Posted on 07/27/2010 3:37:53 PM PDT by george76
More 20-somethings are moving back home with Mom and Dad -- and happily accepting financial assistance.
So pronounced is the trend -- many parents, on average, are giving their 20-somethings 10 percent of their combined income ...
Look, 20-somethings, it's only partly your fault that the economy is still a mess -- most of you voted for you know who -- but it isn't your fault that you lack the skills to deal with it.
Your generation has been coddled like no other generation before it -- never has any generation been given so much for doing so little -- and that is your parents' fault.
It's payback time.
Your father will complain to your mother -- eventually they'll get into loud arguments over the matter -- but if you hold steady, you'll likely keep living at home for free.
States that overpromised and overspent during the good times expect the federal government to bail them out during the bad times.
Our federal government is spending nearly twice as much as it takes in and expects future taxpayers to bail it out.
Heck, nobody is terribly interested in carrying his own load today -- lots of folks are carrying on like 20-somethings who are mooching off Mom and Dad.
Hey, a great recession like this comes along once in a lifetime. Don't let it pass without free drinks from Dad's liquor cabinet.
(Excerpt) Read more at jewishworldreview.com ...
Waitwaitwait...I thought us baby boomers were the spoilt generation that ruined the world.
Let’s share some of the blame on the govt regs and taxes that have crushed businesses, esp small ones, wiped out a lot of entry level opportunities, scared big businesses into stockpiling cash to cope, and taxed productive people - even 20 somethings - to poverty.
That said, most 20 somethings bought into the Hopey Changy garbage, so I just can’t feel too bad for them. And their parents obviously didn’t educate them about reality, so they’re not blameless, either (although at least some probably tried).
We ain't seen nothin' yet!
What a crok of crap. If the parents are dumb enough to fall for it and/or did such a poor job “raising” the kid, who is really at fault?
GMAFB
Hear, hear. Entry level opportunities are thin, and those that are there usually require significant pull (connections) to acquire.
My 23 year-old college graduate step-daughter is living in my home. But she's working...for $10 an hour in beginning-level retail. It'll take a bit of a boost in that to get her into her own apartment, but at least she's on the way.
I keep hearing stories from my friends about recent college graduates who have gotten good jobs.
None of them majored in liberal arts, however.
Yeh but we had decent influences from our post WW2 parents and adults. Kids today and their prodigy have been raised by those baby boomers---quite a dicey difference!
Meet the Greedy Grandparents
Why America’s elderly are so spoiled.
By Steve Chapman
When Social Security was founded, offering a federal pension at age 65, most of the people born 65 years earlier couldn’t take advantage of it. They were dead. For the lucky ones who lived long enough to collect, the new pension system, founded in 1935, was meant as a modest support in the brief span before they passed on to glory. No more. Since then, life expectancy at birth in America has increased to more than 77 years. For the majority of people, that means lots of time being supported by the government. A working life is now just a tedious interregnum between two long periods of comfortable dependence.
America’s elderly have never had it so good. They enjoy better health than any previous generation of old people, high incomes and ample assets, access to a host of medical treatments that not only keep them alive but let them enjoy their extra years, and a riotous multitude of ways to spoil their grandchildren. Still they are not content. From gratefully accepting a basic level of assistance back in the early decades of Social Security, America’s elderly have come to expect everything their durable little hearts desire.
They often get their way, as they did recently when years of complaints finally induced Congress and the president to agree to bear much of the cost of their prescription drugs. From the tenor of the debate, you would think these medications were a terrible burden inflicted by an uncaring fate. In fact, past generations of old people didn’t have to make room in their budgets for pharmaceuticals because there weren’t many to buy. If you suffered from high cholesterol, chronic heartburn, or depression, you were left to primitive remedies, or none. Today, there are pills and potions for just about any complaint—except the chronic complaint that many of them are pricey. It’s not enough to be blessed with medical miracles. Modern seniors also want them cheap, if not free.
That’s on top of everything else they get. Retirement benefits used to be just one of the federal government’s many maternal functions. But in recent years, the federal government has begun to look like an appendage of Social Security. In 2000, 35 percent of all federal spending dollars went to Social Security and Medicare. By 2040, barring an increase in total federal outlays, they’ll account for more than 60 percent of the budget. And that’s before you add in the prescription drug benefit. Most of the projected growth is due to rising health-care costs, not to the aging of the population, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Retirees eyeing this bounty feel no pangs of guilt, thanks to their unshakable conviction that they earned every dime by sweat and toil. In fact, economists Laurence Kotlikoff and Jagadeesh Gokhale say that a typical man reaching age 65 today will get a net windfall of more than $70,000 over his remaining years. A luckless 25-year-old, by contrast, can count on paying $322,000 more in payroll taxes than he will ever get back in benefits.
Why do we keep indulging the grizzled ones? The most obvious reason is that they are so tireless and well-organized in demanding alms. No politician ever lost an election because he was too generous to little old ladies. A lot of people are suckered by the image of financially strapped seniors, even though the poverty rate among those 65 and over has been lower than that for the population as a whole since 1974. But it’s not just the interests of old coots that are being served here. Young and middle-aged adults tend to look kindly upon lavish federal generosity to Grandma because it means she won’t be hitting them up for help. Paying taxes may be onerous, but it’s nothing compared to the cost, financial and otherwise, of adding a mother-in-law suite to the house. Working-age folks also assume that whatever they bestow upon today’s seniors will be likewise bestowed on them, and in the not too distant future. It’s not really fair to blame the greatest generation for this extravagance. They are guilty, but they have an accomplice.
It’s surely no coincidence that the new drug benefit is being enacted just as the first baby boomers are nearing retirement age. Nor can it be forgotten that the organization formerly known as the American Association of Retired Persons—it’s now just AARP—has lately broadened its membership to include all the boomers it can get its wrinkled hands on. AARP, to the surprise of many, endorsed the plan. And what a surprise it is that the prescription drug program, which will cost some $400 billion over the next 10 years, could balloon to $2 trillion in the 10 years following that—when guess-who will be collecting. You would expect taxpayers in their peak earning years to recoil in horror from a program that will vastly increase Washington’s fiscal obligations for decades to come. In fact, they—make that we—can see that the time to lock in a prosperous old age is now, before twentysomethings know what’s hit them.
Boomers have gotten our way ever since we arrived in this world, and the onset of gray hair, bifocals, and arthritis is not going to moderate our unswerving self-indulgence We are the same people, after all, who forced the lowering of the drinking age when we were young, so we could drink, and forced it back up when we got older, so our kids couldn’t. On top of that, we’re used to the best of everything, and plenty of it. We weren’t dubbed the Me Generation because we neglect our own needs, Junior. If politicians think the current geezers are greedy, they ain’t seen nothin’ yet.......”
My son graduated in May, landed a job in town before he graduated and is living at home while he builds up his savings a little. He really doesn’t start making real money for probably another month when his training is complete. He’s not in debt except for a small amount to his university and a small student loan. Besides, he mows the lawn and does other jobs around the house. His plan is to be out by next summer. I see nothing wrong with kids returning home upon graduation until they get on their feet. Besides, I enjoy his company.
I couldn’t wait to get away from my parents. I can’t beleive what wuzzies these kids are today.
Sorry Dude. I’m not filing in with your ‘Baby Boomer’ BS. I never voted for any of this crap.
I had to work to live since I was 14, now over 50. The best culprits were the Greatest Generation that loved the newly elected Boomers with their handouts. They voted this system in wholeheartedly! Can you say Democrats?
How is it that a 70 year old gets more money from SS than they ever got paid monthly in their entire lifetime?
This is the new and growing epidemic of the over educated and unemployed with instant unemployment degrees.
Neighbors across the street have had their daughter, SIL and grand child for over a year. He works and is paid well, but their daughter wants a premium home in the wine country on a blue collar income. The couples’s failure to launch son age 34-36 just finished another instant unemployment degree at UC Davis and has zero job opportunities.
Two other homes on our cul de sac are being refitted to handle adult children with young kids.
We had dinner with 3 couples this past Saturday. All 3 couples have move back in adult kids or failures to launch. One couple has a 40 something daughter, SIL and two grandkids at home for over a year and last week told another daughter, no room at the family inn. This couple is in their 80’s living off SS, small pensions and rapidly diminishing IRA’S.
Another couple’s daughter is back home with her future husband. She has 2 instant unemployment degrees, he has one, and both plan to work on master degrees in the instant unemployment areas where their degrees are. Their daughter has turned into the Queen of Bridezillas, and she expands the upcoming wedding costs on a daily/weekly basis.
The other couple has a failure to launch daughter, who is supposedly working with her dad. She is 24 and has never had a job with anybody besides her Dad.
Our sons and other younger relatives tell us about similiar unemployment situtations with people they know. In these groups, the liberals blame Bush, Cheney and Fox news. Most have worthless degrees and had jobs where they could fake it until the meltdown happened. Now, they are living at home with parents or in laws or headed that way. The independents in these groups are very bitter re Obama, Pelosi, Reid and the left wing congress.
My two sons (30,28 years old), had to move back with in becasue they simply could not replace the income they were making after their companies shut down last year.
Both are working in fast food and pay me rent. 25% of their income, which currently ain't much.
Both are looking for better paying jobs in their respective fields, but in Florida, it's been real, real tough.
Yeah, you're right, I'm at fault / S
Love this phrase.
I had a great job in the days before Obama. Then the economy tanked, my project got cancelled and I got laid off. Since then I’ve been working for myself. Haven’t collected a penny of unemployment. I didn’t vote for Obama, and yet I’m one of these ‘spoiled’ 20 year olds? I’m happy if my income reaches 5k a year.
I’d wager most of you boomers made that much in 1960.
What is a SIL?
I’m with you about not being able to wait to get out of the “nest”. I see it as an embarrassment not being able to sustain one’s self at 20+ years of age. I have to agree with the author on this piece. It is definitely a generational problem. I was in my twenty’s in the 80’s and I worked as many jobs as necessary to live on my own. I was taught that was what one did in order to become an adult. I see firsthand what the adults in my generation have done and are doing to their adult offspring. The youth will never learn responsibility as long as someone else is willing to foot the bills. These parents are retarding the growth of their “kids” by not cutting the financial apron strings. The folks I see in their mid to late 20’s seem much more immature than those of us when we were their age. I believe it is directly caused by over-indulgence and parental guilt.
The non-shirkers I know who had trouble finding work, enlisted.
SIL=sister-in-law
I think.
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