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The majority of 18- to 29-year-olds in the US are now living with their parents

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Re: The majority of 18- to 29-year-olds in the US are now living with their parents

#221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it’s cultural. American society absolutely looks down on those that live with their parents as failures. If I were to guess, some parents might see their children asking to return home as a reflection on their ability as a parent to prepare for the “real world”, but that’s just my guess.

Only a certain vocal rich segment of American society.

I don't think it has much to do with wealth. In fact, in old societies primogeniture practiced by the wealthy meant that the eldest son was expected to stay at home. The second sons with limited inheritance often set out on their own.

In the US context, it has historical connections to the glorification of pioneerism and expansion through the western frontier (along with the genocide that accompanied that).

After that, in the post WW2 period, opportunity in the US was so abundant that a (commonly white male) school dropout could walk into a factory and get a job with benefits. The same person could then afford a modest house (not the gigantic houses of today), support a family on a single income, and had access to affordable health care and good public education for their kids.

In the context of that sort of opportunity, staying at your parents' home in adulthood was far more indicative of personal failings, and that's where the current trope disparaging adult (mostly male) children living at home originated.

But given how diminished all of those opportunities are today (no lands to forcibly take from less technologically advantaged peoples, no new factories, expensive housing where jobs are available, high qualifications required), it's a trope that's pretty irrelevant today.

Re: The majority of 18- to 29-year-olds in the US are now living with their parents

#222
post #58

My wife has a staff of 20 and most of them are young-ish. Like a few years out of college, first real professional job. About half of them have packed up their apartments and gone home to their parents. They're still paying their rent but they're living with their parents so they can have a little social interaction and have more room than their apartments. Its caused a little concern with the higher ups because they…

Are they all working remotely, and did they have permission to?

I'm curious why there would be arguments over this, why would higher ups want people to stay put when the work is remote anyway?

Re: The majority of 18- to 29-year-olds in the US are now living with their parents

#223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly and by not locking down properly we have managed to extend the pandemic in the US and its associated quasi lock down leading to our current situation. I agree with your response.

Have we? It doesn't seem possible to permanently stop outbreaks without having either reached 20-25% of the population infected, or locking down until a cure or vaccine is discovered. Plenty of places that locked down much more stringently than the US are having new outbreaks now - Europe, New Zealand, Australia and even parts of China. Anyway, I seem to remember that extending the pandemic was the whole point of the…

Other places have managed to become entirely COVID-free due to properly following lockdown policies. The US is still gaining thousands of cases a day–the only reason this isn’t more is that most people are staying inside. The places you mentioned with “new outbreaks” have a handful of new cases, and yet are taking it significantly more seriously than the United States.

Re: The majority of 18- to 29-year-olds in the US are now living with their parents

#224

I'm my early 20s and in the UK. I earn more than my Dad who is in his 50s. He managed to get a house, have money left over for an expensive hobby, decent car, the odd holiday etc. I'm a 90th percentile earner. Will 95+ percentile earner in a few years time. Yet it feels like I am not as well off as I should be. I don't live in an expensive area either. Yet I need to save so much money to even have the opportunity to…

Comparing a salary with a pension to a salary without a pension is insanity. Wages are not stagnant. They've declined precipitously. take-home pay is stagnant and pensions are dead.

And real-estate has been pumped so heavily with low interest rates that you either can't afford it or, if you can, you get to sleep with the knowledge that the music has a good chance of stopping on your watch.

Re: The majority of 18- to 29-year-olds in the US are now living with their parents

#225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least in Germany, it's common to have a fixed interest rate for up to 30 years (more common are 10 and 20, 30 is rare). You can refinance, but you have to basically pay a fee that covers the expected loss for the bank, so that may not be worth it. Other countries differ, for example AFAIR it was common in Poland to have housing credits pegged to the swiss franc. However, I'm fairly certain that the GP is exaggerat…

That's interesting. In the US, it's called a "pre-payment penalty," where you have to pay a fee if you want to pay off a loan early. It's not imposed by regulation, but is up to each lender, so you can choose a loan that does not have such a penalty. Often consumers with weak credit or low incomes end up with loans that have worse terms, such as these penalties. My family refinanced our home loan, and it was just a m…

Perhaps I don’t understand why there should be a penalty to pay off a loan too early? I’ve given the bank back their money; isn’t that exactly why I was paying interest in the first place?

Re: The majority of 18- to 29-year-olds in the US are now living with their parents

#226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

High tax rates are what causes this. You are effectively giving away half your wage to sustain a completely unknown person leeching off the government.

What an absolute load of tripe. I'd gladly pay even higher taxes than I do to make sure everyone has access to healthcare and benefits when they need them. "unknown person leeching off the government" is the attitude that just needs to die, it annoys me so much that people still believe this crap, any one of us can be this "unknown person" at some point.

right? and like something i've come to realize over the years is that there is a huge value add of having something just work that i don't think many people actually appreciate. I would absolutely love to pay more in taxes if it meant medicare for all so that if i get hit by a car while riding my bike someone can call 911 and i can go to a hospital and not worry about how much the ambulance costs, whether the doctor i see is "In Network" or not, and not have to figure out how much of whatever needs to be done is covered by the insurance and what the hospital is going to bill me for and whether I can actually afford that or if I need to go into insurmountable debt just to exist.

life already sucks enough as it is, and is entirely too complex in so many aspects that no longer having the "can i afford to not die in an emergency" thought would be such a huge net plus for a huge majority of working americans.

Re: The majority of 18- to 29-year-olds in the US are now living with their parents

#227

I'm my early 20s and in the UK. I earn more than my Dad who is in his 50s. He managed to get a house, have money left over for an expensive hobby, decent car, the odd holiday etc. I'm a 90th percentile earner. Will 95+ percentile earner in a few years time. Yet it feels like I am not as well off as I should be. I don't live in an expensive area either. Yet I need to save so much money to even have the opportunity to…

Monetary policy is a huge factor in all this, asset holders are greatly advantaged over productive members of society at the moment.

The combination of artificially low interest rates with significant inflation in particular make housing spectacularly unaffordable. This combination simultaneously pushes up the costs of housing due to asset bubbles forming while reducing the ability of people who earn money to save for a down payment on a house.

Re: The majority of 18- to 29-year-olds in the US are now living with their parents

#228

I'm my early 20s and in the UK. I earn more than my Dad who is in his 50s. He managed to get a house, have money left over for an expensive hobby, decent car, the odd holiday etc. I'm a 90th percentile earner. Will 95+ percentile earner in a few years time. Yet it feels like I am not as well off as I should be. I don't live in an expensive area either. Yet I need to save so much money to even have the opportunity to…

I’m in my mid fifties and I have never had a company pension, defined benefit or contribution. I saw my first house decline in value by 25%. We had interest rates peaking at 15%. I didn’t have student loans but only because I didn’t go to university, just like 90% of my peer group. Unemployment was much higher than it is now and schools were teaching subjects for obsolete careers. It wasn’t as rosey as it is often po…

RE: "unemployment was much higher than it is now" - I'm not sure what country you're in, but here is a graph of the US unemployment rate since 1950: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/UNRATE (unemployment was higher this year than any other period on the chart)

Re: The majority of 18- to 29-year-olds in the US are now living with their parents

#229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Millennials face a very real risk of being a lost generation financially I think it's already a done deal. Millennials aren't as young as they seem (over 30) and as the own a minuscule percentage of US household wealth. The numbers are incredible. "Indeed, at a median age of 35, Gen Xers owned just 9% of the nation’s wealth in 2008 — less than half what boomers had at that age. And millennials will have to triple t…

Millennials all dream of becoming older one day.

My point wasn't to pooh-pooh on the Democrats (Republicans are worse obviously with their awful tax policies). My point was that they should care about millennial issues. Whether you like or not WE are the ones paying for increased social security, medicare, NOT the boomers. They are getting way more out of the system than they ever put in.

The Boomers basically took all the wealth in this country and regulated everyone out of it. There are so many issues that are good for the country and good for millenials that never seem to gain traction. Student loans reform for instance or Housing (especially zoning and property tax laws e.g. Prop 13).

Here is a good link to what I'm talking about: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wh6hesHk6yE&t=1250s

Re: The majority of 18- to 29-year-olds in the US are now living with their parents

#230
post #49

Millennials face a very real risk of being a lost generation financially. They have endured 2 major, years long recessions, and now the Covid pandemic coupled with social isolation and massive unemployment that does not appear to have an end date in sight. Housing is more expensive for them than prior generations, wages are stagnant, school is expensive and social conflict is also currently on deck. WW2 was of course…

"Major, years-long recessions"? In the lives of anyone 25 and under, there have been three recessions, the current 7-month recession, the 2008 recession which lasted 18-months, and the 2001 recession which lasted 8-months. Recessions in the US almost never last more than a year. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_recessions_in_the_Unit...

Also depends where you're from. Any country that traded with the Soviet Union had a recession in the 90's
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