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Generation Wrecked
Ryosen writes "Fortune magazine has an interesting article discussing how members of Generation X (those born between 1966 and 1975) have been damaged by the fall of the economy and the life-long ramifications of the dot.com boom-bust, stating 'No generation since the Depression has been set up for failure like this.' Particularly disturbing is the statement 'Worse yet, for some Gen Xers, their peak earning years are behind them. Buried in college and credit card debt, a lot of them won't be able to catch up as they approach their prime spending years.'
Are the best years of our lives truly behind us?"
Really Gold Age was not for us. People who are forty, fifty and twenty in 1999 were more successful that we are...
This has been pretty obvious for some time now to those of us in the middle of it all.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I missed all this crap!
WHoo hoo! I'm living the high life like it was 1989!
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
It's not my fault I'm a bum, it's all because I was born in a twenty year period of time.
Does all this 'Generation whatever' crap annoy the hell out of anyone else? People do not care about their 'generation' in general.
Generation Wrecked
Posted by michael on Thursday October 10, @11:06AM
from the born-with-a-plastic-spoon-in-our-mouths dept.
Ryosen writes "Fortune magazine has an interesting article discussing how members of Generation X (those born between 1966 and 1975) have been damaged by the fall of the economy and the life-long ramifications of the dot.com boom-bust, stating 'No generation since the Depression has been set up for failure like this.' Particularly disturbing is the statement 'Worse yet, for some Gen Xers, their peak earning years are behind them. Buried in college and credit card debt, a lot of them won't be able to catch up as they approach their prime spending years.' Are the best years of our lives truly behind us?"
But, those of us who didn't blow every paycheck on toys and assorted junk are doing ok. I drive a modest car, live in a modest apartment and don't live beyond my means. I have 0 credit card debt and 8 months of salary saved away.
Michael Loves Me!
I was born in 62, so I guess things must be sucking for some other reason...
Gen-X'ers, (including me) may have to admit that the lifestyle we got used to from 1996-2001 was a mirage, and we really can't afford a county club house and two BMW's in the garage. Here in Northern VA we are starting to see people selling their $500K McMansions and downsizing to a house more in keeping with their current income levels. For those of us that have been working in the dot com environment the last few years, I think its necessary to assume you will make less money the next couple of years, and adjust your lifestyle accordingly.
I'm not sure I agree totally with this article.. I mean it was because of this boom that I got thwarted into the IT market before I could even graduate from college. I was making nearly $40K at 23yrs of age. (im 26 now.) I was able to buy a house at 24 and become a *responsible* person. i.e. not living with momma. So it shot me up to a higher point in my life faster than the average bear and now i consider myself *ahead* of the game even though all those huge salary increases are gone. oh well..my two cents.
I'm generation Y.
I want to know Y they were so unoriginal in describing us. I guess we're just not nearly as cool as the 'Baby boomers' or the 'teenie boppers'
Is that what they're calling the generation these days?
And isn't generation X the MTV generation? Doesn't that explain a lot?
If a and b in c, and a can create b, and a can create a, and b can create b, and b cannot create a, then a created c.
What's becomming clear is that the inital tech boom was a 1-off. You're never going to get that kind of frenzy in the IT industry again. A lot of people were getting way over paid, or in this case of companies, way over funded.
A few people were big winners, they were funded by the much larger number of people who were losers.
It'll recover, of course it will, but never to quite the same excitement "next big thing" frenzy.
The result will be a stronger long term industry but it is entirely possible people will struggle to earn as much in the future as they could during the boom.
Especially as there are a lot of good graduates now that started degrees during the boom in the hope of getting a massive payig job. This over supply is going to restrict saleries for a few years.
Sure, it's not a spectacular amount, but in my area you can get pretty nice house for $80,000, apartment rent is $400 a month, taxes aren't high....
I'm 21 and I've gotten $1,000 raise each year. Sure, I'd like to make $50,000, but I'm in a pretty stable position in IT (basically, I'm the only person who touches it in a 50 year old, 150 person company) so I'll just tread water for a while.
I think my first computer job was working as a PC Tech at Best Buy, making $9-$10 an hour, then I was a wiring goon/PC mover for $11 an hour at a 'consulting firm', then I got to where I am now.
The days of reading an HTML/Java book and going to a $65,000/year job with a startup are behind us.
I am not trivializing the loss of jobs, nor am I saying the economy is about to boom again. However, there are many people that used to punch a clock working harder than ever to start up new businesses or boost the technology base in old businesses. Both of these are good things!
Click here or here.
My sister -- Sister Reba -- might be considered Generation X.
She doesn't have a dime saved. Everything she spends comes from Riley the boyfriend (a Gen-X'r who dropped out several liberal arts colleges, got a short story published when he was hosteling around Europe, and now has such a severe case of Writer's Block (a fear that he can't reproduce his single success) that he and Sister Reba spend all their money just 'trying to have fun.'
I think they live in a perpetual state of 'recapturing their youth.'
It's sad. I've saved nearly everything, and not long ago loaned Sister Reba a thousand bucks to pay off the last of her college debts. But her credit rating is ruined.
Yet the two of them -- Sister Reba and Riley -- continually talk about the 1970's like they were the best thing in the world. Riley tells me about the movies that changed his life -- Saturday Night Fever, Apocalypse Now, the Deer Hunter -- and swears that at even at age 33 he's still got a good novel inside of him -- somewhere.
Not long ago Riley was reading Jonathon Franzen's _Corrections_ and was so enraged that Franzen had written *his* novel, that he pitched it at one of the plate glass windows in their townhouse. The window shattered, the super won't foot the bill, and now their even deeper in debt.
Me, I know what's what. Or at least I think I do.
If those wacko islamicists are targetting the economy like they say they are, then I know what I have to do. I have to save, save, save. I have to prepare for the day when the power goes out for good and there's no more water coming out of the tap.
It scares me, and I'm only 16.
But Sister Reba and Riley? Fuck it. They could care less. They work at their dumb jobs all days just to pay off their credit cards.
Andrea Tinker, professor of Social Gerontology at King's College, London recently published the results of research into the way that the changing age distribution of the population is affecting different generations. Her conclusion is that today's under 30s are the first generation who can expect lower living standards than their parents. In this writeup, I will present some British demographic statistics, and my own hypothesis as to the underlying reason for Professor Tinker's conclusion.
Fewer children are being born: 91 live births per 1000 women in 1961, dropping to only 55 in 2000. In the 25-29 age group, the drop is even more dramatic, from 178/1000 in 1961 to 95/1000 in 2000.
It is clear that the trend is towards fewer taxpayers supporting more pensioners. I believe that this is no coincidence, rather that the generation(s) born since 1970 were systematically and deliberately set up by the policy makers of the so-called "baby boomer" generation.
They set up a system for healthcare and pensions under which taxation is immediately paid out to recipients, rather than being invested for growth and the purchase of an annuity in a real pension system. They did this at a time when they knew that their own contributions would be minimal, given the population's age distribution at the time. Quite cynically, they decided that it would be easier to levy punitive taxation on their own children and grandchildren than invest for their own futures.
The money they saved by doing so, they poured into the housing market, driving up prices and placing mortgages out of the reach of many first time buyers. This created massive inflation in property prices - almost 20%/year at present - which they benefitted immensely from, already being owners of at least one property.
The state education system has been systematically wrecked. Grammar schools and the Assisted Places Scheme which sponsored children to attend fee-paying schools have been abolished, as the baby boomers further try to pull the ladder up after themselves. These same baby boomers, who once swore never to trust anyone over 30, are now in positions of responsibility and have carefully structured corporations to ensure that today's under 30s cannot enjoy privileges such as a job-for-life that the baby boomers enjoyed. They are scrapping defined-benefits pension schemes, after making sure that they got them for themselves, at the expense of those currently paying into employer's pension funds - us.
We are also paying the price for their disasterous social experiments. Soaring crime rates and falling literacy rates originate in the pseudo-liberal ideals of the baby boomers, who knew that they would escape scot free while their children and grandchildren would pick up the pieces for them. Rather than being the unfortunate result of a well-intentioned experiment than didn't work out, it is indicative of the baby boomer's defining attitudes: firstly, that nothing matters to them more than instant gratification, and secondly that they will never have to face any consequences for their actions.
What can we do? It may be too late; huge damage has already been done to the economic and social fabric of our country. The only hope is that when those of us born since 1970 are in power, that we use that power wisely: to ensure that not a penny of our our generation's money is wasted on or by those that came before us. Let them live on the pensions that they knowingly intended for us, with the standards of healthcare and accomodation that they intended for us, and let us invest our own money in our own future and our own children.
Slashdot is going to overload Fortune?
May we never see th
"Age 32 and piercing-free, Karen Doss . . . has just $5,000 in a 401(k) and $20,000 in home equity. Ideally, someone her age should have at least $100,000 stashed away." Fuck me, $100,000 by age 32? I'm about $100,000 behind, then.
"Gen Xers managed to survive in that environment by denouncing long-held workplace tenets like corporate loyalty. " Did we eschew loyalty, or did they treat us like "human resources" and fire us and lay us off? I loved my first computer job , and would still be there if they weren't evil bastards.
"The Campbells' luck dried up in April, when Alex was laid off, rehired as a contractor without benefits, then rehired yet again as a full-time employee but at a lower level. " Well, sounds like all he needed was company loyalty, huh? I've said for a year this shit was intentional, that the whole "tech downturn" was an intentional ploy to lower our salaries and benefits.
"So is Karen prepared? On this subject, she does her best slacker impression. " They call people our age "slackers" several times throughout the article. Sorry, I thought we were working? The article says how we keep working jobs, the economy sucks, etc., but it also keeps calling us slackers. How are we different than our parents and grandparents? We work, pay the bills, try to do better, etc. The author of this piece is torn between wanting to tell how fucked up things have been for a lot of us, and wanting to insult us.
Whining about 6-7% unemployment? Even a college kid should be able to do simple arithmetic- that's 93-94% employment. Full of angst and sadness because overinflated dot-com jobs no longer exist? Stop it already. Sheesh. This does not even compare to the Depression!
Yeah, I know, it sucks to be 22, and not able to purchase a Ford Exorbitant, and a 4000-square foot house, and have your 401k fully funded. What a pity that anyone would have to settle for less job and paycheck than they really "deserve". Try no job and no paycheck for a while, then you'll have something to whine about.
Just more FUD from Forbes.
---
SCO is weenies
Gator is Spyware
Microsoft is thugs
Everyone jumped ship to go 'design web pages' for 60k and now they don't have college degrees.
The people who stuck it out, have graduated and now can make 60k, 'legitimately'
Plus, there's the eternal damnation thing awaiting all the pagans and heretics, too.
A. Rightmann
Best years as far as earning potential? Maybe, maybe not. Even after 7 months of unemployment I only had to take a 10% cut in salary (which, in my opinion, is still about 20% more than I probably should be making).
... in fact, our account balances went up! She had a stable job, we didn't (ever) carry credit card debt, and we had bought a house that we could afford on the lower of our salaries. So why the heck aren't they teaching common-sense stuff like that instead of touchy-feely nonsense in schools? Beats me.
Then there's credit card debt. Student loans I could understand, but credit card debt? Come on, if you're smart enough to get a degree in CS/EE/CE, you should be smart enough to (1) know the evils of compound interest and (2) know not to bet the farm of future returns that might not materialize.
My wife and I made it through my period of unemployment just fine
ok so maybe its true. though im not a member of Gen-X, i was born in 1981. So what generation am i? It seems like they stopped naming them after X. Ive always wondered what my generation is. anyone know?
That is what way too many people did during the late 90's .. and that is what the problem is!
... and for those people that didn't realize this .. they got what they deserved!
... I missed the cut off by 2 years), but I started a company during the roaring 90's .... a dot com company ... and it is still here! The other problem was that people were paying people rediculous salaries and not managing the monies they were earning very effectively. They also didn't make provisions in their business models for downsizing ... so most of them ran while the running was still good .. and went out of business. A little restraint by some people may have been the secret to keeping many of those dot busts in business (although many of these companies simply didn't have a product to sell, so they were destined to fail).
People didn't realise that most companies price/earnings ratio was 25:1!!! That is nuts!! We were living on "fake" money
I was born in 1977 (whew
I just hope that this last decade makes for some good reading in future economic books as examples of what people should NOT do. The Internet had FANTASTIC potential (and still does in some cases), but as with most great things, people looking to make a quick buck ruined it for everyone by draining all of the available investment capital by putting it into her pocket.
HallmarkOrnaments.Com
Sucks to be me.
isn't a generation every 15-25 years? i am not sure somebody answer this..
I guess I was born a few years too late though. Oh well, I guess that makes me Gen Y?
Cat got your tongue? (something important seems to be missing from your comment ... like the body or the subject!)
My god, why didn't you tell me this sooner? Had I known that money wouldn't flow like water forever, I might have tried to make some financially responsible decisions, like not buying more crap than I could afford to buy! *forehead smack*
You might be amazed--nay, astonished--to learn that there are a whole bunch of people our age who are weathering this storm just fine. Not everybody lived like the movies told us to live, you know.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
I'm not exactly a Gen Xer, born in 1979 (generally considered to be the end of the era), and while my prime earnings oppertunities may be behind me, I'm not dumb enough to shackle myself with college, car or credit card debt (all payed off).
.com overhype in the first place: bad spending habits.
The problem comes from the same stupidity that caused the
Ten years ago grunge musicians and college-age Cassandras who had never held a day job preached that corporate America would crush their generation's soul and leave them without a pension plan. Films like Singles and Reality Bites chronicled their transition from college graduate to Gap salesclerk.
A few years later the core of Generation X--the 40 million Americans born between 1966 and 1975--found themselves riding the wildest economic bull ever. Salesclerks became programmers; coffee slingers morphed into experts in Java (computerese, that is)--all flush with stock options and eye-popping salaries. Now that the thrill ride is over, Gen X's plight seems particularly bruising. No generation since the Depression has been set up for failure like this. Everything the dot-com boom delivered has been taken away--and then some. Real wages are falling, wealth continues to shift from younger to older, and education costs are surging. Worse yet, for some Gen Xers, their peak earning years are behind them. Buried in college and credit card debt, a lot of them won't be able to catch up as they approach their prime spending years.
FORTUNE recently encountered the bitter and (now) experienced voice of Generation X in a chain restaurant in suburban Dallas. Age 32 and piercing-free, Karen Doss has found out that the alternative rockers were right. To pay for college she worked full-time as a secretary at Pillsbury world headquarters. After graduation in 1993, she accepted her sole job offer as an advertising copywriter, even though she despised the industry. She finally quit last year to get her real estate license so that she could better support her husband while he fulfills his dream of owning a bar.
Halfway to pension age, she has just $5,000 in a 401(k) and $20,000 in home equity. Ideally, someone her age should have at least $100,000 stashed away. "I don't have a corporate pension, and they aren't what they were," she says. "Social Security is obsolete and ineffective. And I already know that I'm going to have to have a private health-care plan. I'm angry that I can't seem to get a break."
Yes, yes, yes, we know what you're thinking. The free-spending slackers have only themselves to blame, since the dot-com boom should have made them rich for life. On the surface that's true. A 30-year-old today is 50% more likely to have a bachelor's degree than his counterpart in 1974 and earns $5,000 more a year, adjusted for inflation. But that's where the good news stops. He also has more in student loans and credit card debt, is less likely to own a home, and is just as likely to be unemployed. His salary probably topped out during the boom, whereas his predecessor's rose throughout his career. Social Security will start to evaporate as he turns 50--or before, if the lockbox gets raided--so he'll have to depend almost completely on his own savings for retirement. The comparison with a 30-year-old in 1984 isn't any rosier.
Gen X "has done worse than their parents have done according to a number of dimensions, like net worth and home ownership," says Edward Wolff, a New York University economist who studies trends in income and wealth. In a recent paper Wolff notes that young households lay claim to a smaller percentage of total U.S. wealth than they did in 1989.
Additionally, the inflation-adjusted median net worth of a Gen X household ($9,000) is lower than that of a comparable household in 1989, according to the Federal Reserve's Survey of Consumer Finances.
Silicon Valley and Manhattan aren't the only stomping grounds for disgruntled young professionals. FORTUNE interviewed more than 50 Gen Xers in Dallas, Louisville, and Seattle, with jobs ranging from construction manager to software engineer (see table). Battered by the economy and the bad luck of being born between Madonna and Britney Spears, they're Generation Wrecked.
The kids who toted STAR WARS lunchboxes are the most highly educated generation in American history: Almost 60% of Gen Xers have some college education, and 6.6% have graduate school degrees. The Census Bureau calls their pursuit of higher education the "Big Payoff," since historically a college-educated full-time worker earns 1.8 times more over his lifetime than a high school graduate.
When you can't find a job or pay your student loans, though, college can seem like the Big Rip-Off. Today, the median student loan debt is at its highest level ever, $17,000, compared with $2,000 when the baby-boomers were in their 20s. According to educational lender Nellie Mae, graduating students average $20,402 in combined student loans and credit card debt. Those who have borrowed to pay for professional school, especially doctors and lawyers, are increasingly likely to have immense debt that is not reflected in proportionately higher salaries. Twenty-eight percent of those surveyed by Nellie Mae had combined undergraduate and graduate student debt of more than $30,000, and for 22%, their loan payments ate up more than one-fifth of their monthly income.
After midnight at a young professionals party in Louisville, Steve Flores, 31, and his wife, Jessica, 32, mingle, while the rest of the revelers line up for last call. Steve is a communications specialist for the party's sponsor, Brown-Forman, the big distiller. While working full-time, he is also pursuing an MBA. Although Steve worked to help pay for college, five years after graduation he has $40,000 of undergraduate debt to pay off; Jessica, an art therapist and professional harpist, has $50,000 in student loans. "I haven't started paying back my student loans for undergrad because they're deferred. I'm not taking any student loans for grad school," Steve says. He isn't so jovial when he thinks about the total tab. "We're dreading the day we actually have to start paying."
Those Big Payoff estimates rely on what 50-year-old college graduates make today to guess what 50-year-olds will make 20 years from now. That's not all that useful. "Whereas their parents experienced rising wages over their lifetime, Generation X may not. So college may have been a bad investment," says Wolff, the NYU economist. Adds Bruce Tulgan, a Gen Xer and founder of RainmakerThinking, a consultancy that studies labor trends: "I had a college president say to me, 'I don't know how much longer I can pull this off because people will start to ask, Is it worth this much money to be that much smarter?' "
"Are the best years of our lives truly behind us?" Yeppers.
Now learn how to SAVE money and maximumize your purchase power. Pay yourself FIRST and then pay the bills. Do not touch savings. Remember, any 16 year old can do a website. It is not rocket science. IT is being seen as an expense that generates little added value. Once a network is setup, there is only repair and admin functions, and more often than not, the same guy is tasked with both jobs at the same pay as one job. Upgrades? Funny, after the Y2K fiasco, IT folks are regarded as buffoons. The writing is on the wall.
I've never seen such whining about a "generation".
Before the dotcom bubble, we saw these same exact articles on how jobs were tough to find, people with college degrees were bussing tables.
Let me give you a hint: except for very narrow slices of american history, the economy has always been "tough".
If GenX (and its a dumb label) has a failing its this:
They're convinced debt is no big deal and is inevitable.
I see kids in college with brand new cars!
Then they whine that they graduated with debt and no job!
Here's some myths that I wish the media would start pushing:
1) Don't overpay for college. A 4-year degree from any accredited university is pretty much the same as any other. The idea of paying more is stupid except in about 2 or 3 "big name" schools. But boys, Penn State = Michigan = Duke = Virginia Tech = USC = Oregon = Cornell.
So if you have a choice, go for the cheapest school! Use your fricking head!!!
2) Debt matters - if you graduate from college with significant debt (and yes, $10K is significant debt) you're handicapped financially for the rest of your life.
3) Students should not have credit cards - (see debt matters). This does 2 bad things, first it puts you in debt when you can't afford it second you never learn to put off your "wants" until you can afford it.
4) Learn the difference between want and need - you may "need" a laptop computer (although I doubt it). But you "want" the latest $2500 wonder laptop. You can get by with a used $300 laptop.
I could go on and on. The people whining are people who don't think ahead, put themselves in a bad financial position and then whine society isn't taking care of them.
They're a bunch of spoiled rotten babies.
Well, I would hate for Gen-X to turn out like the depression generation. They only won WWII, had A huge hand in rebuilding Western Europe and Japan into stable democracies, and among many other great works put a freaking man on the freaking moon. I only hope that Gen-X has been "set-up for failure" just as much as the depression generation.
One of the things that I've noticed is that many employers are charging alot more for their products and services but are paying their employees alot less then they are worth. It's been an employer's dream always to have this happen but it's no longer a dream.
/me commits suicide!
For instance, I just got done working at this computer service based business in where I was making 36k/year. I'm worth 55k/year and when hired was told that "it would be no problem" if I were motivated, etc. I quit when I found out that the max anyone makes there at the company was 36k, heh. I was there for 2 years.
Well, the charges that we were giving customers was insane. If it was after hours and on a weekend, they were being charged like $400 an hour for computer service. Granted it was pry to fix one or two of their servers or something but still, that's some serious income for the company and yet I get to see none.
No tech jobs I find want to start anyone much above what I was making and most are lying to me about what I could potentially make at the company. There's a whole slew of $8/hour jobs around me, especially if I want to go into the food service field.
I joined the internet rise in 1995 straigh out of college, and my entire skill set was based on the following years of experience. I worked through a lot of successful start-up companies, building up enough seed money to start one of my own. Enter the dot com failure due to the choking number of net companies. Not only did I lose my company, I lost all my money, and gained some hefty debt trying to keep things afloat.
At that point not only was my skill set the same as the other 50,000 people out there applying to every small position that cropped up for half the pay it used to be, I had a failed company on my resume. An emergency change of my skillset from web to video games is all that kept me from going back to salaries I was making in 1997-8.
I mean come on this is like saying being overweight is bad, or shooting heroin can cause problems down the road.
However, that being said my income has risen every year except one when I moved from Dallas TX to Norman OK and now I make more than I did in Dallas. I guess it all depends on the opportunities you create for yourself. I knew several people in college that dropped out because with their MCSE they could get a 50 to 75K job in Dallas overnight. I decided to stay the course and get a broad education in both business (both MIS and Finance degrees) and technical learning (I began working with linux in '95 as well as Windows based systems).
Having a wide area of knowledge only helps. I've saved my company 10s of thousands of dollars by implementing Linux based solutions instead of MS solutions at my full time job and we are a MS shop only (not anymore).
I guess it's all in how hard you worked toward tangible goals when things were going good as opposed to taking the easy way out.
Frozen salary, every day reading e-mails with subjects like "Thank you and good-bye", helplessly watching how entire product lines are being discontinued, development units are closing, waiting for my turn to say goodbye...
Another telecom engineer developing network products for an equipment provider... oh yes, and born in 1974! There lies my mistake! Unrecoverable error!
The recession of 1990-1991 was more painful, with a much higher unemployment rate.
ENERGY bars and ENERGY drinks have been around for a while!!! Someone gimme a Red Bull and I can run a bike generator for a few days :)
It's not that difficult. If you're making $60,000, you don't need to drive a $50,000 car. People my age (sigh - ok, Generation X) who are spiralling into credit card debt due to gratuitous overspending in the "boom years" only have themselves to blame. Save judiciously, live conservatively, and crappy economies like this one won't hurt quite as much.
I blame the demographic bulge of the boomers. Can't find a home? That's because the boomers bought them all. Stock market bubble? Simple supply and demand. Boomers 401k plans. When they need to draw down to retire, pay for homes, etc. then more money leaves the market that goes in. Pop! Social security is going to evaporate you say? Duh. If you want to make some money, start building retirement homes and nursing homes, cuz there aren't enough of them. I'm sure they'll need a lot of drugs, too. Eventually, they'll start to croak, and then we'll be left with the excess. E.g. excess homes - so don't thinking you r investment in real estate is a good long term investment. OTOH, if you can manage to save some money, someday many years from now you'll be able to pick up some property cheap.
Gen X slackers, huh? Screw you, self-interested short-sighted baby boomer bums.
Being labelled a "slacker" by the "me generation" is such a crock of shit. Their only concern seems to be that they're not screwing me enough by getting me to work 80 hours a week to fund their fat salaries and Lexus payments. The current generation always seeks to undo the excesses of the previous generation. Maybe we actually want to spend some time with friends and family and "live life like we mean it."
Gen X has the highest contribution to their 401(k) of any generation -- why? Because instead of fixing social security, money is getting doled out in a tax cut to benefit the "me generation" so that we can fund 14 retired people when we're at 50. And we have the highest rate of vounteerism. Slacker, my ass.
"It remains to be seen if the human brain is powerful enough to solve the problems it has created." Dr. Richard Wallace
And to add insult to injury, we're all paying for the Baby Boomers' retirement in the form of social security. We all know none of us are ever going to see a dime of that money when we retire because Social Security is a pyramid scheme. Maybe I'm too cynical, but I think the baby boomer generation is the first one in history to care more about themselves than they do their offspring. But since GenX'ers are too apathetic to vote, the boomers are going to continue to screw us over until they die and leave us with a fucked up country.
First of all, life is what you make of it.
I miss gen-x by three year. Big deal.
Whatever happened to the motto, if life throws you lemons, make lemonade? Man I am still paying
my student loans, but I have an awesome wife, 3 great kids, and my own home. My income is decent, if the company I work for goes bellyup... big deal I will consult! I've got enough skills to sell, and if I am busy I sell to the highest bidder.
We make the job market. If we all refulse to work for less we can control the market.
If I was ever asked to take a cut I would quit
and become a free lance consultant. The health benefits would come from my wife's job (Teacher's
assistant).
Best earning years are behid us..Bullshit, The Data Must flow! If noeone is there for trends
analysis, Oracle DBA, custom coding, or Infrastructure design, the economy would fail
worse than it is now.
If you are a truly innovative individual you would find a way to survive. Friends have asked me "what would you do if you were let go due to massive budget cuts at the State?" I've always replied and said "I'd become an Emu farmer!"..
In reality I think if I my quality of work stays
and I always stay on top of new technology , and help save the State money by turning them on to Open Source Solutions such as Perl,Mysql,Postgress, and Linux, perhaps they won't be able to afford to let me go.
I do know that Our priorities are different from our parents. For instance, I would rather receive comp time than overtime pay. I think my time is worth more. Then again I've been a salaried individula for over 16 years. I'd like
to see time and a half reflected in comp time, but it's been equal time. My goal is to retire at
52. I see too many people pushing up daisies at
64.
There is a change in the paradigm of life since the sixties. Up until the sixties, one working parent families were the norm. Now two working parents represent by far the largest majority of families. Why? because you need the incompe produced by two to even approach the style of living that took one (income) then. I think that everyone under fifty is doing worse then their parents did. Why? well first off, for the reason above. Second, most people don't have retirement funds set aside. As they reach retirement age, they won't be able to do so. Up until the early seventies, Social Security was sufficent for at least a reasonably comfortable retirement. Now it falls far short of even poverty levels..and the baby boomers haven't really begun to draw it yet! Once they do, we'll be lucky if it can even stay solvent. If history proves me wrong on this, it'll make me happy.
arrogant little so and so's anyway.
throw BOO_HOO("Your own damn fault");
I take exception to this statement - if you are up to your ass in credit card debt, you have no-one but yourself to blame.
I was reading how the AVERAGE college student has over $5000 in credit card debt (and here am I obsessing over having a debt of about that when I have a high-paying job!) When I went to school, I didn't even HAVE a credit card! Why?
BECAUSE I DIDN'T HAVE A FREAKING JOB!
No income -> no way to pay -> no card!
It's one thing to have a high student loan burden - but that's why you have TEN YEARS to pay it off!
If people would stop going into debt for crap that will have no value when the debt is paid off, and ONLY go into debt for things of long-term value (i.e. don't go into debt buying a stereo, go into debt buying a HOUSE! Don't buy expensive cars that will be junk before you clear the debt, buy a car you can pay off in a couple of years or less) then they would be a lot less worried about the future.
But because credit cards are easy to get, and kids in school are told "Go ahead, buy that stereo, buy that DVD player, go to Padre for Spring Break, you have a credit card", they end up with a lot of crap and a lot of debt!
I was born in 1965, so I miss being a Gen-X'er by a year. I was fortunate to be born to parents that were children of the Depression, and who hadn't bought into the BS put out by Dr.'s Spock et. al. I was raised to take responsibility for my life.
So BOO HOO HOO, cry me a river for the kids who screwed up by charging a bunch of crap on their credit cards. Maybe they will learn from their mistakes.
But I doubt it.
www.eFax.com are spammers
Just don't believe any corporate BS. They are out to get you.
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
n/m
After going to culinary school, my starting income was $18,600. This was for a sous chef position at a large, expensive hotel. This was 9 years ago. Over the next 5 years, my income in the culinary industry, rose to a whopping $26,000 per year. I'm at a loss on how I should have saved $100,000 during that time, purchased a house, and had more than $20,000 in equity in it. I wasn't exactly driving a BMW during that time. 4 years ago, I changed careers, ( I wanted to have a regular family life), and my income has changed becuase of it, so it's easier to save now, but I think the expectations in the article are a bit higher than what the average person is capable of.
You should be a writer. I am not sure if you made that up, or if it is all true, but that was a funny little story you just told. You kinda have that Salinger dissonance, with the irreverence of John Irving. Honestly, if you have never written anything, you should try. I would love to read it.
I'm pretty sure that if you translate this to Chinese and back via Babelfish, you get:
'You set us up the bomb.'
What's happened is that college education costs have, over the past 20 years, outstripped inflation, and the ROI of that college education has fallen drastically. Kind of like the stock market...
Hopefully, the college-bound audience will realize that and the lack of demand will bring college costs back down to reality.
Community college degrees don't look so demeaning now to that the Harvard MBA guy is flipping burgers.
JoAnn
a lot of them won't be able to catch up as they approach their prime spending years.
Someone should update Erikson's psycosocial theory and add a new a new stage: dot com vs. get a job.
A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
Yes, yes, yes, we know what you're thinking. The free-spending slackers have only themselves to blame, since the dot-com boom should have made them rich for life. On the surface that's true.
No, that's COMPLETELY true.
When you gamble hard (looking for that next big pot of gold), you sometimes lose hard. Those of us who didn't buy that crap didn't get burned (nor did we make much money).
Anyone who couldn't see that most of it was horse shit (for example, stocks increasing in value when NO EARNINGS had been posted...and stocks increasing in value when companies would make ambiguous PR statements) DESERVED to get fucked HARD in the ass.
I kept my $40K/hour job during that time, saved up my money, steadily moved up to $50K+...and am now living quite happily. (And am probably worth more then these stupid fucks)
Student loans and credit card debt? Fuck that...that's YOUR FAULT for buying into society's bullshit about going to college and/or a professional school.
Funny....we're supposed to be "well-educated", yet our "median net worth household ($9,000) is lower than that of a comparable household in 1989, according to the Federal Reserve's Survey of Consumer Finances."
I pity these people just as much as I pity the guy who loses it all at the blackjack table.
Gee, if life was all about money (spending it, making it) and I read this article, I would be rather depressed.
Personal enrichment and the best years of your life have little to do with things you can buy. I don't expect the writers and editors over at Fortune to understand this.
Speak truth to power.
Not to get too political on either side of the fence, but perhaps now that the bubble has burst and the easy money has dried up, the Gen X'ers will get some civic responsibility and start voting...
Like I have been saying what my age group needs is a good depression. Maybe their entire warped moral structure will change and they'll actually grow up. I can only hope.
Perhaps instead of complaining they only have a 41 inch big screen TV instead of a 61 inch they'll actually be thankful they HAVE A TV.
Perhaps instead of running out to a club hyped up on X and pot they might actually be forced to confront reality and THINK about important things instead of hiding from reality in superficial relationships.
Perhaps the children will toughen up and not whine and cry when people don't like them as they desperately try to litigate a perfect world that will never exist. You FAT, YOUR UGLY, AND PEOPLE AREN'T ALWAYS GOING TO LIKE YOU FOR -WHO YOU ARE-, GET OVER IT. YOUR SHORT NOT VERTICALLY CHALLENGED. DEAL WITH IT.
Perhaps trial lawyers won't be millionaires on average and people that love JUSTICE will be the only ones left practicing law.
Perhaps pocket book doctors will vanish left only with doctors that are in it to help people.
Perhaps when all those trial lawyers are gone insurance rates would drop and medical professionals can focus on saving lives and not red tape.
Perhaps they'll develop some self-esteem and grow a unique and self-identifying personality instead of rebelling by looking exactly like ANOTHER group of people rebelling.
Perhaps people will value each other on important things instead of the superficial things they can't afford anymore.
Perhaps trite and watered down sitcoms will become readily seen as crap and perhaps they'll learn to read and write re-developing an interest in real literature. Maybe, just maybe when a teacher asks a class "Who is your favorite Author" Steven King won't come out of their mouths 19 out of 20 times (And I was a teacher btw and have asked this question). Maybe names like Milton or Ambrose Pierce might pop up. They might even start reading from he PG archives more!
Perhaps people will once again gather in a park on a warm summer day and philosophize about life and all that is around them.
Perhaps we can avoid "A Brave New World" and dodge the "Orwellian" society.
Perhaps... perhaps not...
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
What can we say? You can print whatever you want in this era, and somehow, we get all worked up about it.
Before I rant, does anyone know what we officially call people who were born after 1975? I don't know an official name. I don't know if there is one. Just curious.
The savings rate has been falling for years, and its not just Gen X who's doing it. So much credit has been lent out we actually have negitive savings (there really is no such thing, the point is we spend more than we make)
No one forces people to take out huge student loans. There are less expensive state universities all across the country. That's the great thing about America, you can go to school anywhere. And the credit card debt is 100% the fault of the borrower, no one forced you to take on credit card debt, or charge consumable items. Why would you want to pay interest on things like food and gas? Items which have been consumed before you start to pay on them?
Things are not as bad as it sounds. No, things are great, but then when were they great? Pensions are a thing of the past, most companies are getting rid of them b/c they are a liability on Wall Street. (companies spend them anyway, much like the U.S. gov spends the Social Security surplus every year)
There is also no reason or evidence to believe that salaries will not rise in the next 20 years. Now, if the generation continues to spend more than they earn then rising salary is neligible.
I'm really interested in what we call people born after 1975. Anyone know?
I hate articles that push entire generations under the same umbrella. You'd think that every baby boomer was a dope smoking war protester in the 60s and 70s, but that's just not the case.
The same with Gen X, we're all whiny slackers in debt up to our eyeballs. Blow me. I guess I work 3 jobs and have zero credit card or student loan debt. All of my friends are in the same good position too. Not everybody worked at dot-bombs. I wish the people that wrote articles like this would realize it.
..what life was like for them. My grandparents grew up on a farm doing manual labor, and worked their entire lives to improve their lives and those of their offspring. When they were my age, the didn't have air conditioning. Oh yeah, and there was this whole thing about my grandfather watching his friends get hosed off the inside of an airplane because there was a REAL threat of evil in the world. Oh...us poor gen X'ers. We wouldn't know prosperity if it sat on our faces...because it IS and we DON'T KNOW IT. We have more than anyone has ever had. I almost wish we'd have a real depression so we'd know what it's like.
First, I missed 'Generation X' (Most stupid name ever - where's all the mutant powers that should come with the X denotation?).. by a few years.
That said, I know a few people who aren't mutants (sadly, aside from a few who seem to have the power to smoke certain substances and become as hungry as a bear about to hibernate).. and aren't out on the streets with signs saying, "Will code VB for food."
Newsflash - every generation has its bums laying under a local bridge, scraping their ass for the change to buy another pint of Jack. And every generation has its meglomaniacal CEOs, who wish to rule over the world with a fist of green.
Hell. I know people in my own generation that'll be worse off than some of the 'Xers' I know, because they're foolish enough to believe that an MSCE and having difficulty with the concept of multi-dimensional arrays is going to land them a cushy programming job.
In short, comparing the ambitions/wealth/joblessness/employed/etc. of people by when they were born is quite absurd.
I'm pretty much slap bang in the middle of the described bracket (1971).
I graduated from school in 1988 and spent the next 11 years studying (without much enthousiasm), partying (with enthousiasm), generally having a good time.
My peers had overtaken me by 1995, high-paying jobs, stock options, stomach ulcers, the lot.
In 1999 I was kind of jealous coz i was approaching 30, not much to show for it, a classical "loser".
I then joined the telco industry in 2000 and witnessed the crash from within, my stock options were never worth jack (thank god we didn't IPO)
My Point? Due to my modest studenty lifestyle which I continue to this day, I never punched my expenses or debt up to an unmanageable level, the telco crash didn't affect me as much as my friends (almost all of which lost most of their paper millions through hanging on to their shares), and I am generally quite happy with my life.
I have enjoyed watching the rest of my office tearing their hair out while staring at the Nasdaq plunge, comfortable in the knowledge that I have never owned a single share. If my present owner goes belly up, I know I can still get by flipping burgers or failing that digging potatoes in my garden.
The 90s were a wasted decade for me economically, but boy did I have a good time. On the whole, I believe I came out on top or at least broke even. No ulcers, no debts, most of my hair and most important my self esteem are where they should be.
Not confused enough? http://translate.google.com/translate?u=www.slashdot.jp&hl=en&ie=UTF8&sl=ja&tl=en
I had to put up with these smug bastards until the bottom fell out around 1990 or so. Interesting how many people wanted out of their "perfect starter homes" in marginal neighborhoods.
Finally bought a home at bargain rates in the mid-90s.
Lesson: Stick this one out. Things will get better. In the mean time "buy low, sell high"
"dope will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no dope"
that the writer was actually able to define generation X. I wonder where he got that from, since that terms is the most overused term in modern media in the last decade. It's good to know that I'm not in generation X... missed it by 2 years, I guess.
in the next 2 to 5 years all the Baby boomers will start retiring from their "life long" government jobs. If you have good education (and I mean Grad school degree or professional designation like I do) the future is bright.
As a matter of fact I am looking forward to the Baby Boomers retiring because I will be able to secure a government (Municipal, Provincial or Federal) job position that will last me till the retirement and will pay above average wage for the next 25-30 years. Plus the pension benefits are insane. I don't need to contribute to my pension plan for the rest of my life once I get me one of those jobs.
Fortune should know better. Let me see if I understand the basic premise...
Woe are Gen-Xers. Things are bad and will never get better. Did they forget all of the recessions before that others have had to live through? Did they think that no one else had their expectations hurt before? How about 1987 stock market bust or the 1990 recession or the dozens of other recessions in the 20th century?
Wasn't Fortune amoung those financial "experts" that promoted worthless ideas as golden because they were done by a Dot-Com? Precisely the type of short-term non-analysis that lead to the Dot-Com bubble is being exercised again here.
They couldn't see that such stupid ideas (as the Dot-Com period) could only succeed for only a short time and apparently again are exercising a lack of historical understanding and perspective in understanding that recessions are not infinite.
It seems like some solid reading in economics and history would be of real benefit, though I suppose that they are more interested in sensationalizing this story for sales purposes.
I do have to agree with one basic premise of the article. College costs has been expanding much faster than inflation for too long. Why? Don't they have to purchase infrastructure, supplies and talent from the same basic pool as everyone else? What is the cost justification for their continuous increases?
What a load of horse shit. How are these morons and why do they get payed for this drivel. "best years of earning potential behind them"..hmmm let me think about that awhile... lets see as I get older I get promotions and hmm looky my salary keeps going UP you moron.
Yes it's true: my career is getting chainsawed by the dot-com bust. I went from AI programming to mainframe programming (and took a $10,000 pay cut) and was told a little while ago that, barring a miaracle, my position is going to be eliminated in February. The good news is I have four months to find a new job before I start collecting unemployment; the bad news is that computer jobs are scarce and I may end up just packing groceries or something.
Are the best years of my life behind me? No.
For the first time in my life, I have more friends than I can count on both hands, a girlfriend who loves pizza and beer and horror movies, a positive reputation in the circles that matter to me, and all the comforts I've ever wanted. My biggest concern if I end up packing groceries is health insurance.
As for computers: I can still do computers for fun. Well-documented, professionally-designed free software builds resumes. I can still take courses toward a Masters' degree in CS. If the field ever recovers, I can get a job. If it doesn't, I have a fun hobby.
What about the future? I admit I didn't plan on being a security guard for the rest of my life. Ultimately, however, a career is two things: an opportunity to do what you love, and a tool for getting the things you want and need. I can do the one and I have the other. Let the career get chainsawed.
The best years of my life are here, and are still to come.
Finding God in a Dog
Oh, good. THAT's what this funk is that I've been feeling. And here I've been worried it's the West Nile Virus.
-"I ate what?"
The article sounds like it's pandering to the rich or those who lust to be rich. People with their heads bolted to their shoulders have nothing worry about. But then again I'm not fortune's target audience and I don't think being rich is the end all of life.
Am I the only person whose got his 401k maxed?
M@
Krispy Cream is people
The tail end of the baby boomers went through worse. There were no jobs to be had anywhere in the late 70's and early eighties. People were loosing their houses at an astonishing rate. Banks were closing.
The economy now is much stronger than then. GenX are just a bunch of spoiled winers.
Just give it up, please, and do us all a favor.
Unless you were lucky enough to be involved in a web-type startup in 1996, this has no effect on you. So we're talking, what, like 0.0002% of this supposed Generation X?
And you know what, we're still here witnessing the rise of the web. You can get cheap web space. You can put up whatever you want. You can use Google. And that's all pretty amazing, and it offers some big possibilities for future business opportunity. Just because you were in some company without a product or business plan that managed to get $100 million in venture capital, then blow it all in four years, doesn't mean that the rest of your life will be a train wreck.
Oh yeah, Jessica, I'm sure you needed to spend $50,000 of taxpayer money for an important, highly paid career as an art therapist. And wow, people are just breaking down the door to hire professional harpists.
Sure, lots of people are going to weep over some idiot that spent $50,000 for an education with no earning potential. And the same goes for those majoring in such non-real-world oriented fields as Women's Studies and Queer Theory. Bad life choices are no one's fault but your own.
Look up "begs the question". I do not think it means what you think it means.
It really fucking does...
"Information wants to be paid"
Generation X (those born between 1966 and 1975) have been damaged by the fall of the economy
The economy right now is far stronger than it was 10 years ago. That was 1992. The economy right now is far stronger than it was 20 years ago. That was 1982. From the perspective of someone born in 1966-1975, how has the economy fallen?
in this forum for pity for the boomers.
I appreciate the hardships that Gen X has undergone. Financial issues are certainly part of that, but I also feel sorry for many of my younger friends that endured anonymous childhoods filled with divorces, peer pressures and an MTV manufactured reality that never got fulfilling.
From my perspective, the downturn in the economy means that my 401k has lost almost half its value since early 2000 and I'll end up having to work a lot longer than before.
I think the thing that bothers me the most is the pay-as-you-go Social Security system in the U.S., where current beneficiaries get a lot more out of the system than they ever put in (hey, they vote!) and during my golden years the reality of this Ponzi scheme will start to set in.
I'm quite willing to pay my SS taxes and even to take reduced benefits in the future and at a later age than our current crop of retirees.
It's hard for me to believe my older friends don't feel at least a little bit guilty if they're drawing handsome SS benefits while their other sources of retirement income amount to many times as much.
But, sigh, that's the sad part of the American way- What can my government do for me?
"Provided by the management for your protection."
And if you think you are doomed by your age to a lifetime of finanical failure, just look at Colonel Sanders: he was basically broke until he started KFC when he was 65 years old!
I don't want to be a polyanna or say I've never had or seen setbacks -- my gf was un/under-employed for a year -- but to just write off a whole generation in Fortune just seems like a sack of Baby Boomer sour grapes bullshit.
Dude, I think I can see my house from here.
The article, like most stories in the media (gotta have an angle and stick to it to make a story interesting) is one sided. There are a number of good things going demographically/marketwise on for Gen Xers. For example, the market crash, has allowed younger folks to start buying stocks at lower valuations. For a buy and hold investor with a 30 year time horizon, the crash is the best thing that could have happened. They can continue to buy stock as the market slowly builds value over the long term. On the other hand the market crash was horrible for a baby boomer who was planning to use that money in five years to retire. Second, by following the boomers demographically, we will get the benefit of the large supply of housing that was built to house all of those boomers and their families. As that housing comes on the market as empty-nesters sell out to retire, there will be a lot of housing supply and less relative demand (as there are less Xers than boomers). As one poster noted, all the boomers leaving their VP jobs will also open up areas for promotions for Xers. Finally all those boomers in retirement are going to be spending big bucks to buy products and services from Xers.
These are just a few examples of how things aren't as bad as they seem for Xers (I was born in 72).
--Spooky Action At A Distance
The media seems to have vision problems beyond myopia...it also seems hindsight-impaired. In all of the press, I don't see the dot-com bust blaming the Y2K budget bubble at all. Maybe I'm wrong or maybe I've a perspective unique to Tech Support.
The IT and Software Development industries were overbudgeted by 300-500% in many companies from 1998 to 2000. A company I worked for in 1999 had perhaps 1000 employees, but had around 100 developers and IT staff working full-time on Y2K and Y2K+1 calendar-related issues. Once the Y2K problems were gone, many COBOL, Foxpro, and other programmers were out of work. The bloated IT budgets in companies saw *lots* of contractors and regular employees alike seeking other jobs in the summer of 2000.
Many companies were created just to handle Y2K issues. Others were started to try to soak up some of the money being thrown around that was left over after Y2K didn't soak up all of the budget.
And let's face it, the United States was getting excited about technology. The first wave of real computer consumerism happened when Windows 95 was released and coincided with Intel working the bugs out of its Pentium chips.. This wave lasted about 1.5 years. The second wave was around 1998-1999 and it came down in the year 2000 when people were sick and tired of hearing about Y2K and how all of the computers were going to blow up. After the computers didn't end up blowing up and consumers realized they had computers fast enough for solitaire and email, the consumer frenzy stopped. Now you can except computer consumerism to coincide with Christmas and back-to-school shopping like many other industries.
Eventhough computer consumerism is not rampant and technology is no longer the big news in the U.S., the economy still seems doing alright in some industries:
In order to reasonably support the people expected to make social security claims over the next thirty years, taxes would have to be doubled at a minimum.
In other words, it is only a matter of time before social security breaks. The only things that can save are an incredible development in the economy that drastically increases real wealth in a short period of time, or massive immigration to increase the number of paying (but not deducting) parties by a huge amount. Its just turned into a pyramid scheme at this point, and that really is what drive most immigration policy.
A while back I saw something saying that gen Y was 1980-1989, and gen Z was 1990-1999. If you do it that way, what do you call people born in 2k+?
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
Of course I don't expect to eat sushi twice a week and buy everything in sight anymore. When it was 1999, we all knew it would end. I socked away money then.... and guess what? All the jobs went away and I slowly spent all the money on rent and food. Now I have a part-time job without benefits because I can't find a real job anywhere, and not because I'm holding out for the $85000/yr perl-and-html gig. And I have $100 in the bank and am living check-to-check.
We're not all bitching and moaning because the Guvmint took away our precious foosball jobs. It is actually hard to scrape by today.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It only takes 4 to 6 years for a person that is well-rounded in the computer sciences to study another field, gain some experience in that field, and prosper. A common analogy is the professional middle-aged man or woman (we have all seen them in college hallways) that goes to back to school (usually a state college for 2 years), and slowly integrates themselves into a new field/trade. I wouldn't stick a fork in the techie crowd of generation X just yet.
In a recent paper Wolff notes that young households lay claim to a smaller percentage of total U.S. wealth than they did in 1989.
I thought that we had an aging population with fewer and fewer young people. Of course they represent less wealth of the total economy! Statements like this seriously diminish the credibility of the article.
Well, yeah. For you it's all downhill. HTH. HAND.
My mother is a college professor, and when "generation x" was the majority of her students, she was ready to quit academe and run screaming into the hills. Even when their mommies and daddies were paying for them, this sadass generation still had the obnoxious "whatever" attitude, a lack of moviation, and few redeeming qualities. One might infer, then, that their current economic standing is wholely self-imposed.
As an afterword, my mother is still teaching. The present generation, who's work ethic appears to be far stronger, is a "delight" to teach, in her words. These kids are already making their own success. You figure out who's gonna be kvetching about unfair economic trends 10 years from now.
Total hooey, probably written by a Gen-X'er who failed history.
My Dad went through the Great Depression and WWII. These are cataclismic events uttery overshadowing minor economic ripples like the dotcom bomb. Yet when all was said and done, he found himself living well with a good retirement.
Gen-X set up for economic failure? Give me a break. How about the boomers who are late in their working life and are having their 401K's blasted by the current stock market? The boomers don't have 30 years of working life to recover from this like the Gen-X'ers do.
it's got to be the crack.
you get modded off-topic, the next comment gets +5 funny.
i suppose missing gen x by being to old just isn't as funny as missing it by being too young.
Especially compared to the rest of the world.
My cousin went into a hospital in Kinshassa last week.
He died from blood poisoning from badly-cleaned equipment.
Life for most people, most places, sucks
In some respects that is what makes life worth living.
The GenXers were a generation on holiday.
Time to get back to work, fellows.
Sig for sale or rent. One previous user. Inquire within.
I thought for certain this was a Katz story when I read the blurb real quick, but alas, no such luck.
Where oh where is our favourite flame-boy writer at these days?
Warmest regards,
--Jack Wagner
-posting anonymously to preserve my karma.
W for Wingers .
The simple fact is that Generation X have had it better than any past generation in history, except for the baby boomer generation - the generation of negative unemployment, antibiotics without antibiotic resistence, reasonable housing prices, free Unis (well in Oz anyway), welfare without scrutiny, lifelong employement with long service leave & gold watches, etc, etc.
So what if the baby boomers had it so good, Xers should get some perpective & realise they are still better off than all the other previous generations.
& what's this with complaining about the fact that Xers were able to rort billions out of the community with the Y2K scare campaign & the dot.bomb pyramid schemes? So what that the party's over, they still made billions at the time, doing sweet FA of consequence.
While those of us who are within a few years of the social security slimepit, and have watched greedy corporate execs and dot-com liars abscond with our meager retirement savings, and have no chance of getting back to break-even in the short time left to us, we got it made! Well, happy days. That'll make the dog food taste so much better. Thanks for the perspective!
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
Anyone else fed up with being put in a basket that says 'generation X' or whatever? I sure as bloody hell am ...
I can look around at my group of close friends and see a bunch of people who are very successful, each in their own way. Some have successful careers, some great education, some a wonderful marriage, some have great kids, some own their own house or car, some have travelled widely, some have achieved great things and they all have their own dreams and aspirations. They are all fantastic people (hey, I wouldn't be friends with them if they weren't!) who accept responsibility for their own lives. Not a single one of them could be described by that article, and maybe that's a good thing.
That's not to say it's been all roses - there have been some [very] tough times, but you know what? That's life.
Get out there and live your life and stop worrying about what others think.
"Because it's there." - George Mallory, when asked why he wanted to climb Mt Everest, March 18, 1923 (New York Times)
Reason to whine? Comparing now to the depression?
How about this: The current unemployment rate is 5.6%. At the height of the depression, the unemployment rate was 25%+
By historical standards, this "recession" is absolute peanuts. This generation has the most opportunity of any generation in HISTORY.
Every generation thinks they have it the worst.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
I was going to make fun of you, but I guess that is a "broad education" compared to MCSE's.
... while everyone else gives up.
This is just FUD and ignoring it and trying hard to make things work is a much better course of action.
I'm confused about the math. Riley is 33, meaning he was born in 1968-69. So how the hell did he see Saturday Night Fever(1977), Apocalypse Now(1979), and The Deer Hunter(1978)? All were Restricted, and he was 10.
He probably saw them on video in the '80s or on re-release in the same period. Which means he's nostalgic for a childhood he didn't have.
Careers should combine three things: what you can do, what you want to do, and what you can get paid for.
Perhaps employers are just tired of mediocre people. Perhaps this is the dawn of the era of Skill Labor. If you have no skills that are rare and unique your lifestyle will reflect this. Much like ancient times where the artisans were the weathly and the laborers are the poor. Perhaps values are shifting again based on this concept.
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
The best years of your life are only over if you let them be.
STOP ROCK VIDEO
I was born in 1968. I almost flunked out of two colleges and worked in food service to scrape through school. I ran up a bunch of debt on my credit cards while in college and in the first few years afterward.
I finally decided to grow up. I began spending less money than I was making. Reducing your standard of living is no fun, but it _is_ possible.
I now have no debt. I own a modest house - with a ton of equity thanks to the current real-estate market and my accelerated payment schedule, I have two cars - both paid for, and I have a decent amount of short and long term savings.
Don't give me that crap about it's because I'm white and I'm college educated.
After all, the family from El Salvador living next door can do it. The husband has two jobs, the wife works, they have three kids, their parents live with them and they rent out the basement of their 1400 square foot house so make ends meet.
This idea that the good life is over for GenXers is just FUD.
Get real. Get responsible. Quit carping about how hard your life is. Ask your grandparents about living through WWII - rationing of food, metal, gasoline - no place to live, no furniture was being made, there were so many men involved in the war effort that the only way that that ware materiel could be manufactured was for the women to find child care and go to work building planes and bombs.
We sit in our air-conditioned cars with CD changers, on our way to our air-condintioned homes with cable, DVDs, PCs and dishwashers and think that life is tough.
We're rich. Life is EASY in the US.
Don't believe me? Try living in India, China, Sudan or any other of dozens of poor nations.
Quit complaining and just do the work necessary to be successful in this economy.
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
According to most sources that I've seen, Baby Boomers are defined as being born between 1945 and 1964. Gen X is between 1966 and 1975. Those of us born in 1965 have really fallen between the cracks.
Written in 1997, "The Fourth Turning" stated that the U.S. was (then) in an "Unraveling" and would be entering a "Crisis" period around 2005.
It is a fascinating book, and I highly recommend it.
I almost made the mistake of missing a broad education until my employer told me in 1992, after working for him for 2 years on hiatus from Univerity of North Texas, "If you had a degree I'd have to pay you twice what I pay you now." I enrolled that month in University of Texas at Arlington and graduated in 1994 with a BS-InfoSys. Now I'm married, two kids and am the CTO of a small pharmaceutical. I run on Linux where possible and Windows when it makes business sense. My salary has also gone up, steadily, every year since college--but I avoided the easy money and harsh lifestyle of dot-com startups. A series of choices.
You wanna know about a real, bonifide wrecked generation that was born between 1966 and 1976? Try Cambodia. My wife was born in 1967 in Cambodia and her entire culture, livelyhood, and many of her family were lost to the Khmer Rouge communists and genicidal elitists. Awwww. . .our portfolios are wrecked. . .damn. What about the Killing Fields? Yet, instead of whinning like spoilt brats, my wife's family (a mother and 4 children; her father was killed) immigrated to the US out of a refugee camp in Thailand. Now all the children are successful professionals (the youngest is finishing college) and productive members of society.
What a stupid generation I belong to. Thinking that the baby boomers wrecked it for us and we're worse off than all that have gone before us. Yet, I think not everyone in my generation whines and complains. It's just that we're too busy making good, or at least, careful choices to be noticed.
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
Where did you get that 1000 bucks?
Flipping burgers?
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
you don't understand our conditions of life and psychology
You don't understand, waa waa waa! Life is so unfair, waa waa waa! Shut up!
The grandparent is spot on. You have no one to blame for debt but yourself. If you spend $5000 on a credit card, you have used $5000 in credit, and you have to pay it back. If you couldn't afford the repayments, don't spend the credit. Its easy.
Posting whiny comments to Slashdot and claiming that no one understands you, life is so shit, and why doesn't someone do something about all this shit you've farmed for yourself, why don't you fucking do something about it? Get yourself a job, pay back your debt, and do something useful.
I don't want to hear it otherwise.
If you rent, get used to being perpetually behind the curve. You are better off buying even if it means downgrading.
The article says how we keep working jobs, the economy sucks, etc., but it also keeps calling us slackers. How are we different than our parents and grandparents? We work, pay the bills, try to do better, etc. The author of this piece is torn between wanting to tell how fucked up things have been for a lot of us, and wanting to insult us.
Amen.
The baby boomers were the most well educated, richest, most spoiled generation in the history (of the United States, at least). What did they do with all this wealth, all this privelege?
They did some great things. They rebelled against the establishment and ended institutionalized racism (and the social acceptance of common racism in most circles, despite the nagging existence of a few ethnocentric throwbacks in populations of every ethnicity). They rebelled against the establishment and won the right for a woman to choose the fate of her own body. They rebelled against the establishment and won a large degree of gender equality and sexual freedom.
And they engaged in excesses that proved to be a little less positive, such as excessive drug experimentation in the 60's, arguably excessive sexual experimentation in the 70's, excessive conservatism and reactionsim in the 80's, and excessive dishonesty in the 90's.
They took all the freedoms they inherited and enjoyed, abused some of them, and then took those same freedoms away from us in the name of their 'knowing better', they systematically and deliberately inundated us with incessent marketing from the day we were born, tempted us with easy credit, pounded into our heads the compulsion to use that credit to buy their products and enrich them, then blamed us for our irresponsiblity when many of us succumbed to their repeated conditioning and actually did what they were telling us to do, an average of 10 minutes each hour (of television viewed or radio heard), and countless other times as we innocently walked or drove down the street to work.
Do we bear some of the responsibility for our alleged lack of self control? Sure. Do the generation of our parents and grandparents, who have orchestrated the incessant advertising that conditions us into submissive little shoppers and consumers, often as unable to resist a shiny new object as we are unable to join a protest for a cause we are forbidden, by that very same conditioning, from feeling strongly about? You bet they do.
There is enough blame for everyone to share, but no generation ever engaged in as much excess, or stripped their descendents of as much freedom and constitutional protection, not to mention financially mortgaging their children's future with unprecendented government deficits and ponzai retirement and real estate schemes than did the generation of our parents.
So while they may condemn us of our weaknesses (and they are real, valid weaknesses we must address if we are to survive), they would be well advised to check out beam in their own eyes.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
...had the right idea about credit card companies.
We must be alert to the danger that public policy could become captive to a scientific-technological elite. - Eisenhower
Since when is your quality of life dictated by your posessions, and retiring early. Everyone in this day in age is only worried about keeping up with Mr. Jones down the street. Can you imagine if we had a depression like the Great Depression where most people are starving to death, and on the brink of homelessness. Even the poor in our country have it much better then the middle class of some nations (try living in Afganistan, Iraq, or the former Soviet Union).
I want my rights back. I was actually using them when our government stole them after 9/11.
you know, In my opinion, a article like this is just a sign of the times. The economy is taking a dump, so we get these doomsday articles, of people opinions. In the depression, I'm sure people thought there would never be prosperity like the 20's again, but then came the 50's. it just takes time. And most people after the depression did just fine. Give it 10 years, GEn Xers will be doing fine, not retired yet, and it'll be ok. Its just people paranoia which makes articles like this.
Theonlyuse of monkeys is to testthings onthem.Some peoplemay say"Hey That'scruel!"and myresponse is"I don't like monkeys
I've been given this some thought, and having been born just after GenX (1979 ... does my generation even have a name?), I was cursing my luck of having to graduate right into the dotcom fallout and not being able to experience the ride.
I've since changed my tune though. Although the economy is still rough for new college grads, and I am taking part-time IT work to get by, I am really thankful to be forced into the market with realistic expectations. I have seen firsthand the benefits of savings and long-term investments (glad I didn't have money to invest during the height of the boom too) and the horrors of unchecked spending and debt.
In short, for those of us who were watching from my generation, we've learned valuable lessons from mistakes we hopefully won't repeat.
...woohoo! I missed it!
Schnapple
Interesting though the article was, their sampling could have been a little better. "Jessica, an art therapist and professional harpist, has $50,000 in student loans." Art therapist? Well duh! Everybody knows the big money is in pet psychiatry.
... if your lifestyle requires you to make $20,000 a month, live in a $3.4 million house, own a Jag (I will own a Jaguar!), have a boat, cottage, 4 dogs, 5 kids in college, two wives...
Simplify, people! Simplify! And don't fucking read Fortune...
+1 Insightful, -1 Troll. What can I say, I'm an Insightful Troll.
So their prospects are worse then the 'great depression generation'. Let's see, the great depression lasted from about 1929 to 1943, it featured peak unemployment at 30% and killed almost 500k men being slaughtered in WW2 (World War 2 for those that don't know history). Don't even get me started on real problems they had to deal with including polio. Yeah, that was a real cake walk.
Btw I noticed that the article liked to compare the peak of the last boom (about 1998) to the peak of our current 2 year recession. That's a real apples to apples comparison. For some reason people like to moan and believe that the deck is stacked against them. The truth is that this is the best time to live in terms of real quality of life.
I fail to see how the economic well being of this generation is faltering for any reason save poor money habits. The article speaks of this "great depression" and yet all the replies are littered with sob stories that equate to nothing more than "I have to buy everything I see and I can't save shit." The whining about the DOT com industry fallout is even more pathetic/funny. Oh boo-friggin-hoo, you can't find a job where you get a BMW, 100k a year, and free privaliges to shoot your co-workers with nerf-guns. Of course, no buisiness plan, but who needs a buisiness plan when you have vision, right? Listen babies, save your money, set up a debt payment system, and quit going to Best Buy 4 times a week.
Finally, math books without any of that base 6 crap in them.
You are absolutely correct! The slacker nomenclature was applied time and time again without just cause.
There are plenty of very hard working people in the workforce right now. Just look at the productivity numbers. Our productivity is so high, that we are only hurting ourselves.
Higher worker productivity increases economic strength at a high price--no new jobs. We are working ourselves right into what analysts call a "Jobless Recovery". That basically means that the economy gets better for everyone but the working stiffs.
Of course, we all know what the baby-boomer execs do. They take credit for the increased productivity as a result of their management skills, and caller us slackers for not increasing productivity more.
> I mean come on this is like saying being overweight is bad, or shooting heroin can cause problems down the road.
What?
you mean they don't just cancel each other out?
Here in the US, they tend not to pay as much as many commercial entities, but the pay isn't that bad, and you're all but guaranteed job security unless you do something really, really stupid.
Same thing though, the old farts are all getting, well, old, and are preparing for retirement. Whee, job openings!
I'm a "GenX'er" (and I hate that term), but things have turned out differently for me. i missed the dot-com boom, I was moving furniture for a living. I chaged careers and started working in IT in 1998, because I was sick of making 20k or less. As a newbie in IT, I made 35k to 40k. Then the stock market fell and everybody started whining. Meanwhile, my income steadily continued to rise. I'm a late bloomer finishing my undergraduate degree in the next year. I'm not worried about finding a job. I'm not worried that I won't be a millionaire by 30. No I have not made any money from the stock boom, and yes I've lost some, but overall things are better for me now that things are "bad". I'm not going to let the doom and gloom of some magazine article stop me from doing what I want to do in life.
Halfway to pension age, she has just $5,000 in a 401(k) and $20,000 in home equity. Ideally, someone her age should have at least $100,000 stashed away.
What rubbish. I would like to see the numbers of people who have over $100K saved by the ripe old age of 32.5. Probably about the same number of people who are still rich using the Forbes philosophy of "buy and hold". Ideally, we would all love to be millionaires by the time we are 40, no, 30! While I would, indeed, recommend saving at least 10% of your pay and not spend it on anything less than a true emergency (after a house is bought), most of the people I know (most of whom make near $100K/year) spend just about every other penny on their families, especially on getting their kids quality education and giving them a quality environment to grow up in. Most of them took over 20-25 years to get to that sort of salary. Few of them got to their age without one or two episodes of work or family related emergencies that required tapping that next egg once or twice. (Unemployment would qualify. It did for me.) All of them worked their collective fannie off. Few of them or their parents read Forbes or any other magazine by and for people with silver spoons in every orifice. Few of them will retire rich, but they might have enough to have some fun for 5-10 years of retirement.
I predict that, since he/she is an uninformed idiot, the author of that article will soon join the unemployed, too. But not the magazine owner. Nosirree, bob. He's some kind of insulated from the economy. That Forbes boy is about a good at giving financial advice (much less political) as the Catholic Church is at giving advice on how to avoid pedaphiles.
Great, this happens just in time for us to be broke when it comes time to start supporting our do-nothing, war-protesting, draft-dodging, Clinton-voting, social security and "drug benifit" grabbing, questionable accounting practicing, baby boomer parents.
We're screwed.
-Peter
they had it easy. They never knew the pain of dealing with the falling value of stock options, not having the smartest car on the block, or falling behind in the gadget race. Maybe we should get a medal or sumthin
It's all very well in practice, but it will never work in theory.
Personally, I think it's good that the "standard of living" is declining, at least in the sense of material possessions. I think Gen Xers got too caught up in material possessions and have lost focus on what's really important. Just my personal opinion.
That said, I have a good job and make a good living. But I've been relatively poor in the not so distant past (living in a run-down studio apartment and barely able to make enough to put food in my mouth).
That was a good experience. I learned to be frugal. Despite an income that could afford me a $30,000 car, instead I drive a 1991 Honda Accord that I bought in cash for $3000 a few years back. I live in a modest apartment. My bills are paid and I'm saving money.
Go back 10 years, and I was $30,000 in debt, had collectors after me, and car within hours of being repossessed. I've been on the other side, and I'll tell you what, a little frugality goes a long way.
I think it's a lesson a good portion of the country could stand to learn. Besides all of this other stuff, I've gained an incredible amount of personal and spiritual (not meaning religious) growth. Anyay, just my humble opinion.
I hate it when everyone seems to try to classify a generation as being wreck or something. Baby Boomers are gunna be hurting cuz dey is no soc security, GenXer's dey be hurting because of the dot bombs. Well, you know what? Not all of us gut SUCKERED by a dot com and them flaunting money. Some of us actually had the smarts to realize it wasn't going to last. Why do people get suckered by pipe dreams? To me, working at a dot com would have made me feel like I was depending on the Lottery for retirement. That's not to say that anyone was wrong for what they did though.
....stuff like that is why they failed. Not all Xer's did this.
I blame it on the genxer dropped out of college that decided he'd start a company (without his degree) and make more money then he'd make as a graduate (like that can really happen) and then decided oh let's have a fully stocked gourmet kitchen for our employee's to use for free. Let's have breaks for as long as you want whenever you want. Let's have utopia. Well, in the situation they were in the set themselves up for failure. Spending money on frivilous stuff for the employee (free gourmet kitchen), not making sure that deadlines were hit, unrealistic business model:
1. Idea
2. ???
3. Profit
While this was going on I was slaving away working in a Community College. I may not have made what the commers were making, but I have now been here long enough that I am vested and every dollar I put into the pension fund is matched by the college. I plan on retiring from here. I don't have a 401k (maybe look into 403b if we every get them), I don' own stock. I would only buy stock if I could afford to loose the money I would invest (I can't, so I don't). I did not let a mortgage company or home builder pressure me into a house I could not afford. What's happened to me? I still have a job, I still have my house (although there are a lot of empties in my neighborhood). Do I want a bigger house? Sure, but I can't afford it. My mission is to try to climb out of debt and try not to go any further in debt. So far I have done ok, but there have been things happening lately....ever have everything in you house or household decide to die or break all at the same time? We were careful though and we intend to not use credit cards for holiday shopping. I hope to have at least 3-4 presents bought next week. As soon as I am out of debt I plan on staying out as much as possible, with exception of maybe a car payment and a house payment. I do not want a 300,000 dollar house (150,000 to 200,000 would be fine). I don't feel my peak earning years have happened just yet (in fact, I will soon be making enough money that I can take care of most of the bills and my wife will work long enough to get our credit cards and some other things paid off. After that, she's being a mom. SO, quit saying I am or most of the people born the year I was (1971) are wrecked. We have plenty of time before we're history.
Gorkman
Please ignore the rant on Forbes. Sorry. (Does he own stock in Forturne?) ps
Go easy on him. He's an OU fan. He doesn't know any better.
because a well educated, well informed citizen doesn't turn as much profit and asks too many questions
Yes the bubble will burst in the housing market.
However in the mean time, my monthly payment GOES somewhere (part to interest (which is TAX free!) and part to equity) AND my rent doesn't raise every year.
And if you aren't going to be in a house for 5 years, DO NOT BUY! I REPEAT, DO NOT BUY!
I have a fixed cost per month. Also, I have a town house well situated close to schools in a pretty good neighborhood. When I go to sell in a few years I will have no problems.
So lets see, instead of paying 1200 for a 1 bdroom apt, I pay 1000 for a 3 level town house.
Hmmmm, do the math. Never mind equity and investment... I get more space for less money. Plus my income keeps rising while my mortgage stays fixed. Sounds like a great deal to me!
Oh, and the reason why I am not paying extra money to bring down the principal: This is the starter home. In 4-5 years when the market drops I will be in a prime position to buy a fat lot of land. All the money that I could have put towards principal will instead be in a REAL investment vehicle (short term, we're talking about 5 years here) which I will then use towards downpayment of the house- getting me a teensy-weensy mortgage.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
"Jessica, an art therapist and professional harpist, has $50,000 in student loans"
An art therapist? Professional harpist? It doesn't take a Nexus-6 to figure out that art therapy isn't the money machine that she thought it would be. Also, I don't really imagine there are too many harp gigs around either except for weddings and classical engagements. It's fine to pursue a dream and another to face reality.
I don't blame anyone for my slackness or the fact that I don't have $100,000 in an IRA by my ripe age of 31. I do blame the government for raiding social security though. So I am a code jockey and doing only mediochre; it beats the stories I hear from my grandfather trying to find work during the depression. Yeah I am having a hard time finding better paying work but still I am doing better than average.
Get over it people and think what it is you need to do and then do it.
For a really good perspective on what is happening with the economy and Gen X (which really extends from 1966 to 1986 approximately - a generation is 20 years not 10) read the book "The Fourth Turning" - it will help the reader to really understand what is currently happening.
Article says for many Gen Xers peak earning years are over. Ok, for the 50 people who earned 200k as a DotCom CTO now tending bar in the Valley, maybe. However, the oldest Gen Xer (going from '66) would now be 36. My understanding of peak earning years was that they always began at age 40-ish, continuing on to retirement.
It might be different in the go-go-go IT industry (where you hear about a lot of coders burning out by then), but nowhere else does this apply.
I certainly do know a number of folks my age (just turned 30, ick) who are in hock with credit card debt, etc.--but our problems are nothing compared to the 50-somethings down the street who've refinanced their houses twice to cover debts and nice cars, etc. I'm guessing Fortune has an older readership, and they're trying to make those folks feel better about themselves.
One neat thing about the article is it does at least admit there won't be Social Security. Would this be a good place to rant about how I'd like the opportunity to invest my quarterly Self-Employment tax payments in government-run, low-fee index funds instead of, you know, somebody in Florida on the premise that that the same will be done for me?
(Disclaimer: own house in one of the last reasonably priced areas of DC metro--bubble's hitting this market as we speak--no debt besides mortgage, drive 1997 Nissan Sentra, run own business after three years of developing it part-time have 401k, ROTH IRA, and SEP IRA currently, just made another contribution to SEP, tend to hang out with Asian immigrants so my savings are comparatively paltry).
Wow, that's some way to measure your life - by the lowest possible standard. "At least I'm not living in a mud hut in Outer Mongolia." Taken to its logical end, even Cracky down at the Port Authority Bus Terminal in New York has it "good." Give me a break.
Maybe we are whiners, but that doesn't mean that our parents our justified in to blowing their savings on globe-trotting and hippie weekend camps - while we bust our asses just to avoid living in a box for our retirement. Don't even get me started on the implications of Enron, WorldCom et. al. They've screwed us royally.
It is not that our lives our so horrible...its just that the older generation is living large and screwing us simultaneously. I think even the Cambodians could see the injustice in that.
It's not a matter of making good, careful choices. You can do everything you are supposed to and still get screwed by incompetent management. Re-read the article.
That's for employers not employees. I've been in the electronics industry since the mid-seventies. In that time there has been no such thing as "corporate loyalty". I remember years ago reading an article stating engineers were expected to change jobs every two years. I think it holds true as that seems the only way to get anywhere in this business. Be fair and do the best work you can where ever you are but don't fall for the fantasy of "corporate loyalty".
Bur always look out for yourself.
You cannot even *BEGIN* to compare this to the Great Depression.
See http://www.korpios.org/resurgent/Timeline.htm
Unemployment in 1933 was 24.9. 24.9 percent!!! GNP dropped 8.5 percent in 1931 and 13.4 in 1932.
Unemployment is 6-7% and our GDP rose by 1.2% last quarter. We are not in any sort of hardship by any means. Hardship is not being able to eat. Not being able to afford a new PS2 is not hardship.
For example, look at the quote "Salesclerks became programmers; coffee slingers morphed into experts in Java (computerese, that is)" So basically the dot-com bubble burst and things are getting back into reality.
And I love this one: "Jessica, an art therapist and professional harpist, has $50,000 in student loans". Hmm, maybe racking up $50,000 in student loans for an unmarketable degree was not a good idea. Who would have thought?
There is a common trend for people in the age bracket of 40-50 to dump on youth. Claim they will never be as good as them etc. Articles like this used to be very common back when us generation Xers where in university. Then people got out of Xers seemed to go one of two ways. Rise to the challenge and do well or fail miserably. Most of the articles concentrated on the people who wheren't doing so well. Don't believe the article. It is based on the false assumption that in 1989 at the end of a boom the statistics should match 2002 in the middle of a recession. Of course Xers are doing worse right now on average. A lot of them lost their jobs and are dragging down the statistics. They will recover and things will return. Don't be brought down by someone in their 50s who claims they did much better as a child. They good old days wheren't. Yeah sure you walked to school uphill both ways...
Our nation is dangerously low on bankruptcy filings. Help out while you still can!!
My sig told me so
Ever hear the story of the grasshoppper and the ant?
The majority of the reason that these people are in trouble is because they stretched themselves beyond their means.
People who had used some forsight could make a killing during the tech boom we recently had, or during the real estate boom following the crash in the late 80s.
There are too many people in their late 20s and early 30s who want to run into buying houses, while at the same time leasing two mid-priced cars and paying for their cell phones and cable modems.
I know way too many people who were quick to move out of their folks' homes as soon as they got a job... then after a couple of years they realize that they've barely breaking even on living costs and have no savings. Anything not in the budget goes on the credit card and takes them years to pay off.
Sorry guys, maybe it's worth a year or two living at home and not being able to have your girlfriend stay over or throw parties on the weekend... but at least you won't be fucked if you lose your job.
The dow realistically will continue to slide until 2012:
0 7/ Charts/SP500/DJ1800Inf_20811.gif
http://www.geocities.com/WallStreet/Exchange/98
Then the boomers will retire, taking up more taxes and providing no output. Then you think things are bad now. Just wait. If you invest now you will have to wait 20-30 years to get your returns back. We are so screwed.
2 years and no mod points. Join reddit. Because openness is good.
-- New End Original
Puhlease... as a newly about to be 39 year old, I want to be counted as Gen X. I'm not a VP or Exec. I certainly don't feel like a baby boomer. I missed doing the free sex and drugs in the 60s, I missed the bad hair and roller discos in the 70s, and justly as a nerd, came out of high school in 1981/2, just in time for the end of Punk. I'm Gen-X. Its an attitutde :-)
Winton.
Adds Bruce Tulgan, a Gen Xer and founder of RainmakerThinking, a consultancy that studies labor trends: "I had a college president say to me, 'I don't know how much longer I can pull this off because people will start to ask, Is it worth this much money to be that much smarter?' "
I would definitely dispute the implication that college makes people smarter, College provides Knowledge and teaches Skills if anything people are dumber after leaving college but they should have learned a few tricks to help them hide the Fact...
As to the actual point of the Article, Economics is based on supply, demand and perception. Since the Eighties the perceived growth has been based on Wishful thinking. The IT bubble was based around companies that had and never could make a profit; IT is here to stay just take ANY office environment once the network goes down, ALL WORK STOPS. Once confidence and reason are restored it will be easier to predict the future but the future is ALWAYS uncertain and is not something someone should gamble with ever, People need to relearn how to plan for an uncertain future rather then depending on Pure Luck.
let's pray that world ends up like Star Trek: Next Generation because every looks kinda wealthy on Earth.
-- ladies and gentlemen we are floating in space!
The first day on my vacation, I woke up. Then I went downtown to look for a job. Then I hung out in front of the drugstore. The second day on my summer vacation, I woke up. Then I went downtown to look for a job. Then I hung out in front of the drugstore. The third day on my summer vacation, I woke up. Then I went downtown to look for a job. Then I got a job, keeping people from hanging out in front of the drugstore. - Cheech & Chong
I feel lucky to live in an era that produced and uses Apache, BIND, gcc, Linux, mySQL, PHP, sendmail, etc. When in American history has there been so many free inventions to use and be thankful for?
This is to say nothing CreativeCommons.org, Project Gutenberg, etc.
And if that doesn't convince you, look at the history of any country under the Soviet heel. We got it made here, folks.
Daniel.
Free software, not Iraq, because Bill Gates is evil & Saddam is just misunderstood.
I'm 30 and drowning in debt, however, I have never lived the high life. I married a woman with a child when I was 21. Then entered college and proceeded to pay for eveything with student loans instead of working full-time so that I could graduate asap. Had three more kids on the way and graduated. Got a decent Engineernig job and moved into IT and got an even better job. I make great money, but you couldn't tell because of the $85,000 student loans (me and wife), $1000 house payment and 4 kids. My wife becaume ill and can't work, so its just my income. Hell, if she could make even $30,000 we'd actually be able to pay the bills! The point is that I'm in the boat they are talking about, but not for the same reasons. And anyone who decides to berate me for having children should ask themsleves who will run the country and take care of us when we get old. If everyone was "smart" enough to not have kids then there would be no future.
As with every generalization, they tend to be grossy overexagerated, but have some grains of truth tucked in there. Most GenXers I know have some things in common with this gestalt picture that the article provides. On the grand scale, I do believe the article is pretty insightful. No one knows what exactly is going to be happening, but they give good reasons and examples and it seems to hold together. What they don't have any opinion on is where this will lead the national economy, and I personally can only think it will be a pretty grim thing...close to the Great Depression if not as bad, though I would love to be proven wrong. =) Though I don't believe all is lost. The article stops short at offering any kind of ideas as to where we go from here, and that's not very constructive in the least. Alot depends on how the GenXer in question sees their situation.
Me? I'm a dot bomb casualty. I went from ISP tech support, to roving infosec software installer/trainer, to high-end VPN design in the space of three years, then was summarily kicked to the curb with about enough money to keep myself around comfortably through 6 months of unemployment. I've got zero credit card debt (mostly because I've never liked borrowing money in the first place) and no student loan debt (thankfully, my mother works for a school). I look at it as if I got taken on a 3 year ride with people who paid for my crap, and the ride came to an end, time to find something else to do. =)
I don't save alot, because I don't make alot. I do consulting work with my father, because he's too busy to do it all himself. I live in the nice apartment that's attatched to my father's office (he used to live here until he got remarried, and the rent is VERY inexpensive), and the rent and utilities get paid with a few hundred bucks every couple-few weeks depending on the vagaries of the small-scale consulting biz. I don't live large because I've never really lived large. My one real vice, video games, gets some money, with plenty left over for food and the like. My gf is a grad student finishing up her doctorate, so she's got more than a few loans, and that's made us consider any wedding plans alot more carefully, but it isn't going to be overwhelming. No, it certainly won't be a walk in the park, but I've got plenty of reason to believe that things are going to be better. =)
.. it has little to do with the long-term financial health of an entire generation. What has to be accepted by everyone is a fundamental slowdown in Western civilization (particularly in the US and Canada).
For about 100 years there was a continuous and (relatively) steady increase in the "quality of life" here, including longer life spans, higher incomes, more liesure time, etc. This is coming to a head now, with the peak earning years of the Baby Boomers. This is the group of people that will go down in history as the luckiest and most previleged ever.
What has happened is that during the earning time of the Boomers, a time when society as a whole should have been saving up, we have instead been spending. Now we have trillions in shared debt that has to be paid off eventually. Going forward from here, the cost to support our society is going up (because the average person is getting older), so the people who drive the society (the next generation) are going to receive less.
I don't see our society doing drastic action like cutting support to the Boomers at this time: they are still the most powerful generation and will stop any attempt to lessen their priveledge. Today's (and tomorrows) taxpayers will support the Boomers into old age, and I believe that they will bleed the system dry (pulling out far more than the next generations can put in).
If you think that things are rough out there now, you ain't seen nothin' yet!
BTW, the severity of this crunch in the future will depend on how quickly the Boomers are cut off. Like I said, I (pessimistically) believe that it won't be allowed to happen until the bottom has already completely fallen out. It will take a very strong and brave administration to be able to accomplish anything else.
Look at the tomato! Isn't it sad? He can't dance! Poor tomato!
You arn't the only one who was surprised to be told he is Gen-X. (1968)
Not everyone deserves a 320i
Viva Thrift!
Work hard, save, leave the big screen IQ sucker at Best BUY. Don't dump your money in the next big stock. Drive a beater for a few years. Cover your debts. Moonlight at something you enjoy. Second think the bigger house. Re-use, re-build, re-cycle. Wait to get the toy you reaaaaaaaaaaally want. Build a nest egg. Enjoy it. Spend it all before you die.
Si vis pacem, para bellum! For evil to succeed good men need only do nothing!
A year ago I was not a Gen-Xer, now I am? I'm confused. I was born in 1972.
I looked but am unable to find the original article, but the title sticks out in my head, and it's a classic. I remember reading this in their print edition, waaay back in 1999:
"Stock Market 'best since 1928', say analysts"
Synergy is your friend
IANABB ( I am not a bond broker) but if you live in one of the many states in the US where there is a state tax then Municipal bonds are a good investment. Most are tax free and much safer than the stock market. bonds.yahoo.com If you want to retire early and have regular livable tax free income then a Bond Ladder is very handy. That and owning your own home and you are set.
Next year (2003) it's predicted that we'll hit the "Hubbert" peak for global world oil production. Hubbert predicted the US would hit this same peak in the 70's for US oil production. Does anyone remember the seventies? Think the economy is bad now, when the world starts sliding off this peak you're going to see some real sparks fly. Generation X -- hold onto your butts this ride is going to be bumpy. Cheer up-- G.W. has promised a show along with the ride! http://www.oilcrisis.com
I used to wonder what was so holy about a silent night, now I have a child.
"Although Steve worked to help pay for college, five years after graduation he has $40,000 of undergraduate debt to payoff; Jessica, an art therapist and professionalh arpist, has $50,000 in student loans."
I predict job growth for "art therapists" and harpists will remain flat the next few years. But I've been known to be wrong.
It might be a "recession" for *most* folks, but for techies it is an outright "depression". Techies are living in the same situation that our grandparents used to tell us long annoying stories about.
Basic "service" jobs (drivers, cash register operaters) are all there is out there right now if one is job hunting. These activities keep a company afloat. Programmers don't, except for a few to fix occasional high-priority bugs. In the short run, you don't need techies. Most techies do things that are "change oriented". For example, upgrading the network, upgrading desktop OS's, making the ultimate Management Info System to track widgets, etc. When things slow, companies PULL THE PLUG on these expansion or "investment" endevours and keep things as-is. AS-IS == Slim_techy_jobs
Intellectual-intensive jobs tend to be like this. It is the bone-head jobs of physically moving thing A to box B that stay afloat during slow times because those are the basal metabolism of a company. The brain shuts down most higher functions.
Ironic how the bone-head jobs have the most job security these days.
Table-ized A.I.
Your parents can blow their savings if they want. It's not your damn money you greedy a$$.
Take some responsibility yourself, and choose wisely.
Couldn't have said it better....
Grandpa had a highschool education (I think ... maybe not.) and was in debt, running a small business. When the depression ended, his peak earning years were definitely behind him. I don't think it ever occurred to him that he'd been set up for failure, or that he had failed.
This is pretty silly stuff, I think. Everyone has some rough patches, and for some of us they last pretty long. The big oil price bust in the early 80's was hard on the folks in Alaska and Texas. The generation which fought WWI was called ``the lost generation'' (This was the backgroung for Hemmingway's ``Big, something-hearted River''). If you ever find a generation which was NOT set up for failure in some way, let us know.
See what I've been reading.
1) I live in the NYC metro area (NJ actually) ... uhm ... rather large company ( > 40,000 employees)
...
:)
.... Some of us had to pay for our own college (and I'm glad I'm not swimming in loan debt.... My "state university" education is just as good as any big-name school, really. NJ has one of the best state higher-ed programs in the country.... )
2) I'm a Unix sysadmin for a
3) My salary is ~$65k
4) I'm 23
Now, I moved out of mom & dad's house this year into an apartment. Buying all the furniture, etc. that I needed leaves me about $4k behind the 8-ball. But it's sitting on a 0% APR bank card, so who cares? I'm paying $1000/mo on it, so it'll be a bad memory soon enough
I also owe another $10k on my car. (Nothing fancy, it's a 2000 Grand Am). That's at a 1.9% APR. I'd be better off putting the car payments into a CD or somesuch -- I'd _make_ money that way.
Debt isn't wholly a bad thing. If managed correctly, it can allow you to purchase things and spread the payments out, and come out ahead. The car is a perfect example. If I blew the $20k for the car right up front, boom, it's paid for, and that's that. But I'm out $20k. This way, if I pay them $500/mo and put some more away in a high-interest savings account or CD or somesuch, I'll _make_ money on the interest alone. Basically, it's like _they_ loaned _me_ the money.
Sure, the interest isn't that much, but hey, it's something
Having said all that, and knowing that I'm doing OK, I'm scared sh_tless. My job is secure, I don't worry about that. My company's having some record quarters recently. (No, we're not in the sin business -- we're an honest, legit company)
Anyway, what worries me are the 3 things that are looming:
1) An engagement ring;
2) A wedding;
3) A house after said wedding.
Heh. Wish I had more put away
Let's home my schoolteacher girlfriend can put some of her money away... but we all know what schoolteachers make!
--NBVB
Oh wait though, by your definition, everyone over 40 is a greedy miser that does nothing but steal from you...
Please. Get off your a$$ and make your own living.
In my case, my parents basically made sure I had a job since I was 11, starting with a paper route. I had to learn in that time, how to budget my money and not to overspend or I had to wait until it was time to go collecting and then I had to figure out what I owed back to the newspaper and what I got to keep. While they helped a lot with the accounting, it did teach me early on how things work and how if you want something (Back then it was a Super Nintendo), you have to save for it and only buy it when you have enough money saved up so that you can buy it and still have a bit left over in case of a crisis.
In high school I got a job at a grocery store and also got a bank account. Now I had a little more spending power but by this time, I knew how to be conservative with my money and to keep a close eye on my accounts, using software to track my spending and keep track of checks I had written.
By the time I got a credit card, I knew well how to live within my means. I made sure to ALWAYS pay off the card in full each month unless it was an absolute emergency expenditure that I couldn't cover with one months pay. I also make sure not to have more than 2 credit cards and to try to never use more than one each month. I also make sure I can pay them in full each time unless its an extreme situation.
On top of that, I also set a "Paranoia level" on my Savings account. What that means is I choose an amount, in my case $5000 (started at $500 when I first got my bank account all those years ago) and I go VERY conservative on spending if I go below that until I've built it back up to above that level. So far that has saved me from every major disaster (car breaking down expensively, sudden big bill or need to buy something expensive like furniture) I've had in the 10 years I've had a bank account. It also reduces the need to use the credit card to cover sudden needs, as I do not like spending money I don't have at all.
Because of that, and driving a modest car ('95 Grand AM) and eeking out the most time I can from my computer (using a 5 year old Mac G3) rather than blowing it all on the latest and greatest every 6-12 months, I have managed to get a $120K home just this June and maintain over 5k in savings since then. I am going to try to raise that up to 10K soon as well as start cautiously getting into investing (maybe should have sooner but after the latest rounds of disasters in the financial world, glad I waited).
The main thing is to learn how to budget, keep a paranoia level of cash in the bank and don't spend money you don't have when you can avoid it (i.e. no credit card debt or loans unless necessary).
If you do that, you should be able to weather all but armageddon or the next great plague.
--Won't that be grand? Computers and the programs will start thinking and the people will stop. - Dr. Walter Gibbs
Not to sound like an ass, but this sort of story makes me realize what a good situation I'm in.
I lost 15K in the roaring 90s, most of what I had (I graduated college in Dec 1998). But this makes me realize how far ahead of the curve I am at my age (24)...
You will always spend the money you make. Now how you do that is entirely up to you.
;-)) You have to have perserverence and make sacrafices.
My advice is this...
1.) Always take the free money. ie invest at least as much as your employer matches. I personally put %20 of my income into various funds. I started this process as soon as I started my current job. THe money has never been there as far as I am concerned, but it is there and the amount that I put in (myself) is still less than the amount that is there due to the match, even in this down economy. I am somewhat happy to see the economy at it's current level because I am buying now and I can't touch the goods for 32 years. Growth will return, even if it isn't soon.
2.) Live within your means. This was the hardest for me to learn, and I only started doing it because I let my wife have the checkbook. We don't live without frills, we drive a somewhat nice new car, not extravagent (it was under 30K). We try not to eat out all the time (which for many years was one of our largest expenditures of spending money). Also I try not to keep up with the Jones. My computer is modest (sub-GHZ) but I have 4 of them, almost all put together because people wanted to get rid of parts because they purchased bigger and better systems. I don't want to be on the bleeding edge of technology because that is where all the overhead is.
3. Buy a home. Don't flush money down the drain. You get absoluting nothing but use of the roof that way. There is no excuse (save bad credit) that you should not be able to get into something right now. (unless you live in the Bay area then you hosed) Intrest rates are so low it's almost sick, it won't last. GO now.
4. Make smart financial decisions. Think for a couple seconds before you spend money. This is not the era where ti grows on trees (webs either). Chances are that you will NOT become wealthy over night (and if I figure it out I won
t be telling you how
5. Keep a positive attitude. No one wants to hire a whiner.
6. Reinvest in your education. The time to go to school is in a recession.
(/local/home/curiosity)-#who -u|grep thecat|cut -c 44-49|xargs kill -9
What? You mean I don't have a chance to end up as rich and miserable as my parents? Oh the outrage and angst, my peak earning years are behind me, Wo is us! I hate to break it to everyone, but maybe this isn't such a bad thing? My parents are upper middle class, I'd say their "peak earning years" are behind them and what are they spending their money on? It sure ain't weed anymore. Nope, try "Precious Moments" and stuff for their grandchildren. I realize the Baby Boom generation has a real need to believe that their children are miserable because we can't be just like them, but that's all this is. Narcissistic, pathetic, old Boomers who have never quite figured out that we aren't as interested as they are in their consumerized McWorld. Does anyone really buy this tripe? I think I might just be able to keep myself from ordering that Super-sized Combo meal, thank you very much. And maybe I'll just go to the library or take a walk instead of out to the mall. The best things in life really are free folks. And our society really needs to rediscover that fact.
[-)
What would Richard Feynman do, if he were here right now? He'd do some math and he'd follow through!
I was right up with you until you said your were 16...
Hot pants! When I was 16 I was listening to the Smiths (and they were before my time in the way that the 70's were before Riley's time) and being stupid (being a male, that's kind of a given)
In college I pulled the fabulous equation "reap the benefits NOW of my future success... I'll charge it!"
(since then I've made good on my promise and now live a responsible financial life)
Wow... when did you have your first existential crisis... at the ripe old age of 3?
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
Those with some acumen will realize that there is this thing called the ripple effect. We are not living in an isolated generation bubble and the events of now and in the future will have positive and negative ramifications on generations before and afterwards.
Other than common sense, the referenced article makes the strongest point. Gen-X is reaching its prime spending years. So, Gen-X finds it self in a financial crisis and by default the money that pumps the machine isn't at the throughput it is expected to be. Your 'I was born in 1976' claim is thin ice to be standing on when the job that was going to be created for you becomes vapor.
Got my MSEE, went into Internet company, several friends became millionaires, started my own company, company (and industry) tanked, $30K cc debt, paid it off on tail end of dot-bomb employment, now work for company that has been around as long as I have making median for my education.
Well, during that time I made videos seen by millions, got my picture in hundreds of newspapers and magazines, got to work with the ultra-cool Slashdot guys and a Net superstar who was on David Letteman, videos were in NY MOMA exhibit, flew around the country on crazy business deals that mainly never happened, friend of mine purchased warship, acquired stomach acid problem from crazy business deals, multicasted video over satellites (twice now), and got married in castle.
Now I just need to chill out at my 9-5 job... whew! At least I have something to tell my (future) children about.
between what the article states and my life. being on the tail end of the baby boom generation is the same damn thing.
A house for my parents was about 2 years salary, a car was about 6 months and food was a MINOR part of their monthly bill. My house cost me almost 5 years salary, I live in Cal, bay area, my car runs almost 3/4ths a years salary, and food is a HUGE CHUNK of my budget not to mention the monthly bills eat up a FAR greater percentage than our parents payed, We are screwed and It WAS NOT BY the .com bubble bursting trust me, we have been systematically screwed by the federal government over the last 20 years. The only way to get ahead is to become a corporation and avoid paying your fair share of taxes, and USE the system to your benefit and everyone elses detriment.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Can we get just a little more self-absorbed? Fine. Wow, you're 26 or younger. Best years of your life are behind you now! Why don't you just throw in the towel and drop out of life?
If you actually believe that crap, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Get a grip, get a clue and get a friggin' life. Want a wake up call? Go ask someone from a third-world country what their prospects are like. Then realize how well you're really doing.
Look people, you believed them when 3 years ago when they told you you were going to be the richest generation ever ... that you were 'born at the right time' ... that things were great and only getting better.
We bought it all and they were WRONG!
Now they're telling you you're irrepairably screwed ... that you don't stand a chance ... that you were doomed from the start...
What makes you think they're getting it right this time?
Here's a little secret: THEY AREN'T. THEY ARE WRONG AGAIN!
I am now learning like crazy.
First thing I learned: Do not confuse your job with how you create your wealth.
Check out my diary to see what I am changing in my life.
<RANT>
The article says something about the average college loan of a baby boomer at about $2000, now it's $17000. About the price of a small new car in the 70's and now. Big deal.
The baby boomers didn't start off with the inflated salaries of the dot-com era. So salaries will finally get in line with what you can actually do. Big deal.
The relatively high unemployement rate of 6% is nowhere near the rate of the 70's (closer to 8%).
Finally for those of you who don't have a job. You already have one: it's called finding a new job. Treat it with the seriousness of a real job and you will find one. Maybe not in the geographic area of your choice or in the field of your choice, but to summarize Who Moved the Cheese, there are good jobs out there, you have to find them. Don't ask where, that's your job, remember?
</RANT>
The article mentioned that we should have all been set for life by the dot.com era. What kind of blinded logic is that? I guess all of the GenX social workers, construction laborers, accountants, bank tellers, etc. dropped everything and became programmers? I suppose the boomers temporarily filled in those positions until they came back? Newsflash. The majority of jobs are not tech jobs. The dot.com boom and bust had no direct affect to most of us.
However, many of us did go to college because it was a basic requirement to get a decent job. The Boomers got the same jobs without going to college. Here's the difference - we have to pay $50,000 up front to enter the job market where the Boomers got in for free. As a result, we can't save early enough for interest to compound and work in our favor. It used to be that parents paid for their child's college education but the Boomers have figured out that divorce works for them at the cost of their children's future irrevocably damaged. I am not knocking divorce. Some people genuinely need it. It is, however, a symptom of some sort of selfishness (i.e. adultery, substance abuse, gambling, spousal abuse, etc.) by making yourself feel good - however temporary - at the expense of others.
I'm a 33 year old GenXer with two kids. I have no credit card debt. My wife drives a '93 Lumina and I an '89 Civic. We have massive payments on student loans. We have a mortgage on a $60,000 condo. There was no freakin' way we could have saved $100,000 by now. She's a teacher and I'm a CAD technician. I am sick of people on this site telling us it's our fault we won't have enough for retirement. It's not. The rules have changed and we're trying to adapt to them the best we can.
Meanwhile the Boomers are threatening to break into the Social Security "lockbox". Our money, not theirs. Theirs is already guaranteed. Boomers aren't called the "Me" Generation for nothing.
Ach, I'm rambling and venting and none of it matters.
The starting pay absolutely blows. If I were to have 100k "stashed-away" by the time I am 32, I would have to save 1/4 of my earnings for 10 years. Now, explain to me how you are supposed to: buy a house, pay for your car, keep out of debt, and still fucking have 100k saved by the time you are 30s?
... the norm for most entry-level jobs. Do not be loyal to an employer who pays you so little -- my initial mistake at the time -- but rather, get the experience you need, then find a proper paying job with someone willing to pay you appropriately).
If only someone had sat down and explained to me how things work when I was in my twenties.
You need to sit down and understand how compound interst works. Seriously. You need to run the numbers, until you understand exactly how modest savings over time, invested wisely, will compound into wealth by the time you hit retirement. Calculate the numbers for yourself over 10 years, over 20 years, over 30 years.
One of the surprises you will find is that, if you start saving $100/month at 20, you will live better than someone who starts saving $1,000/month at 30. Time is the most important ingredient in saving, and if you are only 24, you still have a good amount of time on your side.
Yes, your beginning salary sucks, and yes, you should probably be putting as much extra cash away now as you can reasonably afford. My first job paid only $20,000, so little that the minimum payment on my college debts exceeded my takehome pay. I obvously only worked that job for as long as I needed to find a much better one
And this brings me to my second point: you will not be making such miserable wages for the next 6 years. Put away as much as you can afford now, because time will grow that money remarkably over the next decade, and time is the most potent ingredient in the mixture (assuming, of course, you are earning interest that exceeds inflation. Modest interest will do, you do not need to be making 10% annual returns, and as I pointed out, $100 put away today will do more for your retirement than $1,000 put away ten years from now).
Compound interest is something everyone who participates in a capitalist economy should have an intimate understanding of. The only good debt 'interest' is real-estate interest, because of the tax savings it creates (which reduces the real interst to a very small amount) and the equity in your (likely) improving property value, plus the fact that if you weren't paying it you'd be paying rent and flushing your entire monthly payment down the drain with no benefit and no asset to show for it, and you have to live somewhere.
Other than your morgage, you want to be on the positive side of the compound interest equation, and that means saving and investing, even modestly, while avoiding debt otherwise. If you are on the positive side of that equation and do nothing, you will eventually become wealthy. If you are on the negative side of that equation, there is a good chance you will become impoverished despite working your ass off.
When I was in my twenties I thought I understood compound interest because I'd had a couple of business and economic classes, and because I knew what the words meant. It wasn't until I ran the numbers, and pondered what the results meant (like the surprising result I mention above) that I realized how little I understood the concept's implications in our everyday lives, much less its impact on our retirement. I wish to hell I'd known 10 years ago what I know now, and can only reiterate my advice: run the numbers, study and ponder the result. Understand what the implications are, and start saving and investing, even modestly, now.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
They're all peddling the same brand of crap...
What am I talking about? This: get married, whether you want to or not. You may not make enough money to get a home loan, but you probably make half enough.
And if not, consider a Heinleinesque "line marriage" or something like that. Get enough people, and the group can afford it. Then you can all start building equity instead of being bled with rent.
Marriage: A ridiculous nihilistic individual-destroying cultish idea? Or a historically proven strategy for pooling resources?
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Generation X is just one of many labels created by marketing minds to try to group individuals for the purpose of selling them things. Because those marketers called Generation X-ers refused to buy product based on their X-treme ads, they must be poor failures. Nice attempt to cover their own failure. The "Baby Boom generation" didn't consist entirely of hippies and yuppies. Neither does "Generation X" only consist of wanna-be millionaires who will never do more than struggle. Too much generalization.
I was taking one day at a time, but then several days got together and ambushed me. (from a Rhymes with Orange comic)
Why are Americans in debt more than they were thirty years ago and not saving money? Household debt has gone from 65% of post-tax income to over 100% in the past thirty years and saving rates have dropped. Well, one reason is that the average inflation-adjusted hourly wage is below what it was thirty years ago. You can see the raw data at the government's BLS web site, or check out LBO's nice graphs of the same data. This is a very important piece of economic information, but one rarely, if ever, mentioned in the news. The fact that Americans are making less money per hour (inflation-adjusted) than they were thirty years ago sheds a lot of light on why savings are down and debt is up - they are making less money and thus have less to save and thus by food and clothes and so forth on credit cards.
Some people, for whatever reasons, would rather stick to their own conclusions about how people are indulging themselves too much and this will cause them repercussions. This seems to be a tenet of Christian thought, and since Christianity dominates American society so heavily perhaps that's why people prefer their "faith" view over the scientific and logical conclusions one would draw from economic data. Or perhaps, as I said before, they and their circle are all white collar Java professionals and they apply what happened to them as what's happening to the Gen X janitor who sweeps up late at night in their offices, however falsely. Even in this case I'd disagree, as Microsoft, IBM, Intel etc. bankrolled the ITAA to modify laws such as the H1-B cap, FLSA overtime provisions, section 1706 IRS tax codes etc., in an attempt to lower IT wages. An attempt which was largely successful. Of course, that just played a part in lower IT wages and higher unemployment, the bigger tidal wave of the economy helped lower wages as well. But again, to hear some people talk about it, it sounds like "the economy did it" is like we're all farmers and our crops were flooded and people say "it was just the weather". The economic system is not some foreign, alien force we have no control of, like the weather. The millions the ITAA spent on lobbying efforts, plus larger scale forces manipulating the economy are what caused this. All I hear here are a bunch of people whose solutions to everything is to tighten their belts (and increase their skill level so they'll be more valuable specialists). It sounds a lot more meek and submissive than what the dock workers in San Francisco have been doing - men who have more secure jobs and are paid more than a lot of IT techies, and who probably used to beat these meek little techies asses and could this day still probably beat the meek, submissive techies asses. Quite often reading comments here, I get disgusted by the attitude of many of the posters. The important thing is, those of us who think as we (or I) do have to band together and push things forward, as these toadies never will. Efforts are already being made - Washtech/CWA, the Programmers Guild and so forth, they just need more people on board to start reaching critical mass. We can't wait around for the pansies, we have to get out there and get things moving ourselves.
i swear. these idiots are in the stewpot because they jumped in for a swim.
i remember all kinds of feel-good advice floating around when i was younger -- "make sure you do what you love in your life -- everything will fall in place!" idiot school counselors that are still stuck in the 60s.
yeah, sure. what you want to do has no effect on what other people are willing to pay you to do.
pffft.
Hey I got laid off a few years ago too, but doesn anyone else notice a *slight* disconnect between "No generation since the Depression has been set up for failure like this," and one of their 28-year-old hard luck cases, who is "looking at jobs that pay around $50,000, 40% below the salary he was collecting at Claimshop."
Oh, the humanity! $50,000 a year! However will he afford Gucci and Prada on such a pittance? $50,000 a year ain't filthy rich, but it sure as HELL ain't Depression-level poverty; I personally would be thrilled to get a raise that boosted me to $50,000 a year.
Once they find college-educated 30-year-olds forced to nourish themselves Grapes-of-Wrath-style with breast milk from healthier women, then I'll pay attention to the whining. Why do these stupid stories keep popping up?
-brennan
...not to mention a waste of time.
Rod Tidwell (Cuba Gooding, Jr. in 'Jerry McGuire') said it best: "It's all about the kwan."
Kwan is money, love, happiness and something else but the point is if you use an economic yardstick to measure your success you'll frequently come up short. There are a lot of good people with good tech ideas now the problem is the systems of exchange & commerce in the States are corrupt & broken and need to be fixed.
Anybody born between the mid 60's and 70's has endured several Republican administrations including the current one which is illegitimate. Whenever a GOP is elected surpluses becomes defecits & unemployment skyrockets almost every time.
Many geeks that have gotten burned will recover and start their own businesses or syndicates with other geeks. This shitty economy will not last forever and neither will rampant cyncism.
-nw
I'm 23 (almost 24) didn't go to college (but gots the certs) I rarely use my credit cards so I have no real debt (unless you count the $130 bill on my amex for dsl) I also own my car (no loans to pay off on it) granted it's not a porshe 911, but my 4 door chevy gets me from work and back just fine. I also have a job as a graphic designer for a real estate company, for which I was hired in april 2001 (right after the people I filled in for got layed off)
Where am I going with this?
People make good and bad decisions, I didn't have a "good" paying job until just last year and being that I am debt free - my chances of saving money and planning for the future is pretty good. I also plan on buying a house by early next year.
All in all it depends on the person on whether or not they will suceed or not. I hate to sound corny but it's true - "when given lemons make lemonaid"
Ave Molech Setting
(Porgie and Bess for you technical folks... Tenors, Soprano's.. pay attention) Oh.. I got plenty of nuthin And nuthin's plenty for me I got no house I got no car I got no.. misery.. The folks with plenty of plenty They got a lock on they door Fraid somebody gonna go and try and rob'em While they goin out to make some more.. What for? [-)
What would Richard Feynman do, if he were here right now? He'd do some math and he'd follow through!
Every article has a slightly different definition for Gen X. The way I look at it, if the baby boomers get 20 years (1945-1965), Xer's should at least get about the same, but I think a prerequisite though is to have some cultural consciousness of the 80's. 1966-1980 is a good range. Generation Y comes next from 1981-1995. Generation D (the Digital generation) comes after the Internet really took off.
YMMV
Buried in college and credit card debt, a lot of them won't be able to catch up as they approach their prime spending years.
This sounds more like an excuse. Running up credit card debit is careless and stupid in any economy. If the NASDAQ and Dow are way up, you're still capable of screwing yourself.
I find it silly that ppl can say that their home is an investment and that they're not going to buy one since the value will only increase X amount in 10 years instead of Y. Sure not all houses will be worth $20000 more in five years, but they wont go down in price either, unless you live on some toxic waste dump.
A house is your home. It's YOURS, not the landlords, it's where you wake up, go to bed, sleep, eat, relax-essentially you LIVE in a home. You can paint the walls purple, the ceiling green, and put in orange carpet if you want. You have a backyard to sit outside on a summer day.
I grew up on a farm where all the land within 2 miles of our HOME (not investment) was ours. Maybe because I grew up there and we owned (not invested) in all that land I view a house==home and != investment instead of ppl that grew up in a 1400 sq feet home, err..sorry, investment.
When you were growing up in the 60's, did you have:
A dishwasher?
DVD player?
VCR?
TV in every room?
Two cars less than 7 years old?
Air conditioning?
Cable/Digital Cable?
A computer?
Internet Access?
the latest gaming console, mebbe even two?
Microwave?
Your own room?
Your lawn mowed by a landscaper?
A cell phone?
A big screen tv?
Your own stereo system?
A home theater system?
Regardless of your personal opinion of the value of these items, I would say a majority of middle class homes have 80% of the things on this list, and THAT is why there are more two family households. Think about it, if you lived like your parents, you would have no A/C, be washing your dishes every night, driving the equivalent of a hyundai accent, climbing on the roof to fix that damn antenna to get reception constantly, at 100k miles the car would be almost worthless, etc. but... your monthly bills would be.. Phone (dont forget you can only call people who use the same phone company as you), electric, mortgage, mebbe a car payment and insurance. People are working harder to maintain a better lifestyle... The good old days were never as good as they seemed. Do you really think your father was better off driving to work in 90+ temps in the summer with no A/C in his car? Or your mom was better off having to make a production out of dinner and doing laundry every night? Do you think your parents went out to eat as often as you do? Went out to bars, clubs, movies as often as you do? Dont kid yourself, we're doing pretty damn good for ourselves. The real problem is that everyone feels they NEED everything, and thats where the debt problem comes in, and they only see the things they dont have (BMW, central air, Plasma TV). I can live my grandparents lifestyle without a problem. I believe anyone can.
Me, I don't what generation I'm in, I was born in the last 60s. I am self made, not college educated (well, not totally true, I have taken some courses, and read used textbooks on my own time, but I don't anyone would consider that "college"), and have been supporting myself since age 16 (no parents - long story). I watched my upper-crust classmates go from high school to college, thinking that in the early 1990s, it would just be as good as the Reagan era. Uh uh. They fall down go boom.
I was doing retail jobs to support myself since I was a teen, and by the time they graduated college, I was already in retail management. Yes, to most people, that's like being proud you are a sewer worker, but I was already married with a kid when my buddies were graduating from a 4-year degree. The economy under the Bush Era back then sucked, too. My family was really poor! Most of my buddies went to live with their parents, or retreated to graduate studies to buy themselves another 4 years of living off of their parent's income (not that it's a bad thing, many of them are now very successful). I caught the wave of the tech boom in 1995 or so, and rode that thing until about 2000, when I started studying the stock market's history and realized, "Oh shit! This looks familiar." I cashed in most of my stocks, bought a house, paid off all debts, and now, one big bubble burst later, I have a fairly steady job as a QA Admin, with two Saturns in my driveway, some technical letters after my name, and I take a lot of time to learn new technologies all the time. Is my job 100% secure? No, no one's is, and so I am always thinking a few months down the road. My job is more secure than most, because I work for a large corp with a lot of positive cash flow from steady revenues and a ton of new projects that change the way people communicate with each other. But, yes, it could all come crashing down, maybe because some student in Norway has just invented the mother of all killer apps that will replace what my company does in the next two years, or some CEO runs off with all the money to some undisclosed South American country. That's why I keep learning new things.
Now, some of my younger pals went for the VC avenue, taking those six figure salaries to work for some startup on ghost cash. They ramped up the bills, got nice mansions, sporty cars, and so on. Then it all crashed around them. Heavy in debt, nothing in the bank, and no "what-if" plans. Some of them never learned work or social networking skills, because they could afford to be arrogant, and do what they pleased. I preferred to take the modest path that would not earn me as much money, but teach me the most skills. I am still working, they are still looking. They have outdated skills, or worse, skills that are now saturated in the job market. "Got an MCSE, huh? From Windows NT 4? Listen, I have a stack of resumes from people who just got an MCSE from XP that will work for minimum wage, why should I even consider you?"
There will be more ups and more downs in the future. These waves have come and gone since the 1800s and will continue to do so until the end of civilized humanity. You have to study the patterns, learn from other's mistakes, and move on. Don't live in the past.
I couldn't agree more to that last bit - complaining about how rough this generation has it is terribly arrogant.
Having said that, I must include that my friends and co-workers, most from this arbitrarily-defined 'generation', don't complain about how rough they have it, and how the 'baby-boomers wrecked it for us'. Most of that is a small collective in California and Washington State, amplified beyond all balance by magazines and newspapers looking to increase circulation. The majority of people seem to believe that they still hold the keys to their own destiny, regardless of which named generation they belong to. To assume otherwise is a disservice to those who have let a drive other than pure greed guide their decisions.
We may well be part of a definable sociological cluster, but that doesn't mean that what applies to one fragment applies to all.
Ok, so things may not be as rosy as they were four years ago. Some people may be out of work. Some of us who were going to retire at 40 may have to wait until they're 50 or 60.
Why should we retire anyway? I find my working life fulfilling and enjoyable, and intend to do it as long as I still enjoy it. Nobody in my family has ever truly retired, so that's not really what I'm looking forward to from life.
As for the lack of opportunity, make your own. I'm holding down a good job right now, making plans for my own business, and have just started writing a book. Even if I lose my job tomorrow, I am determined that I will land on my feet.
If you want opportunity, don't wait around for it, make it! If we really are the best educated generation in history, then let's use that brainpower to build a better world, not gripe about how things aren't so great right now.
Now get off your asses and get to work!
It's good to use your head, but not as a battering ram.
Oh yeah, before I forget, stop killing the old people right before I get old. Thanks.
if you bought a house in the last 2 years, you're going to look worse than this guy after the bubble bursts in the housing market.
... hold off, and let the bubble burst.
houses arent that great of investments, and unless you are sure you are going to be in it for 5-10 years, you will get screwed.
That reasoning is only valid for investment property, not the home you live in. Everyone has to live somewhere, so either you own a house and get a tax break, and have some equity in it, or you are flushing a rent check down the toilet every month. Period.
Even if the property value went to zero (to use an extreme, absurd example), as long as it is fit for you to live on, you are still ahead owning as opposed to buying for two reasons:
1) you still get the tax break, which is vastly more than you get flushing that rent check down the drain every month
2) your property value can rebound from zero to some positive amount, while the asset value of the rent you paid will always and forever remain zero, regardless.
Of course, even the shittiest properties in the shittiest areas, assuming they haven't been contaminated chemically or otherwise and thus made uninhabitable, have a value far greater than zero. Having attended numerous tax foreclosure auctions I can tell you the value of said properties is usually surprisingly greater than zero.
Even in the worst case scenerio, where you own a house in a neighborhood that is going down hill, even if you sell at a loss, you will almost always be ahead of where you would have been had you merely rented for the same period of time.
However, if you are looking to buy a second house as an investment, then I agree absolutely with everything you've said
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
It does piss anybody off to shell out 7.5% of my first 80K or something (plus another 7.5% hidden) to pay for somebody who rigged the political system the right way, and to realise that he wouldnt see any of this money when the time comes.. So he has to shell out another 10% for my own personal Social Security..
<^>_<(ô ô)>_<^>
A-HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!
Okay, now that I'm done with that . . . listen, y'all; if you really thought you could spend the rest of your life getting paid $100K+/yr for doing a tenth of the work I do, you're fools. Really. Stop crying in your beer and face the fact that you were acting foolishly. I don't get paid that much, but I actually have a little money in savings, and the only thing I owe on is a new car (and a used Altima, at that, so it's not much!) and quite frankly, I smirked behind the backs of people ditching school for Dotcoms back in the boom days. I knew it couldn't last, and I knew I'd have to tough it out (tough for me because I'm a lousy student
Quitcherbitchin and start pulling your weight.
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
For Fsksakes people, nobody over 40 is "stealing" your social security money!
THEY PAID FOR IT UP FRONT!
The fscking governments in the US and Canada have been raiding the funds for DECADES to plump up their agenda's and are busy now blaming it on the boomers.
Don't fall for the blatent bullcrap the bureaucrats are pumping out.
They're the ones who stole ALL our Social Security benefits!
while its true these are hard times, and the situation will likely deteriorate more still. this generation is armes with information, communication and processing power far in advance of any before. The dot com boom was the abuse/misunderstanding of all this newly aquired power. Now this short dark age is our backlash, fear of our own abuse. A loss of confidence in our own creativity and cerainly a bit of confusion as to what our real goals(dreams) are. Im sure we'll come back to find our dreams noble and our selfs capable. Then to build the sort of futures we dream of but cynically doubt will ever exist...
I have to admit that things look pretty bad right now but I am still optimistic. Life is hard, no doubt about it. You have to work your ass off and every strategy that you try is not going to be successful but I'm not willing to give up just yet.
The recession in '92 taught me some valuable lessons and this latest bust has reinforced those lessons and validated my strategies. I'm glad that these events happened while I am still relatively young.
1. Work for a company that is making money (as an employee or a businessman). If the company is not making money, find one that is. Don't wait, it will only get worse.
2. If the company isn't making money and your department isn't making the company money, your days are numbered. Get out.
3. Live lean. Keep your fixed expenses as low as possible.
4. Avoid debt at all cost for non-appreciating assets. If it is going to be worth less after you buy it, then pay cash. If you can't pay cash then do without it.
5. Use credit cards for convenience only and always pay them off every month.
6. Keep a war chest. You must have 1 year's expenses in cash if you are going to have any options in a pinch. There is nothing worse than having all of your options limited because you need a paycheck in 2 weeks to cover your rent.
7. When times are good, save your money. It won't stay that way. It NEVER does. The business cycle isn't going anywhere.
The biggest mistake that I saw people make during the last boom was planning as if everything would stay optimum forever. They took shortcuts, they loaded up on debt and expenses so when things took a downturn, the house of cards came falling down. If you can't be smart then you have to be tough.
Things seemed simpler in the past. Most of our parents probably worked for the same company for 30 years and retired with a pension that can sustain them for the remainder of their lives. The price that they paid was fewer choices in life. They couldn't start their own company and work out of their house. They didn't have portable pension plans that allowed them to change jobs or even careers. Many of them didn't have the opportunity to get a college education because there were not as many grant and student load programs. Given the choice, I would rather have things the way that they are now. More choices and thus more opportunity.
You
Me? I'm 23. For the mathmatically challenged, that means I was born in 1979. A "post Generation X" or "Generation Y". I have a brother and a sister who are older, and fit into the silly little "Generation X" period. Neither my brother, my sister nor I fit this Generation X stereotypical "The world is at fault" rubbish that slacker Generation X kids like to spout as a defence of their inability to be sensible.
You're whining. You're trying to blame others for your own failure. You got yourself in shit. You. No one else. Get your ass off the couch, sort yourself out, and stop whining. End of story.
First we were "Slackers" who were good for nothing and completely disolutioned.
Then we were the "Uberkind" that could do no wrong, defied the establishment, and were successfull in spite of "how the previous generations had set us up".
and now...
We are doomed to a fate of financial ruin...so bottomless the pit into which we have fallen because of the ".com bust".
Bah! I am pretty sure that we...(if you can call it a "we"...I have never been all that sure about clasifications) will continue to do what we have always done about the "world" arround us....Give it the Finger and get on with getting on.
dimes
...for "weird."
... technologies that may make our political system obsolete, just as mass-produced guns made feudalism obsolete.
...when the full set of artificial organs are available? ...when anyone can afford the boost into orbit? ...when computers stop sucking and start working?
For all the advances in science and technology, we're still basically living the same lifestyle of the 50's. Stuff works a little better, people live a little longer, we have nicer toys, some irrelevant fashions continued to evolve, that's it. We still drive cars at about the same speed, not many people live to 100 years old, hardly anybody goes to space, and most things are still mass-produced in big, expensive factories.
When today's toddlers grow up, some seriously weird technologies are going to start kicking in
What happens when factories are no longer necessary to provide complex goods?
I have to admit that things look pretty bad right now but I am still optimistic. Life is hard, no doubt about it. You have to work your ass off and every strategy that you try is not going to be successful but I'm not willing to give up just yet.
The recession in '92 taught me some valuable lessons and this latest bust has reinforced those lessons and validated my strategies. I'm glad that these events happened while I am still relatively young.
1. Work for a company that is making money (as an employee or a businessman). If the company is not making money, find one that is. Don't wait, it will only get worse.
2. If the company isn't making money and your department isn't making the company money, your days are numbered. Get out.
3. Live lean. Keep your fixed expenses as low as possible.
4. Avoid debt at all cost for non-appreciating assets. If it is going to be worth less after you buy it, then pay cash. If you can't pay cash then do without it.
5. Use credit cards for convenience only and always pay them off every month.
6. Keep a war chest. You must have 1 year's expenses in cash if you are going to have any options in a pinch. There is nothing worse than having all of your options limited because you need a paycheck in 2 weeks to cover your rent.
7. When times are good, save your money. It won't stay that way. It NEVER does. The business cycle isn't going anywhere.
The biggest mistake that I saw people make during the last boom was planning as if everything would stay optimum forever. They took shortcuts, they loaded up on debt and expenses so when things took a downturn, the house of cards came falling down. If you can't be smart then you have to be tough.
Things seemed simpler in the past. Most of our parents probably worked for the same company for 30 years and retired with a pension that can sustain them for the remainder of their lives. The price that they paid was fewer choices in life. They couldn't start their own company and work out of their house. They didn't have portable pension plans that allowed them to change jobs or even careers. Many of them didn't have the opportunity to get a college education because there were not as many grant and student load programs. Given the choice, I would rather have things the way that they are now. More choices and thus more opportunity.
I still think that we will end up being better off than our parents in the long run.
By downloading pirated music via p2p and playing copied games on my modded X-Box
I can relate because I'm financially in about the same boat. Little retirement funds, house but little equity (yet), and little confidence that those greedy boomers will leave anything for the rest of us. Don't get me started about our recent tax cuts (not to be US centric, or anything). I'm not whining (or a 'winger' to quote our friend from down under), but I am hopping mad about all the greed.
Fortunately, I have about 20 years experience in the right technologies, and my earning potential is excellent even if it isn't as good recently. I'm well aware that the squeeze is a lot tighter for some, but it is also clear that the outlook is bleakest if you follow the conventional wisdom. Find a way to express your creativity and take care of yourself. Reduce your needs while you take the road less travelled. I'm constantly seeing people who did this, and have been richly rewarded. Not always in money, but they have what they need.
If things keep going the way they have, I'll still be working at 70 to pay the bills and I won't be able to afford to retire, but that's fine with me as long as I can still do it, and I am doing something that interests me. I'm not that worried.
A guy I worked with who is a bit older was trying to convince me that we are in for a long term downturn when the boomers start to retire in large numbers during the next 10-20 years. The argument is that there is a big loss of experience, and there just aren't enough coming up behind to take up the slack. I say hogwash, let them go. Sure, you are going to lose some very talented people, but I think the generations that are coming on are a lot more clueful about the important shifts that technology and the new social networks made possible. If Gates retired now, we would all be a lot better off, and that goes for most of the leadership of large corperations.
He may have a point about the other end of the size scale, and I think there will be tremendous opportinity in small to mid-sized businesses. IMHO, the way out is to start now to empower people working in these organization to use their vision to keep up with all the shifts. The best business people will do this no matter what generation they come from, and the ones that don't will mostly fail and be replaced by new businesses with vision long before they get a chance to retire.
My claim is that the dotcom bust isn't what it first appears, a conventional bubble (although, it was that too). You have to look more closely at the survivors, and you have to be careful about what conclusions you draw. Sure, Gates and company are still making a fortune, but it is on a dead business model. IBM was making a fortune still when I was in school on the same dead business model and it didn't save them. If I'd learned Cobol (actually, I did, but I knew not to go that way) I'd have had a good year or two leading up to Y2K and I'd be desperately trying to catch up now.
It is an open future, and those that understand the importance of creativity and its relationship to freedom are going to shape it.
I've always liked this phrase, and I think it applies here: "When the going gets strange, the wierd turn pro". I think I've just found something to put in my sig.
This just makes me think of these two people that live down the street from us. Let me paint you a picture: My wife is in pharmacy school, and I'm in IT. We are doing ok covering our bills, but we still have some nasty debt due to basic living expenses and school. It's ok though, as we try to be conservative and are holding out until she graduates and get's the insanely good wages pharmacists earn (90K right out of school is not hard to find, average is 75K). Down the street live another couple, the wife of which is in pharmacy school, and the husband trying to get in but can't pass the classes. Anyway, he has no job, she has no job. Yet she constantly whines of the demands of life. My wife meanwhile takes the same courses and works 15 hours a week. Their parents pay for everything for them. On top of that, and this takes the cake, they have no life insurance. So when he hurt his back recently, they went down to the government to get medicare. This means that I am having to pay taxes to support those two morons while they f' off whatever money they have. Yet they still complain about having to pay taxes, bills, etc. This whole generation is just f'd up. I really fear for when the majority of it has control of government. Then you can honestly say "we're screwed."
From what read, the fact we are having to accept the lower positions is part of the reason we are going to be upside down in the finances. Not that we wont..
It wasnt that we arent willing to do what is needed or taking responsiblity, it was more of a statement of the long term ramifications of the situation we are dealing with.
If the article was meant to say we are all babies and wont grow up, then forget my orginal comment.
So drop the attitudes people..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Wow!! A doomsday message on slashdot!! This storey can stand right beside the whacko homeless fool with matted hair and and one sneaker on the corner holding up 'the world is coming to an end!' sign.
Grow up slashdot.
I work for in international company. roughtly 1/2 the people staffed here are from the company's 'mother land' in Europe.
Working for this company, I have learned several things about the world, and reflexively, the US. See we (Americans) have a system where it pays to work hard and get ahead. In other countries, you work hard, get ahead, and make very little back. The 85% tax rate ensures you don't see much ROI. Now, what they do get is a workign social security system where your retirement is completely paid by the government.
I have a friend here who is from that mother land, and he soo wants to be american so he can start his own company and experience the reward for his hard work. (AKA the American Dream) So I'm going to have to say: If you want to go to work, do the minimum as to not get fired, and have a good retirement, leave the US. If you want to work hard and get ahead, then stay. After listening to my friend, I have decided to start my own company. Ironically, this foreigner is helping me start it, pro-bono, because I don't know how.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
Or does your sig refer to something other than the long shoreman situation happening on the US west coast?
XML causes global warming.
"Likewise, if you know what you want to study, a strong program in that field is more important than bargain hunting. If your plans include graduate school, the name on your BS or BA can make a lot of difference."
No, it won't. When you have 5 years of experience, your BS will be little more than a notch in your belt ("Do you have BS, yes, NEXT!).
Now, certainly graduate schools matter, but most graduate schools aren't worth the money anyway except for 1% of the population.
Expensive college is a sucker bet. You're betting $100K that on 100 to 1 odds that you'll do a lot better than someone else. Frankly, you'll do better if you go to the track and bet on ponies.
Go to a state school (the one in your state), and save your money.
I graduated with no debt and it has given me significant financial freedom over the years.
-begin rant-
I've never been so angry after reading Slashdot comments. I can't believe the number of people (both Generation Xers and people of other ages) who are sitting here and calling Generation Xers a bunch of whiners. Where the hell do you get off condemning an entire age group based on some stupid article written for people in the top 1% of income in the US.
From various threads above:
All I ever se when I read an article about them is a bunch of whiny bitches that think everything should be handed to them on a silver platter complaining about "corporate america" (whoever that is) conspiring to steal from them, take away their rights, and in general make their life miserable. Score 4: Interesting.
What the fuck? You moderators find it interesting to stereotype an entire age group?
I think they live in a perpetual state of 'recapturing their youth.' Score 5: Interesting.
Yeah, we sure do, every one of us who was born between 1965 and 1975.
Gen X is the first instant gratification generation, much to their own dismay. Credit card and other short term debt is killing this generation, as well as an affliction for absurd consumption. Score 5: Interesting.
I don't know about the rest of the people from my generation, but the only times in my life when I had short term credit card debt was when I was unemployed. So fuckin sue me for needing to pay the rent.
Unemployment in 1933 was 24.9. 24.9 percent!!! GNP dropped 8.5 percent in 1931 and 13.4 in 1932.
Unemployment is 6-7% and our GDP rose by 1.2% last quarter. We are not in any sort of hardship by any means. Hardship is not being able to eat. Not being able to afford a new PS2 is not hardship. Score 5: Interesting.
Right. So because fewer people are unemployed now than were in the Great Depression, that means that the people who nonetheless are unemployed right now are not really suffering. I guess the logic is that they have more ability to mooch off of their friends or something, because the friends are less likely to be unemployed.
I could go on, but I have work to do. Please moderate this as flamebait, and go piss off.
-end rant-
"If I could live to be several hundred
I could take a walk and really wander, really wonder."
We make our money from two sources - the fee we charge the store/bar/restaurant/whatever (merchant in our terms), and from people who are late on paying their credit card bills. If you pay your bills on time before interest starts running (we offer 40 days of interest free credit) and use your card a lot, you'll save money. Paying with your credit card also has the added bonus that stolen or copied cards will not empty your bank account. If you use your card as a consumer loan - you'll end up spending quite a bit of money on making us ever more profitable.
Stop the brainwash
For a different perspective, look up "The Fourth Turning", a book which claims to be able to track a four-generation cycle of general attitudes. According to this book, Gen X makes a lot of sense. It's worth checking out from the libe.
Who doesn't own a bar????
Please.
Pick a better sample. That story should have been called "Generation Whiners (the ones we interviewed)"
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
I think many of you are missing the larger point of this article by focusing on your own personal situations.
The dot-com bubble was an abberation obscuring longer-term fundamental shifts in the economy that will screw us in the end, the piece argues, talking about reduced savings rates, social security, higher education costs.
A few other trends come to mind:
1. The information economy (not just based on technology but media, finance and entertainment as well) tends to reward the most successful disproportionately: the CEO makes 500 times what the worker does, Britney sells 9 million CDs while bar bands have a hard time clearing $300 a night.
2. There are more people competing for the same number of resorces. This means housing prices are higher, college tuition is going through the roof, and more college-educated people are competing for jobs. Labor in general becomes less valuable.
3. Reduced barriers to trade, aka "globalism." If you write code, you'll soon be competing for work with people in India, while even telemarkters are increasingly based offshore.
So congratulations, pat yourself on the back that you have little credit card debt and a steady job. But taken as a group, the macroeconomic picture is not nearly as rosy for us as for our parents.
A New York Life Investment Management survey of high-net-worth Gen Xers found that the respondents thought they needed $2 million to retire. Not even close, says Beverly Moore, who conducted the study. A Gen Xer who makes $100,000 and wants to retire at 59 needs $7.3 million net of taxes to sustain that lifestyle. (That means saving $2,600 a month and assumes an 8% return.)
Someone help me understand why those numbers don't seem to work. If someone has $2mil saved with an 8% return, they're pulling $160,000 per year pre-taxes or about $105,000 net. $7.3 mil should give you over $380,000 after tax income. Even if we correct for 5% inflation, it only takes $5 mil in savings to keep an income of $100k.
It just seems that these figures, like every other number in the article, were set artificially high.
Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
But the service sector as a whole has suddenly gotten a hell of a lot more competent.
Damn straight.
As one who was born in 1967 (making me a Gen X'er, to my honest surprise) that our generation is wrecked is Bullcrap.
Taking out the parentheses there:
As one who was born in 1967 that our generation is wrecked is Bullcrap.
This sentence no verb. (or subject) If you want to know why I think that Gen-Xers are failing in life, it's because they can't for the life of them spit out a coherent sentence.
You want to study engineering, go for it. Want to study something professional, great! Want to study things that are practical, great.
The white collar world is still nice, and growth will resume, the economy is rebounding. After the election, everyone will stop "talking down the economy" and we'll probably avoid a double-dip recession. Sure things aren't as good now as they were 3 years ago, but they are better than they were 5, 8, or 10 years ago.
The biggest problem in Gen. X was learning our parent's bullshit mistakes. The Babyboomers got everything.
People saw that educated people have money, and confused cause and effect. Rich people sent kids to play in Ivy League schools before running the family business. Bullshit education is bullshit.
Born rich? Go to Harvard to drink $8 cups of coffees and study the "classics." Sorry, but that's a luxury for the idle rich. Everyone else? Work hard, get an education to advance your career, and work harder. Invest money, and live within your means.
Want to spend $100k studying garbage? If you parents have millions? Great. Otherwise, save enough money to do so on your own. Have at least 3 kids (the population aging, let's all do our part here to fix the situation, don't be selfish and hoard money with no offspring), and work hard. In "retirement" go to the local university and amuse yourself.
Just make sure you save enough to provide your kids with the means to a better life.
Sorry, those born with a silver spoon get the perks, such is life. Instead of whining that you don't get it, provide it to your kids. That SHOULD be the goal.
Sorry, when I watched my father's friends (all doctors) keeping their $2 million homes and pulling their kids out of private school and making them go to state schools, I was ill. Your FIRST priority should be giving your kids EVERY opportunity possible. Your personal luxury is secondary.
Sure, public schooling and state schools are PERFECTLY acceptable. However, if your choice is giving your children a "better" option or buying a new Lexus? Go get a Ford Taurus and deal.
Work hard, better your life, give your kids whatever advantages you can.
I have $10k in credit card debt from starting my business, it will be paid off by my wedding next summer. The fiancee racked up some in school. We're both working, paying off the debts, and trying to save money for a house AND start Roth IRAs (after the credit cards are paid off). We balance transfer our creditcards every 6 months to get 0%-3% interest.
We'll get a nice home in 5 years, and hopefully have 4 kids. They'll all get great schooling, and we'll live nicely. If my business takes off, we'll have a life of luxury. If we don't? We'll have a reasonable home. Either way we'll be happy with our family and extended family.
Alex
My biggest concern if I end up packing groceries is health insurance.
Night stockers usually get health insurance. The hours suck a lot more, though.
thank god i was born in 1977!
"The direction controls are the same in Nethack as they are in vi." "Yeah, I hardly ever die in vi anymore."
...is for Generation ICUP.
--- What
Generation X will get screwed royally by Social Security. They get to pay now, but they probably won't get to collect later -- at least not until they are 90 years old! Anyone in that generation who voted for Gore ought to be forced to wear a dunce cap. At least Bush is trying to move toward privatization, which genXers need badly.
I watch Brit Hume on Fox News
Ha! I am immune to the doubling of taxes. ~50% of my income already goes to taxes in one form or another.
The median US family in the US pays about 40% of their income to taxes. nifty graphs. (note: I didn't check out the credibility of the people hosting this report, but it matches what I have read in known reputable sources, so I will link it)
Maybe "taxes would have to be doubled refers to the social security taxes? That would be roughly a 33% increase in total taxes taking the median tax burden to something just over 50%.
BZZT! WRONG.
I was laid off from my first job after eight months. I was unemployed for some time thereafter. Don't give me this "it was harder for us" crap - it won't wash.
I simply didn't spend money I didn't have. My first car was an old beater. My stereo was the same boombox I was given as a present when I entered college. I didn't buy things I couldn't write a check for. It was YEARS before I got my first credit card.
I simply lived within my means - something YOU obviously cannot understand.
www.eFax.com are spammers
Generation X has already come to terms with a less than friendly socio-political environment. I think we all understood what we are up against before these "doomsday" articles came out in the early nineties. Many of us came out of college in the middle of a recession and faced economic challenges from the start. We know what we are up against, and I think we know that our success isn't going to be given to us on a silver plater.
Of course, this article also gives us none of the credit and all of the blame for our participation in the recent Internet/technology boom and bust. The author of this article gives the impression that we were just swept up on the ride. I would argue that, for the most part, our generation made the ride.
... but we can kick all your asses! We're still young, but old enough to be crafty, so watch your mouths you old farts (and that goes for you young punks, too.)
On a related note, I read somewhere back that if when the SS was initiated, if the gov't had saved the tax revenue for TWO YEARS and invested the money, the SS system would be in surplus right now...
I ran into a little business difficulty but my wife and I just plan on selling our Aspen and Miami houses for retirement.
Sorry I have to post anonymously, the Feds have my computer and I don't remember my password
-- Ken Lay
Bottom line: If a 30 year old couple has a large house, two cars, and cable T.V. they can cut expenses. Regarding your point about wage stagnation you aren't factoring in a greatly REDUCED inflation rate brought about by competition. This has had a net positive affect on buying power. Having grown up in the 70's I can't see anyone can seriously argue that food, clothes, and electronics are less affordable today as compared to then. Regarding those dock workers they are thugs, if corp. played the same games then they would be accused of being monopoly.
Unrealistic goals. What the hell is an art therapist? What kind of degree did you get if all you can be out of college is an advertising copywriter(whatever that is, and what's wrong with it anyways)? Money is always the bottom line; don't get a college degree in the study that you love, get it in something that will sustain you while you pursue the study that you love. But money is the bottom line. Money is what pays the bills, feeds you, and keeps a roof over your head. If you want to be rich and successful, master the most marketable skills and use some prudent career management, and work like hell to climb your way up the pay scale. Dont' expect it to just fall in your lap just because you have a degree. Your degree will get you a job, but that's the first step. The next step is making something out of yourself.
That article is a complete load of crap on many, many levels. But it did seem to indicate that perhaps there's a market for career counselors...
"On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog!" - a dog
And I really hate the fact that even if I sell my house for exactly what I paid for it, I will still come out at least 15% ahead.
Err, well, you must live in a different world than me. If I sell the house for exactly what I paid for it,
Real estate and houses in general are skyrocketing. Everyone seems to need to feel that what they're investing in is the "next big thing"; at current that's real estate (remember the 2000 dot-com's?). You are exactly right in all of your comments, but I think that the intent of the original poster's downplaying the investment that houses are is that the cost of a house today (especially in some areas) is *MUCH* more than it was a few years ago, and much more than it will be in a few years.
--- What
My story in brief: At this point in my life (b. 1969), I'm doing very well and in a stable situation. I'm earning a very comfortable salary for this area, have a wife and child, live well within my means. My house is appropriately priced for the salary I earn, I have no credit debt to speak of other than my mortgage. My parents didn't give me a financial boost, as they were always middle class and lived in a poor city (Flint, MI).
However, my job could evaporate and I'd be fine because of a diverse skillset which I'm always improving and savings. I'm well insured so if something happens to me my family will be fine. It's all a matter of having good survival skills. I have friends in the same age group that are doing just as well. As I look around those that are doing badly, they've almost always made poor choices. The themes are similar:
- They overextended themselves. It doesn't matter if it's credit card debt or college loans. When you take on debt you have to realistically think about how you're going to pay it back.
- Trusted their employer. The age of Corporate Loyalty has been over with for 30 years. Get over it. And the personal word of a company officer is wasted breath.
- Trusted the government to rescue them. The best you can hope for is that the government will get out of your way and let you do your business.
- Planned their careers poorly. The IT industry is cyclical, always has been. Over the long curve it's grown since the 50's, but it has downtimes. The only defense against cycles is diversification, and if you're a 1-trick pony (open source or proprietary) you're vulnerable.
- Stayed in school too long. There is a point at which it's better to bail from school, get into an entry-level job, and start clawing your way up than to stay in school and hope for a better job later. Thinking that "the market is really good, but if I just take another 18 months to finish this 4-year degree I'll be all set with a better salary" is just stupid, especially if you're piling up debt to do it (see previous point).
To the rest of my generation: take care of your own business and stop yer whining. Please. I'm sick of hearing about it.To be honest, the only thing I resent the Boomers for is eating up Social Security at an alarming rate. Every time I look at my paycheck stub I resent the elderly and their voting block -- and despise GenX's fake politics (all talk and slack, no votes). For now I pay the tax, expect no returns, and vote for anyone willing to change the system to my pesonal benefit.
Get off my lawn.
I graduated in 1981 and my skill set is more current.
Is it possible...just possible that you are a bit clueless when it comes to making career decisions?
The generation is not defined as guys that thought they could learn HTML and have it all by the time they were 25. Where did you get that from?
Anonymous posts are filtered.
There will be another tax revolt in this country, should something silly like that happen. There is no hope for massive tax increases (which a 33% increase in total taxes certainly would be!).
And I'll be on the front line, tossing tea into the harbor...
If baby boomers are 1946 - 1964, and Gen X are 1966 - 1975. What does that make me (born 1965?)
I don't get what so many people's issues are. I easily have over $100K in net worth and I'm 32.
I have over $100K alone in home equity from the difference between my house value and my remaining mortgage, and I have over $50K in Canadian RRSP savings. Yet I'm married, have a young child and a wife who hasn't worked in 2.5yrs.
It all comes down to 2 things: minimize costs and interest-bearing expenses, and increase net income.
pi=sigma{n:0-infinity}[(1/16)^n][(4/(8n+1))-(2/(8n +4))-(1/ (8n+5))-(1/(8n+6))]
More people producing and consuming products creates resources, read Julian Simon, commodity prices are dropping labor prices are increasing. Sorry its a fact. Reduced trade barriers increases competition and decreases price. Do you thing paying $4000 for a PC is a good thing?
That you pay $1,200 USD for a single bedroom appt? Where I am, $700 US rents you a house (4 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms) next to the university.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
like any other product. it was like this ritual that you must go to in order to be considered to be part of the non-trailer trash society. People go to college not to learn, but to live like a child for a little bit longer. When magazines like PlayBoy and Maxim are regularly publishing articles about which schools are the biggest drinking school you've got to stop and wonder if maybe people don't really take school that seriously.
The only thing about this is that it hurts lower education. A High school education should not be about preparing you for college, it should be about giving you an education that you can use in Real Life. To get a job that is crappy, but it should give you the skills to be able to get any crappy job you want. You can then work your way up from there, or go and get a higher education from college or from a trade school.
You've right, college is not for everyone, but I feel that my generation was the first in which everyone was expected to goto college. No real reason other then to go. Oh, and pay huge amounts of money in order to do it.
Except that saying "you will not see" social security is speculation on future events. Now maybe if you know where I can get a crystal ball as functional as yours, I can dabble in the market and not have to worry about social security in the future?
Your analysis fails to support the assertion that those who are receiving social security now have not made payments into the system in the past. Without such an assertion, your argument is merely pessimism-- although a little bit of mathematical modeling can go a long way in describing the effects of the COLA changes that happened in the 50's, and how the changes in population affect the fund's liquidity, since social security money is not just sitting in a vault somewhere).
If you read a little of the history of social security, you'll find that the program has been withholding income from wage-earners since 1935, so it is unlikely that you'll find someone receiving a payment who did not make a payment (especially since the system is predicated on giving you back money based on those payments). So if there's a problem, it's that our parents didn't have enough children (revenues may not meet expenses for SS), and if we want to correct this, we'll have to have a lot more children (I say this as a 30-something). How you get from this to "rig[ging] the political system" is beyond me.
I do not have a signature
Can you imagine driving your (due to be paid off in 1995) BMW home from your job as a DEC VAX System Analyst to the Condo you'll be working for the rest of your life to pay off, grabbing a California Cooler from the fridge to go with the sushi you got from the nearest Japanese place, and watching MTV (some things havent changed in 20 yrs) for a while before spending the rest of the evening playing PACMAN while listening to Depeche Mode CDs, until you get a message on your answering machine that says "wanna do some coke" or some such nonsense?
And it WAS hell
"dope will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no dope"
I always thought I was in Gen-X. Being born in 1979 and all. Generation Y? I once heard someone call it the Nintendo generation also :)
Flame suit on here, because this certainly isn't true of everyone, but people on /. tend to flame first and think later...
/., is an extremely vocal majority of the pool of tech workers who only had jobs because of the bubble. In the peak of the internet craze, the quality of your average tech worker was in the toilet. These coffee-slingers-come-Java-developers were still only really qualified for coffee slinging. Every joe-blow who sent out a resume because they read HTML For Dummies wasn't a qualified web developer. As we all saw, every tech visionary wasn't a qualified CTO. There were an order of magnitude more unqualified people in high paying positions than there were qualified people.
There was a certain size population of well-off, well-paid tech workers in existance well before the dot-com explosion. Tech work at that point took a reasonable amount of experience and skill. Not necessarily formal education, but skill sets were generally acceptable, and people were well paid.
I don't think the number of people in those positions is any lower now than it was pre-bubble. In fact, I think the number is quite a bit bigger. There are hundreds of thousands of tech workers right now who are not feeling the pinch of a "depression" or "recession".
What you see, particularly on places like
When the bubble burst, there were a lot of people who thought that a position they once had was still owed to them because of their "experience" and "history". But, the fact is that when push comes to shove, they didn't have real marketable skills. Anyone who has hired anyone in the last year or two has seen that -- 100 B.S. resumes come over your desk for every qualified one, and for the most part those qualified people are not having any problem finding jobs.
Now, again, before people start to flame like crazy, thats not true of everyone. People who were truely talented web developers, for example, are still having a hard time. Companies can't easily pick the gems out of the rest of the dirt, and some of the people who really are qualified aren't going a good job networking with people who know that, or selling themselves. But most of my friends who have lost their jobs in the last two years and haven't been able to find anything, honestly aren't as qualified as they think they are. One or two are, but they are in the vast minority.
Thats the real shock that most people are having -- that they really aren't as good as they and others spent four years telling them. They don't understand that you 99% of people can't be a senior anything with just two years of experience... They still are shooting way too high in their job search, and aren't realizing that there are people out there who are looking (and finding with little trouble) who *are* qualified.
Bone head jobs have the most job security because they aren't filled with people who think they are more important than they are.
My sentiments exactly. From the perspective of Fortune magazine, we're failing to buy into their incredibly narrow definitions of success. I'm overeducated and underemployed by CHOICE - I make about $24,000 a year, in NYC no less, but by making some wise lifestyle choices, I'm living a much happier life than those who are trying to build their life around the Fortune magazine model. What are my age cohorts supposed to be making at my age, according to Forbes & Co.? $40/hr? I suggest that my fellow Gen-Xers play basketball instead of golf - if this saves us $1000 each per year, after allowing for taxes, that's over 30 more hours we have to spend with our friends money well "spent". Support local artists at $5-10 a show rather than going to see some $45 arena show, and you might actually see some talent.
:)
Unfortunately, the effect of this is that we might start thinking for ourselves, and this is the last thing Fortune wants us to do - we might start realizing that economic indicators like the GDP don't actually measure economic health for normal people, and we might not act in a way that allows them to continue with their unsustainable worldview.
This article sums up my life well - the person featured in the article is a real person, according to my similarly employed housemate, and a friend of hers. That's because we have time to make friends with interesting people, like Onion staff writers, because we're not networking at your boring parties
that's interesting. i never knew *why* it was called generation x... what came before the "Baby Boomer" Generation? or was that the first generation to bother naming themselves? I've never heard anyone mention any names for anything earlier than the baby boomers. Also, it seems weird to say that a generation lasts for 20 years. I mean, I was born in 1979 so depending on who I go with here i'm in the same generation as someone born in 1999 and what could I possible have in common with them that someone 5 years older than me wouldn't? Seems to me it should be 10 years or something. By the time you're old enough to start gaining an identity of your own there should be a new generation marker for it.
We are the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no great war, or great depression Our great war is a spiritual war. Our great depression is our lives. We've all been raised by television to believe that one day we'll all be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars -- but we won't. And we're learning slowly that fact. And we're very, very pissed off.
-- Tyler Durden
The subject is just my meta-comment about the idea that slashdotters are of one mind on most things. In this case, personal responsibility is the "groupthink" that is going on. Actually, I'm pretty impressed by it.
I don't know about elsewhere, but in Canada, the baby boomers got $1 in services for every 70 cents in tax, whereas people now get about 70 cents in services for every dollar in tax (approximate #'s, can't remember exactly).
So in some cases, it actually is our money.
Some of it, yes. But some of it is coming from social security, which we have no choice but to pay into now, despite the fact that we're unlikely to ever get anything back out of it.
I guess they mean since this one .
If you sit in your parent's basement moaning about how you can't afford Starbucks anymore, you deserve to fail. Or you could be the next "Greatest Generation," who make anything that the current genX has to "overcome" look like a tough mosh pit.
---
But who voted for them?
They may be stealing it, but it is the older generation (more prone to voting) who are getting rich, and the upcoming generation has to pay for it. Sad but true.
This is an example of democracy as the worst form of government (except, of course, for all the others)
As one of the people interviewed for the article, I should point out that editorial changes were made to strip out any and all "positive" details and over emphasized the plight of this "Generation-X".
/. comments on this already make clear not everyone in this age group is failing. Good decisions lead to better outcomes than bad decisions, that and random chance is what determines where anyone ends up.
I know this because the author called about two weeks ago to reconfirm my details and read aloud the appropriate story section. Then printed version comes out and what do I see, the wording has been changed subtly (and deletions made) to imply everything is far worse off.
As the
- AC
I am glad to see all the people who have taken the time to save and scrimp to buy a house and a modest car. At the time you came up with that plan I cam up with a different one.
I sat down and asked myself "If everything went to sh$t over night what would be the one thing I was invested in that would save my ass." watching the nightly news that night I had my answer.
Guns, lots of guns and ammo, Their are two things that retain wealth. Gold and guns, and guns luckly can help you acquire even more wealth. So as you sit in your warm cozy homes being proud of yourselves for investing wisely to make a better safe haven for yourselves as the world spirals into the next dark age remember this. We are out in the dark watching you, and we are much better armed than you dare dream.
AK-47: $600
1000 round of ammo: $200
Never having to worry about an economic downturn again: Priceless
"... For everything else their is armed insurection..."
Papa Legba come and open the gate
So, how did this all happen? I meet a woman (now my wife) that taught me not to spend all my paycheck and to save some money. I still have all the toys I need (ham radio and computers) but now I have my own place (and garage!) to play with them in.
Moral: Get a good woman that will ride you ass about saving money and investing in the future and you just might have a future in which you can enjoy life and help out others.
-- I have a private email server in my basement.
You mean the guy whose friends laughed at him for staying with his (somewhat) underepaid, safe & boring IT job here in the south, while they were all heading for the west coast & the Next Big Dot Com? The guy who doesn't use credit cards anyway? The guy who defines being able to afford something as saving up the money to buy it, not "can I make the payments?" The guy who didn't buy a huge house, but instead bought a nice house which is Quite Large Enough, Thank You? The guy who drives 5+ year old used cars he pays cash for?
:)
Doing fine, thanks for asking.
"An unarmed man can only flee from evil, and evil is not overcome by fleeing from it." Col. Jeff Cooper
bratgrrrllll... thats a moving average of those signing up during a defined time period. what's the cumulative? about 20%, -20 year highs. You were torchin' a schpleef during math class, rememeber? i still wuv you though.. whats on teevee tonite? :-)
-anon
I managed to miss most of this because I bought into ESR's propaganda about the open source business model and the imminent ascendance of Linux. So instead of getting my MCSE and an Oracle certification, I dived into Linux system administration and Perl- and PHP-based web development. Consequently, while my friends were making $100k+, I was averaging half that through the 90's, taking the work I wanted to do instead of slinging C++ and VB writing Windows apps.
Of course, my $100k+ friends are now making what I was, and I'm only down a few thousand a year from my peak pay in the late 90's. Not that I don't occasionally wish I had gone for the big bucks during the boom, but I know myself well enough to know I would have squandered most of what I would have earned, just like my friends did.
So in the end, thanks to Linux, it worked out about even for me. Except that my total debt load is now about $14k, and more than a few of my friends are into six digits.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
hope i die before i get old
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
You are so right about this. Calling this time another Great Depression is like calling a headache a tumor. It's not a tumor. (AS)
Too many people like to spend money they don't have. Like a friend of mine who just bought a new car. She has a tight budget and a 6yo daughter and rents an apartment - and that was before the car. She could have bought one used 3-5 years old and saved over 60%.
And then there are those who are wise to borrowing money, but instead they spend their whole paycheck as soon as they get it. Like my mother-in-law, who has what she calls "entertainment expenses." This translates to 5 new dvds and a PlayStation game with every paycheck. Then there is also the AOL. She is thinking about getting cable. She is planning to get XBox and PS2. She found out her Social Security benefits was going to be $500/mo and started cursing the government. Anytime there is something she wants, she puts it on layaway. If there is something she needs, she waits until payday because she has no more money left. She rents an apartment too.
Don't even get me started on the idea of credit cards.
I just don't think most people in the US have a concept of money. I don't consider paying a mortgage as "owning" a house. It is better characterized without the "n": you are "owing" a house. A 30-year loan will easily make you pay 2.5x the price of the house. I'd rather own 2.5 houses thank you very much. If a ten year loan costs too much per month, buy a cheaper house.
Yeah, the standard of living may decrease, but those who know how to manage their money will be the first, if not the only, to recover.
TodayTM BillyJoelTM GoogleTMd for StitchTMes due to WindowsTM while RollerbladeTMing with an AppleTM and a PopsicleTM
Google provides. I leave it as an exercise to the reader to do the homework.
ac
b. 1970 and in the same situation. Graduated from an excellent private university with a degree in Mechanical Engineering (Washington University), wife has two undergraduate degrees, a masters and is finishing her doctorate from Stanford. We founded a Linux based company in Puerto Rico, hired people, fired people. We lost money, acquired debt, but kept up the effort. We are just hanging on at the moment, working hard, but it seems like the economy/climate is a bit immature right now. We are in flux, technologies aren't settling down. I like what IBM is doing with Linux. Sun is starting to get it.
Perhaps in 5 more years I won't have to sound so much like a Jehovah's Witness (have you seen this literature, Linux can save you) going door to door evangelizing about Linux and the benefits of Open Source. It's tough, but things are turning around.
So here we are two highly educated hard working people who BELIEVE in what they do. And you know what THAT could be the difference between us and our parents' generation. From what I see in my peers, the so called Generation X is really fired by passion and belief... perhaps a more spiritually connected generation. We do things for vocation not money.
And yet, we feel left out in much the same way as the a non-popular kid in high school sometimes wishes he/she was part of the in-clique. We lament our lack of savings, smaller earning power, and extra debt... but you know what? We are happier than our parents' generation, less beholden, less trapped in bad marriages, less held down by corporate structure, more racially integrated, more tolerant, more liberated, more accepting. We don't have as much retirement savings as they do, simply because we really LIKE what we do regardless of salary. We aren't working to earn a retirement. We are pursuing work that we find worth our while.
Maybe baby boomers were a product of THEIR parents' generation, that is Depression era. To this day, my grandmother washes and stores her used aluminum foil among other things (war years and depression). That's got to have an effect on people. So, perhaps, shaped by that, GenX's parents overcompensated by saving more, earning more, pursing money as a way to plenty and in the process sacrificed their souls a bit.
So I say to my fellow GenX'ers: Just keep it up. Don't fall apart, stay the course. We'll reap the benefits someday... and if they aren't in the form of money, that's okay.
Toddlers are the stormtroopers of the Lord of Entropy.
Just because the N-N-N-NASDAQ's down.
As someone born in 1982 I can proudly say: /Mikael
Who gives a fuck? I'm still going nowhere and I have enough money to buy beer so I don't care...
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
We have to cut the crap about who is doing what to whom and start really being responsible. I won't be able to face my kids if we don't because there won't be much left for them. And they won't be whining about the stuff in the article, they will be facing environmental devistation.
'No generation since the Depression has been set up for failure like this.'
The depression generation succeeded like none before it! This is the generation that enjoyed the boom of the '50s!
The baby boom generation (of which I am an early member), OTOH, has been foisted with paying for the Social Security and Medicare of our elders. Contrary to one poster in this thread, SS and Medicare were set up before us boomers were out of college!
The depression generation also had to fight in WW-II, and many boomers (myself included) went to Vietnam. The Gen-X'ers, with very few exceptions, didn't have a war to worry about!
The biggest problem for the Gen-Xers will be paying for the retirement of us boomers. And this will indeed be a problem, since *we* have lots of votes. This is true in all of the first world countries that I am aware of - the government created retirement systems have always been a generational transfer tax (although not sold as such) and a bit of a scam. The ease of abortion, the later age of marriage and the greater percentage of working women have all lead to a dramatic reduction in birth rate, hence they extra load on the Xers.
The worst thing the boomers have done to the Xers is a result of our generation's rejection of traditional morality, causing too many Xers to grow up in dysfunctional divorced families and without moral guidance.
Boomers grew up when there was little crime, almost everyone had their natural fathers (main exception was those who lost their fathers in war), suicide was rare and drug abuse (with the exception of alcohol and tobacco) was unknown.
The only good weather is bad weather.
Funny, most of MY friends in the area are selling their townhouses and smaller houses and moving INTO much BIGGER homes - making a fortune at it too. What they don't seem to realize is that while their home has gone up in value so has everyone else's so moving up right now and staying in this area probably isn't that bright an idea but.....
:-)
:-( Those who say they will work till they drop can have at it, I want free time to explore all of my interests and hobbies - if you're working too hard to have outside interests you're an idiot. I have hobbies and I enjoy life, so should everyone else.
;-)
My home is over 10years old and MINE. If I want a nicer one I'll improve this one - the mortgage is low
Having said that - my 401K is decimated. I was up over $100K and am now looking at maybe $30K in that account. I have a second account with a more diverse portfolio that's doing pretty good compared to the other thanks to my employrer but nowhere near good enough to make up for the YEARS worth of losses in the other account. I have to laugh when people say it's not really gone until you sell but when companies go under it's REALLY gone! My girlfriend's 401K is even worse since she started out with more and she's much closer to "retirement age" than I
What's saddest here is that I don't see things changing soon. We can no longer trust the numbers Wall Street puts out and companies that were supposedly doing well LIED. Who exactly feels like they shoudl be BUYING stocks right abotu now? Personally I favor the death penalty for those who have screwed over so many as they certainly don't have the money to pay us back nor do I feel like supporting their fat asses in some country club prison.
Maybe someone will come up with a great way to use all of the zillions of computing cycles going to waste an people will buy more computers. As things sit now I have no need for a faster computer and I've not bought or upgraded one for over a year. Someone write something new and amazing that sucks cycles like crazy so we can all start moving forward again
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
"Well-documented, professionally-designed free software builds resumes."
;)
Security guard by day, free software hacker by night . . . and who said super-heroes didn't exist?
Makes me proud to be part of this generation . . .
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
of what NOT to do. I spent my teenage years watching GenXers bury themselves in college loans, car loans on BMWs, ludicrous mortgates, etc..
Unsure what to do with my own future, I made a big point of not following in their footsteps. Rather than sink into debt for an unsure future, I left college and went to work. I eschewed credit cards and bought a cheap Honda. Now I am happy in a great job, making a great salary, and paying my way through school without loans, working toward a goal that I understand.
None of this really would have happened had Generation X not fallen on their faces. Their unguided life choices and foolish financial habits left a legacy of how to NOT handle life as a twentysomething in a wildly successful capitalist society, and by doing the opposite I and many others have been able to enjoy our lives by understanding the dangers that exist in modern America.
"live life like we mean it"
Riiiiight.
And my generation said we have to "live for today".
Do you think that's particularly new or insightful what you're saying?
The difference between intelligent kids and stupid kids is that the intelligent ones never forget what they are: KIDS.
You may be 18, but you're a kid. The things that you think are profound or new have been around as long as apes got together to pick fleas off each other.
Why are you acting like such a spoiled kid and spouting nonsense?
"On the whole, it seems like the crash has actually been to my advantage, all because, as I said, I took the time to learn some real skills."'
And others didn't? How patronizing.As some have pointed out there are indeed good people who through little to no fault of their own are buried in debt. The education "investment" not paying off like one was expecting. So much for the wisdom of getting an education. Were a person with a GED has the same opportunity as someone with education. Colleges and universities are going to be taking the biggest hit of all when their "real skills", are not seen as the wise investment they once were. The same colleges and Universities that are responsible for most of our leadership in tech and basic sciences. To cope they will be driven even further into corperate arms. I suppose those who've avoided most of all this can gloat and say "that's not me", but such shortsightedness will eventially bite back. Dragged down with the so called "lamers" they deride. Or was anyone under the impression that having such a large quantity of "lamers" wasn't going to have any impact on either the social,political,economic, fabric that defines a society? Yes there is deadwood in ANY society, but let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater either. The next Einstein could very well be out there crushed under debt, spit upon by a society that can't see beyond themselves. Called names like "loser" and "lamer" because fate dealt a raw hand.
Tax relief on mortgages and grants for university education have been slashed.
In my observation, "big name" schools don't help techies much WRT earning power. The big-name schools tend to help in jobs where reputation and appearences mean everything, while tech positions are relatively more merit-based.
Thus, it makes more financial sense to get a tech degree from some state university rather than Harvard (unless you go into research perhaps).
Table-ized A.I.
But for every Gates, Jobs and McNealy, there are millions who never found a good niche.
Look at the following quote from the Fortune article for a blatent lie in this regard:
Oh really? Let's look at these graphs.Notice that age of first marriage of baby boomer females as given in http://aspe.hhs.gov/hsp/trends/change.pdf matches closely the peak cohort for 1980 as well as the peak in crude oil prices in constant (1996) dollars near 1980. Onset and drop-offs of these variables also match.
Also notice that mortgage rates, crucial for nesting and reproduction at first marriage, accurately match these same trends. Finally note the radically different way government policy affected WW II GI's seeking their first mortgages compared to the treatment of their children at the same phase of life. Those who were 30 in 1984 were subject to delayed marriages from a variety of factors, not the least of which was the 1970s "stagflation" under which early boomers and GI generation bosses applied mandated "wage and price controls" preferentially to wages but not to prices -- which hit those just entering the job market the hardest. That's when people started jumping jobs to get better pay, but even that wasn't enough given the explosion of prices in real estate, energy and interest rates toward the late 1970s.
You know "boomer" programmers born after 1950? I know quite a few and there aren't many who are looking any better than Gen-X'ers. Look around and see if they're really as good off compared to Gen-X programmers as you would think given the article in Fortune and the comments on "boomers" here at ./ -- then report here.
PS: I was born in 1954 and the only ways I feel even remotely more advantaged by my birth year over Gen-Xers are due to the fact that microprocessors may have been more "real" as a frontier opportunity than the Internet -- and herpes was merely incurable while AIDS kills you. However even that last advantage (Herpes vs AIDS) evaporates when you consider that the disco studs were far lower in number than disco whores. "She can wait if she wants... blame it a all on yourself cuz she's always a woman to me..." -- Billy Joel
Seastead this.
You're saying essentially that you're "fighting the man" "thinking for yourself".
Then why are you so deep in debt?
You're *not* thinking for yourself.
You've bought into your own GenX label.
For christsakes at least be honest enough with yoruself to understand what you are!
The baby boomers have it worse then their
parents.
http://www.inthe80s.com/dynamic/child8e.shtml
I would add to your list...
-They trust that a spouse will support them financially forever. Sh*t happens. People get laid off. People die. People get disabled to the point where they no longer can work. People get divorced and separated.
At the very least, get insured, not just for death but for disability as well. BOTH spouses should be insured, not just the wage-earner if there's only one in the family because an available-24/7-cooking-cleaning-childcare giving-chaffeur-and-errand runner is expensive to replace.
At the very most, keep your marketable skills up somehow even if you are a non-wage earning spouse. Volunteer, write grants, write books, build stuff and sell it, work at home but DO SOMETHING. In the end, your best "insurance" is your own self-reliance!
JoAnn
I have seen a lot of comments critical of the article, but have not seen one critical of the basic presupposition: that each generation has a unique identity (maybe my lameness filter is set too high.)I think this is a major flaw in making these broad characterizations.
I am technically a baby boomer but share most of the traits of a Gen Xer. What makes me a baby boomer? I was born after WWII. OK, riiight.
My mother and I are both baby boomers how can two generations be part of the same generation(figure that one out.) Besides my mother and I have little in common when it comes to political ideas, financial status or educational background (which in my mind create ones identity more than the year they were born.)
Finally, look at the 60's counter culture- Babyboomers. And the Counter-counter culture- also babyboomers. So what identifies the baby boomers, conservatism or change? The answer depends on whom you ask.
We need to just drop the Gen *blank* titles and realise that they are all just gross over-generalizations.
"watching MTV (some things havent changed in 20 yrs)"
Except that 20 years ago, MTV played videos, now it's just a bunch of really low-mentality "Stuffed morons at the beach" type shows. WTF happened?
"Personal enrichment and the best years of your life have little to do with things you can buy. I don't expect the writers and editors over at Fortune to understand this."
If you're after personal enrichment, then why do you have to get into debt to pay for it?
this isn't a question of lowered expectations, this is a matter of higher expectations without the responsibility to pay it back.
Sure, go to school to be a harpist. BUT DON'T TAKE OUT $50K of loans to do it.
That's beyond moronic. Its childish and selfish.
"I want it now! WHAAAAAAAA!" That's what this discussion is really all about.
Wow, I've run down the same road you have. And yet when I try to show up at interviews they wonder why I'm wasting their time.
You got LUCKY.
Easy way out my ass. Degreed and certified with computers/business/electronics.
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
i know that real-estate price dramatically dropped between 1989-1991.
real estate is not without risk. prices do go down.
... hi bingo
Credit Card Bills?
That's nothing! Child support for all these people has gone through the roof...
Why does that contribute? Well folks contributing to child support have a permanent credit report "debt" and are hardly looked at to bring in comforts for themselves, or there kids through credit cards, or most financing.
Can you afford an 18 year credit "debt" on your file? Previous laws, did not have this, and you could actually provide more for the family, and extended family in your life.
I remember when credit card items only stayed on your file for
Hey, but that's what we get for being horny right?
Mabidex
I find it pathetic that middle age is being viewed as, "prime spending years", as if being able to buy a lot of shit is the sumation of my being. (I'm not middle age, but the ramafications on society are disgusting.)
What about those of us that are younger - 20, for instance? Some of us have gotten into the work world early, having trained ourselves. In many cases, we're much more skilled and tallented at what we do that people 5, 10 years older than we are. Things look equally as bleak, with no resurfacing of the economy forseen, for those still in college, even. Especially with all the war and conflict going on.
The people of my generation are an unseen, lost generation. Generation X is several years our senior, and Generation Y is approaching high school still. Sure, we have a lot of nice whiz-bang gizmos, lots of entertainment, and various other benefits. But to what end? There's a large degree of unemployment in most of the desireable job markets, and the markets that are open, are undesireable - a lot of low-end, dead-end jobs that nobody would enjoy doing in the first place.
In the eyes of many people of my generation, there are very few exciting, challenging, new things in this world left to do. National Geographic has the whole 'exploration' thing down pat. Computers and technology are passe, nearing the point of being transparent - simply another entertainment device.
Even in simple living, things don't look good - pay is distributed in a horrible arc curve, distributing most of the wealth to a small percentage of society. What little most people can earn is leeched from them from the upper crust through taxes, credit, lawyer and doctor fees - people that scratch each other's backs, further increasing the differential of wealth. Combine these factors with all of the social decay and unpleasantries going about (STDs, divorce, decay of the atomic family, etc), things are downright depressing.
Even the decay of America's core is occuring. The DMCA and all the various laws like it, destroying our freedom, get overlooked by the populace, while commercials rage on TV telling us to "value our freedom as Americans". The strongarming of foreign countries isn't improving America's international status much, either. The economic benefits that were protecting the US from attack in the past are slowly being whittled away.
It's times like this that even a patriotic American starts to wonder about the future of his country, and whether he should take drastic measures, such as make a new life as a Canadian.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
you've just summed up the problem with democracy.
Simple equation. It doesn't matter how much money you have but how much you have relative to everyone else. Money determines what fraction of the total resources of the earth you can utilize. As the total resources of the earth decline, the amount each individual can utilize is going to decline, even if you have a larger fraction than everyone else. In the same way, the total resources of the earth determine what fraction of the money you own. Declining natural resources cause reduction in the value of money.
For hundreds of years, we got around the declining natural resources by increasing efficient utilization of the remaining resources, but now for several years we've seen no major improvements in efficiency and the decline has caught up.
However, my job could evaporate and I'd be fine because of a diverse skillset which I'm always improving
Don't be smug about it. Having a diverse skillset is a necessary condition for continued employment but not a sufficient condition. It's considerably easier to get a job when you're 33 than it is when you're 43 or 53. Regardless of age, I would not want to be pounding the pavement right now, skillset notwithstanding.
I fully agree with you about staying out of debt.
Planned their careers poorly. The IT industry is cyclical
Yeah, but you best extend that strategy outside IT. You may find it necessary to change your line of work. I've already had to twice. You can be prepared for other opportunities but there's no guarantee they'll arise and there's only so much you can do to position yourself to take advantage of them.
I resent the Boomers for is eating up Social Security at an alarming rate
Whoa up there partner! Boomers were born between 1945 and 1960. The post war crowd will be starting to draw SS soon but the Sputnik babies have a ways to go. That having been said, I sympathize with your resentment of those who ARE drawing SS, particularly those of means who don't need it. Roosevelt foisted this colossal pyramid scheme on us 70 years ago.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
Throughout the article, Social Security is described in pessimistic terms, and yet many people continue to resist its privatization. Think how much better off you'd be if the 15% of your wages going there were instead deposited into your 401(k). Not only would you have a better retirement that SS will ever pay you, but you'd have a nest egg to pass to your descendants.
And here is the counter to the obvious objection:
The recent stock market plunge shows how risky relying on business to provide retirement income is. Where do you think government is going to get the money to pay you? From those very same businesses through taxation. If business tanks, so does government revenue. And while government can use deficit spending for a while to prop things up, there is no free lunch: ultimately benefits would have to be cut or inflation allowed to erode the real value of the payout. Besides which, we're talking about a very long term accumulation of capital here, so short-term fluctuations in the market are not a threat to the long-term health of a privatized retirement plan. The California Public Employee Retirement System (CALPERS) relies on investment to pay out a generous (several times that of SS) pension to its employees who are exempt from participation in the Social Security system, by the way. Many other states have comparable plans based on investment. If it's good enough for a bunch of state bureaucrats, why isn't it good enough for you?
"Try living in India, China, Sudan or any other of dozens of poor nations"
Like Canada.
I think Gen-X is a real thing. Your probably pissed that it's become cliche, but there are merits to the sterotype. Of course, by calling it a sterotype, I'm admitting that there are are many exceptions to it.
.com thing appears (timed when they are in their 20's so when they're born is essential) promising easy wealth and opportunity. The Gen-X attitude is to complain (but do nothing about it) so when the promises are broken (.com bust), you get an article like this - VERY cynical with little to offer.
The term is relative to age, so timing is the main issue. I always felt that Gen-X encompassed those born from around '67-'77 in the US.
If each decade has a fight to be fought, what happens when there is no fight. Look at the previous ones: 40's(WWII), 50's(Korea), late 60's-73(Vietnam/Establishment). Each provides tales of conflict and their contribution to the conflict.
The only bad guys left were the ones that couldn't be fought (China,USSR) and fighting the establishment would be considered an extension of someone else's fight, so disengaging was the only thing that was left. If there is no one to fight, who do you fight? Underacheiving is the art of fighting your potential (or being a bum, as you so eloquently stated).
Since throwing money at a problem seemed to work in the past, parents would throw money at these kids. From this point of view, it makes sense that there exists a sense of privilege, which offends others.
With them all grown up, wondering what to do with themselves, this whole
So I disagree - for this article timing IS everything.
This is not my sig.
Was this girl thinking...
"Jessica, an art therapist and professional harpist, has $50,000 in student loans."
Who the hell racks up $50k in student loans to do that? Doing what you love is important, but being realistic is crucial.
Too many kids are heading off to college thinking that a degree is going to make them rich no matter what.
I gave myself to Jesus, but now he never calls
I'm 21 which for those of you with poor math skills(if there are any of those people on slashdot) that I was born in 1981. I'm by no means a generation Xer by this definition, though I've previously heard myself classified as one. I have never had a credit card, nor do I have any particular drive to spend money I don't have. However, partially due to poor planning on my part, but mostly due to my parents lacking the money to help out much, I'm going to be somewhere around $25,000 in debt when I graduate in May of next year. With the way the economy is at the moment, and the fact that the current government seems to have absolutely no interest in doing anything to benefit people of my age bracket(probably because we're not exactly known for our political activism and even if we were we don't have the numbers the boomers did to have much impact), I don't have any idea what kind of employment I'm going to be able to get despite two degrees from a fairly prestigious university(U of Wisconsin). The sad thing is that I'm not even close to being alone, no one graduating from college around this time has very good job prospects, and in an era of increasing costs and decreasing government assistance for education, most of us are to some degree or another in debt, not even taking into account things like credit cards and car payments and the like. Personally I think that rather than trying to save the jobs of boomers, and even some of the older generation Xers, economic stimulus packages should be focused on building a job market for people around my age, a little older, and of course younger, not just because it would benefit me, but because it's going to be people like me who cover the costs of the people who currently have jobs, and homes, and savings. Most estimates for Social Security have it running out right around when I turn 64 which means I and people like me, will pay into it my entire life without ever getting a cent back. As I said before we need to build the economy for the young so that there will be someone to support the old, how about tax breaks for hiring new college graduates to encourage companies to get over that, we won't hire you till you have two years of experience that no one wants to take the risk to give you problem which has been plaguing every graduating class for the last 50 years or so. Maybe something to enforce a maximum on how much more a CEO/executive can make than the lowest paid employee of his company? How about cutting off Social Security payments to people who have more than enough money without them? There are dozens of things the government could probably do in order to help people my age, and for that matter people the age of most slashdotters, but it probably won't because it would lose them the votes of the people who have been living off the current system all their lives.
Every argument (in the article) seems to try to blame the dot-coms, the economy, and everything else under the sun, each argument always goes back the underlying problem....debt.
Servicing debt is the least effecient way to use money, and the quickest way to make you broke. Most of the debt "Gen Xers" have is college, or related to college (i.e. the computer and books you bought on credit during school).
The real culprit seems to be outrageously inflated college tuitions. Look at the past 10 years; college tuition increases have outstripped GDP growth, inflation, and wage rates. With 60% of american students going to college, is it any suprise that this generation is servicing record debts? My dad got a 4 yr. college degree for $8000.00. One year of college cost me more than that.
America needs to get college tuitions in check, and we also need a national health care system. These are two of the biggest burdens on American consumers....if we accomplish both of these goals, we will be poised for long term growth.
-ted
Ironically, this is one of the few articles I've read that don't lump GenX into "everyone under 40". In that sense, it's accurate - but that's where it stops. "Most productive earning years behind them"? What? I was born in 1967, I'm 35. I'm certainly HOPING that my best earning years are ahead of me. /. comments for this pretty funny because they reinforce what I'm saying. In my experience GenX'ers tend to be more characterized by a "leave me alone to live my life" philosophy (mischaracterized by older and younger generations as apathy).
Generally, I find the tenor of most of the
Living in the the demographic slump after the baby-boom has, for most of us, meant that we are not catered to in any way - by the media, by advertisers, by the markets, etc. Never have been, don't really want to be. Douglas Coupland nailed the ethos of the generation. (That and The Breakfast Club.)
We were too young to be hippes or protesters in the late 60's and early 70's - we've merely been saddled with the rubble therefrom (drug abuse, AIDS, etc.).
We grew up post-Watergate, so government has NEVER been something trustworthy. We matured under the shadow of Reagan and Brezhnev/Andropov/Chernyenko/Gorbachev. When I walked into senior high the day of the Challenger disaster, I was RELIEVED to find out it was "only" that the shuttle blew up. The pale faces and utter silence of the commons made me fear the balloon had gone up (remember that quaint phrase?).
In the 80's, we watched all of our older borthers, sisters, and cousins who had railed against "The Man" and "Corporate America" put on their suits to go rape the economy in corporate takeovers. So all these 'paragons' of idealism are as totally corruptible as anyone else.
Now in the 90's, we saw all these tainted idealists who made a giant pile of money in the 90's, settle down in their cozy 5000 sqft homes, have their one child name Zoe, drive gigantic vehicles in some pursuit of safety-through-egotism and become the "family" that they also said was hopeless back in the 60's.
Finally, now that they are staring old age in the face, now they're all joining churches like mad. HA HA HA. Still looking for God that you couldn't find in drugs/sex/money/domesticity?
As Generation X'ers, THAT'S what we've witnessed, that's what's formed our views of the world. Every decade since we were tots the generation ahead of us has said "we know the true way to happiness!" and been wrong EVERY TIME. We're not "Generation Wrecked". But we're forced to step over their wreckage to live our lives.
-Styopa
It really is.
The favorite stupid line is "you don't put money into a depreciating assett".
Duh.
When you lease, you're putting money into a DISAPPEARING asset!
I suggest anyone who is thinking of leasing run a spreadsheet. Include everything and tell me how much leasing "saves" you. You'll find out that over a 10 year period, leasing costs you anywhere from $25K-$50K.
Yes really.
The only justification that people fall back on is "I get a new car every 3 years".
Well sh*t junior, that's worth pissing away a million bucks over the course of your life. You can die saying "I had a new car every 3 years".
Buried in college and credit card debt, a lot of them won't be able to catch up as they approach their prime spending years.
Nonsense, they'll go work for someone who can manage money so that they can keep making minimum payments on their last J Crew purchase. Could we whine any louder as a people about the consequences of our choices?
are you on crack or do you _not_get_it ?
are the baby-boomers doing anything too help our generation ? NO ! all they are doing is raping the system. the system that was put in place for them by their parents.
and PLEASE explain to me how my paying 10% of my paycheck every two weeks is justified ? i'll never see a damn red cent from social security. but are the baby-boomers doing anything to help us ? NO ! instead they expect us to pay 10% of our income to support them. why ? what the hell did they do besides mess every damn thing up ? the baby boomer generation doesnt care that another 10% of my take-home income gets dumped into a 401k so i can retire before i go senile. and you know what ? i dont care about them either, i hope that they all get on social security and it goes broke in a year and they all have to drag their asses back to work.
your parents paid for your education ? well buey for you. mine didnt. and they didnt save any money for a damn thing. they dumped on me - the same way most parents do from that generation. for every kid who got lucky with smart caring parents five of us got stuck with the "earn it" types.
and you know what ? i agree - THE BABY BOOMERS SHOULD GET OFF THEIR ASSES AND MAKE THEIR OWN LIVING, CAUSE I AM DAMN SICK AND TIRED OF GIVING UP MY 10%
"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe." --Albert Einstein
call -936
Dear Lord, I feel old now. Time to get out my walker. Born 1969.
I have given up on using credit cards. I now only spend money I actually have, and I am determined to never, ever got bogged down in debt.
My dot-com days left me with some stock that is not totally worthless, so I'm taking advantage of the lull by going back to school and getting an MBA. It will help fill in a lot of blanks for me, and it just might make me more employable in the future.
The point is, you can use this time to improve yourself while the economy gets fired back up again.
The system has failed you, don't fail yourself. --Billy Bragg
just because my small studio apartment has a computer and a tv and a nice rug, and my small car has a 6disc changer and air-con, doesn't mean that being out on my slim IT ass with no safety net during a Chicago winter is something to praise God and our great nation for. A roof is a roof whether there is a TV under it or not, and selling my TV or my computer or my rug and futon will keep the roof over my head for maybe a month and a half. I suppose I can't expect the same standards my dad of 35 years at Sears&Roebuck had even though he dropped our of college too, but he never had any problem keeping a roof oved his head, and he sold shoes like Al Bundy until he got his break. For me, my breaks have been getting to continue working while i watch all my friend and co-workers get canned. Now I am reduced to contract work, and none of my other tech-buddies can even find work. If I could find a place to build an adobe hut, plant a garden, and put my BoyScout skillz to good use, i'd take it. Where in America can one do that? I think I'd have to be making at least 7$ an hour to cover property taxes and expenses.
*I used to be quite irreverent and ignorant. I am probably much smarter now. I seem to realize this every 45 days or so.
Everyone should have the freedom to succeed - and also be given a fair chance on achieving that. When the parent generation has generated an economical structure that makes things harder for the coming generation than it was for the parent generation - I think the coming generation is entitled to rant a little.
However, lying on your back and complaining will not improve matters.
Stop the brainwash
Generation X was a book about the growth of youth culture in England in the 60s. It's an insult aimed at those of us born roughly between the end of the 60s and the middle of the 70s who were told we weren't going to amount to anything because we whined too much. Ironically, the people telling us that were told they weren't going to amount to anything, either. And as much as I hate to say "me too", check this out for some further reading.
Maybe we are whiners,
Well, at least you admit it.
but that doesn't mean that our parents our justified in to blowing their savings on globe-trotting and hippie weekend camps
Of COURSE they are. its their money! Go get yourself a good job and save so that you can spend it when you're their age. Hell, they freaking RAISED YOU and still managed to save the money they are spending now. They certainly have earned it!
Don't even get me started on the implications of Enron, WorldCom et. al. They've screwed us royally.
Really? Did you have stock in Enron? Were you a worldcom shareholder? I want to get you started. I want to know the exact dollar figure. How much did you loose to enron and worldcom, precisely? How much?
You weren't an employee or shareholder of them, yet you're still complaining? Piss off. The real victims of fraud have a right to complain but you bed wetting liberals do not.
Yes, you are a whiner. And you should be ashamed.
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23
NO one will probably read this since there are already a million posts on this story but anyway...
several people have summarized this story as being about gen-x'ers whining. but it isn't. it is about a baby boomer who wrote a story and tried their best to make gen-x seem worse than their genreation. really, how many gen-xers read fortune in comparison to their other readers? their target demo is not gen-x but baby boomers. this is an article to make the baby boomers feel better, "Look how great we are compared to these damn kids." does anyone REALLY think that our best earning years are over? no. not a chance.
it's not gne-xers whining, its baby boomers looking for a story.
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
People like to target the "Front Page HTML developers" as the only people hurting. Wrong answer.
You can ALWAYS tell when the author of a post has recieved a pink slip within the last year or not.
I was laid off by a fortune 5 company.
I have years of consulting background and a *strong* problem solving skillset. I have a small mountain of certifications. I am not a developer but I am fluent in just about every (popular) language there is. On and on my resume goes....
I happen to have a job because a former client *created* a position for me. The job is FAR from the work that I had been doing and at about 1/2 the pay. I have a job.
So yea, I can *find* a job. The question is; What did I have to give up to take this job? (About 50K a year, and 3 months of rejection until I decided to take a scrub job).
The point here is that talented people are getting caught up in this downturn. And the idea that if you are good you WILL get a job is COMPLETE BULLSHIT.
Some of my fellow co-workers are still looking, MONTHS later. I had a good client base to fall back on. All they have is a resume with 20 years of project management and developement experince.
The only "senior level" position that they get out of this is "senior fry chef".
So think before you make the assumption that all the people are looking are ones who "read HTML For Dummies" and that everyone else is just fine.
---
Todays take-home assignment:
Those of you who have jobs, try to land an interview with your *resume* in this market. [No fair calling your friend in HR or the like...] Email your resume to a recruiter or a company - see how many responses you even get. Do your best. THEN come back with your bullshit "HTML for dummies" comments.
It is true perhaps, what they assert in this article, but to dismiss completely the experiences that the boom allowed Gen. X as valueless and to write us off as having seen the best salaries we will ever see may be broad and unfounded, not to mention insulting;->. Aren't we still better off for having stolen opportunity when we saw the chance? Also, since when has college debt stood up to the increase in poise and discipline, not to mention salary, that college offers? Given you need an M.S. to look good these days, but college is stilla big pay-off if you are patient, no?
If you read my comment again, you might notive that my real skills were picked up in tech classes at a Junior College. One of the things I noticed working as a tech is that electronic engineers come out of school knowing dick about electronics. They know tons of theory, sure, and they can calculate charge capacitance in their sleep, and they have a much better understanding of circuit design as a whole than I do, but when their circuit doesn't work they come to me to find out why. That's what I mean by "real" skills.
However, I wasn't talking about people who went to school and actually got an education. I was talking about web-monkeys who dropped out their freshman year to capitalize on their investment in "Learn Web Design in 24 Hours" and spent their $75k on partying.
But hey, getting buried in debt is just plain dumb anyway, college education or not. Whenever you gamble, eventually you lose. Merely having an education doesn't somehow magically make you not a "lamer" or "loser", especially when so many schools will let you make up degrees that are essentially meaningless (like the guy who started Sub Pop records who has a degree in "Punk Rock"). If you've buried yourself in debt, you are a loser, I don't care if you're the next Einstein (who, btw, wasn't buried in debt only because he married women who were as practical as he was not).
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
Life is full of surprises, some good, some bad. If you're in your 20's and you think your life is set, cross your fingers. If your're in your 30's and you think you've life is in ruins, it might not be.
I know this sounds like pablum, but much of our lives is really out of our control.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Until his parents use their massive voting power to award themselves your money for their retirement.
No, it's easy to make that assumption since most of the people posting reasonable comments on this thread have had enough financial experience to have an opinion, while the younger "gen-X'rs" have not.
Firstly the dates of a generation are not clear-cut as generations are defined by generalized beliefs withing groups of people, it is absolutely asinine to say people born before 1976 (or whatever) have this attitude and people born after 1976 have a different attitude, doesn't work like that. the 'Baby Boomers' are the only generation actually defined by when they were born (as opposed to their attitudes) and thus grouped inappropriately. i've read reports of the Generation-X'rs (is this a really stupid fucking name or what?) extend all the way to 1980, which places yours truely as an "X'r" (1979).
So then, as a fellow "X'r" i will disagree with you on this point: i am 23, 6 months away from completing college (PharmD is a 6-year degree) which i started immediately out of high school. i worked my way through college (at one point i had 3 jobs while enrolled in 22 Sr. level credit courses (i believe it was 7 classes)) have $0.00 in debt, and had over $20k put away before the market crash, today i think i have around half of that (yes they are diversified investments: global, national, large cap, mid-cap, small-cap, techies, utilities, etc, etc). i do not come from an "advantaged" family other than that my family works for their money, i am one of three children and my parents have never made more than $40k or $50k per year combined (yes, tehy both worked full-time). The difference between myself and a billion other people my age that are broke and in debt, is that i was not, nor am i, a dumb-ass with my money. There are people with poor financial skills of every generation and age strata within those generations, it's no suprise to me that the majority of slashdotters (my perception anyway) are also fiscally responsible... This isn't bragging from a "high horse" or anything (it sounds kind of conceited now that i look at it), but a representation of how the world works, why some people don't "get it" is absolutely beyond me... If i can "do it" then a lot more people than currently are can too...
What'll really erk your cranks (everyone that's proud of this responsibility) is when the government steps in 40 years down the road and gives all those louts who never saved a penny a bigger pension than they give you. "Why should we give it to you?-you have money." they'll say.
Of course the US population could increase to 500m by that time (economist.com(might be subscription-only, sorry if it is)) so this could offset the babyboomers moving into retirement moreso than EU or Japan, but that's a different debate altogether.
-tid242
With a few exceptions, secrecy is deeply incompatible with democracy and with science. --Carl Sagan
I'm 30. I worked through the dot com explosion at a conservative finance company. I hear all the old fart executives laugh at the failure of the computer age. Daily I hear this. Usually because I am the one hooking up their laptop to the presentation system. I am the one showing them how to load that power point presentation that their secretary designed. I am the one who helps them sync their PDA with their laptop. I am the one who is suggesting what computer they should buy their daughter now that she's going away to school. I'm the one showing them how to use Nextel direct connect. Yeah, the computer age is over. My job is in jeopardy and my pay is getting smaller all the time... hardly. The Chicken Little's can complain all they want. I have my geriatric providers right where I need them: Hooked on my technology and convinced that it does not rule them.
Grimwell - old, cranky, mean, obsessive
subject says it all.
Something tells me you don't.
I don't have enough fingers to count the _talented_ people I know that have either taken pay-cuts, or are still looking.
I get tired of reading posts by someone who never got laid off about people who did.
My company laid off approxametly 1/2 its work-force. (Nobody is buying technology - so see ya around). It was not a matter of talent or not, when you lay off in those percentages.
This was an "infrastructue" company. We sold actual product; servers, software, etc.... Not dot.com pet food.
many people are now realizing that a master's in sociology is no more attractive to employers than a bachelor's. Staying in school longer is not always the answer.
Regardless of date of birth, anyone who can remember the name of the Brady Bunch's little cousin OR finds Wacky Packages ironic.
Signed,
Douglas Copeland
...and I carry rocks and dig gravel for a living. Scrounging for pennies. Might pick up a job driving schoolbuses if I'm lucky. Considering living under a bridge. Depressed, yes, but up to now admitting as much would be a declaration of failure. Now that I have society to blame I feel much better.
Maybe I'm just old fashioned.
Proteus' Child
Doko ni datte; hito wa, tsunagette iru.
On posts like this, it's a damn shame the point limit can't be modded above five.
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
Actually I should add to this "flush down the toilet if your renting" argument. I have a landlord that has an equity program. For every year you live here you get a certain amout of equity, you can apply towards a home. Second in most states you do get a renters deduction. Third what most people who talk about homes being good investments don't tell you, is all the other items you have to "invest" in that a landlord would normally take care of.
First it starts with all the cost of procuring the home (30 yr morgage,closing cost,insurence, etc). Doesn't stop with filling it with essentials (what? Your sleeping on the floor?}.
Property taxes every year (now I know why new homes are outside the county i'm in). Cost of maintainance (bet you thought that plumber was a bargain didn't you?). Want to try to improve your "investment"?(more money). And I haven't even touched the everyday expenses that we all have to deal with. Starting to look all rosey isn't it?
Homes are nice but let's not get all glassey-eyed over them.
It's probably generati...ooooh, there's a dog with a fluffy tail!
Don't be so sure. Ever hear of Alternative Mimimum Tax? It is quite possible to be taxed at considerably more than 100% of your income.
This whole BS about trying to label entire generations is marketing driven drivel. Don't worry about what generation you are a part of, let your intuition guide you and seek out the deeper truths, and you will have happiness that transcends those who get their opinions from media outlets. Definetly ignore the lunatics who say you'll never achieve without working 60 hours a week. No one will remember them when they're dead, save the greedy little kids they will raise who will inherit their money and blow it all on their vices. Personally, I'd rather die poor and happy, than rich with snotty little shits who will view my death as a blessing.
Happiness is being happy.
Show me an effect without cause and then I'll believe in chaos.
Of course, we all know what the baby-boomer execs do. They take credit for the increased productivity as a result of their management skills [in cutting staff], and caller us slackers for not increasing productivity more.
I keep telling ya, bullshitting is a key job skill. Calculas? Pfffffpt! They should have at least 4 courses in bullshitting (not just producing it, but getting away with it) before handing you a degree. "The Art of War" should be required reading. (It is not really about military stuff, but skillful BS.)
The world is powered by bullshit.
I don't like it any more than you do, but I would rather not be able to sleep at night because of a guilty concience rather than because the street cleaner keeps running over my bed. (I still can't do it because I am simply bad at BS. I have no BS skills. My face gives me away.)
My wife has a good job and she lied to get it.
Table-ized A.I.
What a freeloader you are!!!
Your 'contributions' to Social Security weren't even enough to pay for current levels of handouts. You're just stealing from the next generation way more than what you put in, even if it went up in value at least as much as the Dow Index.
Social Security is a scam that needs to go away. For all of those years you let -- probably urged -- your legislators to create more handouts to people who never did anything to earn it; and you expect me to pay for your wastefulness!! The past is coming home to roost. Stand by for the death of Social Security. Amen!!
Do for yourself instead of stealing from other.
At my work, we reviewed generational differences to prepare for mentoring new interns. We had a chart that listed "life influencing history" and similar items. The generations listed were Silent Generation (1920-1943), Baby Boom Generation (1940-1965), Generation X (1960-1980), and Millennial Generation (1980-?).
:)
One of the interesting questions that came up was which generation the Millennial Generation related to the most. After everyone suggested Generation X, since they're closer in age, the true answer was the Silent Generation, supposedly becuase they would the grandparents. The Millennial Generation supposedly labeled Baby Boom Generation as "greedy" and the Generation X as "whinners".
Oh well, they'll grow up soon enough.
~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
Richard von Weizs
The Naughties
The REAL jabber has the user id: 13196
What you do today will cost you a day of your life
Please read my post....it's not "their" savings that are being blown, its their PARENTS money (in other words, my GRANDPARENTS money). Baby boomers do not want to sacrifice themselves for their children like their parents did for them. With a few exceptions, they are on the whole selfish and narcissistic.
Take responsibility and choose wisely, huh? Hah. We are in this mess because the Baby Boomers acted without resposibility and choose poorly! So, once again, we are held to a higher standard AND have to pay for their selfish behavior. Disgusting.
And excuse me for wanting security for my children. Our parents want to spend their money on trips abroad, a new Lexus, or some useless community college courses. Meanwhile, we are going to be in debt the rest of our lives.
If wanting retire when I'm 65 and have the resources to give my kids a better life then I had makes me a "greedy @$$ hole," then I guess that's what I am.
How is it the system's fault that your parent's wouldn't pony up for you? Sounds like another "things went bad for me in particular, so everything must be bad" post. Guess what bucko? I pay just as much social security as you do. Quite frankly, I don't want to see little 70 year old men and women starving to death.
Talk about whining! What a whiny little bitch!
Well let's paint a more realistic picture.
In todays society a GED or high school diploma will get you basically a bottom-of-the barrel job. If that's all one wishes to aspire to for the rest of their life? Then more power to them. However reality is for those who look a little higher. Continued education is a necessity. Self-education only works so far (does anyone want a self-educated surgeon working on them?). Real education cost. The only thing you have control over is how much bang for the buck you can get. Yes some degrees are well...lame but we're not talking the miniscule who went for the "punk rock" degree, but the mainstream useful to society degree. What about those who *gambled* (isn't everything a gamble?), and lost through little to no fault of their own? There's a lot of degreed people out at the unemployment office because either there company was negligent (Enron, Worldcom, there's more than just those two). Or simply the company has too many employees and not enough coming in to support them (Downsizing,economy tanked). The problem with what's getting posted in this forum isn't that bad advice is given out, but advice that's as narrow as the posters vision of the world. We're drawing a line that has the one's that were little touched by recent economic upheavel, and everyone else, and tossing stones over the fence. With little regard for the fact that with just a minor twist of fate we could be those stoned.
Speaking as a Gen-Xer, born in '71. I didn't know that we were so whiny, unhappy and wrecked. Sounds like the writer had an idea for a story, and went out to try to find people to fit the mold for quotes.
By reading this sig, you agree to the terms of my sig license.
If you subtract all the debt, cuz I don't like debt, then you've pretty much summed up the perfect lifestyle for me. It sounds pretty awesome.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
If we push the age group back to people born in 1979, then we'd have a more accurate target group of gen-X.
You are an idiot.
I paid for 50% of my college tutition in the form of loans. Since it was an Ivy (yay, me), that means about $100,000. I thought it would be worth it because it would mean a better chance at a career...but that is another posting.
My parents still drag me over the coals for their paying anything at all. I only was able to go to school because of a small need-based grant from the college, thank you rich alumni. I haven't had a vacation since I started working 1 week after graduation over 4 years ago. I paid for my own wedding, which was extremely modest (in retrospect we should have gone to city hall, but both our parents begged for a wedding - did they pay for it? No.). No honeymoon - not enough money. But I guess I'm just greedy for wanting a small slice of what my parents had?
Meanwhile, my mother has never had a career but gets her mothers SS check every month and travels around the world site-seeing. My father took a job with a non-profit to sate his hippie values, so now they don't have any savings. The party will really begin when she gets her mother's inheritance. But that will only last so long. Guess who is going to end up supporting them in the last few years of their retirement? Hint: it won't be Santa Claus.
Been there, done that. Nothing feels quite so "good" as paying tax on your charitable contributions because you gave away too much of your income. :-(
But you do get a huge military out of it. Which Dubya wants to increase in size. And you can afford to lock up 3% of your males of working age (which obviously helps the unemployment figures).
Who pays for all these goverment jobs and their lavish perks?
Too true. The Canucks (and the Brits and the....) are in for a lot of rude surprises as their 'benevolent socialism' collapses under its own weight. You can't spend it if it's not there. When the Boomers retire, it won't be there anymore. They didn't even pay for themselves. Who will a far smaller group of taxpayers pay for more? It won't; and the Boomers will end up poor in the streets when the next generation gets a backbone.
while its true these are hard times, and the situation will likely deteriorate more still. this generation is armed with information, communication and processing power far in advance of any before. The dot com boom was the abuse/misunderstanding of all this newly aquired power. Now this short dark age is our backlash, fear of our own abuse. A loss of confidence in our own creativity and certainly a bit of confusion as to what our real goals(dreams) are. Im sure we'll come back to find our dreams noble and our selfs capable. Then to build the sort of future we dream of but cynically doubt will ever exist... enough of that... FUD will build nothing, and nothing will come. lets just start building things and those so enlightened may start putting those things together... think of everything we build and share as a lego brick... haha.. ok back to work for me... you get it anyway
I'm allowed a bit of personal smugness. My diversification includes careers (and jobs) not related directly to the IT industry. There's quite a few things I can fall back on if one industry goes sour.
Get off my lawn.
This is the funniest post I've read in a long time, thanks so much for it. The irony expressed about you getting out of paying as much of your taxes as possible and profiting as much as possible from living here and then taking this bounty and indigantly leaving the country had me in stitches.
POKE 65495,0 If you know what this does, you are as old and pathetic as I am.
Ah, the double speed poke. Old and pathetic I am.
--fatboy
I'd encourage all of you to think a bit before you blindly sound off about being left behind.
Some points. It's the nature of capitalist societies to buy low, sell high, based on supply and demand. There's little any of us can do to effect supply.. why not effect demand? The first generation of putergeeks did that, CREATING a need and then filling it. They changed the world. Why don't you try to do the same? No way have all the good ideas been taken.. just the easy ones..
Also, instead of whining, I'd encourage you to take a look at how it is in some other countries. For an example of how terribly wrong things can go, take a look at the worlds most bizarre nation, the hellhole that is called North Korea. Now there is a country with a real "Generation Wrecked". An entire literate and intelligent generation has been so completely isolated from the rest of the world (just to preserve one family's homicidal lust for power) that they basically will feel like they have been sent through a time machine when that regime finally collapses.. When it inevitably does now THAT wont be pretty!
Just don't turn to the State for the "solution" to your problems, you are only going to be screwing the next generation.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
I read a similar thing (source: a long-lost mystery to me). The current retirees are the ones that are getting the most compared to what they put in. It only gets worse for us from here on out.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
When my parents graduated from college with BAs in the 70s they were actually sent invitations for jobs through the post. Neither one of them really interviewed. They just chose the job they wanted and went to work. In time they went on to other careers where their experience served as all the credential they needed. They got started with an invitation and they never looked back. I looked forward to the day when I would enter the work force like my parents.
When I got my BA in '91 the career counselor told me and my buddy that there were two alternatives, go to grad school or leave the country. There were no jobs including her own. She was being dismissed as part of budget cuts at the time. My buddy went to Japan and I went to grad school.
A few years later with a Master's degree there were still no jobs so I left the country as well. I'm still outside the country almost ten years later and I only go back for Christmas vacation.
Of the friends that stayed in the States, a surprising number are already dead. My brother born in '74 finally landed a teaching job a few years ago, but it's not clear how stable it is and he's got two kids.
Out of all my cousins only a few made big bucks and the only way they made it was hustling in the worst way. I'm talking backstabbing salespeople types. There is a total lack of people who just had normal career lives among family members in my generation. It has been either balls out money or jack shit. Education seems to be meaningless. The price of your school means everything, but the degree is nothing except perhaps a shot at a part time teaching gig at best.
I do think people in my generation were trapped by circumstances. Those who made it didn't make it simply by being good citizens and playing by the rules and most of the people I know don't have shit and have little chance of ever making it work out.
I think the part that surprises me the most is that there isn't more outright hostility than there already is. Probably now that we're riding down the back side of the distraction of the IP bubble we'll start to see some more active participation --cough-- in social affairs by members of this generation.
WHO do you know around this age has that kind of money in the bank??!?! I'm 31 and am lucky to keep a thousand dollar buffer in my accounts....
The retired segment of the US is the wealthiest. They don't have to work, they have their homes paid off, they get a stipend from the government, and they get to drive slow.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
They (we, regrettably) haven't yet, but they (we) will. The most self-absorbed generation in US history is sure to drain the coffers, and whine all the way down.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
University exists to create experts in targeted fields. It's for people who wish to specialize in a specific area (Doctors, Scientists, or really anything else). So that when you are done University you are valuable in your target field. So when a company needs to do something in a specialized target field they use these experts.
Back before the Baby boomers went to University, a Degree just about guaranteed you a good job. Experts where few and Business needed them.
But then more and more people started to go to university, and the number of experts increased and increased, but businesses didn't need more experts.
At first governments, and other public institutions took the extra in. (Including the Universities themselves) but the number of Graduates continued to increases.
This is all fueled by the myth that higher education is the only or best way to get ahead in life. And that is simply not the case.
The educational path to success is very appealing to some, it is a relatively straightforward and clear path. Grade school, High School, University, Great career. As opposed to the alternative. Grade school, High School, Bust your ass working hard, continue to try new things, fail, learn from failure, (repeat), great career (eventually).
It doesn't help that all though grade school and high school, your told that the only way to succeed is to graduate with great grades for am good University. (And also being told that the people that make it without all the education are just lucky, and or that it just doesn't work that way any more.)
The fact is that with so many going to University there are not enough expert positions, and that only the Top students in the Top schools are getting the good jobs. The rest end up and an equal playing field with the people who didn't go (But worked hard and smart).
This whole thing will turn around once people start to realize that there is no guaranteed path to success and that you need to make your own way in life.
Go ahead. But if I were living on 1,700$ USD a month just for rent, I'd seriously consider moving so somewhere cheaper and using the money I saved from not living in a money pit towards things I cared about, like retirement :)
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Excellent. You start saving while I continue to have fun.
Then, when civilization collapses, I come and shoot you, take your money and resources, and then have a very good laugh.
Get moving!
Moral: Get a good woman that will ride you ass about saving money and investing in the future and you just might have a future in which you can enjoy life and help out others.
;-)
I think you have the positions a little mixed up.
The top 3 most wonderful things my wife has said to me:
(1) Yes, I'll marry you!
(2) I'm pregnant!
(3) I don't need a new car.
Assume 8% return, 5% inflation to adjust to, and then assume that you are taxed on dividends and capital gains, even though you just reinvest them. Their figures are now a much more reasonable ballpark.
I don't know what reasonable figures to put in are, but I bet that the ones they used are reasonable based on historical averages.
Saskatoon is cheap to live in compared to Toronto or Vancouver, but only a little under what you'd see in Calgary.
.57 to convert to US dollar amounts.
:)
With proper budgeting, I can have a nice apartment for 450$ plus 150$ a month for food, with utilities all included in my rent. Unlimited internet access is another 40$ on top of that (home user, cable modem), or 99$ (SOHO -- static IPs and allowed to run services). Very handy when you have to live on minimum wage for a bit between jobs (min wage is 6.35$ per hour).
Note: all dollar values in Canadian. Multiple by
If you wanted to move your university education to Canada, you'd pay about $500 per class registration fee + 50$ to 200$ (or more) for books per class, 5 classes a term, 3 terms a year. Based on your $36,000 Canadian a year to have a house, you could easily attend university while living a decent life in a nice part of town with nice things for that much money.
One thing you notice when you cross the border a lot is that while "big" things cost different (TVs, computer parts, etc), "little" things tend to cost the same (bag of chips, candy bar). You also notice the artificial price controls on things (books are often cheaper in Canada even after the conversion, DVDs cost the exact same dollar amount despite the value difference, most CDs are within the same dollar amount).
The absolute best of both worlds is to live in Canada while drawing income from the US, becuse the US has a hugely inflated costs of living. Canadians are really, really cheap to employ compared to local people, and (on the Canadian side) you'll make more than you're likely to make locally
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
You need more than good coding skills to land a job in the current market. Everyone has (or claims to have) coding skills and, when an employer gets a mountain of resumes, they have to choose other criteria to weed through them.
Case in point. I was laid off last June. I lived in an area that has a small market for software developers and tried (and failed) to find a job there for three months. Actually, I found one at a 20% pay cut but salaries were low in the area to begin with and we just took that offer as proof that we needed to sell our home and move to a bigger market. Over the next three months of widening my search to nationwide, I got two interviews and one offer (which I took). In both cases, I was told that coding skills were a dime a dozen and the only reason I was interviewed at all was because of my full-lifecycle development skills (documented project experience writing business requirements, technical specs, test plans, and user manuals).
So if you want a job in this market, find out what employers are looking for and broaden your skill set. Writing one more java widget to be able to claim 5 years of java coding instead of 4 isn't going to cut it when employers are now looking for java and flash and XML and photoshop and pig farming all in the same employee (well, I made up the part about pig farming).
How can we afford to ever sleep
So sound again
--ebtg
Of COURSE they are. its their money! Go get yourself a good job and save so that you can spend it when you're their age.
In my parents case they didn't save jack shit. They blew what paltry income they had "finding themselves" over the past 30 years, and don't plan to stop anytime soon. They are blowing the money that they *inherited* from *their* parents.
Hell, they freaking RAISED YOU and still managed to save the money they are spending now. They certainly have earned it!
Gee, you sound just like my parents! The double standard continues.
"You should be grateful to us for raising you, now get the hell out of my house! By the way, we are going to treat ourselves to luxurious vacations every three months using our parents money because we've 'earned' it. Sorry, none for you.
After all, we protested against Vietnam, what the fuck have you done lately? What's that? You need help paying your rent this month? Tough shit, you are on your own."
Really? Did you have stock in Enron? Were you a worldcom shareholder? I want to get you started. I want to know the exact dollar figure. How much did you loose to enron and worldcom, precisely? How much?
I didn't own any stock, but now I am going to pay more taxes so the government can bail these cheating baby boomers out. Not to mention the fact that 1000's of people were laid off because of their lies and excess. I could go on and on, but it's easier to point your sorry ass to the front page of the Wall Street Journal. Or are you too busy making pathetic, flamebait posts like these on slashdot?
What a joke.
I agree! The 80's were crap! I was lucky, because I was living with my mom, and she helped me afford college. Now I have a good job with the government. The pay isn't much compared to all the figures I've seen thrown around for tech jobs, but now that I've dug myself out from a mound of Credit Card debt, I'm in the process of becoming stinking rich.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
While I worked during the bubble at a large discount brokerage firm I was often ridiculed for driving an old 1992 Ford and saving my earnings rather than squandering them on the latest fad/car/toy/mcmansion.
I saved for the things I wanted, put a *huge* downpayment on my house (and have a low mortgage as a result), all my cars are paid for, I paid off all my student loans, have no credit card debt and have actively managed to create a sizable 401k with a positive 8% return this year (!).
I guess I'm a genX'er (30's) - I think there are quite a few people in my generation that had the intelligence and common-sense not to get too dependent on bubble economics.
The reality check has done everyone some good, even me - I doubt I'll make 6 figures again anytime soon, but since I saved/invested most of what I made over the past 3 years I shouldn't need to.
Ah! Yes the "go to work for McD's" routine.
I'll let you in on a financial secret practiced by companies worldwide. You need to bring in more than what you have going out. Just bringing in break-even leaves you nothing to build a future on, and bringing in less is simplely a form of slow suicide.
Now why do people feel that what applies for one doesn't apply to the other? Bills will still come due. Food and other such will be necessary. If you can get them to adjust for your "diminished" income, go for it. Reality says otherwise.
> ... Stayed in school too long. There is a point at which it's better to bail from school, get into an entry-level job, and start clawing your way up than to stay in school and hope for a better job later. Thinking that "the market is really good, but if I just take another 18 months to finish this 4-year degree I'll be all set with a better salary" is just stupid, especially if you're piling up debt to do it (see previous point).
I have to disagree with that one.
Lets suppose I need $50,000 to finance my education. I could either delay graduation and work for it now, or I could benefit from low student loan rates (which are much cheaper than mortgage rates I might add)
I'm a recent graduate, and even in this market I find it easier to pay back my loans than to consider the enormous amount of time I'd be flipping burgers (or time spent on some other non-degree paying job)
Of the "poor" students at expensive schools like MIT or Harvard, wouldn't it make more financial sense in the long run for them to just borrow what they needed?
Geez!, You'd be 65 on graduation day if you had to pay for that on student wages!
My translation of most of the people quoted in the story:
"Um, yeah, like I've been working for like ten years ya know and went clubbing every nite, bought every cool high-tech piece of shit I could find on credit, instead of ya know paying down my school loans and like buying a house. Now like I've got like ya know tons of credit card bills and I have ya know big school loans. I like can't understand how it happened dude."
And this classic:
"Dude, I'm so clever because I'm deferring my huge undergrad loan while I rack up more debt for my hot-shit MBA..."
ACHTUNG! Das computermachine ist nicht fuer gefingerpoken und mittengrabben. Ist nicht fuer gewerken bei das dumpkopfen.
...about 90% of the population considering themselves to be above average? All I could find was this.
Anyway, the point is that the worse you are at something, the more inflated your opinion of your abilities tends to be (I call this "first belt syndrome"...anyone who has studied a martial art will understand the reference), especially if your ego is tied up in doing well at that thing. It's times like these that force many of us to stop using the fun-house mirrors and start figuring out what we really are good at.
And if you still really think you're top notch but not getting the interviews, it's probably your resume and cover letter. Have someone who writes for a living (and does it well) help you get them into shape.
How can we afford to ever sleep
So sound again
--ebtg
You're right on about the difficulty of finding a job if you're over 40, particularly in IT, if you haven't moved into management. Personally, I've started paying more attention to a negotiated severence package than annual salary increases. Back when I was a 30-something coder, I could (and did) change jobs on a dime. Now that I'm over 40 I think if I had to go back out into the job market I would find it to be much more difficult due to me age (which is not supposed to matter, but it does).
Karma: Professionally Doomed (mostly affected by inability to keep opinions to self)
Ye gods! Why? How? Where?
I'm 34 and I don't think I know _anybody_ my age with '$100,000 stashed away'. Hell, I'm not at all sure it's a good thing to have that kind of money 'stashed away'. I make stuff- I have made a bunch of CDs (at ampcast.com, above), I make guitar DI boxes, I even make costume tails. That in spite of the fact that I live on a little more than $5000 a year- it's about budgeting, handling money responsibly, doing without and working hard on things (depression-era values?)
Money doesn't come from the money fairy, people- though I can understand 'Fortune' magazine not understanding this. It's exchange value for goods and services- it's to do things with, not to 'stash away'. From my perspective, as someone who tries to do and build things rather than 'stash away', these mythical people with '$100,000 stashed away' (a HUNDRED thou? not even ten thou, a freaking hundred?) are the PROBLEM.
Where does that money go? Typically not gold, or bank notes in a mattress. No, that money was expected to go straight to Enron- woops, I mean WorldCom- woops, I mean Microsoft. Do we see the problem?
These people are crazy. I can't even feel inferior to their expectations because they seem to have no clue that what they expect is what will RUIN this country. For how many years have people 'stashed away' in this way, and see where it's got us? The answer is not to make it safe to stash away investment in Wall Street and multinational corporations again.
Get out there and do stuff. Build, create, do- within your means, but I'm talking ALL your means, no 'stashing away'. If you get hit by a truck next week you'll have been happier to have been engaged with a real life- you'll be building abilities that are better than any corporate-wall-street-speculation-policy as insurance for your future- and the money you spend in pursuing your plans and interests is money that CIRCULATES, rather than getting 'stashed away'.
Honestly, what IS this shit? I think some people still believe in the money fairy, and it isn't Slashdotters or Gen Xers, it's Fortune Magazine. You'd think one Enron, one dotcom implosion, would've taught them.
5 years is a bare minimum
Something like 97% of 5 year periods have made money in the stock market, so a 5 year investment is still a bit of a gamble. According to Dave Ramsey 100% of 10 year periods since the dawn of the stock market have made money.
I too am tired of people saying "you should buy a house." I will buy a house when I'm ready to settle somewhere. Contrary to popular opinion, renting often makes good financial sense.
Unfortunatly alot of people who invest don't do it right. If $40,000 represents one year of work for you don't you think you should invest some of that year in learning how to manage your investments? If your too lazy then your better off dropping it all on red-8 and watching them spin the wheel.
Cheap storage VM.
I'm bearish on the market and wouldn't be surprised if the Dow hit 2000, but that doesn't diminish our opportunity for growth. What DOES diminish it is the government knee-jerk reaction of a market crash which is to waste precious capital propping up businesses which ought to go bankrupt!
Recession is a GOOD thing, trying to prevent it leads to depression!
>80 column hard wrapped e-mail is not a sign of intelligent
>life
That whole idea that we've been "set up to fail" and are in the worst position since any generation since The Depression is bullshit.
There's a really simple solutoin to this: Take some responsibility, get off your ass, and work for what you want. The dot-bomb era only reaffirmed the universal truth that success won't just fall out of the sky and land in your lap.
I'm a Gen-Xer, and an IT professional (was before the dot-bombs, was during, and still am). I've had plenty of rought spots, layoffs, etc... but I picked up and pushed through them. I'm doing quite well these days -- all because I worked hard for it. If you want something, you have to work at it. This expectation of fortune and retirement at 30, with minimal effort, is just moronic.
I thought that would make them baby boomers not Gen Xers.
People gets side tracked so easily. Some blame the generation, some blame people who have made bad decisions. But the article, in the very last paragraphs, points to the real cause.
And of the wealth the boom created, the richest households gobbled up a disproportionate amount.
And I agree completly with that statement, after reading some facts about the distribution of wealth in North America, and in the World. It's not all our fault, as Enron and WOlrdCom's greed pointed out.
Karma:This parrot is dead! (and so is the joke.)
What do you expect of the expectations of those who thought they could work at high paying dot.com that don't really produce anything but speculation about what hype words will be salable next?
I never could figure out what dot coms were trying to sale but the "how to make a million, do what we do... make dot coms"
Imagine a generationm blaming such illusions as being there down fall. Perhaps they need to file a class... uh, errr generation x lawsuite against the dot coms.....huh?
Believe it or not,
Not everyone went to Community College like you, and then got their A+ certification.
Seriously, the return on investment for most degrees is just plain ridiculous. My wife has two degrees a general studies B.A. and a B.S.N. (nursing degree). She makes less than some factory workers!!! Her student loans will drive us into a deep hole and if not for IT (my career) we would be in a really bad situation. Salaries in most fields just do not make for much chance of being profitable. On top of that our income is too high to qualify for any type of low interest home loans, but not high enoughto make house payments very manageable (again thanks to IT we can do it). Our only hope is that our house will appreciate sufficiently that by the time we get the loans for school paid that we will be able to take a second morgtage to clean up all the credit cards and other things we had to use to survive initially. The IT boom was a blessing not a curse many of us will be in a position to have cash later thanks to it. The market certainly isnt helping anyone and a college educcation is not much help except in a few specialized areas (definitely not teaching, nursing, or other allied health fields). My own degree in Clinical Lab Science isnt worth the paper its printed on. I got an increase of nearly 100% by switching to IT which was a hobby for me previously (thank god!).
I hate being catagorized by generations. I may as well change my name and join the collective.
[n8.r0n] http://petesweb.spymac.net/
I have to say that I don't know where I fit in. Born in 1978, I remember hearing about "Generation X" when I was in high school, so I assume I'm between generations - whatever that means.
My wife and I have more than $60,000 in school debt (no CC debt), and didn't enter the job market until after the crash. We don't spend irresponsibly. I don't look fondly back on any point of my life, so I guess I'm on the way up.
She, then an EE major, now has a permanent position at a bank headquarters for $11.50 per hour (nice health plan, though). I'm an ex-CS major working as Web consultant for $18/hour, working under my mother-in-law, though that's due to be up in about two months.
New job prospects look grim, and I have absolutely no personal networks. I forget, what happens when you can't pay off your non-bankruptable student loans? Not that I'm planning to, but I'm just curious.
There, I defy anyone to pidgeonhole me. Actually, I've always wanted to be pidgeon-holed for some reason. Any takers?
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
Salespeople are paid very well, precisely for their BS skills. So are CEOs, even the the non-criminals: Their basic job is "selling" the company -- but to investors and employees, not just customers
...a written excuse for all you lazy bastards!!!
second society
While we can't go back in time and actually experience what it was truly like for our grandparents, we can read personal accounts from those who did experience the Great Depression. Studs Terkel's book is essential if you're going to draw any comparisons about "hard times." It's a terrific read. The point I'm making is, don't make grandiose statements about our plight as techies. Not yet at least. Food is in abundance. Deflation is in check. You can at the very least get that bone-head job if you need income. In the 1930's, folks were being shooed away from highly dangerous jobs like bridge building. You have a good point; just manage your perspective.
Sound like those whiners need a "Holiday in Cambodia". Take it away Jello....
...You're a star-belly sneech you suck like a leech
You want everyone to act like you
Kiss ass while you bitch so you can get rich
While your boss gets richer off you...
Furniture. Appliances. Home electronics. How many of these things do you have enough cash for to walk into the store, lay down legal tender, and walk out with them under your arm? And automobiles. Don't even begin with automobiles.
Until prices return to earth where you and I can make a purchase without a financial institution getting in the way, the economy is gonna sit like a brick. I'm not calling for runaway deflation, but we Americans have to bring our spending in check.
Regardless of what you hear in the news, there is no recession, depression, blah blah blah.
You have to be an idiot to really believe that the economic boom of the 90's was based on real $$$, or any solid foundation.
I can remember when the Dow was reaching 6000 and at that time I knew it was not actual value but increased hype. Hype from the internet revolution. The computer revolution, The cell phone revolution, The PDA revolution, lets see.... the dot-com revolution, the massive increase in uneducated buyers in the market.
The way I see it, the economy is fine. The way it is supposed to be.
If you built your house on a sandy foundation it is your own fault. If you are still holding on for life on your sandy foundation, might I suggest you save your strength and file chapter 7 while you still can. Start over with a clean the slate and begin building with solid materials.
I'm keeping my 2 cents.
The only thing credit history is good for is...more credit.
Believe me, there's plenty of time to build up a credit history once you're working.
The trouble with a credit card is that you get used to satisfying needs immediately. Everything becomes an impulse buy.
How much better on all our purchases if we said, "not now, I'll wait until the end of the week".
if we did that, we probably wouldn't buy 1/2 the "junk" we do today, ie. CD's, DVD's, video games, electronics.
I doubt many 18 year olds have the necessary willpower.
So what do you get? A $5,000 debt when you graduate college at 20% interest. And you'll be earning $20K per year. Tell me how long it will be to pay that back. A L-O-O-O-N-G time. A "credit history" doesn't seem like much of a payback, particularly if you default.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
her entire culture, livelyhood, and many of her family were lost to the Khmer Rouge communists and genicidal elitists.
I don't know if you are describing what happened to the Hmong in particular here. But from what I have heard (I was born 1976), I have the utmost respect for them as well as peoples who have managed to keep on going through similar experiences.
...What will it take to bring things back into balance?
Will it take a Malthusian vision where war, pestilence and famine wipes out a huge fraction of the human population to start all over again? Given the large number of nuclear weapons, rapidly spread human diseases and potential blights that could destroy much of the human food supply, it's not impossible the human race could contract severely like what happened during the explosive spread of the bubonic plague in Europe from 1348 to 1352--nearly 50% of the European population died.
I think at least humans in 2002 will likely survive after such a horrible event--we at least won't lose our scientific knowledge completely like what happened during the Dark Ages of Europe, thanks to the massively huge number of books of general knowledge printed.
The economy is bad because Saddam is a bad man! If we attack Iraq and force a regime change, everything will be hunky dory! I promise!
[o]_O
The fscking governments in the US and Canada have been raiding the funds for DECADES to plump up their agenda's and are busy now blaming it on the boomers.
I agree with you, except for the "decades" bit. There was no Social Security Trust Fund until the 1980s. I believe prior to then the target was for Social Security to take in money at the same rate that it was paid out.
Now that there is this Trust Fund, it is as if we are all forced to invest our earnings in government bonds, which is definitely not the choice I would make if I were controlling the investment.
Generation X, Born in 76, earning $10.000-$25.000 a week by shorting stocks and trading stock/index options and futures, beside working as an UNIX System Engineer. Targeting my first milion before I'm 30. Four years more to go :-)
I guess being born in 1977, I couldn't possibly be effected.
aesop? - i prefer joyce
('scuse the line-numbering)
~ ~ ~
The Gracehoper was always jigging ajog, hoppy on akkant 22
of his joyicity, (he had a partner pair of findlestilts to supplant 23
him), or, if not, he was always making ungraceful overtures to 24
Floh and Luse and Bienie and Vespatilla to play pupa-pupa and 25
pulicy-pulicy and langtennas and pushpygyddyum and to com- 26
mence insects with him, there mouthparts to his orefice and his 27
gambills to there airy processes, even if only in chaste, ameng 28
the everlistings, behold a waspering pot. He would of curse 29
melissciously, by his fore feelhers, flexors, contractors, depres- 30
sors and extensors, lamely, harry me, marry me, bury me, bind 31
me, till she was puce for shame and allso fourmish her in Spin- 32
ner's housery at the earthsbest schoppinhour so summery as his 33
cottage, which was cald fourmillierly Tingsomingenting, groped 34
up. Or, if he was always striking up funny funereels with Bester- 35
farther Zeuts, the Aged One, With all his wigeared corollas, albe- 36
dinous and oldbuoyant, inscythe his elytrical wormcasket and 1
Dehlia and Peonia, his druping nymphs, bewheedling him, com- 2
pound eyes on hornitosehead, and Auld Letty Plussiboots to 3
scratch his cacumen and cackle his tramsitus, diva deborah (seven 4
bolls of sapo, a lick of lime, two spurts of fussfor, threefurts of 5
sulph, a shake o'shouker, doze grains of migniss and a mesfull of 6
midcap pitchies. The whool of the whaal in the wheel of the 7
whorl of the Boubou from Bourneum has thus come to taon!), 8
and with tambarins and cantoridettes soturning around his eggs- 9
hill rockcoach their dance McCaper in retrophoebia, beck from 10
bulk, like fantastic disossed and jenny aprils, to the ra, the ra, the 11
ra, the ra, langsome heels and langsome toesis, attended to by a 12
mutter and doffer duffmatt baxingmotch and a myrmidins of 13
pszozlers pszinging Satyr's Caudledayed Nice and Hombly, 14
Dombly Sod We Awhile but Ho, Time Timeagen, Wake! For if 15
sciencium (what's what) can mute uns nought, 'a thought, 16
abought the Great Sommboddy within the Omniboss, perhops an 17
artsaccord (hoot's hoot) might sing ums tumtim abutt the Little 18
Newbuddies that ring his panch. A high old tide for the bar- 19
heated publics and the whole day as gratiis! Fudder and lighting 20
for ally looty, any filly in a fog, for O'Cronione lags acrumbling 21
in his sands but his sunsunsuns still tumble on. Erething above 22
ground, as his Book of Breathings bed him, so as everwhy, sham 23
or shunner, zeemliangly to kick time. 24
Grouscious me and scarab my sahull What a bagateller it is! 25
Libelulous! Inzanzarity! Pou! Pschla! Ptuh! What a zeit for the 26
goths! vented the Ondt, who, not being a sommerfool, was 27
thothfolly making chilly spaces at hisphex affront of the icinglass 28
of his windhame, which was cold antitopically Nixnixundnix. 29
We shall not come to party at that lopp's, he decided possibly, 30
for he is not on our social list. Nor to Ba's berial nether, thon 31
sloghard, this oldeborre's yaar ablong as there's a khul on a khat. 32
Nefersenless, when he had safely looked up his ovipository, he 33
loftet hails and prayed: May he me no voida water! Seekit Ha- 34
tup! May no he me tile pig shed on! Suckit Hotup! As broad as 35
Beppy's realm shall flourish my reign shall flourish! As high as 36
Heppy's hevn shall flurrish my haine shall hurrish! Shall grow, 1
shall flourish! Shall hurrish! Hummum. 2
The Ondt was a weltall fellow, raumybult and abelboobied, 3
bynear saw altitudinous wee a schelling in kopfers. He was sair 4
sair sullemn and chairmanlooking when he was not making spaces 5
in his psyche, but, laus! when he wore making spaces on his ikey, 6
he ware mouche mothst secred and muravyingly wisechairman- 7
looking. Now whim the sillybilly of a Gracehoper had jingled 8
through a jungle of love and debts and jangled through a jumble 9
of life in doubts afterworse, wetting with the bimblebeaks, drik- 10
king with nautonects, bilking with durrydunglecks and horing 11
after ladybirdies (ichnehmon diagelegenaitoikon) he fell joust as 12
sieck as a sexton and tantoo pooveroo quant a churchprince, and 13
wheer the midges to wend hemsylph or vosch to sirch for grub 14
for his corapusse or to find a hospes, alick, he wist gnit! Bruko 15
dry! fuko spint! Sultamont osa bare! And volomundo osi vide- 16
vide! Nichtsnichtsundnichts! Not one pickopeck of muscow- 17
money to bag a tittlebits of beebread! Iomio! Iomio! Crick's 18
corbicule, which a plight! O moy Bog, he contrited with melan- 19
ctholy. Meblizzered, him sluggered! I am heartily hungry! 20
He had eaten all the whilepaper, swallowed the lustres, de- 21
voured forty flights of styearcases, chewed up all the mensas and 22
seccles, ronged the records, made mundballs of the ephemerids 23
and vorasioused most glutinously with the very timeplace in the 24
ternitary not too dusty a cicada of neutriment for a chittinous 25
chip so mitey. But when Chrysalmas was on the bare branches, 26
off he went from Tingsomingenting. He took a round stroll and 27
he took a stroll round and he took a round strollagain till the 28
grillies in his head and the leivnits in his hair made him thought 29
he had the Tossmania. Had he twicycled the sees of the deed 30
and trestraversed their revermer? Was he come to hevre with his 31
engiles or gone to hull with the poop? The June snows was 32
flocking in thuckflues on the hegelstomes, millipeeds of it and 33
myriopoods, and a lugly whizzling tournedos, the Boraborayel- 34
lers, blohablasting tegolhuts up to tetties and ruching sleets off 35
the coppeehouses, playing ragnowrock rignewreck, with an irri- 36
tant, penetrant, siphonopterous spuk. Grausssssss! Opr! 1
Grausssssss! Opr! 2
The Gracehoper who, though blind as batflea, yet knew, not 3
a leetle beetle, his good smetterling of entymology asped niss- 4
unitimost lous nor liceens but promptly tossed himself in the 5
vico, phthin and phthir, on top of his buzzer, tezzily wondering 6
wheer would his aluck alight or boss of both appease and the 7
next time he makes the aquinatance of the Ondt after this they 8
have met themselves, these mouschical umsummables, it shall be 9
motylucky if he will beheld not a world of differents. Behailed 10
His Gross the Ondt, prostrandvorous upon his dhrone, in his 11
Papylonian babooshkees, smolking a spatial brunt of Hosana 12
cigals, with unshrinkables farfalling from his unthinkables, 13
swarming of himself in his sunnyroom, sated before his com- 14
fortumble phullupsuppy of a plate o'monkynous and a confucion 15
of minthe (for he was a conformed aceticist and aristotaller), as 16
appi as a oneysucker or a baskerboy on the Libido, with Floh 17
biting his leg thigh and Luse lugging his luff leg and Bieni bussing 18
him under his bonnet and Vespatilla blowing cosy fond tutties 19
up the allabroad length of the large of his smalls. As entomate 20
as intimate could pinchably be. Emmet and demmet and be jiltses 21
crazed and be jadeses whipt! schneezed the Gracehoper, aguepe 22
with ptchjelasys and at his wittol's indts, what have eyeforsight! 23
The Ondt, that true and perfect host, a spiter aspinne, was 24
making the greatest spass a body could with his queens lace- 25
swinging for he was spizzing all over him like thingsumanything 26
in formicolation, boundlessly blissfilled in an allallahbath of 27
houris. He was ameising himself hugely at crabround and mary- 28
pose, chasing Floh out of charity and tickling Luse, I hope too, 29
and tackling Bienie, faith, as well, and jucking Vespatilla jukely 30
by the chimiche. Never did Dorsan from Dunshanagan dance it 31
with more devilry! The veripatetic imago of the impossible 32
Gracehoper on his odderkop in the myre, after his thrice ephe- 33
meral journeeys, sans mantis ne shooshooe, featherweighed 34
animule, actually and presumptuably sinctifying chronic's de- 35
spair, was sufficiently and probably coocoo much for his chorous 36
of gravitates. Let him be Artalone the Weeps with his parisites 1
peeling off him I'll be Highfee the Crackasider. Flunkey Footle 2
furloughed foul, writing off his phoney, but Conte Carme makes 3
the melody that mints the money. Ad majorem l.s.d.! Divi gloriam. 4
A darkener of the threshold. Haru? Orimis, capsizer of his ant- 5
boat, sekketh rede from Evil-it-is, lord of loaves in Amongded. 6
Be it! So be it! Thou-who-thou-art, the fleet-as-spindhrift, 7
impfang thee of mine wideheight. Haru! 8
The thing pleased him andt, and andt, 9
He larved ond he larved on he merd such a nauses 10
The Gracehoper feared he would mixplace his fauces. 11
I forgive you, grondt Ondt, said the Gracehoper, weeping, 12
For their sukes of the sakes you are safe in whose keeping. 13
Teach Floh and Luse polkas, show Bienie where's sweet 14
And be sure Vespatilla fines fat ones to heat. 15
As I once played the piper I must now pay the count 16
So saida to Moyhammlet and marhaba to your Mount! 17
Let who likes lump above so what flies be a full 'un; 18
I could not feel moregruggy if this was prompollen. 19
I pick up your reproof, the horsegift of a friend, 20
For the prize of your save is the price of my spend. 21
Can castwhores pulladeftkiss if oldpollocks forsake 'em 22
Or Culex feel etchy if Pulex don't wake him? 23
A locus to loue, a term it t'embarass, 24
These twain are the twins that tick Homo Vulgaris. 25
Has Aquileone nort winged to go syf 26
Since the Gwyfyn we were in his farrest drewbryf 27
And that Accident Man not beseeked where his story ends 28
Since longsephyring sighs sought heartseast for their orience? 29
We are Wastenot with Want, precondamned, two and true, 30
Till Nolans go volants and Bruneyes come blue. 31
Ere those gidflirts now gadding you quit your mocks for my gropes 32
An extense must impull, an elapse must elopes, 33
Of my tectucs takestock, tinktact, and ail's weal; 34
As I view by your farlook hale yourself to my heal. 35
Partiprise my thinwhins whiles my blink points unbroken on 1
Your whole's whercabroads with Tout's trightyright token on. 2
My in risible universe youdly haud find 3
Sulch oxtrabeeforeness meat soveal behind. 4
Your feats end enormous, your volumes immense, 5
(May the Graces I hoped for sing your Ondtship song sense!), 6
Your genus its worldwide, your spacest sublime! 7
But, Holy Saltmartin, why can't you beat time? 8
In the name of the former and of the latter and of their holo- 9
caust. Allmen. 10
Times are truly what you make of them...
of a goddamn Russkie, who jumped into the meatgrinder, jammed it, and got out, I just want to say that the material help from the States was barely enough to make some nice propaganda about us being allies. We fought our fight with Russian-made, Russian-designed T34s made out of Russian-produced steel from Russian-mined ore. We have lost 26 millions of our lives. How does the american contribution compare to this?
what my parents did or did not give me is not the point. the point is why should we have to pay too support them ? especially when we wont have anybody too support us ?
i hate you ignorant fools who try too pigeon hole everyone. the social security system BLOWS HARD ! period! and *I* have a right to complain about it. and guess what ? i dont care about the 70 y.o. because they dont give a damn about me !
"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe." --Albert Einstein
The aritcle is about GenX, of which a small part were techies. But the STATS are about the demographic as a whole.
>Generation X (those born between 1966 and 1975)
>have been damaged by the fall of the economy and
That is an odd def. They always say the boomers ended with 1963, so what happened to 1964 and 1965?
And they generally go to the early 80s...Fortune is always screwed up though.
Care to enlighten the younger (i.e. Gen Y) among us as to what the double speed poke is?
well lets see at 50k that is about 416 dollars owed PER month at 0% interest more like 500 with interest. Now lets say you get a job (entry level btw). For 40k per year. That leaves you about 3000 per month after fica, taxes, federal and state. Leaving you with 2500 per month to live on. House lets say you get a small one 700. Food lets say you dont eat out 100. Utilities lets be gernerous 100. Another 100 for extra home things that happen. Leaving you with 1500. Not bad IF you plan it right.
Now lets say it took an extra 3 years to get that masters degree. Not only did that 3 years cost you 50k PLUS interest. It cost you another 120k in lost salary. Thats IF you didnt get a raise. Most places at least give you inflation.
Now lets say you make 10k over a bachlors. It will take you 12 YEARS to make it up. 20k 6 years... After that you will be making more. However when you are starting out you will need a bit more money to play around with to buy things like furniture house car family... As you get older you will not need as much as you already have acumulated it.
All in all its about even. But you will feel like your burning the candle at both ends.
Also I would get rid of that variable rate loan, because there is no reason for them not to soak it to you. Those are junk. It will go up to or within a half-a-point of the max very soon. Pay as much as you can to get rid of it. I have not had a loan for 8 years and that is 'extra' money every month I can use on other things. Even if it is saving it.
No degree at all you will be scraping by in most cases for years. Till you get senority somewhere. Then they will see your the most expensive worker and do about the same amount of work as the others, and can you.
Also having a masters does NOT mean you will be making more money than everyone else. My mom has a MBA and is working as a secritary. Is this because she is stupid or bad at what she does? No. Its because age descrimination does exist.
Plan ahead or you will be screwed.
Also I would add to that list of stupid things I see people do is buy a brand new car. Then 2 years later do the exact same thing. Used cars work fairly well when your starting out. Then drive the hell out of em. Buying a house is the exact oposite. You actually end up with an tangable benifit. You can take money out of your taxes and put it back in your pocket. You get to keep your money. I got a 400 dollar per month raise just buying a house instead of renting.
Age 6-13 for sure...no commitment, no worries
At one point I had over $100k in my 401K. Luckily, over the next 30 years, it should appreciate
The point is - it wasn't that hard. I didn't have to get lucky with the market or stock options. All I had to do was go to work while it was still dark, work hard, and not buy a ton of expensive toys. The "best years of our lives are behind us" is pure stupidity, in the same genre as 'There is only a worldwide market for 5 or 6 computers' and '640K should be enough for anyone.'
Write this guy's name down, and stick that quote in your sig file. It will be as laughable as Gates' comment someday.
It's Lewisville you fucking tool.
Writers imply. Readers infer.
What I see around me is a lot of people with no real skills sitting in coffee shops whining that they aren't getting paid big money anymore, and that's all I was talking about. As for the debt thing, I think it's just plain dumb. I make 1/2 to 1/3 of what some of my friends were making, and yet I have very little debt, while they are buried under it. My credit card debt I could pay off in a few months at my current wages, and even if I were making 1/2 as much (which would be possible just about anywhere, since that wouldn't be much over minimum wage) I would still be able to cover all my bills, including the 2 cars.
Yeah, everything is a gamble, but if you aren't prepared to lose, if you over-extend yourself to the point where you can't afford to be making less than you are, then it IS your fault, and your situation is the direct result of your own poor planning.
And again, while I've been laid off several times in the last few years, and I haven't collected a single unemployment check. I always apply, just in case, but I've never been unemployed long enough to recieve one. Mostly that's due to the skill set I've developed, which anyone could get within a year at a JC. Most retraining programs will support you for at least that long. My attitude makes a big difference to, in that I view every job that comes my way as a learning opportunity, and if it sucks, well, I've still learned something from it that will likely come in handy down the road, and there's nothing stopping me from looking for another job just because I already have one.
So no, fate has nothing to do with it. I've worked to get where I am, and I take what opportunities come my way even if they aren't exactly what I want, rather than sitting around whining about how the economy is so bad and I can't get the exact job I went to school for.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
You can do what you want, I plan on living less expensively and saving.
Even if the dock workers win this particular round chances are good that they are going to lose in the long run. There are plenty of people that are willing to do their work at lower prices (especially in California with their large immigrant population). A quick look at the ILWU's website shows that shipping companies are already shifty work away from the longshoremen. It's only a matter of time.
Programming is something that is even easier to shift overseas. Programming unions would simply guarantee that software development shifted overseas.
so am i exempt or just slightly less wrecked?
Will all people who actually believe that generationalist crap please go stick their head in a bucket and go away!
/. by people who should know better). Let's try to answer it, shall we?
Everything which is said about the so-called 'Gen-X' is said by the media -- first advertising slime, then editorial slime, followed by stereotyping lazy journalist slime -- not by the members of this nebulous and meaningless 'group'.
What is this article saying? That it looks like younger people are going to have a really crappy time for the forseeable future, probably the rest of their lives. And that despite the crapulous stereotype fostered upon a generation by fiat, "This time they have reason to whine." (think about that byline. It means that according to them 1: all Gen-Xers whine and complain, and 2: at all times except for this one, any complaints are trivial and meaningless and can be ignored safely. Who decides?)
Why is this bullshit continuing? Why are 'Gen-Xers' going to do so badly? (A question which is not even asked on the Fortune article, and is answered by "because they are all whining shits" here on
For a start, lets use the term 'Gen-X' merely as a reference to the people who happened to be born in that time period, and not say anything about their personal habits, merely the opportunities they (...'we', I should say) have).
Gen-Xers have been around to take up and ride the greatest explosion in technology since the Industrial Revolution. A few have even managed to become senior programmers and sysadmins. Where to from there? The people who run the companies are still from generation older -- lets label them 'Baby Boomers'. As generations, we -- Gen-X -- have watched them -- Baby Boomers -- profit from wealth and progressive social policies from the sixties to the late seventies -- and then systematically dismantle those things behind them. Here in Australia we used to have free (government-funded) Universities. Student fees were introduced in the early eighties. They have been increasing steadily since, and it now costs between tens- and hundreds-of-thousands of dollars for a degree. And the people who are most shrilly declaiming that fees are still too low and students don't know how good they have it are precisely those who recieved most benefit from free education.
And then there is the Reagan/Thatcher economic model, which says that selling off your country and renting it back from whoever could afford to buy it somehow makes good economic sense. Gee, that does work! Just ask anyone with a privatised Electricity Company! or Water. or Prison System.
Governments now have the same or higher debt than they used to have, but there is nothing left to sell off. Except maybe the citizenry as slave labour.
The Baby Boomers, as a group, are statistically the greediest and most selfish for a hundred years prior, and certainly since. They (that is, those members of that group who have had unfettered access to the pension funds) have squandered the pension money, but do you think there will be any willingness to forego the best care in their dotage? And what will be left after the largest retired population -- by proportion, and absolutely -- in the history of mankind has gone? SFA is my bet. It will be up to us to fund our own retirements, if we get any.
But wait! There's more... those of Gen-X who have managed to find $100,000 pa jobs are statistical freaks. Most have been dumped on the streets after the bubble burst. There used to be a path of promotion to a point where you could set company policy. How many of you are in that position? How many are under 35? How many of your peers are over 40-45? What about superiors?
Or the media -- where are the Gen-X journalists? Don't include MTV, or anyone whose only task seems to be reporting on skateboards and rap music. Where are the Gen-Xers interviewing Rumsfeld or Rice? Where are the Gen-Xers reporting in Afghanistan? Or hosting a talking-head show? (Conan O'Brien Doesn't Count).
When you think about it, this comes down to the powerful members of one generation saying to their children "We will tell you what you are. You are dissapointments to Us. You will never live up to what We were and what We did. We therefore will not give up the world until We cannot hold on with Our palsied hands one moment longer, and We will then expect you to take the best possible care of Us no matter what the cost to your own future."
And you wonder why those children are pissed!
P.S. I am not saying that all Boomers are consciously subduing all Gen-Xers, but I am saying that the social structures dismantled by one generation has amounted to pulling up the ladders set up by their parents before the next generation can make its own way up. Any who have climbed the wall on their own, or slipped into the fortress through a fortuotous (sp?) crack, more power to you. But don't forget the increasing crowd still locked outside the gates.
"This is a Hollywood movie: when it comes to the Laws of Physics, they're lucky if they get Gravity!" --- my wife
Isn't this the same generation that was expected to be the first in American history to do worse than our parents?
I dunno -- the dotcom thing was pretty good while it lasted. Beats the flower generation in terms of lasting power.
Necessity breeds solutions. We'll dig out of this. Stop panicking.
I am one of those poor afflicted "Gen Xers", living in this modern day hell suffering the highest standard of living in human history with the freest and most congenial life ever.
,etc. The crux of it is that IT delivered very significant improvements in productivity in the early to mid nineties and generally declined thereafter. Unrealistic expectations of a constant rise in productivity from IT alone ad infinitum have been replaced with a more sophisticated understanding that just slapping servers or PCs on desks does not make a company more profitable or efficient.
Its articles like this one which makes my Dad glad that he had only to endure the softness of the Depression, fighting the Japanese, etc. If Grand Dad was alive I'm sure he would have preferred his decades of back breaking labor in squalid (by our standards)conditions and his years in the trenches of WWI (with gas & bullet wounds) to living today.
When are the people who write this sort of angst ridden rubbish going to develop a sense of reality ? The IT industry feasted on huge salaries, ridiculous benefits in its heyday because no one knew what was going on. People were being paid more than their work was worth because revenue was regarded as an "old economy" concept. Now we hear about how miserly companies are in investing in IT, how limited their vision is
Don't worry about it, its cyclical. Eventually the IT market, which is still huge, will pick up. Many people with limited skills will drop out of IT, and there will be a greater correlation between renumeration and revenue.
Another thing to whine about.
Speaking as a 29 year old who was born in 73, I couldn't care a rat's ass what the hippie media says no matter how many times they say it. I do not belong to a "generation". I don't watch MTV, didn't listen to that Kurt Cobain puke. I am not a number! I am a free man! Fortune is for Keynsian twats. Forbes rules.
after reading this article. NPR has also had a few segments on people and their job searches after 9/11; particularly in New York and DC; and how they will settle for just about anything to stop collecting unemployment. Employers in DC and Northern VA are picking five of five hundred resumes at random and no longer negotiate salaries with you; they tell you what (little) they'll pay you and expect you to jump for joy. Right this moment I work at a major pharmaceutical plant in Virginia, two hours from my home in West Virginia. It is a 3 month contract and I hope that it is extended; I can't even imagine when I'm finished with the project if I'll get to stay on doing something else. The money is great but I have gone back to the harsh sacrifices required to earn a decent living that our grandparents tell us about.
I think with the interesting people, their lives can't possibly be wrapped up into a nice little package.
I'm 27, at the very end of generation x...
I have slightly over 50K in savings (in a money market account) I have over 30K in investments (401K, stocks, IRAs, etc.) I own my condo (40K equity, 80K mortgage.)
It helps to have a decent job, be able to save, and living cheap for the first few years out of school (share an apartment, live with your parents, etc.) My parents are quite well off, so I didn't have any student loans, so I am probably an extreme example.
I here stories of these kids who have only 500 bucks in their checking account. Many of them are a couple of years older than me. Where does all the money go? One of these kids still lives with their parents!
"Are the best years of our lives truly behind us?"
If they hinged on economic prosperity and material possesions, possibly. Thankfully there's much more to life than that.
-- No, no gems to be found in this sig.
if you base "the best years of your life" on the amount of money you make, you have answered your own question
Social service agencies here in the Phoenix area report that they are overwhelmed by the demand for their services. They report that they are seeing entire families show up who were formerly middle class, but now are destitute. Even the soup kitchens are now having to turn away people, in a scene right out of the Great Depression. There are a lot of people hurting out there, but due to the way unemployment figures are cooked by our government (it's not a new thing, BTW, I mentioned this several years ago on my web site), we're spared knowing just how bad the situation is.
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
We've had a front row seat to the excesses and extremes of the Baby Boomers and feel jaded as a group. But we're not slackers or cry-babies. Sure there were excesses during the dot-com era, but from what I could see it was the salespeople and their ilk doing most of the excessing; the coders, sysadmins, designers, and project managers worked 80 hour weeks. Hardly a bunch of spoiled children living in a fantasy land.
/.'ers here without jobs. You're just lucky. Luck is the only reason you're not suffering right now, and I hope you get the chance to learn that before the economy picks up again and preserves you in your delusions.
Yet expectations were generally unrealistic and this patch we're going through now, though rough, will in the long run turn out to be a very positive time of soul-searching and learning what is truly important in life. Family, good friends, and helping your fellow human beings are the truest source of happiness. It makes me happy to know that a much greater share of my peers will realize that than otherwise would have, and it makes me quite optimistic that our descendants will recognize us as the most compassionate generation. Our finest years are just ahead of us, and no other generation will be as able to clean up the god-awful mess the boomers mean to bequeath to us.
That said, from many of the posts here I actually hope that the tech slump deepens so all of you calling the unemployed among us losers can share in the experience of having your professional world crumble around you despite being a brilliant programmer/sysadmin/designer/whatever and busting your butt 90 hours a week to make someone else money. You did not make the right choices, you did not out-code anybody, you did not brilliantly and with prescient foresight save while your silly peers played the day away, and you sure as shootin' don't enjoy a greater share of common sense than anyone else. You are not superior in any way to any of the
So to you all, I say can it until you reach retirement age without ever once having been laid off because you're so brilliant. Chances are astronomically good you'll never make it.
To the rest of my downtrodden brothers and sisters, lay low, husband your resources, and wait for the day this turns around because we're gonna take the world by storm.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Why is it that Generation X is being called a bunch of slackers? I know GenX-ers (older than me) who work longer hours than my parents ever did. Meanwhile, the company they work for allows executives (members of the Boomers) to do things like spend $500 on "dinner with a client" or take a day off of work to play a round at an exclusive country club AND EXPENSE IT.
.com thing was a scam, yes... but the Generation X CEOs who were part of the scam were being strung along by venture capitilists... who were mostly (surprise)... Baby Boomers.
It is members of the Boomers who get to fly around in the company jet, get to stay in fancy hotels in business trips (which the company pays for), and so forth.
Then the GenX-ers at the company are asked to work more than 8 hours a day, plus weekends... and are called slackers for wanting to do things like "spend time with their families."
To top it off, it is members of the Boomers who are "cooking the books" to give themselves fat paychecks. Who suffers when the company goes bankrupt? The GenX-ers who were working at the company.
And it isn't looking very great for people who are graduating from college now. Not only do we have to compete with LAID OFF Generation X members with Masters Degrees and PHDs who are being forced down into what would normally be entry level positions, but some of us face even greater debt from school.
(I'm luck that I don't have any debt from school, but plenty of my friends have tons...)
The government is _encouraging_ the GenX-ers to go into debt by "going shopping" to fight terrorism at the same time. Great idea!!
I talked with someone from the DEPRESSION generation a few months ago at a picnic.
The economy entered the discussion.
They said that they don't understand how younger people can even survive today with the damage that the _Baby Boomers_ are doing.
The
I'm not trying to bash all Boomers here. I know plenty of Baby Boomers who are having just as much trouble as the Generation X people are. But it is just really kinda messed up when Generation X is being called a generation of "slackers," when most of the damage is being done by people from the Boomer Generation who are purposefully doing things that are hurting the economy and hurting the Generation X people so that they can get more money that they don't even need.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
It is always darkest before the dawn, and Fortune typically assumes the current trends will continue forever (whichever way they are going). And they usually are most apt to do so right at the turning point.
To me, this looks like great news because they are pointing this out now. Perhaps things are turning around already.
Some of the stuff in there (e.g. a 3x year old 1/2 to retirement) is SO misleading and the point seems to be to strike fear into people. Why? If they got there BS they are maybe 10 years into their work career which should last for 40 or so years. Thus it is alarmist to say they are 1/2 way there when they are perhaps 1/4 of the way...
"And if you still really think you're top notch but not getting the interviews, it's probably your resume and cover letter. Have someone who writes for a living (and does it well) help you get them into shape."
Yup! There should be plenty of those "high opinion of themselves" writers out there to help polish "Mr modesty's" resume.
Cashflow-wise, my neighbors are poor. They earned their living in pre-inflation dollars, and their Social Security benefits are measured in pre-inflation dollars. They can barely afford the property taxes on their homes and dog food for their dog. While "wealthy" on paper, the reality is that they live in poverty because you can't eat equity until you sell -- and if they sell, they're on the streets.
Frankly, I haven't had a health insurance policy in the past 10 years that did not pay for prescription drugs, albeit sometimes with a hefty deductible (e.g. basic Blue Cross/Blue Shield had a $1500 deductible before they would start paying 80% of the cost of prescription drugs). Medicare is "just" a health insurance policy. Why should old people have less benefits than I do?
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
Figures, I had something interesting to say but I was carded.
Yeah, well, just because they paid in doesn't mean that I owe them, does it?
I know, that's how it works. But I feel justified in getting pissed off when I realize that no one is (probably, now, who really knows?) going to cover the money *I* put in.
Writers imply. Readers infer.
I haven't heard much of or about him in years. I guess he's retired. You would think he'd be still making some noise if he isn't dead. I would be very interested in his take on 9/11, but maybe he's just too 'over the edge' for current times.
(turning out to be a rant)
As a non-bubble tech, with a month and a half till I've been with the company for 5 years (and 3 months as a temp), reality has been with me the past 8 months of layoffs. The parent company, who bought us after I started, is officially "up for auction" today, presumably unable to make it's $30Mil bank payment by 1 Nov.
I saw the bubble rise, the creation of lots of "Instant Jobs", no rise in salary. No raise for the past 2 years. Wishing I was on unemployment. A highly specialized position in general (yes, help desk) taking 6 months for a good tech to figure out what's going on in general. I've managed to become the "specialist" with our 2 "bastard child" products (of 3: 1 current, 1 in development, 1 in end-of-life). I would have thought that the petroleum industry (POS side) would be a safe bet. Hell, I can fix cash registers AND gas pumps now! Oh, I suppose the SQL, DBase, serial
Renting cheap apartment, driving cheap car, military veteran with only my "Honorable Discharge" to hang on my wall. I haven't even bothered looking at what my 401k is worth since it was over $10k. Guess what...5k of that is "preferred stock".
The bubble gave me none of it's benefits, all of it's problems, and a nice view from the bottom of an outhouse. I suppose I still have a shovel, but at this point, I've switched to one that's comically ballooned.
(probably only paragraph suitble for comment)
Oh, I'm soon to be 37, born in '66. I do not consider myself to be a GenX'er for one important reason. My parent's aren't "Baby Boomers". I don't think my brother, born in '69, is GenX either, but he's closer than I. I've always thought of GenX'ers as "Baby Boomer Spawn". So I also believe that GenX+1 (GenY) are "GenX Spawn".
(wrapup)
My Dad is retired from a major airline, but he wasn't a pilot. Good company retirement, great healthcare, etc. Mom raised us kids, then became an LPN, but isn't employed now. The family is buying a goodly quantity (+100 acres) of resourceful land in a protected environment in a yet-to-be inflated East Coast state. That's a result of the property balloon just starting to reach most of "back east" (trends move west-east here in the US). My dad says "Land is a great investment because they aren't making any more of it". That doesn't include the 1000+ sqft of "air" some people "own" in a condo or some such.
Why are Union workers more "legit" than tech workers? Cert'-o-rama has been a joke I have refused to participate in all along (work hasn't paid for it).
Just another needle in a 1400 post haystack
Plus ca change, plus c'est les memes choses.
I am right now, in the worst economy in a decade, enjoying the highest salary and best job I have had since I got out of college with a measley undergrad.
Since getting out of college, I have had 4 jobs in three years...3 by choice, 1 layoff. But the layoff doesn't really count because it happened in 99 and was the result of management being so stupid, even a green just-out-of-school-twit like myself questioned their basic business principles.
If you sell yourself short and walk around with your head up your ass feeling sorry about yourself because you are 28 and don't drive a Ferrari, you are an idiot.
Now, will I be better off than my parents? Yep. Wanna know how I know that? Because I know-not guess, not think-but know that I will. I werk my ass off and I am rewarded for it.
I spent a year at a company full of losers who thought that the only way they could ever be financially successful was to win the lottery. Hey slick, the lottery is a tax for people who are bad at math.
If you want something bad enough, and you find the right place to be in your life, you will achieve anything you want.
In my city, mortgage payments on a 1500 square foot house are cheaper than rent payments on an 850 square foot apartment. You're saying that I should have continued to send my money down a rathole for rent?
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
You've just summed up the problem with collectivism.
I stayed 9 months in that job, hated it, and quit.
I now live on a reasonably small percentage of that same wage and have a higher quality of life.
It's not always about the money.
mogorific carpentry experiments
grain of truth in it.
theres going to be a lot of social distrubance in the usa and might turn towards fascism. terrorist attakcs are very useful, like riechstag fire was. one indicator is sudden uncontrolled increase in prices of everything, called hyperinflation. anyone notice this? better get rid of the cash and buy goods and things. you never know when you maight need them. notlike loony survivalist fringe but a sensible precaution. maybe should be ask slashdot question-"how to tackle the coming mega crash".
ac because of good reasons
Granted, I haven't had to use this so-called "unemployment insurance" yet. Last time I was unemployed, I had a job within four days of starting my job search. But that was before the local job market totally crated.
I suggest that before you make blithe statements about "unemployment insurance", that you check to make sure that it exists in places other than where you're posting from. Unemployment insurance that actually replaces a large percentage of one's salary is limited to a few states. In most states, unemployment insurance is capped at an artificially low maximum that is only barely adequate for buying food for a family, and definitely NOT adequate to keep one from tapping savings while unemployed.
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
I think a lot of the people responding to this article are missing the main point in that there are less jobs available today than even twenty years ago.
The majority of the jobs available now are $6/hour working at McDonald's. You might say.. you gotta take whatever job you can get.. but $6/hour at McDonald's is not even enough to live on what we'd now call a 'bare minimum' of living quality.
Okay, you could move back in with your parents, ditch the girlfriend, and the $6/hour paycheck would be fine.. but don't the skilled members of the generation have the right to be able to get a job (even if it was just $25k per year) so they could live in their own apartment, own a modest car, and be able to live the life of an average 30 year old?
That's the main question, and I'm not arguing it either way.
My opinion is that a lot of this is blown out of proportion, and that most of the whiners are those who want to live in a $1500/month apartment in San Francisco while having two gay lovers on the side.
Forget that shit. You can rent an apartment in somewhere nice, but cheap, for like $300/month sometimes. If you can find a job in Wisconsin, Wyoming, the Dakotas, Missouri, or the Deep South, that pays at least $20k, you can live like a king.
mogorific carpentry experiments
I suggest buying and reading this book called Time and the Technosphere:
http://www.unknowncountry.com/store/?fid=8
The result is that our houses are built crappily and tend to fall apart, but what the hey, they're cheap.
Now, that applies primarily to carpenters, lathers, and stucco appliers. In other trades there is a great demand, for example plumbing, electrical, and HVAC (Heating, Ventilation, Air Conditioning). On the other hand, the training to get into those fields is getting more expensive than it once was. You're talking about a six month course of study at a vocational school, or if you're one of the lucky slobs whose Dad was in the union, you can slide into a union apprenticeship. (Hmm, I'll have to ask my mother where my father's old union card went to). Those are definitely NOT fields where you can simply walk in off the street and be hired. If you don't believe me, the full National Electrical Code is over 1,000 8 1/2 by 11" pages long. If you don't have that tome pretty much memorized (at least to the point where you can thumb directly to the table that you need to, say, detirmine the proper depth for a buried type UF feeder to a subpanel in a detached garage that is 120v with a GFI protector), you're not qualified to be an electrician.
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
I had to see if I could find something more recent from him after getting this info. I'll have to read some more, but this seemed pretty recent. An interview video. I didn't want to download RealPlayer just to view this, but there were some interesting tidbits here. For instance he has a new book coming out in December.
Regarding $50,000 in student loans, average tuition costs at state colleges are approaching $10,000 a year (they were $8,655 a year in 2001), with the better state colleges costing more, and average stay at state colleges is approaching 5 years (it's virtually impossible to earn a degree in 4 years unless you kill yourself doing it). $50,000 in student loan debts does not sound out-of-line to me.
Is a college degree worth $50,000? Probably not in today's job marketplace. But I'm sure it seemed a good idea at the time, compared to spending the rest of her life reciting "Do you want fries with that order?".
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
Yup me too, but I always figured that was because I was too poor to get into debt, ie no bank in its right mind would lend me a red cent!
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
Number of cars: 1
Well guess what, I can easily afford that on one income. Heck, I can even afford what was a *BIG* house in 1959 on one income (I own a 1500 square foot house built in 1959). Heck, my house, unlike most 1950's houses, even had provisions for a *dryer*! Granted, I don't live on the coasts, which are horrendously expensive, but it is quite possible to live as well as in the 1950's on a single income.
BTW, most people in the 1950's did NOT live in rural areas. The 1950's were the first decade in which more Americans lived in cities than in farms, thanks to the aftermath of the Great Depression, WWII, and the mechanization of farms after WWII (which drove many of the ex-farmworkers to the cities).
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
as everyone knows you can't trust anyone over 30. Mainly because by age 30 your brain has retrogressed to that of a 'talking monkey'. In which your language only consists of the following words, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, mon...
The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education. - Paul Feyerabend
You're so freakin' spoiled. Your parents gave you birth, raised you, sent you off to college, and now:
1) That college wasn't good enough
2) Hey, aren't mom and dad selfish for enjoying their life.
3) Maybe, just maybe, you ought to get a freakin' job, and pay for something yourself for the first time in your miserable, pathetic, loser life.
4) Its too bad your mom didn't have a better coat hanger because she obviously gave birth to one of the most self-center spoiled brats on god's earth.
5) I'll bet at least one of your parents killed themselves because of you.
I'm doing very well and in a stable situation, not drinking too much, regular exercise at the gym (3 days a week). I'm earning a very comfortable salary for this area, eating well (no more microwave dinners and saturated fats), have a wife and child, a safer car(baby smiling in back seat), live well within my means. My house is appropriately priced for the salary I earn, I frequently check credit at (moral) bank (hole in the wall), I have no credit debt to speak of other than my mortgage, an empowered and informed member of society(pragmatism not idealism).
My parents didn't give me a financial boost, as they were always middle class, no chance of escape. I'm well insured so if something happens to me my family will be fine(shot of baby strapped in back seat), It's all a matter of having good survival skills (the ability to laugh at weakness). I keep in contact with old friendsin the same age group that are doing just as well, we enjoy a drink now and then. As I look around those that are doing badly, they've almost always made poor choices - ridiculously teenage and desperate.
For now I pay the tax, concerned (but powerless), expect no returns, and vote for anyone willing to change the system to my pesonal benefit ( favors for favors ).
I'm doing very well and in a stable situation, a pig in a cage on antibiotics.
I was born in '75. I guess I should just off myself now before I make anymore money;p
I live in Pleasant Hill in a 1BR condo with garage, all appliances, my own washer/dryer, and my own garage. And I'm only a 40-minute commute away from SF (or I can BART in.)
I pay $1280/month, and I'm on the high end of the scale for PH.
Your prices are no longer accurate (either that or you're just exaggerating.)
Honestly, that's why I'm not a chef. It's definately a labor of love. For every wealthy Wolfgang Puck or Mario Batali, there are *thousands* of highly trained, mega-skilled, extramely talented, creative, ambitious, smart people working in the world's great restaurants and hotels, for less than $10/hr- even at age 40! Try living on that in NY or Napa- better have a trust fund to fall back on!
Dear Snippy Piece of Shit:
I suppose it's easy to float around in your ever-protective bubble of superiority. That you have no clue what the job market is like, that you have no compassion for people who hocked themselves into debt tryign to secure a better future, that you sound like some Randroid/Rush Limbaugh clone, is obviously of no concern to someone of your 'superior' skills.
However, I wasn't talking about people who went to school and actually got an education.
But hey, getting buried in debt is just plain dumb anyway, college education or not.
So how do you get a GOOD college education without ending up in debt? Save?? ya. Have your parents pay for it? Well thats nice but most people can't rely on thier parents to do so.
You seem to acknowledge that you need an education to get a decent job, but then you turn around and say even college debt is dumb. So what are people supposed to do?
It's interesting how many people here can't see beyond their personal circumstances. There's so much of this "I'm ok, what are you complaining about" garbage.
1. Learn a programming language
2. ???
3. Profit!!
It is only money. Why are we all so worried about how much everyone else is making? Money does not equal happiness. Living a full, rich and rewarding life does. And that does not require money.
...Go get yourself a good job and save so that you can spend it when you're their age...
Oh, ok, I just run right out and start making $125 a year. I'll just snap my fingers and be set in life. Because, as we all know, the economy is so fucking great right now. Bed-wetting liberals my ass. I graduated university at the top of my class, and I can't even find a job that'll pay me $20 an hour right now. Maybe you have had easy breaks your whole life, but don't assume that that's everyone else's reality.
The reason people with decent jobs don't have money is that they spend it all. That's not saying Generation X is any more stupid or less responsible than their parents or grandparents. It's that they have grown up in a world where things are instantly available, advertising is designed by psychologists, and credit is doled out like candy.
People often simplistically credit WWII for the economic boom of the 1950's, as if war itself creates prosperity. The war did create employment, but more significantly it created huge shortages because so much production was diverted to the military. Everything from cars to coffee was hard to get. For several years people were making decent money and couldn't spend it. They saved like crazy. When the war ended and the tooled up factories switched to consumer goods, people poured all that money back into the economy. High demand, high production, high employment, it was party time. Citizens devolved into consumers. It wasn't the euphoria of victory that drove the economy, it was that people simply had tons of real money to spend. That generation is retired now and is generally able to live comfortably on its own leftovers.
We won't have a situation like that in the near future. If anybody thinks going to war with Iraq or terrorists will boost the economy, they're not reading the liner notes. We don't want to get into a big war, and little wars that don't deprive the public in a way that creates postwar prosperity. At least not when the message from leadership is Business as Usual instead of Batten Down the Hatches.
I don't look forward to the next few decades in America at all.
Take out the credit card companies and the credit reporting bureus. Level the playing field. Only way out.
But seriously we live in a time of such excess, that those who complain about their earning are just upset because they can not affort the life style they have/want to become accustomed to.
But, keep in mind that not all of us measure our self worth by our job titles or the number of zeros in our paycheck.
Problem with this is if you look too high, the reality you realise is beyond the people around you. Just ask Einstein and Dr Hawking.
Someone hates these cans.
You always have a choice. A person is responsible for his/her life. what happened to us was due to us. putting it on someone else wont solve anything
My Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
FB : https://www.facebook.com/TanveersPhotography
I was born in '65 and I remember reading articles in the late 80's calling those of us born between 1960 and 1965 the "Baby Buster" generation. There are significantly fewer of us than the generations before and after.
This kind of made sense to me because all through my grade school and junior high years schools were being closed for lack of kids. The remaining schools would then swell with new students just a few years later.
Sure, go to school to be a harpist. BUT DON'T TAKE OUT $50K of loans to do it.
Why not? If being a harpist is your dream, and somebody puts a 50K price tag on it, you will have to decide if that's worth it to you. You know, for some people, money is not the end of the world. 50K is pretty cheap for the chance to actualize your dreams.
Don't give me that crap about it's because I'm white and I'm college educated.
After all, the family from El Salvador living next door can do it. The husband has two jobs, the wife works, they have three kids, their parents live with them and they rent out the basement of their 1400 square foot house so make ends meet.
That seems fair to you? I'm white and college educated (and recently emerged from debt) and one thing I've learned is to appreciate what's been given to me. Only the median income for Asian Americans beats the median for whites. And they both outstrip the median for "hispanics" by a wide margin. And the median income for blacks in the U.S.? Now that's depressing. The disparity is disgraceful. You don't want to hear that crap? Quit complaining. Pull your head out of the sand and do something about it. It's not going away on its own.
Fifty years ago it only took one person working full-time to pay for the expenses of a whole family. Now we have both parents putting in 40+ hour work weeks to achieve the same purchasing power.
Mimimum wage was actually closer to a living wage back then too, but powerful and well-connected lobbies (McLobby) keep it artificially low.
Getting deeply into debt in your 20s for the sake of an education or because of a sudden medical emergency is par for the course. Its no wonder that credit card companies and payday loan companies are doing so well. People need fast credit ASAP to stay afloat.
Hopefully, my generation will address these problems instead of shoving them under the rug when they begin to consolidate more power in the next couple decades as the boomers drift off to retirement.
Since the vast majority of Gen-Xers had nothing to do with dot-coms, I don't see the point.
Sorry, none for you
Hey, lifes tough. Sucks that your parents aren't more supportive, but assuming you're over 18, they don't owe you jack.
Go get a job and leave college for awhile, its probably a better move anyway, given the state of colleges these days. Having trouble paying rent? Get a roommate. If you're still having trouble, get a smaller place. That's what responsibility IS.
I didn't own any stock, but now I am going to pay more taxes so the government can bail these cheating baby boomers out.
Where did you get that idea? Enron isn't being bailed out. Sheesh.
could go on and on, but it's easier to point your sorry ass to the front page of the Wall Street Journal. Or are you too busy making pathetic, flamebait posts like these on slashdot?
Oh, I'm well aware of the fraud at enron. I 'm just trying to figure what in the world gives you the right to have an opinion on it. It isn't affecting you at all.
Fucking whining liberals are always blaming others for their problems. Can't pay rent this month? Is it because you sat on your ass? No, its because of Enron!
Give me a break.
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23
For the record, I don't sit on my ass, I work for a living. The problem is that my employer didn't give *anyone* a raise last year (and probably this year, too) because of the "bad economic situation."
And Enron did effect me because I own mutual funds and 401(k)'s, and, if you haven't noticed, the Stock Market has dropped by several thousand points over the past year. Bah.
You may think that parents don't owe their children anything after 18. Well, I disagree. Your kids will be pumping gas while mine are (hopefully) executives that own the chain of filling stations at which your kids work! Why? Because I helped them get started in life and paid for their higher education. Have fun when your loving children have to move back in with you at 26, jerkoff.
Futhermore, I would argue that if parents do not owe their children anything after 18, then the reciprocal also holds. Children have no obligation to aid parents in their retirement years. So, when your parents finish pissing away all their money on bullshit "self discovery" therapy sessions, mid-life crisis sportscars, and frivolous vacations, I encourage you to let them spend the last years of their sorry lives rotting in a cardboard box.
Wotta morron.
Deactivate your rose colored glasses please. The boomers also grew up in times when racial discriminiation was accepted, beating your wife and keeping women from working as much as men was also accepted, and inner city problems were ignored because the people who lived there, minorities simply did not matter. Now there's your moral guidance and no wonder it was rejected. Thank GAWD it was rejected.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
Yeah, well, just because they paid in doesn't mean that I owe them, does it?
You don't. The social security administration, however, does. And because social security money was not simply invested (in itself an odd idea since it would have likely been invested in bonds anyway), but spent on other government projects, this means that the money has to come from somewhere. Again, the variances in population, cost of living, etc, are what affect this financial model the most.
I agree that we have a right to be angry if we reach the age where we should receive social security benefits and there are none to be had. Of course, we will-- at that point-- have only our own generation to blame, since previous generations will be long gone by then and we would have had every opportunity to repair the damage... we are going to need to get creative, though... simply being upset about something that might happen in the future isn't going to solve our problems.
So what is your plan to make sure that the streets are not filled with homeless old folks who can't afford medicine, a home, new clothes, or a comfortable old age?
I do not have a signature
Except, they aren't just blowing their own money. They are even stealing the life savings of other BOOMERs that just aren't as rich. Ponzi schemes are usually illegal and considered a form of theft.
Don't forget that only a select few BOOMERS are benefiting. It is not as if the generation as a whole is making out like a bandit from all of this chicanery.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
It's not that at all. He's complaining that the Boomers benefited from the old ettiquite and then changed ingnored it so that they wouldn't have to do the same for their own children.
You can still call someone out for being a selfish self-centered bastard, even if it is their money you're talking about.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Everyone to young to have "come of age" before then end of the 1970's get's called "Generation X" it's come to mean "That other generation" rather than a single generation.
Generation X is this generation that spends there time infront of a video screen.
This is one of those red flags where you say "author didn't do any research"
Other red flags
"Mac's aren't powerful enough" and "Linux is to hard" easy trappings.
"baby boomlet" or "Baby boom" is the term used when research is done.
Some of "Generation X" retired some are just starting to make "real money".
Each writer means something diffrent when he says "generation X" and it's nice that SOME actually speak what they call Gen X.
For me it's the "I said don't lable me and they did it awayway" generation.
The "Techno Generation" the "Information Generation" the "TV generation" all good meaningful and used often but news media culture prefers the misleading lable "X Generation" and it makes sense to me that the news media would do something so misinforming it's what they do and they do it well.
It's the "Your beneathe me and I'm gona tell you why" lable.
We had a very strange time. We've seen the world change by technology we've seen a culture shock of our elders. We've had more knowladge than our parents and seen our schools decay forcing us to take our education in our own hands.
We've seen the world change so much that predictors who once would predict 50 to 100 years in the future only to be the bunt of jokes 50 to 100 years later started making predictions only weeks into the future and need only wait 24 hours to be proven wrong.
We've had quite a few millionairs show up not all from the Dot Com boom. We've seen millionairs broken as well.
Most of all we've seen people do what they love and love what they do and get paid for it more now than before.
Is that comming to an end? People sure love to talk about how things are over. I'm wondering what grumblings about "The United States" and our freedom were anything like this? Ohh it won't last. Those people in the states will come crawling back to us when they can't survive on there own. Freedom? Hah Lawlessness and chaos.
The economic downfall was this and only this: To Many Unrealistic Expectations.
The successful dot coms were planned out like any brick and morter company, treated like a brick and morter company and run like a brick and morter company.
The failures lived in la-la land.
To many people took the Internet as some Commerce utopia and not as the business tool that it is.
If enough companys fall in a short piriod of time the ecconomys going to be effected.
Every company plans based on current ecconomics but has room to cut back... well every SEREOUS company anyway.
So a major custummer falls you cut back.
A major custummer cuts back you cut back.
A bunch of major custummers cut back.
All your custummers cut back.
Most of your costummers fall.
Thats what's happening...
Dot Com A-F fall. Everyone doing business with them have to cut back. Everyone doing business with those companys cut back. Etc.
Shockwaves.
And that brings reality back to the ecconomy.
As for the future of "X Gen" earnings...
Well it all depends on how good we are at applying what we know.
Becouse we've got the knowladge and thats a start. But you gotta get down on your hands and knees and work.
I think most people assume Gen X are lazy. Lazy becouse we can do everything by computer.
But how lazy is a generation of users who ask parents for code books and computer parts instead of cars and driving lessons?
I don't actually exist.
First, I thought a generation was 20 years... (66-75???)
Second, somebody born from '66-'75 should have a lot of earning years ahead of them. I'm more worried about those born in the early 50's who had their pensions disappear.
Third, people have only recently started expecting to be able to retire on their "savings". You either worked till you died or your kids took care of you.
Stop whining and get to work.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Seriously, how is food possibly such a huge chunk of your budget? Are you eating out/getting delivery on a regular basis? Do you cook at home? Do you shop sales and use coupons?
According to my mom, food expenses were actually a pretty large chunk of their budget when I was growing up. But by stretching their dollars as far as they would go, she managed to keep the costs down. Leftovers weren't unknown on our table (versus friends of mine who "won't eat leftovers" and throw food out if they don't eat it right away), we weren't allowed to buy fun cereals unless Mom had a coupon, generic items made up a large part of the pantry, and Mom or Dad cooked dinner every night, and not using fancy gourmet ingredients either - no basmati rice or imported halibut steaks.
I bet that if you cooked at home more you'd see your budget go down.
And why do you have such an expensive car? Get a beater, or get on Public Transportation if available. The government didn't tell you not to buy a used car, or make used cars illegal. Don't tell me they're not reliable either, because mine will prove you wrong, and it didn't cost me 3/4 of a year's salary.
You make your own decisions.
Care to enlighten the younger (i.e. Gen Y) among us as to what the double speed poke is?
<voice type=geezer>
The problem with kids these days is they don't know how to use Google.
Why in our day, we had to use YaHoo!, and we liked it!
</voice>
--fatboy
You can blithely say "tough, every adult is responsible for what they do no matter what" and feel good about condemning others who stumble and fall,
I didn't condemn anyone, I just pointed out that it does you no good to complain. After all, none of the problems you're whining about will be fixed by posting on /.
It is far better we begin to address the crux of the problem, which is the impunity with which corporations, governments, and other groups can use indoctrination and conditioning techniques via our media and brainwash the public, with little restraint and no accountability for the direct and measurable consiquences of that behavior
Blah, blah, blah.
It is not the government's job, or anyone else's, to sanitize what you read and see. If you can't learn to filter what people tell you, you're always going to be confused.
Read that last sentence again, and again, until it sinks in. And then some more until you understand that it applies to everyone, and it's not the job of some "elite" to care for all of the "poor, ignorant, masses", who are neither poor, nor ignorant and really prefer not to be looked down upon by arrogant liberal pseudo-intellectuals.
If you really want to do some good about this problem, you're attacking it the wrong way. Don't try to get some oversight committees set up to eliminate the brainwashing (Quis custodiet custodes ipsos?), teach people to recognize it for what it is. It's nearly impossible for someone to manipulate you if you consciously recognize what they're doing and how.
I've taught my children how to read ads with skepticism, how to recognize the use of color, fonts and symbols to provoke an emotional reaction, how to read the text/hear the words that invariably exaggerate and paint the issues in the best light. I've given them the opportunity to experience firsthand, with their own money, the disappointment that comes from believing advertising. I'm also teaching them how to read newspapers, watch TV, listen to the radio, always with an eye towards what biases might be behind the words that are said.
IMO the real problem is that we see/hear/read is *too* sanitized; we're trained to believe that the newsmen are "objective" (as if that were possible) and that advertising cannot lie. I think the advent of "objectivity" as a goal in journalism is one of the worst things that has ever happened to us as a society. It, quite literally, has made us stupid, trusting, robots. I have mixed feelings about the statutes on false advertising.
However, there's really no *need* to change anything, people are perfectly capable of deciding for themselves that they're not interested in being anybody's patsy, if that's what they want.
Including you. If you want. It sounds like you want big brother to take care of you and keep you from having to think, weigh, analayze and discern.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
You are clearly confused. My parents are not pissing away money, they are managing it wisely. They helped me with college, but they didn't give me a free ride. That was the right thing to do. and I will be there when they need me in retirement, though somehow they probably won't need me for a long time.
That you have 401ks and mutual funds is not justification for claiming enron has damaged you, unless you owned enron stocks. Enron didn't bring down the market, and over the long term the market is doing great, and will continue to do so.
I think enron is an excuse to exercise the bigotry against corporations that many of todays neo-marxists exercise. Ignorant of economics they point to one criminal and exclaim this justifies and oppressive, fascist political ideology, ignoring the hundred million people killed by this ideology and the wholesale fraud that Social Security is. You and I both are being forced to contribute to social security and that fraud DOES affect us directly yet I hear democrats whining about enron while they ignore the fact that their party has raided the social security trust.
If you don't like your income, go work somewhere else. Its a free country. Take care of your kids, great. Don't whine that your parents didn't take care of you as you would like-- you have the choice to rectify that situation with your kids.
But to claim that everyone has some claim on their parents money is absurd.
Where did this sense of entitlement come from? You think life is supposed to be easy? You thin the world owes you something?
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23
You could acquire some marketable skills and earn the money to pay for it yourself. You could work while going to school. You could get scholarships and grants. You could take all your general ed requirements and intro classes at a JC. You could go to a public school, which is much less expensive. You could live off-campus, which is generally much cheaper than living in Dorms. You could go to a school near your hometown so you can avoid housing costs completely by living with your parents.
And before you say you can't get a good education at a cheaper school, in my experience instructors at the JC level are much more involved in their classes, so the education is actually better. You may not get a prestigious education, but you will probably learn more.
Doing any one of these things will dramatically reduce your college debt, and aren't particularly difficult. So, yes, excessive college debt is dumb.
I offer my sister as an example: She got a BS in Combined Sciences with a Medical Focus from Santa Clara University, which is both highly respected and very expensive (around $26k/year, IIRC), and then she went to UCLA for Paramedic school. Her college debt is under $30k, and the $11k loan for paramedic school doesn't have to be paid back as long as she maintains employment in a medical field for a certain number of years. While she was at SCU she took some classes at the local JC to get her EMT license and worked part time as an EMT, and she persued all manner of scholarships (she even competed in a beauty contest for one). She's currently working as a paramedic and taking classes to become an RN. Once she has fulfilled the time requirement for the above loan, she'll go to medical school for her MD, which she will likely have saved enough to pay for herself. The cost to our parents was only a couple thousand a year.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
And it will not be missed by me. I've cast off those shackles. And maybe instead of whining and complaining about how they can't find a job, everyone who needs a job should just get over it and do something about it. Everyone needs to find there own path, and here's my story. I went to school for a couple years, got my CCNA (Cisco Certified Network Associate), and got a job at Ford Credit. I was only making collection calls, but hey, had to get in the door somehow. I spent about a year trying to get on Ford's IT department or get a job using my skills somewhere, but never could. Then, I decided it wasn't worth all the crap. It wasn't worth struggling to find a job doing what I wanted to do and had went to school to do. Even if I did find an opening somewhere, I'd go for an interview and basically be told, "Well, you have some good skills, but we're looking for someone who can do basically everything under the sun, and we'd like to pay them maybe $30K/Yr." Seriously. They wanted people that had been in IT for years and wanted to pay them what someone with my skill level might find reasonable. So, you know what I did? I said, "Fuck all this bullshit." Even if I did get a job somewhere, well, we've all see how much security there really is in IT. Lucent just cut 10,000 more workers today. According to CNNFN, they only had 77,000 back at the start of the month.
So, I joined the Air Force. And you know what, I wouldn't trade it for a thing. Yes, I'm not making a whole lot of money. Even at Ford making collection calls, I made about $25K, I'll probably pull about $16K as an E-3, though my living costs will be paid. But I'll still have more money than I'll know what to do with it. It's hard to waste $16K a year with no rent or food costs. And yes, I have a few more responsibilities than the average 19 year old, and I can't go out and do 19 year old things like get piss drunk and wasted off my ass, but I also don't want to. I'm much more mature than people my age, I have self-confidence and pride none of them could imagine, and I'm probably in the best shape of my life. In 20 years, I can retire and collect roughly half of whatever I'm making at the time (Not exactly true, but the system would take to long to explain, so that works) plus have an absurd retirement fund thanks to all the money I have been/will be hoarding. You'd be amazed at how it, coupled with a lovely optional government retirement plan, can grow. No need to worry about if my company will be there in 20 years. Unless the country goes under, my job should be very stable. And all of my education is, as of this month, 100% paid for by the U.S. government, as is every other active duty military member's. I'm not making much now, but download a pay chart and see how much an O-4 makes at 20 years, not bad for a 39 year old.
Now, I'm not saying the military is for everyone, because that it is definitely not. I'm just saying, for those in need of something, 4 years of your life for such a decent cause isn't really a bad thing, and besides, you might just like it. Besides, which do you think has more pride and honor, a 25 year old making $100K/Yr for some wasteful dot.bomd that may well be out of business in a few years and watching his health deteriorate as he sits behind a desk staring at a computer screen, or a 25 year old making $22K/Yr as a Staff Sgt. in Special Forces who is one of the finest specimens humanity can muster, and who's work really does do something to shape the world? "What did you do today, Bob?" "Compiled my new program to write e-mail." "What did you do today, Airman Johnson?" "Helped save the world."
Now go on and mod me down for being off topic and what not while you die slowly at your desk. You have Karma to maintain, I have a country and a world to go help save.
Request: ECM unit, 1000 km fullerene cable, 1 tactical nuclear weapon. Reason: Birthday party for foreign dignitary.
The idea that the Democrats are the ones responsible for "raiding the Social Security trust" is just plain silly. Both parties are guilty!
And, as a matter of fact, I do think that the world owes me something: opportunity. Opportunity that the Baby Boomers have effectively stolen from us with their irresponsible behavior - both as individuals and as a whole. If you want to live in a fantasy world in which anybody can just "up and move and get a job anywhere whenever they want," that's your choice...but if you want to re-read the Fortune article and see what the facts are, I will be the first to welcome you to Reality.
You'd be pretty retarded to take more than 2 years to get an M.S.
So now you've switched from college debt to excessive college debt? I think you should be more clear in the future.
While your suggestions may be practical for some people, i'm sure they are not for others.
Its true that a JC may give a better education then a more prestigious collge would, going to a noname school probably won't help you as much when you gradute. In some cases, the prestigious college may also actually be the best.
As for scholarships; yes they are available. Unless you're a white male. Sort of out of luck them. Believe me i looked. This thing happens in other areas too, not just scholarships.
Academically i was in the top 10% of my class. But that wasn't good enough to qualify me for anything. I'm glad your sister was able to compete in a beauty pagent for one, but that particular option is pretty limited. In the end i got a need based scholarship from my college.
Yes you can work during college. It can be difficult though. Getting the education is secondary to any job you might have; at least it probably will have to be if you want to do well in college. In my case, i worked for food, gas (when i was not living on campus) and extra spending money. I don't think its reasonable to ask anyone to be all work and no play, at least not for extended periods of time.
You can live at home and go to college. But that limits your choice of college greatly. You also miss out on the social part of college. There is alot of learning that goes on in college that does not take place in the classroom. I'm sure anyone that has gone a good distance for college will atest to that. A good distance being one where you only come home for the holidays, and maybe a few weekends.
There may also be problems with taking courses at a community college and transfering them. It seems that today less and less credits are transferable between colleges. It may also complicate financial aid, and can make scheduling more difficult, especially if one is working while taking classes.
Now i'm not saying that your suggestions are impossible or not worth pursuing. They certainly worked for your sister, but i doubt everyones situation will match your sisters. Some or all might be more difficult to implement, or just not possible.
So what exactly is your idea of excessive debt from college? Is it coincidence or on purpose that your sisters debt you seem to imply is not excessive. FYI, my college debt ended up to be ~$30k, with my mom having her own loans for it (she won't tell me how much).
Well, being a white male who is paying his own way through college while also supporting a family, I have to say "cry me a fucking river".
I know you are trying to present valid arguements, but I hear a whiny teenager saying things like "But I don't want to work, I'll never have time to party", and "You mean I have to live with my parents for another four years? I can't take it!"
Seriously, how much of that is just wanting to get away from your parents and do stupid, crazy stuff? How much of that has anything to do with actual education?
As for the supposed change to excessive debt, there was no change. Read my earlier comments where I was talking about people are buried in debt. Most people have some debt, and that isn't necessarily bad. Christ, I've got 2 new cars, I've certainly got debt, but I my level of debt is such that I could still make my payments if I were making half as much as I am now, so I don't consider my debt to be excessive.
I never said having debt was dumb, I said being buried in debt was dumb. You're the one who decided that was an all-or-nothing deal.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
I know you are trying to present valid arguements, but I hear a whiny teenager saying things like "But I don't want to work, I'll never have time to party", and "You mean I have to live with my parents for another four years? I can't take it!"
... I never said having debt was dumb, I said being buried in debt was dumb. You're the one who decided that was an all-or-nothing deal.
Well hear what you will.
So please look at what i actually said. Notice the word 'party' didn't appear anywhere. Also notice you took two of my arguements and read into them something that wasn't there while ignoring the others.
So do you consider going to class and doing the assignements that go along with it work? I certainly do. There were many times where the amount of work you have from college does take up all your free time. There were many quarters were i spent every waking moment in a lab or in a class room. ALL my meals were gotten from a vending machine. I would not have been able to do as well if i had to work during those times. Thats the bottom line.
As far as moving out of your parents goes, perhaps living with them is not a viable option for a lot of people. For me, the nearest college was 30 minutes away. Automattically that means that, unless i get my degree from a community college (which are known for being ridiculously easy to get into), i would have to move out at some point. Just about every college requires freshmen (and increasingly, sophmores) to reside on campus unless they live less then a few miles away (if i remember correctly, it was usually 15 miles).
Seriously, how much of that is just wanting to get away from your parents and do stupid, crazy stuff? How much of that has anything to do with actual education?
I can only speak for myself, not others. Personally i didn't want to leave home. Especially going as far as i did. In the end it was better for me. As far as doing crazy stuff goes...
Well if by crazy you mean staying up until 1am and playing quake, then i guess i was crazy. I got my work done, and i didn't have to be up until 8 usually the next day. Or if i did have to be up earlier, i wasn't up till 1am the night before. Hell i never had a drop of alcohol until 4 months before i graduated! I'm not going to say i never had any fun; i certainly did. But i didn't move away for that purpose. It was a combination of finding a good school, and my mom's desire for me to 'see whats outside of my home' that finalized my choice. I think its said that there are people from my hometown that still have never left. They probably never will. At any rate, you never went full time to college, so i guess you'll never find out just how much of it is 'actual education.'
but I my level of debt is such that I could still make my payments if I were making half as much as I am now, so I don't consider my debt to be excessive.
Forgive me if i'm misunderstanding, but by what you're saying you believe i have excessive debt. If i made half, i probably would have to make changes just to make payments on debt and cover living expenses. I have almost no savings. Yet i certainly didn't blow it living things up; in a little less then a year and a half, i have paid back 1/3 of my college loans. This is the wise thing to do i believe, since in the end i will have a) removed my only real debt and b) will have paid much less then if i took 10 years to pay it back.
Well, being a white male who is paying his own way through college while also supporting a family, I have to say "cry me a fucking river".
Why do people that support a family think they have a harder time then anyone else? They seem to think that everyone else should have compasion for them, but they never do for anyone else. Well anyone else that doesn't have a family.
Which brings me to another question. You said youi could lose half your income and still be ok, but what if you lost your wifes income completely. God forbid she dies or is an accident where she can no longer work. Would you still be ok? How about if at the same time you had to take the minimum wage job? Think you could be buried in debt then?
But fortunatly those things will never happen, b/c fate has nothing to do with it.
I suppose it was my own fault that someone else was tailgating another car and then hit mine while i was stopped.
> born in 1967 (making me a Gen X'er, to my honest surprise)
Your instincts are right - generation X are the people about 4-5 years older than you.
The Fortune article has some good insights is fundamentally incorrect. I really recommend the book _Boom, Bust & Echo_ by D. Foot for an explanation of the baby boom and its repercussions.
Generation X, by the way is the height of the baby boom - those born around 1961-1962. Yes, the baby boom started after World War II, but it reached its *peak* in 1961, and those poor bastards are Generation X. There are so very many of them that there aren't really enough resources (jobs, houses) for all of them. And all the good positions were snapped up by the people around 5-15 years older - the lucky members of the baby bust. If you're part of a baby bust, you're in a very sweet position because the world is essentially there for the taking, and you don't have many peers to compete with.
It's all supply and demand, and the supply of people in Generation X is very high.
1966-75 is actually an echo of the baby bust, of course not nearly as pronounced, so we (I'm around your age) are part of the lucky generation. However, the sheer size of Gen X that came before us means that we still feel the effects of it.
Anyway now I feel like I should do a slashdot review of this incredible book.
I'm forced to conclude that you're just whining because you have to actually work for a living.
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23
The number you quote (2.1 child per woman of reproductive age) is called the fertility rate. The birth rate is the number of births per 1000 people.
In the US the birth rate was 14.7 in 2000.
See http://www.census.gov/statab/www/part1.html
No, I am whining because I might have to be working for a living until I am 85 (or until I die). Excuse me for wanting to have at least what my parents had - something every generation - Great Depression excepted - has had until now.
Well I used to be an investment banker, and I went back to school and now I'm a consultant. I enjoy what I do and make good money, and have people begging to work for me. I've raised a LOT of money lately for startup companies. Yea lifes a bitch, my generation is being screwed.
OH PLEEEZ, give it a break. Gen "x" has so much oportunity for smart hard working people willing to take a chance that the oportunities are boundless. But you've got to take some risk.
Are they kidding? Someone born in 66 is only 36 now. Most geek types in the software world earn more money in their mid-30s to mid-40s by far than in their earlier career. This article has the stupid ageist myth that really young coders are the most productive. It has the even more egregious myth that young coders get bigger salaries commensurate with the huge hours they might be more willing to work. Really good hackers usually improve with age. A virtuoso hacker takes many years to fully flower.
While it is true I burned more hours and wrote much more code when I was 11 years younger, it is also true that arguably my best work was developed after 10 years in this business and continues today as I am pushing 22 years.
More generally, most people don't mature where financial matters are concerned until their mid-30s.
Nobody has paid for the their SS money 'up front'.
Then how do you explain that the SSA sends you a statement with your contributions? And that the amount you get upon retirement is dependent on what you put in?
Although the underlying financial mechanism is as you describe, the government tries pretty hard to pretend that it's a lot like retirement savings. The guy isn't a troll just because he believes the bullshit that the SSA sends him in the mail.
An astute quote:
"Thinking that "the market is really good, but if I just take another 18 months to finish this 4-year degree I'll be all set with a better salary" is just stupid, especially if you're piling up debt to do it."
Amen! The time to go for additional education is NOW! The trick is to find a full-time position that is stable BEFORE the market downturns. The 20'something wonders should have done this:
1. 1999 - finish with 2 years of tech in college and get an overpaided job quick!
2. 2001 - laid off. You should now have enough money to finish college and get your BS.
3. 2003 - Try the job market now. If sour, then think about a second BS degree in some Business
discipline like Accounting (it ain't that bad now with Excel VB Script, really!) or Computer Aided Manufacturing.
Forget being in research unless you want to stay at the university. Why? Hardly anyone else does pure research now. The corporate suits are eating the seed corn of R&D, except in Bio-Tech. Bio-tech is HOT, but it will not require the thousands of new researchers and engineers that other industries requires. Since the cold war is over, there is huge big driving need to accelerate technology. Sure, we will need better face, fingerprint, and voice recognition systems, but nothing like having to build new spacecraft, new fighters, new smart bombs, new anti-missile systems, "star wars", and better field recon tech all at once. This is what had to be done in the 60's and 70's and this required thousands of researchers. Now, the need for private researchers went down the tubes with Lucent, Bell Labs, Xerox PARC, Honeywell, Harris Corp., IBM, and other hard R&D companies. They need only hundreds of researchers, not thousands.
You can retire early. All you have to do is be financially prudent.
There are many books that will show you how-- from the Motley Fools "You have more than you think" to "Buffettology" to the popular "Wealthy Barber" series.
Its actually quite easy to save up enough money to retire on in 10 or 15 years if you decide you want to do it.
What possible reason could you have to think that you can't do this? Or that generation X cant do it? The stock market is there- and in fact, there is far MORE opportunity to do this than your parents had or the generations before them-- financial instruments are more readily available and cheaper than ever before.
What you can't have is a house that is wastefully big, a new car every 4 years, lots of credit card debt buying crap AND early retirement.
But even living high on the hog (a nice lifestyle without scrimping) I've been able to make alot of progress to early retirement.
And here's the ironic thing-- the stock market crash has gotten me closer FASTER than if it hadn't crashed. (IT didn't crash, but you know what I mean.)
The only think keeping you from this, far as I can tell, is ignorance and attitude. The ignorance is easy to fix, read any of the books I just recommended. The attitude is up to you.
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23
I say it again: Go back and read the article. Even if our generation does all this stuff you are talking about, attaining financial security will still be longer and more difficult then it was for our parents.
Furthermore, so I don't know why you are making all these ridiculous assumptions about my lifestyle, spending habits and financial investments. You don't know me. The person you described is not anything like me.
I suppose it is easier for your to set up a Straw Man to attack than it is to have an intelligent conversation about the facts.
Sheesh. You lamented that you didn't think you'd be able to retire before 85.
I pointed out that this is a silly worry-- that it is really quite easy to retire early.
And it is. A bunch of whiners complaining about how things are tough now are just idiots, and of course I'm ignoring them.
Its really quite simple: Either you are wasting money and won't be able to retire before you're 85 as you claim, or you are being prudent and you can retire 10-15 years from now.
You set up the strawman by claiming you couldn't retire.
Its garbage- if you have an income, you can retire early, its simply mathematics.
And if you're in Generation X, , even if you got started late, you should still already have 5 years toward retirement.
I can understand not getting started on your retirement when you're 22, but by the time you're in your late 20s, you should be saving.
I do know enough about you-- you claim to be in Generation X, and you post to slashdot. Therefore you have at least some technical skills and are old enough to know better.
Stop whining and start investing.
Read the books I suggested.
Its really within your power-- the thing that determines whether you will be traveling the world, carefree or destitute at 85 is YOU.
Don't let a forbes article that managed to find some stupid slackers convince you that its not your responsibility and fault whether you retire early or never.
In fact the article supports my position- these people who got training in worthless careers, didn't bother to save any money while the economy was hot, are now whining because things are tough when the economy is cooled off? What pathetic losers! The economy cooling off has hurt me, but I've been able to coast thru because I was prepared for it. I didn't know it was coming, but I had already spent a couple years getting my cost of living down so that in any situation I can live cheaply- and save more when I'm employed, or have the freedom to develop my own business when I'm not.
I understand-- it too me about 8 years of denial before I took financial responbility of my own life, and it was quite amazing how quickly things turned once I did that.
Like I said before, the only things that will keep your from retiring early are laziness, attitude and ignorance. All of which are in your control.
Whatever the state of the economy or generation you were born into.
Be a man (or woman) and take responsibility for your own life, for gods sake.
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23
You keep telling people what to think and what to do but all you do is post on Slashdot. I've looked up your profile and you have, like, 30 posts a day. And half of those are pure karma whoring.
Looks like you're the one who needs to get a life.
Don't let a forbes article that managed to find some stupid slackers convince you that its not your responsibility and fault whether you retire early or never.
Before I read those wonderful "books," why don't you actually try reading the article. It was Fortune, not Forbes.
I have already started saving - in a conservative bonds-based mutual fund which has grown 30% in the last year while everything else was falling. So don't lecture to me about being prudent. Meanwhile, all the other employees at my job (Baby Boomers the whole lot of them) invested their 401k's in aggressive securities-based funds...and seen them evaporate by 40% in the last year. GUESS WHO IS GOING TO BE PAYING THEIR SOCIAL SECURITY IN A FEW - THAT'S RIGHT, ME MUTHFUCKA
*ahem* Therefore, after reading and re-reading your post, I have arrived at the conclusion that you are an idiot. You choose to ignore the facts in favor of the usesless words of some "investment guru."
Enjoy having the last word - as if it were worth anything.
I did read the article. You have provided no facts for me to ignore.
YOU lamented that you'd still have to be working when you were 85. And with the foolish and risky investment strategy that you now claim to have made (why the switch? I suspect you're making it up now.) you're going to do poorer and have higher risk than following this "guru" who has never written a book.
Sheesh you're such a fucking idiot- you think buffett is a guru leading people astray when he's never written a book, never lead anyone-- he's just invested and answered peoples questions about what he invested in begrudgingly.
You have provided no facts for me to ignroe-- just an article claiming that a music major can't find work and somehow I'm supposed to be concerned?
I actually thought you were someone who was redeemable that you were just ignorant of the ways of the world. Stupid me for trying to help you.
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23
Something mysterious is formed, born in the silent void. Waiting
alone and unmoving, it is at once still and yet in constant motion. It is
the source of all programs. I do not know its name, so I will call it the
Tao of Programming.
If the Tao is great, then the operating system is great. If the
operating system is great, then the compiler is great. If the compiler is
greater, then the applications is great. The user is pleased and there is
harmony in the world.
The Tao of Programming flows far away and returns on the wind of
morning.
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
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