7 ms·

I think some things are falling apart but not everything. If you had the foresight/luck/guidance to get into a stable white collar career, find a partner, and b

I think some things are falling apart but not everything. If you had the foresight/luck/guidance to get into a stable white collar career, find a partner, and buy a house before 2022 I think you're on "the train". This train is currently pulling away from a burning station containing everyone else who hasn't done those things yet. It's still possible to escape the station by running down the tracks but at this point the train is picking up speed so your odds aren't too good. Obviously this is a young single person's perspective but I think we're by far feeling the shifts in society and the economy the most right now. Alternative, darker analogy: everyone is on the Titanic. It's currently breaking in half and about to sink, but people like the author of this blog post are on the upper half looking down.

tamaharbor 4y ago
Or you can just wait for the next stop and get on there.
- the_other 4y ago
  How do you get to the next stop?
  - jimbob45 4y ago
    You wait for the market to cycle again - crash, boom, then crash, etc. Parent poster might have been in their 20s/30s though and implying that waiting for the next cycle would waste prime years of their life.
    - tejohnso 4y ago
      > waste prime years of their life. I'm not sure that life is wasted, but I'd suggest financial opportunity is wasted. You just can't reach the level of financial security that the previous generation could if that previous generation had a drastically lower cost of living relative to income for the first X years of their adult life. Especially as X approaches the length of your entire career.
    - User23 4y ago
      Or you hope that your boomer parents don't reverse mortgage the house to fund the Margarita-ville lifestyle at some compound in Florida. For many young people today inheriting a house is the only plausible way they're going to get one.
      - aaronax 4y ago
        Anyone can move to my town and get an $18/hour starting wage job and buy a $150,000 house. Hard to imagine that this is unique. Look outside the cities...
        User23 4y ago
        Blackrock is aware of this problem and is actively mitigating it.
      - bradlys 4y ago
        That’ll happen at far too late of an age for it to matter though. Parents aren’t dying at 60 when they had kids at 30. They’re dying at 80 and the kids will be 50+ when they finally get anything. By then - it’s far too late.
    - rtkwe 4y ago
      That depends heavily on your job and savings not being decimated by the crash part of that cycle.
- woodweb 4y ago
  As someone born in and has all my family in BC, Canada; I barely lucked out securing a house in 2020. This was thanks to a white collar career and financially literate partner. There is no next stop. Look at Canada's housing crisis if you want to see where the United States is headed.
- jaqalopes 4y ago
  I appreciate extending the analogy but I don't understand what this actually looks like in real life. You only go to college one, have your first job out of college once, etc. If you don't maximize ROI on those (not just financially but socially) you're playing catchup forever. Success is absolutely still possible but it will take hard work and luck compared to if I had just followed the prescribed path like so many people I know.
- tenebrisalietum 4y ago
  On a burning station? That's not safe. Is a train even going to stop at a burning station?
hotpotamus 4y ago
Curious - you say you are a young single person - do you count yourself as on the train (or at least able to run fast enough to get on?).
- jaqalopes 4y ago
  I'm currently running to catch up. Feels like there's a non-trivial chance of failure, but I have enough privilege that I think I'll get on all right in the end. I could have been on the train from day 1 if I had made some different choices but there's no helping that now.
thaway2839 4y ago
White collar careers outside of tech are not as stable as you're indicating.
- jaqalopes 4y ago
  That's definitely possible, I'm only going from people I know personally. Lots of insurance and finance and consulting types whose lives seem obscenely easy with their regular raises and functioning health insurance (grass is of course always greener). And as for tech, while the industry isn't going anywhere I think any single tech job is not necessarily super stable either. I guess by white collar jobs I was specifically thinking of jobs at Fortune 500 companies.
daviross 4y ago
This is a good way of putting it. Having graduated high school in 2008, it's felt my entire adult life like I've been reaching for brass rings just within reach (for me), barely clinging on, but still doing better than so many people who weren't even in position to do that. We'll see about 'stable', there's some work I need to do if I want this to be sustainable/not something I'm at risk at crashing down from, but I've made it on the train while feeling the flames lapping at my neck.
rtkwe 4y ago
I think the 'train' is also on fire just more insulated from the burning and it'll be a bit more comfortable until your car is engulfed and disconnected. IMO the beginning of Walkaway or maybe After the Revolution is a reasonable picture of what the future will look like economically with the gap between the rich and the rest of the world continuing to widen and life outside of that becoming increasingly tenuous. I'm not bullish on major changes happening that manage to address the causes of that. How well things stay glued together like in Walkaway or we get an explosive fracturing like After the Revolution is anyone's guess.
- imtringued 4y ago
  There is a movie about this called snowpiercer.
  - rtkwe 4y ago
    Yeah I liked it. They also made a TV show but I never watched that. Thought about how to include references to it but it didn't quite fit so I dropped it.
Teknoman117 4y ago
Crap. One of three for me. I'd have had a house by now if it weren't for the fact I had to pay back $120k in student loans. Heavy drain on my finances for years. Finally paid the damn things off earlier this year. In some ways I did the stupid thing by moving to an area where the property costs were beyond me, but it's where the people I know live. I was so very alone where I was before.
basisword 4y ago
While I agree that buying property has become very difficult, what has changed in 2022 that prevents you from getting a stable white collar job or finding a partner? If you have the requisite skillset (which can be acquired more easily than ever thanks to the internet) getting a stable white collar job is very possible. And in the age of dating apps, so much friction has been removed when it comes to finding a partner (although it might not feel like it at times).
- A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
  Some friction was removed; some friction was added. The 'ease' of finding a partner on apps creates an illusion of 'plenty fish in the sea', but 10s still go after 10s and, apparently, so do 6,7,8, and 9s creating a very interesting vacuum. As far as skillset goes, I would argue that it is only part of the story. Knowing the right person, is the key. You want to talk to people. You want to showcase what you can do. Stable job is doable then, but I don't know if it is easy. And that does not even touch the simple fact that not everyone is built for that.
  - basisword 4y ago
    >> Some friction was removed; some friction was added. The 'ease' of finding a partner on apps creates an illusion of 'plenty fish in the sea', but 10s still go after 10s and, apparently, so do 6,7,8, and 9s creating a very interesting vacuum. Is this not what happens in the real world too? The bit I'm stuck on is how it's gotten harder in 2022. At worst, it's the same as the past as far as I can see.
- BeFlatXIII 4y ago
  Having the skill set to do a job is vastly different from having the skill set (or connections) to get the job.
  - basisword 4y ago
    Yes, but how is this more difficult in 2022?
- 4y ago
brnaftr361 4y ago
Except there's a mob outside with pitchforks, and the conductor and engineer are part of it[1], and everybody in it has the same look on their face, "You really thought you could get away?" as the air brakes hiss into their fail-state, and everyone on board the train realizes the red herring of the burning station didn't work out. [1]: https://coloradosun.com/2022/04/08/bnsf-railway-attendance-policy-lawsuit/ https://coloradosun.com/2022/04/08/bnsf-railway-attendance-p...
lampshades 4y ago
As someone securely on the train, this feels apt.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

tamaharbor 4y ago

Or you can just wait for the next stop and get on there.

the_other 4y ago
How do you get to the next stop?
- jimbob45 4y ago
  You wait for the market to cycle again - crash, boom, then crash, etc. Parent poster might have been in their 20s/30s though and implying that waiting for the next cycle would waste prime years of their life.
  - tejohnso 4y ago
    > waste prime years of their life. I'm not sure that life is wasted, but I'd suggest financial opportunity is wasted. You just can't reach the level of financial security that the previous generation could if that previous generation had a drastically lower cost of living relative to income for the first X years of their adult life. Especially as X approaches the length of your entire career.
  - User23 4y ago
    Or you hope that your boomer parents don't reverse mortgage the house to fund the Margarita-ville lifestyle at some compound in Florida. For many young people today inheriting a house is the only plausible way they're going to get one.
    - aaronax 4y ago
      Anyone can move to my town and get an $18/hour starting wage job and buy a $150,000 house. Hard to imagine that this is unique. Look outside the cities...
      - User23 4y ago
        Blackrock is aware of this problem and is actively mitigating it.
    - bradlys 4y ago
      That’ll happen at far too late of an age for it to matter though. Parents aren’t dying at 60 when they had kids at 30. They’re dying at 80 and the kids will be 50+ when they finally get anything. By then - it’s far too late.
  - rtkwe 4y ago
    That depends heavily on your job and savings not being decimated by the crash part of that cycle.
woodweb 4y ago
As someone born in and has all my family in BC, Canada; I barely lucked out securing a house in 2020. This was thanks to a white collar career and financially literate partner. There is no next stop. Look at Canada's housing crisis if you want to see where the United States is headed.
jaqalopes 4y ago
I appreciate extending the analogy but I don't understand what this actually looks like in real life. You only go to college one, have your first job out of college once, etc. If you don't maximize ROI on those (not just financially but socially) you're playing catchup forever. Success is absolutely still possible but it will take hard work and luck compared to if I had just followed the prescribed path like so many people I know.
tenebrisalietum 4y ago
On a burning station? That's not safe. Is a train even going to stop at a burning station?

hotpotamus 4y ago

Curious - you say you are a young single person - do you count yourself as on the train (or at least able to run fast enough to get on?).

jaqalopes 4y ago
I'm currently running to catch up. Feels like there's a non-trivial chance of failure, but I have enough privilege that I think I'll get on all right in the end. I could have been on the train from day 1 if I had made some different choices but there's no helping that now.

thaway2839 4y ago

White collar careers outside of tech are not as stable as you're indicating.

jaqalopes 4y ago
That's definitely possible, I'm only going from people I know personally. Lots of insurance and finance and consulting types whose lives seem obscenely easy with their regular raises and functioning health insurance (grass is of course always greener). And as for tech, while the industry isn't going anywhere I think any single tech job is not necessarily super stable either. I guess by white collar jobs I was specifically thinking of jobs at Fortune 500 companies.

daviross 4y ago

This is a good way of putting it. Having graduated high school in 2008, it's felt my entire adult life like I've been reaching for brass rings just within reach (for me), barely clinging on, but still doing better than so many people who weren't even in position to do that. We'll see about 'stable', there's some work I need to do if I want this to be sustainable/not something I'm at risk at crashing down from, but I've made it on the train while feeling the flames lapping at my neck.

rtkwe 4y ago

I think the 'train' is also on fire just more insulated from the burning and it'll be a bit more comfortable until your car is engulfed and disconnected. IMO the beginning of Walkaway or maybe After the Revolution is a reasonable picture of what the future will look like economically with the gap between the rich and the rest of the world continuing to widen and life outside of that becoming increasingly tenuous. I'm not bullish on major changes happening that manage to address the causes of that. How well things stay glued together like in Walkaway or we get an explosive fracturing like After the Revolution is anyone's guess.

imtringued 4y ago
There is a movie about this called snowpiercer.
- rtkwe 4y ago
  Yeah I liked it. They also made a TV show but I never watched that. Thought about how to include references to it but it didn't quite fit so I dropped it.

Teknoman117 4y ago

Crap. One of three for me. I'd have had a house by now if it weren't for the fact I had to pay back $120k in student loans. Heavy drain on my finances for years. Finally paid the damn things off earlier this year. In some ways I did the stupid thing by moving to an area where the property costs were beyond me, but it's where the people I know live. I was so very alone where I was before.

basisword 4y ago

While I agree that buying property has become very difficult, what has changed in 2022 that prevents you from getting a stable white collar job or finding a partner? If you have the requisite skillset (which can be acquired more easily than ever thanks to the internet) getting a stable white collar job is very possible. And in the age of dating apps, so much friction has been removed when it comes to finding a partner (although it might not feel like it at times).

A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
Some friction was removed; some friction was added. The 'ease' of finding a partner on apps creates an illusion of 'plenty fish in the sea', but 10s still go after 10s and, apparently, so do 6,7,8, and 9s creating a very interesting vacuum. As far as skillset goes, I would argue that it is only part of the story. Knowing the right person, is the key. You want to talk to people. You want to showcase what you can do. Stable job is doable then, but I don't know if it is easy. And that does not even touch the simple fact that not everyone is built for that.
- basisword 4y ago
  >> Some friction was removed; some friction was added. The 'ease' of finding a partner on apps creates an illusion of 'plenty fish in the sea', but 10s still go after 10s and, apparently, so do 6,7,8, and 9s creating a very interesting vacuum. Is this not what happens in the real world too? The bit I'm stuck on is how it's gotten harder in 2022. At worst, it's the same as the past as far as I can see.
BeFlatXIII 4y ago
Having the skill set to do a job is vastly different from having the skill set (or connections) to get the job.
- basisword 4y ago
  Yes, but how is this more difficult in 2022?
4y ago

brnaftr361 4y ago

Except there's a mob outside with pitchforks, and the conductor and engineer are part of it[1], and everybody in it has the same look on their face, "You really thought you could get away?" as the air brakes hiss into their fail-state, and everyone on board the train realizes the red herring of the burning station didn't work out. [1]: https://coloradosun.com/2022/04/08/bnsf-railway-attendance-policy-lawsuit/ https://coloradosun.com/2022/04/08/bnsf-railway-attendance-p...

lampshades 4y ago

As someone securely on the train, this feels apt.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]