Young People Are Screwed: Here's How To Survive • Hacker News Board

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

#121

Post by muzz » Thu, Jan 10, 2013, 8:33 AM UTC

jpdoctor wrote: post #86

pnathan wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

About two years I broke out the BLS data for US employment % vs level of education into a series of graphs. Numbers for the non-HS degree went up to about 17% unemployment worst scenario. Grad degrees topped out at 4%. The biggest differentiator was high school: that dropped outcomes by about 5%, iirc. Some college - not even completed college - dropped about 4% down in the outcome. People with BS+ degrees did quite…

> About two years I broke out the BLS data for US employment % vs level of education into a series of graphs. I've posted it elsewhere, but CR also had that graph in his blog: http://cr4re.com/charts/chart-images/EducationUnemploymentSe... I find it quite an oversight that pando quoted the CR unemployment duration, but not the UE by education. The second graph makes the pando article look silly IMO.

Agreed. Unemployment rate for those with at least a Bachelor's degree NEVER topped 5%, even during the depths of the recession in 2008-9.

Pretty amazing stat on its own. And this includes people who graduated with the minimum passing GPA (2.0?) from the worst college with the most useless major.

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

#122

Post by Moto7451 » Thu, Jan 10, 2013, 9:16 AM UTC

snogglethorpe wrote: post #70

brianchu wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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: + Fo…

In my case I couldn't receive FAFSA and in turn many other forms of financial aid until I turned 23 (technically, the year where on January 1st I was 23) because I'm estranged from my parents and couldn't get their tax return info. I was making between 17K & 20K per year before 2011. This pretty much put a University education out the realm of possibility for a while.

In the end my (paid out of pocket) associates degree, some luck, and a few Hail-Mary career moves put me in roughly the situation I hoped to be in post university and I didn't have to graduate at 25/26 years old with student loans.

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

#123

Post by georgemcbay » Thu, Jan 10, 2013, 9:36 AM UTC

Suncho wrote: post #88

angersock wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm concerned that I'm maybe putting the wrong emphasis on some bit of what you said, because if I'm not then yes, I disagree with you. There is no reason historically that people have not had to work to support themselves, and so to suggest that they not do this suggests either that you desire them all to become layabouts dependent on welfare or that you want them to stop working and die off. Please explain an alter…

I don't want them to die off. I do want them to depend on welfare. Whether they layabout is up to them. Historically, if you go way back, everyone grew/hunted their own food and built their own houses etc. This was a very brittle/brutal existence. Drought, disease, or a cold winter means I might die or my family might die. So we learned to be efficient by dividing up tasks and specializing. This reduced the total amo…

"That's a good thing. It frees people up to do what they want with their time."

I agree with your premise.

IMO, socialism, like or it not, is an inevitable result of a highly technical society.

This is a good thing in the long term but it is going to result in decades of horribleness, at least in the US, because so little of the population is going to accept this until it is clearly inevitable.

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

#124

Post by georgemcbay » Thu, Jan 10, 2013, 9:44 AM UTC

munin wrote: post #12

spydum wrote: post #8

There is a lot of focus on programmers , which is absolutely fine: they are usually the "makers". However I wonder why admins get overlooked. Just like the plumber or the electrician, sys/net admins are the handyman/tradesmen of the computing world, and as software deployments grow, so will their demand.

admins are going to be replaced by programs that software engineers write (consider devops, heroku, aws, etc).

software engineers are going to be replaced by programs that software engineers write, it is just going to take longer.

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

#125

Post by prewett » Thu, Jan 10, 2013, 9:48 AM UTC

muzz wrote: post #121

jpdoctor wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> About two years I broke out the BLS data for US employment % vs level of education into a series of graphs. I've posted it elsewhere, but CR also had that graph in his blog: http://cr4re.com/charts/chart-images/EducationUnemploymentSe... I find it quite an oversight that pando quoted the CR unemployment duration, but not the UE by education. The second graph makes the pando article look silly IMO.

Agreed. Unemployment rate for those with at least a Bachelor's degree NEVER topped 5%, even during the depths of the recession in 2008-9. Pretty amazing stat on its own. And this includes people who graduated with the minimum passing GPA (2.0?) from the worst college with the most useless major.

Maybe it was the people with the minimum GPA and the most useless major that are the 5% of college grads that are unemployed.

Also, you might be a 3.5 GPA Literature major employed at Starbucks. You wouldn't be part of the 5% unemployed, but that huge college debt didn't buy you anything, either. Or you gave up looking for employment, so you don't get in the numbers, either.

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

#126

Post by elisehein » Thu, Jan 10, 2013, 9:48 AM UTC

I am loving these illustrations

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

#127

Post by cfn » Thu, Jan 10, 2013, 9:48 AM UTC

jrwoodruff wrote: post #74

rayiner wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

...as long as you don't run into any health issues that affect your cognitive capacity, and you are able to maintain a position that matches your -likely declining- abilities. I would like to think that I can look forward to retirement - travel, family, personal projects, etc. - without having to also continually worry over my status at work. But I'm not terribly optimistic.

I cannot find it right now, but there are recent studies showing that, as long as we are healthy, we do NOT lose cognitive abilities with ageing.

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

#128

Post by Crake » Thu, Jan 10, 2013, 9:49 AM UTC

mjmahone17 wrote: post #85

muzz wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

At Brown, that is the case as well (at 60k/yr). And yet, there are federal and school policies in place to prevent students from paying less than their fair share. I know students whose families earn about 25-30k/yr, who have siblings, and are still expected to pay ~15k/yr. My family's Expected Family Contribution last year was something like 20k (which is more than they were able to pay, so I still had to go into de…

Yup, gotta love being punished for working hard. :/ It also especially sucks when you have a high EFC and your parents are only willing to contribute, uh, $0.

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

#129

Post by Crake » Thu, Jan 10, 2013, 9:51 AM UTC

muzz wrote: post #66

brianchu wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Unfortunately, a policy that is rarely actually followed. It's amazing how private colleges will bend over backwards to find you have an EFC that requires them to provide little to no financial assistance.

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

#130

Post by jrogers65 » Thu, Jan 10, 2013, 9:55 AM UTC

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 to spend even half your life working, yet alone from 18 to 65 (or whatever the retirement age is now). Why have we automated so many things yet work the same hours? There is no virtue in work what-so-ever. It is a means to an end and nothing more. If I could have robots grow my food, manufacture my appliances and create entertainment for me then I would spend all my life enjoying it and not give that a second thought.

This 'cult of work' needs to go. We're not here to use our hands to modify the structure of matter and energy, we're here to figure out why we're here, enjoy and love each other and have a good time.