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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

#161

Post by EliRivers »

chii wrote: post #118
philwelch wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I own a house. I can't wait to sell it. For me, the house is one more thing to worry about. On the other hand, my apartment lease gives me no worries. If I was rich, I might like to own a house, but only for the freedom of doing whatever I want with it.

I cannot understand why leasing (or renting) can be considered superior to owning your own place. Sure it does prevent you from just moving on a whim - something i don't think people should be doing anyhow - but the money paid as rent is like throwing it into the sea!

You rent your clothes, your food, your transport, everything. You pay some money and when it's done, you have nothing to show for it. What's so special about rent that you consider that wasted money, but not the money spent on clothes, food, transport, and everything else that has a short effect or wears out?

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

#162

Post by unimpressive »

prewett wrote: post #151
unimpressive wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ideal solution I think, is simple: "Followers of the Way [of Chán], if you want to get the kind of understanding that accords with the Dharma, never be misled by others. Whether you're facing inward or facing outward, whatever you meet up with, just kill it! If you meet a buddha, kill the buddha. If you meet a patriarch, kill the patriarch. If you meet an arhat, kill the arhat. If you meet your parents, kill your…

If I understand Buddhism correctly, then since everything (including you) is really just ultimately nothing, going to college is unimportant, unless it helps you in realizing that everything is nothing. Debt is bad, because it will enslave you, and likely lead you to think that money, etc. is actually something. College is may also be unhelpful, because it may lead you to think that an Education is not nothing. If yo…

I'm not exactly a Buddhist, but I'm 99% sure that's not it:

Yamaoka Tesshu, as a young student of Zen, visited one master after another. He called upon Dokuon of Shokoku.

Desiring to show his attainment, he said: "The mind, Buddha, and sentient beings, after all, do not exist. The true nature of phenomena is emptiness. There is no realization, no delusion, no sage, no mediocrity. There is no giving and nothing to be received."

Dokuon, who was smoking quietly, said nothing. Suddenly he whacked Yamaoka with his bamboo pipe. This made the youth quite angry.

"If nothing exists," inquired Dokuon, "where did this anger come from?" [0]

[0]: http://www.101zenstories.com/index.php?story=82

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/101_Zen_Stories

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

#163

Post by skorgu »

brudgers wrote: post #63
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.

There are all sorts of US government incentives to own. For one the mortgage interest is federally tax deductible which amounts to effectively a ~30% discount on the beginning years of the mortgage (depending on your income, etc).

It's also a predictability thing. In lots of metro areas rents can fluctuate pretty substantially, even if you're getting a good return on the money you're investing instead of buying moving is still a pain in the ass.

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

#164

Post by frobozz »

chii wrote: post #143
repsilat wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the money paid as rent is like throwing it into the sea! The same can be said of mortgage interest. The fair comparison to the renter with no savings is the homeowner owing the full value of the house to the bank, and the fair comparison to a mortgage-less homeowner is a renter with investments and savings equal to the price of the house they're in. Better arguments for your position might be 1. Mortgage rates are…

> Mortgage rates are lower than rental prices in many places, its unlikely that mortgage payments are lower than rent - otherwise, it'd be better to pay the mortgage than renting! You would buy a place, and rent out a room or two, and have the rent income plus your own money to pay the mortgage. I m not against renting - but i just don't want people to think that a mortgage is some baggage that they are better off no…

>its unlikely that mortgage payments are lower than rent - otherwise, it'd be better to pay the mortgage than renting!

In some places, they are, and it is. However, I would be incredibly surprised if there is anywhere where the mortgage payments on a 100% LTV mortgage are lower than rent; and this is one of the reasons why many settled people don't own their own home. They can't (yet) afford a sufficient deposit to make the repayments affordable.

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

#165

Post by a3camero »

pnathan wrote: post #83
moocow01 wrote: post #21

A lot of this article has points I agree with but feels swarmy and misdirected. The take-away seems to be "forget about getting educated, pick up a few O'reilly books, make a website, make sure your friends are doing the same". Yeah a lot of stuff is tough for young folks. Yeah we probably have got some tough things coming. We've got a lot of collective debt, healthcare problems, student debt, global warming, etc etc…

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…

Or the sort of people who are more likely to get university degrees are also the sort of people more likely to have connections, money, opportunities, behaviour, etc. that lead to employment.

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

#166

Post by ChuckMcM »

chii wrote: post #143
repsilat wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the money paid as rent is like throwing it into the sea! The same can be said of mortgage interest. The fair comparison to the renter with no savings is the homeowner owing the full value of the house to the bank, and the fair comparison to a mortgage-less homeowner is a renter with investments and savings equal to the price of the house they're in. Better arguments for your position might be 1. Mortgage rates are…

> Mortgage rates are lower than rental prices in many places, its unlikely that mortgage payments are lower than rent - otherwise, it'd be better to pay the mortgage than renting! You would buy a place, and rent out a room or two, and have the rent income plus your own money to pay the mortgage. I m not against renting - but i just don't want people to think that a mortgage is some baggage that they are better off no…

There are various times where dislocations in the market make this more true than others. For example over the last 3 years due to the high foreclosure rate in Las Vegas Nevada you could buy a property for $125,000, leverage it at a 4% rate, an immediately rent it out for $1500 a month making it cash flow positive from the day you bought it. However, that situation was created by the mortgage crisis where these same houses had $300,000 mortgages with $2500 mortgage payments. Having watched prices in the bay area fluctuate I've seen the markets on both sides (renting was cheaper than buying and buying was cheaper than renting) at various times.

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

#167

Post by pnathan »

randomdata wrote: post #96
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…

What I've been always interested in is why people leave school at given intervals, statistically speaking. If, for argument's sake, 90% of high school dropouts are dropouts because they were too lazy to go to school, it stands to reason that they will also do poorly in the workplace, being too lazy to go to work. That doesn't mean the remaining 10% who had to drop out due to unfortunate life circumstances will also h…

That's a really good question. I don't have a data-driven answer. I think that its a mix, to be honest - you have to have grit to get through education in the US, and success comes via grit quite often. But you can have grit and not an education.

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

#169

Post by philwelch »

jrogers65 wrote: post #158
philwelch wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we're here to figure out why we're here Turns out we're here to work. Seriously, I don't know about you, but I have a list a million pages long of problems I'd like to see solved by the human race, and I'm pretty sure everyone can chip in on at least one of them. Navel-gazing doesn't get anyone very far.

My list of problems is about as long and I would love to see them solved. I've researched and thought a great deal about why these problems occur and the root cause of them is invariably humanity itself. We look at how much food the human race produces and see that there is absolutely no reason why anyone should starve, yet many people do. We have plenty of water yet people die of dehydration. Why is this? Our techno…

Sitting around and navel-gazing still isn't going to solve any of those problems. You won't know what the solutions are for sure until you try them, and that takes work.

> Why are people working for pennies in factories to make our smartphones?

Because it's a better alternative to subsistence farming, usually. I mean, whatever caused them to voluntarily choose to work for pennies in a factory must have been even worse. Now you want to put them out of a job?

Even if you want to redistribute the wealth, it still needs to be generated in the first place or the whole thing collapses. And you're not going to stumble upon a better social and economic system by not producing as much wealth anymore.

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

#170

Post by Crake »

brianchu wrote: post #153
Crake wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your second + fits my situation exactly. My parents are divorced and neither would pay for college. I'm 24 and basically just starting college now that I can at least get enough loans from the government to afford community college tuition. I've had to work really shitty jobs for the last six years just to be able to pay for rent and food. (The rent they would have charged me to live at home was more expensive than m…

You qualify for aid. If you're 24, you are now an independent student and parent income is no longer factored into the financial aid equation. You are basically low-income in a college's eyes. Education about financial aid goes a long way. Just because someone qualifies for aid but does not seek it does not prove my point wrong. http://www.fastweb.com/financial-aid/articles/699-fafsa-and-...

Wow, way to be a dick. I like how you also ignored the part where I said I had to wait six years for the aid WHICH I AM CURRENTLY NOW ON that you somehow think I'm still not familiar with due to laziness/stupidity.
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