Joe Biden and the Political Left Were Correct.......

[Mister Moose]

I also wonder how much your view is colored by the fact that you live in an area of the country with many fewer opportunities than more urban areas. If you entered the IT business in the greater Boston area you'd have found a world of possibilities. In rural Vermont, I imagine the opportunities are far fewer. That's not a function of capitalism, that's a function of population density. If you choose to live in a resort area where you can ski 100 days a year, that's great, and if it makes you happy, I'm all for it. But you have to recognize that by choosing that lifestyle, you are choosing to forgo other opportunities.

You've drawn some short straws. You make some valid points. However now is a time in your life when labor markets are strong (elsewhere) and you can go get a good job at a place with upward mobility. Take a few more courses to add to your value. To do otherwise is to choose to stay where you are. You chose to go into debt. You chose to "screw the man" and screw your credit rating in the process. Time to make some better choices. Or if you choose to stay in low opportunity Rutland County, please stop complaining about it.

Your idealism is wonderful. Reality bites.

At least reality comes around for the better in cycles. idealism never does. Idealism denies man's true character, and therefore is destined to fail.

[Heywood jablowmee]

Fifty bucks says....out skiing. You cant make this pitiful shite up.....

[asher2789]

All you do is blame the world for your problems, boo f*** hoo. Stop blaming the world and do something about it. You can if you really put the effort in but instead you boast about skiing 100 days a year.

what makes you think that i dont get paid for it?

[asher2789]

your father and uncles (assuming no big age gaps) grew up in a completely different time frame where one could get by on a janitors salary and support a family on it. the comparison is irrelevant. cant speak of the other people without knowing their ages.

I'm not sure times were so different, but in any case the other examples I cited are all gen-Xers born around 1980 or so, which I believe is the same time frame you grew up in. There are many more examples. If you look at the big tech elite, many of them like Dorsey, Zuckerberg, Cuban, and many others came from decidedly working-class families. That kind of rise from working-class to uber-elite does not happen in a system that is rigged in favor of elites at the expense of the working class.

I also wonder how much your view is colored by the fact that you live in an area of the country with many fewer opportunities than more urban areas. If you entered the IT business in the greater Boston area you'd have found a world of possibilities. In rural Vermont, I imagine the opportunities are far fewer. That's not a function of capitalism, that's a function of population density. If you choose to live in a resort area where you can ski 100 days a year, that's great, and if it makes you happy, I'm all for it. But you have to recognize that by choosing that lifestyle, you are choosing to forgo other opportunities.

im from the NYC metro area originally. its easier to get ahead in vermont than in new york by leaps and bounds. regardless, the math doesnt add up anywhere. i had a fancy corporate job in my field of study in NY, and you know what it paid? not enough to pay rent in a studio basement apartment an hour commute from the city.

also, FYI, 1980 is the start of millennials, born 1980-1994.

[asher2789]

1. death benefits stopped being paid out to 19-22 year olds in 1985 thanks to saint reagan
2. like i said, the credits didnt transfer because school is a business. i have many friends who went through similar struggles, and worse, couldnt complete their degrees in 4 years even without transferring because their required classes were unavailable on a proper schedule to make it possible.
3. actually, average public tuition costs in the 1970s when my boomer parents were in SUNY was indeed a few hundred bucks a year. SUNY didn't charge tuition until 1961...
4. credit scores perpetuate inequality and make racial disparities worse.

So...

1. Survivor benefits continue until you're 18 rather than 21? I'm assuming that was part of the deal made to reform Social Security, a deal made between Republicans and Democrats as part of a compromise to fix what had been a program that was unsustainable in its then current form.

2. I didn't graduate in 4 years either as a result of transfers and a change in majors. Many students, even without transfers, don't graduate in 4 years. That's not a big deal and is not unusual.

3. SUNY didn't charge until 1961? Cool...boomers didn't get to college age until after that. In other words, boomers didn't get to go for free. The WW 11 generation went for free, mostly under the GI Bill. Part of the reason college costs subsequently increased over time was the increase in demand. Millions of people now go to college where, prior to WW 11 and the post war era, most did not. Do all HAVE to go? Obviously not, but many more do today and facilities have to be built. It was the same with K-12 schools having to be built en masse post WW 11 due to the baby boom years.

4. Criticisms of credit scoring mechanisms are valid, but what came before was also a problem. It's not the first time nor will it be the last where the law of unintended consequences applies.

As for how you would replace capitalism..."as for what to replace it with, that is a tough question. something closer to anarchism/syndicalism/communism, but without the authoritarianism or ideally, the state. im far left/ far libertarian on that political compass thing."

You have to realize this is somewhat of a contradiction, unless you're talking about Communism in its ideal, unreachable form. Communism as an ideal and theory assumed the state would eventually dissolve and the proletariat would run themselves for the benefit of all. Good luck with that. Human nature being what it is, homo sapiens will need to evolve well past where we are today or any time in the foreseeable future to achieve that vision of utopia. Until then, Communism requires the state and the state will not give up control.

Anarchism is the elimination of the state and, with it, the rule of law unless, of course, you again ignore human nature.

Syndicalism is, at least as I understand it, workers owning their own companies, i.e. the means of production. Of course, someone has to run the companies, at which point we get the equivalent of Animal Farm.

Your idealism is wonderful. Reality bites.

syndicalism would describe employee owned companies, of which there are numerous in vermont. still, these companies exist in an outrageous late stage capitalism environment where every aspect of life outside of breathing (for now) is financialized and monetized. now if every company in the economy became employee owned, and we removed the financialization/monetization aspects of it, we'd be getting somewhere. as for animal farm, you are describing capitalism as it stands. "all animals are equal, some animals are more equal than others" - labor does the work, but capital reaps the rewards, because they "risked" their money. labor, depending on the line of work, trades their time for money and risks their lives.

there are small scale examples of anarchism (in the form of libertarian socialism) and communism today - i would agree that it would be difficult to implement at scale, which is why i followed up my "ideals" with pragmatic suggestions that dont upend the system all that much (besides nationalizing some industries for the public benefit) that you very conveniently ignore because its just easier to smear my political ideals than address my points. also, as an aside when it comes to scale, ive lately been thinking about if humans are even meant to be in large scale societies, particularly in the context of impending WW3/nuclear doom but even back in history to the global genocide against indigenous people during the colonial period.

[asher2789]

I am ~4 years your senior, graduated college in 2006 also in tech field, and live/worked through the economic mess in ~2008 with just two years out of college. I didn't have to go through the difficulty of losing my father at a younger age and they/we never lost our home. I can't speak to how hard that is and won't pretend to try.

I am only posting to share that our generation can succeed. I worked 2-3 jobs varying between McDonald's, local pizza joint, CVS, bank rep, and lifeguard before and during college. My college loans totaled $75k upon graduation, despite getting my gen ed requirements at the local community college. I paid the last of my student loans off a few years ago. I'm not an aberration. Many in my circle of friends and those I graduated with have done the same. It's possible to succeed.

you're lucky.

Why do you assume it's luck? My dad always said luck is what you get when planning and opportunity meet. In that sense, luck doesn't really exist.

Just an example of 'luck'. When I went to school (graduated 2006) you could get a Bachelors in Accounting and have a ~55k/yr job offer in hand before graduating. This is what a lot of my buddies did. It's still like this today, but the starting salaries are higher. Of course there's an Emotional Intelligence variable to all of this. These Accounting firms are seeking graduates that are well spoken, motivated, have the right attitude, social skills, effective communication, etc. This is probably no different than a lot of other fields. As a hiring manager, I can tell you there are a lot of Millennials that have poor Emotional Intelligence (I've never interviewed a non-Millennial so can't speak to comparing generations).

Heard a TED talk a decade ago or so and jotted down this quote from the speaker (don't remember who) that I found to be relevant in my career:

90% of your long-term happiness is predicted not by your external world but by the way your brain processes the world. If you change your formula for happiness and success, you can change the way it affects reality. Only 25% of job success is predicted by IQ .... research shows that 75% of job success is defined by (1) optimism level, (2) social support level, and (3) ability to see stress as a challenge instead of a threat.

sure, you succeeded. so did mark zuckerberg (or any of the other tech bros that are older millennials). that does not negate my point that many more did not, and some are sadly no longer with us as a result.

I don't think it's fair to dismiss my experience as an aberration. I think this is a form of Experience Bias, where you take your experience as the average experience of others. Just an example, look at the recent US Census (here). They found the median millennial household pretax income was $71,566 in 2020. This doesn't seem to align with your experience.

I do agree the salary of a Millennial is lower (in real terms) than the boomers at the same age (they had lower debt, too). This is indisputable. However, it's not as big a difference (~15-20%) as you make it seem when we look at a Millennial's at a National Level.

while i like your dad's quote, luck plays a bigger part than anything. and 'self made' successful people hate hearing that.

[asher2789]

I also wonder how much your view is colored by the fact that you live in an area of the country with many fewer opportunities than more urban areas. If you entered the IT business in the greater Boston area you'd have found a world of possibilities. In rural Vermont, I imagine the opportunities are far fewer. That's not a function of capitalism, that's a function of population density. If you choose to live in a resort area where you can ski 100 days a year, that's great, and if it makes you happy, I'm all for it. But you have to recognize that by choosing that lifestyle, you are choosing to forgo other opportunities.

You've drawn some short straws. You make some valid points. However now is a time in your life when labor markets are strong (elsewhere) and you can go get a good job at a place with upward mobility. Take a few more courses to add to your value. To do otherwise is to choose to stay where you are. You chose to go into debt. You chose to "screw the man" and screw your credit rating in the process. Time to make some better choices. Or if you choose to stay in low opportunity Rutland County, please stop complaining about it.

Your idealism is wonderful. Reality bites.

At least reality comes around for the better in cycles. idealism never does. Idealism denies man's true character, and therefore is destined to fail.

where have i complained about rutland county? nowhere. nowhere in this country do the incomes meet the cost of living. i hate america as a country, i dont hate this area specifically - where i am from is far worse despite all the "opportunity." america is trash, and if i could leave it i would.

[Mister Moose]

where have i complained about rutland county? nowhere. nowhere in this country do the incomes meet the cost of living. i hate america as a country, i dont hate this area specifically - where i am from is far worse despite all the "opportunity." america is trash, and if i could leave it i would.

Paywalled article, another place you might be spending money that I don't.

Why can't you leave America?

[Fancypants]

I'm from the NYC metro area originally. its easier to get ahead in Vermont than in New York by leaps and bounds. regardless, the math doesn't add up anywhere. i had a fancy corporate job in my field of study in NY, and you know what it paid? not enough to pay rent in a studio basement apartment an hour commute from the city.

Curious, what was your field of study?

[Dickc]

where have i complained about rutland county? nowhere. nowhere in this country do the incomes meet the cost of living. i hate america as a country, i dont hate this area specifically - where i am from is far worse despite all the "opportunity." america is trash, and if i could leave it i would.

Paywalled article, another place you might be spending money that I don't.

Why can't you leave America?

Mister Moose - Use Firefox, and open the link in a new private window. It bypasses the paywall that way.

[ifixu]

Ash’s attitude says it all, who the heck would hire someone like that is beyond me, an $18,000 car??? You have to be joking all along on here, your choice of f friends is a harsh reality as well that is very telling , ski 100 days? come on