I think that shit is gonna hit American universities in the not so distant future and that's one reason I've left the USA
― droit au butt (Euler), Tuesday, 4 August 2015 00:03 (eight years ago) link
certainly all kinds of questionable shit being paid for by someone or other when really we should be transferring cash directly from extractive oligarchs to the bank accounts of everyone else, it'd be extremely low-cost to run
― go hang a salami I'm a canal, adam (silby), Tuesday, 4 August 2015 00:43 (eight years ago) link
maybe once it all collapses and they fire all the incompetent boobs who haven't been educating anyone i'll finally be able to get a job
― j., Tuesday, 4 August 2015 00:46 (eight years ago) link
Ok xps sorry I wasn't explaining myself clearly at all. First of all, it has nothing to do with tuition, it just has to do with the article posted about the problems facing millennials in the future, one of which is (allegedly) growing federal debt. And I was saying that I feel like the left take is often to shrug off the idea of growing federal debt being any threat to our future (hope I am not strawmanning here, do not mean to), and I am wondering what take on that people ITT have.
― five six and (man alive), Tuesday, 4 August 2015 01:07 (eight years ago) link
Sovereign debt is not like household debt, the U.S. national debt could grow indefinitely without an actual problem happening; if the dollar were to somehow inflate dramatically relative to the RMB then maybe there would be a problem? That's my assumption.
― go hang a salami I'm a canal, adam (silby), Tuesday, 4 August 2015 01:13 (eight years ago) link
So yes I totally ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ that off, who cares how much debt we have, it's how we get dollars to exist without printing them, it's less inflationary right? In theory?
― go hang a salami I'm a canal, adam (silby), Tuesday, 4 August 2015 01:15 (eight years ago) link
Sovereign debt is not like household debt but that doesn't automatically mean it can grow indefinitely without a problem. Nations have actually run into problems before when their sovereign debt got too large. Hence one of the questions I was asking: does the assumption that it will never become a problem for us implicitly rest on the assumption of us remaining the most powerful country in the world? I mean Greece, which is not so powerful, is at the mercy of its creditors.
― five six and (man alive), Tuesday, 4 August 2015 01:22 (eight years ago) link
in diplomatic fashion i agree with elements of what both of you are saying. you can't continue accumulating massive loads of debt in perpetuity without running into problems at some point. but people like krugman will repeatedly argue that the amount of debt the U.S. current has and is projected to have in the near future isn't a fatal problem that can't be solved. there's precedent for nations taking on more debt (as % of GDP) as the U.S. and coming out fine by making policy adjustments. he was trying to persuade people of this back during the loudest days of calls for austerity, arguing instead for more stimulus/federal spending. but i guess all of that depends on how much you trust krugman and his econofriendz.
― 1992 ball boy (Karl Malone), Tuesday, 4 August 2015 01:31 (eight years ago) link
but out of the list of things that will possibly happen in the future that will be terrible for me, the ramifications of federal debt is low on the list
― 1992 ball boy (Karl Malone), Tuesday, 4 August 2015 01:32 (eight years ago) link
I think I basically agree with the Krugman-n-friendz take that you don't do austerity in a recession, and that ideally you spend the money on things like infrastructure projects that provide jobs to the working/middle class (who will spend money) and benefit the larger economy (e.g. by providing better transportation for workers and goods).
I am sort of wondering "at some point in the distant future is the federal debt going to fuck with my life at all?" though
― five six and (man alive), Tuesday, 4 August 2015 01:33 (eight years ago) link
Greece's debt was also denominated in a non-sovereign currency, which seems like a confounding factor. Really, the raw size of the debt or the debt:gdp ratio wouldn't concern me as much as, like, the RMB suddenly getting way more expensive. Or some other kind of disaster. Our debt's cheap.
― go hang a salami I'm a canal, adam (silby), Tuesday, 4 August 2015 01:35 (eight years ago) link
yes definitely the euro made things much more immediately terrible for greece (since it had no option of inflating its way out of the debt).
― five six and (man alive), Tuesday, 4 August 2015 01:37 (eight years ago) link
https://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/news/social-sciences-and-humanities-faculties-close-japan-after-ministerial-decree
Japan radically scaling back social sciences in favour of 'useful' qualifications.
― I wear my Redditor loathing with pride (ShariVari), Tuesday, 15 September 2015 07:46 (eight years ago) link
Idiotic decree - but I would've thought economics and law would be useful! Seems the decline in the population is as big a factor.
― xyzzzz__, Tuesday, 15 September 2015 09:34 (eight years ago) link
http://ejournals.bc.edu/ojs/index.php/ihe/article/view/8550/7683
― called a 'Star' by the Compliance Unit (Bananaman Begins), Tuesday, 15 September 2015 09:35 (eight years ago) link
As for economics, well, perhaps Abe doesn't want too many people familiar with that quote Keynes attributed to Lenin: “The best way to destroy the capitalist system is to debauch the currency.”
― called a 'Star' by the Compliance Unit (Bananaman Begins), Tuesday, 15 September 2015 09:36 (eight years ago) link
http://nytimes.com/2015/09/14/upshot/gaps-in-alumni-earnings-stand-out-in-release-of-college-data.html
― iatee, Tuesday, 15 September 2015 12:37 (eight years ago) link
a strong contender for the worst thing i've read all week
http://www.vox.com/2015/9/8/9261531/professor-quitting-job
― big WHOIS aka the nameserver (s.clover), Friday, 16 October 2015 06:48 (eight years ago) link
Critiques of my teaching and debate team coaching, often made through backchannels and delivered to me secondhand or not at all, centered on my easygoing personal style (He doesn't use the title "doctor!" He teaches in T-shirts!), my effusive student evaluations (If he's pleasing them, he must be doing something wrong!), and my relatively calm demeanor (If a young academic doesn't seem stressed beyond capacity, he's not working hard enough!).
yes these were definitely the critiques made
― kinder, Friday, 16 October 2015 10:02 (eight years ago) link
hmm looking at his previous work, I am sure you could top that pretty easily xp
"Why I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Clickbait" in The Good Men Project Magazine, February 2014
"Masculinity and Competitiveness: Why I Quit Playing Video Games" in The Good Men Project Magazine, February 2014
"Rick Rude: The Loneliness of the Above Average Man" in The Good Men Project Magazine, December 2013
"So What if Barack Obama is Gay?*" in The Good Men Project Magazine, November 2013
― iatee, Friday, 16 October 2015 13:23 (eight years ago) link
what's your biggest weakness?
that's a difficult question, but i suppose that if i had to, i'd say that i can sometimes care TOO much about this company.
― 1998 ball boy (Karl Malone), Friday, 16 October 2015 13:24 (eight years ago) link
http://thebaffler.com/salvos/study-total-depravity
― big WHOIS aka the nameserver (s.clover), Wednesday, 23 December 2015 21:35 (eight years ago) link
But Veblen did not call Veblen goods “me goods”
heheheh
― j., Wednesday, 23 December 2015 21:45 (eight years ago) link
Mission creep is driven by student demand (the terrible reality that America has no use for non-degreed workers any more)
This isn't necessarily true. Iirc, college enrolment has declined for three consecutive years and isn't predicted to grow again until 2017 at the earliest. The next ten years of growth are predicted to be relatively modest. When the economy is reasonably robust, a lot of people go straight into employment. The big growth years tend to coincide with recessions. For-profit colleges have been the worst hit due to a (necessary) increase in regulatory scrutiny and questions over vfm.
― On a Raqqa tip (ShariVari), Wednesday, 23 December 2015 21:56 (eight years ago) link
The economic analysis in that article sounds pretty questionable in places.
Also, the word "loan" is conspicuously absent from the article although it's probably the main driver of college cost. Veblen good or no, a 120k "discount" price would appeal to far fewer status chasers if there weren't a virtually bottomless well of credit available with few of the limitations affecting other forms of credit.
― on entre O.K. on sort K.O. (man alive), Wednesday, 23 December 2015 22:29 (eight years ago) link
http://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/poor-millennials/
― Ari (whenuweremine), Friday, 15 December 2017 18:42 (six years ago) link
The biggest problem we face is not financial illiteracy. It is compound interest.
In the coming decades, the returns on 401(k) plans are expected to fall by half. According to an analysis by the Employee Benefit Research Institute, a drop in stock market returns of just 2 percentage points means a 25-year-old would have to contribute more than double the amount to her retirement savings that a boomer did. Oh, and she’ll have to do it on lower wages.
― Ari (whenuweremine), Friday, 15 December 2017 18:47 (six years ago) link
I am 35 years old—the oldest millennial, the first millennial—and for a decade now, I’ve been waiting for adulthood to kick in. My rent consumes nearly half my income, I haven’t had a steady job since Pluto was a planet and my savings are dwindling faster than the ice caps the baby boomers melted.
I don't understand this. I've recently begun working at a Portuguese callcenter. This is not the best job in the world, it's probably pretty low in the hierarchy of jobs in Europe, wage is lower than any job in Denmark, but it's steady, and I'd never think to spend half my income on rent. This guy has enough experience and network to get a "highline" article on huffpost but he's unable to land a steady job?
Dunno, maybe things are just terrible in the US.
― niels, Friday, 15 December 2017 22:14 (six years ago) link
The rent situation here depends very much on where you live. Even the outskirts of popular cities can be expensive.
― nickn, Saturday, 16 December 2017 00:08 (six years ago) link
I'd never think to spend half my income on rent.
congratulations?
― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Saturday, 16 December 2017 05:54 (six years ago) link
Average take-home pay in the UK is something like £1700. Average rent is something like £850-£900. In London that is £2200 and £1600 respectively.
Obvs that includes rent on multi-occupier properties as well but I’d be surprised if anyone other than the fairly wealthy renting in the south of England is living on their own and spending much less than half their income on accommodation.
― Wag1 Shree Rajneesh (ShariVari), Saturday, 16 December 2017 06:15 (six years ago) link
Twenty years ago I was living on $18K a year but my rent (apartment with a couple of roommates, suburb of a popular city) was just under $300 a month, so $800 a month for the whole place. Just looked on Zillow and apartments of similar size in my old neighborhood are now renting for $2500 and up. So yeah, people who live there are spending half their income on rent unless they've got a lot of income for a young person.
― Guayaquil (eephus!), Saturday, 16 December 2017 06:23 (six years ago) link
if i were paying the rent on the one bedroom apartment i share with my wife by myself i would be paying 50 percent of my wages on rent + utilities. my apartment is a coupe of hundred dollars cheaper than the average one bedroom in the city, i have a 9-5 office job at a university.
― khat person (jim in vancouver), Saturday, 16 December 2017 06:48 (six years ago) link
good story, thanks whenuweremine.
― Nhex, Saturday, 16 December 2017 07:41 (six years ago) link
This guy has enough experience and network to get a "highline" article on huffpost but he's unable to land a steady job?
yup!
― difficult listening hour, Saturday, 16 December 2017 07:47 (six years ago) link
lol yes exactly
― Nhex, Saturday, 16 December 2017 07:51 (six years ago) link
nothing matters
with a little luck tho the huffpo check'll come by easter
― difficult listening hour, Saturday, 16 December 2017 08:04 (six years ago) link
Wait til you hear about our healthcare system...
― louise ck (milo z), Saturday, 16 December 2017 08:31 (six years ago) link
sry to hear about crazy rent everybody, that's terrible!
just to clarify I rent a very small room and spend about 25% of my income on this - renting an apartment on my own would easily cost 50% of my income (so I don't, would be nice tho)
btw I know it's hard to come by steady jobs in journalism, I was suggesting that with the author's skillset it would seem he'd be able to land a different kind of job, pretty sure he could have my job if he applied
anyway, I don't mean to dismiss issues of poverty in the US, just found the author's tone... a bit much. Iirc pay gap and poverty issues have a terrible racial and gender slant, something about his apocalyptical victim narrative abt college educated millenials seems off to me. Not sure how trustworthy the US Census Bureau is but general outline in this article seems realistic to me https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/09/13/493751949/census-bureau-poverty-rate-down-median-incomes-up
― niels, Saturday, 16 December 2017 09:48 (six years ago) link
Hobbes is from Seattle where the average rent in commuting distance on a 1br apartment is $2000. To hit the 25% mark, after federal taxes, etc, you’d need to earn $120k - of course he would still need to pay for healthcare, etc, which we do not. idk what the ratio of millennials to $120k jobs in Seattle is.
Renting a room, sharing a house, etc are all solutions to existing in a big city but the broader point about living in those conditions being a bar on a transition to doing ‘adult’ things like getting married, having a family...buying a table?…, etc is true. Living a perpetual student lifestyle is great if you enjoy it but generational expectations are being radically redefined.
Whiny millennials have access to the public ear in a much more obvious way than the people who bear the greatest burden of poverty but the contraction of the traditional middle class and expansion of paycheque-to-paycheque living aren’t things that we should be glossing over because other people have it worse.
― Wag1 Shree Rajneesh (ShariVari), Saturday, 16 December 2017 10:04 (six years ago) link
French owners are allowed by law to avoid renting to you unless the rent is at most 1/3 of your income, and in practice they take advantage of this, because French law makes it hard to kick someone out when they can't pay. so when we moved here we had to live 1h20 by train from the city. granted, we are a family of 5, and so need a bit of space (~70 m^2 works) but yeah, living in the city was impossible then.
now we live in the city because we got social housing (being gov employee with a long commute & big family got us priority). but to qualify for this *highly* subsidized apartment my salary still had to meet the 1/3 threshold and my starting salary did not, so we had to wait a year and a half to be eligible for social housing.
living in the countryside & commuting wasn't that bad because I picked a town where I could commute by train (we didn't need a car bc French villages are compact for daily life)(and half my transport costs were paid by my employer, by law). USA countryside doesn't permit this, so you're talking long car commutes there if you're not in the city.
― droit au butt (Euler), Saturday, 16 December 2017 10:27 (six years ago) link
Accounting for inflation, I spend twice as much a year on a train ticket as my (poor, immigrant) father spent on renting a two bedroom Victorian flat with a huge garden in central London in the eighties. The flat would rent for a minimum of £36k-£40k a year now. And I’m lucky! I own a house!
― Wag1 Shree Rajneesh (ShariVari), Saturday, 16 December 2017 10:33 (six years ago) link
What was his internet speeds like
― remember the lmao (darraghmac), Saturday, 16 December 2017 10:57 (six years ago) link
those are very good points ShariVari, thanks
― niels, Saturday, 16 December 2017 11:36 (six years ago) link
The ratio of Millennials to $120k salaries in Seattle is heavily influenced by the proliferation of software developers working for Amazon et alia. Which is to say there’s a sizable supply of kids willing to rent a studio for $2000.
― .oO (silby), Saturday, 16 December 2017 15:55 (six years ago) link
every generation has seemed to rationalize selling out their potential and playing dumb in exchange for hypothetical material security, not just millenials, the poor kids
― reggie (qualmsley), Saturday, 16 December 2017 20:38 (six years ago) link
When you say something like that
Do you ever I mean ask
Assuming it even makes any sense as a statement never mind that it's accurate let's just assume in your head this is a coherent sentence and also a fact
Assuming that and don't forget you just made an ass out of u and ming then do you ever ask yourself why each generation does this thing you think they do
― remember the lmao (darraghmac), Sunday, 17 December 2017 23:49 (six years ago) link
U ok hun
― But doctor, I am Camille Paglia (Bananaman Begins), Monday, 18 December 2017 01:21 (six years ago) link
I feel like that highline article dilutes its own argument by ultimately turning out to be about every bunch of Americans who ever graduated college during a major recession.
― El Tomboto, Monday, 18 December 2017 01:34 (six years ago) link