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).
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
I keep hearing stories from my friends about recent college graduates who have gotten good jobs.
None of them majored in liberal arts, however.
I couldn’t wait to get away from my parents. I can’t beleive what wuzzies these kids are today.
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.
The non-shirkers I know who had trouble finding work, enlisted.
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.
OK, I am not liking this mocking of family helping each other.
I feel that families should, when they can, help their good kids who get stuck in economic hard times. I am not talking of pot-smoking freeloaders, but hardworking, good people who get laid off.
I believe family should help first, not government. Am I weird????
That’s ok, because when I’m retired and my kids are making the big bucks, we’re moving in with them.
It is only fair, we have given them 80+ years of incremental socialism and corporate dominance over small and medium business!
Plus, we expect them and their kids and their kids kids to pay for our way of life now, so hey.
Out here in the fields,i fight for my meals.I dont need to be forgiven.
As long as I’m wanted at home, I’ll stay there. I’m not going to spend unnecessary money on an apartment in the middle of a total economic collapse, especially when I still need to get another degree.
Of course there are some 20 somethings who live at home and never work...well...they suck.