Are millennials lazy whiners or victims of circumstance? | Michael Hobbes | Big Think
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- Опубликовано: 15 окт 2024
- Are millennials lazy whiners or victims of circumstance?
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Writer Michael Hobbes says there are too many stereotypes about millennials. What is missing is the realization that millennials are going to be in financial trouble. The conditions that allowed previous American generations economic prosperity are simply not there. Since millennials are bound to start taking power, they need to avoid the mistakes of their parents.
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MICHAEL HOBBES:
Michael Hobbes is a reporter for HuffPost and the co-host of “You’re Wrong About,” a podcast that debunks historical and political myths. His article on millennials, “Generation Screwed,” was nominated for a National Magazine Award.
Before becoming a journalist, Hobbes worked in international development in Europe and Africa. He’s also an animator, filmmaker and speechwriter. Find him on Twitter at @rottenindenmark and more of his work here michaelhobbes....
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TRANSCRIPT:
Michael Hobbes: So, there are three things that every millennial should know. The first one is that there is no evidence for any of the stereotypes about us.
If you look at entitlement, if you look at selfishness, if you look at public opinion polling there’s as much evidence that we’re “worse than our parents” as there is that we are werewolves: There is none.
Whereas there’s a mountain of evidence that things are harder for our generation than they were for our parents or our grandparents, and that it’s getting worse.
So how many articles have you read about how more millennials are living with their parents now than ever? There are twice as many millennials living on their own-making less than $30,000 a year-than there are millennials living with their parents. We don't read any articles about that.
So what we need to do is acknowledge that all of these stereotypes come from anecdotes, that they are older people who have seen a millennial on a skateboard or have had an intern who was a young person who they didn't like very much and have decided that that is representative of an entire generation, and we need to resist that.
It wasn’t always like this. When my dad bought his first house he was 29, living in Seattle; he was a university professor and his house cost 18 months of his salary.
Now, if you’re a young person living in a big city you know that that is science fiction. In the vast majority of America, especially in cities, it will cost you six, seven, ten, 12 years of the median salary to buy the median home. So this idea that we’re different from our parents because WE have changed is completely false.
What has happened is the economy has profoundly shifted underneath us. Housing, healthcare and education are all three times more expensive now than they were in 1968. Those are the prerequisites of a middle class adulthood, of a secure adulthood, a real life, and our parents like to point out that things like refrigerators and TVs are a lot cheaper-and they are, that’s great-but the things we actually need in our lives are much more expensive, and our wages have not kept up.
So, one of the things that we forget, and especially our parents forget, is how much cheaper college used to be.
When my dad was in college he worked for ten hours a week in the cafeteria, and that was enough for his tuition and a little bit of his rent. That doesn’t sound familiar to anybody I know. And what has happened since then is the cost of education has gone up between 400 and 1200 percent, depending on the kind of school you go to. Meanwhile, minimum wages haven’t really budged, general wages haven’t really budged, and the price of everything else has gotten higher too.
So in the early ‘70s it took around 300 hours of minimum wage work to afford a four year education. By the 2000s it took 4,400 hours of minimum wage work to afford a four year education.
So tell your parents that next Thanksgiving when they complain to you about not going to college.
I think there’s a tendency when we talk about millennials, and especially when we talk about poor millennials, to talk about our choices rather than our options.
So again, the evidence-like did my grandparents know what their pension was when they were 25? I don’t think they did. I think that by the time they checked they had one, whereas this generation gets blamed for not saving more for...
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A small number of people who went into politics or inherited enough to fund politicians changed the rules, and not in a good way. The majority of us have no power and never have had. The Supreme Court citizens United ruling made unlimited political bribery legal so that a few very wealthy make the rules. That is what needs to change in order to set things right.
Becky Alexander
I dunno if that alone would stop bribery.. if 'lobbying' becomes illegal, the crooked people who buy off candidates illegally will have an edge in politics:P
How may millennials are in power? All i see are boomers.
Worked hard in highschool got into a great culinary school in New York graduated in 2008.
My Externship wanted to hire me but one major issue. They were laying off all their stuff due to the financial crash.
But my external head chef give me an amazing recommendation, I got my first major culinary job. 6 month later Laid off, student loans started coming in.
I walk the streets of New York with Resume, Portfolio, and Recommendation from my Chefs. I received the same response from everywhere I applied. "We very sorry but we're not hiring at this time".
Or "We would hire you but we're currently laying off".
I had no choice but to go on assistance. But I was determined to keep looking.
I noticed that the buses were still running and a friend of my family who was a driver told me about it was a good and secure job.
So I retrain myself took the money from my assistance and go a CDL. Got the job with the MTA and never looked back.
We millennials have been fucked over by the action of the previous generation all the student debt is due to their fuck up.
KamidakeRed can be said for every generation. Every... single... generation... for the last... 50 years. Somehow every time a millennial speaks, he sounds like a millennial. Hmmm....
i find your post SUPER amusing. I guess having google and wikipedia there all the time make you use it less. You know very little about history i take it. Crashes has been around forever. You are here for the latest part of automatization. People have been losing jobs to machines for 50 years, and having to retrain for these reasons. You dont have it harder. It FEELS like you have it harder because you are in fact a softer generation. I dont judge your generation for it, its a part of our globalization. Its a part of our world based on entertainment and passing time. You just have to accept that the older generation look at you and smirk, and believe me, you will in 20 years, do the same with the generation that is being born now. Enjoy it. All this is old.
KamidakeRed Actually it is as out of control for us, the older generation, as it is for you. We have been unable to wrest the money away from the military, chemical, financial ghouls who would exterminate us. I wish you luck with your fight against evil, I certainly hope you do better than we've done. I'm surprised your making it with CDL, many aren't.
Matatatata Tatatata The difference? The previous generation didn't have to go through this process nearly as long as we do today. By the time they were 20, my parents owned a home, a car, could easily support 2 kids without government aid with my dad being the only one working, and all on a single job. He made 14 an hour when he retired. I make 12 an hour and can barely afford a small apt rental, no car, no kids because I simply cannot afford them, and in debt up to my ears for school.
I have the same god damn story and I hear it from everyone and it makes me sad.
I graduated from the #1 public University in the country with a degree and got a great job straight out of college. Then financial crash and my company sold out to larger competitor and they laid off everyone just so they could get the client list. (3 Owners made obscene profits while leaving hundreds unemployed).
50 interviews later, nobody is hiring. I took contract work in tech support with a small medical company where after fixing all their problems they decided to not renew the contract.
My father dies and I have to take every penny of inheritance and my entire life savings to buy a failing storage business plus a massive bank loan. I managed to turn it around and I will spend the next 20 years paying off a loan just so I have job security. At least I can't be laid off again. But I probably will work until I die.
My biochemist took only 10k of student loans to pay off for his entire educational and medical career. That's about 12+ years of education and only 10k of debt. Public universities used to be 2k a year back in the 80s. Now it's 15-30k yearly.
I graduated with $24k in debt that I paid off within 1.5 years with a job that requires no education. Had I never gone to college, I'd have 2 houses paid off and well over $200k in the bank.
Yeah guys, it's called liberalism. Once you make it mandatory to give someone a loan, no matter their credit, to go to school.... the Universities skyrocketed the price.... just like Obamacare & the 2008 Housing Bubble. Liberalism is Communism and is a mental disorder. You people voted all of this in yourselves.
Burnt Popcorn Productions Is the UK communist? Just curious.
Random dude What country you from? Europe isn't a country. Long story short, Racism, the Red Scare (in case you haven't heard of that, look it up) and Ronald Ragen got us into a position that other countries never had. This position got us into a place where we have more expensive healthcare with fewer taxable people to pay for it. Racism because back in Jim Crow days some president tried to make a bigger safety net, but knew that southerners wouldn't vote for his reelection if it helped black people, so he scrapped it. Red Scare because thanks to that, we think that would be communism. Ragen because Ragenomocs made more wealth inequality. That's my uneducated opinion anyway. It's important to understand how we got here when other counties didn't.
Tech Freak LOL Not with the current government sitting in Westminster. It’s as much of a rich person’s country as it’s ever been and very tough on millennials, I’m not one but my sister is ten years younger and I know how hard she worked to get through university and get a stable job. She’s not whining about it though she’s getting on with it and then we’ll vote at the next election and see what happens. I’m not sure we have a communist party to vote for though I think I can speak for a lot of people and say we’re not really into that.
I'm gen x and I had to watch this twice. You won't see this guy on MSNBC or fox "news" any cable or local news. Great job 100% truth.
My dad bought the house for the price of 2 years of his annual salary that's a conservative measure in the 90's. It was around 60K. Now, the house is valued at around 400K. I only get around 30K (my last job), I'm 3rd level educated and was in a technical/IT role.
Edit: In context, about €370,000 is the average house price in my city.
only 30k lmao.I think my highest basic wage in uk was like 12k when i was back there. you prob drive around in a new car tho huh? and an Iphone that is best part of a grand,a laptop you dont use mu
ch and broadband every month, maybe sky tv channels. possibly eat out every week.
yeahh sure, dont think we even had a car til the 80s, no colour tv til i was like 13, yeah, YTS for 25 quid a week as they stopped apprenticeships after leaving school, i couldnt have afforded a bus to get to university even if id been motivated to attend, UB40 top of the charts cos 1 in 10 outta work, riot sin the streets, poor people locked up for not affording poll tax.... it was sooo easy back then
Medical Cannabis Spain Don't drive. Don't have expensive phone. Wow. All the assumptionso and mental gymnastics you are doing there is really something. Swosh and the point went over your head. 30k per year is nothing especially for a 3rd level educated person when the price of rent is 1250 per month on average.
That phone you mock, replaces a wired telephone, tv, binders, writing utensils, dictionary, thesaurus, multiple compendiums, calendar, snail mail, picture albums, books, camera/video recorders, games, faxes, maps, phone books, alarm clock, radios, watches/stop watch, tape measures/ruler, levels, meters of all types, remote controls, flash light, calculator, note pads/day timers, answering machines, contact list/rolodexes .. should i really go on. Your so full of shit for taking crap about people have a cell phone because even at the cost of this shit in the 70s it would still be cheaper to buy the fucking iphone.
husher5142 lol so true
Bread Harrity lucky stiff... you have a great place to live for free and you'll eventually inherit it if you're not a complete idiot. Good job choosing your parents! We should all be so fortunate.
Many of us GenX-ers are in the same boat! What you say is true... I get it! I have 3 millennial daughters... they don't fit the stereotype. There's too much generalization these days... from all directions!! :/
You don't even need to build homes for the homeless, so many hotels in Daytona Beach are closed and fenced off, while the homeless wonder the streets. We need to stop allowing the rich to waste resources on such projects just to abandon them when they're no longer making money. It makes no sense for there to be 40 story hotels decaying away while there are homeless people who need assistance.
Since time immemorial, it's the overly wealthy who are screwing over the population and they make up the excuses such as "personal responsibility" and "leaching off welfare from the productive"; but they're the same ones who would ask welfare from the government after fucking the economy and lobby for tax breaks only to ship the money to some offshore tax havens.
That actually sounds like it'd be a good use of eminent domain . . . they're not using it anyway and there would seem to be no viable other use.
"Homeless problem? Give em a home! Legalize squatting in all those abandoned buildings." -Jello Biafra Your comment reminded me of that quote, and I haven't heard it in almost a decade.
You people are asleep at the wheel. You would be insulted if someone called you a Communist; but you are spouting COMMUNISM! ( Remember, they are the ones who are responsible for 85 to100 million human deaths! ) Most rich people (and I am not one ) got that way by WORKING! Most homeless people got that way by NOT WORKING ( plus alcohol and drug use ). WAKE UP!
Burkhold St. Rudderberg No YOU are asleep at the wheel. It doesn't fuckin matter if you're a capitalist, communist, fascist, socialist, or whatever the fuck you claim to be, any human with common sense can see that 3-5 25 story buildings, closed and fenced off, is NOT a good thing. It is a gross waste of resources. People with the money to fund such projects NEED to be held accountable to those projects. It doesn't matter who you are or how rich you are, to create buildings like that to waste away is an atrocity. If the rich guy who built the shit can't do something with it, it ought to be siezed and utilized elsewhere. It doesn't matter what you claim to be, WASTE is unacceptable be it food or a fuckin building.
Thanks for understanding. It's hard knowing that you can't compete with your peers simply because of the lack of options whilst everyone just calls you lazy.
Interesting video but I have to disagree with a lot of his points. For starters some of the damage here is self-inflicted. There are places you can live and work where the median house is nowhere near that expensive. Its nobodies fault but your own if you aren't a millionaire and chose to live in LA. Secondly, the "you must go to college" line has turned out to be a lie my generation bought into hook line and sinker. People getting out of trade schools have similar outcomes and next to no debt and that's not the only option out there. I and my wife got our CDL and drive a truck we own and make a fantastic living. Sure automation may eat into that eventually but that's coming for a lot of degree holders too and I would bet money they get to the chopping block before I do.
Then there are the solutions he proposes. I hear a lot of "Tax the rich" with an implied "Just like they do in Europe.". Problem is they don't just tax the rich to pay for everything over there. those high taxes extend well into the lower middle class. Implying otherwise is disingenuous. The Trump and Bush tax cuts probably need to be largely rolled back but I don't think becoming just like Europe is a great idea either.
While I agree we have it harder than our parents I have no idea where he got that impression about our grandparents. My grandparents lived through the Great Depression and my grandfathers were WW2 vets. One of them dug ditches by hand for rich people that didn't want heavy equipment in their yards just to put food on the table and that table under a roof. Which brings me to another point. Frankly, I think the stereotypes are largely based in fact. A lot of my generation wouldn't dig those ditches despite the fact that that sort of job these days pays a good living. Want a good paying job that isn't likely to be automated or outsourced? How about bricklayer? It's not sexy and it is hard work but its a solid middle-class income. It's also just the sort of work they can't get my generation to do.
I take issue with the "Personal responsibility narrative." idiocy. just who's responsibility should the outcome of your own life be? To which his response seems to be "The government!". My feelings on that point hover someplace between horror and humor. What kind of fool looks at OUR government, the one that craps it's proverbial pants every time anything of importance needs to be done, and says to themselves "Yea I want that institution running my life!". It's the sort of thing that sounds like a joke right up till you find out the person saying it means it. And don't give me some crap about how it's all the evil republicans fault our government doesn't work. Obstructionism isn't unique to Republicans. and even if it were, there are two problems with that line of thought. Firstly, sometimes the right and left need to be obstructed. Secondly, they aren't going anywhere and should not go anywhere. The left and right exist for good reason and both are needed.
Don't get me wrong. I think the government does need to do more. Free markets cannot do squat for you if you get a heart attack. can't exactly comparison shop in the ambulance for a better price on open heart surgery. Our antitrust laws need to be updated and used liberally to destroy anything that looks like a monopoly or that is too big to allow to fail. I think we did nothing to prevent another 2007 style economic crash and we need something like Glass Stegall back. Wage stagnation and income inequality are huge problems that we need to find good answers for. I am no Libertarian. More of an outraged moderate who looks at the political left and right and can't help but feel disgusted by the current state of both.
My education prevented me from becoming a complete bigot. The more education we have available, especially in rural areas, the more people are able to better themselves. Anyone who calls a degree "worthless" obviously does not value the process of learning.
Standing ovation from my home. Many people have given up even trying or don't realise how hard life is, and will be in future, and don't prepare their kids for it. I hope this video gets many shares.
Hey fellow Millenials. If you're still living at home, just delete your personal Facebook, Instagram, etc., delete your Netflix, Hulu, etc. and focus on starting an online business (practically for free), or learning to code ($20/course on Udemy.com), or buy an old pick-up truck and paint wealthier peoples houses for $1500+ per house (Or more depending on the size).
For example, if you choose to start a painting business, paint on your own for like 6 months. Then hire a bunch of high school kids who have pick ups and have them work for you on the side after school. Pay 'em $2 or $3 dollars more than the local McDonald's and buy them all coffee in the morning so they'll be loyal to you instead of Micky D's. Convince them not to go to college because fuck the debt _you're_ in, right? Use the power of social media to market your business, make time-lapse Instagram videos of you and your employees painting the living shit out of a house, a website with profiles/blurbs about each painter, etc. Celebrate and support each painter's dream.
Then after a few years of that, when you have a fleet of like 10 trucks and you're paying your employees $15-$20/hr because you're racking in like $2500+/week from bidding multiple jobs, make 'em detail their trucks with your logo. Advertise it on your site using social media and maybe Shopify to automate orders. Go on Fiverr and have some Indian kid set up your logo and site for like $50 if you don't do that thing yourself.
I guarantee after 8+ years of a business (the first two years will be *hell on earth* ) you'll be able to buy a house way bigger than your parents, have your own boys (and girls) paint your house for you every year because you feel like it, and you'll be in the green instead of the red.
Used Ford Ranger: $4k (Or the car you already own)
Painting whites from WalMart/Dickie's: $40
Painting tools and supplies: Paid for by your client.
Sure it'll suck that you won't be using your degree, but after 4 years of working in silence and saving up, you could save the next generation *AND* ball on your parent's generation at once.
when i lose a job, unemployed and seeking for work in almost desperation, i come to watch this to remind myself this is the kind of society i'm living in. and it is okay to be scared and frustrated cos i'm not alone, the whole generation is going through it.
That’s because your whole generation is LAZY and entitled.
I escaped living in a country where they tried to make things quote en quote equitable. I paid through the nose to get myself and my family legally over here in the US. Please don’t undo my work. Please don’t make the US an “equitable utopia” like the one I left behind.
He looks like if Putin and Robin Williams had a love child
You sound like one of those stereotypical people he talks about.
Hahahahaha
So accurate...
Can't unsee it.
I see it
To sum up: Millennials are both.
Every time he said “let’s tax the rich to pay for it” a Libertarian somewhere keeled over dead or lost his shit.
I only had a slight heart attack!
Libertarian is just a PC term for raging asshole
Over the last 3 years I've come to realize that university education in the US for our generation needs to be written off as lost for the segment of the population that do not have parents who can pay for it. For that group, look to studying outside of the United States. You can get world class educations in Germany, Denmark, Norway, Poland, France, Spain, Czech Republic, Iceland, Italy, and beyond for free, or for a few thousand dollars a year in tuition. Most programs you can take in English and learn the native language on your way. If you want to return to the US after, you have your education without a massive debt load, a second language which is immensely marketable to companies, and experience outside of the US that the vast majority of the workforce does not have. If you stay, the quality of life is amazing in some of these places in comparison to home, and while it's not easy, you can find jobs in Europe for your degree and get permission to become a permanent resident.
Great insight! I appreciate such a clear presentation of why the stereotypes don't mean anything in the context of the changing world. It's honestly disappointing how poorly the last generation structured everything to stifle the American dream. I also like how you present honest solutions all with the Robin Hood mentality. I believe one positive change could be shifting government agency incentives so that good work and efficiency is favored rather than cutting off groups who do their job alright
I don't know where to start with this guy. This whole video is exactly the kind of attitude that gives the older generations ammunition to shit on us.
1) If your comfortable making minimum wage then being poor is your fault. If you aren't comfortable with that, what actions have you taken to remedy your situation. If the answer is none, then your own poverty is your own fault.
2) Food stamps don't pay for sandwiches because its more expensive than purchasing the individual material and putting it together.
3) Taxing the rich = rich people move away.
Take ownership of your life and stop blaming others for your own deficiencies. Your not entitled to anything, if you want it earn it
America. Land of The Commerce lol. Debt & Money. Trade school is better tho however it does depend on what one wants to do in life. And the idea of braggin at the family function of how many degrees your sibling has or whatever is a concept that wont ever die..so imo trade school and its a plus if your already good at whatever it is what you do.
I am 29 and live in the Silicon Valley. A 3 bedroom, 1 bath house🏠in my mother's neighborhood is selling for $1,200,000. These homes were built in the early 70's. Supply and demand is crazy here in the Bay Area. Now most of the people here are on an H-1B visa from Asian countries. You can not find a home for less than 1 million in my area these days.
Im not laz
I'm 55, but I've been saying stuff like this for a long time. The younger generation has it harder than young people used d to, and anybody who is paying attention knows this.
Young people, please believe this. Stop worrying about this. You have to know in your own heart, without a doubt, that you can survive, and thrive, on your own. Nothing, and I mean NOTHING, is a lasting substitute for that. Stop wasting your time and energy listening to stuff like this. Focus on how you want to add value to this world then set a goal and let absolutely nothing stop you from achieving it. The clarity and hope of working on a large goal is self validating. Achieving it gives you confidence that lasts a lifetime. Many of you already do this!!! If you haven't yet, just start now. You are not a "millennial". You are a young person in a different world than your parents were in at your age. But their world was different from their parents too. Forget all this argumentative energy. That IS the enemy. It takes away focus. You guys are awesome! But you have to know that for yourself. So go prove it to yourselves. :)
We can't ad anything to this world when we're backbreaking in order to have the strict minimum to live.
DamnedTuga , did you mean unorthadox? Whichever, I'm happy for you and hope you find a way to contribute, monetize it, and get fulfillment.
Maleficent I agree, and wanted to tell him the same thing.
Brian Wade ours is a generation that suffers from the folly of the previous, in much the same way the Greatest Generation and Silent Generation suffered as they fought wars for the powerful of the generations that came before them. The Baby Boomers may go down as the worst generation in history, but it's up to those that came after them to persevere and ensure there IS a history to remember them as such.
It's certainly not easy, but when compared to most of human history, we have so many advantages that overcoming the shortsightedness of our elders will be easy in comparison to the struggles of the past.
DamnedTuga, respect and virtual handshake to you. I think you're already "ahead of the game".
The argument put for by our host is virtually correct. I graduated from university in '72 and my schooling was paid for by a combination of the GI bill (draftee, Vietnam War) and some part time work. It wasn't easy and life generally isn't. However, I have been aware that the equation changed back in the late 70's and that education suddenly became horrifically expensive, schools argued for major sports programs ($) almost entirely because the state houses in this nation suddenly turned off the subsidy. This is your silver bullet, defunding the state colleges and universities drove the market vertically. I can not say adequately how this shortsighted anti-tax response defunded our culture. It was and is a horrific decision with demographic consequences never envisioned. Now the politics preys on the fallout. I always wanted the folks that couldn't graduate from high school (because there are so many reasons) to have another, better chance, but our country chose to pander to tax adverse successful folk.
🤔 maybe they shouldn’t judge a whole generation until they actual become adults
Every millennial is pretty much an adult now with the oldest pushing into the mid 30s.
In just first two minutes:
- House pricing. Average median household income in 1965 was $6882 (www2.census.gov/prod2/popscan/p60-049.pdf), in 2017 it is $61,372 (www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2018/demo/p60-263.pdf). The median price of the new house in 1965 was about $20K, in 2017 it is about $320K (www.census.gov/construction/nrs/pdf/uspricemon.pdf). So if median house price is normalized by median income, it has became bigger just in 1.8 times. And we haven't even considered the change in the size of the house (median has grown from 1,525 sq.f. in 1973 to 2,169 sq.f. in 2010), growth of U.S. population and foreign investments in real estate (both bump the price up) and enormously grown amount of bureaucratic regulations that made it extremely hard for a family to buy land and then build a house on it.
- Education. It is free. You can get a free old laptop on craigslist, find a free table and wi-fi in the mall, and get all the education materials you need. Harvard, MIT, Berkeley and many others provide tons of materials to study, even for complicated topics like neurology or genetics. Not to mention myriads of educational videos on youtube and thousands of articles on google scholar. Now a piece of paper called "diploma" is very expensive, both in terms of time and money. But the good thing is that in many professions employer cares more about your experience and skills than just a diploma. Not to mention your own business.
- Healthcare. Life expectancy has grown from 66.8 M / 73.7 F in 1965 (www.demog.berkeley.edu/~andrew/1918/figure2.html) up to 76 M / 81 F in 2018 (www.statista.com/statistics/274513/life-expectancy-in-north-america/). At the same period of time, obesity has tripled (www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/obesity-overweight.htm), which kind of nullifies the amount of smokers that has decreased twice (www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/su6001a24.htm#fig). It is pretty much useless to compare healthcare costs now and 50 years ago, and not only because how much medicine has changed since then. Even the term "Healthcare" has a different meaning today. But we can compare the results on people, and it is a huge progress, especially considering bad habits one replacing another.
Welcome to the millennials journalism.
"Tax the rich"
The rich : *moves overseas* *
What else are they supposed to do? Nobody wants to be fleeced.
@John Taylor In the actual system, Working hard *does not* equate getting rich. People who work two jobs at the minimum wage work very, very hard. Yet, they struggle to get by.
John Taylor OR maybe society changed? I also guess you just don’t believe in human dignity hahaha
@@LouisParent They are usually working low skill manual labor jobs.
I'm not sold on this idea that you HAVE to go to college to make a decent living. Quite the contrary.
I work full time as an arborist and part time as a delivery driver. I walked home last week with just over $1200 from working overtime as an arborist after a storm. Yeah I had to work about 70 hours to get that, but it's the long weekend now and I am so relaxed 😌
Here's the awesome part: you don't need a license to start at entry level as an arborist. You don't even need an apprenticeship.
Just walk into or email an arborist company (I work for Davey Tree which is the biggest in Canada and the oldest in the US) and they will probably set you up as a groundsman.
It is very ergonomical work as we are literally designed for trees (being primates and all) and there are plenty of ways of commanding a higher wage and greater responsibility. I have an airbrake-truck license and can command $20/hr just to drive the truck and be a groundsman.
There are virtually endless job opportunities due to the fact that trees are so common in residential, commercial, and public areas.
I might get a bachelors someday once I get old and need a "sit down job". But I'll be able to finance that by myself, so I'm doing just fine and don't ask for anything from the government. In fact they ask a lot more of me as a taxpayer and citizen.
To live in such a way is true freedom and I believe every honest person will aspire for something to that effect.
Let the rich be rich if they worked for it. Don't disincentivize ambitious behavior. Let people dream to the skies and beyond.
That's the way it ought to be.
Low taxes and loads of opportunity.
It's quite a bit more expensive to for instance get college education so whining is perfectly justified as previous generations messed things up.
This man is my favorite journalist. I think I have listened to everything he has ever released, and I have learned so much. He is very well researched
Wanted to hate it... but he has a point :/...
When I was a young person the very same things were said about my cohort. Although we were not allowed to voice opinions and had less access to information. My sons are millennials and one of them is a talented musician the other training to be a lawyer, and he chose to do that when he was 8. They are not spoilt but they are supported. They are not stereotypical at all. How kids turn out all depends on how they were brought up. Although they will never admit that their parents had anything to do with their adult principles.
"tax the rich to pay for it"
Connecticut tried that and all the high earners packed up and left the state and took their companies and jobs with them, and now Connecticut is more worse off than ever.
The proposition is from a federal perspective, not state.
For a change, vote for an end of government funding of loans for college. The PRIMARY REASON that 10x minimum wage job hours are needed is due to tuition inflation from easy government loans. STEM jobs are in such high demand that the USA imports workers, primarily from India and China. Young adult US citizens are faced with an open job market in STEM jobs and forced to compete with the most motivated in the world. Note that I use the term 'motivated', not 'best'. End H1B (imports 85000 new foreign nations workers every year), its 2-for-1 spousal VISA work authorization and end government-induced tuition inflation.
He's a millenial? He looks 10 years younger than my dad
The Mexican Animator
Millenials are currently 22 - 37 years of age. I was looking pretty good until I turned 32.
23-38 years. Depends on what habituals one has besides the DNA that ages them.
Bryon Myers not millenials. I wish they would ston lumping 37s with this generation.
ehhh???????? Millenials, born this century
Gen Z are 2000 +
The dislikes are from Ritch people
The problem with taxing the rich is that proponents often speak about it as if the rich are things and not people. So they paint a picture where the only thing that happens when you tax the rich is that the tax revenue increases, and everything else remains the same. But just like anyone else, the rich do not like to be taxed and some type of reaction to increased taxation should be expected. What that reaction will be and how it will manifest itself is something that should be analyzed and factored into the decision making process, just like any other proposed change to the economy.
Phil Barker nope, taxation is theft period so taxes should be banned
I have a college degree from UNC Chapel Hill in Biology and the best job I could get with benefits is a job on a dredge. I work 84 hours a week and come home dirty almost every day. Virtually everyone I work with never went to college, some haven't graduated high school, and some have been to prison. I do manual labor, working my ass off. I have good benefits and make $2100 per week after taxes. Point is, you do not need a college degree. College degrees are overpriced for the benefit you receive. And if we start making the taxpayers (people like me) paying for people to get their degrees, not only will the price of tuition go up, but so many people will have a degree that it is meaningless.
I am not trying to bring politics into this, but this video (I'm almost 5 minutes in) so far is a BIG fail. I haven't heard of this channel before, so I won't judge it off such limited info. But so far this video is clearly about advancing a political agenda, much like info wars, CNN, MSNBC, or the many other insanely biased "news" networks out there.
Right now 90% of people reading this just said "WTF? He just put info wars and CNN in the same group?"
Time to think outside your bubble.
Oh good lord, this video just keeps getting worse. There is no "making the button rung well off". This is an absolute myth. You can only make the middle class join "the bottom rung", making more people poor, in the name of "equality".
Warning: basic economics incoming.
If you stray away from a system based on merit, effort, ability to satisfy customers, etc... and simply start helping out the lower class regardless of how hard they try... There are a number of issues.
***it's debatable as to whether or not drastically increasing the minimum wage will actually put more money in the hands of minimum wage workers, since their hours are often cut and some flat out lose their jobs due to lay offs, or entire businesses closing down, but in this instance, I will assume that drastically raising the minimum wage does indeed put more money in the hands of minimum wage workers.
When you give money to the lower class (be it by universal basic income, drastic minimum wage increases, etc etc), the following happens:
1. People abuse the system
2. Prices increase (supply and demand)
3. Welfare must be increased due to #2
4. Taxes must be increased due to #3.
5. People move out of the city due to #4
6. Taxes are increased due to #5
7. More people move out of the city due to #6
Allow that to sink in.
8. There is less incentive to work
>>if working hard leads to poverty, why not collect welfare, when you can be in poverty without having to work?
9. Taxes increase as welfare increases
10. The cycle continues.
There is much that I could add, but it isn't necessary. A few key things to understand:
1. The United States is not Capitalist. There is an abundance of government intrusion into the market and taxes are too high, making the risk of starting a business too high.
2. The more businesses there are, the more competition takes place.
3. Competition leads to higher quality goods/services at lower prices. If you deliver a bad product at a high price, you become bankrupt.
I'm going to end this. I do believe some government involvement is necessary. I think there are necessary environmental regulations that should exist, as well as some taxes. The government should also provide programs for the TRULY NEEDY, but measurements should be taken to assure that the system isn't abused.
There must be incentive to work hard and succeed. If there is incentive to NOT work, or incentive to stay at a minimum wage job one's entire life, that's what people will do.
We must preserve the American dream. Welfare is guaranteed poverty. Staying at a minimum wage job is guaranteed poverty. Why should we create incentive for this? Increasing the amount of poor people DOES NOT HELP.
Asian Americans have the highest income, per capita, in America. This is NOT because the system is "rigged" for Asians. It's because their culture instills values of hard work and education, dating back to Confucius. We must try to create a productive and successful citizenry. The opposite is having no future.
No one that makes less than $30,000 a year should pay taxes and sales tax should be abolished.
This summer, I paid $2200 a month to live in an unfinished basement of a child sex offender, with crickets and frogs. The town I live in is a seasonal vacation spot, so everyone rents their houses for thousands a night in the summer. Many restaurants have had to shut down because there is no one to work in them, because working people can't afford the $10k a month rent. It's incredibly frustrating that my husband and I, who are both educated and work 2 jobs each, will never be able to own a house.
159 people are offended by facts
One could argue that it is the existence of those pensions that has increased the costs absorbed by employers, which in turn contributed to increasing prices. I'm no economist, but that just seems logical. While that knowledge doesn't make things any easier, it puts it into a context where solutions to the current problem can be explored which don't ultimately lead to increasing prices and a continuation of the problem for the next generation.
I was all on board until he brought up taxing the rich to pay for everything.
This moron forgets that money doesn't recognize borders.
@@loadishstone European countries backtracked already.
My parents paid $75,000 for my childhood home. It was in the heart of Queens, NYC. In the suburbs near some of the best public schools in the district 34 years ago before I was born.
It is worth 1.5 million today.
How much has federal minimum wage increased since then?
And they claim nothing is wrong and we are imagining things HA!
My Father had his first house built in the 1950’s, which was a three-bedroom ranch style with basement and garage for 11,000. I think homes in that area now are about 175,000 to 225,000 Midwestern Great Lakes region. (this is not the expensive area either) My guess would be that you should be around 1500.00 to 1900.00 @/week pay to match that with a newer car purchase, children, taxes, energy . . . and on and on.
This video says that we MUST go to college to get on the job ladder. This is not true. There are SO many options today, more than ever before. Please do your research. We no longer MUST go to college to get jobs.
As a gen Y guy I started hating this guy (I’m holding on to Gen Y) …..then started totally agreeing with this guy. Sorry Millennials, my 401k is dominating. You’re fucked. This guy is right.
This video proves the very fact they are trying to disprove. Waaah, I blame everyone but myself. "Housing is 3 times more expensive than in 1968". While that may be true, the Inflation calculator says $100 in 1968 is now worth $703 in 2017 dollars.
I'm gen x. I have no retirement plan, I have no pension. I didn't go to college because I couldn't afford it. I've worked for myself for the past nearly 20 years, I moved to where I could afford a house when I was 29 instead of staying in the big city and buying $8 coffees.. The big difference is I don't complain about it. I don't complain about how the system is broken. I don't expect other people (including the rich) to make up for my bad decisions. I work within the circumstances life has given me to make the best of it. My actions are my own and I own them 100%, good or bad.
Housing being expensive is hardly universal, too. I can buy a decent small house for barely more than my parents did, in non-adjusted dollars. You don't have to live in a densely packed city, generally, nor a state where red tape inflates those costs. If you do for work, make sure they pay enough to compensate.
turbo2ltr, I left a job managing 35 people and moved across the country to a place where my wife and I could afford to buy a house. I make more money now, doing menial labor, than I did before, working in management. It is possible to take responsibility for living your life well while simultaneously acknowledging how badly broken the sysyems within our society are; obviously, I chose homeownership over my prior job, but I loved that job, and I was very good at it; applauded by the owner and other local business owners, none of whom could afford to pay their employees a living wage.
I have not known the person to lament his or her income while buying eight dollar coffees; that is, simply put, a false narrative submitted to give solace to the impoverished who work 40, 50, or more hours a week. At one point, working two jobs, I put in 90 hours a week for four months, and could only make my rent so long as I ate two meals a day: an egg sandwich on dry toast for breakfast and ramen noodles for dinner. Who, working those hours, deserves to eat like a refugee?
there you go. 🍪
The point is they are making claims, 1: that aren't true, 2: they don't site where they are getting this info from.. So what is embarrassing is that you blindly believe everything you hear because it's in a youtube video. This chart put together from bank sources show that even at the peak of the 2008 bubble, housing prices, after adjusting for inflation have not even doubled since 1975. They have never come even close to 3 times. They have since gone down. i0.wp.com/inflationdata.com/articles/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Inflation-Adj-Housing-Prices.jpg?ssl=1
To put it simply: in 1975, the average house price was about $120k in 2017 money.. In 2017, the average house price was $186k. That isn't even close to 3 times.
That's probably because I am older. You are very observant.
My dad was a university professor , at 29 he bought his first house, it cost him 18 salary ( quick google search now it about $70,000 a year, Average house price is $190,000, thats 31 months) that sound more but is it ( another quick google search ( in the 1980 average house size was 1,740 square feet so 1 months of his dad salary got 97 square feet, average house size now. 2650 feet , 1 month salary gets 85 square feet , that’s 12% more expensive but if the house is 12% better quality, like better insulated, double glazed windows, higher class finish its the same price,
This dude looks like Putin
CustardGanet if he's not into peepee, my gaydar is seriously broken
I was thinking Stephen Miller's non-psychotic twin.
He looks like Putin if Putin were gay.
Don't worry about his looks or his sexuality. Did y'all understood anything he was saying and benefit from it? That's the real talk here
robin williams
Totally on the same page as this guy. I'm 49 and some of my best pals are millennials. Even as a kid, I liked old people and kids more than my parents generation. With all their "music was better in our day" crap, which I didn't subscribe to then, and I don't subscribe to now. Some of the most judgemental pre-millennials I know forget that I knew them when they were kids, and we were all lazy, clueless and unmotivated, a lot of the time. It's not a new phenomenon. I have old school pals on Facebook who I know for a fact never wanted for anything while growing up who come the old "I only had one pair of jeans my entire childhood, and worked for everything I got" fable, incessantly. Conversely, the most hard-working, thrifty, humble kid I knew at school is someone I am still friends with, and he's the same now, has a great relationship with his own kids, and is no more likely to grumble about millennials as he is to start speaking fluent Latin.
This is how every generation thinks of the next.
Exactly. It will never end.
Not me!
Enayet Hussain Im also a millennial and I can see that our generation is self absorbed and lazy. The "evidence" is literally right in front of him but he needs to see a poll/survey to believe it.
Young people will not do physical labour anymore. Just ask how hard it is to get laborers, drivers, tradesmen, etc. When I was a child it would have been a dream of mine to drive machinery for the summer to earn money. Lots of kids my age were the same. However I have heard from every single contractor that they cannot get young people to work for them. They won't do the unsociable hours or sacrifice their social lives. I've heard this from countless people in the last couple of years. They say there is a marked change in the space of 5 years.
Hey D, its not about not wanting to do labor jobs. We are the generation with more college graduates than any other generation. Our parents who were the laborers wanted us to get an education so that we WOULDN'T have to be labourers. What about that do you not understand? HOWEVER, as the video mentioned, the system has systematically fucked us with debt and many of us graduated during the height of the recession taking low paying jobs just to survive which became a perpetual cycle.
Stop blanketing an entire generation which is FAR greater in numbers than previous generation based on anecdotal nonsense. You have no idea what evidence even means.
D a lot of these “labour” jobs are pointless and are getting replaced through automation. Why go into a job that will likely be worthless half way through your life? I have run a business from my bedroom with my laptop earning enough to get me into the highest tax band in the UK. Does this make me “lazy” because I don’t do labour work? Am I still not contributing towards the economy and providing a useful service to others?
The reason college is so expensive is because so many employers require college degrees or show preference for college degrees in general, even for positions which do not correlate to any major field of study and for which it is arguable if a college education even affects competence. I graduated college but I don't believe I actually use any knowledge or skills I acquired in any of my classes in my day to day work. I can't even remember all the classes I took; I would have to look at my own transcript to tell you, and there's no way I could remember what I "learned" in each of those classes. To be honest, the only reason I went to college was because I knew I had to have a degree to be employable. So the problem is employer bias for an education credential that is of questionable relevance. To a lesser extent, I believe this is even true of trade certifications as well. Why don't we question that instead of just accepting things the way they are?
Move to Europe, enjoy your strong job market.
In Europe, if you get laid off or fired, your life is as good as over.
The generation before us, our parents sold us out and their parents sold them out because things were good right after the depression and during the war. Things are good now too production has never been better but wages have barely moved an inch. We need better representation and we need more groups to come together.
@@brettsinger9565 Is that actually the case? And if so, what makes similar situations in the United States better than in Europe?
In Oregon, if it's 2009 and you've never worked before, no one will hire you. Your life is as good as over. Just give up.
My dude you cannot say that it's hard to get onto the work growth ladder while at the same time lamenting the minimum wages. These two facts are logically inconsistent.
Do you realize when you say tax the rich more (and also the way you say it, it's like you want them to be punished), it's lawyers, doctors and small buisseness owners that you're targeting, and not the multi-millionaires? They have burdens of their own too. What we need is to tighten the fiscal laws so that every body actually pays their due.
He probably really meant tax the rich(i.e. the top 10%), not professionals who you named.
Uh...those professionals are usually close to, and in some regions in, the top 1%, not merely 10. The top 10% doesn't get you past middle class, today.
Reason why everything is more expensive is the rise of intrest rates, and the lack of the dollar holding any value.
How are times harder then the Great Depression?
With the money-saving aspect we should not forget that there is something called inflation, so a decent amount of money today won't have the same purchasing power tomorrow...
The trades right now are absolutely starving for young people. They aren't necessarily cushy desk jobs, but they pay well and have benefits. And most of the time they don't require a college education. Probably a 2 year associates could help though.
Matt T
Trade jobs aren't that easy to come by, don't pay half as well as you say, and work is based on the amount of jobs you have lined up which can be pretty unforgiving at times. A trade is good, but it's not enough to pay the bills.
Trade jobs are highly competitive currently and DON'T pay all that well. True they don't require college but they are famous for entry level positions that require 5 years of experience. In my experience most trades also do NOT have benefits unless you are in a union. Many trade jobs are seasonal and cyclical with yearly layoffs and rehires not to mention contract 1099 work that sees you paying double the taxes of a traditional job. Also, entry level trade jobs are ALWAYS the first ones cut when the layoffs start so job security is practically non-existant to start with. The trade positions are also predominantly male occupied so good luck for any women trying to get a job.
Don't pay well and don't have benefits. Try again
It depends on where you go, but every factory, mill and power plant needs electricians and mechanics to maintain the equipment. Bonus points if they have an internship or apprenticeship. It's not all doom and gloom. Trades don't change the fact that houses and college are well more expensive than they used to be.
"There is enough money, but it's being distributed to the wrong places." "We need to tax the rich to pay for [social programs]." The trouble I have with viewpoints like these is that they view rich people as though they are ATMs - as if it is our right to distribute someone else's money simply by virtue of them having earned more than they need to survive. This may come as a surprise, but rich people often earn what they have. So, why is it any more acceptable to tell a rich person what to do with his money than it is to tell a poor person? Wouldn't the best solution be to not tell anyone what he/she should do with his/her money?
I do think you have a point about wasteful spending, but we seem disagree about where the waste is coming from. In my estimation, the waste is in government. The more power and money you give the government, the more it needs to satiate itself. By taxing the rich, how would we guarantee that any of that money would get distributed fairly? Who determines fairness? Throwing more money at an already broken, corrupt system is hardly a good idea and, worse, not addressing the root cause of waste in this country.
We wouldn't accept the idea of reallocating property value to less robust, dilapidated homes on our blocks. We wouldn't redistribute our test scores to under performers in the classroom, so I am not sure why we should be so eager to give away our wealth, especially when that wealth has come at great risk, effort, and toil.
I do like some of your points about millennials. I think you're right - they are often unfairly judged. They are certainly facing challenges of their own - not necessarily more significant or more difficult than other generations have had to face, but challenges all the same. They also have many advantages that others did not, like unprecedented access to information and free education. Almost any topic imaginable can be found and learned about with a few strokes of the keyboard or swipes of the smart phone. Don't want to pay for that expensive college tuition? There are hundreds of online alternatives offering in many cases a superior learning experience. We live in an age when making a simple app can make you the next multi-millionaire. Opportunity abounds. There are plenty of avenues to have the kind of career you want. So, it's not all doom and gloom.
Also it would be good to actually present the "evidence" and studies that support YOUR claims.
Very true. There are plenty of studies out there to back up what he's claiming in this video but a list of references would be REALLY useful. Alas, Big Think doesn't bother to cite sources
Loads of generational research and results here:
www.pewresearch.org/topics/millennials/
You can not really do that easily on this kind of format. But then most of the articles on either side of the topic represent their cases well scientifically. People buy their perspectives based on biases and circumstances, which more flatters their ego.
I actually posted a comment criticizing the author in that I think he should have developed his representation more. I do not think he did a good job at sufficiently explaining biases.
For example it is true that young people are poorer at the same age than their parents were. While currency is more numerous, economists speak of ´purchasing power´ which means the relative value of a unit of currency has. While currency has become more numerous, the purchasing power of units have relatively decreased so much that the same investment is unable to produce as much as it could 50-years ago.
So just to clarify hypothetically for example: A penny back then is today´s 10 units (dollars/euro/pound/X) and what you could buy with a penny back then vs. what you can get with 10 units now is so that a penny then was worth more in products than 10 units now are. Functionally meaning that to get the same product, a person has to invest more in aggregate to gain it. Investment in economics includes currency but also time, effort and work.
4 years in trade school. Never taken a single day of unemployment, have health insurance, a house kids, wife, motorcycle… Don’t have to have a degree.
Instead of taxing the rich to pay for it; tax consumption.
TheGazimon oh you mean so people who can less afford to dish out extra money have to pay taxes at the same rate as people with millions and millions of dollars? Wow, brilliant.
Psycho Lefty there's a great mistake made by the left which states that the rich should pay their fair share. Unfortunately, this is, but a fantasy the reality is that if I'm rich enough I'll use tax havens in the third world or elsewhere to hide my money. You will never be able legislate equity nor should you. All utopias are secretly dystopias if one is willing to observe keenly.
Remember what JFK said: "A rising tide lifts all boats."
TheGazimon I don't want equity. I want equality of opportunity. And I don't see that happening right now. It is practically impossible to identify the extent to which wealthy Americans have benefitted from the system we have here. They should give back. And you absolutely can legislate it. We have intentionally left loopholes to let the rich hide their money. Close them. We do not prosecute and punish rich people and corporations who hide their money. Do that. You don't seem to be arguing against the idea of taxing the rich inherently, just against the implementation.
Psycho Lefty every country who has legislated equality has failed miserably. Scale is a huge issue when you're talking about a welfare state with 300 odd million people. The richest percentile will always dodge taxation regardless of laws in place because this country is an oligarchy and a corporatocracy.
Noam Chomsky said this: "In the US, there is basically one party - the business party. It has two factions, called Democrats and Republicans, which are somewhat different but carry out variations on the same policies. By and large, I am opposed to those policies. As is most of the population."
I argue that instead of fighting losing battles, focus on shifting the economy toward taxing the biggest consumers. The rich don't really buy American anyways, this is a global game of chicken.
Right out of the gate, I counted 3 separate objective contradictions in about 30 seconds.
You said words that offend me, therefore it's violent, ergo I must cry in the corner because I have been violently assaulted...
wut?
what are you talking about? Did you even watch the video?
Yep, found the self-hating millennial.
Again, generalizations
Why do people think it unreasonable and whining to expect that if you get a degree or technical training to want a home in a decent neighborhood and to live comfortably by working one job? I’m not talking luxury and wasting money on things. I’m talking paying for a home, a car (because we all know we don’t have a train and bus system like Europe because that would be socialism, or as the right calls it, communism), food, and some money for leisure activities.
Y’all the ones whining, we’re just tired of living lmaooooo
When I lived in Portland, Oregon, in 2009 my salary as a professional salesperson was $65,000 and the condo I then owned (a tiny studio in a complex called Sylvan Heights) is currently (that is, in 2018) listed at $129,900. These things do exist. We just have to look harder and be more inventive. (Oh, and I'm Gen X)
No one cares about your singular anecdote you oiled face fuck
Oh the Huffington Post? This is for real news right here folks!
I actually regret going to a 4 year college. My younger brother is working in a bakery and makes way more than I am and he has only a CNA, which he doesn't use in this job anyway. I'm not pushing my daughter to go to a 4 year school unless she absolutely needs it for her career. Technical colleges can be just as good if not better for some people.
Every generation thinks they're more clever than the generation before them and more wise than the generation after them. Are some millennials whiny/lazy? Yeah. Are there also millennials out there grinding, doing things you can't even imagine? Yeah.
I'd actually argue that a large portion of the millennial generation has bout into this "lazy/whiny" narrative of their own generation. We may be the first generation out there to lack the backbone to tell older generations to fuck off when they continue to stereotype and insult us.
Jason Seow For sure, definitely a lot of spineless mfs out there agreeing with the older generations because they don't want any smoke.
i think apart of Millennial buying into these stereotypes of millennial comes from the alt right millennial looking at and judging the SJW left Millennial. They have embraced the stereotype for political gain and to try to have that "air" of being "woke" or "red pilled" compared to others of their generation.
Yes, I remember as a teenager my father being like "Why don't you have any money? You're making as much in an hour as I made in a day!" "Yeah Dad, and what did you pay for a loaf of bread and a gallon of milk?"
It's actually much worse than this. Not only do you have to go to college, you have to go to the right ones and go to the right colleges. Probably half of all degrees are largely useless. Then, you will probably need a master's because everyone has degrees.
He just ruined the video in the last minute.
A study showed you need to earn 18 to 19 dollars an hour just to afford a 1 bedroom appartment anywhere in the country, and the Fed min wage is 7...
As a millenial.. i think, it goes both way. Our generation are indeed had the too much entitlement mentality BUT at the same time, middle-lower class millenial are much-much harder to get the same level of economy security than baby boomer..
Baby boomer has rigged the economy while at the same time some of them creating the new age dreamer mentality..
Having said all that, i am totally disagree with him, on what we should do to fix this. Alot of what he sugest as fix, is big socialism bullshit.
So, asking for a future, access to healthcare and education and wages that actually allow us to survive independently is now entitlement?
I think that you need to grow a spine and stop eating up all of the bullshit being flung at our generations by those that have had all of these things just given to them. Further, a progressive tax system is not socialism. A good economic system distributes resources efficiently. Ours allows for millions of homeless to struggle for survival on the streets while banks keep millions of houses off of the market to keep prices higher. There is entitlement in our society. It's not by and large coming from millennials
Socialism, more like Keynesian Capitalism. We live in a socialist society now, called corporatism.
+AspergersGuy
We do live in a somewhat Keynesian Capitalist society and Corporatist is a good description of our economic system. I think you'd have to REALLY stretch most definitions of socialism to equate any form of it to Corporatism.
i feel your frustration, as i were once in your place too. let me explain one thing at a time.. the idea that everybody should get into university or free healthcare and enough wages to fulfilled a certain lifestyle , is indeed entitlement mentality. progressive tax system is indeed, socialism.
BUT what you were saying about those baby boomer riggs the economy to their favor and their subsequent generation that benefited from that, i also agree.. since the end of ww2, most of nation on earth were running either communism or crony-capitalism, both were incredibly injustice system.
youtube and internet as a whole created a nearly free ways to share information. it should make most type of education dirt cheap, but why college getting more n more expensive? this does not make much sense. unless the government whom had monopoly on education certification and regulation, created that problem.
many other problem like wage n barrier of entry to workforce is the same things.. government regulation very often make things worst,..
think about it.. why do we need to a luxurious college building? and why are we spending so much time in campus? i think most of subject need less than 10 hour of class a week, the majority of study can be done on our own home using internet, just watch a recorded lecture and read online text book..
or think about work.. why do company want people to have college degree to work at stupid job? it because the minimum wages law, created so many unemployment and thus make them picky about it..
I live in Canada, where we do have a decent social welfare system, yet we still have the same issues as American millennials. We still have very few career opportunities, still have high tuition, etc. Alot of people do unfortunately abuse good welfare programs, and alot of those programs won't solve the larger issues we face. Corporatism and mass environmental raping/destruction has created social values and ideologies that will take a generation to change as they are embedded in social norms, etc.
"let's tax the rich to pay for it" you realize that that will end up meaning that the middle class the " richer than the poor" will be taxed higher also. and this idea that raising the minimum wage will cause less people to be poor is just dumb you literally are raising the bar on which we call poor you're not making anyone else less poor you're just raising the bar on where we call people poor
Are you seriously arguing that raising the minimum wage won't change if poor people are called poor or not? Who gives a shit. If you are trying to claim that raising the minimum wage will increase the cost of living and not help them pay their bills, that's just bullshit. We have increased minimum wage to liveable wages in some places and it works just fine. You also see some job that used to be minimum wage steadily increasing to near $15 an hour due to those jobs being pretty shitty and requiring a lot of physical labor. My stocking job used to be around $7.25-$8 an hour if that in 2009-2010 at most places. Now you see a lot of places where I live starting at $11 or $12 or more because usually not only are these jobs more physically demanding then other low wage retail jobs, there seems to be universally this mentality that the workers are never fast enough and asshole managers all around. So there is high turn over, and in order to fight high turn over and lore people in, they have increase the starting pay over the years.
You do not know the first thing about economics. You have been brainwashed into believing in nonsense so that those who are in power can buy their 7th private plane. Am I being hyperbolic? Sure. Here is how my city of NYC is going to provide 15 an hr minimum wage. Nice and slowly and by 2021 it will be in full effect. www.labor.ny.gov/workerprotection/laborstandards/workprot/minwage.shtm
Guess what? We also have free college.
It fucking works when you plan accordingly.
xinic5 that's how the economy should work if you have a hard skilled job it should pay more but if you raise the minimum to where these harder jobs are paying they aren't going to raise the harder jobs pay at the same rate thus increase turnover they are going to take time to raise it back to a point where people think their skilled work is getting the pay they deserve and then turnover becomes less, this is basic economics if you pay your simple employees close to the same as your skilled employees you will see turnover
xinic5 also by those minimum wage numbers I think you might be from California which is already on track to get to $15 by 2020
Forceably I might add... companies should be able to do this naturally i.e. people should work with their employer's not force their hand with a reach around via the government
I'm millennial, and I think we do *NOT* get bad reputation for staying in our parent's house, but because we tends to felt *entitled to good life* and *blaming others* when it didn't happen.
This guy *IS* the prime example why we have such bad reputation: blaming the economy, the housing crises, education system, his parents, environment, etc. Everything work together to drown us, eh?
That, and delusion of grandeur, like when this guy said that we can fix the society by "taking control" and legislate our problem away.
Back in our parents day, there are only 4 billion people on earth, now we have 7 billion. There are more people, more demand, and so price goes up. Everything gets more expensive. But that also means bigger market and better chance to be even greater than what our parents can ever be.
It's like bronze age people said that stone age people have it easy, they don't need to be "educated" to get "comfortable job" in local chieftain's court, they just need to be strong. But now we, bronze age people, must learn to read and write to get the same position in local lord's court.
Dude, it's true that you need to get better and do better than your parents, but you now have better tools and more resources too. Like in our parents time, they can't just making video unboxing and talking about smartphones, and get money.
Stop complaining and blaming others and start thinking about what options you have and work from there.
Throw away any delusion of grandeur you have. You are entitled to nothing.
Fact. Excuses.
Things are always hard. I never compared my life to my parents. I wonder why millennials do? Maybe you millenials should consider making pensions part of your labor benefit package, instead of promoting more privatization and deregulation. For a generation which seems so focused on economics you don't really realize who is screwing you? And it's not previous generations, but those in power that want to cut their overhead and your benefits first. While you focus on previous generations they are still using you.
Minimum wage is not the reason why college student can’t afford college. Adjusted for inflation the minimum wage should only be $4.19 according to CNN. But minimum wages are going to $10-$15 depending on your city. Colleges have been charging more since the government has provided college financial aid through Sallie Mae and other programs. It’s an endless money pit and keeps getting more expensive.
Given that minimum wage was originally meant to be enough to support a family (yes, it was originally a living wage), that's a BS adjusted value (a fair comparison would be to dollars as purchasing power, but they probably just used monetary inflation). The rest is right on, though. It's an artificial bubble, created by the government, just like the subprime bubble was. I think Congress cretins are afraid to fix it, and be blamed for the [much needed] crash, though many surely understand the problem.
Huff post and he Not Entitled. ...........
exactly
If you want to close wage gap more effectively get rid of social programs and reform voting laws to those who are knowledgeable on the issues. Base group identity on solely what nation you're from. Democracy is a pagan culture afterall.
I was open minded at the start of this video, but it seems to me like he's just complaining about circumstances that everyone faces.
You apparently missed the part where millenials are the first generation in modern HISTORY that have less prospects for advancement than their predecessors. So no, we do not face the same circumstances as everyone else. Literally everyone born before 1979 had an EASIER time than anyone born after 1980.
I was born in 79 and I can SEE it with my own eyes. When my mother was a single mom in the '80s and needed a job she just walked out the door and came back with an office job, with a pension, and health insurance from the first place she applied to with ZERO experience and no college degree. She bought a house in 1977 for $45,000 in a good neighborhood. When she retired she sold the house for $500,000!!! This is why old people don't understand. They still think you just get a job and magically your make enough to buy a car, a house, and everything else. In today's world you can work a full 40 hour+ week and still be poor as hell with no opportunity for advancement.
John S. Just like a millennial who was dissing McDonalds in favor of Chipotle. Someone older told HIM, it's the same company. 🤯
kt cool It's a fact paired with a lame excuse.
bkLEGION3000 We HAVE new jobs. You can't compare then and now. There is a reason why it's called The Future. INFLUENCERS didn't exist before and making $$. Did you ask your Mom WHAT type of job she was looking for? THAT answer would change your perspective. Most of us who are looking for a job, gets a job...NOT your passion, NOT your dream job. There IS a difference
Belle Lopez - I'm just going to type one of the best jobs available. (best because it'll be here for at least a decade or two, and doesn't saddle you with debt)
Truck Driving.
6 days a week
12 hour days
65k a year to start
Never home, you'll live in your truck.
If you wanted to buy an average house in PA with the average price of $282,000 , it would take 6 years with that income and life-style. Compared to my Grand-Father, who supported his Wife, 2 Sons and 3 Daughters on a school Janitor's salary while also buying a small house... Something doesn't quite add up.
I am considered a millenial, what's happening is that life IS HARDER for our generation!! We must work 5 times harder than our grandparents who had it way easier. We are wiser and we as a generation have learned to adapt and overcome, we are more creative and find ways to make our dollar stretch further, we have learned to do more with less, learned to share with others in order to survive! We also have the advantage of technology which Millenials are masters of, so when it comes down to it, we are better than the baby boomers because we had to make do with less and still found a way to make it work! Without their safety nets, ie Social Security, pensions, Medicare etc, etc they would be toast!!
Millennials are lazy
We are sitting are record low unemployment, especially in high tech blue collar and STEM fields. Why would you go to a 4 year college that costs 30k a year to get a lib arts degree when that would at best pay only 35k per year. You also have to look at what the expectation for living is. When I first moved out all my furniture was hand me downs and I could only affort not much more than a small single bedroom apt. I was making about $27k per year in 1998. Most of the food I ate were cheap as I could not afford non gmo, free range, etc. Buying coffee at starbucks everyday was out of the question. Yes our parents could buy a house much sooner in life and do it with one income, but most of those jobs that paid that were factory and the US is not that type of economy. It also seems that the the younger gen seems to want to enjoy life more instead of doing the hard work and hours. My co workers who are of the millennial age are always talking about going out after work and meeting friends or eating only organic whatever. All of this cost money, and its their priority to live in big cities and want the lifestyle of their parents right out of college, without knowing that it could have taken their parents about 25 years to get there.
Claiming that the stereotypes are wrong while whining about being a victim and exactly matching the stereotype. Tone deaf perfection.
chrisose
He's saying the stereotypes of whining are entirely accurate BECAUSE of the situation.
If a restaurant has a low rating and food critics say it's terrible. They aren't complaining to get attention. It means the restaurant is bad.
School is almost 100x more expensive and wages have gone up 8x. So yes. We're complaining because we have no power to change it.
If we did.
We would have fixed it already.
We havent put ourselves in this terrible situation, and we can't get ourselves out.
We need help, not elders dangling the carrot in front of us and saying "If you just want it bad enough."
chrisose but enough about your comments
He kept making reference to other nations. Uncertain which ones. For example, australians have to pay for college (it's probably subsidized), have retirement costs built into their salaries, have expensive housing and tax the rich fairly aggressively.
I agree, but taxing the rich more is not going to work. You have to tax the middle class as well. That's the problem with millennials. THey think taxing the rich will solve it all. Its the strong middle class that makes a country well off (but that's not popular and will not get people elected into office) People do not like to hear once they are making 50 000 plus- should have to pay for the safety nets of society but that is what has to happen. Additionally, housing costs are due to en extremely low barrier to entry- with very low interest rates while supply and demand and cost of materials have changed. Additionally, governments have been careless with public spending with such a massive debt- which also contribute to higher prices for millennials. People need to look at their countries more like a busines and use research based policies instead of feel good policies.
The problem with taxing the rich more- is that there is a threshold of negative returns- especially with globalization. it is not hard to look for countries who have already tried big government with high taxes on the rich. They seem to be doing well?
Student loans aren't inescapable. Join the military, serve your country, and get "free" healthcare and college in exchange. Wouldn't have made it this far without that option for my family. You're highly employable when you get out and get a pension if you stay in the full 20. Just putting it out there. It's not for everyone but it's security.
You're not wrong when you speak about the rising cost of living combined with stagnat wages. That's a pretty obvious issue. But like others have said here, you could learn a trade and make boat loads of cash. Problem is, you folks think you're above that and so wouldn't dare get your hands dirty, lest you stain your overpriced iPhone.
They over pay for college, to be qualified for jobs that don't exist, and then get upset that the only jobs they can get are working at Starbucks.
Blood Angel how about having a society that allows you to do whatever you want and follow your passion instead of going to a trade job that you hate in order to live decently or spending hundreds of thousands in stem careers that you don't want to learn about?
The average wage of a trade worker is 12 to 19 dollars. That is nowhere near close in city conditions to survive off anything and that's where most of the jobs are heading.
There's nothing stopping you following your passion, but if you think you're entitled to get paid simply because you choose to do that, you're mistaken.
I understand all of these sentiments but I'm going to be frank, the way we pay work is fucking atrocious in the United States. Nevermind the student loans, the very fact that a trade worker gets paid significantly less than a computer science major is horrifying because without the trade worker, the CS major wouldn't have a job.
Unless you are going to college/university to get a degree in stem, just get the job now that you will end up with with after obtaining a "studies" degree. Stem related degrees that you can retire the debt in 3-5 years is the only sensible route. Others that aren't ashamed to get their hands dirty can get a trade. Plumbers, electricians, mechanics can make $60K-80K+ a year. Sure beats being a barista making $20K with a $50K Student Debt.
this channel has seen a constant decrease in the actual big think since it started to feature people with political agendas
cesar zumaeta Jordan B Peterson was good.
JBP is one giant political agenda. WTF are u talking about? That's literally all he is.
this is facts, not politics mate
Fake Dufas ......The dude said it himself. Most of the stuff he talks about isn't related to politics, it's about psychology
Fake Dufas - lol you've never actually listened to JBP, have you? Nobody who's listened for longer than a soundbite would think that. Nobody honest, at least.
Well, can't speak too much about the US since I'm from Europe, but I can tell you it's not that much better here where I live. Practially impossible to find a place to live here. All new buildings being built in cities are luxury owner flats with 100k+ in initial payment. No single bedroom flats, no two room flats. Just big ass flats for the already well off with a stable job and family. Not to mention our healthcare, school system etc. is going down the drain since they haven't recieved any new funding for decades despite our population growing rapidly. It's a system on the brink of collapse, cancer patients are dying because the wait times are too long to receive treatment, the elderly's pension is so low the can barely live with any basic human dignity, school results are steadily declining year after year. But we should totally import half the middle east and have them here on welfare waiting to be integrated into our society.. But like always the cause is obvious to everybody with any kind of critical thinking, it is of course caused by the irresponsible people who call themselves politicians who receive juicy economic "parachutes" of millions when they retire, or get fired for scandals for that matter as well. Or spent holding grand parties with expensive dinners for their political party costing the state millions as well.
"News Flash My Guy," we already tax the wealthy at a rate of nearly 90%. What we really need to do is to find a way to create a base level tax and close the loopholes that make it possible for the super wealthy and corporations to avoid paying their fair share or anything for that matter. If we could also tax corporations at the same rate we tax individuals or if they were taxed solely based on transactions. What about if we created a new classification for Non- Profit Organizations such as churches and community organizations and clubs that allow them to be taxed? There are many methods we could use to build a better economy but everyone must be held accountable not just the rich and wealthy. Everyone.
The top marginal tax rate is somewhere close to 90% but in effective tax rates we never see anywhere even remotely close to that. Also its notable that tax brackets exist and even if someone is paying a high tax percentage they are only paying it on money over a certain amount. You may want to look it up because its a bit hard to explain in a sentence. It is simply false that the wealthy are being overly taxed already and when you compare our current marginal/effective tax rates to those of decades past this becomes very apparent. Theres nothing wrong with beiong rich and the wealthy certainly arent bad people, but it is undeniable that a smaller group of people hold a larger amount of the wealth than ever before at a time when the middle and lower classes are suffering from stagnant wages. So the rich have been getting richer and the poor poorer. Seems like a system that need adjusting
tax at 90% where the hell are you?? Pretty sure you not American because everyone knew the top 1% never paid 90%, not 80%, not 70% and most certainly not even 50%. I should know because i have interned at one of the big 4 before and let's just say America tax system deliberately leave boatloads of loopholes for the rich to pay the least. That is one of the reason why Trump created hundreds of shell companies in Delaware. There is a reason why the rich loves to go to Delaware.
The irony is Trump voters actually used these phony shell companies to brag why he is brilliant. The tax system is now further rigged by Trump and the GOP to let the rich escape with more money and I don't see you complaining?
americansfortaxfairness.org/tax-fairness-briefing-booklet/fact-sheet-taxing-wealthy-americans/ The richest 1% pay an effective federal income tax rate of 24.7% in 2014. Why did you take a number out of your ass instead of googling it.
SAMael The Fallen One 1. Churches should pay taxes
2. We do not tax the rich at 90%
Personally I think the US should take half their military budget and throw it into education. Smarter children means better solutions to your problems. But that's just me and i'm crazy.
I slept in my car for 3 weeks because I was too embarrassed to go back home. Life isn't perfect, work with what you have. Taking From other people doesn't solve your challenges in life. Blaming your parents is your blind spot.
This dude looks older than me and i wear an adult diaper!
Being a millennial and the constant state of being offended has prematurely aged him.
James Bra My Wife does it.
No Ma'am Yeah that shit put me in a diaper
Yea you're what we called lazy arse.
off-kilter We?