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The children will likely end up moving into their parents' homes and paying off their parents' medical bills with reverse mortgages leaving the once young at mi
by devonkim 11y ago
The children will likely end up moving into their parents' homes and paying off their parents' medical bills with reverse mortgages leaving the once young at mid-life or later with nothing to inherit and no job prospects in these areas typically away from major metro (and increasingly, employment-availability) areas. This will leave most Americans in the positions before WW2 about given there will be few assets in the hands of most Americans again.
I'm seeing housing prices in suburbs, exurbs, and rural areas dropping as lack of viable jobs in these areas combined with crushing commutes to cities makes these locations terrible for those still needing to work. There's an alarming number of people I've heard of commuting from West Virginia into DC and from Richmond into DC enduring 3+ hour commutes as cities that used to be self-sustained economies now become suburbs of the largest cities, and the trend is going to continue with a few deviants that buck the trend like remote workers or homesteaders.
Where I live, the local economy is driven by two demographics - tourists and local retirees sprinkled with some of the wealthiest households in the US living here part time to avoid paying state income taxes. Much of the US is eerily similar to this pattern and it's extremely depressing to think of a way out of the spiral where almost all of our money will go into paying outrageous mortgages / rent with lower-paying jobs and the few in the middle class are in finance, tech, or healthcare.
- sholanozie 11y agoYou pretty much hit the nail on the head here. It really is alarming to think that we have not started to plan for this almost inevitable scenario in ~20 years time. We need to begin re-thinking our role as humans in an economy which increasingly does not require us.
- partisan 11y agoHow do you plan for the collapse of the economy?
- sholanozie 11y agoThe first step is to invest, as communities, into producing as much food as possible locally in order to lessen our dependence on the global economic system. We have the technology to turn all those shuttered Targets and malls into indoor farms powered largely by renewable sources. An ironic side effect would be the creation of jobs and a reduction in the net cost of feeding a city.
- icebraining 11y agoWhy not just move somewhere with arable land?
- nine_k 11y agoHow about job availability?
- icebraining 11y agoOh, I assumed we were talking about a post-jobs era. The idea that growing food to sustain a community can be done as a after-hours hobby sounds a little naive.
- sholanozie 11y agoThat's what most people will do. This current refugee "crisis" is nothing compared to the vast migrations that climate change will instigate.
- hueving 11y agoLocally grown food is an unsustainable luxury that doesn't work for large portions of the US because there is not year round farm worthy land close enough by to sustain the population.
- sholanozie 11y agoDid you read my comment? I propose using currently-available technology to grow food indoors.
- losteric 11y agoStart by having level-headed discussions about the value of life. I know a lot of families taking on massive debt to help pay for their parent's old age. Five-Six figures here and there to extend their parent's lives by a decade or two, saddling themselves with debt and leaving the next generation with no assets... Likely after moving the entire family to a decaying suburban city. All so the previous generation can stick around with a much poorer quality of life. Health care has a far larger impact than the number on the bill. We need to openly talk about life and accept the inevitableness of death.
- mhurron 11y agoI wonder if you'll be so ready to give up your life right around retirement age instead of trying to have it extended 'by a decade or two.' It's so incredibly easy to say when you're simply throwing others lives away, rarely do people do it with their own.
- losteric 11y agoI'll fight tooth and nail for every minute of my own independent life... But I would never dream of crippling my children's future just to exist in an "assisted-living" retirement home. Personally, that's an undignified life that's not worth living... modern day vampires. Again, this is just my personal position regarding my life's value vs my descendants. I'm advocating the questions, not my answer. This is a hard problem, which means the questions are hard to ask and the answers are difficult to accept... Death has never been easy. However it's a conversation that families and society at large need to have. Culturally, we are lagging behind what science can do... We can do so much but never stepped back to ask if we should. Society needs to make conscious decisions instead of blindly following our biological instincts.
- nugget 11y agoWyoming?
- paulddraper 11y agoFlorida, I assume.
- phyllostachys 11y agoI would have guessed Las Vegas.
- devonkim 11y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Carolina_locations_by_per_capita_income https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Carolina_locations_by_pe... 2. Biltmore Forest, North Carolina $85,044 Buncombe county rank in state and per capita income: 19 Buncombe $25,665 The Vanderbilt family, descendants, and close associates have strong ties to Asheville and its economy, where the Biltmore estate is located.
- javajosh 11y agoOr the kids will say, "I'm sorry, but I'm moving where the jobs are, and I'm going to have a life of my own. I'll come visit you once a year, but I'm not giving up my life for yours." The good parents will say, "Good! Don't sacrifice your chance for happiness for me. I'll make it through."
- icebraining 11y agoAnd where are the jobs?
- khuey 11y agoThe coastal urban areas and Texas, not the rural south or midwest or rust belt cities.
- losteric 11y agoWhats even more fun is there other major problems approaching on roughly the same timeline... - Less developed nations will be transitioning to a population crunch (WSJ 2050) with huge ramifications on global economics/politics - fossil fuels (especially oil) reaching depletion or becoming too expensive to extract - climate change impact in full swing, serious disruption to even domestic agriculture - Ubiquitous AI, and all the associated social unrest of a deprecated generation of workers Ultimately there's just too many people. Society doesn't need 8 billion humans anymore, the US doesn't even need 300 million... Arguably what youre describing is an emergent solution to that problem. Now we've reached the point where the next generation will need to support their parent's slow death instead of raising the next generation of children... That's going to wreck society's ownership of the future in a big way. (Mobile, excuse the poor formating)
- toosmart4u12 11y agolol. Recent college grad, naive + propaganda sponge? Have done 0 research, and know practically nothing on the topic - but watched a few documentaries on Netflix? Every generation has gone through the same type of existential angst. Sell your house, liquidate your 401K. Buy gold bars, grow your own food, live out of a cabin. The economy is going to crash, the world is going to fall apart - it's different this time. Nah, probably not. Not in your life time. Most likely, the machine will keep on rolling. Some of the problems we have will be solved. Some will turn out to be less dire than the alarmists anticipated. There has NEVER been a better time to be alive. This was true of the previous generation, too. But, unfortunately for you, you now live out of a wooden box. But hey, at least you got those gold bars. Surely they will be worth something when the economy melts down (it's just around the corner!).
- jczhang 11y agoRight, the issue of overpopulation is huge. It's going to need a different kind of society with very different values than the ones we have today. Capitalism can't grow like it has been once we realize the issue of overpop and work to reduce it. We have a crazy new world coming. And the transition has be fast.
- 11y ago
- branchless 11y agoI hear this "inherit housing riches" a lot and I'm glad to see you aren't fooled by it. Housing isn't wealth. The value of land represents the ability to make use of it. If the support ratio slips (ratio of working to non-working) then if we are to maintain the living standards of the non-working we either have to have a big productivity leap or lower living standards for those in work. Reverse mortgages aren't going to cut it. And as you say, what then when the millenials have to hand over the keys to their parents' house? Land isn't a thing of value in and of itself if we can't work it. The only use ramping land value has is as an inflationary tax by private banks on workers. My $0.02 on this is we give the boomers+ a massive haircut right now. Just pull the rug right out from under them, their politicians and their banks.
- devonkim 11y agoThis is a terrible comment in hindsight given I made it on Christmas but spending the holidays in rural Appalachia for years makes me ponder how oblivious people in tech are to the realities of their countries. Enjoy the holidays, folks and go talk to everyone - get out of your comfort zones and experience something completely crazy perhaps. We have the best living standards worldwide in the history of the planet but we have a long way to go before we can achieve the humanist dream of providing the opportunity for each person to work hard for their dreams and realize them. I hope that during the holidays as a time of reflection we look for our common struggles and work towards creating human consensus rather than the every day popular rhetoric of creating division and controversy out of their own desperation to put food on the table.
- cryoshon 11y agoYep, not to mention these people who are struggling to take care of their parents are dealing with medical bills and debt slavery of their own. They can forget about owning a home or car. They can forget about having children, as the money is needed to care for the old. They can forget about retiring, as they have no savings. Wages have been stagnant since their parents' careers were at their start. The banks will be extracting wealth from the fading boomers until their last breaths, leaving their children with no inheritances and a large debt of their own.