51–60 of 102 posts
Another article that bemoans the fate of Millennials, compares them with the Baby Boomers....and somehow ignores the fact that there was a generation between them. Gen-Xers, anyone?
The 90s were full of sentiment about how Gen-X was the "first generation to be worse off than their parents." But the media has long since moved on. I guess, "millennials still better off than Gen-X" doesn't really generate clicks.
It depends on who you ask. The narrative here is of precarious terror. Other people will have a different story. Seattle attracts a lot of people, and they often have sticker shock because they didn't do enough research. And , a lot of people feel entitled to live in the hippest neighborhoods very cheap. That said. The writer needs to contextualize this. In 2001, the year I went to college, the Twin Towers fell and a…
If I lived in eastern Europe any where near Turkey right now I'd be more afraid.
A "broken political system", please. Like Syria? Most of the Arab Spring? Even Brexit? There are people literally laying down their lives to get an opportunity to participate in such a "broken" system as ours in the US. If you don't like the system, work to change it. In the US at least you won't go to jail for doing that. Good grief!
This is sliding scale, not binary
Having spent a lot of time in Seattle I'm skeptical of the article; that being said, to my mind the big issue is housing costs, as I describe in "Do millennials have a future in Seattle? Do millennials have a future in any superstar cities?" ( http://jakeseliger.com/2015/09/24/do-millennials-have-a-futu... ). If you lower costs enough, a lot of other things become possible, and a lot of issues become less important (…
hey, don't you write on Seattle housing periodically? Or is that someone else with a similar name?
It is somewhat dispiriting to work on all these projects when the biggest challenges in many cities are not subsidies but being able to build enough housing in the first place. Housing is a solved issue in technology terms, as steel-framed buildings and elevators are quite old; the problems are entirely political and legal (see e.g. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/023562e2-54a6-11e6-befd-2fc0c26b3c...).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am not american, could you explain why putting your money in a IRA/401k would be considered unethical? And what alternatives do you have?
Money placed in a 401(k) is generally invested in the market. The hypothesis is that retirement money is a primary source of capital for investment banks. Some young people hold the view that this is akin to financing the banks' unethical activity, and refuse to participate. Of course this is nonsense. One can always keep invest a 401(k) in hard currency or short term treasuries (T-bills.)
So is money put in a bank. Other than stuffing cash in a mattress, there are very few ways you can save money that don't involve either investing in markets or enabling someone else to do so.
> One can always keep invest a 401(k) in hard currency or short term treasuries (T-bills.)
Using your 401(k) to buy up central-bank issued currency or government securities (both of which financial sector companies also invest in, and increases in other people investing in them increases their returns and gives them more money for their other operations) -- all while still paying a fee to the investment company running the 401(k) -- isn't any less investing in the financial markets and enabling unethical behavior on the part of investment banks than investing your 401(k) in the stock market is .
The kids will be fine.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, I got that too. How is a $90,000 starting salary for a javascript bootcamp grad a sign of the end of days? It seems to me the problem is occurring as the "millennials" want to settle down in mid-life, buy a house, buy a car, have kids, and save for their college. In short, the middle class baby boomer lifestyle seems completely out of reach for most in their twenties and thirties.
> In short, the middle class baby boomer lifestyle seems completely out of reach for most in their twenties and thirties. Seattle houses (condos on the market are usually pretty fancy and on par with house prices) are roughly 450K on the low end; neighboring cities hew to that, with the usual SES modifiers. So if you're making, say, 100K/yr salary, your conservative financial buy of a house is about 300K. Welp. There…
That's a convenient bogeyman. That's not to say there isn't truth to it--more or less depending upon the locale. But at least an equal driver is the relatively sudden desire of certain demographics to live in a handful of urban areas.
I'd add that if someone has farted around until they're 32 and just getting ready to think about starting a career, I'm not sure in what period they'd be in good shape to buy a house in anything considered a passable neighborhood with employment possibilities.
The 70's were seen as stable because no American's knew anything about what was happening worldwide. Being connected to pretty much any human on the planet is a really new concept, what we call our "community" has grown exponentially in size, distance, and diversity in the last decade. The world has always been this scary, now we're just paying attention.
It was the end of the postwar boom. High inflation, high uncertainty. 15% mortgages with 20% down as a minimum. Cities collapsing after the white flight. Big industries transforming.
Anyone claiming it was a happy go lucky happy time frankly doesn't know what they are talking about.
It depends on who you ask. The narrative here is of precarious terror. Other people will have a different story. Seattle attracts a lot of people, and they often have sticker shock because they didn't do enough research. And , a lot of people feel entitled to live in the hippest neighborhoods very cheap. That said. The writer needs to contextualize this. In 2001, the year I went to college, the Twin Towers fell and a…
General: house prices. Just build more ffs.
I've been reading Robert Caro's multi-volume biography of Johnson. He writes somewhere about the US political process eventually mirroring the desires of the population (I suspect in the third and fourth volume where Civil Rights feature). Just keep going for the politics you want.
A "broken political system", please. Like Syria? Most of the Arab Spring? Even Brexit? There are people literally laying down their lives to get an opportunity to participate in such a "broken" system as ours in the US. If you don't like the system, work to change it. In the US at least you won't go to jail for doing that. Good grief!
Dude, that is an idiotic comparison. The world's richest nation conspires with Saudis and others in the region to change regime in Syria and in the process inadvertently (or covertly in the most twisted minds) fund ISIS, creating chaos in the Arab world, which the US, Britain, France (the colonial powers plus the new world superpower) have been doing for ages. You sound extremely arrogant if not ignorant.