http://www.esquire.com/features/young-people-in-the-recession-0412

3/31/2012 2:33:16 PM

The answer is clear! Old people are vampires!

Go cry yourself to sleep. I'm sure it's the system keeping people down again, not irresponsible behavior and an entitlement mentality.

3/31/2012 3:01:20 PM

Quote :

"A generation now means an economic cohort — a moment in the cycle of rising and (mostly) falling economic data. The UK has 21.8 percent youth unemployment, France 22.8 percent, Hungary 26.1 percent, Italy 28.2 percent, Spain 47.8 percent. Around the world, young people are beginning to be defined by their unemployment: the mileuristas of Spain, "those who earn less than a thousand euros"; the NEETs of England, "not in employment, education, or training"; the hittistes of Tunisia, "those who lean against the wall." Revolutions or unmanageable riots have inevitably followed the rise of masses of bored, underemployed young people."

3/31/2012 3:16:11 PM

I kinda agree with a lot of the arguments in the article but I don't necessarily blame old people. For me, the debts young people are going to be paying aren't just monetary either. I also don't think this is some new paradigm, recent history has a lot of examples of generations continually kicking the can into the future.


I give old people credit: They get out to vote and the politicians know it. That coupled with the shear numbers of the baby boom generation I think explains some of this. But its more than just governments taking from the young and giving to the old, its also our economic structure starting to crumble a little bit.

I think it will take a consciousness/paradigm shift on the part of young people to begin exploring alternatives to our current system to break the cycle.




[Edited on March 31, 2012 at 3:22 PM. Reason : ...]

3/31/2012 3:16:21 PM

I don't think there is a point to blaming old people necessarily. But there are widespread problems in our institutions creating systematic dysfunction to society as a whole and it disproportionately affects young people. There can be no doubt that these problems arose under the watch of the older generation and young people will suffer the consequences. Framing the debate in an honest and factual manner is the first step in rectifying the situation.

3/31/2012 3:27:07 PM

agreed, the previous generation telling kids to "do what they love" is fucking stupid and has caused great harm, as there is a dearth of STEM talent coming out of colleges.

Silicon Valley is literally starving for engineering talent. The pickings are only moderately better elsewhere.

3/31/2012 3:31:00 PM

I'd say neglecting the country's infrastructure over the past 30-40 years has caused far more harm than telling people to not be miserable.

3/31/2012 4:09:15 PM

Aww, that's so cute. You just go right on believing that.

3/31/2012 4:12:52 PM

Your convincing argument has swayed me.

I'd say maintaining the country's infrastructure over the past 30-40 years has caused far less harm than telling people to be miserable.

3/31/2012 4:21:47 PM

I'm wondering when all the fucking old people dying in my family are going to finally include me in their wills

3/31/2012 5:09:11 PM

Look, I'm the last one to defend baby boomers, their idiotic policies, how the government coddles them--and least of all their goddamn entitlement programs...

But that graphic is kinda dumb. I mean, is it really news that the financial stability of 20/30-somethings is more tenuous than that of 50/60-somethings?

3/31/2012 5:20:08 PM

I don't think general financial stability of young versus old is so much the point as the then and now. One group has fallen by 70% over the past 25 years while the other has improved by 40%.

Of course, it doesn't help that nearly the entire savings and investment career of those currently under 35 consists of bursting bubbles and constant war.

3/31/2012 5:45:17 PM

^This indicates that you think those under 35 are saving and investing.

3/31/2012 8:09:41 PM

I think it's unwise and extremely difficult to ignore the large-scale problems facing my generation on the social level. The escalating costs of attending college combined with the fact that it's basically a necessity for obtaining a job worth a damn nowadays means that people are being systematically disadvantaged. Is it possible to be successful despite all of these challenges that were not forced on the Boomers? Sure it is. Is it a lot harder to succeed which means that inevitably more people will fail? Absolutely. The first step to fixing the problem is to identify it.

3/31/2012 9:34:27 PM

That graphic tells me that 50% of the population is $3,662 away from joining the revolution.

3/31/2012 9:56:56 PM

^^ We have indeed diluted the value of a college education by sending every other fucking knuckledragger to college and acting like it's a good idea. Supply and demand, from there, has caused college education to get a shitload more expensive as the worth of the degrees go steadily down the toilet.

3/31/2012 10:45:19 PM

Quote :

"I'm the last one to defend baby boomers, their idiotic policies, how the government coddles them--and least of all their goddamn entitlement programs."

Emphasis mine.


Could you detail, for us, the baby bommers' entitlement programs?

Medicare/Medicaid, I could possibly see; however, Social Security existed long before the baby boomers.

I'm still hesitant, however, to call Medicare/Medicaid the "[baby boomers'] goddamn entitlement programs."

I can see how Medicare might have been implemented for the baby boomers, but it was implemented by the greatest generation.

And, lest it be mistaken:

Quote :

"That's high praise."

[Edited on April 1, 2012 at 1:15 AM. Reason : ]

4/1/2012 1:04:58 AM

Quote :

"I can see how Medicare might have been implemented for the baby boomers, but it was implemented by the greatest generation."

It was implemented such that 90+% of people would die before they could receive a dime in benefits. It was only when the baby boomers came along that 90+% of people would expect to receive benefits for many years.

4/1/2012 1:14:53 AM

Oh, for sure, that shit was courtesy of FDR and LBJ.

What I mean is, now that we no-shit need to do something about those programs, we can't, because of how influential the Boomers are in our political landscape.

4/1/2012 1:15:09 AM

We, no-shit, need to do something about Medicare spending and Defense spending, but not Social Security spending...

[Edited on April 1, 2012 at 1:22 AM. Reason : ]

4/1/2012 1:18:21 AM

The lawmakers are composed of wealthy rich old people.

And you're surprised that the majority of the laws benefit them the most?

4/1/2012 1:28:58 AM

I wonder if it is because old people have knowledge, wisdom, and experience and realize the value of a strong work ethic, whereas young people don't know s%#t, but think they know everything and are entitled to everything without working?

4/1/2012 9:51:37 AM

Better go shoo those kids off your lawn.

4/1/2012 2:58:19 PM

Quote :

"We have indeed diluted the value of a college education by sending every other fucking knuckledragger to college and acting like it's a good idea. Supply and demand, from there, has caused college education to get a shitload more expensive as the worth of the degrees go steadily down the toilet."

This, to me, is one of the biggest problems. Every year kids shell out more money for a degree that is worth less. No doubt you all would have to struggle to think less of Political Science, but I feel like I got a good education out of that program -- because I tried to study things that would be relevant to my career goals (which, incidentally, involve real careers and not "multiculturalist sensitivity trainer" or something). The professors were almost all excellent, intelligent and able to communicate that intelligence well. But a lot of the students were straight-up god-damn retarded. The majority, really. Which makes for a fun time looking for jobs and a potential employer says, "Poli sci from NCSU? We just interviewed three guys from there. For a janitorial position. They were not smart enough."

Just as bad is the flip side of the problem. By setting the bar at "bachelor's degree," the preceding generations have completely devalued trade schools and community colleges. We make fun of people who go to them. We think of them as lesser intellects. When in reality the entire country would be incredibly, vastly better off if many NCSU alums (or drop-outs) had just gone to Wake Tech and learned something useful there instead of coasting through a humanities program and learning nothing.

---

Also, let me briefly mention the other side of older people, retirement, social security, and all that. Sure, we hand over a lot of money to old people, but that doesn't mean individual old people get a lot of money from us. We also make them work longer and longer to get that money. Now, that's smart on the one hand -- it shaves money off of some of our most expensive programs. On the other hand, it encourages them to stay in the job market longer. Every year a geezer stays on the payroll is a year that a younger person isn't taking his place. Partly, the willingness to retain older employees in some sectors relates to experience. I suspect that it also relates to the cost and risk inherent in hiring a new employee.

Of course, "experience" presents its own problem. Even low-level shit jobs demand that you have months or years of it. We've all at least heard of that catch-22.

[Edited on April 1, 2012 at 11:26 PM. Reason : ]

4/1/2012 11:21:41 PM

Quote :

" Of course, "experience" presents its own problem. Even low-level shit jobs demand that you have months or years of it. We've all at least heard of that catch-22."

http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm

http://www.openculture.com/2011/11/stanford_launching_14_free_online_courses_in_januaryfebruary_enroll_today.html

http://adafruit.com/

https://github.com/

http://99designs.com/

http://www.etsy.com/

http://www.newraleigh.com/articles/archive/unc-tv-video-short-on-raleigh-denim/


There must be 4000000 ways you can develop skills now and YouTube tutorials for anything from sewing to auto repair to cutting edge robotics. Does someone have to come to your house, wipe your ass, do your job to get you a check?

Quote :

" "Difference Between the Janitor and the Vice President," and it's a sermon Jobs delivers every time an executive reaches the VP level. Jobs imagines his garbage regularly not being emptied in his office, and when he asks the janitor why, he gets an excuse: The locks have been changed, and the janitor doesn't have a key. This is an acceptable excuse coming from someone who empties trash bins for a living. The janitor gets to explain why something went wrong. Senior people do not. "When you're the janitor," Jobs has repeatedly told incoming VPs, "reasons matter." He continues: "Somewhere between the janitor and the CEO, reasons stop mattering." That "Rubicon," he has said, "is crossed when you become a VP.""

Bet it's a bit more realistic in today's world someone suggested everyone major in engineering or science

Quote :

"^^ We have indeed diluted the value of a college education by sending every other fucking knuckledragger to college and acting like it's a good idea. Supply and demand, from there, has caused college education to get a shitload more expensive as the worth of the degrees go steadily down the toilet."

Some degrees have more worth than others, and everyone knows this--in fact many people here argued the opposite several years ago. Not so funny now, huh?


[Edited on April 2, 2012 at 12:40 AM. Reason : -]

4/2/2012 12:28:29 AM

Quote :

"There must be 4000000 ways you can develop skills now and YouTube tutorials for anything from sewing to auto repair to cutting edge robotics."

How does one put "I watched a YouTube tutorial" on a resume without getting laughed out the door?

Quote :

"Some degrees have more worth than others, and everyone knows this--in fact many people here argued the opposite several years ago."

A better way to put it is that some degrees are in more demand than others. The world probably needs people who are educated in, say, journalism, communications, political science, and literature. It just doesn't need so many as it currently has.

It's easy to feel secure in engineering and science here, because they're in high demand. This hasn't universally been the case in the 20th century, as evidenced by the Soviet Union, where all sorts of shit jobs were filled by "engineers" because there were so damn many of them. Partly that's because they focused on that field. Partly it's because they shot all the social science people or at least sent them to Siberia.

4/2/2012 12:55:34 AM

Quote :

"How does one put "I watched a YouTube tutorial" on a resume without getting laughed out the door? "

You can be the one doing the tutorial--build something and show the world. That's the whole way the world works now in almost every field. If you're awesome, at anything, people will buy from you or hire you. It takes time to learn any skill and be good at it, but in the modern world their aren't any excuses. The barriers to entry are gone.

4/2/2012 1:03:07 AM

Except capital, networking, real-world experience, and government red tape. But yeah, the barriers to entry are pretty much gone.

4/2/2012 1:56:53 AM

Vocationalism has its pitfalls too.

4/2/2012 2:20:06 AM

Quote :

"How does one put "I watched a YouTube tutorial" on a resume without getting laughed out the door?"

That is a pretty crappy attitude.

How about you look at it this way... You use the internet to learn about a given trade or skill set, and absorb as much knowledge as possible on it. You can do this by watching more videos, buying/reading texts on it, signing up for specific classes, interning/apprenticing, then practicing it as much as possible.

This is EXACTLY what I did. If my projections are accurate, I'll have gone from <10k a year in revenue to >100k in under 4 years by teaching myself a skillset that was completely outside the scope of my NCSU BS degree. Then developing my own business around it.

Quote :

"Except capital, networking, real-world experience, and government red tape. But yeah, the barriers to entry are pretty much gone."

Keep making excuses. That will surely get you past obstacles, to your goals.

[Edited on April 2, 2012 at 6:44 AM. Reason : ]

4/2/2012 6:40:13 AM

Quote :

"This is EXACTLY what I did. If my projections are accurate, I'll have gone from <10k a year in revenue to >100k in under 4 years by teaching myself a skillset that was completely outside the scope of my NCSU BS degree. Then developing my own business around it."

Outside sales?

But srsly, your accounting is clearly exaggerated. If you were making <10k with a bachelors, it wasn't for the lack of the skill you learned.

4/2/2012 9:28:05 AM

Quote :

"Except capital, networking, real-world experience, and government red tape. But yeah, the barriers to entry are pretty much gone."

Re: Steve Jobs quote above.

As for capital there are bank loans, venture capital, and crowd sourced funding (http://www.kickstarter.com/). Real world experience comes from doing something other than making excuses, though some make careers on doing just that.

4/2/2012 10:30:59 AM

Is it an excuse to admit that the economy is depressed due to government and bank policies? That's totally incontrovertible. There are still good and bad decisions to be made on an individual level, but many opportunities have simply evaporated due to the burden of debt - good money being sent after bad in perpetuation, making it unavailable to those that could actually use it in a productive manner.

4/2/2012 11:19:33 AM

Quote :

"A better way to put it is that some degrees are in more demand than others. The world probably needs people who are educated in, say, journalism, communications, political science, and literature. It just doesn't need so many as it currently has. "

An even better way to put it, is that if you are responsible for the huge capital investment of your education, why would you sink yourself for the rest of your life by doing mediocre in Psychology? Why go at all?

The world doesn't need science and engineering as much as it needs creative problem solvers that can't be automated or outsourced away. Engineering can help teach that, but at the root it's creative.

Quote :

"but many opportunities have simply evaporated due to the burden of debt"

I think those opportunities are eclipsed by the opportunities and talent vacuums created by the collapse of the old guard industries and institutions.

[Edited on April 2, 2012 at 12:01 PM. Reason : a]

4/2/2012 12:00:55 PM

Quote :

"Outside sales? But srsly, your accounting is clearly exaggerated. If you were making <10k with a bachelors, it wasn't for the lack of the skill you learned."

Nope.

I got my BS in Business Management - Marketing.

I dropped my outside sales gig because it drained soul, and got in to personal training. I devoured every single source of information I could get my hands on. Contacted every local, successful training studio around town and asked for mentorship. I interned and volunteered at physical therapy clinics. I went back to school @ wake tech to take physics, A&P, chemistry, and biology so I could grasp the science based concepts of training better, and possibly apply to physical therapy school. I volunteered at physical therapy clinics to get hands on experience with biomechanics and kinesiology.

Then I devoured as many resources about marketing, entreprenuership, and starting a business as I could. I cut all my expenses as possible. And minimized my debt.

After realizing if I went to work for a commercial gym, I won't get paid shit, I broke out on my own as an independent trainer. Now, after consistently growing my business every month for the past 2 years. I got a loan for $40,000 and now starting my own strength & conditioning center.

If I can maintain the same growth I had with my independent business, now with more resources and a large facility, I'll have grown from my first year squeaking by with $10k, to more than 100k in revenue after 1.5years growth.


I made such a low income because I refused to settle for some shitty cubicle job, just for a status quo salary. Delayed the easy money for something I love doing, which allowed me to pour my energy in to growing my business.

[Edited on April 2, 2012 at 12:06 PM. Reason : I suck at writing today]

[Edited on April 2, 2012 at 12:10 PM. Reason : ;]

4/2/2012 12:03:42 PM

Quote :

"I think those opportunities are eclipsed by the opportunities and talent vacuums created by the collapse of the old guard industries and institutions."

That's some nice speculation, but not much else. Imagine if every 100k of debt given out to some student attending a fourth tier law school with almost no career prospects was instead given to a promising start up. The latter will almost certainly create more jobs than the former.

It's impossible to get a good idea of why the job market looks like this without taking into account the distribution of credit. These imbalances were all created because the market has been flooded with cheap money, which is what I'm talking about when I say "good money going after bad". It's money that could be used for productive pursuits that is instead being used for consumption or being wasted.

This isn't something that is specific to the past decade, though, it's just gotten markedly worse due to monetary policy. Money will naturally flow into growth industries, unless policy redirects in a different way. With our current economy and laws, banks can throw as much money as they want into student loans, and it's a guaranteed return since students can't default. They aren't taking a risk, so there's every incentive to give out more and more loans, and universities respond accordingly. Until we fix this model, I am not optimistic about the future of the U.S. jobs market. Exceptional people will always succeed at a higher rate than their less inspired peers, but standard of living across the board is being held back.

4/2/2012 2:48:46 PM

the problem with startups today is that everyone thinks "Silicon Valley" startups, which really means making an app and a website.

The really useful startups come from someone understanding an industry, understanding a need in that industry, and having the connections, capital, and drive to make it happen.

the problem with that reality, is that it doesn't fit the lovely story of the outsider coming in and changing everything. Startups are businesses like all other businesses. Mal-investment can happen too, just as it did in the .com bubble.

The bottom line is that education should match the need. But that's the real problem - poor access to economic opportunities. People go into dead-end law schools because they don't know what else to do, and it's available for them. Although it's a bad option, it's an option they have entry to. There are more useful applications of their labor, but either that door isn't open to them, or they don't see that door.

It's the entrepreneurial spirit itself that creates value, and this exists within the context of many different business structures. Individuals in an established company can have an entrepreneurial spirit, even Japan in the 1970s economic boom was powered by an entrepreneurial drive, even though they were hanging onto concepts like lifetime employment at the time, which is a virtual self-contradiction by our modern business thinking.

4/3/2012 9:25:52 AM

Quote :

"the problem with startups today is that everyone thinks "Silicon Valley" startups, which really means making an app and a website."

The reason in particular I mentioned Kickstarter and Raleigh Denim, is that there are a lot of people that get other skills (like sewing or making making honey as two off the wall examples). After they get at a certain skill level you can use Kickstarter to raise funds to make a business out of it. There are opportunities like that for anything (music, books, small scale film, agriculture, beer making, hardware, software). Those aren't paradigm shifting startups like Craigslist or Facebook, but they are something that could potentially sustain a family.

As for the app and website comment. There are startups here in automotive, medicine, aviation, robotics, energy, hardware, and yes mobile apps. Everyone has a mobile computer in their pocket now and with that come tremendous opportunities leading to over saturation in some cases. The interesting startups are the ones taking that into areas that have traditionally shunned tech, and now don't due to it's ubiquity.

Quote :

"The really useful startups come from someone understanding an industry, understanding a need in that industry, and having the connections, capital, and drive to make it happen."

Fundamentally this isn't true. Craigslist and Wikipedia didn't start because they had a unique prospective on the newspaper ad or encyclopedia industries. Apple, though not a startup, didn't create the iPhone from an expertise with resistive touchscreen stylus Windows phones and Palm devices.

Quote :

"The bottom line is that education should match the need. But that's the real problem - poor access to economic opportunities. People go into dead-end law schools because they don't know what else to do, and it's available for them. Although it's a bad option, it's an option they have entry to. There are more useful applications of their labor, but either that door isn't open to them, or they don't see that door."

The problem is that people think there are easy solutions to hard problems. People drop out of premed, engineering, math, and computer science because it's hard to fake those majors and you can't bullshit your way through it. Everyone knows that to be true while they are in school, yet they talk themselves out of sticking it out. They say that it won't matter if they get the humanities degree, because really they are just as smart as the engineer and they know this or that about computers. That's certainly true in some cases, some people have raw talent in a field so great it's easy for them to get a job despite not having majored in something that would prove it. For everyone else it's in your best interest to major in something that's hard, network, or learn a trade that's hard to automate.

Quote :

"That's some nice speculation, but not much else. Imagine if every 100k of debt given out to some student attending a fourth tier law school with almost no career prospects was instead given to a promising start up. The latter will almost certainly create more jobs than the former."

Quote :

"This isn't something that is specific to the past decade, though, it's just gotten markedly worse due to monetary policy. Money will naturally flow into growth industries, unless policy redirects in a different way. "

I'm not just talking about startups as I said above. I'm talking about legitimate old school small business. I think they would be better off taking the 100K of debt into opening a laundromat in a big city, or an organic free range hipster bakery, or even working for a startup.

The opportunities and funding avenues are all in the private sector. You aren't going to hear it from big business whores.

[Edited on April 3, 2012 at 10:55 AM. Reason : a]

4/3/2012 10:55:00 AM

Hard to read but interesting graph:



The US stands out for having the largest proportion of 55-64 year olds with a post-secondary degree, aside from Israel. Also for being the only country aside from German that hasn't gained in this area.

4/3/2012 10:59:44 AM