Posted on 06/01/2013 10:55:17 AM PDT by YankeeReb
Actually, I'm not sure it is an utterly bad thing -- it may be the thing that saves the country. Consider that a lot of them are there because they can't afford to be elsewhere (if that's choice or not is a separate discussion) because it will strengthen the familial bonds [something the government has been working to destroy since at least no-fault divorce]... honestly, what's going to make people want to strike out against government overreach? It's when their families are put in danger, when they see Mrs. Jones hauled out and beaten by the SWAT because of a quarter ounce of marijuana (which might have been planted) on a "wrong number" and they realize that it could happen to them and their family too!
So, as far as that goes, I'm not philosophically opposed to [extended] families living in the same house.
I’m in my early 30s, and I find the idea that somehow 16-34 is a generation to be ludicrous.
I remember:
A time when people didn’t know what the Internet was
A time when people didn’t have cell phones. No one in my high school had a freakin’ cell phone. All of them do now.
A time when you could get on a plane without being treated like a terrorist because there was no war on terror.
Batman movies were directed by Tim Burton.
Popular music still had guitars.
I could go on and on...
Sme of you may dismiss them but Millennials are a larger cohort than any other in history. Bigger than the Boomers and absolutely dwarfing Gen X. By 2023 they will be 75% of the workforce. Love em or hate em you will have to deal with them. They are just too big.
They're not interested in buying because the entitlement mentality makes them wait for it to be GIVEN to them!
And more...
Cars are so complicated, I remember a time when some of my friends were flip artist, they would find an old Impala convertible and pick it up for $50 bucks because the owner had no idea it ran bad because of bad points. New points and my friend sells it for $400. Can't do that today, ditto that going to the Junk Yards and getting parts for your High School Clunkers. Gosh today's High School parking lots are better than one car in our driveway. Add to that Vehicle History Reports etc., man it would be a rare kid today that rebuilds a clunker from pocket money, when it used to be the norm. On top of it, The High Schools don't promote Auto Shop worth a darn. One Mega HS near me, has one row of "Greasers" way in the back of the kids parking lot, maybe a 1/2 a dozen of them with 4 X 4's out of thousands and kids and hundreds upon hundreds of cars, the rest are all pedestrian shoe boxes...
Damn Fedzilla has taken all the fun out of it...
What’s this 16 to 34? Generation X is currently 27 to 47. Don’t be making us even smaller! Millennials are currently 6 to 26. Maybe that’s why they’re not buying houses.
$33k a year isn’t hard to haul down right after college, but living on that amount is really tough in many places. You really can’t live on that in Silicon Valley.
That was it's result. However, I don't believe that was actually the reason.
The reason for that program was that the Chinese wanted payment on the money we owed them, but they didn't want our worthless paper money, they wanted STEEL. LOTS OF STEEL.
Why do you think they filled the engines with glass? Where did all these cars with glass filled engines go? They aren't in any junkyards in the US.
They went by rail to shipyard to overseas.
How much of that is because society has been telling them that they cannot succeed, that the who-they-are is inherently worthless? -- This is certainly present in the cultural acceptance of misandry in our media (when was the last time you saw a show where the dad wasn't the bumbling buffoon-type? Family Matters is the last one that comes to my mind), the bailouts are another (showing that the government picks who survives and who doesn't).
And upon their enabling parents.
“Can’t do that today, ditto that going to the Junk Yards “
The feds have actively been trying to eliminate junk yards. They want only recycling places run by the original equipment suppliers, Ford, GM, etc. They want all the parts removed, tested and boxed. Incredibly expensive.
>>If I could do my life over again, I’d definitely go simpler. Especially if I knew what technologies were coming down the road. You are right, the younger generation are living in a virtual connected world that most of us older people cannot even imagine.
I agree with you. If I was 25 again, I would rent a small apartment and live the high-tech minimalist lifestyle that the millenials are attracted to. They’re basically hippies, but with technology instead of drugs.
As it is, I’m 50 so I grew up in the early days of video games, I became an adult in the MTV/Headline News era, and I work in IT so I’m a techie. I straddle their world and the conventional world. I have a full-time “career” job and a home in the suburbs, but I live a lot of my life in the virtual, connected world.
Since I’m more in touch with them than my own age group, I do some ministry work with the millenials and I find that they also possess a spirituality that our generations do not understand anymore. If it wasn’t for “educators” programming them to be robots, they’d really be better people than we are.
One might wonder why that electric sign prominent in the second photo is in the world’s dominant language.
It's not just a matter of a "different" world or a different way of life.
There are better ways of living and worse ways too.
That is the whole point of life: to live it fully, to better oneself, to make a better life for family and others around you, to improve your lot in life in a Godly fashion if such is your choosing, or simply in a qualitative manner, if that is your wish.
Your comparison of the 50s generation and their grandparents to modern youth does not hold up. My parents' ancestors might not have thought my parents' life was necessarily a spiritual improvement upon the old ways, but they most certainly would have recognized my parents' hard work, their achievements, their strivings for a better way.
The young people and their "virtual world," as you describe, can in no way be seen as an improvement upon the hopeful, ambitious, vigorous, purposeful outlook of my parents (and of me too, for that matter).
A life of tiny spaces, tiny devices, "part-time jobs, high tech socialism, and minimal materialism" is a path of reductionism in every sense: physical, spiritual, intellectual, material.
They own little or nothing, they are building on nothing (except some vague sense of self and of "experience"), they exercise nothing in the way of discrimination or judgement except a default bias against "judgement" itself.
They are adrift, purposely purposeless, content in the absence of challenges, and very, very vulnerable.
They are a half-step from slavery.
Congrats to your daughter, and you for a fine job of raising her. My two daughters, 30 and 34, also buck the trend. Very focused, got through 4 years of college by 21 and hit the job market. They listened to us parents about staying out of debt. They both have great homes and are doing very well with their own children.
My older daughter and her husband did a novel thing. They bought an old victorian home in a redevelopment area, that had been converted to an apt bldg. The neighborhood is an up and coming area for professionals, near downtown. Cost $80G, bought in cash. No taxes for 10 years. They gutted the bldg, their own labor, and are almost done converting it to living space above and restaurant below. They plan to run a restaurant there. No debt, fully owned, worth $500G. Their friends are of like mind, work hard and smart and you can get things done.
Looks like the progressive plan is on track...
“... worry about the future of the U.S. economy”
Here are two quotes from the historian Will Durant:
“Rome remained great as long as she had enemies who forced her to unity, vision, and heroism. When she had overcome them all she flourished for a moment and then began to die.”
“Freedom and equality are sworn and everlasting enemies, and when one prevails the other dies.”
There are more illegal aliens in this country than I thought.....
Don’t forget those college loans they’re paying off.
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