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 ...
They keep voting for Roosevelt!
I wonder as a side effect all these people living under one roof will have on the housing industry?
July 22, 2010
Social Security Staggers Toward Collapse
Posted by Van Helsing at July 22, 2010 10:02 AM
Liberals often point to Social Security as the definitive accomplishment of collectivism in America. Sure it required their idol Franklin Roosevelt to set himself up as a dictator and steamroll over the Constitution, but it was worth it to guarantee that no one needs to take responsibility for their own retirement plans.
Few realize just how much money the government steals from them on behalf of this program, because employers match employee contributions, which are expropriated from your paycheck before you even see the money. This means that if you’re self-employed like yours truly, you have to pay twice as much. Four times a year I am forced to send a big fat check to Washington. Social Security takes up more space in my budget than discretionary spending. What will I get for the money? According to Gallup, most people agree that the answer is nothing:
Six in 10 Americans who have not yet retired believe they will get no Social Security benefits when they retire, more pessimistic than at any time since Gallup began asking this question in 1989. Similarly, retired Americans are now significantly more likely than they were five years ago to believe their existing Social Security benefits will eventually be cut.
Meanwhile, the government allows illegal aliens to collect Social Security, even for jobs obtained through false or stolen documents.
How long will Social Security stay solvent? It’s hard to say, when our rulers won’t let us know how bad its finances have gotten....”
I’d wager most of you boomers made that much in 1960.
Woulda been hard to do...I'm a leading edge boomer...was in high school and summer work in the fields just didn't quite pay that much.
IIRC, my step-dad only made $3600 that year and with 6 kids in the house, nobody got spoiled.
My own kids, 42 and 38, didn't get to be spoiled either...they wanted extra, they went to work.
Want a car? Fine, get a job; want the latest gadget? fine, work more hours.
The only thing I "gave" them was college and $50 a month spending money; anything extra, fine, get a part time job "and your grades better not suffer".
They "launched" just fine.
I agree with you. I can only speak to my experience as a parent and admittedly an over-indulging one with the first child. I wanted to do things differently than my parents and not make my child work as hard as I had to and to experience the failures I did. HUGE MISTAKE! My parents had it correct and did it correctly. I was the one who didn’t follow their examples and thus produced one of those failure to launch sons (love that phrase). I had my come to Jesus moment after he flunked out of college (intentionally) and thought he’d lay around doing nothing because he thought finding a job consisted of browsing the internet. I gave him three months and gave him a contract that he had to sign if he wanted to continue to live in our home. If at anytime he failed to meet his obligations he would be given 48 hrs to leave. Of course he couldn’t meet them. A year later, I’m not sure if he’s pulled himself together but it is his life to have and to find.
To my dad (who is now 70)...you had it right and thank you for making my life not easy. Your other grandkids are not too happy with you since we’ve decided to more closely follow your lead:)
You sound like my dad:) You and many others your age did it correctly. It is many in my generation (not all of those in my generation)that spoiled our kids. For those who do have successful older teenagers and young adults, you are to be applauded and realize that you are the minority...but job well done all the same
<I keep hearing stories from my friends about recent college graduates who have gotten good jobs.
<None of them majored in liberal arts, however.
Yup. I teach in a grad program. Students can wind up serving in a variety of organizational types, from the wretchedly poor nonprofit to Fortune 100 corporations.
I have to bang these ‘kids’ (some are married w/kids of their own) over the head to get them to understand that companies are not evil and that living in poverty the rest of your life should not be the prize for 2 years in grad school.
I guess it’s no surprise that the males in the field end up in the higher paying and management-oriented jobs while a good number of the women wind up getting the lowest paying jobs. I’m female myself and want to smack some of these women sometimes.
So I wasn’t far off.
Look I know life sucked for the Boomers. You guys had the longest boom and you still have the nerve to whine about us.
Look, Obama’s one of you guys. So was Bush, so was Clinton.
How about you quite riding us, and take a look in the mirror?
I haven’t had a decent paying job since I got laid off of the one I held for 17 years. I still getr by but only because I saved and earned enough when I had the good job to subsidize what I’m doing today or else I’d probably be living on the edge of the poverty line. My kids aren’t going to get the opportunity of that 17-year head start, those kinds of jobs are probably gone forever. My daughter is out of school now, underemployed and working multiple jobs to get by. My son still has his youthful optimism, he’s in summer school right now so he can graduate a sememster early and get a head start on his fellow classmates. He’s a go-getter and I think he’ll be fine but if he can’t make it I’ll help him until he can. He picked a bad time to grow up, maybe not as bad as the kids who turned 21 in 1940 but a lot worse than I had it.
“The only thing I “gave” them was college and $50 a month spending money; anything extra, fine, get a part time job “and your grades better not suffer”.”
I didn’t even get that. Paid my way through work and scholarships over 8 years of school.
Again, how are we all spoiled?
Well, I was 4 years old in 1960, so I didn’t get up to 5K. Didn’t even have a lemonaid stand until 1965. I don’t think 20-year olds now are much different than I was in the 70’s. It’s just that the economy is much worse and the prices of things like rent (for a decent place in safe part of a city) and transportation are relatively higher than even in the Carter days. It’s not such a bad deal if kids need to live at home for awhile while they’re working themselves up the ladder.
No, there’s nothing wrong with it at all...I remember I did it for 2 months after grad school in 1980. Jobs were easier to find then, even in a Carter economy. Most 20-somethings abhor the idea living with the parents and want nothing more than to have their own place. And that’s a good thing.
Thank you. I don’t think there’s any difference between boomers and us at all.
Some boomers just love to regale us of tales of how they walked uphill both ways in the snow. Look we get it. We are failures if we can’t find work or support ourselves.
Please don’t think we are implying parents shouldn’t lend a helping hand. There’s a pretty healthy distinction between over-indulgence and general assistance during tough economic times. The article mentions “kids” who are still living high on the hog while those providing basic necessities are scaling back. These so called “kids” need to learn how to live within one’s means when finances are limited. This is an opportune time to teach these young adults how to be...adults. Thorough financial 101 lessons begin with the word “NO”.
You are quite wrong when you say Obama like the rest of us. We are trying to articulate the differences in upbringing to you. Obama himself was an overly indulged academic. He has never had a “real” job. He has never had to struggle with a few jobs to make ends meet. WISDOM comes from overcoming obstacles and hard times. This is why Obama is such a dreadful example of the times we have before us. He has never had to experience what most of us have. I feel most fortunate to have had my life experiences because I know I can support myself in the toughest of times. I wouldn’t have had it any other way.
(Thanks, Mom! for not allowing any excuses and making me self-sufficient.)
Grab a hammer, learn a trade. Look around the neighborhood and see who needs a paint job, a new roof, who has a half-assed yard you could work on. Learn to tear apart a friggen lawnmower engine apart and put it back together. Do something instead of whining and signifying.
Things have been good for a long time now, apparently longer than your lifetime.
In 1960, the oldest Boomers were 15/16 yo and 5 grand was what their working class dads were making.
How about you kiss my ass and get a real job, like the military or the oil/gas patch. I worked 99 hours last week on the deck of a swabbing rig, sun-up to sun-down....I'll be 50 this year. Your incessant boo-hooing is getting very old....
The bottom line is that the US is fundamentally, economically different from it was a generation or two ago. The great change began in earnest during the double digit inflation of the Jimmy Carter years, then continued and expanded, but in a different way, during the Ronald Reagan years.
While income eventually catches up with *overall* inflation, after about a 10 year lag, it doesn’t ever catch up with those areas with a much higher rate of inflation, which often do not even count into the official level.
For example, since the 1960s, college tuition inflation has consistently been 3% higher, per year, than the overall inflation rate. Health care, at least 2-4% higher, per year.
For example, adjusted for inflation, having a baby in a hospital in 1960 cost about $900 (actual price $130). By 2008 that had risen to $5,275. An almost 600% increase over overall inflation.
Buying a house in 1960, adjusted for inflation, would cost about $91,000 today (actual price $12,700). By 2008, the average cost of a new home nationwide was about $300,000. Over 300% greater than overall inflation.
Yet wages track not too far away from overall inflation.
Add to this the availability of substantial debt, in things such as college tuition. While corporations don’t really care about a degree compared to competency, the federal courts have ruled that for them to hire based on written tests is discriminatory, so they must rely on applicants having a college diploma.
This was a gift to the universities, a license to steal. Or really, to raise tuition to nonsensical levels, with graduates being so deeply indebted for decades that they had to forestall marriage and children. And home ownership. And just about any degree of prosperity. And no retirement.
It’s about enough to make people want to live with their relatively prosperous, retired parents. While they can’t marry or have children, to ruin their lives, and they have to be unpaid servants to their parents, at least they will not starve nor be homeless.
Hey, not starving or being homeless is the new AMERICAN DREAM.
Thank you, federal government, for screwing it all up for us.
I don’t recall anyone saying you ALL were spoiled. We are simply calling the obvious of a select few. Those of us with the life experiences have the wisdom to know the difference. You really shouldn’t be so hyper-sensitive, especially if you clearly don’t belong in the group we are referring to. Some of us are clearly making the admonition of our failures. This could be a learning moment for you if you are willing to be objective and observant. Those two traits are what most of us parents are praying for daily.
Welcome to FR BTW.
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