector workers for every retiree receiving Social Security benefits.
#24 Our national debt is currently sitting at a grand total of $17,937,617,036,693.09. It is on pace to roughly double during the Obama years, and Millennials are expected to service that debt for the rest of their lives.
Yes, there are certainly some Millennials that are flat broke because they are lazy and irresponsible.
But there are many others that have tried to do everything right and still find that they can't get any breaks. For example, Bloomberg recently shared the story of a young couple named Jason and Jessica Alinen...
The damage inflicted on U.S. households by the collapse of the housing market and recession wasn’t evenly distributed. Just ask Jason and Jessica Alinen.
The couple, who live near Seattle, declared bankruptcy in 2011 when the value of the house they then owned plunged to less than $200,000 from the $349,000 they paid for it four years earlier, just as the economic slump was about to start. Jason even stopped getting haircuts to save money.
“We thought we’d have a white picket fence, two kids, two dogs, and we’d have $100,000 in equity,” said Jason, 33, who does have two children. “It’s just really frustrating.”
Can you identify with them?
Most young Americans just want to work hard, buy a home and start a family.
But for millions of them, that dream might as well be a million miles away right now.
Unfortunately, most of them have absolutely no idea why this has happened.
Many of them end up blaming themselves. Many of them think that they are not talented enough or that they didn't work hard enough or that they don't know the right people.
What they don't know is that the truth is that decades of incredibly foolish decisions are starting to catch up with us in a major way, and they just happen to be caught in the crossfire.
Sadly, instead of becoming informed about what is happening to our country, a very large percentage of our young people are absolutely addicted to entertainment instead.
Below, I want to share with you a video that I recently came across. You can find it on YouTube right here. A student at Texas Tech University recently asked some of her classmates a series of questions. When they were asked about Brad Pitt or Jersey Shore they knew the answers right away. But when they were asked who won the Civil War or who the current Vice-President of the United States is, they deeply struggled. I think that this video says a lot about where we are as a society today...
MORONS every one.
“’Fair’ is a place you go to ride ponies and eat cotton candy”
-my dad
I hear the word “fair”, I hide my wallet.
I’m a volunteer EMT in a wealthy town, and many of my patients are from a very expensive assisted living complex.
Many of them have high school degrees only, and still managed to be very financially successful.
Credentialism and outsourcing. If the job still exists in this country, it’s not enough to be smart and willing to learn on the job - you’re supposed to jump through some costly hoops to prove you’re smart, and the companies still don’t want to train you - they’d rather say they can’t find you and prove they need Ramesh from Mumbai.
ROTFL I've been quoting that for years (the one I remember ended with "What you mean 'we', paleface?"). Thanks for linking to the cartoon!
If they hadn’t voted Obama into office twice, I might be able to muster some sympathy for them. They inflicted their ignorance on us all.
I agree TOTALLY with the last statement, that today’s young people are really addicted to games, TV shows, facebook, entertaining themselves to death, etc. They do not pay attention to what is going on or who is doing it. Not to mention that THIS particular group is the feelly-touchy group that falls for the social media lies, attend the same kind of church, if they go at all, and blame those trying to rectify the damage instead of the perpetrators! I do feel bad for them, and my own kids are in that group financially to some extent, even though older, because the job market has been terrible since the 90s for some careers. The problem is that they’ll likely rebel, putting the Marxists right back in because they don’t know the difference.
Liberals LOVE to remind everybody about the one good thing that they give President Eisenhower credit for, his farewell address that included the criticism of the developing “Military-Industrial Complex” and its bad possible outcome(s).
Today we need to have another such speech, although I have no thought that it would come from our next departing President, but this time on the ill effects of the “Government-Education Complex!” Consider that with the Department of Education, children are in the eye of government apparatchiks from pre-K through College. Add to this the fact that the Obama Administration has taken over the Student Loan operations and makes specific tax treatments for individuals going to school, education institutions, labor unions and others. In short, the intrusion of the FEDERAL Government is one of the most massive shifts ever given that there is no mention of Education in the powers given to the government by that dread document, the US Constitution.
More fodder for my theory that an Economic Populist Demagogue is going to walk away with the next election.
It was liberals who sold the lie that you can’t get ahead in America without a college education. It was liberals who destroyed the education system to the point that students need to go to college just to get a high school education. It was liberals who made it ridiculously easy to rack up astronomical student loans, and impossible to discharge them in bankruptcy, creating a generation of debt slaves. It was liberals who run the universities and benefited from unlimited money pumped into them. But they keep voting for liberals.
Not always. There are many small towns and some big cities where people move away and never come back. The security is not that the house will necessarily be worth more than you paid for it, but hopefully by the time you retire it will be paid off, freeing you from mortgage/rent payment in retirement.
That’s obvious eveywhere but FR, although I do appreciate some sanity here every now and again. Not that it will do any good.
Many of my co-workers are in this age group ... thinking, thinking, thinking ... out of about 10 that I know personally, not everyone in the plant, only one 30-something owns a home.
Partly because his wife has a really good job that makes up for our McJobs at the appliance factory.
Since the recession, some of the factories that paid over $20 per hour relocated ... when they came back or re-opened they offered people $12 per hour instead.
It doesn’t seem right to bust your hump all day on an assembly line and still have to depend on food stamps.
(I’m not in that age group — we own our home and it’s almost paid for. But I’m a little worried for my kids.)
If it makes you feel any better I learned early. My parents were Democrats and they loved Obama and meth. We had social workers in the house all the time and my father ended up dying in prison and my mom struggles to stay clean. I never wanted to be like that and I needed something more in my life. Around the same time I found Free Republic I found my husband and his family and not long after that I started to find Christ.
I can tell you from my group of friends that I’m not the only person in my 20’s who has rejected the empty promises of leftism and who want to see an America that more closely resembles the ‘city on a hill’ that our Founders wanted it to be.
If anything, I think my generation will end up being more conservative than even the Reagan generation.
God bless you and thank you for everything you do!
- Megan
Can’t believe I’ve never heard that one before. Excellent.
Thank you very much, Megan. God bless.
I’m mad because I read Atlas Shrugged and I’m seeing it happening now, only there’s no Atlantis to disappear to.
Soooo, what’s your point? Millennials in the top 0.1 percent? Who the hell cares! Debt? So what! They need to stop the damn crying, buckle down, and make smarter moves. ADAPT you fools!!
Globalism is a race to the bottom of the WORLD and that is as low as human life can go. The more success globalists have, the more suffering and poverty Americans will have.
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