It has been said that the Y generation is the most selfish generation there ever was. The “Selfie” generation. Yet, this is one generation that is growing up to face one of the most burdensome public debt in history.
A few years ago, after she watched some sad sob story on some Canadian Bs Channel, my mother (boomer born in the 50’s) complained to me that old people were left alone and that none of their many children ever came to see them in their old people’s home. Now I do love my mom very much (she can still drain the life out of you with her first world problems), but yet my first thought was “Well… maybe they deserved it. Maybe they screwed up their children so bad that those children don’t care about them anymore.”
I kind of had the same thought yesterday when I watched this clip from Molyneux.
He makes references about Y generations kids still living in their parent’s basement, and that the reason they are stuck in their parents’s basement is because their parents had the good life while shoveling public debt down to their kids. Now their kids are stuck with the bill and can’t afford a basement by themselves anymore.
It led me to go back to my days working in finance and check how was the dear Regime des Rentes du Quebec going. (Quebec Social Security fund if you’d prefer).
Sad to see. I’m pretty sure it’s the same for all Social Security types of regimes around the Western World. Those Social Security schemes are going dry as we speak.
Denouncing this as a Ponzi Scheme is no news to any of the people hanging around here. I am well aware that you won’t need any new fainting couches.
But, knowing all we know about the snowflake generation, do the boomers still think that the Y generation, their kids, that always bring the tab to them, won’t bring the tab to them once the funds run off? Do you really think the Y are going to pay for it? The X might, but if the Y won’t, no one else will. What will you do then, at 80?
Now it’s the thing that makes me wonder the most about all the public debt accumulation. The boomers seem to think the younger generations will subsidize their lifestyle forever. I’m just a late X, early Y, and I have agreed in my life to play the card I was dealt with, but I can tell you one thing, I don’t think the Y will.
Comments
93 responses to “Do you really think we are going to pay for it?”
Everyone knows the US has secretly been bankrupt since 1933 when FDR sold all our souls to (((international bankers))) which is when the government started capitalizing names and putting gold fringe on the flags in court rooms. The signs are all there for those who know how to see.
+1 British Maritime Law
I think we really need to poll these ‘Millennials’ to find out what they really think.
Do we have someone in charge of polling? Besides STEVE SMITH?
NO ONE LIE TO STEVE SMITH! STEVE SMITH HAVE 100% REPLY RATE! STEVE SMITH TOP POLLER!
I do not want to be anywhere near Steve Smith’s Poll
Millennials!
Before long we’re going to be hearing about the latest Glibertarians-Rupe poll.
I take some solace in the fact that 191% of libertarians will forever reject the label.
AGGRESSION!
Laughs derisively
Please, Gen X was rejecting labels before rejecting labels was cool
“Now their kids are stuck with the bill and can’t afford a basement by themselves anymore.”
I don’t agree with this. The bill hasn’t really come due yet. If anything, living in the basement is a result of kids doing on a micro level what their government does on a macro level: Don’t ever save anything. Spend a ton of money that you don’t have on a bunch of shit that will not produce anything, and keep borrowing money to do it.
^ This.
Boomers were supposed to face the same problem, and X-ers after them.
No one is ever going pay the national debt – that’s not what the debt is there for. The can will forever be kicked down the road, and moment-to-moment budget shortfalls can always be filled with a combination of taxation, more borrowing, and printing more money if it comes to that. The economy may become more and more anemic, leading to eventual collapse of some section of the government that defaults on the debt, but it will simply reorganize and start borrowing again, in just the same way that Kevin’s basement boy will eventually not be able to pay that credit card bill, will get his debts reorganized, and will plug away again as fast the system can get him back to borrowing again. It’s not the principal, it’s the interest.
The government will inflate the debt away. That’s their only option.
That would be the “printing money” option, and I agree – at this point that’s the only option. Which, on the bright side, is a fairly egalitarian form of theft, if you believe in means-testing government theft options.
Yup. The debt will get paid, one way or the other. Inflating it away is the only viable option. The burden of inflation falls hardest on (a) savers – it erodes the capital pool of the country, causing further long-term economic damage and (b) low-income people, who see expenses running faster than their incomes.
Someone lent the money and they’re gonna want repayment. How it will manifest itself who knows?
You think the problem is only about the national debt?
That’s funny.
No this is about total government spending (fed, state, and local combined) that has grown to encompass 35 to 40% of the total economy while producing ever less actual benefit to the working people because previous pension and welfare promises are eating up an ever greater portion of the pie.
Government spending on pensions have gone from 0.5% of gdp in 1950 to 7% today and none of those pensions are running a surplus.
It is not just the government either corporations and individuals have run their finances just as badly to the point where the total debt level in the US (Government, Corporate, and Private) is somewhere well north of $200 Trillion dollars and the costs of servicing all that debt are chewing up another 10 – 15% of the economy.
When you have more than 20% of your economy paying for past spending that is just going to leave a lot less for current consumption and savings and the way that manifests itself in the economy is stagnant wage growth, lower wages, the bottom tiers of the career latter being eliminated all combined with much higher costs in real property.
Net result, yes today’s millennials are starting to pay the price for Boomer and war generations profligate spending
My buddies are pension fund experts.
They always tell me we have no clue what a mess of a racket it all is.
It’s not when we’re bankrupt, we’re already there.
Kevin’s Basement Boy is a great band name. Thanks.
I think we’d better go wake up the Gimp . . .
Actually it IS coming due and cutting the bottom out of the economic ladder for young people is one of the symptoms of that. Sure some millenials are living at home because they are lazy shits who don’t want to grow up and take on grown up responsibilities but the reality is it is the combination of the weak job market and still inflated housing market that is driving that train.
The system works! Even my crappy thoughts and rants with bad grammar can get published!
I’m just 2 articles away from getting a nice cushy job as an intern in D.C.!
All jokes aside, thanks a lot to all the team for giving us a platform where we can share our thoughts and make sasquatch rape jokes.
STEVE SMITH NOT JOKING.
The fact English isn’t your first language and managed this well and even got these bozos to comment is impressive.
a good video ruined by VR by Learn Liberty on the debt.
A better video by them on the budget. This one is a few years old.
Learn Liberty really deserves more subscribers. They do a really decent job putting together tight packages to get the ideas of liberty across. I think they fucked up on the name choice though, “Learn Liberty” just doesn’t really sound like a channel that will take off any time soon. But hell, what do I know?
they seem to be marketed towards the college-ish crowd.
All these posts about my generation and I only registered 4 hours ago. Thanks guys! 🙂
The first of 12 surveys will be in your inbox shortly. You are the only one we’re polling right now, so please try not to skew the results.
Seems like a fair sample size. My opinion is very average among TripodKats.
A lot of MILLENNIALS!1!! live with their parents, not because they are crushed by the overwhelming debt accumulation of previous generations, but because they can’t fathom the idea of having a roommate (or, god forbid, two).
I’m lucky enough to only be acquainted with a couple of adults living with their parents, and both could easily afford to live on their own if they split rent and utilities.
That doesn’t address the bigger issues like student loan debt and the job market, but we don’t have an entire generation with no hope, saddled with no jobs and payments on debts incurred before they were born. We have a segment of that generation who has no incentive to make themselves even slightly uncomfortable.
Get off my lawn, please and thank you
I had plenty of roommates!
I have a few.
Hey man, I eventually made enough money to afford my own place, ain’t nothing wrong with living the dream as long as you’re paying for it yourself.
House or apartment?
2 bedroom apartment for now, I’ve got quite a nest egg I’ve been saving for a down payment on a house, though. Almost there.
Part of me thinks a house is a bad purchase though, since its really a consumer good, not an investment (except for the land, which is risky in and of itself). Maybe I should just invest the nest egg instead of purchasing a house? I haven’t made up my mind.
I had to drop almost $10k at closing. It was less than I expected (and less than I would have liked to be able to put in)
Buying a house is not about making a return on an investment. Mostly, you’re just trying not to lose money. How likely are you to move? Do you have a family? If you die, would the insurance pay off the mortgage? All sorts of questions to ask.
Depends on where you are. If you’re within about 20-30 miles of the coast, a house in CA is never, ever a bad investment. Can’t speak to the rest of the country.
@Scruffy Housing is pretty inflated where I live, so its a bit of a gamble whether or not I’ll just be underwater when the next recession hits. Its so hard to answer those questions when we’re talking about a 30 year mortgage. I almost went through with a 5/1 ARM just to take advantage of the low interest rates. The idea was to hop to the next house after the end of the fixed rate, but I decided it was too risky.
No family, not sure if I’ll move out of the area yet, I’m relatively certain that at the down payment I would make (less than 20%), I’d be stuck paying PMI. I know PMI would pay the lender if they had to foreclose, but I’m not sure if it applies if I die. I have plenty of life insurance.
@Uncertain Square – I’m relatively close to DC. I guess home values probably only go up around here, I know my rent does. I just look at some gains that my friends have made in the stock market and I salivate just a little bit. Part of me thinks that’s were the inflation is at right now, but maybe I’m just paranoid. By now you’re probably getting the idea that I’m relatively cautious about large investments. I really should get this money out of this low rate deposit account, though.
Housing is nearly always a bad investment. There are always hot markets here and there, sure, where if you time your entry and exit you’ll make money on your house. Some markets seem permanently hot, but nothing goes up forever.
The trick with housing as an investment is all the carrying costs of the house. Between insurance, taxes, interest, and repairs, houses cost money. Nobody ever calculates their gains net of all that. And of course on the other side of the ledger is the use value of the house.
Because of transaction costs alone, its generally a bad idea to buy a house if you aren’t planning to live in it for at least 3 – 5 years.
I would hesitate to count on the DC real estate market. DC doesn’t follow normal economic cycles. DC is one of the only metro areas that has been thriving for the last 10 years, and as the economy recovers, DC may well head the other direction.
^ Also an important consideration. If you’re planning to stay in a house 10 years or more (especially in CA), you’re unlikely to go wrong. We bought about 9 years ago near the bottom of the market (but still in the downswing), and prices are now back to where they were in 2006, but we were upside-down for a couple of years. If we had needed to move in 2011, it would have been ugly.
So what you’re telling me is that life is a goddamn shot in the dark? Yeah…
It’s crazy. When my fiancee was in grad school a couple of years ago all I heard from her cohort was how broke they were, etc, etc. Maybe 1/3 of them had a roommate. This was an MFA program, so that probably explains most of it, but there is definitely a strong percentage of this generation y (which I belong to), who just will not give up luxuries in order to live an independent life.
Yeah, I do see a lot of my generation buy $6 starbucks lattes 3 times a day and then complain that they never have any money. When I point out that if they switch to their office’s complementary coffee they could save around $500/month, they call me crazy.
My workplace doesn’t have free coffee. 🙁
Then drink water you privileged shitlord!
1000x this. You can’t expect to pay for place on your own making 9.50 an hour as a barista. It’s not feasible. Shack up with some buds, eat rice and beans, start a drum circle, move to Philly, get a hybrid, don’t go to college.
For what it’s worth, I lived a pretty comfortable lifestyle on $10.00 per hour. Granted, I worked a fair amount of overtime, and this was in a medium-sized Ohio town with a pretty low cost of living.
But I lived in a 2-bedroom apartment by myself, smoked cigarettes (around $120 per month), ate a ton of food, bought plenty of alcohol, and even managed to support a rather costly gun buying habit.
My front door neighbour bought the house next to his for his two kids – 27 and 25. The older one just figured sorta of what she wants to do and the other is still dicking around. I guess he did it as a bit of a hedge for them but part of me thinks it’s not the greatest of ideas if they don’t kick in coin to take care of it. The other part thinks sure why not? Help where you can.
Will you at least pay the interest? Because that might make the bonds worth buying.
Yeah man. Whatever you need my guy
I always forget what letter generation I’m supposed to belong to so I’m not sure if I should be outraged or offended.
Both.
No matter what topic is being discussed.
I always forget what letter generation I’m supposed to belong to
Generation Eth
I’ve decided I’m “Generation Meh”.
“Well… maybe they deserved it. ”
I have pointed this out to people before, usually getting the same shocked response I would get if I slapped them. I follow with:
“Who do you think screwed them up so bad?”
This usually leads to them reflecting on their own childhood which, more often than not, leads to bitching and whining about the way they were treated as children.
Of course there is the other approach – “Did they keep you fed, housed, clothed, doctored and in school? Did they lock you in a closet? Did you turn out to be a dope head, a jail bird or a prostitute? The least you can do is return the favor. Your life is on you. They didn’t do so bad. You are a grown up. Take responsibility for your own decisions.”
On Social security:
I made sure I never had to count on that. I have put away substantial amounts, against my wife’s wishes (“We cant take it with us. We are alive now we may as well spend it! Let’s go on vacation!”) and now that those years are approaching I have no anxiety and neither does she. She is seeing the value in it now. We won’t have to ask anyone’s permission or explain ourselves to anyone. Fuck the federal government. If SS wants to send me a check they can but I am not counting on it.
As I’ve said before, in about 10 years we will be treated to the sight of mobs of Millennials busting the doors of our nation’s nursing homes down and dragging the residents out from their wheelchairs and hospital beds to hang them from the nearest lamppost or tree branch.
Would it kill you to go just one day without ripping off Christopher Buckley?
Thanks for doxxing me, asshole.
Phew, I thought you were going to say they were going to drag them out and MOVE IN!
OT:
Goddammitsomuch
Who didn’t see that coming?
Technically “Action” could include rescheduling Marijuana
/deliberate faked optimism.
Hopefully this causes more grassroots support for federalism? Ah, who the hell am I kidding?
I’d like to shove Sean Spicer up SIV’s ass and sew it shut.
VGZ doesn’t get any of that love from you?
He’s already up Trump’s ass all on his own.
Come and take it.
Like what? Pass a constitutional amendment? Because absent that, they don’t have the f—–g right to “take action”.
The dispensaries and grow sites are still breaking federal law and there are plenty of DEA troops to raid them without local help. And they could go after the cash even with all the banking trouble Obama gave them.
Hell, all they’d have to do is raid them, steal the cash on hand, and leave for a few days running before they shut themselves down.
No legal guns either.
I really doubt they want to start such a shitstorm. This is just bluster.
I resemble that remark.
If Obama’s DOJ spent years going after medicinal marijuana, I don’t put it past a Sessions-lead DOJ going against legalized recreational marijuana. To the extent that it’s unpopular it’ll be unpopular in the states that have legalized recreational marijuana — and very popular amongst Trump’s base.
I’ll bet they mean playing games with funding, like the sanctuary city thing, or the threats to UC Berkeley. An active federal law-enforcement crackdown would be expensive and . . . unpopular. Would maybe even turn violent, and could lead to actual armed standoffs between federal and local agencies.
I have little trouble imagining state and local forces lining up in Oakland, say, to stop federal agents from confiscating product at a dispensary – Californians are just itching for a context to “resist” Trump. How would such a situation resolve, I wonder?
A nice bit of grandstanding, but if anyone is serious about this, their thinking is misguided and short-sighted in the extreme.
Like not having the constitutional right to do something has ever stopped FedGov from doing it.
Perhaps I’ll write an article too, but not until this ERP migration is finished.
*returns to pulling his hair out and cursing IBM*
Protip – have short haircuts, it protects your scalp.
As for cursing IBM, that’s a common passtime over here. (the tech people keep telling management that the IBM solutions are not the best opions, but IBM contributed to the governor’s campaigns…)
I think I should have put the following in the article, shame on me for not doing so :
“Do you guys heard about the Carrés Rouges ? They took the streets in order to avoid a few hundred bucks per session tuition rate. Do you think they won’t take it again (this time with more resources, knowledge and skills) for a few thousands bucks taxes raise in 20 years?”
My idea was not ”oh… life sucks for them, they have to live in their parent’s basement” but more of a ”You keep saying this is a self entitled generation, and I think you are right. Why don’t you see that once they see the tab, the screen door won’t be patched, the beef-steak won’t be pounded. You’ll be caught with the cistern empty on a Saturday night and they’ll be at that pool table. You keep saying they are not trustworthy, why do you trust them!?”
But heh, this is my first piece, I still have to learn.
Thanks for your comments !
Fix in in .1 release!
Or better yet, call it 2.0 and get another article out of it.
Those stupid red squares. I still have nightmares.
Dammit – they just screwed up Titanfall 2 with a big update.
How so? Saw there were server issues, but those were apparently resolved…
Seems to be working again although Live Fire (getting killed repeatedly by 12 year olds) isn’t for.
me.
You just need to get on that For Honor train, friend. Its lots of fun.
Hey that is an ALT RIGHT GAME, ok?!
They all are, Glitter. They all are.
“Regime des Rentes du Quebec”
Tabernak you worked for them?
Also, saw that clip. He basically blamed the boomers for draining the life and hope of future generations and that we shouldn’t be surprised or even too judgmental of the position these kids find themselves in.