Political Discussion

[RenegadeMonster]

Those two articles say quite different things. The CNBC article suggests that millennials are not living within their means and owe their struggle largely to personal, non-mortgage debt (an average of $28k, of which it specifically says the largest contributor is credit card debt, not student loans).

Yes, but those millennials may not be living within their means due to the cost of living.

Based on what my rent is and what my salary is by the general deffiniton of living within your means I'm not living within means. Rent is just too high compared to my salary. And that high rent like I said caused me to build up credit card debt because I couldn't afford necessities or utilities my first year.

Talk to any "Boomer" and they will place fault with my financial struggles as being my own. Poor decisions and money management for living above my means. You don't want to know how many times I have been fold "find a roommate".

I have had bad experiences with roommates in the past. Never again.

 

[jaycee]

I'd say it's a lot of luck, a touch regional (though I know a ton of people from Indiana who moved to either Denver or LA because the job market was fucked in the city or town they came from) an

d partially that you are old enough to have entered the job market prior to the recession. The fact that you already had a home prior to the recession is case and point to this. Or the fact that you got a private education while incurring less than 15k in debt. Or the fact that you were able to buy an house off a 30k a year salary because you had money before the recession hit and, thus, could take advantage of low property costs. In Denver that would currently require a 100k per year salary.

Of my close friends and family in two different states, my brother is one of only two millennials I know that own property and didnt require a shit ton of help from their parents to make it happen.

My world experiences could not be further from yours as somebody whose core friends graduated from college between 07 and 12'.
The story given by @RenegadeMonster or @Bull Shannon is the norm in most parts of this country for people under 35. I appreciate that you are willing to take a step back and acknowledge the data though.

@jaycee I know that the snarkier, more cynical side of me is prone to showing its face in this thread. And I fully agree that its important the left be united versus divided. But I also see it as virtually impossible for us to be united or for me to view anyone as a part of the same team who does not support policies like M4A, student debt relief, or some variation of a green new deal. Because the stakes I see around me are so high that anybody who is against those policies = the opposition regardless of whether their more socially liberal than a Trump supporter.

Maybe that makes me an asshole? I used to be really good at talking to people with opposing view points and finding empathy within our gaps. But now I just find myself frustrated that so many people of older generations seem incapable of seeing the problems that my community lives through.

Interestingly, that last paragraph is very applicable to minority communities and how they must feel towards white Americans. Which circles back to why it's so easy to divide us.

My post wasn't about you per se. There was a post just before mine that was deleted that was less than educated imo.

I'm right with you on most of your points and I don't think you are an asshole for not wanting to interact with people that don't support the policies you feel are correct. I agree with you on most of those btw. I don't know if dismissing other people's dumb ideas as dumb is helpful or not. I'm too cynical to think that people's minds can be changed by anyone other than themselves, which is why I think that the propaganda that is present on various social media platforms has been incredibly effective.

A lot of what I consider to be false arguments around data (evidence) regarding why we should have this or that policy don't resonate with me. IMO it's a lot more straightforward than those arguments, which are often thinly veiled propaganda themselves. Either we chose to be a society who care about each and every person or we continue to be the America / global capitalists we all know so well. Either we want to be in competition with our neighbors for finite resources or we respect the resources and each other enough to be truly equitable.

I don't believe that any current candidate really wants these things, and even if they do, they can't do much to make it a reality by becoming president. I simultaneously recognize that something is better than nothing and hope that a few of the people who are still running would actually do some good if elected.... but for me I just hope that the people who are fighting about being left enough or whatever the fight is about actually identify their common problems - otherwise we will continue to do what we've always done - accept mediocrity at the expense of other humans

Those two articles say quite different things. The CNBC article suggests that millennials are not living within their means and owe their struggle largely to personal, non-mortgage debt (an average of $28k, of which it specifically says the largest contributor is credit card debt, not student loans).

Meanwhile BI says millennials are frugal and that less than half of them even have student loan debt (but that the average among those people is quite high).

Also worth noting that by many measures of the generational break being from roughly 1980 - 2000, the 'average' millennial is still between the ages of 19 and 39. That means that the average salary of $35k/year is being brought down by students, people in entry-level positions, etc. (not sure how BI defined millennial for purposes of this study though).

Again, I agree with most of what you guys have said, and I'm not trying to diminish the experiences you've had. I do share that experience in several ways, despite the ways I've described it being different (I relate more to the CNBC description than to the BI analysis, myself). Just trying to recognize that a "generation" is a broad swath of people and you can slice the data in a million ways, but there will always be a vast variety of experience within that. And I think that contributes to the issues we see where people sort of roll their eyes about millennials in some instances. A lot of us are doing okay. Some of us are doing okay but it wouldn't take much to make us not okay. Others are one catastrophe away from total ruin.

Right. There seems to be a lot of major assumptions at the root of these discussions / arguments. Primary among them that these generational classifications have some universal truths associated with them and the scientist in me is very suspicious of how representative population data is and how dependent it is on the researcher and the funding source.

I hope that it's been clear that I haven't been attempting to diminsh anyone's experience as well. My point has been that there is some exageration / hyperbole / dismissive opinions coming from all angles and that the discussion in and of itself isn't particularly helpful in explaining why the issues being described exist

Talk to any "Boomer" and they will place fault with my financial struggles as being my own. Poor decisions and money management for living above my means. You don't want to know how many times I have been fold "find a roommate".

I have had bad experiences with roommates in the past. Never again.

This is the problem with this discussion. "any Boomer" it's not true. The loudest people do not define the reality of everybody.

Also, there's some regionalism at play here because everyone I've ever met from the Boston area that wasn't under 40 has been a royal *insert nasty word or phrase here* - just personal experience and a small sample size talking here but I'll go with the evidence of my own observation - yes I recognize the irony in that statement

 

[Dtknuckles]

Yes, but those millennials may not be living within their means due to the cost of living.

Based on what my rent is and what my salary is by the general deffiniton of living within your means I'm not living within means. Rent is just too high compared to my salary. And that high rent like I said caused me to build up credit card debt because I couldn't afford necessities or utilities my first year.

Talk to any "Boomer" and they will place fault with my financial struggles as being my own. Poor decisions and money management for living above my means. You don't want to know how many times I have been fold "find a roommate".

I have had bad experiences with roommates in the past. Never again.

And if you would have stayed home with your parents to save money you would have been criticized for that.
I hate that criticism because it is very culturally loaded. My wife as well as many other Latin people I know never moved out until the were married. It just wasn't an option for them.

 

[RenegadeMonster]

And if you would have stayed home with your parents to save money you would have been criticized for that.
I hate that criticism because it is very culturally loaded. My wife as well as many other Latin people I know never moved out until the were married. It just wasn't an option for them.

I did move back in with my parents late 2014 and early 2015 when I was laid off and job hunting / traveling everywhere for interviews. However, living at home and not having my place would never have been an option.

When I moved back in the only contention between my mother and step father was that I was living at home. Even though I was paying a 1/3 of the bills. My step father who is a boomer, grew up where everyone moved out and where on their own by 18. The fact that I was living at home and an adult was the only point of contention between him and my mother. And it resulted in me getting an ultimatum of having to move out by so and so date. Luckily I found a job by then, but if I hadn't I would have been homeless.

 

[Dtknuckles]

I did move back in with my parents late 2014 and early 2015 when I was laid off and job hunting / traveling everywhere for interviews. However, living at home and not having my place would never have been an option.

When I moved back in the only contention between my mother and step father was that I was living at home. Even though I was paying a 1/3 of the bills. My step father who is a boomer, grew up where everyone moved out and where on their own by 18. The fact that I was living at home and an adult was the only point of contention between him and my mother. And it resulted in me getting an ultimatum of having to move out by so and so date. Luckily I found a job by then, but if I hadn't I would have been homeless.

He seems umm...unreasonable. Were you even living with them a year? And you were making efforts to find a job.

 

[RenegadeMonster]

He seems umm...unreasonable. Were you even living with them a year? And you were making efforts to find a job.

It was about a year. Yes I was making efforts to find a job. I travelled as far as MD and Chicago for Interviews. I was working random minimum wage jobs through a temp agency, worked seasonal for UPS for the Holidays as well as freelancing at the time. And like I said, I contributed 1/3 to the bills.

 

[jaycee]

I did move back in with my parents late 2014 and early 2015 when I was laid off and job hunting / traveling everywhere for interviews. However, living at home and not having my place would never have been an option.

When I moved back in the only contention between my mother and step father was that I was living at home. Even though I was paying a 1/3 of the bills. My step father who is a boomer, grew up where everyone moved out and where on their own by 18. The fact that I was living at home and an adult was the only point of contention between him and my mother. And it resulted in me getting an ultimatum of having to move out by so and so date. Luckily I found a job by then, but if I hadn't I would have been homeless.

Your step father isn’t very bright and in at least that instance is a complete asshole.

Im sorry that was your experience.

I grew up with similar expectations that were less than just.

I had to move back in for almost 2 years after college. I started off landscaping

 

[AnthonyI]

I did move back in with my parents late 2014 and early 2015 when I was laid off and job hunting / traveling everywhere for interviews. However, living at home and not having my place would never have been an option.

When I moved back in the only contention between my mother and step father was that I was living at home. Even though I was paying a 1/3 of the bills. My step father who is a boomer, grew up where everyone moved out and where on their own by 18. The fact that I was living at home and an adult was the only point of contention between him and my mother. And it resulted in me getting an ultimatum of having to move out by so and so date. Luckily I found a job by then, but if I hadn't I would have been homeless.

LOL, k, I know i've been touchy about the "Boomer" subject, so just to even the scale a tad, my son graduated college 2 1/2 years ago, got a job a couple of weeks before graduation at a pretty good starting pay. He wants to move to Texas but knows he needs to put in the time to get the experience. THIS boomer offered him this, and this stand for all 3 of my kids, you can live at home as long as your saving money and pitch in around the house. He pays for his own stuff and kicks in a little rent. I want him to chase his dream without going into debt to do it, if he's contributing and saving for his goal, why wouldn't I help him?

I can understand if living with your parents is an actual space problem or something like that, but I don't understand your step-fathers issue........and I'm a boomer. That being said, I know that the "Your out when your 18" mentality lingers past the boomer generation and I don't understand it from them either. As parents, aren't we here to try and give our kids, regardless of how old they are, the support and help they need to do better in life?

K, I'm done, it was a shit day so I needed a soap box for a bit.

 

[RenegadeMonster]

American computer expert spoke in North Korea about cryptocurrency, and now he's under arrest

Virgil Griffith's cryptocurrency talk at a North Korean conference violated U.S. sanctions, federal authorities allege

www.latimes.com

Bit Coin? Whatever the Cryptocurrency was one US citizen found himself in hot water for giving a speech / talk on Cryptocurrency in Pyongyang earlier this year. Apparently that speech violated U.S. Federal Sanctions against North Korea and the FBI arrested him.


Incredibly stupid nonetheless.

 

[Dtknuckles]

Considering our recent conversation

 

[jaycee]

Considering our recent conversation

R people supposed to believe that a Fordham degree (or any other for that matter) is going to pay for $200+K in debt in anything other than a lifetime. Absolutely ridiculous. The Board of Regeants are just as guilty Wall Street

 

[swamp]

Considering our recent conversation

Sadly, so much of the air in the room for these conversations is spent on folks affirming and absolving their own experience of being fortunate. The communication channel is one way only.

You had a better opportunity, you have more capital, and you have more volume in your megaphone. Thanks for sharing that...information...while we're discussing how a lot of us can't afford a home or a family...do I hug you now? Or give you a high five? Am I supposed to do anything else for you?

 

[jaycee]

Sadly, so much of the air in the room for these conversations is spent on folks affirming and absolving their own experience of being fortunate. The communication channel is one way only.

You had a better opportunity, you have more capital, and you have more volume in your megaphone. Thanks for sharing that...information...while we're discussing how a lot of us can't afford a home or a family...do I hug you now? Or give you a high five? Am I supposed to do anything else for you?

Could you expand on this?

I don't understand why it's in reference to that tweet exactly.

 

[Dtknuckles]

R people supposed to believe that a Fordham degree (or any other for that matter) is going to pay for $200+K in debt in anything other than a lifetime. Absolutely ridiculous. The Board of Regeants are just as guilty Wall Street

I have about 100K for a state school for 6 years of loans. The whole time working two jobs one through school and one I had prior to enrolling. Usually 7 days a week. However I would not be able to afford what I can now and this is also with a wife that makes a similar salary range. I think it was worth paying back the loan debt for the rest of my life. I just wish that money wasn't going to a bunch of greedy corporations, maybe paying back in to a national college fund where profits are reinvested.

 

[jaycee]

I have about 100K for a state school for 6 years of loans. The whole time working two jobs one through school and one I had prior to enrolling. Usually 7 days a week. However I would not be able to afford what I can now and this is also with a wife that makes a similar salary range. I think it was worth paying back the loan debt for the rest of my life. I just wish that money wasn't going to a bunch of greedy corporations, maybe paying back in to a national college fund where profits are reinvested.

I agree the piece of paper and the college experience are incredibly valuable, but the tuition is going to pay for what exactly? A lot of administration, the college investment portfolio, the gift bags at the conference being hosted at the alumni center, the pitted dates at the board of regents meeting

It's about priorities and where the burden of those priorities fall. Should they be placed on the shoulders of the education consumer? Should the consumer be getting more for their money or have more of a say in where the $ are spent?

It's also about the priorities of the country. Where do we want our communal coffers to be spent. Do we want to militarize the police? Do we want to give tax breaks to the wealthiest so they can trickle down all over us? Do we want to prop up the insurance industries? Do we want to build more fighter jets?

Instead we could be:
educating our citizens at institutes of higher learning
ensuring all people get mental health care
building the infrastructure to modernize our society
paying for clean air and water
conserving fossil fuels instead of burning them
etc. etc. etc.

There are reasons that Fordham is asking for $52k a year for undergraduate education and all of them likely stem from solvable problems if the people who get to make the choices would choose differently or if we all had more of a say in how the $ was spent

 

[Joe Mac]

I agree the piece of paper and the college experience are incredibly valuable, but the tuition is going to pay for what exactly? A lot of administration, the college investment portfolio, the gift bags at the conference being hosted at the alumni center, the pitted dates at the board of regents meeting

It's about priorities and where the burden of those priorities fall. Should they be placed on the shoulders of the education consumer? Should the consumer be getting more for their money or have more of a say in where the $ are spent?

It's also about the priorities of the country. Where do we want our communal coffers to be spent. Do we want to militarize the police? Do we want to give tax breaks to the wealthiest so they can trickle down all over us? Do we want to prop up the insurance industries? Do we want to build more fighter jets?

Instead we could be:
educating our citizens at institutes of higher learning
ensuring all people get mental health care
building the infrastructure to modernize our society
paying for clean air and water
conserving fossil fuels instead of burning them
etc. etc. etc.

There are reasons that Fordham is asking for $52k a year for undergraduate education and all of them likely stem from solvable problems if the people who get to make the choices would choose differently or if we all had more of a say in how the $ was spent

Yeah, the problem with all western democracies is inequity of wealth across society. We’ve bought into the myth that wealth is created rather than it just being a thing that is distributed. It is not moral to have 1% owning more that the rest of society combined and it is the job of the state to mitigate against this and not to enable it. Third level education is a right, not a privilege. Affordable healthcare too. The property rights of the super wealthy are so unimportant to me as to fade in to irrelevance.

 

[RenegadeMonster]

We have all heard you are living above your means if your rant/mortgage is more than 30% of your salary. And in many cities that 30% of salary is impossible to obtain for most.

Well here's a real kicker and one I have never heard. Have you ever heard of the 1/10th rule for buying a car? I never have. But you are considered living above your means if you purchase a car who's total cost is more than 1/10th of your yearly salary. That's the total cost of the car, not what ever you yearly payment adds up to.

So if you make $42,000 a year you should never spend more than $4,200 on a car.

40 years ago that figure was actually realistic. In 2019 it is not. Today the median gross income is $42,00. So that means if you are buying a $36,000 car, which is the median priced car you are spending about 81% of your gross salary. That is 8 times higher than what would be considered living within your means!

My thought is, this leaves most people buying cheap used cards which will likely need $1k to $2k annually to keep them on the road and pass inspections.

That is just crazy if you think about it.

 

[Dtknuckles]

We have all heard you are living above your means if your rant/mortgage is more than 30% of your salary. And in many cities that 30% of salary is impossible to obtain for most.

Well here's a real kicker and one I have never heard. Have you ever heard of the 1/10th rule for buying a car? I never have. But you are considered living above your means if you purchase a car who's total cost is more than 1/10th of your yearly salary. That's the total cost of the car, not what ever you yearly payment adds up to.

So if you make $42,000 a year you should never spend more than $4,200 on a car.

40 years ago that figure was actually realistic. In 2019 it is not. Today the median gross income is $42,00. So that means if you are buying a $36,000 car, which is the median priced car you are spending about 81% of your gross salary. That is 8 times higher than what would be considered living within your means!

My thought is, this leaves most people buying cheap used cards which will likely need $1k to $2k annually to keep them on the road and pass inspections.

That is just crazy if you think about it.

So I had a Toyota trachoma for over ten years, when an old lady totaled it it had 240k on it. It was only in the last year did I have to put money into the cars. I used my insurance check to buy a Audi A6 that was top of the line at its time with 120k miles for 4K. Cars are the most flexible necessity in a budget.

 

[DownIsTheNewUp]

Cherry picking a quote here to anchor a response to. The trouble here is that there were competing audiences and interests tracking this investigation and the associated stories. I agree that too many people conflated the purpose of the Russia investigation with trying to find a single reason Clinton lost. The DNC needs to do its own soul searching either way. But that wasn’t actually the purpose, in my mind. The purpose was delineating exactly how our democracy was being influenced by foreign powers, and how the candidate who eventually won not only broke norms by encouraging that behavior, but now had a vested interest in not protecting the electoral process from further attacks. The integrity of the investigation isn’t sullied by the desires that some in the media projected onto it, but the sense you get from a casual reading of Greenwald or Taibbi (emphasis on the casual, meaning not someone who follows them closely for a really nuanced perspective of their specific views) is that they’re throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

I think the end result in many instances is that even if Greenwald’s and Taibbi’s motivations are the opposite of the right’s, the constant assailing of “mainstream media” as a bunch of dupes who can’t be trusted only serves to further weaken public confidence in the nature of truth (which, I know, is exactly what Greenwald/Taibbi AND the right would both say about mainstream media, also, so everyone is pointing the finger at everyone else).

I take your point, but my issues aren’t that they’re assets as much as that their dismissal of the “scandals” also necessarily comes with a minimization of the real issues that generated them.

I know this is a very late response but articulating my response was tricky and I just didn't feel up to it at the time.

That said two things have happened this week that cause me to circle back around to this convo.

A) Clinton went onto Howard Stern and basically red-baited Bernie. She straight up blamed him for 2016' and then implied Russia was backing him. So basically, she attempted to do the same thing to Bernie that she did to Tulsi but in a much more subtle manner.



B) PBS just did a special where they talked about every candidate under the sun EXPECT Bernie Sanders.

'He's Just...Erased': PBS 2020 Segment Finds Time for Klobuchar, Sestak, and Bullock--But Completely Ignores Bernie Sanders | Common Dreams

It was like watching "manufacturing consent in action,' said Current Affairs editor Nathan Robinson.

www.commondreams.org

Similarly, NPR did a story a few weeks back that was quite literally billed as a story about the Top 3 candidates. Bernie was firmly in 2nd or 3rd this story aired - **BUT**, the hosts managed to talk about Biden, Warren, and several other candidates outside the Top 3, without ever once mentioning the words “Bernie” or “Sanders”. Not even a passing mention of him being a candidate at all, let alone the candidate polling 2nd. In a story about the *top 3 candidates...

Which brings me back around to:

These things are directly related. The same media that is doing everything it can to dismiss and ignore Bernie Sanders just like they did in 2016. Meanwhile, they fan the flames about Russia because it's an effective deflection and side show that distract from very real issues that make the 1% look bad. It's McCarthyism and somehow educated liberals don't see it. That somehow? Probably has to do with that being the same demographic that refuses to criticize CNN or MSNBC (much less NPR or PBS) the way they do Fox News.

And by the way, Warren fucked herself with her handling of M4A. I don't necessarily view it as a good thing because she's easily my plan B, but she is nosediving in the polls and Bernie is picking up a lot of those people who jumped ship. A poll today had his him up in CA. His likely up in NH. He was up in Nevada and Colorado before the heart attack and could feasible recover there. Nobody knows what's happening in Iowa or whose supporters will show up.

In other words, this thing is wide open and the media is busy manufacturing consent. All while Bernie continues to crush Trump in head to heads and polling with independents (which is not true of either Warren or Pete).

 

[RenegadeMonster]

I'm willing to bet there are a lot of special interests that do not want to see Bernie win.

Perhaps even media executives.

Remember this?




It has to be intentional that they are dismissing Bernie / acting like he's doesn't exist and is not part of this election.