24 ms·

The New 30-Something

• elorant 8y ago
  Thirty years ago you could raise a family with just one parent working. Nowadays that's pretty much impossible. The cost of living has skyrocketed and this leads a lot of people to seek support from their families.
  • dgellow 8y ago
    > Nowadays that's pretty much impossible ... in the US.
    • kome 8y ago
      Also in large part of Europe.
  • oh_sigh 8y ago
    You can still do that if you don't mind living in a 1100 SQ foot, cheaply built house in the suburbs.
    • occamrazor 8y ago
      1100 sq.ft is enough space for 3 bedrooms and one kitchen/living room, which is definitely sufficient for a couple with 2 children.
      • oh_sigh 8y ago
        I never said it wasn't. But good luck finding houses being built like that today.
    • manigandham 8y ago
      1000 square feet is not tiny. Many families all over the world live in spaces even smaller.
    • MagicPropmaker 8y ago
      I grew up in a house like that, and I came out just fine, and with no financial support from my parents -- including for college tuition! I went to a reasonably priced local school, didn't live in a fancy dorm and took the public bus back and forth to school, home, and my job. What we need to do to address "inequality" is to tax this transfer of wealth as income so responsible self-sufficient people who didn't get this privilege won't have to unduly subsidize these same people when they hit retirement age and get themselves in the same underwater situation.
    • AWildC182 8y ago
      With a 1.5 hour commute each way that effectively becomes a second, part time job and destroys your life. Time is money and even housing bears that out. Housing prices are absolutely based around two incomes at this point.
  • rb808 8y ago
    Given that 1/3rd of all children are raised by single parents, it clearly is possible.
    • _red 8y ago
      >its clearly possible. * As a percentage, what share of single-parent homes receive some kind of government assistance? * You deliberately neglect that most single-parent homes receive ongoing child support from other parent.
    • panzagl 8y ago
      Just because one parent is raising does not mean only one parent is contributing financially.
  • moonshinefe 8y ago
    Not sure why this is being down voted, it rings true to me. I happen to live in an area where the cost of living has skyrocketed and the cost of living is completely unaffordable for a single parent who wants anything other than a life of being poor. His experience may be valid, even if others live in more affordable regions. You essentially have to be in the top 1% in some areas to even afford a house and be able to raise a family by yourself. And yes, I guess we could all move away from our family and friends, but not everyone can even afford it or wants to do that for various reasons.
  • CalChris 8y ago
    Tuition then was something you could pay with a minimum wage job. Ask me how I know this.
  • jcadam 8y ago
    I'm doing it. My wife is a stay-at-home mom. Here's the thing... my wife hasn't worked since we were in college. We never got used to having two salaries coming in. I think the real difficulty is couples base their lifestyle (housing, cars, schools, etc.) around both parents working... and so it becomes a requirement to keep up with the payments. Cutting your household income in half voluntarily is a hard choice to make. It's easier if you've never had the option.
    • celeritascelery 8y ago
      Completely agree with this. They say your spending increases to fill your income. I realize there are people in my area that make half of what I do. But I think it would be almost impossible for me to take a 50% pay cut.
  • celeritascelery 8y ago
    > nowadays that’s pretty much impossible Considering that only 60% of families have both parents working, I would say that it is still very possible. https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2017/mobile/employment-in-families-with-children-in-2016.htm https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2017/mobile/employment-in-famil...
  • war1025 8y ago
    I turned 30 in the fall, married, 3 kids. Wife stays home. I make good, but not great, money. I own my house outright, and have a stock portfolio worth roughly as much as the house. For people in tech, that is all attainable. The trouble is that people listen to what the culture tells them to do, rather than assessing their options and doing what makes sense. If you take your advice from people who benefit from you being in debt and barely making ends meet, then that is where you will end up.
• dvtrn 8y ago
  “I think millennials need to get past this narrative they’ve made it on their own and ‘I pulled myself up by my boot straps,’” Mr. Isaacs said. “It hides all the kinds of ways they have been privileged by their race or parental help.” I started to fire a snarky comment about how nice it must be to fit into the category of millennial who have enjoyed the listed privileges, but instead I'll just adopt the position that I am not the "target demographic" here, and maybe that's why after reading that entire article, finding this remark as the closing statement caused me to involuntarily furrow a brow.
  • warent 8y ago
    It's also a weirdly broad generalization that I think shows an overly-simplified, almost naive way of seeing the world. As with any "X group with tens of millions of people," there are going to be people who actually do fit those criteria. e.g. How many ethnic or black millennials without parental help started from nothing and are now successful? I personally know of a couple at least. For some reason, so many people seem to see "Millennials" as one gigantic person. It's similar to the odd occurrence of someone accusing HN of having conflicting opinions, ignoring the fact that HN is full of different people.
    • aurailious 8y ago
      Sites that have voting, like HN and Reddit, will get judgement that because of what is up voted. There is of course lots of different people, but clear trends do start to appear and that is what people view and assign to be the overall opinion.
    • dtech 8y ago
      > For some reason, so many people seem to see "Millennials" as one gigantic person. This happens everywhere, all the time. "Baby Boomers" are as often talked about as a group: "Muslims", "Hipsters", "Hacker News", "Liberals", "Conservatives".
      • retsibsi 8y ago
        Yeah but it makes a lot more sense in some contexts than others. Like, if you're talking about a religion or a political affiliation, membership in that group is defined by some common beliefs or values. (Obviously people routinely generalise too far and end up using lazy stereotypes, I'm not denying that.) It's a bit more obviously arbitrary to generalise about a generation, unless you're talking pretty narrowly about e.g. shared experiences they had by virtue of growing up at the same time.
• tyler- 8y ago
  Seems like most articles written on this subject assume young people come from "well-off enough" families that can support them, even if they themselves are broke. It seems like "my family can support me" is universally accepted as truth for such people in those situations. Are there any articles or studies done on young people from working-class families or families that aren't affluent enough to support them?
  • dvtrn 8y ago
    So it doesn't quite take the same theme of parental-financial support as the parent article to this comment thread does, but: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/05/african-americans-with-college-degrees-are-twice-as-likely-to-be-unemployed-as-other-graduates/430971/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/05/african... I do sometimes point to this article as something of note, that resonates with me as a member of that particular social group. Of course with many things, YMMV as to how much of this also happens to relate to you and whatever social group you happen to be a member of--since there are valid parallels across the socio-economic fabric. That link can also be found in this article, which resonated pretty well with me for similar reasons. https://newrepublic.com/article/153122/missing-black-millennial https://newrepublic.com/article/153122/missing-black-millenn... Same caveat here: article doesn't necessarily go into the aspects of how Black millennial fare with parental-financial assistance, but I'm definitely keeping an eye out for such an article. Maybe I should write an anecdote laden response to the NYT piece here, and publish it on medium (mild sarcasm in use here).
  • jamestimmins 8y ago
    I'd imagine that having those opportunities and privileges helps folks get in a position where they can write these articles and get wide readership. So there's likely a self-selection bias.
  • hopler 8y ago
    You're right. As an upper middle class East coast American can attest, these NYT thinkpieces are written by young rich parent-supported kids living in New York City, who write their articles by asking their FB friends for quotes. Not many NYT writers live in Buffalo.
• gorpomon 8y ago
  This all rings true, but it doesn't have to make you feel like America is broken. I'm of South Asian descent, where finances between generations are even more intertwined. In America we've created a narrative of one generation being completely free of the last, and when we don't fulfill it we feel shame. Like many destructive narratives our society has, it might be time to let this one go.
  • georgeburdell 8y ago
    And yet, presumably you are here in the U.S. and not in South Asia.
    • sooheon 8y ago
      Are you implying that financial independence between generations is everything that makes the US better than South Asia?
      • georgeburdell 8y ago
        Maybe. The O.P. seems so sure in his conviction that "South Asia's" culture in this regard is superior without evidence, and yet his forebears felt compelled to emigrate from there. O.P.'s argument appears to be that inter-generational independence is hard therefore we should give up and not feel bad about it.
        • antisthenes 8y ago
          What are the downsides of having an inter-generational safety net?
          • jtuente 8y ago
            It provides people with ammunition against tax-funded welfare? Changes opinions to be against estate taxes (my family earned this money why do you get to tax it)? Establishes expectations of inter-generational help or wealth?
• CompelTechnic 8y ago
  >On average, each millennial parent receives $11,011 per year in combined financial support and unpaid labor, the 2017 TD Ameritrade Millennial Parents Survey found, for an annual total of $253 billion in America. I wish they had separated the unpaid labor from financial support. Grandparents helping raise the kids is a tradition as old as time; the labor portion is not the surprising part here.
  • blang 8y ago
    That did seem like a really weird framing. It seems like the corollary article would be. "Family ties eroding, grandparents no longer spending time with grandkids"
  • Footkerchief 8y ago
    Yes -- how much unpaid labor of this kind did past generations receive? Without quantifying that, there is no comparative basis here.
  • mobjack 8y ago
    Having grandparents help raise kids saves a ton of money in childcare costs. It can be the difference between someone being a stay at home mom/dad vs providing a second income stream for their family. The financial impact is that big.
  • Balgair 8y ago
    Yes, this seems so strange to me as well. Like, true, this is quantifiable in terms of dollars, but there are worlds with out money. The 'family' has always been a world without money (define family as you will). If anything, having other family members in the child-rearing process is something of a luxury. If you have 'good-enough' parents and siblings, I'd imagine that you'd want the whole family involved. I can't imagine how toxic a relationship you'd have to have with your family to see child-rearing in terms of dollars and cents.
• rayiner 8y ago
  This strikes quite true to me. When we were between one apartment lease and buying a house, my wife, daughter, and I moved in with my parents. My mom stayed home with our daughter for almost a year, and my wife’s mom did the same for another year. We are also considering having a third child, in large part because my parents live 5 minutes away and provide a lot of free child care. But I question whether this is “new.” None of this would be unusual in the least in Bangladesh, where my family is from. I strongly suspect that it’s not new in the US either, or at least was only unusual compared to a status quo that existed only for a blip of time during the 20th century.
  • learc83 8y ago
    >I strongly suspect that it’s not new in the US either, or at least was only unusual compared to a status quo that existed only for a blip of time during the 20th century. You're entirely correct. I'll go a step further and say it never even went away--at least in my experience as a child of lower middle class White baby boomer parents in the South. I have a great uncle on my mom's side who stayed at home while he finished college and then him and his wife lived with his parents for a while after he graduated. My dad's oldest brother and his wife lived with their parents for a while. My dad's youngest brother lived with his parents for years. My grandparents eventually moved in with my dad and his wife--partially because they were getting too old to maintain a house, but also to help him afford a new house after he'd gone through a bankruptcy. Both sets of grandparents also provided my parents with free childcare, and my parents and aunts and uncles all borrowed plenty of money from my grandparents over the years. I have many friends who've had similar experiences.
    • WorldMaker 8y ago
      I think the solid, seemingly disconnected "nuclear family" is an interesting mythic tale in the American Dream that is an accident of consumer marketing more than anything else. It sold more homes, it sold more goods, so it became a useful myth to marketers. In reality it never existed, not even in the mythic 50s where it got so ensconced in television sitcoms and advertising.
• xxpor 8y ago
  >New York City, Los Angeles, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco or Washington, D. C. One of these things is not like the others.
  • Hortinstein 8y ago
    out of curiosity...guessing Boston? [edit] more likely referring to Chicago
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• kokokokoko 8y ago
  I can't believe this would be a shock to anyone. How else does a first time home buyer come up with a 20% deposit on a $500,000 house? There are obviously exceptions, but generally speaking that's where the money comes from. Money from inheritance and family grossly distorts the market. Anyone who takes money from family or inheritance should be ashamed of themselves unless that money is used for helping the less fortunate. Edit: I should add that I had access to family assistance financially and chose to not take it. Which made my life significantly more difficult. So this is something I feel very passionately about. Those who take the money know it is wrong, because most of them will never admit publicly they took any money.
  • manigandham 8y ago
    Children should be ashamed to use their family's money to better their life? That's a rather extreme statement.
    • kokokokoko 8y ago
      Yes, absolutely. It is wildly unfair to those who do not have access in a market economy.
      • MagicPropmaker 8y ago
        The compromise is to make sure this transfer of income is taxed like any other income.
      • okmokmz 8y ago
        Life isn't fair. Should we also all stop drinking potable water because it is unfair to those who do not have access?
      • manigandham 8y ago
        Unfair does not mean you should be ashamed. Life isn't and never will be fair anyway.
  • g_z_m 8y ago
• nell 8y ago
  Somethings mentioned in the article are common in Asia. - Parents funding their children until they settle down to the extent they’re capable of. That’s partly why they tend to be frugal to a fault. - Grandparents helping raise kids. My great-grandma helped my mom for the first year. Now my mom helps my sister raise my niece. And not to mention, kids and grandparents love being around each other. If you take a long view, these “millennials” who get assistance from parents will one day help them have a comfortable oldage* and assist their kids in raising families. * My opinion here is influenced by an old lady who died alone in our apartment complex yesterday. No one should go like that.
• dsugarman 8y ago
  There's some really good research in this article and then some really poorly researched topics and it seems like the entire thing was written with an agenda to please an anti-millenial audience. Specifically, an agenda to prove that millenials are given way more than previous generations (especially boomers) with really poor research and a really shaky narrative. This one part shows it pretty clearly: >n the television show “Thirtysomething,” which aired from 1987 to 1991, the all-white cast of characters seemed to be economically emancipated from their parents, who rarely factored into the story lines. Today’s series about 30-somethings portray a decade that seems far less adult, at least by traditional standards. (Think “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt” or “New Girl.”)
  • hopler 8y ago
    thirtysomething aired during the 1980s "Me generation", and portrayed that generation's fantasy. The main characters worked at an ad agency. By that standard, millennials are living the dream en masse -- between adtech and influencers and ad-supported apps and blogs, advertising is the Millennial industry. I'm suspicious of the analysis of someone who was unable to get the capitalization of the show correct.
  • screye 8y ago
    A bit off topic but ,is it just me or have articles by the NYT become more and more ideology driven over the last few years ? The whole process seems to be structured around finding data to support their preconceived notions, rather than using the data and research to craft the hypothesis. I hate Trump as much as the next guy on HN, but his criticism of the MSM isn't totally unfounded. I used to look at NYT and WSJ are paragons of journalism, and they've routinely disappointed over the last few years. Many youtube channels seem to be a lot better researched than these 'prestigious' outlets. Channels like CGPGrey and Kurzgesagt give much better common-man explanations of complex problems. On the other hand, niche channels like Caspian Report and Healthcare Triage stick to things they have expertise in, and make no attempts to water down the news or risk losing nuance in the process. With big outlets, it is hard to calibrate an article to account for the implicit bias of the outlet itself. When it is instead a youtube personality who you feel like you know better, it is easy to identify the lens through with information is being delivered and build trust over time.
• nimbius 8y ago
  What the article doesnt mention is college debt. I know tons of people who have college debt for degrees that pay absolutely nothing. Its debt they will never escape, and im guessing mom and dad feel guilty about it to some extent. I came from a poor family, so college wasnt much of an option. My mom and dad had lived their whole lives under check cashing shysters and credit card debt until dad hurt his back and went on disability/heroin. Mom did the best she could at the local truckstop diner where i spent most of my time after school. College was never an option and looking back im glad it wasnt. I grew up to become a damn good diesel engine tech. not the best, but i walk out of the shop every day feeling like I actually did something meaningful. Some days im even making cut-rate lawyer money. but I see college kids at my local bar, partly because thats an aesthetic for college kids my age, but also because its a necessity. They buy a round of el-cheapo beers and sit in the corner on their phones for an hour. They rarely tip or if they do its some weird math that comes out to screw over the barman, but its hardly their fault. I bought a Sam Adams for one of these guys who was fired from mcdonalds for showing up to work late just once. He had a masters degree in business management. He came home to see his prius getting repossessed, and decided to just decided to keep on walking past his apartment and down to the local watering hole. His plan was to ride out an eviction and move back in with his folks.
  • lanewinfield 8y ago
    They definitely mention it! "Those who do not have parental assistance in their 30s, however, continue to be at a disadvantage. “They are grappling with paying off student-loan debt, their savings might not be as strong because of that, and many are taking care of other family members,” said Iimay Ho, 32, the executive director at Resource Generation, an organization that works with people ages 18 to 35 with wealth or class privilege to engage on issues of inequality." ... "For those without parental cash at the ready, there’s often some kind of debt hangover that holds them back in significant ways. Roger Quesada, 34, calls his $65,000 of student-loan debt to Sallie Mae, which incurs $400 a month in interest payments alone, “a jail sentence.” A lapse in his payments ruined his credit, he said, and has hampered his financial and career aspirations." And I feel for it, too. Compounding debt instead of compounding interest. Reminds me of a very relevant Onion headline: "Lazy Poor Person Has Never Earned Passive Income From Stock Dividends A Day In His Life" https://local.theonion.com/lazy-poor-person-has-never-earned-passive-income-from-s-1832537497 https://local.theonion.com/lazy-poor-person-has-never-earned...
• g_z_m 8y ago
  I can't understand the tone of this article-- is there something inherently wrong with receiving parental help? What's wrong with family members helping each other? It's part of being in a family, people of your own blood helping, protecting, and lifting each other up. In an article slighting millennials for claiming to "pull themselves up by the bootstraps", it's even weirder to look in the NYT comments section filled with boomers talking down at struggling millennials while bragging about how they themselves worked 8 jobs, saved 10 years for a Honda Accord, trekked 5 miles in the snow to get to work.
  • zimablue 8y ago
    Because it replaces meritocracy with oligarchy if wealthy parents are required to get a foothold in life.
    • g_z_m 8y ago
      I disagree, but what do you suppose people do then? I'm afraid it's unrealistic to expect a society to collectively agree on donating to charity any excess money originally intended for helping their offspring.
      • zimablue 8y ago
        I expect society to severely tax and regulate wealth, and also the most harmful methods that the wealthy use to game meritocracy. Eg. for private education - tax the hell out of it, legislate that each next stage somewhat accounts for the last one being rigged (eg. colleges forced to push down people from expensive schools) and seek to promote meritocratic alternatives (eg. online education).
        • dsfyu404ed 8y ago
          If there's one thing there needs to exist non-government alternatives to it's education. The government shouldn't get a near monopoly on telling the youth what to think. FWIW your median "private school" is usually church run, not some elite prep school CEOs send their kids to.
• g_z_m 8y ago
  I can't understand the tone of this article-- is there something inherently wrong with receiving parental help? What's wrong with family members helping each other? It's part of being in a family, people of your own blood helping, protecting, and lifting each other up. In an article slighting millennials for claiming to "pull themselves up by the bootstraps", it's even weirder to look in the NYT comments section filled with boomers talking down at struggling millennials while bragging about how they themselves worked 8 jobs, saved 10 years for a Honda Accord, trekked 5 miles in the snow to get to work. I mean is there some joke flying entirely over my head that I'm missing?
  • antisthenes 8y ago
    No, poor quality American journalism just likes to "re-discover" how basic things work (like family) that have been figured out in the rest of the world for centuries.
• deleted 8y ago
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• floatrock 8y ago
  > Then there are the free services. Ms. Palmer, who is 39 and lives near Washington, D.C., said that the free 20 to 25 hours of child care she receives every month from her parents contributed to her family’s decision to have a third child. If she were to pay a babysitter, Ms. Palmer estimates it would add up to around $6,000 a year. This kinda bugs me, not only because inter-generational child rearing has been the norm for most of history rather than something unique that deadbeat millenials are relying on, but also because it propagates the belief that anything you don't pay for with money is considered "free" (the bad "free", as in "deadbeat" or "moocher"). There's the whole debate that GDP is the wrong measure precisely because it doesn't measure these kinds of "unpaid services", but I prefer to look at it another way: a "livable" city is more than what restaurants and bars are around, but also who your neighbors and social connections are (I've heard this described as alternative forms of capital beyond financial capital like social and cultural capital). It's not that millenials are killing the babysitter industry, it's more millenials are reaching the age where they understand the whole "it takes a village" folk wisdom.
  • cflewis 8y ago
    "It takes a village" has really bitten for me, I've seen just how bad it is without. Moving to the Bay Area, far away from any parental help, seemed so great when I was 25. Now I have children that I am raising without family help, while trying to do well in my own career, can just be totally emotionally crushing sometimes.
    • beamatronic 8y ago
      On top of that, here you can feel like you are working hard day in and day out, and you meet someone just like you, working just as hard, but they have $5M in stock because they worked for the right company at the right time.
      • arethuza 8y ago
        On the other hand, I knew a guy who turned down a job in the Bay Area for family reasons who eventually worked out that the stock he was offered was worth ~$300 million at the peak of the .com bubble. He was very philosophical about it :-)
• chris_mc 8y ago
  In Hawaii, where housing is physically limited and prices are insane (maybe not like SF but still), a lot of families live with 2 or 3 generations in the same house. It's perfectly normal there, for example, for kids to live with their parents until their late 20's in order to save money, and some live with their parents until they pass away and then they inherit the home and live in it as their own. It's a much more diverse place than the US mainland, and it has a heavy dose of several Asian and other cultures which make it this way (Hawaii is kind of a "stew" rather than a "melting pot" like the mainland).
• SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
  > Over half of these millennial parents ... say they have a generalized anxiety about not earning enough to support themselves and their families. That's pretty much the entire reason that my wife and I haven't chosen to start trying for children - we're equal earners, and we don't know if we can afford to have her reduce her hours. It would be a choice to lose any current potential savings safety net we have, and to put a huge hit to our mortgage and our already iffy retirement.
• deleted 8y ago
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• martythemaniak 8y ago
  It makes a lot of sense, doesn't it? Property owners use their powers to increase prices on non-owners, efficiently siphoning off as much of their income as they can. In a lot of cases this amounts to parents siphoning off their children's income, so why wouldn't they have both the ability and obligation to kick back that income? Seems like one of the main effects will be greater interfamily inequality. The housing trick only works in some places though, so the best way to break free of this is to move to a 2nd or 3rd tier city and try to make it on your own. Many thing (jobs, free parental childcare, aesthetic preferences etc) make this not possible for many.
• deleted 8y ago
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  • TomVDB 8y ago
    Here's the other point of view: we have only 1 child. It makes much more sense to give her some of our assets while she's young and needs it most than wait until we're both dead and she'll be 60. She'll most likely chose a profession that won't allow her to purchase a home in the Bay Area all by herself, so if she has a preference to continue living in this area, helping her out will make that possible. And we'll have our grandchildren (if any) nearby.
• jarjoura 8y ago
  Is this article implying that previous generations did not have assistance from family? Were families too poor to help in previous generations, but now are better off? I'm a bit confused on the take-away here. Instead this reads as a smug piece about how lucky some families are to enable their children to live better lives. The article isn't even framed as a matter of them being lucky or not. It's as if we're supposed to feel bad that these people aren't making enough to support themselves. I certainly didn't have any help from my parents. So hearing that my peers did during all the pivotal moments in their lives certainly feels heavy.
  • cflewis 8y ago
    I think most Boomers didn't have financial support, and they didn't need it: their wealth accumulated at a faster rate than large expenses (college, healthcare, housing) grew. Those large expenses are now almost all exhibiting bubble-like costs, but probably aren't bubbles. They're the new normal. Millenials, and at least the generation after them, will need financial support to live similarly to the environments they were raised in.
    • oldprogrammer2 8y ago
      It wasn't so easy for all the boomers. I remember my dad losing his business after he lost a loan during the S&L crisis, and I remember my parents struggling to afford a 3-bedroom house in 1983 at something like a 16% interest rate on the mortgage. And I'm sure they remember gas lines during the 1979 oil crisis, as well, even though I don't.
• throwaway934898 8y ago
  > New York City, Los Angeles, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco or Washington, D. C. Maybe they need to accept that they can't all live in the cities that they want to.
  • claudiulodro 8y ago
    I'm not sure exactly what you're getting at. Should those cities be reserved for the wealthy and their children?
    • malvosenior 8y ago
      No more "reserved" than any other luxury good. They list the most expensive cities in the world and lament not being able to own a home in them. Of course the average person can't buy a house in SF. There's very limited availability and millions more people who want to live in the city than it can support. No one has a right to live in a super trendy, naturally expensive city.
      • Apocryphon 8y ago
        You forget that to many, the point is not to live in trendiness, but to live where the jobs are.
        • throw0101a 8y ago
          Or even to live where they were born and were raised themselves.
          • malvosenior 8y ago
            As someone born and raised in one of those cities, I now no longer live in it because the economic reality is such that it doesn't make sense to do so. I do not feel entitled to live in a city that's become a luxury destination, even if my family came from there.
• cflewis 8y ago
  > Mary Wallace, a real estate agent... said that in 20 years she has rarely seen anyone in their 30s who did not have family help or an inheritance for their down payment. This is the unwritten law of California first-time home ownership: you are waiting for your parents to downsize and cash in, or just to straight up die and inherit their house. You do not just get a job in CA and buy a home. The article also talks about the US in general, throwing around "six figures" as some indication of being financially safe. In CA, that is just not true. I would not have a home without significant assistance from my parents. I can't imagine how it would be if I was saddled with large student loans as well (came from the UK where college education was cheaper) or had a job where the health insurance could leave me one bad situation away from bankruptcy. Even if wealth distribution is possible, it comes with its own hurdles: early wealth distribution leads to questions about how elder care is going to get paid for, late wealth distribution leads to questions about how stunted the career and life development of the child is. I think this is the new normal, and will be for generations past us, but I wonder what it will mean for G8 countries. I think step one is abandoning the idea that if you try hard you're going to live better than your parents. You might, you might not. It's not a given anymore.
  • dfxm12 8y ago
    Why is CA so expensive? Is it something intrinsic to the land (weather, natural features, etc.) or is it something more variable, like job & entertainment opportunity? If it's the latter (and I suspect it is), it is a solvable problem, at least for most G8 countries, since there is a lot of un(der)-developed areas out there. I would not have a home without significant assistance from my parents. I don't know your specific case, but on average, you could have bought a home without assistance if you wanted, just maybe not when & where you bought.
    • cflewis 8y ago
      It's the jobs. You want to work at Google, you work in CA. You want to work in movies, you work in CA. There are various environmental factors (like the weather) and economic factors (like locking in property taxes when you buy) that keep people in their homes, stunting inventory. Yeah, I _could_ buy a house somewhere else, just like I _could_ give up on a fulfilling career. But I don't think people are willing to spend the majority of their waking hours in a job they don't like so they can have a house, given the alternative of having a job they do and renting. Everything is a life choice, and home ownership is not be all and end all, but I think it seems very wrong that the dichotomy of career vs home-ownership is as harsh as it is.
• jayd16 8y ago
  I remember when I was setting up a home purchase, the bank was really pushing for an extra $30k as a parental gift. They were pretty adamant. They know they can probably get it and they push for it.
  • jakemoshenko 8y ago
    Genuinely curious: for what? Under what context can the bank push for you to have more money? Debt-to-income? More down payment? Assets after closing? Why should they care?
    • jayd16 8y ago
      >Debt-to-income? More down payment? Those two.
• lm28469 8y ago
  In the USA* That's not completely surprising when the entire system allowed a millionaire who thinks that socialism is full blown communism [0] to become president. I don't see that happening as much in countries with free health care, (good) free education, proper retirement systems. The weird paradox of working full time in one of the most powerful country in the world and still not being able to live decently without outside help. Survive to work, work to survive, and if you ever want to have kids or a decent house get a 60 years loan or move to buttfuck nowhere Kansas. "Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires." becomes truer by the minute. I barely understand why all these people are not protesting for years, so many americans are barely making it but somehow the whole system manage to convince them that it's their personal problem, what a sad state of affairs. [0] https://www.euronews.com/2019/02/06/trump-tells-congress-and-sanders-america-will-never-be-socialist https://www.euronews.com/2019/02/06/trump-tells-congress-and... https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/11/magazine/americans-jobs-poverty-homeless.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/11/magazine/americans-jobs-p...
  • icebraining 8y ago
    > a millionaire who thinks that socialism is full blown communism The distinction between the two is not as clear-cut as you make it sound, and depends a lot on which kind of socialist you ask. For example, "Marx and Engels used the terms Communism and Socialism to mean precisely the same thing", whereas Lenin implied it meant "the first phase of Communism"[1]. Non-marxist socialists tended to have different definitions of the word, of course, but appropriation of the means of production by the working class is an often agreed component of the concept. I don't mean to imply it's necessarily correct to conflate the two, but there's a real, serious precedent, it's not just ignorance. Arguably, a better name for "capitalism with its edge blunted by a safety net" is social democracy, rather than socialism. [1] https://www.marxists.org/archive/hardcastle/1936/socialist_equality.htm https://www.marxists.org/archive/hardcastle/1936/socialist_e...
    • lm28469 8y ago
      Idk, socialism ideologies brought 35 hours work weeks, decriminalization of homosexuality, worker rights, unions, social welfare, mandatory paid vacations, job security, decent minimum wage, pensions, public telco / electricity / gas companies, public health system, public and affordable transport systems, &c. to France. Some of these things are still lacking in countries like Germany, or the US. I don't understand how socialism is perceived so differently between Europe and the US. When the current US gov talks about socialism it just sounds like they're addressing authoritarian communism. Maybe we're just using the same word for vastly different things. For example the french definition goes something like that, according to wikipedia : "The word socialism covers a very diverse set of currents of thought and political movements, the common point of which is to seek a more just social and economic organization. The original goal of socialism is to achieve social equality, or at least a reduction of inequalities". While the english version says "Socialism is a range of economic and social systems characterised by social ownership of the means of production and workers' self-management,[10] as well as the political theories and movements associated with them.[11] Social ownership can be public, collective or cooperative ownership, or citizen ownership of equity." Not so long ago we all witnessed an artifact of earlier social movements when the so called yellow vests went in the streets to protest for better wages and pensions (as well as other things). Now if you listen to the news, these people are just lazy, uneducated, violent and should be sent to jail. Well, guess what, when people were fed up of sending their 12 years old kids to the coal mine 80 hours a week they didn't wait for the elite to care, they took what they deserved, through social movements deeply influenced by socialism. (just like it happened for black people in the 60s-70s in the us) So again, when Trumps says "America Will Never Be A Socialist Country"; "We Were Born Free And We Will Stay Free", I don't see what socialism has to do with that. We're talking about the #1 world economy, telling the world that socialism is bad, while at the same time his people die of diabetes because they can't afford insulin due to a heavily privatized health industry. Where is the "we the people" in that ? I stand by what I said, a healthy dose of socialism wouldn't harm the US a bit, quite the opposite.
• jumbopapa 8y ago
  This article strongly rings of the "Economic Outpatient Care" chapters in The Millionaire Next Door.
• chipgap98 8y ago
  > More than half (53 percent) of Americans ages 21 to 37 have received some form of financial assistance from a parent, guardian or family member since turning 21, according to a 2018 report by Country Financial, a financial services firm in Bloomington, Ill. This seems like a weird age range to pick when talking about 30 somethings. Many kids are still in college in their early 20s. I'd be interested in knowing how many people in their 30s are receiving family aid
  • softawre 8y ago
    That number wouldn't get as many clicks though
• skywhopper 8y ago
  Ugh, yet another millenial-bashing thinkpiece constructed from soundbites of consulting agencies and web startups who have a vested interest in pushing a particular storyline. I suppose this sort of thing gets clicks, but it's toxic in a dozen different ways to pretend that these anecdotes and overgeneralities are representative of Americans in their thirties. Not to mention the loaded assumptions that cross-generational support is something unprecedented or negative.
  • sime2009 8y ago
    Did you even bother to read the article? It is nothing like that. It is really an article about terrible economics young adults have to face.
• saosebastiao 8y ago
  > On average, each millennial parent receives $11,011 per year in combined financial support and unpaid labor That's the average?!?! What's the 90th percentile like, cause I've been sitting on a big fat zero since before I was a legal adult. And I know I'm not alone. These numbers are blowing my mind right now.
  • trowawee 8y ago
    Literally hundreds of thousands of dollars. Flights on private jets when there's a pressing need for travel. Rent and food and entertainment in major cities, full tuition payments for millennials and, as they reach the point of starting their own families, their children. Relatedly, one of my strongly-held, but weakly-sourced opinions is that the disparity between anger about financial inequality (wildly inconsistent throughout the country, but not really dominant anywhere) and the level of actual financial inequality (higher than ever before in the history of the country) is largely due to the fact that most people, like you are realizing here, don't actually see that disparity that much. A lot of this wealth transfer is obfuscated (very deliberately!) and laundered through less-explicit mechanisms, like the aforementioned "paying for the ludicrously expensive nightmare that is childcare".
    • mrep 8y ago
      Not even close. 90% wealth has a little over a million and even the 99% has a little over 10 million. At 10 million, you can live in perpetuity with $400,000 which is good, but not private jets good.
• throwaway-1283 8y ago
  Living in SF, the very real phenomenon I've noticed is friends who hit late 20s/early 30s, get married, and then leave with varying intentions but many to move closer to their parents (presumably in a cheaper area) so that they can get help raising kids while both continue to work. This article doesn't really capture the fact that this only works if the 30-somethings move out of SF, NY, LA, etc. to move closer to home (unless those are the places where the parents are already living), which may be an area outside of a major urban job center.
• rabidsnail 8y ago
  Housing development is one of the highest on the ripe-for-disruption list, maybe second after higher education. Virtually none of the money these people are going into debt to spend on houses generates real value in their lives, they're doing it because they think they're supposed to. If you can figure out how to build cheap housing on cheap land that offers good living standards (doable now that you don't need access to the power grid) then you'll unlock literally trillions in value.
• bandrami 8y ago
  Part of this is the peculiarly American obsession with moving out of your parents' house and living independently as soon as possible. When I was living in India that was difficult for my coworkers to understand.
• SovietDissident 8y ago
  There are a lot of problems---namely: debt, cost of living, and third-world immigration---that this generation has to face. That being said, we are still probably the second-richest generation in the history of the world. Look at the squalor people lived in only 80 or 100 years ago: whole families in one-bedroom houses with no central heat or A/C, a chamberpot in the corner of the room, wood-burning stove providing all heat and cooking, and almost certain death by most diseases. If they wanted to start a business, they'd have to save enough capital to start a brick-and-mortar enterprise in a local market. We have the ability to buy a $500 computer and start a business or learn a new skill from anywhere. We have access to wondrous modern healthcare (yes, which gov't interference has increased the price of, but the quality is nonetheless excellent). Cars are much better than they used to be---your 10-year old Japanese car with power windows will run until the bumpers fall off, and then probably keep going. I'm certainly nowhere near where I want to be financially, but perhaps I'm striking an optimistic tone today because I watched They Shall Not Grow Old over the weekend. One of the veterans talks about how he was retreating after an offensive and saw a fellow 16-year-old writhing on the ground in pain after being blown to bits. He knew the boy was done for, and put him out of his misery. By comparison to what they endured, we live in Heaven-on-Earth.
• Causality1 8y ago
  The idea it's somehow wrong or shameful to share a house with your parents is a very culture-bound one that doesn't have many objective advantages.
• galfarragem 8y ago
  This article doesn't fit the typical millenial in the HN bubble. Most people here have a prized lottery ticket in their pocket (IT) and consistently want to ignore it. Most times they are in position of helping their parents, not of being helped.
  • roguecoder 8y ago
    It was a lot easier to get that lottery ticket with parental help in the first place. For many commenters here, just having access to a computer before college was a mark of family wealth.
• ryandrake 8y ago
  In my 40s so too old to have the “millennial” label, but there definitely seems to have been some kind of generational shift in terms of what’s normal. I would be absolutely mortified and ashamed if I had to ask my parents for help with a down payment for a house or for a car, let alone routine bills. They’re retired and on fixed income, and in my 30s they were financially just barely getting to that point where they could retire. I think most of my age cohort would say the same thing. I’d rather cut the size of my home in half and drive a 20 year old beater Toyota than depend on my parents, who already spent the prime of their adult lives supporting me. Not saying the new attitude is wrong, but is seems so foreign to me. I guess my question to a 30 year old whose parents pay their bills is: what would you do if they died suddenly or became unable to continue support? You must have some kind of plan..?
  • refurb 8y ago
    Same attitude as you. I wouldn't dare ask my parents for financial help, they've done enough. I had a coworker whose parents paid for his college. They were low income gov't workers. He gets a good degree and starts raking in the cash and spending like no tomorrow. How could you possible do that and still look your parents in the eye?
• 40acres 8y ago
  I was born in NYC to Haitian immigrants, if you didn't know Haiti is the poorest country in the Western hemisphere. I grew up in a neighborhood with a lot of West Indian first generation children, a common theme for us was that we were "tougher" than the white kids who grew up in NYC because they lived easy lives. It was typical short sighted thinking that young kids do. I wonder what that kid would say now after reading this article. A lot of the people I grew up with went to crappy colleges. I did too, and we were too broke to even think about tuition so PELL grants funded my education. College Textbooks? You mean PDFs from The Pirate Bay. I made it out and got a nice job in tech, but like many of my peers it is I who support my parents. I pay their health insurance, I lend them money for groceries, and I'm financing my dad's chemotherapy. Do you know how hard it is to save up for a house (on the west coast !!) knowing you'll never get a windfall from Mom and Dad? When in fact they are a liability budget wise? I wish more articles were written about this side of the coin, it is my experience that many young people, especially minorities, are shouldering the burden of "elder care" earlier than they ever thought they would.
  • david-cako 8y ago
    >I made it out and got a nice job in tech, but like many of my peers it is I who support my parents. I pay their health insurance, I lend them money for groceries, and I'm financing my dad's chemotherapy. Do you know how hard it is to save up for a house (on the west coast !!) knowing you'll never get a windfall from Mom and Dad? When in fact they are a liability budget wise? I can only imagine how difficult that is. This is an interesting distinction between western and eastern culture too. I wonder if the obligation to take care of your parents is less pronounced in eastern households that are wealthier.
    • nikhizzle 8y ago
      So I disagree about the distinction, I have many Indian and Chinese friends who have no obligation to take care of their parents (admittedly from middle class backgrounds). And then I have two good friends who are American of long ago European descent who definitely help their parents out with the bills extensively. To answer your question though, I've seen it as common in both eastern and western families of means to not be expected to take care of your parents as much.
• bkohlmann 8y ago
  As a (older) millennial, one of the unanticipated benefits of my military service was near financial freedom. When I was 18, all I wanted to do fly airplanes. I didn’t realize it would help me have options when I decided I was done flying. I graduated from a top private university with no debt in 2004. My parents didn’t pay for any of it (indeed, they couldn’t). I was on a full ROTC scholarship which covered all my tuition and books. It also paid a monthly stipend of ~$350/mo which covered my minimal needs. Room and board was covered by summer jobs like painting houses and some other random scholarships I got from other sources. No one goes into the military to get rich, but if you are savvy, you can do very well in your 20s. I always had a roommate. I ended up buying two (low cost) houses which I then rented to buddies on the same base. When on deployment, in a combat zone, we got tax free pay – and almost nothing to spend it on. Being a saver anyway, I threw them into index funds and a few tech stocks in the early 2010s. I started a Roth in 2004, maxing my contributions every year since (benefitting from having no loan payments). When I got out of active service, I went to a very expensive, top graduate school using the GI Bill. It paid for over 80% of tuition, and since I was in the Bay Area, a very generous housing stipend. The rest I made up for via other veteran and religious related scholarships. At 35, I had a nice nest egg built up, two prestigious degrees paid for via my early military career choice, and a very nice job lined up after graduation with significant upside. My wife and I have no debt (aside from our current house), some cash flowing investment properties, and positive career prospects going forward. I also have the option of continuing with (minimal impact) reserve service to get a small, but meaningful monthly pension at the age of 60. The decisions (unanticipated in many instances) early on have enabled an empowering financial future. We’re not uber-wealthy…yet. But we are secure - all without family contributions. Some caveats: Most of my military career I lived in low cost of living areas (think rural Mississippi, Texas, and California). I was unmarried with no kids. I had a propensity to save (similar military peers with a similar trajectory had a lot less cash when they got out…and some have a lot more). I write this only to present an alternative, showing the unanticipated rewards from making a particular career choice. The key thing here is the immense value of getting education paid for and being able to invest the money that would’ve gone to loan payments over a decade or more. For many the military may not be the right move (and there are downsides)…but in my case, it had immense financial upside (and I got 1800 free flight hours out of the deal!), especially for a public school kid coming from a modest family. To you 17 year olds without money looking for options, taking advantage of government funded education in return for military service can be a lucrative path if tied to other cost-minimization strategies.
• golemiprague 8y ago
  Why anglo cultures are so obsessed with cutting the cord with their families? where I come from parents giving help to their children is the norm, everybody helps everybody else, whether within the family or broader community. I see so many lonely people where I live now, they don't have friends and family. I got the feeling that in the west they want to break those ties, the same way the communists did in order for the government to be able to control everything. When you don't have family and community you need to rely on the government, then they control you and screw you up and it all becomes corrupt and bloody.
• ljm 8y ago
  Various parts of my family are pretty damn wealthy, as far as I can assume. I cut contact. I won't be in any of their wills, I won't have their money. And I am immensely happy for that. It means that everything I achieve is purely my own, and with people I love dearly. It's a lot less comfortable but it opened me to opportunities I never would have had. Like other commenters, my nice programming job in tech helped make that happen. We're pretty damn lucky to learn these skills at this time.
• AtlasBarfed 8y ago
  The intergenerational social contract isn't justified by laissez-faire economics of the baby boomers and globalization. Don't worry, the uplifting of people in other countries via globalization justifies the disenfranchisement of the younger generations of America. Of course, we won't talk about the fact that the super rich in all countries are the true beneficiaries of the wealth redistribution of laissez-faire free trade globalization. The article is spot on though. No jobs, regressive pay (stagnant is for people in gen Y, the Millenials are experiencing shrinking pay both in real and equivalent dollars, while housing, healthcare, education, have skyrocketed. Consumer spending may buy a bit more than it used to... But good luck having a house, staying healthy, and getting a job to buy all that plastic crap at target, or even... food.
• cascom 8y ago
  I think this issue is illustrated in a different way - the asset/wage ratio of the 70's/80's vs today... To take a yuppie example: If you went to work for a white shoe law firm or top investment bank right out of graduate school in the 1970's in new york maybe you made ~$30K a year but a really really nice apartment or townhouse cost $150k-$300K so it was a 5x-10x ratio between starting salary and really nice house Now the houses that sold for $150k-$300K in the 70's sell for like $7.5m - $30m, but those same first year banking/law jobs at top firms pay like $250k so a ratio of 30x - 120x!!!!
  • bradlys 8y ago
    Townhouses or apartments for $7.5m to $30m? Is this in NYC? (Even then, that seems outlandish) The only thing in SF Bay that's $7m+ are the mini-mansions in Atherton and Woodside.
    • cascom 8y ago
      New York city... not saying there are not cheaper, but what what would have cost a few hundred thousand dollars in the mid 70's would cost that now
  • kevindong 8y ago
    > Now the houses that sold for $150k-$300K in the 70's sell for like $7.5m - $30m I think you're off by an order of magnitude. 432 Park Ave, which is by any account one of the most expensive buildings in NYC, has a 2 bedroom / 2.5 bath apartment listed for just shy of $12 million [0]. In fact, there's only 13, 2-bedroom apartments more expensive than that for sale in Manhattan [5]. In Manhattan, there's currently 134 listings for 2 bedroom apartments with a listing price of under $750k [1], 1596 listings for under $3 million [2], 1998 listings for under $7.5 million, and a total of 2034 listings for all 2 bedrooms currently listed [4]. [0]: https://streeteasy.com/building/432-park-avenue-new_york/53a https://streeteasy.com/building/432-park-avenue-new_york/53a [1]: https://streeteasy.com/for-sale/manhattan/status:open%7Cprice:-750000%7Cbeds:2 https://streeteasy.com/for-sale/manhattan/status:open%7Cpric... [2]: https://streeteasy.com/for-sale/manhattan/status:open%7Cprice:-3000000%7Cbeds:2 https://streeteasy.com/for-sale/manhattan/status:open%7Cpric... [3]: https://streeteasy.com/for-sale/manhattan/status:open%7Cprice:-7500000%7Cbeds:2 https://streeteasy.com/for-sale/manhattan/status:open%7Cpric... [4]: https://streeteasy.com/for-sale/manhattan/status:open%7Cbeds:2 https://streeteasy.com/for-sale/manhattan/status:open%7Cbeds... [5]: https://streeteasy.com/for-sale/manhattan/status:open%7Cprice:12000000-%7Cbeds:2 https://streeteasy.com/for-sale/manhattan/status:open%7Cpric...
• gerbilly 8y ago
  Why insist on buying in those hyper inflated areas anyway? Why not go found a millennial utopia in some (as yet) undervalued part of the country, and start creating startups there etc...?
  • hobofan 8y ago
    Isn't that what Portland/Austin is/was?
• weberc2 8y ago
  This comment from the NYT comments section captures my reaction well. Note that the subject of the criticism is the article, not millenials: > I find the tone of this article just stunning. Since when is there a sacrosanct right to live in the most expensive housing markets in the country? NYC is not newly expensive - it has always been expensive. When I graduated from college many years ago, I got a job in Manhattan, but certainly couldn't afford to live there. So I did what most people in my situation did: I lived where I could afford and commuted to work over an hour each way on public transportation. This is hardly a radical proposition except to those who somehow think they are entitled to have what they want when they want it. Sometimes you have to learn to defer gratification. The easiest time to do this is when you are young. After 8 years of saving, I was able to make a down payment on a house. 4 years after that I finished paying off my student loans. There is great value in learning to live within one's means and I am grateful that my parents found it more important to foster self-reliance than to insulate me from disappointment.
  • anonymousJim12 8y ago
    really? It reads like the subject of the criticism is millenials... I find the tone of the criticism stunning, even if it were about the article and not millenials. The article is laying out how millenials have it different than previous generations. Yes NYC was always expensive but even now places that are 1 hour commute are out of reach for your average 30 something. It's tough to say when the commentor came up but the article is painting a picture that the game has changed and it isn't as easy as it once was to delay gratification for 8 years because it's more like double that amount of time. At that point we need to start asking questions to understand if this is sustainable.
    • weberc2 8y ago
      > really? It reads like the subject of the criticism is millenials... It’s quite explicitly a criticism of the article’s tone, which suggests millennials should feel entitled to certain luxuries. This is markedly different than arguing that millennials hold an entitlement attitude. > The article is laying out how millenials have it different than previous generations. Yes NYC was always expensive but even now places that are 1 hour commute are out of reach for your average 30 something. Perhaps that is the case the article means to make, but it supports itself with anecdotes about how a down-on-her-luck millennial was able to buy a $400K San Diego condo on the beach thanks to a $40K gift from her parents. That might sound reasonable to a New Yorker, but to the rest of the country that is incredibly tone deaf. This isn’t dunking on millennials—I’m a millennial in my lower 30s and I come from a lower middle class background. I’m renting downtown in a major US city, and I’m saving to buy property, so I’m very much the demographic in question. Still, I can’t imagine expecting my parents to help financially (they didn’t help with college either). The economy is perhaps worse, but the salaries in the article are still perfectly manageable if you don’t have to go out to eat every week or take annual international vacations or live in the hottest neighborhoods.
• courtf 8y ago
  As a millennial born in the early 80s, I know a good number of people from my college years who, I have learned over time, live a similarly charmed life. Looking back, there was always something a bit odd about these folks: namely, that they seemed to be far more concerned than I was about what to do with their time. They seemed to really be concerned about having the "right" kind of job, or the "right" kind of life. When I was working customer service or slinging cocktails at the gay bars to pay my rent and food costs, they were researching grad schools (only the best), or traveling to the third world on short-term humanitarian missions. One took several years off from work without much apparent anxiety. Another jumped from city to city, making large numbers of fair-weather friends and throwing himself into startup after startup, never settling down or really committing to anything or anyone. Another married a successful artist, and raises the kids in Santa Monica. I know a few living very bohemian lives, in high-minded intentional communities, writing books to teach their peers about some obscure facet of culture. Some went into the corporate world, where they adequately fill a suit and sometimes write about M&A on a blog. I've worked with lots of these types as well of course, in the tech industry. They have no concern about being their own angel, and care a lot about diversity, but have no qualms about asking you to work late, or over the weekend to help "the business" meet its latest pivot. Needless to say, all of these people are white. My husband's family is white too, although quite poor. His father used to break and shoe horses, and can track an animal through a desert. The sort of man who relies on Medicare to pay for his liver removal surgery, his lymph-node removal, his spinal growths removals, and any other places where the cancer metastasized, but is out fixing a truck engine soon after, with his oxygen tank dangerously close to the welding torch. This happens in the sort of countryside where your trailer gets broken into, and the thieves drag your refrigerator over to their trailer not far away up the dirt road, leaving a trail you can see from space, but the police can't do anything. In an earlier time, he would have solved that problem himself, but he doesn't hear so good, or see so good thanks to a couple of strokes and type-I diabetes. The wife has MS, so he spends most of his time taking care of her. When the grandfather shot himself, the gun was one of the most valuable things he left behind. Despite losing her retirement to shady financial management, after 30 years as a charge nurse in the ED, the wife couldn't wait to blow what little they got in the will on a new hot tub. Better enjoy it now. Of course they'll have to sell their sandy little plot in the next year or so anyway, before it becomes worthless due to the water table drying up. My husband does what he can to bail them out when unexpected bills arrive, and maybe he ought to spend more on their comfort. God knows his sister can't help from behind bars. My family is different, my parents paid for my bachelor's, just not my master's, but we can tell some similar stories from a couple generations back. My grandfather had to cut off his own father during the depression, essentially dooming him, because the old man stupidly lost everything he owned, and his only hope was the wage my grandfather earned, after a career as a ship's engineer, shoveling coal into the furnaces of buildings in NYC. This is the ugly side of progress no one wants to talk about: how people get left behind. How the parents fight a losing battle, and the kid grows up knowing their only hope is to get the hell away from it all. These callous things long to be forgotten.
• zeroname 8y ago
  Basically, you got: - overpriced health-care, because the government thinks everyone should be able to buy health-care no matter what state their health is, but also everybody should be able to not buy healthcare when they feel like they don't need to - overpriced private primary education, because the government thinks tax money must be locked up in a garbage public education system - overpriced college, because the government thinks everyone should be able to go to college (and go broke for it) - overpriced housing, because the government thinks everyone should be able to buy a house (and go broke for it) - overpriced stock, because the government-created asset bubbles must be re-inflated with cheap money in order to save the retirement funds - high taxes and deductions to mitigate the enormous amount of government debt that this whole charade requires As a bonus, trillions of unfunded liabilities going into the future, meaning more taxes and deductions and fewer benefits for those suckers that'll have to pay into it. Mark my words, in the future we will need the border wall to keep people in. Also don't forget that, as a citizen, you will owe taxes to Uncle Sam wherever you go.