Japan is a preview of what's coming to many developed western economies.
I found this paragraph from the article disturbingly similar to the situation here in the states:
"The rise in those shunning marriage, experts say, is due not only to more diverse life-styles but to an increase in low-paying, unstable jobs. Part-timers, temps or contract workers now account for nearly 40 percent of the workforce compared to about 20 percent in the 1980s."
I imagine this will only be accelerated with the rise of AI and increasing job automation. Already, we're seeing the average age when people get married and have kids rise with each generation. I think alot of this is due to job instability, depressed wages, rise of the 1099 worker with no benefits, etc. Reminds me of the situation in China, where unless you have a house and a car, you're basically persona-non-grata.
So if you're a young person in the US, you're doubly screwed. All your friends and potential dating partners are concentrated in the big cities, but those are also the places with the highest costs of living, highest costs to own a home, to raise a kid, etc.
If you're mid 20s / early 30s person in San Fran and you're not working for GOOG/FB/APPL etc. you're basically screwed.
This is a rather narrow perspective. Lotta cheap big cities with lots of jobs if you're not on the coast.
The people really screwed aren't the ones in Dallas, Atlanta, or Charlotte - where an average home is something like 200K and jobs can be found - they're the ones in dying small towns that have been left by businesses, or in the expensive coastal cities where they're caught up in the housing madness but without the high income or established wealth driving those prices.
They'd be better off moving to, say, the Dallas area, but that's not an option for everyone. And "you have to pick up your life and say goodbye to everyone you know because the market says so" is hardly an outcome we should be promoting.
(I'd also make the argument that we'd be better off getting more diverse perspectives into those cities, vs our current CA/NY/OR/WA-vs-the-rest-of-the-US silos, but that's another discussion, and a perfect example of "if you really believed that so deeply, why don't you move yourself?")
"you have to pick up your life and say goodbye to everyone you know because the market says so" is hardly an outcome we should be promoting
Why is this true? Virtually every working class immigrant to the United States made that decision, my parents included. And in return, America is one of the world's most prosperous nations that's staved off the slowdown in economic growth associated with most developed economies.
It's a tradeoff decision - we can create a more ordered and comfortable society where people get to stay where they already are or we create a less ordered one where people have to move.
More ordered societies tend to have less economic growth and social mobility than less ordered ones. We may prefer to make that tradeoff but we should do so knowing what we give up.
"you have to pick up your life and say goodbye to everyone you know because the market says so" is hardly an outcome we should be promoting.
Disagree. If your town's way of life is based on for example, coal mining, then good riddance. Another example, perhaps the town is based on agriculture but drones cut the need for labor in half, some people will have to either learn some skill that can be applied remotely or move elsewhere to efficiently allocate their labor. The government (imo) shouldn't be "promoting" any lifestyle. Let the markets operate.
I mean, this is probably laissez faire capitalism at its best (worst?). But we, as a community, as a culture and as a Nation, have to decide on what kind of things to prioritize. Do we really want markets to have a free hand in everything? Historically this has not turned out well.
Let me say that I don't necessarily disagree...many people here seem to forget the tremendous migration of people that took place in the US when the economy moved from agrarian to industrial, so its not unprecedented, neither is it undesirable. But we do need to think the consequences through rather than simply "Let the markets operate".
Do we really want markets to have a free hand in everything? Historically this has not turned out well.
I can't really think of a historical example of a truly free market outside of black markets or maybe for a short period of time, failed states. Historically, "freer" markets have dramatically outperformed planned economies. It is better in most cases (outside of obvious e.g. environmental externalities) for individuals to decide what is best for themselves than for the subset of the population that is politically active to come to some plurality decision about what everyone else should value.
Essentially I disagree somewhat on the deciding things as a community (we should avoid doing that whenever possible), although that's fairly vague. Having said all of that I would vouch for common sense stuff e.g. progressive taxation. America would look a lot different if capital gains were taxed at same rate as income; I would say that's more of a re allocation of market intervention than an increase in market intervention.
It's one thing if your community is dying economically. It's a different story if your area is doing great economically, but housing is so restricted that only a narrow subset of people can live there. Especially since government (via zoning) is creating the artificial scarcity in the first place.
That's fine, but it doesn't really address my point.
To put it in different terms... imagine a city has 1 million jobs that pay a livable wage, and you increase the city's working age population by 2 million. Even if cities are more efficient at creating new opportunities than rural areas, that does nothing to address the shortfall in the job market in the short to medium term. Also, rapidly increasing the population size of a city tends to push up the price of accommodation faster than an increase in wages, which reduces the pool of available livable wage jobs.
In short, rapidly increasing the population size of a city without the job market already set to support it isn't likely to lead to economic stability.
Those jobs get created incredibly quickly, and often the only factor in preventing them from being living wage jobs is accommodation costs. So cities should be prepared for allowing accommodation to be built quickly too instead of adding too much delay and restrictions.
> The government (imo) shouldn't be "promoting" any lifestyle
That can't be helped. The government influences the economy, the economy influences lifestyle. When they enacted NAFTA they knew jobs would be leaving rust belt and they knew that would affect people's livelihood. It's only reasonable to expect the government to have some response to the towns it destroyed.
> Reminds me of the situation in China, where unless you have a house and a car, you're basically persona-non-grata.
That's vast exageration and it's sad people believe this common myth about China, lived there plenty of years and yes, it's common phenomenom, but so it's marriage out of love. I knew plenty of mixed couples and also plenty of local couples who contradict this claim. Pretty much none of my foreign coworkers had house or car and married if they wanted (yes, some traditional parents were not happy about it, but it was usually more about being foreigner than wealth) and so did Chinese couples doing naked wedding. I really recommend to you explore term "naked wedding" (it means without house/car) which is more and more common since properties in China are more expensive every week.
I find personally this selfpity about how you are screwed if you are not making tons of moeny and havin great car and house a lame excuse, as if all girls living would be gold diggers, but I guess in this website where is maybe 98% readers men it sounds plausible in this echo chamber.
> That's vast exageration and it's sad people believe this common myth about China, lived there plenty of years and yes, it's common phenomenom, but so it's marriage out of love.
I'm quite familiar with China, the culture, people, and the situation on the ground. I stand by my claim. It's a serious problem, one that the government itself is addressing because they believe will lead to social instability. It's not a myth at all. It's a serious problem - it might be improving with youth in urban centers - because so many have no chance of realistically owning a house/car - but the overall mentality still very much prevails.
> Pretty much none of my foreign coworkers had house or car and married if they wanted (yes, some traditional parents were not happy about it, but it was usually more about being foreigner than wealth) and so did Chinese couples doing naked wedding.
Yes, foreigners don't need to have a house or car to get married to a local. They have other assets - like foreign citizenship - that make up the difference.
No offense, but you live in rarefied air in China. I don't think you really know about the situation facing the average Chinese person.
> I find personally this selfpity about how you are screwed if you are not making tons of moeny and havin great car and house a lame excuse, as if all girls living would be gold diggers, but I guess in this website where is maybe 98% readers men it sounds plausible in this echo chamber.
In China it's not about the gold-digging. It's just facing the realities of life on the ground: competitive society + single child families means you have to take care of your parents, so of course girls seek stability. This is natural and you find various elements of this in the west too.
as i said i knew also plenty of Chinese couples not owning any property
as for citizenship from foreigner, it's again nonsense, plenty of those Chinese would prefer never leave China where is foreign citizenship of husband just burden
have YOU lived in China? because you seem disinformed by media and dunno about reality on the ground. i lived there for years, most of my colleagues including me were married to Chinese
no point really to follow this discussion, anyone with common sense will figure out not everyone is marrying because of money, even in China
> as i said i knew also plenty of Chinese couples not owning any property
Sure, this doesn't mean that the pressures to own house+car before marriage is not real. I would argue that these pressures are especially felt in secondary and third-tier cities, where owning a house is not completely unrealistic like it is in BJ/Shanghai - also BJ/Shanghai has a much more cosmopolitan mentality amongst the youth than is normal/average. Please keep that in mind...
> as for citizenship from foreigner, it's again nonsense, plenty of those Chinese would prefer never leave China where is foreign citizenship of husband just burden
Whether or not the foreign spouse has no intention of leaving China doesn't really matter. The fact of the matter is, foreign citizenship is a nice insurance policy and provides some social clout amongst certain Chinese. The "insurance policy" is especially important given the fragility of the on-the-ground scene in China (just the pollution alone, places a nice premium on the option of escaping at a moments notice).
> have YOU lived in China? because you seem disinformed by media and dunno about reality on the ground. i lived there for years, most of my colleagues including me were married to Chinese
You assume I'm some China noob because I disagree with you. Yes I have lived in China, in fact. I've also worked there, have many friends who still live there, etc. I hope you see my comments in a new light. I'm far from ignorant / _mis_informed about China. I'll let you put two and two together for why that might be.
Also it's worth keeping in mind that your social circle in China doesn't really reflect the average Chinese person. It's like someone who graduated from Harvard, living in NYC as an investment banker, pontificating about the motivations of Jim-Bob and LuAnn in Wichita, Kansas. Even your Chinese wife - who I'm sure provides all sorts of interesting insights into Chinese culture - is different, just by the fact that she's married to a foreigner - to the average Chinese person living in randomville, Hunan province.
I don't mean to be so presumptuous about all of this, but you're assessment is so far off-base I'm not even sure how to properly respond to it. Ignorance is truly bliss, I guess.
> no point really to follow this discussion, anyone with common sense will figure out not everyone is marrying because of money, even in China
No, not everyone is marrying because of money. Still, pragmatic concerns of financial stability is a real and pressing concern in China, just as it is in all countries, including the developed West (there's a great song by the American R&B group, TLC, that perfectly encapsulates this universal view, it's called "no scrubs" - check it out). In China, these pressures are even more exacerbated by the factors that uniquely affect China: massive population (and thus competition for resources - including spouses), one-child policy, Confucius concept of filial piety, etc.
Look, I'm sorry if I offended your personal sensibilities. I'm sure your wife is a lovely person and loves you for you, but the pressures of having a house/car in order to marry in China are real. Period. Really, not that much dissimilar to the huge pressures facing Chinese high school students - and their families - to score high on the gaokao, which I'm sure you will not refute.
it may take time of adjustment, but free minimum wage or something similar to that will come. as there are couple of side effect of automation. one, it will reduce the price, so you can still buy same thing for lower money. second, if people do not have job, they do not have money, they can not afford higher price good, so goods price needs to be reduce. ideally, for any consumption of any kind, economy will balance out eventually. ( i.e. sum of all people consuming all of goods, energy or other resource = all goods, energy other resource produce. ) kind of second law of therm. for economics. so because low wage people spending less money = no point of producing tons of automatically manufactured goods for which nobody going to pay. )
I don't think it's downplayed so much as implied - when a country has an increasing number of disenfranchised people but still has economic growth that outpaces their population growth, the wealth is probably accruing somewhere else (ie, those ambitious people.)
I also feel like that's exactly what is happening in the US. I write software in the Bay Area (surprise) and its striking to me that I make more money that several married couples I know where both partners work full time. The couples that do make more than me all have at least one person in tech or medical. Generally, these people are also more ambitious, but not to the degree the difference in income would imply.
I don't see the "illusions". It isn't as if these people are daily choosing their life. There aren't huge numbers of well-paid jobs out there for them or anyone else. Just because someone isn't successful doesn't mean they are under some sort of illusion. The word "parasite" also implies that these people should somehow stop living, that they are such a drain that the parasite should just let got and die rather than continue the only life available to them.
They may have made some mistakes, but in previous generations a few mistakes now and again was not a life sentence. A few years off the books wasn't a big deal in the 80s or 90s. Now any gap in your linkedin profile is interrogated. In Japan and elsewhere, anyone with a blot on their employment record is doomed. And heaven help those with any criminal convictions. Our societies today deliberately push away so many people. It is improper of us to then say that it is entirely their fault or that they suffer illusions. The illusion is ours, that by shunning and dispossessing people for slight imperfections we only amplify them.
Once upon a time there was a net of reasonable jobs that didn't pay well but allowed people a life, low-level government jobs that took anyone willing to work hard. But has anyone here looked at how hard it is to become a postal worker or to join the army? Ability and willingness is no longer enough. (I have relatives in the Canadian Armed Forces. The application process takes at least one and sometimes many years.)
"I got used to living in an unstable situation and figured somehow it would work out"
That last bit is illusory thinking.
Also, I'd beg to differ on your suggestion that these people aren't choosing their life every single day. I'd suggest the opposite is true for most of us (leaving aside those who through incapacity have diminished options). Every single day you don't make an effort to look for work, don't volunteer for something, don't organise an activity, don't spend some time learning something, don't go somewhere to meet people, don't go on a date - you are making a choice. Living with your parents and (more importantly) living off your parents well into your fifties is not an accident. You can't accidentally do that. That is directly the result of daily choices and illusory thinking.
And while we can agreee that the term "parasite" is pejorative, I find it is deserved- at least from the perspective of the parent (who in this case is probably as much to blame for this situation).
My daughters are 20 and 18 and the expectation has long been set in our family that they will be moving out once they're in stable employment (and by that I mean any job that can pay their bills, not their dream job). When both kids are out of the house, we'll downsize and share some of the cashed out equity to help them get started on the property ladder. Then they're on their own. In our family we refer to this as "The Plan". They've been hearing about the Plan (and been onboard) since their early teens.
And accumulate crippling debt in order to live life according to the prosperous fantasy that you happen to grow up in?
Japan is about 20 years ahead of current US/EU monetary policy. This is coming to America and it's not an accident and it's not people getting lazy and stupid. Things have gotten more expensive, more unequal and more competitive. And at least Japan has strong safety nets, America doesn't.
Why are you assuming my kids will have crippling debt? What if they are happy to start off life in a simple one bed apartment of which our contribution will be roughly 80% of the cost? My parents started their life together in a small flat and ended up in a 3 bed home which growing up we thought was huge. My girls' expectations are not unrealistic. They don't expect to move out of the family home and into a huge home with a pool.
I never said people were lazy or stupid nor did I imply it. However to claim as some are, that people don't have choices in life is just plain wrong. You might not like the choices you have available but you've got them. And you're free to choose your path from among them.
Don't get me wrong and conflate what I'm saying with some kind political ideology. All I'm saying is that people are faced with personal choices and need to own their choices and the consequences of their choices.
> Why are you assuming my kids will have crippling debt?
Not the OP, but do they expect to go to college? Do you plan to cover their college costs?
If the answers are yes and no, they will come away with anywhere from $20,000 to $200,000 in student loan debts. I'm not sure how it could be more crippling...
You may have set the expectation that they will go out and live on their own, but were one of them to come to the point of becoming homeless (whatever the cause), would you let that happen to them? If one developed a crippling disease which didn't let them work a full time job, but also didn't kill them outright, what would you do then?
Intentions are great, but reality tends to kick intentions to the curb.
There are ways to do college cheaply. A peer mentioned scholarships if you come from an economically disadvantageous background. But there is always the Community College option. I think that is often overlooked because parents want their kids to enjoy the same "college lifestyle" that they themselves had, but it might be financially more prudent for them to start CC and then transfer to a better college later.
Having a manageable student debt is undoubtedly more important than the "college experience" IMO. College is really really important for the education; if you make the most of it and obtain the skills to make money, you ensure a much more sustainable and enjoyable quality of life.
In Australia where I live, the student loans are not as great and are paid via a government interest free loan that is repaid as an additional "tax" once your salary exceeds a certain threshold. This is another reason I'm thankful we're not in the US.
With respect to disease and circumstances truly beyond their control then we will do whatever is necessary at that time. However they are exceptional circumstances.
With respect to homelessness my response will be measured against their attempts to exit those circumstances (irrespective of how they got there). So if they are addicted to a substance (for example) then if they are actively trying to shake that addiction (or showing a true willingness to) then I will help them do so.
My view of parenting is that our goal should always be to try and raise resilient, independent kids. It is not to provide an infinite bank for those that aren't interested in owning their own lives.
there's things called scholarships, worked well for me and lots of other people.
The problem is that easy student loans has made it so people who should have never gone to college are now going and flunking out after a few semesters of partying and now have 10s of thousands in debt with nothing to show for it.
Combine easy money with indoctrination telling kids that they will be losers if they don't go and you have the current situation
Scholarships are hard to get when you're a white male with perfectly good (but not exceptional) grades. A bit easier when you're a woman, since they have more scholarships earmarked for you.
Most people won't have scholorships, or at least not enough scholorships to cover their entire tuition.
> telling kids that they will be losers if they don't go
It's worse than "mere" peer pressure. A 4 year college education is all-but-required for entry level white collar jobs anymore. A college degree is this century's High School Diploma.
And they frequently paid really low wages, since they're expected to be filled by immigrants, both legal and illegal. $10 an hour seasonally to pick onions? $15 an hour for a professional welder? Those are near-poverty level wages.
If you will give them 80% of the cost they will choose something bigger than they should. Checkout the book the millionaire next door for some stories about parents that would subsidies their children and how it turned out.
One major differnce is that, from what I understand, land/housing in Japan has historically been generationally owned (very long mortgages, such as 100 years, paid off after multiple generations).
That is generally quite rare in the US (not sure about EU).
>>> ... they will be moving out once they're in stable employment.
Have you met any 20-somethings in stable employment? Unless your daughters are supermodels or have PHDs in biotech they are in for at least a decade of contract work and constant job-hunting. Even those at their dream jobs know they stand on the knife's edge. And the property ladder, the average home price in my area is over 500k and closer to 1m if you want to be in driving distance of any "stable" job. Even with the 20% down payment only top earners even qualify for a loan. I hope you are ready to co-sign their mortgages.
I am a 20 something who was hired for a salaried position shortly after graduation with a bachelors degree in math. I bought a house less than a year later (granted, with an FHA loan and less than the traditional 20% down).
Most of my friends in a major field of engineering or computer science are just fine as well (IT-degrees and almost comp sci degrees don't fair as well).
The world is not as dismal as it may seem for millenials. It's just that demand for STEM +CS continues to grow while the demand for other fields is stagnant, relying on people leaving the workforce to create new openings.
> I am a 20 something who was hired for a salaried position shortly after graduation with a bachelors degree in math. ... The world is not as dismal as it may seem for millenials. It's just that demand for STEM + CS continues to grow while the demand for other fields is stagnant, relying on people leaving the workforce to create new openings.
That means you weren't around for the dot-com bust in 2001 or so. Yes, things are good right now but the situation can go south very suddenly and with very little warning and stay bad for several years.
I work at a finance company so I'm not too worried.
EDIT: In hindsight, I see the irony of that statement. But I also know we don't get involved with the sort of schenanigans that hurt firms in the last crisis.
We're getting paid high dollar amounts while Silicon Valley is in boom, but the fact that they're contingent on appearing daily in Bay Area offices means the long-term stability of home ownership is off the table for us. And with booms come busts: many of us work for companies that hemorrhage investor cash.
Even if your present employer is stable, it seems likely that tens of thousands of us will be competing with you for your next job, and bidding down its wages.
In making high-dollar salaries, we're doing better than most, but don't confuse $150k Senior Engineer positions for 25-year-olds at 5-year-old companies with long-term stability.
Similar situation here. I'm a 20-something with a Bachelors in MIS. I make $80,000 in the Dallas area, and consider myself stable.
I also took out a sizable chunk of student loan debt for my degree, and have paid it off already, so now I'm debt-free and employed. Nearly every one of my friends and peers are in a similar boat. No apocalypse here, yet.
I also grew up in a non-nuclear family with a single mother and 2 siblings.
Where do you live? I know 20-somethings with stable jobs. Housing is expensive, but with good credit, it isn't hard to get a pretty big mortgage, even with much less than 20% down. I'm usually sympathetic to this sort of argument - I do think it's quite a bit harder for young people to get started than it was in the fairly recent past, but your comment seems hyperbolic.
Canada - Average house price in the country just hit 550k, and that includes all the stuff in the VAST country. Within the cities, the only places for young people to find jobs, prices are closer to 1mil.
For a 400k loan, with 100k down, a Canadian bank will want to see an income of at least 80k/year before taxes. That number (80k) puts one in the top 10% of earners. So to buy the average house (500k) one must be in the top 10% of earners. To buy the average house in a city you better earn closer to 180k, putting you well into the top 1% of earners. So for the vast majority of young people home ownership isn't a reasonable option even in the long term.
The example I always return to is the military. An officer in a nation's military should be able to buy a house and have a family in a degree of comfort. That was my grandfather. Today, officers rent apartments in full knowledge that home ownership will never happen so long as they remain officers. An RCAF pilot, an elite officer in any military, earns between 75 and 100k. With a young family and perhaps a student loan, that fighter pilot won't ever own a house. It is worse for naval officers, who generally need to live near cities/ports.
As many as 78% of adults in the Toronto area are still living with their parents, a trend "driven more by high house prices and an increasingly unstable job market for young adults".
Yes. Myself, my sister, her boyfriend, and my girlfriend.
Granted, we're smart folks, who could finish a bachelors in four years, and got degrees in subjects that lead to well-paying careers. We also chose to live in a part of the country that isn't stupid expensive.
If you're a first-time home owner, you can get an FHA mortgage, which has a low down payment and low interest rates.
Real estate inflation is a problem, but if you live outside of the ridiculous areas, that million dollar house is only 100k-250k. Which is entirely feasible on an engineer or developer salary in those same areas.
I don't make half of what I could make in SV or NY, in gross terms, but for where I am, I'm very comfortable.
Median tenure is falling I believe.
And employees in their mid-twenties and thirties have way lower tenure than those in their fifties. I think it's about 3 years as opposed to 10 years. Job-hunting is much more prevalent.
Where I live, our family home is currently worth about 7x the price of the cheapest one bed apartment in the same area. I expect to be able to help them out to the tune of 80% to 100% of the cheapest one bed apartment. If they want to borrow a bit more to get something nicer and they're able to do so then good for them. But that's their choice.
With respect to jobs, I totally agree that the definition of "stable" has changed from my parents' era to my children's. And we are lucky we don't live in the US. Our social services, while not what they were, are still ahead of your. But if you can start life without a huge debt, then that is the best way we can help them, and in those circumstances "stability" can be defined more flexibly.
It may be true that, with more effort, a specific unemployed and unmatched person could beat the other candidates for a good job, or the other suitors for a romantic partner.
But that doesn't mean that the population of unemployed and unmatched people can shrink. Only that it can churn.
What possible benefit is there to sell a property just to buy another? That just burns transaction costs, and forcing people to live alone harm's mental health and is economically inefficient. Your Plan is built on prejudice not logic.
My house is worth 7x. If I sell to by a 2 bed bungalow for 3x, I can give my kids 1x each for a 1 bed apartment. Buy a 1 bed apartment to rent out and still have some travelling money.
I'm in my 50s and expect to enact the plan before I'm 60. At that point, my wife and I don't need to be rattling around in a huge home. By moving into something smaller we can help our kids in what we believe is the best way possible - by avoiding starting life with a huge debt. I don't want them to be wage slaves for the rest of their lives.
Also, I have no idea what you mean by my idea being based on prejudice. Prejudice against what, who?
I think the "illusion" referenced in the article is the sentiment that "things will just work out."
Frankly I see this sentiment alot with today's millennial generation (really anyone from early 20s to mid/late 30s). Everyone thinks they'll have that dream job, life, marriage, kds, etc.... even the uber drivers and starbucks baristas. The "oh things will work out" attitude is especially prevalent given the popular parenting slogans of the past few decades: everyone's a winner; every child is special; you can do whatever you want if you put your mind to; etc.
Frankly, millennials were completely robbed by the generation before them in the United States. Incredible escalation in college costs, with the requirement that you need to go to college to get jobs that in no way require collegiate training. Severally penalizing even small mistakes by basically giving people as the OP put it, a life sentence for a single crime.
Disgusting. I am one of the oldest millennials (born in 82) and my age group was the last to have it somewhat easy. People born in 92 are in a pressure cooking from every angle.
The only answer is to transfer wealth from baby boomers to millennials through inflation. I have zero idea if it will happen, but as the pressure builds on this generation, they will surely look for political solutions, one of which is printing money.
Reading ithinkinstereo's post ridiculing the increasingly unsteady optimism / deluded thinking of "millennials" (it's always millennials now isn't it) I couldn't help but think "once that optimism or whatever-you-want-to-call-it is gone, all that's left is a 21st century American Reign of Terror".
Like whatever the reason for it: bad parenting, trashy culture, Bill Clinton, or maybe - maybe - that their parents pissed away the legacy of their forebears and the birthright of their progeny - whatever the reason, there are consequences to flushing an entire generation of people down the toilet. Consequences like mass revolt and death. It's really not good to leave large numbers of people with little to lose.
I'm not blaming any of this on "millennials". I hope that's not how my comment reads.
I agree that some of the blame should be directed towards the prior generation; I was trying to allude to that with my criticism of their parenting technique, which I think is inherently hypocritical, given the advantages they enjoyed that kids today don't have.
I am a Gen Xer born in the early 70s, and I have to say I totally agree with you. I feel lucky I was able to go to college before it was basically expected that you'd be paying off college loans for 20 years or so.
Economically this is not at all what happened though. The baby boomer generation was simply exceptionally lucky, economically speaking. Gen X and Y are still in the very lucky category. Compared to the generation that actually went to war, we still have it much better economically.
Unfortunately that mostly means that our kids will likely have it worse, not better. Starting with baby boomers we simply had too few children to keep growing GDP. GDP, and economic activity in general shows a remarkable and extremely direct relation to two things : total amount of energy used, and total amount of people. For the first time in over 70 years, both are stagnating, slowly.
And it's too late : to fix the population growth rate, gen X should have been having lots of kids one to two decades ago, and that has decidedly not happened. For the foreseeable future, we'll have to do more with less, both in terms of energy, but especially in terms of labor available.
You might say "but machine learning", "but robots", etc. Well that's exactly what they said in the 80s with the car plant closings. That was patently false. Then they said it again with Japan crashing and then stagnating. Again, not true. Now we're saying it about ourselves (but doubly so for China). I don't think this time it will be right either.
> You might say "but machine learning", "but robots", etc. Well that's exactly what they said in the 80s with the car plant closings. That was patently false. Then they said it again with Japan crashing and then stagnating. Again, not true. Now we're saying it about ourselves (but doubly so for China). I don't think this time it will be right either.
Well, I do remain hopeful that we will reach an inflexion point at which such technologies will make labor immensely cheap. If you think about the very basic requirements for having ever increasing population and GDP: you need young people to keep your factories running, working your farms and running your investment funds etc. Once most of these things are automated, labor productivity would have reached the point where there won't be a need for ever-expanding population to achieve the same standard of life.
Is there a good reason to blame the generation before rather the corporations, shareholders, and economic paradigms that they had nothing to do with? People just do their jobs and live. The people running the world make the rules. They don't belong to a generation they belong to a ruling class. A ruling class which has obfuscated itself using different rhetorics and the mass media to deliver that rhetoric to protect itself from the blame. But really marketing, psychological manipulation, credit cards, consumer culture. All this stuff raised these people to act the way that they do. They didn't decide to be selfish assholes, it's the culture. They are a product of the system. Their conditioning has been conditioned. The ruling class made the rules, and their corporations used various tactics to raise these people as who they are for their personal benefit. They want consumers that spend so they can capture all that wealth rather than let it sit around and do nothing in the bank accounts of the masses.
Yes in the sense that the prior generation enjoyed tremendous social/government benefits, that they then systematically dismantled when they came into power.
Of course our neoliberal, hyper capitalistic society doesn't help either...
>Yes in the sense that the prior generation enjoyed tremendous social/government benefits, that they then systematically dismantled when they came into power.
The people that came into power dismantled them, no the generation.
The people in power before them, and after them equally were for dismantling things.
> The people that came into power dismantled them, no the generation.
Its the generation that votes/puts people in power in a democratic political system. Politicians are representatives of the people i.e. generation.
> The people in power before them, and after them equally were for dismantling things.
Nope. The New Deal was the opposite of dismantling: using government resources to kickstart the economy. And then the Great Society programs to enable higher standards of living for all.
>Its the generation that votes/puts people in power in a democratic political system. Politicians are representatives of the people i.e. generation.
In an ideal world. In practice they're in the pockets of many interests (including their own), and people only get to vote 1 in 4 years or so, and only accept a candidate "wholesale". How many promises did Obama broke to the people that elected him? How many will Trump?
>Nope. The New Deal was the opposite of dismantling: using government resources to kickstart the economy. And then the Great Society programs to enable higher standards of living for all.
The New Deal was rather the exception, after a near fatal crash, and under the pressure of a unionized America and an increased communist global influence, where the ruling classes had to show that they were for more than exploiting too. Similar things happened all over the world and established the early welfare state, but not because the 1930's generation was somehow special in voting for better people.
I agree with you but don't think its as simple as that. The 0.1% are surely orchestrating things in their interests, but political power has definitely become a lot more diffuse than what it used to be.
And yes generations do decide on a lot. For instance, the baby boomers instituted social welfare programs that generation after them paid for, but the programs won't be funded long enough to take care of the next generations? Sounds like the biggest ponzi scheme in the history of Mankind.
I also think it's worth considering the various cultural shifts, etc. from one generation to the next.
One thing that I always found interesting about the greatest generation vs the boomers is the shift in attitudes towards wealth, one's civic duty, etc.
The finance industry is a nice microcosm to study this shift... 40-50-60 years ago banker salaries and the enviability of their jobs were both low. Top grads from the ivies would sneer at their classmates for going into finance over something like the diplomatic corps. Today that's 100% reversed.
I always felt that the "professional services" industry is basically a giant con perpetuated by lazy boomers because it's an easy, optically nice appearing, way to shift money into one's own pocket. Collectively, they've created these upper-income professions that serve little to no value, solely in place to fund "elite" society. The result is that the greatest minds of my generation are wasted in the pursuit of making silly and irrelevant powerpoint decks (Consulting) or rent-seeking in the capital markets (Banking). And look, it's even infesting technology as evidenced by the legion of irrelevant startups. Why work hard at something difficult when you can roll the dice with someone else's pension funds (and if that fails, onwards and upwards to HBS)?
The reason people make a lot of money in any case is because they can eliminate the information asymmetry associated with them delivering value.
In finance the people that are paid well are the ones who can show with clarity that they delivered dollars to the bottom line. Investment bankers show it through the huge fees they earn by winning contracts with companies IPOing etc.
Portfolio managers show it through pointing to their measured performance and showing their AUM gains. AUM x Fees = revenue.
People in big corp have a much harder time showing how their individual production helped the bottom line. Engineers have a REALLY REALLY hard time with this. Those engineers that do are making ridiculous money because of the scale that they can add value.
I have experienced the exact opposite. Its rare to find a 'millenial' that truly believes they're going to get that dream job. If anything, they know they'll be working retail for a long time, and maybe they might get something they like better, but the jobs and lives that they looked up to when they were young are quite far away.
Its the parents and age 40+ that think everything will just 'work out' for them, because they're 'hard workers', who are themselves stuck in manual labor/retail and do not have any career or education outside of that. They ignore job trends and stick to what they've been doing, then cry when they're retired after 5-8 years of working there, scapegoating with leftist politics and 'millenials who don't know anything.'. Even my own parents succumbed to that one. If I had my own kids, I would tell them that things /will/ work out for them, if they put in the effort, because I know my parents were quite wrong. On the flip side, even if you don't get what you want, atleast you put in a lot of effort, and that will get you something.
What's the alternative? Things can work out in many ways. Surviving may be things working out. What would you prefer they thought instead? "I'm not special, I'm average, my upbringing and economy will restrict my life forever"? Even if it's true, that's definitely not helping in making decisions.
It is only an illusion if you actually believe it. There is a fine line between an illusion that something will come, and hope that it will. I cannot fault people for hope.
> Once upon a time there was a net of reasonable jobs that didn't pay well but allowed people a life, low-level government jobs that took anyone willing to work hard. But has anyone here looked at how hard it is to become a postal worker or to join the army? Ability and willingness isn't enough any more.
This is all about Neoliberalism then isn't it. Privatize everything and then the privatized companies are highly competitive and only want the best and couldn't care less about the middle or the bottom. It's not about jobs, it's really never been about the jobs that's just rhetoric. It's about profits. And profits are stuck in large consolidated corporations that pay as little as possible to the middle and the bottom, preferably on contract or the "sharing" economy of contractors. For full-time employees with benefits they just want the top which is often overworked. I mean the economy was engineered to be like this specifically for the benefit of those with money.
I agree that saying they "suffer from illusions" is silly. But the rest of your analysis here seems off.
There's no reason to lionize these people and act like "society rejected them." It's just (comparatively) easy to not work in the modern world, in first world countries, and these people didn't.
well, of course the media is going to depict these people negatively--the media lives off of corporate profits which are spent in part on media advertising...these stay-at-home people are just living a lovely life...but they are not working and are not consuming...and thus not helping to increase corporate profits much and thus not feeding the media...work work work...consume consume consume....rinse and repeat...
I take it that you haven't hired people into those professions. Plumbers and electricians need certifications and long apprenticeships. Teachers or nurse ... wow. Those are multi-year degrees plus professional training. Anyone with an imperfect background will have a seriously difficult time entering these professions.
Note that none of the jobs you list would ever allow someone with a criminal record. A minor felony conviction (drunk driving, drug possession etc) closes all of those doors.
Plumbers and electricians are still locked into the vestiges of the medieval guild system. You start as an apprentice, after some years and qualifications progress to journeyman, and then after much experience and credentialing rate as a master.
If that's medieval, then by the gods below, let's go medieval. Speaking for myself, the folks I worked with who came about the craft (software development) from school are always so steeped in theory they can't make actual progress on the tool. They'll throw away a year's worth of effort so they can re-write it in Javascript, no Dart, no Typescript, no...
In contrast, the people who learned at the hands of mentors always showed more interest in actually becoming good at the trade, and favor practicality over theory. They will usually work to fill their own gaps in knowledge, and become some of the lynchpins on any development team.
I'll take an earnest, self-taught person coming up from the QA department every day over a greenhorn fresh out of college.
> A minor felony conviction (drunk driving, drug possession etc)
Neither of those things are "minor felonies". They're misdemeanors, and don't close all those doors. Felony convictions hover around 8.6% of the population based on a cursory Google search, and most non-drug related felonies are serious business.
If you do get convicted of a felony, yes, your life as you know it is over (can't vote, can't own guns, etc etc) However, the two offenses you state are not felonies, unless you've hurt somebody while drunk driving or you possess enough drugs to indicate intent to distribute.
Nearly 10% is an awfully large percentage of people to be permanently disenfranchised for a one-time mistake. And it's easily possible to collect a felony conviction for something as trivial as shoplifting - the vast majority of shoplifters being mentally ill and not hardened criminals.
At the same time, it seems a bit much to say "your life as you know it is over". Lots of people don't vote or own guns anyway.
> At the same time, it seems a bit much to say "your life as you know it is over". Lots of people don't vote or own guns anyway.
Uhm, that's not the only problems you face. If you're not aware of it: you don't get a lot of federal benefits, credit etc is screwed, noone will rent you their apt etc., unemployable for almost every job except janitor etc.... your life is over.
Drunk driving can be a felony. Everything depends on the outcome. Hurt someone or do it more than once,and you will be looking at a felony charge. For drug possession, depending on how much you have, and how you carry it, possession quickly becomes possession with intent to distribute. Get caught with drugs while crossing a state line or boarding a plane and you will be lucky to avoid federal charges. Then there are conspiracy options should your possession be linked to other people.
You do need a degree in nursing, and there's fierce levels of competition for even community college nursing programs, with strong GPA requirements. It's not med school level, but the same forces apply to nursing as well.
I think people here really overrate how open the trades are. Most of the "can't fill" positions are for things like underwater welding, or high risk/niche occupations. Your local tech school generally produces more than enough electricians and plumbers for most local markets.
Truck drivers are on the verge of severe disruption, the category might even be extinct by the time the next generation comes around. Teachers are horribly underpaid and overworked. Nurses are in demand but there is no career. Traders are at the mercy of real estate markets.
Sure, you don't need a LI profile to get a dead-end job.
> Truck drivers are on the verge of severe disruption
I keep hearing this. Have for years. I don't expect it to actually happen anytime soon. We're still stuck in the "assisted cruise control" and "lane keeping" age, a good decade after the technologies were first introduced into consumer cars.
Let me know when the self-driving cars can do even level 4 automation on more than the well marked, sun-drenched California roads. Then we can talk about the immanent automation of all of the trucks.
I think you are in a bizarre region or do not have friendships with people in the mentioned occupations.
Nursing, plumbing, and electrical work are all stable, rewarding jobs. Nursing has no career? Get real. Nursing has as much career progression potential as a software developer: nurse -> administration/policy/public health; nurse -> manager; nurse -> nurse practitioner; nurse -> anesthetist.
My dad is technically still a nurse, so uhm, yeah I know a thing or two. In Europe at least, most admin positions are filled by people with degrees. You will need a degree to be promoted to an admin role. In fact, there are even degrees in nursing these days, which give preferential access to stable roles in areas where offer outstrips demand (i.e. poorer regions).
The best you can get without a degree is leading your own team of nurses, which basically means deciding shift patterns. My dad sorta invented his own job (back in the '70s when the world was more flexible, let's say) and "escaped", but most people he knew are still there doing shifts.
>Sure, you don't need a LI profile to get a dead-end job.
I'm pretty sure the only people who ever say that are people who were raised to hate themselves if they aren't at least in the upper-middle class. There will always be teachers making $50k per year and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. In fact, if you look closely, all across America there are millions of people earning less than $60k per year. Guess what? They're doing just fine. They're content with life. They aren't toxic as*holes who can't live with themselves because they don't make X thousand dollars per year and live in Y school district.
The second example was not a "parasite single," he was someone who tragically got Parkinson's disease after already having a career. The fact that the journalist couldn't find two legitimate anecdotes makes me question whether this is an actual trend in Japan.
Even the first one doesn't really count in my books because the partner had died. Find me an example of a Japanese nuclear family where both parents are still alive and the kid lives at home.
What's the difference between tragically getting a disease and tragically failing to get a stable job? They are both conditions that lead to being a "parasite". Your comment sounds like you're blaming the victims of poverty for being poor. Not everyone is equipped to make the best personal choices for their lives. There will always be people who lack motivation and make mistakes just as there will be people who get diseases.
I think you are seriously misreading my comment; give it another glance.
The journalists's use of the pejorative "parasite" is not appropriate for someone who fell under serious misfortune as living with Parkinson's. "Parasite" implies a willful decision to live off another's resources. The first example was that: the woman decided to pursue emotionally fulfilling work without saving or contributing to a pension.
I'm criticizing the journalist, who in the attempt to document a "weird Japan" trend, just dug up a sad story which could have happened anywhere in the world.
I think it's hard for some non-US Citizens to understand how rather backwards and unwelcome the thought is for Grown Children as Adults to be living at home with their Parents. The cultural fabric of the US mentality is to grow up and achieve "Independence" as a general concept. That usually means living away from family, and having the means to do so.
Culturally, living with one's Parents in the United States, as a grown Adult, with or without a Spouse, is going to be predominately portrayed as a negative lifestyle indicator. As in, the Individual doesn't have the choice of Independence, at least not the basic financial / living arrangements type.
The "Sandwich Generation" label scares the ever loving spirit of freedom out of most US people who might find themselves caught between providing for both Kids AND Parents.
Assimilation into values such as this US type of Independence are, understandably, quite foreign to several other Large Cultures elsewhere in the World. However, on this turf, it is the prevailing attitude. No amount of "Well in other countries it's perfectly normal" will turn the tide regarding this component of the US life experience, and, at least here, it's an indicator of a need to further assimilate or, unfortunately, deal with cultural push back.
To be fair to the US, this happens when US people try to ascribe their values to other cultures as well. I get it. Two way street.
The problem is that in other cultures it is not only normal, but going far away is bad! I am talking about moving from cities, not actually living with your parents.
In Spain this happens mainly in smaller cities and towns and with somewhat more traditional thinking families. In many of these cases* you are expected to stay close so the family takes care of each other in both ways.
Even the next big city might be a reason for relatives to feel bad for your family. The person moving away is categorized normally into:
- Needs it for $: financially unstable OR greedy, while other cultures would see this as a positive career improvement. If these people are already at the top of their career path, then they should help improve the country!
- Troublesome: someone who doesn't care for the family, while other cultures would see this as independent. These are expected to end up like those non-fancy-titled people who are flipping bugers or receiving you in a hostal in UK or Germany.
- Temporary to grow: it is okay to go abroad as long as you come back later on. Normally it is expected that they tell a lot of stories about how crappy the other country was and all the trouble they had.
Luckily I am from a bigger city and my family knows (even though they won't verbally admit it) how bad this country is for what my sister and I like doing. They try to show support us working abroad even though it's clear they are unhappy when we go away.
*Yes, there are many situations where this is not the case! Normally with people who speak N languages and has a degree (like me) are not like this. I am talking about my experiences from smaller cities.
It's worth noting that getting to the low percentages requires a society that subsidizes living costs. In the Nordic countries living with your parents as an adult implies some non-financial reason to do so; every adult will receive housing benefits for independent living if needed.
You make it sound like the non-US countries have "living with your parents" as a cultural phenomena but this is barely true.
It became a "culture" (if even that) due to economical pressures. Buying a flat or, gods forbid, a house in Bulgaria's capital (Sofia) is honestly a nightmare. The mortgages might as well be called slavery agreements (so don't give me the argument of "if you're 25 and have 3-4 years in one organization the bank will give you a mortgage") and well-paid jobs on the local market are as rare as unicorns. Thank all the gods for remote work or I'd probably be flipping burgers, my programmer skills be damned.
In these conditions people try to optimize and make do with what they have. Bacterias adapt their behaviour depending on the environment, chickens do it, fish do it, everyone is doing it -- humans as well.
Other posters here comment that obtaining homes in USA is becoming harder. I have no idea if that's true but if it is, expect more living with the parents in USA in the future as well.
go abroad, save money, return and buy without mortgage, that's what I did (5 years of easy job) together with savings of my wife and now I don't need to care about stupid mortgage like 90% of my peers, though we didn't return to my home country but step up a little bit moving into one of the most famous touristy capitals of Europe and I don't think we had some spectacular incomes when living abroad in her country, it's just that incomes there are much higher than in many European countries (so is cost of living, but renting is relatively cheap, so great place to save money for later) plus we are both frugal, so I never understood how people with similar salaries as us didn't have any savings, while we after 5 years saved for apartment in EU
if you can work remotely, then obvious option would be to find country with lower expenses (PH/ID/TH) and work from there and save money (many of my friends moved there, not just because of cost of living but also for weather, enviroment), if moving to richer country and getting paid more is not an option
Apologies to everyone for off-topic. This isn't a forum for asking advice from strangers, but as long as @Markoff replied to me, I'll respond briefly.
You're saying both you and your girlfriend are frugal. I am no longer neither frugal nor humble. I've been poor a lot of time in my life and even though at least 80% of that time was self-inflicted, this doesn't matter one bit in the end: your patience runs out.
So here I am, totally out of patience, with debts and still having to think strategically. I am not a defeatist, I am a pretty strong guy, physically and mentally, but I am just burned out and very tired in a sense that cannot be fixed by sleep, sex, or food. I need a rest from being an adult.
That won't happen. Ever. We all know it. So I am basically doing my best to increase my income but not decrease my expenses. Hard or not, it's my life and a battle for mine and my girl's happiness and fulfillment and I'll fight the battle as long as I am alive.
then what's the point of your complaining in this forum, if you don't expect suggestions and don't wanna improve your life? I might complain a lot about million things, but complain how is my life bad is pointless, I am the only one who can improve it, so it's waste of time to complain about it to others
imagine you have wife without any maternity leave welfare and child to support, you have nothing to complain about, you still have it very very easy and many options how to resolve it, how I wish I could not be an adult and just relax...
it's really not that on-topic here since the article is about children dependence on parents, but... I hope to eventually have the wherewithal to allow my parents to move into my home, which will have to be big enough to also house my wife and children with sufficient privacy for all, so that I (and my siblings) are right there with them to take care of them into their old age.
guess you can call that "living with parents". it's such a broad definition of situations that I can't imagine that just the label alone is useful for judging much.
so in US they don't sell 2-generation houses? it's pretty common in Europe where I am from, not that common as it used to be in past, but they are still in market and especially in small towns/villages it's nothing uncommon that more generations are sharing same house or at least land, neighbors of my grandma from both sides are living this way, they are sharing their land but both generations have their own houses next to each other
If I'm being brutally honest the only time in the US that one really sees "family clusters" like you describe is in poverty-stricken neighborhoods. Or, in the case of St. Louis, a place that used to be nice but the City rotted around the homestead. The dynamic I've seen, especially in Urban US environments (Chicago, New York, Seattle, on and on miscellaneous Midwestern stops) versus International are drastically different - don't get me wrong, ROOTS are extremely a point of Pride.
The idea, and I think Rap stars put it best, is to rise up and then buy your Mom a House somewhere nice. Go make it, then bring the rest of the family up. That's why them and NFL / MLB / US sports starts feel like they owe a lot of hungry mouths. It's complicated for sure!
> If I'm being brutally honest the only time in the US that one really sees "family clusters" like you describe is in poverty-stricken neighborhoods.
You occasionally see it in immigrant-heavy communities even when they aren't impoverished, because family-locality is a cultural value in many of them.
But, and I don't mean this blase style, I haven't seen immigrant heavy block-buying in $1-5M homestead Country Clubs, because people don't buy blocks of land like that in Westlake, Texas. Like you said - occasionally. It's not the status quo. Economics matter.
> But, and I don't mean this blase style, I haven't seen immigrant heavy block-buying in $1-5M homestead Country Clubs
OTOH, I have seen it, close up, in purchases in ~$200K suburban northern California communities, and in rentals in places in NorCal with similar values, which are much more middle income than impoverished.
It's not really a marketing category, because America prefers the (at least illusion of) the isolated nuclear family as the norm.
OTOH, multiple generations of adults in the same home (or in detached units on the same property) has never been uncommon (and is increasingly common in recent years), and there are certainly homes with features that cater to that use on the market, though unless a particular customer is known to be seeking that particular use the features won't be pitched for that purpose.
Not a very informative article, unfortunately. No discussion of what caused the issue, what is being done to help these folks, or if anything can be done. A few of these folks are profiled, but one of them was diagnosed with a disease in his 40s and would have issues whether or not he lived with his parents.
The bigger issue is the tremendous waste of human capital at a time when Japan needs employees more and more. (Of course, it is the right of these individuals to live their lives as they see fit, but society would benefit if they were more productive.)
Maybe the employers need to change? Maybe the social net needs to be modified to encourage work? Not sure how to change incentives, but it certainly seems a large subset of that generation isn't headed anywhere good.
I wonder if the west will see a similar effect from the outta control property prices. Historically when people retire they have their house paid off and they can live on a low budget for the retirement years. This is likely not going to be the case for a large number of people in ~35 off years.
As far as affecting retirement, I am less worried about rising property prices and more concerned about how easy it is to access home equity. That ease makes it very tempting to dip into your nest egg when you should be paying down your mortgage. And there's always some reason to borrow.
Of course, that is only an issue for folks who've been able to buy property, but as another comment mentions, if you leave certain metro areas property becomes very affordable very quick.
The issue here then becomes what do you do at 60 when you've been unable to purchase property and can now not qualify for a standard 30 year mortgage? If you've paid 35% of your before tax income in rent since you were 20 on a standard salary, you've got maybe $150k(AUD) in savings if you were really, really dedicated, which isn't even enough to buy a house 600km out of a major city (Sydney in my example) and now have no income outside of superannuation or a government pension? Quality of retirement (in Australia) evaporates if you have to pay market rate rents...
I might be wrong since I don't know what the economy in Australia is like, but it is VERY unlikely for someone in the US to have $150k in savings and yet not own a home. In fact the opposite does happen a lot: all of a person's equity is in their house, and they have $0 in savings. But then they sell their house, move to a cheaper house and used the difference to make ends meet.
Interesting.. Given the current median price and interest rates in Australia, $150k isn't actually enough for a 20% deposit on the mortgage for the average house here, especially as you get closer to the city. Within about a 20 mile radius and increasing with proximity to public transport, you'd be looking at a median price of over $1.15M, quite nearly insurmountable for most people wishing to enter the market simply due to the capital required before you can even get a home loan.
Hm, that sounds an awful lot like a Ponzi scheme, if people are actually expecting that. Do you think a large percentage of people are planning on that?
The reason to borrow is to take equity out of your home (a money pit with limited tax benefits) and put it into some other investment that is either generating income or accumulation of capital.
I dunno if there have been studies which account for where all that wealth is going from the increased housing prices. My guess would be the banks and the 1%.
Of which Japan has many, filled mostly with retirees. Also, since public services are funded nationally, the civic infrastructure (roads, schools, hospitals) is kept up even when the population drops.
The New York Times has presented a couple of articles over the last two years on dying towns in Japan, and it was noted that once the population drops to a certain point, the utilities get cut off, making it hard for anyone who actually wants to live there, to do so.
Perhaps some of these people chose to live in a close family unit with their relatives through choice. This is how millions of people live in other cultures worldwide, caring for each other. No shame in that at all. This article appears to be pro rat race or be shamed...
That is common here, I'm an Aussie with a Japanese wife, I just invited her grandparents to live with us. (Grab spa is old and grandma has to look after him, this way we can help, and grandma can help my wife when we have a child)
I'm calling BS on this one. In as much as they chose to live in a close family unit, they should also pro-actively contribute financially to said close family unit, not lazy about with guitars and stupid songs.
You really need to learn to look past media bias. This is the view the article author is leading the reader to have, but the reality is likely to be much more complex.
Just looking at the number of people who live at home with parents has no bearing on what got them there. Some may be actively looking for work but only able to find sporadic temp work. Others may be needed as a live-at-home carer to their elderly relatives. Some may be genuinely lazy. Some may be very hard working. There's literally none of this information conveyed in statistics alone, all you have in this article is a few hand-picked personal stories to present the view that the author wanted to convey.
The whole concept of living "with your parents" is modern. Across many societies, and thousands of years, it's been normal for relatives to share the same houses and pass them down through generations.
Not that I care that some cultures do it, but the whole concept of living with your parents as an adult is pretty much unique to humans. Across nature - you get the boot when you can take care of yourself.
1) Having your children around after they are grown up is a threat to the health of your marriage and often your own sanity and financial well-being.
2) "Unwanted competition for resources" also applies where the children take advantage of the parents limited resources without contributing their fair share.
Not saying it can't work for some cultures, but in the US and other countries, it hasn't. For the most part, parents simply don't want their children living with them and it significantly limits the available pool of potential spouses/significant others/mates/etc.
In the US, it's synonymous with momma's boys, socially awkward males and those with financially unstable situations.
I think its only very recently that Nuclear families, living alone as a single etc. became economically viable and socially acceptable. Throughout most of history, generations have lived and died in the same houses. Building homes has always been a very very expensive proposition for most people through most of humanity.
Let's do it the other way. I'll name only one where living with your parents is considered not kosher - the USA. In practically every traditional society, living in the family home is just fine, especially for those members of the family that don't have their own homes.
In fact if the family home is sizable, raising your own family inside the family home is OK too. I've seen it everywhere I've traveled - much of Africa and South America.
There can be big benefits to being near your family, including health and mental health benefits, besides the economic benefits. Recent parents being able to lean on the grandparents, rather than sending kids to expensive daycares that frankly don't really care about the child as much as a grandparent will, for example.
I would tend to disagree with this. Grandparent may value your child more than worker in daycare, but socialization of your child will suffer a lot, so will its development, child need to be with peers and not home with 2 old people. Same goes for playing and learning, there justisn't enough stimulation at home compared to daycare.
Who says children need constant stimulation? They've historically had no trouble filling the gaps with their imagination. If anything, I think that attention span has suffered greatly because children are never allowed to be bored anymore.
This would be the case for pretty much any society where land and housing was not easily available. As housing is becoming increasingly unavailable in the United States, and population is still increasing, expect to see it here.
There's plenty of housing available in the U.S. The lack of housing availability is more localized to specific heavily-urbanized areas (like the coasts); as you move inland, property costs drop significantly.
1. What is managable, at this point? Two hours of commuting a day? Three? How much of the savings does the cost of the commute offset? I hope your non-tech job doesn't require you to work downtown, because parking there will run you a small fortune.
2. Yeah, and neither are rich people. The well-connected in the USSR weren't affected by shortages of apartments and automobiles, either.
3. On the Moon, I think possession is nine tenths of the law.
To use the Bay Area as an example, one can look at Sacramento. Plenty of Sacramento residents make that commute every day (my dad was one of them, and he was a non-tech worker), taking advantage of the dramatically lower cost of living. Parking is not a huge problem if you're taking the train from, say, Davis. Commute costs are a factor, but negligible compared to the increased property costs. Commute time is right around 1-2 hours if I correctly recall the last time I made that drive; that probably varies if you are indeed taking public transit.
Spain, Japan, Vietnam and Italy. They vary a lot on the why and style and I'm just saying the ones I know for certain. I've also read about Portugal, Greece and India being similar in this regard but I haven't lived there or talked with natives about this.
It is normal until you either get married, move due to university/job or move with your partner. Why else would you want to live alone? (;
though majority of them not by choice, but out of necessity, those are like poorest countries with low purchasing power and with highest unemployment of young people
yes, they might been more traditional even in better times, but let's not lie to ourselves that most of the children would not move out if they could afford it
Myanmar as well. But again, I think if they can choose, they'd rather choose to live away (not too far away to pay a visit like once a month/year) from their parents. There's no hard and fast rule/expectation about that nor anybody is looked down by the society for living with his/her parents.
Recently I heard senator Warren speak of what she essentially described as the selling out of the middle class starting with Reagan and with the tacit support of democrats.
When you see the effects of the maturation of an economy plus globalization, it's apparent it's not as simple as saying that beginning in the '80s the establishment sold out the middle class in favor of the elite. There is more at play. Japan has been suffering from the same issues, but somewhat differently due to some structural rigidity.
Japan is, as they say, complicated. Work culture (at the extreme death from over work, but commonly getting home very late due to social obligations at work), gender roles (still difficult for women to achieve success on par with men), cost of living, hiring practices (must be hired before graduation) hyperactive brand awareness (the new cool thing minted by thirteen year olds must be had by virtually 50% of the pop) and to some degree idealization of a bohemian way of life and repudiation of their previous generations' attitudes toward work. All these things come together and result in a ~30year intractable malaise.
If they could just get themselves to address the biggest issue, make it easier for women to work and succeed (opportunities, responsibilities, salaries, time off for family and bigly social expectations) they just might have a chance at improving things, but I'm not holding my breath.
Your comment made sense up until the last paragraph. I honestly see no connection between giving things to women and solving any of the problems we're discussing here. In fact it could make things worse by further saturating the job market, increasing living costs (e.g. restaurants replace home-cooked meals), and so on.
Japan's biggest issue is simple demographics and capital saturation, not conservative views on women in the workplace. In the past, when the economy was roaring, their views on women were even more conservative than now, and it clear didn't hold them back at that time.
You can't have an apathetic population get involved (in society) when they have lots to lose but little to gain. Partners coming home at 11pm and leaving at 5am isn't a "partner". Why would any one want to raise a family and ensure the continuation of the society when you're in that situation.
Basically what they did and continue to do is forgo roughly half their potential workforce and half their overall potential because they could not bother to make things even semi-attractive for women to stay employed beyond 30.
Given the way that problems in Japan have effected the population -- many men as well as women are out of work; the phenomenon of hikkikomori affects predominately men; death by overwork affects men as well as women -- why do you think the "biggest issue" is making it "easier for women to work and succeed"?
At this point, things seem intractable --unless the gov can spur or induce people to reproduce.
More women in the workforce means more workers, more money in the economy, more viability for families, more progress, more development, more real demand for goods and services etc.
> More women in the workforce means more workers, more money in the economy, more viability for families, more progress, more development, more real demand for goods and services etc.
You aren't really making an effort to demonstrate this, or your earlier point that the "biggest issue" is making it "easier for women to work and succeed".
In Japan right now, it's not just that women are underemployed -- men are underemployed, as well. "Death by overwork" affects women as well as men. This would seem to speak to an overwhelming level of power on the part of employers, not a need for more workers.
I am really puzzled by the idea that the core problem in Japan has anything to do with the relative involvement of women in the work force.
Senator Warren's boom the Two Income Trap says that in the US the second income went mostly into higher land prices, childcare and transportation. The net benefit accrued mostly to the old (more workers per retiree), the government (more work now taxable) and the rich (who held assets that rose in price).
The problem isn't that there isn't enough income it the distribution of the income.
Senator Warren is obviously an advocate for women having the opportunity to work and have a career while the book analyzes the system wide implications of those individual choices. She makes a convincing case that the results have been for parents to assume more financial risk to raise children and that the risk is higher for single income families and higher still for single income/single parent families.
Some points that really crystallized for me from her book her analysis of household spending for a single income household in the 1970's compared to a more recent dual income household. Once you take out the higher mortgage payment (to get access to good schools), childcare (to support the second income), medical care and transportation (to support the second income) the household in the 1970's had more disposable income at the end of the month than the two income modern family even though the modern family has a much higher household income.
She primarily advocates for tax and policy changes to reduce the system wide impacts on families with children.
Someone might write about the declining returns available to education but still go on to a great career with a CS PhD. We can't apply secular trends directly to our own lives. Elizabeth Warren has a career that is exceptional in many ways.
I think her mistake is in attribution. Things are more expensive where people have more income (but that's not bad -it allows for power equilibrium). That's not to say that taxation could have affected this in some way, but there were and are many other things at play not the least the dive into globalization and foreign labor competition in the low skills sector.
In the book I think she makes a pretty strong case that the wide disparity between public schools in the US is a major driver of real estate costs.
A single income family that is outbid for access to good schools through real estate prices may send a spouse to work to get access. The single income family that is now excluded may do the same. Eventually you reach a tipping point where every family is expending maximum income to fit into districts with good schools.
One thing I believe the book missed is that having two income families also has the impact of degrading the very same school districts as the book ignores the contributions of the non-working parent. Parents who are dedicated full time to raising children volunteer at school, have more well adjusted children and their social networks stabilize neighborhoods. The same forces that move families to send a spouse to work are the same that degrade the very schools that they want access to.
The result I believe is a game of survivor where couples with children bid for smaller and smaller islands of the middle class and more couples opt out of having children.
How schools are funded is obviously an issue in the US but also explicit tax transfers from single income families to dual income families through things like childcare credits and mortgage deductions also contribute to the demise of the single income family.
To be fair, it's difficult for women to achieve the same station as men even in most forward thinking countries. Japan is far behind this for a variety of reasons, and I think the parent comment undersells how much of a problem this is for Japanese women.
I missed in the article what is the percentage in other countries making Japan special with 20%.
Btw. is there something wrong with it, if parents and the men are fine with that, what's the problem here? At least parents will have someone to take care of them, my wife's uncle is in similar position and I don't see it as anything bad, at least other children with better jobs no need to take care of them. Or the preffered option is to dump own parents to retirement home and stay in your own apartment, if someone has no problem with the other option?
premiss is way off. it's not because they're single, but because they did not work they are in trouble... this article feels like social engineering - well juppies marry marry marry
Nobody likes killjoys, and I see so much denial in these comments, yes, you will get old and the desitions you make today matter for your future even if you choose to ignore that fact and "live for the moment".
I found this paragraph from the article disturbingly similar to the situation here in the states:
"The rise in those shunning marriage, experts say, is due not only to more diverse life-styles but to an increase in low-paying, unstable jobs. Part-timers, temps or contract workers now account for nearly 40 percent of the workforce compared to about 20 percent in the 1980s."
I imagine this will only be accelerated with the rise of AI and increasing job automation. Already, we're seeing the average age when people get married and have kids rise with each generation. I think alot of this is due to job instability, depressed wages, rise of the 1099 worker with no benefits, etc. Reminds me of the situation in China, where unless you have a house and a car, you're basically persona-non-grata.
So if you're a young person in the US, you're doubly screwed. All your friends and potential dating partners are concentrated in the big cities, but those are also the places with the highest costs of living, highest costs to own a home, to raise a kid, etc.
If you're mid 20s / early 30s person in San Fran and you're not working for GOOG/FB/APPL etc. you're basically screwed.