Boomers: The Evil Generation!

[Hrothbern]

I'd get up at 5 and head out to carry two bags 18 or 36 holes 6 days a week then try to grab a few hours working in the bag room or the locker room. and then try to get a shift in the kitchen/dining room unless I could the shift car parking. I think I made 20K during the summer of 71. In three months, that was twice my yearly salary upon graduating in 79.

I earned gold with private lessons, helping kids of rich parents with their homework,. It paid during my study everything above the money for the rent of my room and a below bare minimum to eat (which I got from the state as childrens allowance through my parents)

 

[rah]

For beer money in college I used to tutor the basketball players at Bradley in Peoria. I didn't pay that well, but there were a lot of perks.

 

[Birdjaguar]

I set it up thread, but BJ's list is missing the failure of the Boomers to handle the wealth transfer upwards as it was occurring. And now, we're trying to take something from people, which is twice as hard as preventing them from getting it in the first place

Please explain this to me. Nevermind, I got it.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Here is a graph showing the growth of income inequality over the past 40 years. It looks like the biggest growth in inequity for the top 15% of households began in the 80s and that growth peaked with the 2000 Recession. Since then it has been up and down without much actual growth like the previous 20 years.

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/...ars-of-income-inequality-in-america-in-graphs

 

[El_Machinae]

That's income inequality. There's also wealth inequality. We've moved into a world where you need to start with a student loan to tread water. Someone owes that debt, someone owns that debt.

https://www2.deloitte.com/insights/...2018/us-average-wealth-inequality-by-age.html
You will want to look at this page. You'll note first how mean is spreading from the median. That's usually a problem, and is only 'negated' as a problem if the median is rising.

Note the averages, as well. The mean suffered less of a real loss compared to the median between 2004 and 2010. People thinking about retiring had the greatest losses in absolute terms over the GFC, while their average did not. Meanwhile, there are cohorts of younger people that never actually recovered.

When your mean is significantly higher than the median and the median is eating most of the losses ... well, you have an inequality problem. The problems began in the early years of the Boomer's adult lives. It certainly didn't get better.

Edit: fixed link

 

[Birdjaguar]

Your link won't load for me.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Now it does. Thanks.

 

[Birdjaguar]

There is lots of great info there.

 

[aelf]

You and others here keep talking about Marxism and nationalization of industry and how that is the path forward if the terrors of capitalism are to be contained. I'm mostly just trying to figure out what you are talking about and what you would like to see happen. You seem big on criticism, but bereft of any statement on what you actually stand for or how to get there.

...

Capitalism doesn't have national goals. Generally, a mix of various competitive corporate goals drive things in conjunction with national policies and tax laws. Those corporate goals are often determined by various market conditions.

So, please tell me what you are arguing for.

Do you know what's the best way for the economy to move forward? If you do, hurry up and take your place as a prominent economist, because most of them don't. It's likely the case, though, that those who think they have all the answers only think that they do.

I always find it the case that, when pressed for clear-cut solutions to whole macroeconomic problems, capitalists tend to be coy (or provide wildly unrealistic solutions like massive deregulation). But they are not shy to demand this from those who criticise capitalism.

And literally all of academia, including research and knowledge-exchange that have direct impact on the real world, is a series of criticism and modification of existing ideas. So criticism is evidently important in the real world, even if your MBA-types don't know or don't care.

About the prewar soviet effort to move industry east; you don't know your history. The effort began in June 1941. It was successful and turned the tide of the war in Europe, but it was a war effort, just like the the US put into place to crank out ships, guns, and tanks as fast as possible. Prior to the German invasion in 1941 efforts to industrialize merely help bring the USSR back to the pre WW1 Tzarist levels of productivity. That effort also produced famine in the early 1930s.

Well, if you do know your history, then please provide your sources that say efforts to industrialise merely helped bring Russia to pre-WW1 levels. You'd also have to note, though, that you mentioned "pre-WW1". Not just WW1, there was another destructive period I mentioned called the Russian Civil War that followed, which was not the product nor a failure of central planning either. If central planning only managed to reverse the damage from those, that is still hardly a failure.

 

[Lexicus]

Well, if you do know your history, then please provide your sources that say efforts to industrialise merely helped bring Russia to pre-WW1 levels. You'd also have to note, though, that you mentioned "pre-WW1". Not just WW1, there was another destructive period I mentioned called the Russian Civil War that followed, which was not the product nor a failure of central planning either. If central planning only managed to reverse the damage from those, that is still hardly a failure.

I'd point out that every single major country that fought in World War I (except the UK and US) saw its industrial output sharply reduced during the war and its aftermath. I believe Germany did not attain prewar levels of output until the late 1920s for example.

Incidentally here is a graph of Soviet GDP:

As we can see GDP cratered starting in the final years of World War I and went even lower during the civil war. But by the end of the 1930s it was close to twice what the Tsars had achieved.

 

[metalhead]

As an out of state student at UNC-CH in 1966 my tuition was about $4,000; today that price is about $35,000. The purchasing power in general of that $4,000 is about $31,000 (4% annual rate of inflation and a cumulative rate of just under 700%)
The minimum wage in 1966 was $1.25, the equivalent wage today is $9.88

Google is telling me that out-of-state tuition in 1966-1967 for UNC was $600, with mandatory fees costing another $150. That's $850, or around $5,800 in today's dollars compared to $31,000. Nice try. Though I will say the state of NC deserves some credit because the in-state tuition is still a relatively affordable $9k a year totaling tuition and mandatory fees. My state has not done nearly as well by its residents with its flagship university, Penn State is over $15k a year these days.

Also, if you follow the link and look at all the historical stuff, a semester of Med School at UNC for a resident was a grand total of $656. I mean shoot man, don't even try it.

 

[civvver]

Where this is actually going is that the top 25% of every generation measured by income/wealth have always had it easy and the rest struggled. Lots of millennials are doing quite well today, More are struggling. The struggles today are not the same as those of 40 years ago and they demand different solutions.

In 1965 there were about 6M college graduates.
In 2010 there were about 21M.
In 2018 the number is about 20M.

2010 is a peak year. What happens when you more than triple demand and you have a pretty fixed base of providers with a high capital cost for them to expand capacity?

Every time cost of college is discussed I harp on this fact. Every year we hear about how universities are jacking up prices even more and yet every year they are filled to capacity and turning away students. We have a supply and demand issue.

Though the article linked earlier about the private profitability of online degrees was off putting, for brick and mortar schools it's that we simply aren't building or expanding enough new state schools. There's a capacity issue. Which is why I also think curriculums should be contracted into 2-3 year programs for a lot of technical degrees.

 

[metalhead]

Every time cost of college is discussed I harp on this fact. Every year we hear about how universities are jacking up prices even more and yet every year they are filled to capacity and turning away students. We have a supply and demand issue.

Education is a public good, its cost shouldn't be driven by supply and demand.

It's a failure of planning that we left college as the only means for most people to attain economic security - but then also allowed their first decade or two after to be beset by economic insecurity as they pay back the loans they took out.

There is zero reason why public colleges have to keep increasing tuition. Just because they can, doesn't make it right that they do.

 

[civvver]

I agree with that as well, but if there were more colleges in general there would be cheaper options. And I mean good quality public state universities, not fly by night for profit programs like university of pheonix or all the local get your MBA in 18 months programs no one's heard of. But it's expensive to build and staff those initially.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

There is zero reason why public colleges have to keep increasing tuition. Just because they can, doesn't make it right that they do.

Well, there were aggressive cuts to higher education funding during the recession that haven't been undone. Our elected officials decided one of the easiest ways to fix the budget was to push college cost onto the kids and they have failed to restrain cost growth.

That said, there is a ton of wasteful spending in higher education that is inexcusable.

 

[metalhead]

In retrospect, allowing conservatives to manage academia was a really terrible idea.

 

[El_Machinae]

Soviet graph needs a source. Can we get a head to head on GDP per capita between (say) France and Russia? From a source that's reasonable (I don't have a mechanism to measure that). A confounding factor there would be median age.

 

[rah]

Well, there were aggressive cuts to higher education funding during the recession that haven't been undone. Our elected officials decided one of the easiest ways to fix the budget was to push college cost onto the kids and they have failed to restrain cost growth.

That said, there is a ton of wasteful spending in higher education that is inexcusable.

The funding or lack of it by the states is the largest cause of the issue. But I put more blame on the schools that chose to respond to reduced funding by just raising tuition instead of reducing wasteful spending. Liberal or conservative.

 

[Lexicus]

Soviet graph needs a source. Can we get a head to head on GDP per capita between (say) France and Russia? From a source that's reasonable (I don't have a mechanism to measure that). A confounding factor there would be median age.

The source, as it says on the graph, is Maddison Project data.

You should be able to find France in there if you download the data set.

 

[Hrothbern]

Supply and demand... but for what ? Between universities and students ? Or between students and the demand of a country ?
I can understand that Saudi Arabia has so many students Art, they drown in family money anyway. And Saudian engineers... that is for sure their hobby.

Here % of students in Art and Engineering. The US and Saudi Arabia to the far right.

https://data.oecd.org/students/tertiary-graduates-by-field.htm#indicator-chart