I wouldnt confuse Kalifornistan with reality.
And I wouldn't confuse a credit bubble with wealth.
Posted on 08/02/2005 8:54:52 AM PDT by MinorityRepublican
But GovernmentShrinker had it right. We knew no "career" was going to be forth coming, the college was UC Santa Cruz, and the education was mostly liberal mush. To be sure this young guy did not even try to find a job in this field, and what he felt trained for was "camera man". As has been posted, one can take a college education for a purpose, or fall into a purpose later with a good liberal arts background, but if one does not apply some effort the result is you had a nice party. As also stated he is working and not returning to the fold. And he does have a small advantge over applicants for any position who only have a high school degree. True?
Part of the problem is that many parents nowadays want to be a "friend" to be their children.
I finished a year of graduate school in pathogenic bacteriology. During that year, I resumed an interest in electronics and earned an Advanced Class ham license and a First Class Radiotelephone license with Ships RADAR endorsement. That improved my income from $2.45/hour plus commissions at Radio Shack to a whopping $4.75/hour. I even had to join IBEW Local 569 for the pleasure of working in the shipyard. The marine electronics work provided good "hands on" hardware design and troubleshooting skills that have served me well in engineering large computer systems.
It wasn't until 1980 that I took a job at PacBell where my degree had any influence on being hired into a first level management position. I started at $19,000/year as a toll equipment engineer. Pencil pushing, job estimating and supervising installations by Western Electric. After 3 years of that dreck, I moved to the IT side of the house. I was finally able to leverage my skills as a UNIX systems programmer. Kernel and device driver development. My income tripled by 1991. Working 14 hour days X 7 days a week had some influence too.
I don't know anything about USC, and little about NYU's film-making program. However, I briefly attended NYU (over 20 years ago), and knew a number of students who were in the drama program there (my roommate was in that program). Virtually all of them had significant professional experience, even the ones who were arriving straight from high school. A few had had significant roles in major films and Broadway shows, most had had minor roles in such productions, and others, like my roommate, had more offbeat but still "professional" experience.
My roommate had been one of the on-field "mascot" performers for a major league sports team for the last 3 years of high school, earning pretty serious money dressed up as some silly animal, doing comical routines at the games, and also doing a lot of off-site PR appearances. Hardly "serious acting", but definitely paid acting, and demonstrating long-term professional reliability to show up and perform energetically whenever and wherever she was supposed to.
But other than the students who arrived with major film or Broadway credits, I never heard of any of them again, and assume they didn't end up with significant acting careers. Technical skill-oriented film-making is a less shaky career path than acting, but there are still massive numbers of young adults trying to "make it" in the field, and most haven't the faintest hope of a career in it, even if they get a film-making degree from any but the top handful of programs. Most will end up wishing they'd studied something else, after they discover that their "career in film-making" consists of long hours at low pay, doing uninspiring things like re-shooting a toothpaste ad for the third time, because the ad agency didn't like the way the lights bounced off the teeth of the "actress" on the first two tries.
That is very true. When hiring for my department - for positions that require working with numbers and no small amount of customer service - I give heavy preference to people with degrees. I have a gal with a degree in communications and a guy with a degree in English Lit. They are my best workers; the most independent of the bunch. The one's without degrees are clock in/clock out types.
President Bush should make another round of tax cuts before his term is done. It should include that provision like you mentioned.
After President Bush's term expires in 2009, it may be a while before we have another President like him.
I'm 58. I bought my first home for $19,500, after renting it for 6 months while I came up with the $1000 down.
How can anyone, starting out, come up with the real funds to get an honest loan? And then be able to afford a $500K home. The property taxes in California, alone, are $5000 a year.
What I am complaining about are the people that buy, not to live in, but to resell for twice the price. To me, it's grand theft.
It just an example of how the dollar has crashed in value. Pennies are going to be eliminated soon, or should be. You cannot buy anything for a penny anymore.
Families are getting back together, just to survive. Maybe it's a good thing.
A house can easily rent between 1,000- 3,000 dollars all over California. In almost any town.
3 years ago a house could be bought in a number of places for under 100,000 dollars at 5-6% interest. On a 30 year that comes out to about 600-700 dollars per month. These same houses easily rent for 800-950.
6% do you not understand what that means?
With what kind of jobs?...that pay what?...Are we all supposed to be computer software engineers?...I got news for you baby, they are losing their jobs too to cheap foreign peons who will work for nothing....
Just to survive? The people I see "surviving" around me drive $40K SUVs and live in $500K houses. And I live in a blue-collar area in Vegas!
Things are not as dire as you claim. The fact is, kids want too much too soon. I'm in my low-30s, and I just started making a "good living." Before that, though, I always made enough to survive (and to support my wife and 3 kids). We drove old cars and we still live in a small house. But we did it on our own, and we now have the financial discipline to survive many ups and downs.
Yes however, some industries grew overall throughout that time. In spite of the inflation, career growth was good for most. The real boom for the Boomers was during the 1980s. As the WW2 generation retired, there were not enough of the Silent Generation (the first "Baby Bust") to fill the slots. Ergo, Boomers got promoted way over their heads.
Asuming the ladders are still here and not in India! LOL ...
Anyone starting out right now should relocate to a place where they can afford to buy any real estate that will appreciate. You should never plan it your residence appreciating, but it is a nice consequence if it happens. You are still parking your money in real estate and getting a deduction for mortgage interest and state property tax. That beats the heck out of pouring money into rent and getting nothing back.
I'm finished with life in California for a long list of reasons. Even as a native born Californian, it no longer feels like home. My #2 son makes a good living in real estate. He speaks fluent Spanish and closes almost 100 homes sales each year. Not bad for a 22 year old. He's off the the Marines for the next couple weeks, then will return to finish his BA in business and sit for his real estate broker's license exam. He's done the whole thing on his own nickel since age 18.
Here's an update: those foreign peons aren't delivering the goods. The work has been coming back as businesses leap on cheap labor only to discover they are incompetent, sloppy and deliver poor quality. There is lots of work that can't be outsourced because it is classified. I'm not worried in the least. The only that that is really succeeding is the low end work that could be handled by high school dropouts.
I wouldnt confuse Kalifornistan with reality.
And I wouldn't confuse a credit bubble with wealth.
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