What If There Are No Adults?

AlbertMohler.Com ^ | Aug 19, 2005 | Albert Mohler

[BureaucratusMaximus]

You were expecting maybe, Humphery Bogart??????

A society that can't produce a Bogart or a John Wayne is pretty close to doomed.

Oh they're out there...they're just not on TV.

[Smokin' Joe]

Mine starts at 14, mainly because all the farm work was paid in cash.

I remember getting paid a "WHOLE DOLLAR" for working a day in the tobacco fields dropping sticks as a kid (I think I was 5 or 6).

I had it spent five times in my mind before I got home riding my bicycle. (8^D)

[thoughtomator]

Don't you know it. Most of my post-tax income goes directly to savings awaiting the day when housing prices come back to reality.

[sandbar]

Hope I die before I get old, talkin bout my generation...

[thoughtomator]

To take that one step further, why grow up when you can sponge off both your elders and your children and your childrens' children?

[WVNan]

I think you are right Joe. I see disaster coming down the pike. I'm going to hold on to our home since it's nearly paid for, because our youngest has just signed the dotted line for $110,000 for a house that I don't think they can afford. If things get as bad as I think they will, I don't want my grandchild out on the street. They will not know I'm doing that, because they have to sink or swim on their own. But you can see the WWII generation in my thinking. Don't want my kids to have it as hard as I did. Yet, it was that very difficulty that molded me into a person who can survive under the most extreme circumstances.

My Boomer children were raised with strict discipline. My daughter went to college at age 16. She went on a partial scholarship that she earned in HS. We paid zero on her college. She worked two jobs and it took her 5 years, but she did it herself. But she still turned out to be a liberal. Ha. I think it's because she was in that college environment too long, and then became a professor, which made it worse.

It's natural to want to protect ones children, and it's hard to discipline them, even when we know it's for their own good.

[WVNan]

Where did you grow up? I didn't know they raise tobacco in N.D.

[Smokin' Joe]

Increasing energy costs may bring the existing outlying 'Yuppie Mansionette' back down in price, but only if the move is to refurbish urban areas.

As soon as someone figures out how to make renovating the cities fashionable and profitable (and it sinks in that fuel prices are not coming down any time soon) the tide will turn.

If you set yourself up so you don't have to spend much time in town, or your mileage is tax deductible (contractor to jobsite type stuff), you could do fairly well.

But I could be wrong, too.

I am holding out for cheap, used, SUVs and pampered pickups, myself.

[Smokin' Joe]

Southern Maryland. I tried a small plot of tobacco here, just for old times sake, but I started the plants about three weeks too late. They only got to bloom (6 foot plants) before we had a frost, and were not ripe yet.

[elfman2]

There are statistic to back up most of what I said, but I don’t see them in a quick google.

Addressing what I can, I suspect that dividing the average home price by the average income is pretty similar across generations. I’m sure it’s now more expensive in trendy areas and lower in others. Our forefathers generally didn’t have the luxury of enjoying trendy areas. Also, I suspect that there may be more estates inherited.

Education? Same thing. Do a little shopping for a quality teachers in a quality program in a state school. They’re not hard to find, but you have to follow what’s available, not what you wish was available, just like our parents had to do. Find a room to share and trade the car for a bike just like your parents perhaps did. It’s dirt cheap compared to average wages, and there are all kinds programs in existence today to help that didn’t exist for our parents.

You can have as many kids as you like, but it’s a trade off just like it was with your parents. Double up on bedrooms and make sure you work in a company with insurance. If you want more than 4-5, you’re lifestyle options are going to be more limited, just like they were with our parents. But even if you refuse and want it both ways, the public pays, and you still get your kids (an option unavailable to our grandparents).

All that’s not nearly as difficult as it was 60 years ago. Respectfully, life’s too short to focus on the dark side and morph into the old grump that we remember from our childhood.

[HamiltonJay]

The sooner the baby boomer generation is in the ground as worm food, the sooner the world will return to reality. Pandered to their entire lives they have done more to mess up the world than ANY generation before them.

[BureaucratusMaximus]

Between the national debt, higher taxation, anti-marriage laws, outrageous housing and tuition costs, discriminatory laws, and the near-complete destruction of liberty, it should be no surprise that the boomers are the first American generation to manage to achive a reduced quality of life for their children.

Well...its because they are. I know of very few one-income-man-is-the breadwinner households. A 2-income household seems to be the norm these days. Of course...most people immerse themselves in credit to buy incessant BS and have student loans to pay off that "degree" they'll never use these days too. Even with 2 incomes...alot of people are dumb, selfish and wasteful when it comes to finances.(luckily I'm the sole breadwinner in my family and if we can't pay cash for something..we don't get it) Furthermore...the overall absense of respect, tact, integrity, common courtesy and common sense in society today adds to the fact that the American standard of living has been greatly reduced from the previous generation.

I may get flamed for this...but...the whole womens-lib-career woman having to go to work and be like a man mindset,(instead of being a mother to her children) along with little-boy, wanna-be men who can't handle marriage, commitment and responsibility has ruined this countrys standard of living more than anything.

[WVNan]

Oh. Okay. Southern Maryland is not far from here. I worked tobacco in Tenn. Dark fired. Hard crop to raise and work.

[Smokin' Joe]

Air cured. You sure got the work part right. Where in Tenn.?

[Clock King]

And if the kid enters the amount wrong and say "But that's what the machine says!"? Yes, I've had that happen to me. Well, I guess that's why we have bar code scanners as well. Also, I always use self-checkout if possible. Add to that, store managers and cops who don't know $2 bills are legal tender.

[thoughtomator]

I think you'll find the average home price/income ratio took a huge jump in the 1970s and another one in the past decade. As far as education goes, past generations learned through high school what now requires a college education, and didn't have to endure 15 years of socialist indoctrination to do it.

Having kids ain't the same deal now that corporal punishment is borderline-criminal and family law is seemingly designed to shatter families.

And that's not even touching on the quality of life for the millions in the post-boomer generations who never survived to see the outside of a womb. The wholesale devaluation of human life is one of the biggest wounds to quality of life that the boomer generation has perpetrated.

[WVNan]

You're right elfman. A little sacrifice along the way brings rewards. There are always ways to survive if you work smart.

[WVNan]

Robertson County, near Springfield. Dark fired tobacco required smoke curing in the barns. Steamed plantbeds in Feb. while we were in the barn stripping and grading for market. Crop overlapped.

[joesnuffy]

Wild In The Streets

Never trust any one over 30

[russesjunjee]

That's a really good way to put it. The problem is that we can't stop the experiment because public education is the world's largest baby sitting service.

American mothers are in the work place and in debt up to their eyeballs. They are just glad to have a place to send their kids during the day. Most people are unable or unwilling to stay home and raise or educate their kids anymore. So, uncle Sam gets to raise them how he sees fit.