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'Member when minimum wage was considered enough to fill basic needs?

Also ditto to the answer of 'what does a $250k house look like in your area' being "no."

This is the natural lifecycle of Capitalism.

 gorgon wrote:

 John Prins wrote:

 gorgon wrote:


Playing devil's advocate here...so you could potentially afford something. It just wouldn't be your ideal situation and lifestyle.

When someone says they can't afford housing, it generally means within a reasonable radius of their workplace. I live an hour's commute outside of Toronto and houses in my area are 500K CAD minimum, you have to go another hour out to find stuff in the 200-300K range. Four hour daily commutes aren't reasonable - yes, some people do it, but it's not reasonable and it takes a huge toll on people.

Again playing devil's advocate...so you could potentially afford something. It just wouldn't be your ideal location.

Sure, you could buy a sugar shack 5 hours north of Toronto for 20K. That doesn't include the surrounding property of maple trees, BTW.

Most people my age don't move out of their parents house till they are 30. (source had two siblings who all left at age 30, and had several friends sharing their space with their parents because how expensive it is and just cheaper in terms of living than living afar)


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 Dreadwinter wrote:
This is the natural lifecycle of Capitalism.

Or poor economics. Not increasing minimum wage and requiring higher education and student debts is a massive issue. Schools are far more expensive now than they have ever been. https://www.forbes.com/sites/debtwire/2018/10/08/college-costs-more-than-ever-but-some-schools-go-against-trend-and-slash-prices/#1b2cf43872c7

There are some exceptions but its hard not to find students with massive crippling debt or ability to go into the housing market or afford simple things.

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/29/how-much-college-tuition-has-increased-from-1988-to-2018.html

Its risen considerably and not because of 'capitalism' its more of geopolitical and people failing to increase wages.

 Dreadwinter wrote:
This is the natural lifecycle of Capitalism.

True. I'm suspecting socialist policies to gain popularity this century. Capitalism is already viewed as pretty toxic by millenials and I suspect the next crash will hit right on time to do the same to the next generation, meaning two consecutive generations with a strong dislike. Capitalism is also (and rightly so) going to get a lot of blame over big businesses putting so much effort into downplaying climate change or outright denying it. Boomers will also (again, rightly so) get flak for that as well.


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 Asherian Command wrote:
Most people my age don't move out of their parents house till they are 30. (source had two siblings who all left at age 30, and had several friends sharing their space with their parents because how expensive it is and just cheaper in terms of living than living afar)


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 Dreadwinter wrote:
This is the natural lifecycle of Capitalism.

Or poor economics. Not increasing minimum wage and requiring higher education and student debts is a massive issue. Schools are far more expensive now than they have ever been. https://www.forbes.com/sites/debtwire/2018/10/08/college-costs-more-than-ever-but-some-schools-go-against-trend-and-slash-prices/#1b2cf43872c7

There are some exceptions but its hard not to find students with massive crippling debt or ability to go into the housing market or afford simple things.

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/29/how-much-college-tuition-has-increased-from-1988-to-2018.html

Its risen considerably and not because of 'capitalism' its more of geopolitical and people failing to increase wages.

Captalism is why they are not increasing wages.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 Dreadwinter wrote:
This is the natural lifecycle of Capitalism.

True. I'm suspecting socialist policies to gain popularity this century. Capitalism is already viewed as pretty toxic by millenials and I suspect the next crash will hit right on time to do the same to the next generation, meaning two consecutive generations with a strong dislike. Capitalism is also (and rightly so) going to get a lot of blame over big businesses putting so much effort into downplaying climate change or outright denying it. Boomers will also (again, rightly so) get flak for that as well.

Well we might see it shift in paradigm for companies where it becomes serving the community and people as they see a greater good.... Hopefully a man can dream of a star trek future okay!

Captalism is why they are not increasing wages.

I disagree it sounds more like corrupt idiots and people not understanding economics.

Why wouldn't you want your consumers having, in general, more spending power?

 Asherian Command wrote:

Why wouldn't you want your consumers having, in general, more spending power?

Because everyone wants a slice of the pie, so no one wants to risk giving up any potential part of their slice of the pie, even if that means that they get less pie.

It's practically large scale this

Because you can make more money for YOUR business by reducing wages. The impact of YOUR business on consumer spending is minimal.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Because you can make more money for YOUR business by reducing wages. The impact of YOUR business on consumer spending is minimal.

Companies and short-term business decisions go very well apparently.

 gorgon wrote:

 LordofHats wrote:

 gorgon wrote:


Again playing devil's advocate...so you could potentially afford something. It just wouldn't be your ideal location.

I feel like you're kind of trivializing the absurdity of spending 1/4 of the day traveling to a place to spend another 1/3 working for a grand total of 1/2 of your day dedicated to something and only being paid for 2/3 of that time. It's pretty damn unreasonable to underpay your employees so badly that the only way for them to make ends meet is to spend half as much time as they work on gas, unpaid, and then chalk that up to "well you just can't live in your ideal location."

Not really where I was going with it.

Setting aside other situations for a moment, let's focus on a case of a younger person -- good worker, gainfully employed but still early in his/her career with an income that reflects that -- unable to purchase affordable housing in a desirable major metro area.

TO ME, this seems like a fairly timeless issue and not one unique to 2018 or the Millennial generation. What MAY be unique -- and what's interesting to me, and not in some mocking "HO-HO-HO, typical Millennial" way -- is that Millennials may be less inclined to sacrifice their lifestyles for the big house in a good neighborhood and school district. Because there are plenty of people who do those two-hour commutes each way and take those hits to their lifestyles because they value those other things THAT much.

Obviously, we're talking in degrees and not in absolutes, because there are certainly Millennials who are putting up with punishing commutes to get that house in the 'burbs. Still, even a change measured in degrees may eventually have some interesting implications for suburban and (especially?) exurban real estate markets.

That’s simply not true. Yes, millennials are putting experiences about material goods. They are buying holidays over new cars. What they are not doing is putting travel time, or other “lifestyle” about a big house and good schools. Commute times have been going up and up since the 80s in the US and UK. Millennials are living further from work in smaller houses in worse areas.

 LordofHats wrote:

 gorgon wrote:


Again playing devil's advocate...so you could potentially afford something. It just wouldn't be your ideal location.

I feel like you're kind of trivializing the absurdity of spending 1/4 of the day traveling to a place to spend another 1/3 working for a grand total of 1/2 of your day dedicated to something and only being paid for 2/3 of that time. It's pretty damn unreasonable to underpay your employees so badly that the only way for them to make ends meet is to spend half as much time as they work on gas, unpaid, and then chalk that up to "well you just can't live in your ideal location."

I don't disagree that living near your place of work can be too expensive to be achievable but that's really not something that can be blamed on employers. You've mentioned the DC area, housing is expensive in DC because there are a lot of wealthy people competing to live in DC which drives up the price so you have to move further and further out of DC to find areas where demand hasn't massively inflated housing prices. There are service industry jobs in DC and those jobs can pay fair wages but still not provide enough income to live inside the beltway and have politicians, diplomats and lobbyists for neighbors.
My wife and I grew up in NJ, her family had been in the state for multiple generations, mine just for multiple decades but in both instances our parents bought homes in the suburbs that massively increased in value by the time we became adults. Both of us were priced out of the towns we grew up in. We were college educated, gainfully employed and fairly paid but the housing costs in our hometowns had skyrocketed as homes were bought up by wealthy people working in the financial district in NYC because our towns were right on the rail line for commuting to Manhattan. Since my wife and I weren't concerned with living in NJ we moved south, got essentially the same jobs we had up north for similar pay but had much more disposable income because we were now in an area with a lower cost of living. We have friends and family still up north that live in NJ and commute into NYC and who live in PA and commute into NJ because they can't afford housing near their jobs. That's not ideal, it's not even good but it's a result of supply and demand, it's not due to companies colluding to exploit workers and under pay them. Employers can't just conjure up more money for payroll every time the housing market goes up.

 Asherian Command wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Because you can make more money for YOUR business by reducing wages. The impact of YOUR business on consumer spending is minimal.

Companies and short-term business decisions go very well apparently.

Humans have a long relationship with short-term thinking.

 Asherian Command wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Because you can make more money for YOUR business by reducing wages. The impact of YOUR business on consumer spending is minimal.

Companies and short-term business decisions go very well apparently.

Yes.

But more fundamentally, no one in the country (or anywhere probably) simply gives a flying feth about the economy outside of how much money they're making out of it. If I rent property at $1000/mo, and all the properties are getting rented out, then charging $800 would give my tenants more purchasing power in the economy. But it gives me $2400 per year per renter less than I would have received otherwise, and they're going to spend that money on something that is not rent. There's absolutely no incentive for me to do so. That goes the same anyone and anything else out there that's not regulated as a utility.

And the government has no incentive to attempt to do anything about it because the companies incentivize the government to leave it be with their considerable spending power, media outlets have an incentive to make anyone who doesn't play by those rules look as crazy as possible and get labelled socialist, voters have an incentive to vote against the socialists because 'socialism is eeeevil', and because, philosophically speaking, something something free market and/or Adam Smith along with a little bit of "it's not broke enough to fix yet because everyone has their cell phones and if people can't afford fill the spaces in their empty lives with the things they see in stores then the sick fethers are still somehow content enough to live vicariously through unboxing videos on youtube" sprinkled on top.

Club "We've Got Ours", I'd like to introduce you to our host. He's Got His, and I've Got Mine, meet The Decline.


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It's not all bad though. The one positive thing that this is doing is increasing the rate of marijuana legalization, so there's that.

 AndrewGPaul wrote:
No, but you can blame them for denying those incentives to anyone else once they've had the benefit.


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 AndrewGPaul wrote:
No, but you can blame them for denying those incentives to anyone else once they've had the benefit.

Or for the sort of doublethink Techpriestsupport mentions; "I did it all by myself", disregarding the thousands of dollars of government aid they received. Because I deserved it, not like those freeloaders.

Sure you can blame them for it but are the Boomers really acting any different from previous generations? The Boomers' parents, the Greatest Generation or whatever you want to call them, suffered economic hardship in the late 1920s through the 1930s, then benefited from massive government spending during the war effort of WWII and then benefited from the sustained postwar boom (that didn't materialize after WWI). That generation benefited from a booming economy, an expanding job market and government subsidies that were paid for with growing government revenue that was a product of the growing economy. By the time the Boomers reached adulthood and the economy slowed down in the 1970s and 80s the Boomers' children couldn't benefit from the same level of govt assistance that the Boomers got because there wasn't enough economic growth to fund it. The Boomers didn't choose to increase taxes on themselves to benefit future generations but when has that ever happened in US history? The biggest program to transfer wealth that comes to my mind is Social Security and that doesn't transfer wealth forward, it sends it backwards. The social security payments that my generation pays are what funds the Social Security checks that the retirees in our parents' and grandparents' generations receive, they don't benefit younger or future generations.
Can we definitively say that the Boomers were more selfish than any preceding generation or is the problem that our consumer based economy is becoming increasingly corporatist and can't consistently grow fast enough to fund government assistance programs to offset the stagnating wages, increasing costs of living and shrinking employment opportunities that are the predictable effects of increasingly rapid technological advances and vertically integrated national and multinational corporations?


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 daedalus wrote:

 Asherian Command wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Because you can make more money for YOUR business by reducing wages. The impact of YOUR business on consumer spending is minimal.

Companies and short-term business decisions go very well apparently.

Yes.

But more fundamentally, no one in the country (or anywhere probably) simply gives a flying feth about the economy outside of how much money they're making out of it. If I rent property at $1000/mo, and all the properties are getting rented out, then charging $800 would give my tenants more purchasing power in the economy. But it gives me $2400 per year per renter less than I would have received otherwise, and they're going to spend that money on something that is not rent. There's absolutely no incentive for me to do so. That goes the same anyone and anything else out there that's not regulated as a utility.

And the government has no incentive to attempt to do anything about it because the companies incentivize the government to leave it be with their considerable spending power, media outlets have an incentive to make anyone who doesn't play by those rules look as crazy as possible and get labelled socialist, voters have an incentive to vote against the socialists because 'socialism is eeeevil', and because, philosophically speaking, something something free market and/or Adam Smith along with a little bit of "it's not broke enough to fix yet because everyone has their cell phones and if people can't afford fill the spaces in their empty lives with the things they see in stores then the sick fethers are still somehow content enough to live vicariously through unboxing videos on youtube" sprinkled on top.

Club "We've Got Ours", I'd like to introduce you to our host. He's Got His, and I've Got Mine, meet The Decline.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
It's not all bad though. The one positive thing that this is doing is increasing the rate of marijuana legalization, so there's that.

You're putting way too much emphasis on politics and media hype and not nearly enough on basic market forces. If you own rental units the rent you charge for them is going to be tied to the market rate for your area. If you are trying to rent a building full of 2 bedroom apartments and the going rate in your area is $750-800/month you won't rent them if you list them for $1200/month. Likewise you wouldn't try to rent them for $500/month because you'd be undervaluing your property for no reason. You rent the units for their market rate because you're the one that owns the building and has to pay for them so if you under charge on rent the result will be you selling the building because you won't be able to afford to keep it because you'll be losing money on it every month.
We have a consumer based economy. We always have, it's been that way for centuries and the state we're in now was entirely predictable and the problems we're facing aren't new. A consumption economy needs consumers to buy goods and services so it needs companies to produce goods and services. Technological advances continue to shrink the amount of manual labor needed to produce and deliver goods and services and corporatist regulations make it easier for fewer corporations to dominate the market and eliminate competition. Look up the 10 biggest employers in your state and the percentage of your state's labor force they employ. That degree of dominance provides them with a large amount of insulation against market forces. The biggest employers feel the least pressure to raise wages because they rarely encounter a shortage of applicants to take the jobs on offer and since the largest employers aren't incentivized to raise wages it lessens the pressure on smaller employers to raise wages which causes wage stagnation which shrinks disposable income and limits consumer purchasing power. The shrinking purchasing power of consumers incentivizes the producers of goods and services to streamline costs which incentivizes automation and less labor which again decreases pressure to raise wages. It's a vicious cycle but it's a cycle that we've been locked into for centuries. Along the way world events or technological innovations will fuel the boom times which inevitably cycle down into lean times and the boom and bust cycle generates smaller and smaller booms and longer periods of busts because the booms require less and less job growth and wage growth which is what fuels economic expansion.
The market drives all of this by default with no malice needed.

Yes, they ARE BROKE, because yes, they are expected to get University at least as a minimum (that was like getting grade 12 in my day) and that is big money to spend.
Then their main chance for success is small startup businesses which have a very high chance for failure which is devastating starting out.
The only saving grace I can give is getting money out of my dad... just did not happen, I remember this and help as effectively as I can with my kids.
Self-made is one thing, leveraging what resources you have at hand for success is that much better.

As entertaining as I could make explination spoilered for big wall of textWhere I can see they have a HUGE edge over us old folks:
- Adapting to software, most are configurable whatever it may be (MRP, Solidworks, ...) so they customize to maximum productivity and program in a few routines/macros/code and life is good.
- More efficient collaboration, I find myself wanting to get some "face-time" (I mean physical proximity) while they tend to get what they need and run with it with the odd message sent to confirm things.
- Awesome at out-sourcing work or collective works and some social mobilization.
- Marketing is at an all time level of mastery and complexity.
- Inventor / small business / startup is the best it has ever been.

Prestor Jon wrote:

You're putting way too much emphasis on politics and media hype and not nearly enough on basic market forces. If you own rental units the rent you charge for them is going to be tied to the market rate for your area. If you are trying to rent a building full of 2 bedroom apartments and the going rate in your area is $750-800/month you won't rent them if you list them for $1200/month. Likewise you wouldn't try to rent them for $500/month because you'd be undervaluing your property for no reason. You rent the units for their market rate because you're the one that owns the building and has to pay for them so if you under charge on rent the result will be you selling the building because you won't be able to afford to keep it because you'll be losing money on it every month.

Probably, and that was what I was trying to say. I was responding to the question of why a company wouldn't want consumers to have more spending power. It's because it provides that company with negative net benefit.

We have a consumer based economy. We always have, it's been that way for centuries and the state we're in now was entirely predictable and the problems we're facing aren't new. A consumption economy needs consumers to buy goods and services so it needs companies to produce goods and services. Technological advances continue to shrink the amount of manual labor needed to produce and deliver goods and services and corporatist regulations make it easier for fewer corporations to dominate the market and eliminate competition. Look up the 10 biggest employers in your state and the percentage of your state's labor force they employ. That degree of dominance provides them with a large amount of insulation against market forces. The biggest employers feel the least pressure to raise wages because they rarely encounter a shortage of applicants to take the jobs on offer and since the largest employers aren't incentivized to raise wages it lessens the pressure on smaller employers to raise wages which causes wage stagnation which shrinks disposable income and limits consumer purchasing power. The shrinking purchasing power of consumers incentivizes the producers of goods and services to streamline costs which incentivizes automation and less labor which again decreases pressure to raise wages. It's a vicious cycle but it's a cycle that we've been locked into for centuries. Along the way world events or technological innovations will fuel the boom times which inevitably cycle down into lean times and the boom and bust cycle generates smaller and smaller booms and longer periods of busts because the booms require less and less job growth and wage growth which is what fuels economic expansion.
The market drives all of this by default with no malice needed.

Not malice. No one is sitting around a room clasping their hands together in joy that the youth don't enjoy the economic benefits they themselves did. Well, I'm sure some people are, but I don't think policy is being decided that way. I'm just talking about utter self-interest. It's healthy and natural that people should act in their own self interest, but, hypothetically, when you possess multiple orders of magnitude more resources to do so than I do, and your self interest deviates from mine, then things probably do not work out in my favor. That's how things go sometimes, and sure, things are cyclical, but we've seen these things happen before and we know the eventual outcome. There are places that are already Walmart company towns in all but name. Global monopolies with more power than nations are forming without opposition. None of this is surprising or new, and yet we, as members of a society, refuse to learn from our mistakes.

Okay, I might ascribe some malice to certain "news" organizations, but I'd rather not get any more political than this is already turning, and it's probably too far in that direction already.

 daedalus wrote:
I had a thing I was going to post here that was sarcasm, comparisons of housing, school, and food prices between the 60s and now, and various other things, but it got super depressing.

Instead I'll sit here and reflect on how I actually have an extremely well paying job, and while I actually do have savings and investments, I live pretty meagerly at this point, or at least what I'd consider meager. And I'm still not where I want to be on those savings and investments.

I don't honestly know how anyone with an even average paying job survives.

By and large? Poorly, until an emergency occurs, and heaven help them if it's a medical emergency and they can't pay because no one else will.

You know it was inevitable that a generation of americans would do less well then their parents and grandparents because america's huge boom and economic dominance was based on something that would not last.

After ww2 anerica enjoyed a period of world economic dominance for a simple reason: We were one of the few economic powers not devastated by WW2.

It took many industrial nations years and years to simply rebuild after the devastation of ww2. England, france, russia, japan, germany, much of europe, china, etc were devastated during ww2 and it took them years to rebuild their basic infrastructure and during this time america had the mother of all economic booms since it was largely the sole industrial power not having to rebuild itself after ww2.

This of course was temporary as other nations finally rebuilt themselves, and also benefited from having to rebuild their infrastructure and industry in a more planned, modern, organized fashion, an advantage they now have over america which still has a lot of infrastructure and cities who are terrible outdated now and poorly laid out.,

So this was foreseeable, and sadly a lot of the rich saw it and decided to make money off it for themselves while everyone else took the hits. Like the housing market crash.

 Asherian Command wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 Dreadwinter wrote:
This is the natural lifecycle of Capitalism.

True. I'm suspecting socialist policies to gain popularity this century. Capitalism is already viewed as pretty toxic by millenials and I suspect the next crash will hit right on time to do the same to the next generation, meaning two consecutive generations with a strong dislike. Capitalism is also (and rightly so) going to get a lot of blame over big businesses putting so much effort into downplaying climate change or outright denying it. Boomers will also (again, rightly so) get flak for that as well.

Well we might see it shift in paradigm for companies where it becomes serving the community and people as they see a greater good.... Hopefully a man can dream of a star trek future okay!

Captalism is why they are not increasing wages.

I disagree it sounds more like corrupt idiots and people not understanding economics.

Yeah, he already said Capitalism is the problem. You are kinda just saying the same thing.

 Techpriestsupport wrote:
You know it was inevitable that a generation of americans would do less well then their parents and grandparents because america's huge boom and economic dominance was based on something that would not last.
...
So this was foreseeable, and sadly a lot of the rich saw it and decided to make money off it for themselves while everyone else took the hits. Like the housing market crash.

I'm slightly confused. Either it was inevitable or foreseeable. Personally I think it was foreseeable and previous generations (primarily the baby boomers, but not being too strict about the dates) decided to put their own gain about that of future generations. In the UK the generation before started the NHS and universal well-fair, they built new towns, they started social housing. Before them were the great reformers who formed unions, built equitable working out of the oppression of the industrial revolution, built the great social infrastructure like sewers. Then the following generation lived off that, failed to invest and mortgaged the futures of their children and grandchildren.

 Steve steveson wrote:

 Techpriestsupport wrote:
You know it was inevitable that a generation of americans would do less well then their parents and grandparents because america's huge boom and economic dominance was based on something that would not last.
...
So this was foreseeable, and sadly a lot of the rich saw it and decided to make money off it for themselves while everyone else took the hits. Like the housing market crash.

I'm slightly confused. Either it was inevitable or foreseeable. Personally I think it was foreseeable and previous generations (primarily the baby boomers, but not being too strict about the dates) decided to put their own gain about that of future generations. In the UK the generation before started the NHS and universal well-fair, they built new towns, they started social housing. Before them were the great reformers who formed unions, built equitable working out of the oppression of the industrial revolution, built the great social infrastructure like sewers. Then the following generation lived off that, failed to invest and mortgaged the futures of their children and grandchildren.

It was inevitable and foreseeable. however many people chose ti not see it because they believed in the myth of "American exceptionalism" and that somehow America was favored by providence, and all it's booming economy was due to divine beneficence, rather than mundane, natural, completely natural, factors which would change in a few decades.

So what your saying is, all America needs to do to solve this generational problem is to bomb everyone else back into the stone age?

I think we have a new plan. Someone get the President on the line!

Not sure if sarcasm, but the solution is to pull our heads out of our own caves on a cultural level. There is a strong theme in our culture about America just being better for the common man compared to our peers (stemming from the majority of our history where it was). This is great for optimism regarding opportunity and innovation, which is a good thing, but also leads to disregard of problems and now even the reality that the US is worse for the common man.

We also have a historic low in application of critical thinking, which tbf likely has people being overworked as part of the cause.

 Steve steveson wrote:
Either it was inevitable or foreseeable.

They're not mutually exclusive. Death and taxes.

 Easy E wrote:
So what your saying is, all America needs to do to solve this generational problem is to bomb everyone else back into the stone age?

I think we have a new plan. Someone get the President on the line!

In terms of finding or creating new markets and room for growth, yes, that's what the US has to do to generate economic expansion of our consumer economy; increasing consumption leads to increased production both fuel growth.

A lot of the gains corporations are seeing in profits come more from improvements in efficiency than in expansion into new markets. We've gotten pretty good saturation of existing markets. Most people who are in the demographic that would like to own a smartphone and have the disposable income to purchase one have purchase options to do so in their marketplace. There's also protectionist measures in place in most large countries to give preference to domestic products and avoid imports dominating market share. China wants their large population to consume domestic products and fund their own economic growth and you see that reflects in their policies. Companies are incentivized to increase efficiency because a more streamlined process increases profits but unfortunately increased efficiency usually means less labor is involved which reduces jobs. If Amazon can increase the speed of delivery and reduce shipping costs by having small items delivered by drones Amazon increases their profit margin and customers get better service. That's a win/win for the two primary parties involved but it also means that Amazon needs to hire less delivery drivers and has a smaller labor force. Likewise, increased automation in Amazon warehouses both reduces the number of workers needed and increases the pool of applicants they can draw from which stagnates wages. Since Amazon is leading the industry other companies that want to compete with them try to emulate them so it's a race to do more with less (people).

The internet was a massive boon to the economy but it also caused a paradigm shift that we are still struggling to handle. In the past if companies wanted to make more money it usually required an increase in sales and an increase in sales required more locations which required a larger workforce. Successful companies grew physically larger and hired more people. Now, companies can increase sales and profits by shrinking their physical footprint and workforce. Companies can provide you a wider selection, more inventory and acceptable service through online ordering from centralized warehouses instead of operating a national or multistate network of brick and mortar storefronts.

The internet also made it easier to start your own business and operate your own storefront without incurring the costs of a brick and mortar store. That's a good thing, lower costs and less gatekeeping helps increase entrepreneurship. However, those small business have to compete with industry giants like Amazon. That's why good economic policy and regulation is so important. Corporatism is not good and doesn't help a capitalist consumer based economy. It's counter productive in the long run for everyone except a small number of corporations. Capitalism thrives on opportunity. The opportunities to produce goods and services, opportunities to contract out your labor and opportunities to purchase goods and services. Corporatism stifles opportunity to benefit monolithic corporate entities dominating industries.

Prestor Jon wrote:

I don't disagree that living near your place of work can be too expensive to be achievable but that's really not something that can be blamed on employers.

I never blamed employers for the high cost of housing.

I blame them for offering amounts so low no one can live near where they work, which is something they should damn well know and they still offer laughably low salaries. I don't expect a raise every time CoL goes up. I expect to be paid enough that if you want me there in 4 weeks I'll have somewhere I can afford to live. If you're not willing to pay me that much, well I know why you haven't been able to fill this position for 7 years. I'd write it off as a one off thing from a stupid employer but I've seen this 3-4 times now.

Prestor Jon wrote:

 Easy E wrote:
So what your saying is, all America needs to do to solve this generational problem is to bomb everyone else back into the stone age?

I think we have a new plan. Someone get the President on the line!

The internet also made it easier to start your own business and operate your own storefront without incurring the costs of a brick and mortar store. That's a good thing, lower costs and less gatekeeping helps increase entrepreneurship. However, those small business have to compete with industry giants like Amazon. That's why good economic policy and regulation is so important. Corporatism is not good and doesn't help a capitalist consumer based economy. It's counter productive in the long run for everyone except a small number of corporations. Capitalism thrives on opportunity. The opportunities to produce goods and services, opportunities to contract out your labor and opportunities to purchase goods and services. Corporatism stifles opportunity to benefit monolithic corporate entities dominating industries.

Good post Prestor Jon.

I just kept the last paragraph as it clearly points out the need for Trust Busting, Anti-Monopoly, and strong regulation to avoid Corporatism to strengthen Capitalism. This is a form of Protectionism that does not involve Tariffs. Probably getting too political....

Therefore to segway, if Millennials are the current "market" that needs to be expanded into it would seem many companies are doing it wrong. How many articles have we all seen about how "Millenials are killing Industry X"? Isn;t it more that Company X is not appealing to their needs?

 Easy E wrote:

Prestor Jon wrote:

 Easy E wrote:
So what your saying is, all America needs to do to solve this generational problem is to bomb everyone else back into the stone age?

I think we have a new plan. Someone get the President on the line!

The internet also made it easier to start your own business and operate your own storefront without incurring the costs of a brick and mortar store. That's a good thing, lower costs and less gatekeeping helps increase entrepreneurship. However, those small business have to compete with industry giants like Amazon. That's why good economic policy and regulation is so important. Corporatism is not good and doesn't help a capitalist consumer based economy. It's counter productive in the long run for everyone except a small number of corporations. Capitalism thrives on opportunity. The opportunities to produce goods and services, opportunities to contract out your labor and opportunities to purchase goods and services. Corporatism stifles opportunity to benefit monolithic corporate entities dominating industries.

Good post Prestor Jon.

I just kept the last paragraph as it clearly points out the need for Trust Busting, Anti-Monopoly, and strong regulation to avoid Corporatism to strengthen Capitalism. This is a form of Protectionism that does not involve Tariffs. Probably getting too political....

Therefore to segway, if Millennials are the current "market" that needs to be expanded into it would seem many companies are doing it wrong. How many articles have we all seen about how "Millenials are killing Industry X"? Isn;t it more that Company X is not appealing to their needs?

I mean we've seen the success of companies being regulated its not like companies are these organizations that cannot change on the fly or at the drop of a hat. Companies aren't governments. Companies can afford to change radically in leadership and in terms of organizational tactics.

Wages are a massive issue currently and especially when the cost of living so enormously high.

More efficient collaboration, I find myself wanting to get some "face-time" (I mean physical proximity) while they tend to get what they need and run with it with the odd message sent to confirm things.

I disagree with this i think this is only in certain fields not everyone is like this.

I find the older Millennials spend a huge amount of time on their phones and with very little of that activity translating to productive product for where-ever they are employed.

Seems to be your experience, but not mine, I listen to music while I work or design graphics for my company. I take breaks or mental breaks to organize my thoughts. Like I am doing right now. It helps clear my thought processes as most of the time it is just designing and figuring out problems. Having something difficult to study really gets my brain going.

My kids tell me they do not need to memorize anything because they have access to everything at all times.

If your in the tech industry, you don't memorize things if you working on extremely complicated processes. Simple things are thrown out the window once you are trying to program an advanced game engine or running a marketing campaign.

We have a consumer based economy

I agree we should have one, but that won't* happen until we give consumers more spending power.

We have a consumer based economy

Just send him a tweet he'd probably read it especially if you embellish it

 LordofHats wrote:

Prestor Jon wrote:

I don't disagree that living near your place of work can be too expensive to be achievable but that's really not something that can be blamed on employers.

I never blamed employers for the high cost of housing.

I blame them for offering amounts so low no one can live near where they work, which is something they should damn well know and they still offer laughably low salaries. I don't expect a raise every time CoL goes up. I expect to be paid enough that if you want me there in 4 weeks I'll have somewhere I can afford to live. If you're not willing to pay me that much, well I know why you haven't been able to fill this position for 7 years. I'd write it off as a one off thing from a stupid employer but I've seen this 3-4 times now.

Not many businesses are nimble enough to relocate if housing costs go up dramatically around them. Salaries are primarily determined by the nature of the work needed to be done and the amount of payroll increase the employer can afford to take on. The company is listing the job opening because they want to fill the position. The salary they're offering is the one that makes sense given the company's revenue stream and current salary structure for their employees. They can't just conjure up more money to pay people to offset a rise in housing costs. Home prices in our town have recently gone way up since the glut of homes on the market after the 08 crash have been bought up and the lack of new home construction since then has left a shortage of homes to meet rising demand. Families of our kids' school friends have had to move out of town to find homes that suit their needs in their price range. If my wife and I were making our current salaries and we had to buy our house in the current market we wouldn't be able to afford it. Luckily we bought it 12 years ago but the fact that we couldn't afford it today isn't causing us to hold a grudge against our employers.
It's not personal, it's just math. Job hunting is a vicious grind, I spent the last 3 years at my old job actively searching for a new one, it sucks. If a job doesn't pay enough to be worth your time then don't bother applying for it. There's no sense in taking it as a personal affront it'll just get you wound up over something that's not worth the anger and frustration.

Memorizing is overrated. If it is knowledge one regularly uses then it will end up memorized in short order. If it is not then that mental effort would be better utilized elsewhere. It is like learning history; memorizing the exact dates of when things happened is far less useful than understanding why they happened and what the impact was. If one person could name the exact dates and major battles of a war while the other could only give the approximate years but articulate the context that created the war and its effects on the participants, which would be better suited to teach a class on the matter?