Free Republic

Hello, lost generation. The Millennials entered the workforce during the worst downturn since the Great Depression. Saddled with debt, unable to accumulate wealth, and stuck in low-benefit, dead-end jobs, they never gained the financial security that their parents, grandparents, or even older siblings enjoyed. They are now entering their peak earning years in the midst of an economic cataclysm more severe than the Great Recession, near guaranteeing that they will be the first generation in modern American history to end up poorer than their parents.

The last time a serious economic downturn hit in 2008, Evan Schade was in high school and the crisis seemed like a news event that happened to other people. This time, as the coronavirus has brought the economy to its knees, it has become a personal affair. When nonessential businesses were closed last month in Kansas City, Missouri, where he lives, Schade, 26, lost his job at a carpet store and almost all of the shifts in his second job at a coffee shop. His girlfriend, Kaitlyn Gardner, 23, was laid off from a different coffee shop. The money they...

The last time a serious economic downturn hit in 2008, Evan Schade was in high school and the crisis seemed like a news event that happened to other people. This time, as the coronavirus has brought the economy to its knees, it has become a personal affair. When nonessential businesses were closed last month in Kansas City, Mo., where he lives, Mr. Schade, 26, lost his job at a carpet store and almost all of the shifts in his second job at a coffee shop. His girlfriend, Kaitlyn Gardner, 23, was laid off from a different coffee shop. The money...

The eastern half of America, anyway. Which is where the hot spots are, coincidentally. This is a few days old but worth watching as a demonstration of why reopening parts of the country while outbreaks are raging in other parts is an invitation to disaster. Unless states are going to start closing their borders to each other, infected people will keep bringing the virus in from outside.

A California social media prankster claims he was hospitalized with the coronavirus — just days after posting a video of himself licking a toilet bowl for a nauseating online challenge. The TikTok personality, known as Larz, reportedly posted footage of himself in a hospital bed on Sunday, according to the Daily Mail. “I tested positive for Coronavirus,” the 21-year-old from Beverly Hills tweeted on an account that has since been suspended, the outlet reported

The only welcome victim of coronavirus will be the myth of the 'entitled millennial.' Let us hear no more accusations of individualism, selfishness and over-avocado-eating from older generations. Many baby boomers now owe their lives to the selflessness of the young. The civic restrictions introduced across Europe in recent days are intended to slow the spread of COVID-19, and keep hospital beds and respirators available for critical cases. But this lock-down will also rob a generation of education and income. Yet in the midst of these bewildering times, there are signs of hope for the post-corona future. Humans have once...

Dell founder and CEO Michael Dell said on Twitter that people who don’t take the coronavirus pandemic seriously shouldn’t apply to work for any of his companies. Dell was responding to a video on Twitter from CBS News, which showed a slew spring breakers who brushed off concerns of COVID-19 and traveled to Florida despite health officials urging people to stay home. “Anyone in this video, please don’t apply to work @DellTech @VMware,” Dell tweeted Thursday. “And also please don’t apply to @Secureworks @DellFdn @boomi or MSD Capital.”

On Friday, due to mounting fears about COVID-19, our university announced that it was suspending all on-site classes until April 1. A nursing student who is one of my teaching assistants in a chemistry lab commented that the fear radiated by the students was palpable. “Their freshman year experience was being taken away and many of them expressed they had a loved one who was particularly at risk.” The south Florida campus where I teach stretches over many acres. It is a lush, sub-tropical paradise of green spaces, palm trees and variegated shrubs in an explosion of colors. Our easternmost...

“We think democracy is better,” said the jet-fuel salesperson. “But is it? In terms of outcomes?” In a conference room overlooking the gray Thames, a group of young corporate types tried to imagine how the world could save itself, how the international community could balance the need for growth with our precarious ecological situation. For the purposes of our speculative scenarios, everything except for carbon was supposed to be up in the air, and democracy’s track record is mixed. A graph from Chinese social media showing how many trees the country is planting — a patriotic retort to the Swedish...

“Complete transformations” happen so fast these days that it is helpful to set Thursdays aside to recall the roots of some of today’s popular technologies and ideas.The Origin of Texting DevicesFor example, few people today know the proper way to set a formal dinner table.The correct placement of the texting device is below and slightly to the left of the butter plate.And it seems that every decade or so people forget that really bad ideas create bubbles: that result in a really bad economic downturn when they burst. Yet they continue to fall for really bad ideas.Just a few random...

“People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.” - Albert Einstein My problem: I can’t decide whether to go back in time and be considered a genius, or forward in the hope that mankind has improved and life on earth is truly better. “I fear the day that technology will surpass our human interaction. The world will have a generation of idiots.” - Albert Einstein Who am I kidding, I have seen the future and it is as Einstein feared: a video game. Perhaps time...

As the report notes, the millennials (defined as individuals 18-37 in 2018) “demonstrate lower basic financial literacy levels while at the same time being more likely to overestimate their own financial knowledge.”

A national survey conducted by Loandepot finds 77 percent of Millennial and Gen Z-ers are expecting financial assistance from their parents to purchase their first home. The most common expectations included help with a down payment (38 percent), co-signing the mortgage (31 percent) and helping with closing costs (24 percent). Of those expecting down payment assistance, the majority of respondents were looking for less than $10,000. Alarmingly, 18 percent of parents responding to the survey who indicated they would help their children also said they were putting their retirement on hold to do so. Parents whose children were still living...

I grew up in Minnesota, the heart of the Midwest: a blue state of really nice, hard-working people who love winter, lefse, and Al Franken. Starting at about 13 years old until college, I worked for my dad, a successful remodeling contractor, over school breaks. I hated the work. Often the only female on a construction site or a hotel in the midst of remodeling, I felt awkward. I got dirty. I wasn’t good at painting or wallpapering. The hours were longer than anything I’d ever experienced, and we rarely ate out during the day. (Somehow cold granola bars just...

His Democrat Socialism robbed people of their pride, courage, wealth, land, freedom, and destroyed their souls, self-determination, and self-sufficiency A 2016 BBC documentary titled, The King of Communism – The Pomp and Pageantry of Nicolae Ceausescu, focused on Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife Elena’s cult of personality propaganda that helped maintain his brutal Communist Party dictatorship (1965-1989) in the Socialist Republic of Romania, a tyranny that irreparably damaged the soul of a nation. Sadly, the documentary was celebrated by people who still believe in his misery right up to this day. Unfortunately, the old communist ideology has been repackaged for...

Bernie Sanders is a survivor, but can he survive the orchestrated media onslaught that seems determined to bring him down? At 78, Sanders has survived a heart attack, and the loathing of the Democratic Party establishment and its compliant media wing. He survived that recent vicious and shameful CNN takedown accusing him of sexism for allegedly saying a woman couldn't be elected president. Sanders denied it. CNN didn't much care. Now his supporters are being shamed as dangerous and angry by other media and also as tools of President Donald Trump. But guess what? It's all backfiring. Sanders is surging,...

Millennials have no idea how society operates, how the economy is run, what it means to be an American citizen, the duties and responsibilities to family and to our nation In a 1958 interview with Mike Wallace, Aldous Leonard Huxley, British writer and philosopher, discussed the power of technology, drugs, and propaganda as formidable methods of indoctrination. He talked about Hitler who used the press and radio very effectively to brainwash an entire nation to accept the evil that followed. He explained to Wallace:

In the late fall, Sen. Bernie Sanders came to speak at Georgetown University and was treated like a rock star. He was followed across campus by a hoard of students desperate to get a photo, have a question answered, or even just be near the candidate.Sanders deeply affected many young people in 2016. He energized a passionate millennial base, and it is estimated he won more youth votes than Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton combined. He also gained popularity among many adolescents too young to vote then, but who have since come of legal voting age. This momentum has...

More than one-quarter of HIV-negative millennials report that they avoid hugging, talking, or being friends with someone who is HIV-positive, according to a new study from the Prevention Access Campaign and the phamaceutical company Merck. The study uncovered widespread ignorance and stigma from young people when it comes to HIV. Thirty percent of HIV-negative millennials (people between the ages of 23 and 36) said they would prefer not to interact socially with someone with HIV. One in three Black and Latinx millennials reported avoiding even shaking hands or sharing drinks or utensils with someone with HIV. In reality, the disease...

As baby boomers look to downsize out of their suburban McMansions, a generational showdown is looming: Millennials might be coming into their own as the nation's biggest group of first-time home buyers, but they aren't exactly lining up with bids in hand for those large, expensive homes in the sleepier suburbs. Instead, they're looking for a different kind of home—the same ones, in fact, that the empty nesters are looking to buy. It's a battle of the millennials vs. baby boomers playing out in the nation's suburban housing markets.