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Young People Are Screwed: Here's How To Survive

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Re: Young People Are Screwed: Here's How To Survive

#61

Post by brianchu »

snogglethorpe wrote: post #46
muzz wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main fallacy of the whole rising-college-tuition thing is that students don't actually pay "sticker price". The actual cost is much less: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-11-27/misconceptions-101-...

> The actual cost is much less ... often. OTOH, If you don't fit the mold, you may be screwed... I've known any number of students who actually were paying full price for tuition at top-tier private universities [to the tune of $50,000/year] despite being quite poor. Some took out massive loans, others did full-time work and attended as best they could.

What do you mean by "quite poor?" To my knowledge, if they're poor, they're poor. I don't know anyone who was legitimately poor that did not qualify for financial aid.

EDIT (reply to below): Your point about the estranged parent is valid; a wealthy parent refusing to pay is the only case in which a "poor" student does not get much financial aid. Foreign students are not entirely excluded from financial aid, though they get much less. Studying abroad is a luxury, and the case of a poor foreign student whose family lives in the US who chooses not to attend an affordable state/local college is very much an edge case.

By and large, if your family is poor, you qualify for financial aid.

Re: Young People Are Screwed: Here's How To Survive

#62

Post by bane »

brianchu wrote: post #54
bane wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Secondly, a private school education typically runs around $200-240k, a number that is calculated to include room, board, books, and living expenses. That's not entirely correct. The tuitions at many private schools these days lists at ~$200k for a 4-year undergrad and does not include expenses. For example https://undergraduate.admissions.gwu.edu/costs-attendance Lists just tution at $45,735 while R&B is $10,530. S…

Your math doesn't add up. The total for 4 years is $225,060. Which falls in the range I provided. EDIT (reply to below): Okay, adding the un-cited items adds up to just about $240k (keeping in mind that some of those fees are one-time only). Which is right at my range. Obviously, $200k-240k is not some sort of hard-and-fast rule. It's an estimate I threw out there, and it doesn't really detract from my point to nitpi…

You didn't include the other expenses from their site (linked previously).

Re: Young People Are Screwed: Here's How To Survive

#63

Post by brudgers »

BenoitEssiambre wrote: post #24

Since the beginning of the financial crisis the media has constantly been repeating that the housing market was key to recovery and that the government had to do things to help prop up house prices. As someone who would like to own a house in the future, I find it quite unfair that the government is helping to maintain bubble prices. It is yet another way for current homeowners to to extract as much money as possible…

Why do you want to own a house? Is it as an impediment to relocating? For the risk of a highly leveraged investment? Or so that you can spend time and money fixing leaking pipes on Tuesday evening and patching the gypsum board on Saturday?

Ever notice how most small businesses deal with real-estate? Hint: they don't negotiate a thirty year lock-in.

Re: Young People Are Screwed: Here's How To Survive

#64

Post by jayunit »

rayiner wrote: post #28
BenoitEssiambre wrote: post #24

Since the beginning of the financial crisis the media has constantly been repeating that the housing market was key to recovery and that the government had to do things to help prop up house prices. As someone who would like to own a house in the future, I find it quite unfair that the government is helping to maintain bubble prices. It is yet another way for current homeowners to to extract as much money as possible…

The punchline, of course, is that retirement won't be a realistic option for our generation at 60. 25-75 leaves 50 working years, and that's what it'll probably take so we can pay for the boomer generation to retire and also save for our own. And I don't think it's a bad thing. It's patently ridiculous for a person to spend half their life not working, why should it involve less than an unreasonable savings rate to d…

> It's patently ridiculous for a person to spend half their life not working

Why is this ridiculous?

  The idea that the poor should have leisure has always been shocking to the
  rich. In England, in the early nineteenth century, fifteen hours was the
  ordinary day's work for a man; children sometimes did as much, and very
  commonly did twelve hours a day. When meddlesome busybodies suggested that
  perhaps these hours were rather long, they were told that work kept adults from
  drink and children from mischief.
-- http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html

Genuinely curious - I'm no economist, and don't understand whether Russell's argument is full of holes, outdated, both, or if rather his proposed reallocation and reduction (through technology) of work is something we should be aspire to.

Re: Young People Are Screwed: Here's How To Survive

#65

Post by rayiner »

BenoitEssiambre wrote: post #51
rayiner wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The punchline, of course, is that retirement won't be a realistic option for our generation at 60. 25-75 leaves 50 working years, and that's what it'll probably take so we can pay for the boomer generation to retire and also save for our own. And I don't think it's a bad thing. It's patently ridiculous for a person to spend half their life not working, why should it involve less than an unreasonable savings rate to d…

That is my conclusion too. I hope I can still code at 70.

Work keeps your brain sharp. I've met 80+ year old judges that can keep young lawyers on their toes peppering them with questions to test their arguments.

Re: Young People Are Screwed: Here's How To Survive

#66

Post by muzz »

brianchu wrote: post #61
snogglethorpe wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The actual cost is much less ... often. OTOH, If you don't fit the mold, you may be screwed... I've known any number of students who actually were paying full price for tuition at top-tier private universities [to the tune of $50,000/year] despite being quite poor. Some took out massive loans, others did full-time work and attended as best they could.

What do you mean by "quite poor?" To my knowledge, if they're poor, they're poor. I don't know anyone who was legitimately poor that did not qualify for financial aid. EDIT (reply to below): Your point about the estranged parent is valid; a wealthy parent refusing to pay is the only case in which a "poor" student does not get much financial aid. Foreign students are not entirely excluded from financial aid, though th…

At Stanford, it's a policy that if your family makes less than $100,000/yr, they waive tuition. At Harvard and some other Ivies, they do it at $60,000/yr.

Re: Young People Are Screwed: Here's How To Survive

#67

Post by rrmm »

muzz wrote: post #49
BobWarfield wrote: post #14

The scariest thing in the article is the unemployment graph from Calculated Risk. Isn't it interested at how Wall Street has gotten better and better at inflating bubbles that take longer and longer to recover from. I just wish the gov't was more focused on creating jobs instead of all the other BS they're fighting with each other over.

Huh? You do realize that we are in month 60-something, ie the upswing, of that graph that began in 2007. Private sector has been creating jobs for over 3 years now, etc. What that graph really shows is how deep the Great Recession was-- it should be compared to the Great Depression rather than the garden-variety recessions we've had since then.

Indeed. Today's kids may or may not be screwed, but I don't think CR's chart implies what the article's author infers from it.

Starting the article off with post-apocalyptic imagery seems to be the wrong tone to make any constructive statement.

Re: Young People Are Screwed: Here's How To Survive

#68

Post by Suncho »

While I think he's made some important observations and I agree with some of his advice, I don't agree with his conclusion that young people are screwed.

Here's an important insight that I definitely agree with:

"But won’t a college degree pay for itself? It probably won’t."

It won't. You probably shouldn't get one if your goal is to make money.

Here's some advice I disagree with:

"My advice to young people is to figure out how to make something. That means either working with your hands, or learning how to type code with them."

The job market is a game of musical chairs. You can give a person a strategy for winning at musical chairs, but it doesn't change the fact that there are fewer and fewer chairs each round.

It's not reasonable to tell young people (or any people) that their goal should be to find a job so they can be self-sufficient and they can support themselves financially.

Re: Young People Are Screwed: Here's How To Survive

#69

Post by rfurlong »

Domenic_S wrote: post #53
rfurlong wrote: post #37

This article, like many articles on Hacker News equates the value of education into dollars. Education, intrinsically, cannot be solely measured in dollars. The problem isn't people getting useless degrees, its degrees that don't correspond to high paying jobs in the current economy costing too much. THERE IS NO SHAME IN GETTING A DEGREE IN LITERATURE. Education should be free. I just get a knee jerk reaction to any…

> THERE IS NO SHAME IN GETTING A DEGREE IN LITERATURE. I agree with you, but the supply side of the education system agrees with you all the way to the bank. The real point is: the traditional education model is usually a bad financial deal. If you want to learn, do so -- but don't be swindled into taking out loans for it.

I agree with your real point, however, I would not say the current model is the traditional or even universal model. Countries other than the US have much better models. I just get tired of the discussion not focusing on the problem and instead accepting it. Universities are often the best place to get an awesome education in the humanities. Withholding that opportunity because education has been transformed into some financial investment, instead of a holistic investments that not everyone can take is just plain sad.

I think its also important to point out that the skills and concepts you learn in areas such as the social sciences and humanities are still financially lucrative. As long as our economy is dominated by big corporations there will be managers and CEOs whos only job is to delegate tasks to and organize the humans beneath them. Understanding human power structures and having the ability to persuade and communicate effectively with people will always be the real big money ticket.

Re: Young People Are Screwed: Here's How To Survive

#70

Post by snogglethorpe »

brianchu wrote: post #61
snogglethorpe wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The actual cost is much less ... often. OTOH, If you don't fit the mold, you may be screwed... I've known any number of students who actually were paying full price for tuition at top-tier private universities [to the tune of $50,000/year] despite being quite poor. Some took out massive loans, others did full-time work and attended as best they could.

What do you mean by "quite poor?" To my knowledge, if they're poor, they're poor. I don't know anyone who was legitimately poor that did not qualify for financial aid. EDIT (reply to below): Your point about the estranged parent is valid; a wealthy parent refusing to pay is the only case in which a "poor" student does not get much financial aid. Foreign students are not entirely excluded from financial aid, though th…

Er, "no significant savings, income, or other resources to draw upon."

The "system" generally tries to support poor people, but there are an awful lot of rules in place to try and make sure people pay their "fair share" and prevent cheating. I think usually those rules have more or less the desired effect, but like any rules, they can be rather blunt instruments, and end up hurting people as well.

Some examples:

+ Foreign students are often ineligible for grants and aid (even those from the university itself), no matter how poor they and their parents are. [There are exceptions, e.g. Harvard (which has lots of money and extremely high admission standards), but my experience is that they are very rare.]

+ In many cases a parent's income is considered in calculating the student's resources, even if the student has no contact with or leverage over the parent and that parent is not willing to pay anything. The reason for such rules is obvious: to avoid parents pretending to be estranged in order to avoid paying their fair share. However it still can end up hurting students who really don't have any choice in the matter...

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