Gen Z does not dream of labor • Hacker News Board

Re: Gen Z does not dream of labor

#461

Post by AvocadoPanic » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 9:14 PM UTC

goosedragons wrote: post #436

sieabahlpark wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't seem like the rest of the world's universal healthcare did any better than ours? You have farfetched dreams that government run anything would somehow be not shit. You'd hardly get any coverage and I doubt the deductible would be anywhere sufficient.

You don't get completely fucked if you lose your job and then get sick/injured? Is that not better? I pay literally $0 to go to the doctors or emergency room.

Someone pays, just not you at the point of service.

Re: Gen Z does not dream of labor

#462

Post by heavyset_go » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 9:23 PM UTC

LinuxBender wrote: post #401

heavyset_go wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The places I've seen with houses in the $50k to $80k range are in Rust Belt-esque areas whose time has long passed, or in places where a "career" means working at Walmart or cooking methamphetamine. Their economic prospects aren't that great, and their long term economic prospects are even worse. Rural areas also tend not to be great places for LGBT people, either.

Rural areas also tend not to be great places for LGBT people, either. That may be true in some areas. I can only speak anecdotally. I brought a couple members of the LGBT community with me to a very rural area that is about as cowboy-midwest as it gets. Everyone has been very civil and even the "Good ol boys" have been very respectful with them to my pleasant surprise. There are plenty of openly LGBT working in the l…

> Everyone has been very civil and even the "Good ol boys" have been very respectful with them to my pleasant surprise. There are plenty of openly LGBT working in the local stores.

Speaking from experience, they're going to be on good behavior around you and others. It's what happens when they think no one will notice or no one will hold them to account when real discrimination occurs.

I've met plenty of people who claim to be LGBT supporters in public, but have no problem harassing LGBT people, discriminating against them and calling them slurs when they think no one else is looking. Same thing goes for people in power, like bosses and owners, or police and judges. Discrimination doesn't always look like American History X or the Westboro Baptist Church, the vast majority of it is low key and insidious.

Re: Gen Z does not dream of labor

#463

Post by ac29 » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 9:42 PM UTC

heavyset_go wrote: post #261

boplicity wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cost of a house has spiked to over 7x median income in the US, in a very short time. That's put buying a house out of reach for many people. Hopefully the bubble will burst -- but who knows? It could drag on for a very long time. Historically, the cost of a house has hovered around 4.5 to 5.5x annual median income. It's currently at the highest level it's ever been, at least according to this graph: https://www.l…

> Hopefully the bubble will burst -- but who knows? It could drag on for a very long time. The median home price in Canada is $800k and rising, while in the US it is $400k and rising. Housing prices in the US could easily double.

> in the US it is $400k and rising

Actually the latest quarter median prices fell in the US, which may continue as interest rates increase.

Broadly speaking though, prices certainly are up over the last couple years.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MSPUS

Re: Gen Z does not dream of labor

#464

Post by hackerfromthefu » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 10:25 PM UTC

closeparen wrote: post #252

mordymoop wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your first paragraph is something that I, a middle-Millenial, could have written when I was 20. Fight Club , a film about young men broken by the dehumanizing nihilism of “working a job you hate to buy stuff you don’t need” (among other things) came out in 1999, and was something of a cultural bell-weather. (I think the main difference between now and 1999 is that simply working a job you hate no longer guarantees yo…

Actually the housing types we had in abundance in the 1900s-1930s - walkable, row houses, townhouses, garden apartments, apartments over the store - are now extraordinarily premium, luxury products. The modern car-dependent high-energy-use high-amenity high-sqft stuff is cheaper!

Wrong, it's that those houses are in locations that are now the epicentre of a huge cultural and infrastructure amenity that did not even exist in the 1900s. The physical houses are not the value there, it's the location and amenities.

While the location is the same in a geographic sense as in 1900, a google maps view of that era would show them being in a small town compared to a city with incredible amenities these days.

Re: Gen Z does not dream of labor

#465

Post by hackerfromthefu » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 10:28 PM UTC

ushakov wrote: post #87

Jerred wrote: post #38

As a Gen Z it's not that our entire generation is lazy it's that we've seen our parents give their entire lives to a company or industry just counting down the years to retirement. That personally is my worst case scenario for my career. Sure some people my age just want to be famous and not do any hard work, but I'd say the majority just don't want to be a "good employee" for 40 years just increasing the number ever…

i think the problem is that these folks browse social media too much and reject the reality the reality is that not everyone of them will end up rich, beautiful and famous... in fact only a tiny tiny minority will

Hard agree, it's like a diet of pure sugar - it corrupts the body or in this case the minds expectations.

Re: Gen Z does not dream of labor

#466

Post by closeparen » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 10:41 PM UTC

hackerfromthefu wrote: post #464

closeparen wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually the housing types we had in abundance in the 1900s-1930s - walkable, row houses, townhouses, garden apartments, apartments over the store - are now extraordinarily premium, luxury products. The modern car-dependent high-energy-use high-amenity high-sqft stuff is cheaper!

Wrong, it's that those houses are in locations that are now the epicentre of a huge cultural and infrastructure amenity that did not even exist in the 1900s. The physical houses are not the value there, it's the location and amenities. While the location is the same in a geographic sense as in 1900, a google maps view of that era would show them being in a small town compared to a city with incredible amenities these…

>huge cultural and infrastructure amenity

The amenity is simply walkability. If the same mix of businesses that are spread across many square miles of ordinary suburbia were structured in the form of an old-style main street, that would be just as much of a huge cultural and infrastructure amenity.

Re: Gen Z does not dream of labor

#467

Post by heavyset_go » Tue, Apr 26, 2022, 12:37 AM UTC

sieabahlpark wrote: post #432

throwaway48375 wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my area United Association Plumbers get $42.77/hour and have great benefits including healthcare/pension. I agree though we need truly universal healthcare like medicare for all. The system we have now is hopelessly broken.

Doesn't seem like the rest of the world's universal healthcare did any better than ours? You have farfetched dreams that government run anything would somehow be not shit. You'd hardly get any coverage and I doubt the deductible would be anywhere sufficient.

I have family members on Medicaid and help them with their care. Medicaid covers 100% of everything, from doctors visits to specialists, ER care, surgery, dental, vision, medications, etc at no cost to the beneficiary. By law, Medicaid has to pay for everything, so patients don't get pushed around by providers or insurers about billing or additional costs. The headache surrounding billing and paying for care just doesn't exist. Policyholders can confidently see doctors and buy prescriptions they need without worrying about being sent mystery bills several months down the line, or being unable to fill medication, including brand name medication.

On the private insurer side, if you're prescribed an on-patent medication that has no generics, every insurer I've had has fought me every step of the way for coverage, and some plans just don't cover brand name medication at all. Even when you work with your doctor and insurer to get coverage for specific medications, insurers will decide 4 months later that they don't want to cover it anymore and you have to jump through those hoops all over again.

My "favorite" experience was having to cycle through several medications that I had been prescribed in the past that weren't effective in order to make my insurer happy so that they'd cover the medication that does work. Apparently the private insurer knows how to treat patients better than doctors do. Then I moved and had to switch insurers, and the insurer wanted me to go through the process of taking drugs that don't work all over again. I gave up and just pay for the actually-efficacious prescription out of pocket, and none of those costs go towards my deductible. I now pay $18 per pill for something that costs $34 total for a 30-day supply, which is about a dollar per pill, in other first world countries.

If it was possible, I'd drop my own coverage instantly for Medicaid. Doing so would make my life immeasurably better.

> Doesn't seem like the rest of the world's universal healthcare did any better than ours?

On every metric, other countries' healthcare systems outperform the healthcare system in the US, resulting in higher quality care and patient outcomes, all for much less than the US spends[1].

[1] https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/quality...

Re: Gen Z does not dream of labor

#468

Post by bb88 » Tue, Apr 26, 2022, 12:42 AM UTC

hackerfromthefu wrote: post #407

bb88 wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The traditional rule for a mortgage was 20% down and the house itself was no more than 2.5 times salary. Where I live, Boise, housing prices have shot up dramatically, over twice. Median house prices in Boise is $536k. So you would really need to make $214K/year to afford the mortgage under the old rules. And nobody makes that kind of money here.

The old rules don't apply because the old interest rates were so very much higher. The prices are based on the ability to repay based on the income - with lower interest rates the same income and service a much larger loan, hence the increased prices. The world has changed, from very high rates to current very low rates, and seems like it might be changing back to middle rates.

I think that's what the mortgage lenders of today want you to believe since they have cheap cash available through the fed. As long as house prices continue to skyrocket, they could still make money on the foreclosure.

Re: Gen Z does not dream of labor

#469

Post by heavyset_go » Tue, Apr 26, 2022, 12:54 AM UTC

AvocadoPanic wrote: post #461

goosedragons wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't get completely fucked if you lose your job and then get sick/injured? Is that not better? I pay literally $0 to go to the doctors or emergency room.

Someone pays, just not you at the point of service.

Everyone knows that "free" healthcare means that it's still being paid for via taxes, so points like this aren't exactly insightful. The OP's point was that their care cost them nothing to utilize or receive, not that there aren't costs in the system at all. Nobody actually believes that doctors are working for free, that assumption would be a strawman.

Re: Gen Z does not dream of labor

#470

Post by Copernicron » Tue, Apr 26, 2022, 1:30 AM UTC

karaterobot wrote: post #149

skulk wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He could've been a plumber/electrician/welder who would do really well in the current market. False. A plumber making $80k (US median seems to be around $60k) isn't going to be able to save up for a down payment if they're paying a typical mid-sized city's rent (~$1.2k a month). Not to mention housing costs going up during this period of saving up.

I don't agree. I made under $80k in household income when I bought my first home in 2014. This was in (well, just outside) Seattle, which was and remains one of the more expensive markets in the country. I saved up for a down payment; it took years. It wasn't my dream home, but it allowed me to build equity and continue saving for the one that was. I am not ready to say "kids these days want everything handed to them…

It's flat out impossible to buy a house or even condo on that kind of salary in southern Ontario without significant outside financial assistance. I bought my condo in Oct 2021. Six months later it has appreciated in value by $200,000 judging by what other units in this building are going for. You simply can't save money fast enough. Housing prices in general have more than doubled around here.

You got lucky and bought when it was cheap. Don't act like anyone can do what you did.