The Majority of 18- To 29-Year-Olds In the US Are Now Living With Their Parents (axios.com) 187
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Axios: Nearly 30 million Americans are spending their 20s in the same place they spent their grade school years: at home with their parents. For the first time since the Great Depression, the majority of 18- to 29-year-olds have moved back home. Those living arrangements can come with a great deal of awkwardness and pain, but families across America are making the most of it.
Reasons for moving home vary. The coronavirus recession has hit young people especially hard, and many are living with family because they've lost their jobs or haven't been able to find work after college or grad school. Others wanted some company during lockdowns. "You can't imagine how great it is to hear that I'm in the majority of my generation," says Elsa Anschuetz, a 24-year-old working in public relations out of her childhood bedroom. "It is definitely not where I thought I'd be at this stage in my life, but, at least to me, it is definitely better than living in an apartment alone during this crazy pandemic."
Reasons for moving home vary. The coronavirus recession has hit young people especially hard, and many are living with family because they've lost their jobs or haven't been able to find work after college or grad school. Others wanted some company during lockdowns. "You can't imagine how great it is to hear that I'm in the majority of my generation," says Elsa Anschuetz, a 24-year-old working in public relations out of her childhood bedroom. "It is definitely not where I thought I'd be at this stage in my life, but, at least to me, it is definitely better than living in an apartment alone during this crazy pandemic."
As economic indicators go (Score:2)
This one is not good.
Re:As economic indicators go (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a good thing the stock market doesn't care how many hard-working young people can't afford housing, or some numbers on a computer would look bad and then we'd all be in deep shit! :-P
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No, but it follows a very long-term trend towards the infantilization of young adults.
Irony (Score:3)
All those old people could really use the help taping those eviction notices on all those rental property front doors.
So what? (Score:5, Insightful)
This was exceedingly common for the bulk of human history. Why are we now acting like its some shameful thing? Yeah you don't get quite as much privacy as you would living on your own, but you gain a lot in financial benefit.
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It's not the end of the world (I lived with my parents until after getting my first corporate job) but it's clearly an indication that housing affordability is going down significantly. Which isn't great but also pretty obvious to anyone who's seen the prices recently.
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This was exceedingly common for the bulk of human history.
However, in the US, until quite recently it has been exceedingly uncommon.
Why are we now acting like its some shameful thing?
What do you mean now? It's been considered as a sign of failure for decades if not longer.
Yeah you don't get quite as much privacy as you would living on your own, but you gain a lot in financial benefit.
Funny because the reason so many people are living with their parents is specifically because of corporations own "financial benefit" which is to say, they don't pay shit and they would pay even less if it was legal.
How are you not understanding that this is a sign of a failed economic model? Just look at how wages have stagnated while the cost
Re: So what? (Score:4, Insightful)
There is a lack of housing because while are population is growing in large part due to immigration, we refuse to build more homes due to NIMBY anti development and anti green space building as well. If we stopped growing the population, then we could also stop building. Unfortunately environmentalists and the progressive left donâ(TM)t see the contradiction between a growing population and the environment.
Or we could pursue a policy of ever less housing units per capita. And then people when they earn the least in their lives have to live with their parents. And you are going to be miserable if you are 23, have a full time job, but your parents are assholes. And letâ(TM)s face it, a substantial minority donâ(TM)t know how to treat their adult children with dignity and respect.
Re: So what? (Score:2)
Re: So what? (Score:5, Interesting)
In the 1980s my father 55k a year job owned 3 homes by age 40 had 3 kids a boat and two cars.
My 50k year salary wouldn't let me save enough money for a car and down payment on a house. I couldn't qualify for any mortgages in my area ( suburbs 40 miles from a major city)
Inflation is wiping out people. Because it is tied a weighting algorithm that is outdated. Low milk and oil prices and tv prices offset skyrocketing housing costs.
Re: So what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Inflation is not the problem. The issue is that all the increases in wealth in recent years have gone to the 1%ers. Increasing wealth disparity is the problem. Inflation would not be a problem if wages had kept up, but they haven't.
On another note: increasing wealth disparity is negatively correlated with economic growth rates. Not only are wealthy people suing their money to influence politics to their own benefit, they are making the country poorer through their influence.
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It's even worse than that. A lot of people are convinced to vote against their own best interests. People who are working glass get convinced that they are middle class and should vote for policies that benefit the wealthy because they will somehow tangentially help them too.
A lot of it is just blame culture. Blame everything on the poors, the welfare queens and scroungers. Hey look your house is worth 3x what you paid for it, that means you are rich now, right? So vote to lower taxes on the rich and don't
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As an environmentalist I want to see new homes built - to a decent standard with energy saving features that reduce emissions. We have too many old homes that are barely fit for living in and highly polluting.
The problem is lack of building and especially lack of social housing. Social housing was a great way for people to move up in the world. A decent home with low rent that allowed them to save for their own place.
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The problem with "housing standards" is that the standards have pushed the cost per dwelling unit for new construction so high, especially in urban areas with high land values, that you just can't build new housing at rents which are affordable.
I'd argue we need some flexibility to build housing to lower standards so we can lower the cost per dwelling unit. I don't know what this means without sacrificing safety, but it might mean sacrificing energy efficiency, handicap accessibility, or other material qua
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The standards contribute very little to the cost of housing, it's mostly the land cost and developers wanting to maximise profits.
We should look at housing as infrastructure, the same as roads. Mostly built by or for government (under contract) and sold or rented as cheaply as possible for the benefit of citizens. The government is already involved even when house building is done commercially, e.g. adopting the roads and providing services like schools.
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That's not what I've heard from people building housing. The construction cost per square foot of housing is a pretty well known figure and it's pretty high due to material costs and required building codes (which also drives material costs).
We could use subsidies to make more housing available at rates affordable to existing incomes, but this is just an indirect way of dealing with income inequality and chances are that the non-rich would wind up paying some big chunk of it. It would probably also create
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That doesn't make a lot of sense. For example exterior insulation is only needed on the exterior of the house and is very cheap to install at build time. Things like solar panels are also cheap to install during build, along with the wiring and inverter, and don't scale linearly with the square footage of the dwelling.
Actually square footage is another major problem with housing in the UK. Our houses are extremely small by European standards, and it causes various problems. For example the kitchen is often
Re: So what? (Score:2)
We have enough space to give every single person a 1000 sq ft apartment when they start up their life at 18-22 with the expectation that soon their significant other will move in with them and the two people
it isn't a "liberal" issue (Score:2)
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Re:So what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, so what! Previous generations could afford a house on a single salary and had pensions. But whatever. That's really not important. Previous generations could earn a middle class income on just a high school education, while current generations can't even with a college degree or two. Big deal.
There is literally nothing to be concerned about here.
There can be no economic impacts if there's an entire generation that can't afford to get on with life, get married, buy a house, and raise a family. I mean seriously, what could those people possibly contribute to society?
I mean, people in the 1800s lived far worse than this. And that's the logical standard of living we should really be comparing the state of things to.
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This is not a problem of the politicians, but the Universities. They teach you stuff you don't need at cost you cannot afford, meanwhile we have an acute shortage of people that can do basic math, compose correctly structured short essay, learn a foreign language and break their thoughts into self-contained parts. As you call them... programmers.
Re: So what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: So what? (Score:5, Interesting)
I think there is definitely something to be said about doing better with living within one's means, but I'd similarly argue that there's a lot of suppositions there.
Most of my millennial friends don't have flagship phones. A handful do, but the majority either have midrange phones (commonly 0% financed through the carrier), or only have a flagship phone because they got it to replace their three-year-old phone whose screen was cracked for more of its lifespan than it wasn't.
$15 at Starbucks for one person is pretty atypical. To be fair, I do remember my sister having a Starbucks habit that exceeded that for a little while there, but again, not typical. Personally, I'm more a 7-11 person, and it's not even every day. $10/week for coffee isn't going to alter the calculus on owning a home.
Yes, my cell bill is high, relatively speaking. I also pay for four people to be on my plan as a way of helping out my family. I could cut them all off to save money, but contributing to one's family takes several forms. If we can shift slightly but still remain in telecom world for the moment, I have basic cable, one box, basic internet tier, brought my own modem and router...and still pay $180/month no matter how many times I call my carrier and ask them to get me on the $60/month for life plan I would have had if I didn't become a customer three years prior...Starlink can't come soon enough as far as I'm concerned.
I'll commonly get food 'out', but when I've done the math, my options seem to be either 'spend about the same to do grocery shopping when adjusted for food spoilage', or "live on nonperishables, typically carbohydrates, that I'm trying to be concious of and limit my intake". I probably could do better on that front if I was more intentional about it, but even if it ends up being $40/month different, that's not exactly the sort of money that would make or break my 401(k).
Some of my friends have been able to get houses they can afford. Sometimes their parents helped them out, other times they were handy and willing to buy a fixer-upper, at least one friend got a good job in finance and can legit afford a good home...and still others made the terrible life choice of "deciding to become a teacher instead of pursuing a STEM or law degree", meaning that they're either in apartments that cost well over 1/3 their net monthly income because it's all they could afford, others got trapped in debt early (the "help your family not-lose their house" sort of debt, not "credit card debt fueling crappy spending habits" debt) and can't even get a debt consolidation loan because their debt to income ratio is currently too high as it is.
Yes. My generation can learn to live with their means, myself included. There are probably some worse spenders than myself as well; like most other broad generalizations, there's a spectrum. Even so, let's take a few numbers and compare them:
--The average annual wage of those between the ages of 24-37 in a given region of the country
--The average cost of a home in those same regions of the country
The rule of thumb I was taught is that you're supposed to look for a house that costs twice one's annual salary. Admittedly I live in a more expensive region of the country (not SFBA or NYC), but I did a quick look at houses in a 10 mile radius of my office and I can't find one for less than four times my annual salary (most of them are going from five to ten times that amount)...and I work in IT. Maybe I'm somewhat underpaid and the houses near me are somewhat overpriced, but the math isn't even close. I could get a 50% raise and all but three of the houses I looked at would still be in excess of three years' income.
I'm not a Bernie Bro. I don't think owning a house is my God-given right and I agree that it is advantageous and virtuous to live within my means. But I do believe that there is at least some argument to be had that the inability for Millennials to own a home isn't purely the result of too many iPhones and lattes on one's Discover card.
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All of my Gen X friends who managed to buy houses did so when a relative died and they inherited enough wealth to put down a deposit and get a mortgage.
Millennials know this and know they are screwed because their parents already got the inheritance and are going to live for another 40 years before they get a taste.
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Cheap house in the cheap part of town.
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Not meaning this to sound like a dick, but in my position it feels easy to observe others; As someone who is quite successful now i feel the "have not paid yets" make up 90% of society when they use to only make up maybe 50%. I live in a normal 5 bed house within my means but probably earn 5-10x more than most people on my street. Meanwhile the mansions up the street might as well be rented as most of the families living in them seem to consume all their income on new cars, taxes and gadgets. The weirdes
Re: So what? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is absolute nonsense. I mean yeah some people spend too much on avocado toast or whatever but that's not the reason they can't afford to buy a house.
It doesn't matter how many soy lattes you drink when you have to pay $500+/month for your student debt, $500+ for insurance and $2000 for a shitty apartment.
Re: So what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Bingo.
If people switched from flagships to secondary brands, or from new phones to old phones, if they made their own coffee instead of going Starbucks, that's not going to free up enough money for a house.
People are buying the feel-good products because that's all they can buy.
And even if they could scrimp and save up for a house, job security is to tenuous for so many people that it doesn't look like a wise choice.
My dad bought his first house at 19 with an associate's degree. I bought a cheap condo at 34 with a bachelors and two masters. That was the point in my life where I felt I had the financial stability to take on property ownership. And since then, it looks like it's only gotten worse.
Re: So what? (Score:4, Insightful)
In the 1980s the economy shifted to one based on debt, particularly household debt. Instead of renting you should own a home with a big loan. Instead of public transport you should own a car, with a loan. Everything should be bought with loans because then they get to charge you the purchase price and interest, and you think your quality of life is improving because now you can afford a nicer car and own property.
Of course we saw how that went back in 2008. Problem is we are stuck with it and young people today don't have any choice but to play the game. Education costs them money, rents are insane, house prices are insane, not having a garage/driveway to fix their own car means they can't buy a banger and need something reliable... And people criticise them for spending a bit on entertainment or little luxuries that take the edge off their cursed existence.
This won't get fixed for a very long time because the people who screwed it all up in the 80s are now reliant on the young for their income, particularly from property.
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"young people today don't have any choice but to play the game"
That's not really true. None of this renting behavior is necessary. But they don't even realize the game they are playing, so they're not checking the rules.
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According to your link, the national debt went down under Clinton. Doesn't that count as "fiscally conservative"?
That's a minority you're talking about. (Score:2)
Most young people can't afford to go out any more than your grandparents could.
But there is also lifestyle choices. A cyberpunk lifestyle ("digital nomad") does make sense these days, especially with cardboard houses that blow away with the next hurricane or burn down next fire-season costing 400 000 USD a pop. So the kid working part-time freelance sitting in a cafe might actually have a cheaper lifestyle that someone back in the day doing a "regular" job.
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Really? You are going to go the "avocado toast" route on this?
Holy shit dude. I am established and not poor (currently) but even I can see how rough the younger generation has it. My economic experience was much worse than my parents and my children have it MUCH worse than I had when I was their age.
For the entirety of my life, the economic situation as a whole for me and most other Americans has been nosediving, not merely getting a little worse. When I was young, college was fucking expensive, but possibl
Re:So what? (Score:4, Insightful)
Previous generations lived in houses that were maybe 1,000 square feet. A "car phone" was a luxury, families had only one TV and one car because that is all they could afford. Those pensions didn't work out so well, companies went broke because they couldn't afford to keep them solvent.
Now, we own so much stuff we can't even fit them in our much larger houses. Ever noticed how many rental storage places line the roads? Those units are mostly full.
We don't have an income problem, we have a spending problem.
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Back then car phones and TVs were extremely expensive. Now you can get a big TV for 150 bucks, or for free as a hand-me-down. I pay 5 quid/month for a phone contract and a basic phone is only 100 quid or again free as a hand-me-down.
Times change, things that were expensive get cheap. Other things, like houses, get much much more expensive. Even living frugally it will take a young person on an average way decades to save enough to get a house, and by then prices will probably have risen anyway.
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And job security isn't a thing anymore, which makes owning a house even more risky.
There was a period of many decades where most people had pretty stable jobs. Where they had pensions. Where they could plan for the future.
If you work for a corporation of any medium or larger size, you don't have that luxury. Mergers and acquisitions are rampant, and the entire game is keeping the profits high to keep the stock price going up. Layoffs are not a once-in-a-lifetime traumatic event. They're every few years, rel
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That's precisely my point, we live differently now than 100 years ago, we expect more now than then.
My 22-year-old son got an entry-level job with AT&T and made enough to move out into his own apartment. Rent was $800 per month. That's not what kills people's hopes of being independent. But when you add $150/month cable bills, + $150/month cell phone bills, plus 10+ streaming services, plus food delivery for every meal, those things add up. If independence is a goal for a young adult, it is achievable.
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Are there even 10+ streaming services? Maybe in the US, I don't know.
But okay let's say they save $300/month by cutting down the bills. After 10 years they have a $36,000 deposit towards a house, how far will that get them?
In the UK the answer is "nowhere", I guess in the US it depends on the area.
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After ten years of shoveling that money into index funds, you can actually expect about $80k.
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Sadly, and beautifully, everything will eventually collapse.
I guess the measurements that imply success escape your grasp of cyclic pattern reliability. All great empires ebb and flow like the tide. It's nature's way.
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What do you mean, the USA will collapse? Watching the news, I'd say it started around the beginning of 2017.
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The baby boom and economic golden age was an aberration, not a standard you should feel entitled to. The USA will collapse. Sorry.
I don't know why this comment was modded -1, it's absolutely correct. The standard of living the current generation is being to compared to, that of the 1950's through the 1980's, was not representative of the U.S. experience. It was an artificial peak.
It's tough telling people that they won't have what their parents had and to adjust their expectations, but the sooner folks face reality the better.
Pining for a pipe dream that is generally unattainable for many will eventually take its toll.
Re: So what? (Score:2)
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I know I'll do everything I can to make sure my son is independent and I hope he's ready for his own life in his early to mid 20s but I'll make sure he's financially sound before I put any pressure on him to leave t
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Re: So what? (Score:3)
Companies are making their own minimum wage of $15 to $17 an hour just to get basic help. And then everyone else wants experience and bachelor degrees and only pay $20 an hour.
The 2010' s recovery never came with wage increases as economists predicted. And it was a major concern before the pandemic. 2019 ended in a slight recessions for multiple industries in the usa. Wall street climbed higher than ever.
Wall street has completely recovered. Main street still isn't working. The disconnect is so bad no on
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Companies are making their own minimum wage of $15 to $17 an hour just to get basic help. And then everyone else wants experience and bachelor degrees and only pay $20 an hour.
The 2010' s recovery never came with wage increases as economists predicted. And it was a major concern before the pandemic. 2019 ended in a slight recessions for multiple industries in the usa. Wall street climbed higher than ever.
Wall street has completely recovered. Main street still isn't working. The disconnect is so bad no on can figure out what is next.
Bullshit, it's pretty obvious what is next. This is a long running trend. I'd say it's since at least 1980, but that's only because I don't know (personally) what things were like before that time.
Our wages will continue to stagnate. Our companies will continue to move jobs overseas. Companies overseas will continue to grow and prosper while we do not, but some of our rich people do.
plus the election.
Which doesn't fucking matter and won't help this issue in any way. It's way beyond the help of anything Washington will a
Mostly due to massive rent/housing inflation (Score:5, Insightful)
House and rent prices are through the roof in desirable places.
This I believe is due to an exodus from metropolitan areas combined with too much money in the hands of the wealthy. Wealthy people are looking for places to horde money and two go-to assets are stocks and real estate. Both are inflated and continue to rise unabated. The Covid19 bailout with PPP have enriched many business owner as the Federal Gov't has sponsored their cost of labor for a significant part of the year.
Income inequality continues its expansion. And now they are talking about another round of PPP.
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Too many people. I live in what used to be considered mostly country nearby a few small towns and lots of farmland, in 40 years it has become the suburbs, and then apartments popped up everywhere. Calling this area the suburbs is now generous.
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In many cities, such as Houston, it's possible to rent a three-bedroom house for $1,000 a month. Rent is only impossibly high in places where policies restrict building, such as San Francisco.
The tech bubble hides a lot of issues (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm solidly mid-career (mid 40s) and I think the pandemic is only one reason these numbers are high. Lots of "my generation" likes to say younger people are entitled and self centered and have no drive or whatever, but the reality is that it's harder for most of them than it was for us. Education is way more expensive than it was when I graduated, so students are starting off much further in the hole even if they were careful borrowers. It's just not possible to juggle full time school, internships, other networking activities you're expecting to attend, etc. with a full time job if you're studying anything remotely technical. In addition, companies have been thinning out their entry level workforces, sending jobs that new graduates would once do to offshore locations or just not doing those tasks at all anymore. Again back when I graduated, you could be a solid C student partying your way to a business/psychology/communications degree, and companies would just show up to a career session and practically take the first 50 people who could speak full sentences and looked somewhat presentable. They'd get some random entry level job shuffling paper or on the trade show circuit or whatever, but they'd at least have a start.
Of course, people love to hold up the "learn to code" card and show how young people are/were striking it rich at FAANGs, startups and other tech companies. While true, this path isn't available to everyone and this shouldn't be the only way to earn a decent living. Most people just aren't suited for the work no matter what education you give them. In addition, there's a bucketload of people just chasing the Second Dotcom Bubble money who have no aptitude for development, IT, DevOps, whatever you want to call it. All of these people would be happier doing something else, but someone told them there was money in them computer fields.
I think the tech bubble is hiding or at least blurring a lot of the issues. Under the surface, there really is less chance for someone to succeed the same way we did, so it's no shocker that younger people are moving back home. Some of it's practical...I certainly wouldn't want to be trapped in my $4500 a month SF or NYC studio apartment when I could easily move back home and have more space. Unfortunately I think things are going to get worse. Jobs that are work-from-homeable seem to be less willing to take chances on new entrants, and of course there are still plenty of jobs where you have to show up. As much as people want to hurry automation along (but of course not replace it with a UBI or anything...) I think we need to preserve some way for new graduates to make back their investment on education and get a start in life. No one...OK, well, almost no one...wants to be 30 and living in their bedroom because there's no opportunity for them.
Re:The tech bubble hides a lot of issues (Score:4, Insightful)
Along that line of thought, I did a little research experiment last year and looked up some numbers in the area where I lived after graduation.
Compared to when I "struck out on my own",
-Same degree from the same school cost 2.5x.
-Same kinds of apartment in the same area cost 2.5x
-Entry level pay in the same kind of industry in the same area was maybe 10% more.
It's apparent that a version of me starting out today would have the deck stacked against me compared to what I had, and that was before the pandemic. Things are going to break, possibly violently, in the US. I hope I'm not around to see it.
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This is 180 degrees off in my experiences. I'm same age range as you, and have lived and worked in a few areas of the U.S. While there's definitely stark contrasts in the cost of living (looking at you, failed coastal states) that doesn't really impact the number and availability of entry level jobs. You know, the jobs that kids and young adults get to put a few discretionary bucks in their pockets while their parents watch them learn first hand how the real world works. The jobs they use to light that
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Education is not that expensive. It's only expensive if you need your school to have a football team and wave pools. Community college is maybe $3k/year depending on where you luve. That's $6k for half of a bachelor's right there. You can save that up by working shitty jobs for a couple years out of high school. After that, you should be able to find a better job to fund the rest of your education, if you deem it necessary.
And if you don't know what your major is going to be, you shouldn't even be in s
Good or bad? (Score:3)
Is it a problem? Probably a good idea in fact. I have been living on my own since I was in my mid teens. Freedom! yay! Umm no. More like struggle all the time, fucking up, dealing with bullshit probably up until I crawled out my 20s. And no it doesn't build character or any other BS lies. You have no idea. Stay home, dont get sidelined, educate yourself in a useful skill (something people would pay you for), save your money to start a business or buy a house. Note, when I say stay home I don't mean sit around .. get a job, or an education (courses are freely available online now, so you have zero excuse), something. Don't waste your time, especially not your 20s.
Re:Good or bad? (Score:4, Insightful)
One of my parents was a colossal asshole and the other was crazy. I moved out at 15 and haven't regretted it since, even when it got hard.
Being able to stay at home and also stay sane is a privilege.
They've moved back due to Covid (Score:4, Interesting)
All of my suburban neighbors have adult age kids (and spouses and their kids) who have moved back due to covid.
The kids were living in New York city, and they moved back either due to job loss or safety concerns.
My next door neighbor alone went from a household of 2 to a household of 8, with no plan for it to end any time soon.
In my case the kids never left, but it's fine with me. I tell them they have a home for as long as they want it.
Trickle down devalue labor economics (Score:5, Insightful)
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They'll manufacture the cheap rope the middle class will hang itself with, to paraphrase some dude with a fake name.
Boomers (Score:3, Insightful)
The boomers scooped up all the wealth in the nation and shoveled it into their homes. This is the expected result.
Me too (Score:2)
Yeah, I lived at home until I was 29. The only reason I moved out was because my parents moved out first.
Moving back home = shifting the voting population (Score:4, Insightful)
This is probably going to monkey with election results. Mass sudden movements of a sufficiently large population group always messes with districts and voting. So whatever numbers you are hearing now could actually result in wildly different results come November. All of that constant manipulation of district lines is probably gonna backfire gloriously.
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hard to be on your own with an $200K student loan (Score:2)
hard to be on your own with an $200K student loan to pay off.
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So don't borrow 200K to get college education. Not necessary.. Hell my first year salary was equal to my four total college expense.
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If you ended up with a $200k loan, you have nobody to blame but yourself.
Great parents, but I moved out for good at 18 (Score:4, Insightful)
I can't imagine living at home from 18 - 29, even though my parents were great. I worked hard and played hard, and I have never needed a lot of sleep. Basically, my lifestyle would have been disruptive to my parents' lifestyle and (wink, wink) moral standards.
So I moved out when I was 18 and never went back except for big family holidays. Living alone I could keep whatever hours I liked, sleep with whoever I wanted whenever I wanted, have dinner when I got home from work, even if that was at midnight, and watch a movie at 2am with the volume up if I felt like it.
To be clear: my parents wouldn't have pulled any "my house, my rules" crap (like the parents of a lot of people I have known), but my lifestyle would have had an impact on them. They didn't need that, and neither did I. Having a place to call my own, and being responsible for it, helped me grow up. I feel incredibly sorry for kids/young adults today who don't have this opportunity.
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This. I want my kids to feel confident enough to spread their wings and fly when they are 18. But how are they meant to do that if they can't afford housing costs. I think it's just so ridiculous where 'free market' thinking has taken us. We have all the technology and resources to build enough housing if we want, but we all sit around staring at each other and eventually throw our hands up and say it's not possible - we have to spend our time at work getting people to click on ads for things they aren't go
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That's one of the best summaries of post-WWII America I've ever read. Canada has gone down a sadly similar path, though not nearly so far as America. We have universal health care, for example, but it is constantly under attack and is gradually being whittled away by service providers euphemistically referred to as "Public-Private Partnerships".
Impact of Immigration (Score:2)
So, in many cultures it's much more common to live with an expanded family. If we're to compare apples to apples, we need to see the demographic changes over time.
Ah, late-stage capitalism (Score:2)
The pandemic was just the last straw.
Maybe you're making two or four times what you did 20 years ago. Meanwhile, multimillionaires have become billionaires, and companies have become trillion-dollar concerns.
And so we're back to where we were at the beginning of the 20th century, when most folks lived in multigenerational homes.
Oh, but back then, they weren't brainwashed against unions, and for tax cuts for the rich.
Re:The Trump Economy (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's not kid ourselves. We're waiting for a new president, not for the old one to grow up.
Re:The Trump Economy (Score:4, Insightful)
Plan your escape from USA now.
Good luck finding somewhere that will take people from the country with the highest number of plague deaths.
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Well, if you are in semiconductors your only options are pretty much Taiwan, Korea and Japan. Europe is tiny in semiconductors and labor laws make employers think 10 times before they hire someone. Also, you need to speak the local language fluently. Software jobs are easier to come by outside the US but they don't pay nowhere near what they do in the US.
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A smart candidate would be able to easily identify why people vote to trump and defeat him at that (protip: there are much more unemployed people in america than racists), but seems like brains are not on the american politics at all.
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If reelected watch for a push to change the constitution. And watch every single republican follow through with supporting it.
Fortunately, they couldn't even come close to enacting such a change.
2/3rds of both chambers of Congress need to pass it for submission to the states, of which 3/4ths need to ratify it.
There is nowhere *near* that level of unity on any topic right now, much less removing term limits with the dumbest motherfucker alive in office.
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" or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States,"
Congress need not be involved at all. Such a convention of states is currently being pursued. So far, Georgia, Alaska, Florida, Alabama, Tennessee, Indiana, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arizona, North Dakota, Texas,
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Re: The Trump Economy (Score:4, Insightful)
Or, you know, a sane/empathetic society that understands that it's in all of our best interests to work together towards a common goal during a crisis.
Selfishness is what's killing us.
Re: The Trump Economy (Score:5, Insightful)
An yes the old "my freedom to swing my fist gives me freedom to break your nose" argument.
Wear a fucking mask you moron.
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When you have to mangle a very well known quote, you've lost the argument.
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I know, I can't believe how selfish the mask Nazis are. "Oooohhhh my personal fears are more important than your freedom!". Bunch of assholes.
The big problem there is that masks primarily protect other people from the wearer, not the wearer from other people.
Re:The Trump Economy (Score:5, Insightful)
The rest of the world is re-opening and getting back to work while we sit here like fucking morons refusing to wear masks, attending political rallies, weddings, and throwing house parties.
ftfy
That's alot of Trump Corpses - Time to lie (Score:2, Informative)
It looks like you have decided to take Trump's lead and simply lie Covid statistics.
https://www.worldometers.info/... [worldometers.info]
Trump brings out the worst in everyone who associates with him. It's time to cut your losses and be a decent person.
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It looks like you have decided to take Trump's lead and simply lie Covid statistics.
Which of my statistics was 'a lie'? I looked them up from the same website you posted.
Trump brings out the worst in everyone who associates with him.
That's because he is a horrible, incompetent person. Why the hell would I ever associate with him? Ohhhhh, I see. You are one of those people that just tries to link Trump with ANYTHING you don't like, even easily verified statistics of COVID cases. How intellectually lazy of you.
Re:The Trump Economy (Score:5, Informative)
US [statista.com]
I'm really not seeing the same picture you're seeing. Don't get me wrong- they're struggling- but the per capita isn't even comparable.
Europe has nearly double the population of the US.
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I'm really not seeing the same picture you're seeing.
What picture are you seeing? Because even your links are showing roughly the same numbers as my source (https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries). Your source (August 15th) USA: 35k new cases (vs. 36k for my source) Europe: 30k new cases (vs. 43k for my source) Note that the day before that they recorded 59k new cases. Given the differences in reporting dates, sources, etc., was this really enough of a difference for you to post about? That's a rhetorical question; of course it wasn't, which
Re: The Trump Economy (Score:4, Insightful)
You think Biden is a commie? Well honestly it's not that surprising that someone with "gunner" in his username is that kind of fuckwit.
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Talking to him is a waste of time. If he sees something he doesn't like he just says you're lying, even though he proves several times a day that he doesn't understand what he reads anyway.
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Re: The Trump Economy (Score:2)
So long as BLM, antifa, etc are only destroying their own neighborhoods and not mine, they can have at it as far as I'm concerned. Not a whole lot you can do about somebody self inflicting their own problems.
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It looks like responding to the biggest pandemic since 1900 with total incompetence and dishonesty is not a successful economic strategy.
It's shameful that Americans are still banned from travel to Europe and Canada due to our widespread outbreaks while the rest of the world gets back to work.
The rest of the world is re-opening and getting back to work while we sit here like fucking morons waiting for a single uneducated jackass to finally take his responsibilities seriously.
Sad.
Yeah, so in like 8 years or whatever after a Democrat has been in office and this trend continues, are you going to say it's great that more young adults are continuing to live with their parents?
Slashdot is as bad as Facebook with all the fucking politics.
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If a Democrat takes office they will work to get people working again because their support comes from working people. Then a Republican will take office as it's just all starting to turn around, take credit for the upsurge, ruin everything, and blame the ruin on his predecessor. Just like what's happening RIGHT NOW.
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Airbnbs and vacation homes need to be taxed to hell and back until everyone is housed. Completely unoccupied should not be the standard, occupied less than 50% of the year is my proposal. That gets the vacationers.
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80% would be better. If you can vacation for two months of the year you can afford to fork over fucktons of money.