I have two daughters. My oldest recently married a trust funder. Yippy, I think. I won’t go into my worries about that but I believe they are well founded concerns even though it seems to be a significant amount of moolah. My youngest daughter was going to go to nursing school (which her mother and I supported) but has reservations about taking on that much debt. I don’t blame her. We (me) are now pushing her hard to join the Air Force. I live in the D.C. area and every person I talk to that is in the government or military tells me this is a great idea. I think it is also since I am told over and over again that the opportunities are many after retirement. Especially if she were to concentrate on (I think you have to show an aptitude for it though) intelligence and/or cyber anything.
I like Charles Hugh Smith and have been reading his site even before I found TBP. The one thing I am not too sure I agree with him on in this article is his view that housing is in a bubble. I say this because the pace of home building and the price points are being caused by low building numbers. Maybe I’m wrong about this but, in my neck of the woods the prices are simply outrageous and there is no/low inventory. Anyway, I hope there is plenty of commentary.
https://www.oftwominds.com/blogjun18/dear-grads6-18.html
June 25, 2018
You deserve a realistic account of the economy you’re joining.
Dear high school graduates: please glance at these charts before buying into the conventional life-course being promoted by the status quo.
Here’s the summary: the status quo is pressuring you to accept its “solutions”: borrow mega-bucks to attend college, then buy a decaying bungalow or hastily constructed stucco box for $800,000 in a “desirable” city, pay sky-high income and property taxes on your earnings, and when the stress of all these crushing financial burdens ruins your health, well, we’ve got meds to “help” you–lots of meds at insane price points paid for by insurance– if you have “real” insurance without high deductibles, of course.
Here’s the truth the status quo marketers don’t dare acknowledge: every one of these conventional “solutions” only makes the problem worse.Student loan debt only makes your life harder, not easier, as the claimed “value” of a college degree is based on the distant past, not the present. The economy is changing fast and the conventional “solutions” no longer match the new realities. But don’t expect anyone profiting from the predatory profiteering higher-education cartel to admit this.
The high cost of housing isn’t “solved” by buying in at the top of an unprecedented bubble. Buying into bubbles only makes the problem worse, for all bubbles eventually pop.
The “solution” to crushing levels of debt is not to borrow more just to prop up a rotten, corrupt, dysfunctional and self-serving status quo. In effect, the young generations are being groomed to be the hosts for the parasitic classes that feed on young taxpayers, student loan debt-serfs, young buyers of bubble-priced housing, unaffordable sickcare “insurance” and all the rest of the status quo “solutions.”
As writer Peter Turchin has explained, societies in decline overproduce elites. Those promised an elite slot who are left out become the engine of social unrest.
The status quo claims that getting a college diploma more or less guarantees you a slot in the elite class of folks with secure incomes and opportunities to get ahead and build real wealth.
The reality is only the top 5% of the work force are doing well. So of the 33% of the work force with university diplomas, the system only creates slots for the top 15% of that educational elite. The next 15% (the rest of the top 10% of the entire work force) can pick up the 2nd tier technocrat positions and everyone else gets the scraps: insecure jobs, mediocre pay, limited opportunities.
Before you accept that becoming a debt-serf to get a college diploma is a “solution,” check out the other side of that trade: the mostly older, wealthier folks profiting from your debt-serfdom:
This parasitic predation is guaranteed by your federal government: you know, the institution everyone looks to for “solutions.”
How did millions of students earn college diplomas before the hyper-financialization of the economy and before assistant deans made $350,000 a year in “competitive” salaries? It’s a mystery lacking any mainstream explanation.
Speaking of debt–here’s the nation’s total debt level: note that the amount of debt required to push GDP higher keeps increasing far faster than GDP:
As for plunking down hundreds of thousands of dollars for that little cheaply constructed stucco/particle board/plastic box: housing prices in hot markets such as Dallas and Seattle have far exceeded the previous hyper-financialized housing bubble top in the mid-2000s:
Don’t worry about soul-crushing commutes, homeless encampments or rapidly rising taxes: asset bubbles make everything bearable, until they pop.
You deserve a realistic account of the economy you’re joining. Here’s reality: the vast majority of the gains reaped since your birth have flowed to the very top of the hyper-financialized wealth-power pyramid.
As Bucky Fuller noted in his famous dictum, “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
Rather than fight a system designed to stripmine you for life, seek a model for your life that obsoletes all the perverse conventional “solutions.”
“How did millions of students earn college diplomas before the hyper-financialization of the economy and before assistant deans made $350,000 a year in “competitive” salaries?”
Uh, they didn’t. They went down to the nearby factory and got a job.
Well, that AND/OR they were able to pay tuition with summer jobs.
A societal crimewave is being commited, imo against the youngins.
Yup, in the late 70’s graduated college with $700 total debt. Worked my way thru school at Sears when they still actually paid their workers.
We “early adopters” had a very low cost college education. The wave of inflation hit around 1975; Just when I (we) graduated. It really killed the retirement of a lot of geezers. It’s only gotten worse since then. Blame financialization by the big banks. Everything has become about money. Remember-it is your life to live. Choose wisely or inherit well……if you have a choice.
In 1980, I started college at the same school my son is now graduating almost 40 years later.
My tuition was $625 for a full-time load of 12 hours or more and at that time, you could take up to 21 hours per semester for that tuition. I know. I made that mistake my second semester and carried that albatross GPA result around my neck for 25 years.
My son is taking his final summer course required for his degree completion. For that single class, which runs 8 weeks for two hours daily, tuition is $846 (which he paid, taking his very first loan ever. Long story short: Free junior college in Oklahoma with him paying cash plus high ACT score scholarship for Missouri tuition once he transferred. I could tell you the story about how I clipped coupons and invested the money in JNJ and PNG because my baby seemed to use a lot of that stuff but then the story would get really long and digress. And, since I’ve turned over a new leaf in my life, I will stay on point. In forty years, the tuition has gone from $55 per credit hour to $282 per credit hour. There are lab fees and miscellaneous fees for every single class my son takes now: a lab fee for an economics course? Because it was titled Economics of Engineering or some fancy pants thing like that?
So, someone else can do the math (I can but don’t feel like it) and tell me the increase in costs and tell me why, when I just linked to the school to find out exactly what they charge per hour (http://www.mst.edu/) I ended up being informed about the LGBTQ community outreach on campus almost immediately by a banner?
My son is a frugal young man thanks to both his father and me and he has a good head on his shoulders in spite of me. But I will be honest and tell you all I did not prepare him well for the world he entered as a Millennial. His father and I were quite “retro” for parents in the 1990s and I truly believed I could control the output of my child by controlling the input. I moved him to public school in third grade and he never adjusted well, which turned out to be a blessing in disguise, if you ask me. He spent most of his time taking care of horses for a lady who paid him cash, which he saved. Then, he bagged groceries for cash tips at the Commissary, which he saved.
He had already gotten this student loan before he admitted the need for the class, so I’m proud he stepped up. His plan to pay it off ASAP is fine and I hope it works out. But, his father and I are outliers in the world of debt and indebtedness. We pay things off as soon as we can, for example, buying this log home kit from Gastineau Oak Log Homes on a 3 year same as cash plan. How many people do you know who bought their home on layaway? Now you know me. I hope my son maintains his practical approach to financial matters. But, I know how the rest of the world sets the trap. That is why I also cry for my own children (my stepson is included in my mind’s eye) and want them to know we tried: There are some really evil people in charge and as hard as we tried, kids, we couldn’t bring the bastards down. They want your joy for no other reason than they don’t want you to have it. If you won’t give it to them, they will trick you into indebtedness or immoral behavior to steal it from you. They don’t want to experience your joy; they just don’t want you to have it. So, kids, learn to rejoice and how to hold onto your joy in the face of evil. It is the only thing that will get you through.
I had taught him that truth and justice mattered. When I explained to him why I got suspended from work when I was a Union Steward the IAM would NOT support (who eventually won her lawsuit btw), I explained a lot to him about the legal system in this country and why equality before the law is vital to the workings of our type of government. That “redress of grievances” clause doesn’t get a lot of discussion, perhaps because the list of what demands priority as a “grievance” has gotten ludicrous.
It has all really gotten ludicrous, hasn’t it? Let’s see if I set this new avatar thing up right… I am really happy with living out here in the suburbs of the sticks. My friend’s daughter from up in your neck of the Mordor on the Potomac Woods, WIP, is coming down for a couple of weeks this summer. I am thrilled because I think I will have a little goat ready for her to learn to milk. She has had a very rough year, with life dealing her a double blow in the loss of her brother to a witch (marriage poorly executed) and her friends to an upscale dance school scandal. Add to that some serious heart surgery for her grandfather and I believe a few mornings tending chickens, bunnies and milking a sweet little goat named Agnes (winks) with her little twins Stucky and TBD (Simon is the Billy Goat and Agnes is the Nanny Goat. The twins (Agnes’s first litter was a boy-girl pair, cute as bugs at around three months now with the little girl still nursing. The boy kid got kicked off the teat early for undisclosed reasons. Agnes and Stucky are not talking about it but I saw him try to mount his un-named sister goat and Simon sent him flying with a well placed head butt. Goats have an interesting pecking order, at least this little family of goats the good Lord dropped into my recently finished pen. So, the little female goat is not yet named… maybe I should ask Admin for a TBP Goat Naming Post. My own husband heard me talking about needing to get some Udder Butter and later, when I asked him what he thought about Agnes as a name, he said he liked Nutter Butter. I told him his hearing is worse. The little male kid keeps getting his little horns stuck in a corner fencing overlap and I decided “Stucky” was a really good name for him so don’t get your head or anything else that swells up stuck anywhere anytime soon you big lumberjack looking dude. Simon came to us named Simon and it really seems to fit. I did call him by my Poppa’s Italian name and he seemed to really like it, but I’m not sure which of my angels sent him. I do think Simon has come to stay here at Narnia, sliding right in like an old chum. Stucky, the little goat whose interest in girl goats seems premature, will soon be clearing brush for us guarded by our youngest Pyr, Little Miss Melissa. The little girl goat will be pampered and taught to be milked from the start. There will be little children visiting me within a very few years, I think. And those little hands will want to gather eggs, pet bunnies and help Mags milk the goats.
So, as you can see, a fantasy world is not hard to create on paper or in the mind. And, with the proper layaway plan, you can build one for yourself).
So, back to point, I am hoping my friend’s daughter enjoys working with farm animals and wildlife here as much as I think she will. Or, at least, perhaps she will not hate it as much as I fear she might.
Apologies for the very late night thoughts, wip. Am hoping your daughters make good choices in a world where the other kind are proliferating. Mushrooming, even.
Hey… I see you too!
Thanks Maggie. I hope your visitor loves your place. I know I would. I have a dream, a dream of nature.
I have a semi-finished novel I wrote 30 years ago about a fifty-ish woman who returned to the region after a lifetime away. It was a mystery/suspense novel whose title character was named Beatrice, which might explain why I continue to think of BL as a lady. If you “get” that, you’ve been around TBP for a while. If you do not, don’t ask.
The Bea in my story faces her worst nightmares, of course, and confronts the fact that her family betrayed her long before she was born, visiting the third generational curse onto her in the form of foresight (not foreskin, Stucky… fore SIGHT). Having stumbled upon her mother’s bones in an outcropping of rock when she was fifteen along with a message concealed there by her trapped and dying mother almost fifteen years earlier, she’d climbed on a farm truck with a bunch of migrant farm workers and hadn’t looked back for more than thirty-five years.
My thesis professor with more than two dozen published novels herself! really liked the draft and suggested I finish it. Now that I really am fiftyish plus, perhaps I can figure out what the hell Beatrice does once she kills that rat bastard stepfather of hers: Job.
I named him Job because, if you really think about it, Job is a really scary fellow. Able to stoicly maintain his faith and reverence and respect when losing everything. Sure, he ends up happy again, but do you really want to hook up with Job or be part of his next family knowing how devoted he is to the Lord, who let his other family get offed on a bet. Job was a brilliant naming of the villain and I got an A++++ from the professor for thinking of it.
The name of the novel: Nature’s Way by Maggie May (not my real name but really the title I bestowed upon it during the scene where Job steps on and squishes Maggie’s little kitten with the broken foot, telling her that it is nature’s way for the lame to die and not be coddled. When the mother cat rejects the deformed kitten, Maggie saves it by feeding it with a bottle and the little kitten hobbles around the yard, annoying the stepfather, Job. Until one day he squishes it, stepping out of his way to stomp its little head. When she reads her mother’s words engraved in stone in that little cave where she’d tried to dig her way out with a set of camping gear, she knows with complete certainty the killing of that cat had been a direct threat to her. So, when she returns to face him some 35 years later, she realizes it will be him or her. She’s had 35 years to get ready while he’s just gotten older. It is Nature’s Way in all things.
So, you see, I also have great respect for nature and the natural order, of which both compassion and pragmatism play important roles. A time to live and a time to die. A time to eat and a time to be eaten. A day to get your goat and days your goat gets you!
Edit: I’m uploading a short little video of Stucky the silly billy goat and you can see his sister goat who needs a name, but she hasn’t suggested one to me yet. If you “get” that, then you know the difference in a milk goat versus meat goat. What’s in a name? EVERYTHING.
EDIT again. I made it… I think. Here’s Stucky the goat.
I think you’re pretty awesome for a white girl. Lol. White girl is a compliment believe me.
I think you’re pretty awesome for a white girl. Lol. White girl is a compliment believe me.
Does that line really work at the club? I think not. It makes you sound like a real dork.
That qualifier ‘for a white girl’ is a backhanded compliment and trying to recover with, ‘it’s a compliment’ is just desperate groveling. You need more work, wipper.
EC
You never fail to be a prick. A wetback would be wetting his pants for a white girl. Hmm, how come I never see white girls with wetbacks?
Btw, I’m married to a beautiful white girl. Get ya some. Oops, I forgot, you’re a wetback.
idk. I had a crush on one in hs. I wrote her a letter and she never replied. That was the end of my white girl days. You see plenty of dudes with white girls around here. I kinda get mad at my own luck but hey, I was born too soon.
My take on it now is similar to the person who said a seashell is diminished when it is removed from its natural setting. White women are beautiful in their natural setting. I don’t hate. But I do love to dog you when you make a mistake. At least I’m no Rdawg, he would really rip you a new one.
EC was born too soon to get the white girl he was promised after paying $6k to a human trafficker to escape a shithole and too soon to see the end result he and his compadres are doing to our freedom loving heaven. Turning it into a socialist shithole. Cockraoches perhaps?
Oh well, sometimes you win and sometimes you lose.
I was on a roll but looks like the comments widget is fucked up.
You’re a smart and funny guy EC, you should use it to help America back to its greatness. There just seems to be something off about other races. They dont get how taking what’s already built is not sustainable. Statistics and reality dont lie.
Wippy, just scroll up to the first reply button you see.
Actually, my mamacita was born in Ft Collins. That makes me a second gen Americano, gringo.
I’m a gabacho, ok, maybe not. I’m a pocho.
Wip has won me over, EC. Now that I’ve gone full healthnut crazy, lost a whole other person and actually jumped up into the back of the pickup truck the other day, causing the mulch man (now, there’s a horror movie term) to ask how I was moving around like a twenty-something! After my day chasing the little nanny goat and settling the goats into their new home, I have decided to start acting at least like a forty-something because the bruises and sore muscles don’t heal right up like they once did.
The three-legged rabbit got killed and mauled by coyotes last night. So much for my domestic rabbit warren at the edge of Narnia. I’m blaming you.
Besides…
So help America be great again so I can call you my american brother instead of the two of us kicking each other in the balls…err, wavoes.
Yeah, well. I’ll get over it Maggita. Hope you and wippy enjoy your time together.
Your daughters are starting on third base. They have a dad and he is a good one, there is no war and Draft to take them, they got a good K-12 education, there isn’t a Depression, they are healthy and smart, there are plenty of Jr Colleges needing students, plenty of ways to borrow money if they choose to, and women are in the Cat Bird Seat. A lot of that was not true in the old days. Definitely don’t buy an expensive house or car; buy used and use dad’s wisdom. The USAF has a lot of job choices, locations, and treats women good; probably has a college program aimed at creating Officers from NCOs. Dad didn’t mention God, but get to know the Lord and He will be the greatest help in your life.
Most young people are fucked but some will do very well in this ever changing world. Most middle class are not going to be middle class when this debt money system collapses.We are headed towards a greater depression that will make the 30s look like a slumber party and it’s all by design. A cash less society is coming .Once this 5G system engulfs our nation there will few ways to excape. I am glad I’m 57.
As Bucky Fuller noted in his famous dictum, “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
Right on. But the new model, cryptocurrencies, are bashed relentlessly on this forum. Like anything new and revolutionary, new models face every kind of bias imaginable as people cling to their safe places and rely on the precious metal model of old. The “new” is ridiculed by the affected. Next will come their attacks. Then acceptance. Then “we thought of it first.”
I don’t think gold is all that great for hedging against collapse. The banks and governments own most of it. The rich have some. No doubt that if a gold standard is re-introduced and the new price is $100k or whatever that would vastly increase your own wealth, you can expect the gov’t to tax your ass off on the profits.
Silver is the better hedge by far. The banks and governments don’t own much and the stuff is used up in all things technological. It by rights should be more expensive than gold and likely will be one day when silver supplies run short for the role of silver in new and old tech. Silver is most often a byproduct of some other mine. Not many all or mostly silver mines, and no new strikes seem to be found anymore. God’s ratio for silver against gold is ten to one. The market’s ratio throughout the ages has been around 15 to one. Right now the ratio is around 80 to one. Silver is cheap, cheap, cheap.
Cryptos are also cheap and as a hedge they can’t be beat for potential. People lament that they could have bought Bitcoin at $200. When Bitcoin hit $20k they wished they had bought at $1000. When it hits $100k they’ll be wishing again that they could have bought, but then at $6k. That’s life for ya.
Bucky balls, bigmouth.
The value of the houses didn’t go up – the value of the currency went down. My grandparents bought a house in NYC during WWII for $4000. It originally sold brand new for $20,000 in 1921. I sold it three years ago for numerous zeroes added to the $4k. What caused the value of those very same bricks and sticks to increase like that? Wall Street financing!!
If the price of that house fell 80% in 20 years, how far down could it fall now? Don’t believe it could happen again? If the equivalent of the Great Depression were to occur today, and huge numbers of people were without work, what would happen to real estate prices?
Prepare accordingly, and please don’t shoot the messenger.
Doc, we don’t need to shoot messengers, we need to shoot wall street bankers and their ilk.
The progression of the digression as to where we are now in American society has been ruthlessly planned and perpetrated by the enemies from within our own government . “THEY” have colluded with foreign powers accepted bribes or favors for personal gain and sold the birth rite of average Americans of life liberty and the pursuit of happiness for “THEY” and their crony capitalist supporters . Userey and theft at its finest !
Foreign students are set up to work resorts for the summer under conditions that should put the business owners and politicians that dreamed it up in Leavenworth for decades . These very same politicians endentured American students with loans burying young gullible people with debt that is unmanageable in collusion with administrators of higher learning institutions to keep the cash flowing in regardless of damage down to those “THEY” claim to be helping .
No do not go into a mountain of debt for education and do not waste your years working for someone’s business supporting their dreams at the expense of your most productive years . Hold out for either a government position or a position where your salary comes from forced government payments or insurence . Very few opportunities exist in the private sector that pay substantially what it takes to survive . You mentioned you live in the Washington DC area , I am infinitely familiar with the area , it’s like economic land of OZ , not real !
Maryland s biggest industry as employers go is government and though most people will claim they can earn more in the private sector they are full of shit !
When you hear some asshole tell you there are plenty of good jobs out there give them a pen and paper for a phone number and address and the name of a person or company to approach , generally you will find they are full of shit too . GOOD LUCK
Anyone who lives in the DC area and IS BEING HONEST knows what you’re saying is true. I’ve had several government workers tell me they could make more in the private sector. I do not consider any company whose revenue comes from government to be private sector. This place is the home of the Wizard of Oz.
WIP: I have a family member with a paper shuffle job on a military base and she was whining about her pay and conditions etc so we sat her ignorant ass down with her pay stubs , retirement plan , medical benefits and the cost associated for her and her husband and 2 children and POW ZING LIKE A FULL BEER CAN TO THE FOREHEAD ! She realized that even if she could land a job with a modest monatary increase which was doubtful the benefit costs she would have to pick up put her in the hole . Her government employee entitlement attitude coupled with her smart ass mouth would have her bouncing in and out of the unemployment line in no time .
These people are CLUELESS. They are part of the largest welfare group in the world. They’re bloodsucker and cry about it.
https://www.cybrary.it/ If your girl has the mind and the focus to stay with it, go here and start on the cyber education. It’s FREE OF CHARGE! You can study the basics, like COMPTIA A+, at your own speed via video lectures and move up the ladder. Once she feels like she’s got it, she can sit at a local accredited location for the certification test. Those certs are what open the doors for you in the computer world. This method could save her a fortune in education costs, too.
If she’s serious about USAF, get to a recruiter NOW and start working on it as early as possible- you don’t want her running off next month to be a box kicking clerk with no plan. I don’t know how USAF does it, but I would not be surprised if they expect you to enlist for 3-5 years, then reenlist for an intel job as an NCO. That’s what the Army did to some of my friends who wanted to go intel. If she’s really interested and willing to do the work, she might find OSI Special Agent a very interesting career field. Also, see if the recruiter can get her a chance to speak to some current service airmen who are actually doing the job she wants. DC is filled to the rafters with servicemen and women, so it shouldn’t be hard to arrange something.
Good luck to your children!
Yeah, a man hath no love for his children like one who is prepared to feed them to the machine.
I wonder – is this why he cries?
It should be.
Make all the comments you want. I did Army, did my time, made the best of it, and I have a better, more interesting and rewarding career now than the law education I passed up would have provided. I would do it again, if I had it all to do over. I would not advise my child to go to college and become a debt slave over a useless psychology of feminist literature degree or videogame ethnics degree. I would rather advise them to go for a useful trade or military service in a good MOS and let them get real experience and useful career training before worrying about a useless degree. Plus, once they’re 18, it’s really their decision more than mine. Like Kahlil Gibran said, kids are arrows you shoot down the trail of the infinite. You don’t get to choose where they land.
Go enlisted for minimum years, play hard to get with recruiter, in usaf CC of air force offers associates degree or go what was formerly known as a NY regents degree here:
then Take and pass GREs (2) CLEPs and minimal college courses. Get BA or BS degree apply for OCS.
I will read through all of this. Thanks.
Use base education center advisor on active duty and take night courses locally with non GI Bill free tuition assistance (It was free then for me) classes to get a little over 30 sh of lower level courses along with CLEP tests with the gres for upper level requirement. Sign up for Excelsior in year one anticipates having enough credit for degree to avoid year to year fees.
Another way of saving, is to be able to do your own work around the house: Plumbing / electrical / carpentry / drywall / painting / tile.
I grew up with a family that had an HVAC business. I knew all about soldering / electrical. I was always good with my hands. When we purchased our first house in 1974 – I never did sheetrock / tile / you name it. I took my time, figured it out, asked old timers.
I have a friend that paid $35,000 to have a bathroom remodeled. About 10 years ago, I gutted our master bath, installed premium tile tile and fixtures for about $10,000.
Sweat equity makes a real difference.
Dutchman, 99 times out of 100 a time and patience project will much better than a professional one. John
Here’s a shocking piece of news from my most recent VA visit, post cataract surgery to get a new prescription for eyeglasses. It took me YEARS to service connect something that was in my records from the get go… and when I did, I could only get glasses every five years while in college for vocational rehab for service connected injury.
Well, NOW???? All honorably discharged veterans are eligible for eye exam and a pair of glasses, up to and including lasix surgery if it is determined to be feasible (under 60ish, I think. Age discrimination is the elephant waiting to hashtag metoo somebody.) However, the lady who dotted my lenses for the progressive shading told me the glasses were a $400 pair, easy. I selected the “free” frames rather than upgrade. Upgrade at the VA. Do you remember birth control glasses at basic training, EC? Now you can get designer frames for $100 copayment. Did you know that?
How many honorably discharged vets are out there needing glasses. Who benefits? Which Congress Critters are owned by “Big Eyeglasses?”
Thank you, Maggita! https://youtu.be/2lPKU5qSO6A
Well, since my daughter has scoliosis, they probably will not take her into the Air Force or any other military branch. If so, very disappointing.