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There's also the shifting economics. In the youth of the boomers, working yourself through college was a thing, getting on the bottom rung of the property ladde

There's also the shifting economics. In the youth of the boomers, working yourself through college was a thing, getting on the bottom rung of the property ladder with your entry level job was a thing. Nowadays you'd get a bitter laugh suggesting a millennial do either. But boomers still think it. "They don't have a work ethic" - no shit, they don't. They've made the entirely rational decision that hard work doesn't pay. Rather, work is a painful subsistence deathmarch promising no future other than more of the same.

stegosaurus 11y ago
Agree. The idea of work ethic has been contorted. I will work hard for years if I get a reasonable reward for it. 20 years of 40 hour weeks for a family home and reasonable life at the end? Sure. 40 hour weeks for zero increase in net worth and barely making the rent? Get outta here. Someone else can be your pawn. I'll find alternative ways to live, screw your little game. The idea is deferred gratification, not total lack of gratification.
VLM 11y ago
"working yourself through college was a thing" Not just youth of the boomers, but as an early gen-x I had no problem doing the same. Well, I had minor credit card debt but nothing much. The government didn't help much back then, which is why my tuition payments were like $2K instead of $30K like now. Today I could not possibly afford to buy the house I bought and live in around the turn of the century. Note that in the long term those prices always revert to the norm. One way or another the median property buyer eventually buys the median property. So either their wages go up (LOL as if that's ever going to happen without a revolution) or the prices go down (guaranteed, this is baked into the cake at this point). There is a famous saying about the market can afford to be irrational longer than you can afford to wait so its not like its going to be next week, but eventually the average dude is going to be able to afford the average domicile, and the only question is who's going to take the painful adjustment.
- soylentcola 11y ago
  Even though I was at the tail end of "Gen X" like the author of the article, I still managed to pull it off. This wasn't without any debt but I went to a state university that cost about $10k/yr and paid for most of it by working part time throughout school and full time over summers (while living for free at home during breaks, foregoing the car payment, and skipping the pricey spring breaks and summer vacations). That's not to say I didn't take out any loans but when I graduated, I owed the equivalent of a Ford Focus rather than a good chunk of a home mortgage. Looking at the costs at the same state university, it's now up to around $13k for tuition, fees, and a dorm room for a full year. That's a decent $3k/yr bump from what I paid but I also didn't take advantage of cheap community college tuition for the first year or two so there are still ways to do it and not graduate with $50-100k in debt. If anything, I think what's missing (and was missing for me as well) is a real focus on the value of degrees and the real cost of debt. Offers of loans and credit are thrown at students all the time and it's way too easy to accept when you haven't spent years of being truly broke and in debt. Likewise, there was so much focus on just going to college because that is what you did after high school. Just pick a major based on something you like and no mention is made of which fields are actually hiring and what they're paying. The idea of just going to college and paying $40k or $60k to spend four years learning about something interesting just "because" really only works if you come from wealth and can just pay for it. As long as it costs that much, I think there should really be more focus on exactly what you're getting at the end. Too many young people think it's "college, then graduate, then get job in field, then use salary to pay off any loans while maybe saving up to buy a house somewhere down the line". I don't think you can really blame them because if I remember correctly, I was ignorant of much of reality at 17 when I was applying for this stuff.

stegosaurus 11y ago

Agree. The idea of work ethic has been contorted. I will work hard for years if I get a reasonable reward for it. 20 years of 40 hour weeks for a family home and reasonable life at the end? Sure. 40 hour weeks for zero increase in net worth and barely making the rent? Get outta here. Someone else can be your pawn. I'll find alternative ways to live, screw your little game. The idea is deferred gratification, not total lack of gratification.

VLM 11y ago

"working yourself through college was a thing" Not just youth of the boomers, but as an early gen-x I had no problem doing the same. Well, I had minor credit card debt but nothing much. The government didn't help much back then, which is why my tuition payments were like $2K instead of $30K like now. Today I could not possibly afford to buy the house I bought and live in around the turn of the century. Note that in the long term those prices always revert to the norm. One way or another the median property buyer eventually buys the median property. So either their wages go up (LOL as if that's ever going to happen without a revolution) or the prices go down (guaranteed, this is baked into the cake at this point). There is a famous saying about the market can afford to be irrational longer than you can afford to wait so its not like its going to be next week, but eventually the average dude is going to be able to afford the average domicile, and the only question is who's going to take the painful adjustment.

soylentcola 11y ago
Even though I was at the tail end of "Gen X" like the author of the article, I still managed to pull it off. This wasn't without any debt but I went to a state university that cost about $10k/yr and paid for most of it by working part time throughout school and full time over summers (while living for free at home during breaks, foregoing the car payment, and skipping the pricey spring breaks and summer vacations). That's not to say I didn't take out any loans but when I graduated, I owed the equivalent of a Ford Focus rather than a good chunk of a home mortgage. Looking at the costs at the same state university, it's now up to around $13k for tuition, fees, and a dorm room for a full year. That's a decent $3k/yr bump from what I paid but I also didn't take advantage of cheap community college tuition for the first year or two so there are still ways to do it and not graduate with $50-100k in debt. If anything, I think what's missing (and was missing for me as well) is a real focus on the value of degrees and the real cost of debt. Offers of loans and credit are thrown at students all the time and it's way too easy to accept when you haven't spent years of being truly broke and in debt. Likewise, there was so much focus on just going to college because that is what you did after high school. Just pick a major based on something you like and no mention is made of which fields are actually hiring and what they're paying. The idea of just going to college and paying $40k or $60k to spend four years learning about something interesting just "because" really only works if you come from wealth and can just pay for it. As long as it costs that much, I think there should really be more focus on exactly what you're getting at the end. Too many young people think it's "college, then graduate, then get job in field, then use salary to pay off any loans while maybe saving up to buy a house somewhere down the line". I don't think you can really blame them because if I remember correctly, I was ignorant of much of reality at 17 when I was applying for this stuff.