I think its dead for white people, for many foreigners I know its as real as ever.
American Dream Fades for Generation Y Professionals
11–20 of 134 posts
Re: American Dream Fades for Generation Y Professionals
#12Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I support United States policies that move in the direction of east Asian rather than western European patterns of government spending and social welfare This is going to be very difficult to pull off without a massive cultural change. The Confucian influence on East Asian culture has resulted in a much higher degree of filial piety (孝) than in the West, which makes it possible for people to live in old age without…
Not mention, considering the imitations of this article, I don't see young Americans being able to support their aging parents.
This is actually a problem in modern China as well. Called the four-two-one problem[0], China's one-child policy has resulted in many adults having to care for 2 parents and 4 grandparents, since they have no siblings.
This may not be as big of a problem in America, since it has a slightly higher fertility rate than China (2.05 children per female, versus 1.79 in China). But given stagnating wages and skyrocketing healthcare costs, it could very well turn out to be worse on the whole.
0: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-child_policy#The_.22four-tw...
Re: American Dream Fades for Generation Y Professionals
#13The employment problem is precisely why I do not think the housing market will ever "recover". Housing prices did not crash, they simply aligned themselves with current and forecasted salaries. Attempts at raising housing prices to "normal" levels is a fools game. Create the jobs and the salaries first and the rest will follow.
I don't understand why everyone wants housing prices to go up. As a person looking to buy a home in the near future I certainly do not hope the housing prices head towards their prerecession levels.
Because people are fooled into thinking that houses are investments as opposed to places to live. They all feel like fools for buying high, and want the world to adjust to their expectations.
Re: American Dream Fades for Generation Y Professionals
#14It is jarring just how different tech (and SFBA) are from the rest of the country.
I think this sort of view-bubble perspective adjustment is very healthy and helpful for understanding our businesses' places (and strategies!) in the larger economy.
Re: American Dream Fades for Generation Y Professionals
#15Gen Y's and Baby Boomers are the two largest examples of irrationality that this nation has ever seen.
Gen Y for thinking that you can just do whatever you want and expect a high salary for it. I look at my peers from high school and can't believe some of the entitlement issues they have.
Boomers for thinking that they could continuously f* over an entire generation with their robbing of social welfare systems and expecting people with no right to vote to pick up the tab 30 years into the future. When payroll taxes reach 20%, Social Security Recipients will become the next Westboro Baptists.
Re: American Dream Fades for Generation Y Professionals
#16The repercussions of dropping out of college constantly cross my mind. Luckily, articles like this ease my self doubts. :)
Except that four out of five jobs lost during the recession were employees with less than a college diploma [0]. Rather than dropping out, I strongly recommend transferring to a lower-cost school or switching majors.
The article talks about law school students. A huge number of students entered law school right at the start of the recession. There just wasn't market demand for that many new lawyers when they graduated in 2011. [1]
[0]: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2190273/Georgetown-U...
[1]: http://chronicle.com/article/Unemployment-Among-Recent-Law/1...
Re: American Dream Fades for Generation Y Professionals
#17From the article: "Three and a half years after the worst recession since the Great Depression, the earnings and employment gap between those in the under-35 population and their parents and grandparents threatens to unravel the American dream of each generation doing better than the last." There have been many postings to Hacker News recently with similar themes. The situation described increasingly looks like the s…
> I support United States policies that move in the direction of east Asian rather than western European patterns of government spending and social welfare This is going to be very difficult to pull off without a massive cultural change. The Confucian influence on East Asian culture has resulted in a much higher degree of filial piety (孝) than in the West, which makes it possible for people to live in old age without…
And without the well-off students as their peers in the public schools, the poorer students won't improve, no matter how much money you throw at the situation.
I'm curious - are you postulating that the only way to cause poorer students to improve their educational outcomes is via peer effects with richer students?
I'd love to see data on this one way or the other.
While most people don't mind if their children associate with middle class black and Hispanic children, they certainly don't want them associating with minority children from the ghetto.
If the peer effects you seem to postulate above go both ways, there is a very good non-racist reason for this: while their children might improve the ghetto children's outcomes, the ghetto children might harm the richer children's outcomes.
Re: American Dream Fades for Generation Y Professionals
#18The employment problem is precisely why I do not think the housing market will ever "recover". Housing prices did not crash, they simply aligned themselves with current and forecasted salaries. Attempts at raising housing prices to "normal" levels is a fools game. Create the jobs and the salaries first and the rest will follow.
You are perhaps correct, SF Bay Area housing has pretty much 'recovered' to its 2009 levels in terms of resale. I don't agree with your assertion of the 'alignment' however. To support such a claim you would have to show that house prices were a dependent variable of salary, and my observations over the last 20 years of home ownership has not shown that correlation.
Re: American Dream Fades for Generation Y Professionals
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I support United States policies that move in the direction of east Asian rather than western European patterns of government spending and social welfare This is going to be very difficult to pull off without a massive cultural change. The Confucian influence on East Asian culture has resulted in a much higher degree of filial piety (孝) than in the West, which makes it possible for people to live in old age without…
And without the well-off students as their peers in the public schools, the poorer students won't improve, no matter how much money you throw at the situation. I'm curious - are you postulating that the only way to cause poorer students to improve their educational outcomes is via peer effects with richer students? I'd love to see data on this one way or the other. While most people don't mind if their children assoc…
> I'm curious - are you postulating that the only way to cause poorer students to improve their educational outcomes is via peer effects with richer students?
What I'm really postulating that the only way to improve the educational outcomes of students that come from families who don't emphasize education is to surround them with students who come from families that do emphasize education.
So my initial statement assumes that poor students come from families that don't emphasize education, while rich students come from families that do. That is a generalization that applies primarily to black and Hispanic students, as there are many poor Asian immigrant families who emphasize education - their children have gone on to be quite successful. But as we all know, the educational problem is with black and Hispanic students. When you eliminate them from the picture, American students do quite well in comparison to European and Asian students[0].
> there is a very good non-racist reason for this: while their children might improve the ghetto children's outcomes, the ghetto children might harm the richer children's outcomes.
Yes, this is certainly possible, and is the most common argument utilized by the rich parents when faced with charges of racism towards poor blacks and Latinos.
0: http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/12/amazing-truth-abou...
Re: American Dream Fades for Generation Y Professionals
#20The employment problem is precisely why I do not think the housing market will ever "recover". Housing prices did not crash, they simply aligned themselves with current and forecasted salaries. Attempts at raising housing prices to "normal" levels is a fools game. Create the jobs and the salaries first and the rest will follow.
Housing prices are already being "inflated" by the low cost of mortgage debt. If interest rates climbed to something like 6-7% for a 30-year mortgage you'd see values drop.