I’m not gonna add a story here because the plural of anecdote is not data. But, I will leave this as food for thought.

quote:

Originally posted by Lefty Sig:
By handouts I meant the massive grift to the politically favored that we are now finding out via DOGE, the green energy boondoggles, the endless array of NGO's that take government money and accomplish nothing but enriching themselves and kicking money back to the politicians.

As the boomers die off, everyone after them is left holding the massive national debt bag. The day of reckoning hasn't happened yet. When it comes it could rival the Great Depression. China is doing everything they can to help crash the dollar and then step in with their RMB to replace it.

Boomers gave away our entire industrial base which is unforgivable and a threat to national security.

Millenials are indeed victims of their Boomer parents. At least Gen Z (raised by GenX) is more realist and more conservative overall.

I have my hand on the wheel, but I made the mistake of voting for Perot in 1992. Bush lied about no new taxes and Clinton was full of shit. And Clinton - a boomer - got elected due to Perot siphoning Bush's votes. Had we stuck with Bush things might be a lot different today.

That’s a longer gripe list, but it still boils down to the idea that one generation somehow ran the whole show while everyone else just watched from the porch. Are you kidding me?

Sure, there’s been plenty of grift, waste, and politicians getting rich off taxpayer money. That fucking dog's been hunting a long time, and it didn’t do it by itself. It took voters, donors, corporations, and a whole lot of people keeping the same folks in office election after election.

The debt’s real, and the bill’s coming. But Gen X, Millennials, and now Gen Z have all had a hand on the ballot box, and most of them kept voting for the same nonsense. Hard to blame the cow when everyone keeps milk­ing it.

Shipping the industrial base overseas wasn’t some boomer garage project, it was bipartisan globalization, pushed by corporations and happily supported by consumers who wanted cheap TVs and cheaper socks.

The story where Millennials are helpless victims and Gen Z is the wise fix-all is comfort food. Every generation tells itself that right before reality smacks it upside the head.

And yeah, Perot mattered—which is a nice reminder that votes have consequences. Funny how that lesson always stops right after the one election folks regret.

quote:

Originally posted by Bytes:

Thanks Prefontaine, I was afraid my generation was the only one responsible for the collapse of society as we know it Rock On Fender!

Not boomers or any generation is “responsible”. Boomers didn’t have a bunch of puppets on strings going “mu ha ha” we are going to f up society! And make the homes expensive! This Gen Z rhetoric is Reality > Narratives.

For scale, the average apartment here is almost $2k a month. And you can’t hardly find a vacancy. They are Luxury with pools, gyms, etc.

And full of people in their 20s paying $24,000 a year to live there.

Why do they charge $2k a month? Because people will pay it. And they are standing in line to get in.

For the “just the facts” crowd, explain to me how a lot of 20 something’s, many with college debt, and all of the amenities discussed, afford it plus utilities?

Pretty simple. They live beyond their means. If people would stop renting above their means, people wouldn’t be standing in line to rent. If people aren’t standing in line to rent, prices come down.

Housing costs what it does because people will pay it. When they can’t pay it, costs go down.

A man with money worries about what it will cost. A man without money only cares about what the payment is. We are a society that worries only about the payment amount.

^^^ Add a roomate and it's $1K a month. That's probably what they are doing. The college debt is income based minimum payments, which will cause the loan balance to increase over time. Minimum payment should be interest only to make sure the balance never grows. Everything else is credit cards, and you can file bankruptcy every 7 years and discharge a lot of that. For some, that's a feature not a bug.

quote:

Originally posted by Bytes:
That’s a longer gripe list, but it still boils down to the idea that one generation somehow ran the whole show while everyone else just watched from the porch. Are you kidding me?

Sure, there’s been plenty of grift, waste, and politicians getting rich off taxpayer money. That fucking dog's been hunting a long time, and it didn’t do it by itself. It took voters, donors, corporations, and a whole lot of people keeping the same folks in office election after election.

The debt’s real, and the bill’s coming. But Gen X, Millennials, and now Gen Z have all had a hand on the ballot box, and most of them kept voting for the same nonsense. Hard to blame the cow when everyone keeps milk­ing it.

Shipping the industrial base overseas wasn’t some boomer garage project, it was bipartisan globalization, pushed by corporations and happily supported by consumers who wanted cheap TVs and cheaper socks.

I am being somewhat of a devil's advocate and I know everyone else older and younger got to vote during boomers' lifetimes. But boomers are the biggest generation by far, and they have had an outside influence on the country, culture, and government. There's a reason they have been called the "me" generation.

The debt exploded pretty much from 1980 forward, which means that boomers got to vote in every election except the youngest boomers in 1980 election. Reagan deficit spent to win the cold war, like we deficit spent during WWII, but not as much. We should have changed to paying off that debt after the USSR collapsed, like after WWII. The "war on terror" after 9/11 is something we all know well so we don't have to discuss that waste of money. But Bush W. and a lot of the people on Congress that voted for it were boomers. And the people the joined up and gave their lives were Gen X and Millennials.

NAFTA was Clinton, China into the WTO was Bush II. I watched many factories close after that happened. Hell, boomers in the company I work for sent me to China to build factories for our products!

The overriding behavior in all of this is boomers doing what is best for THEM and not best for the country, the future, or their grandkids. Pelosi made a ton of money insider trading. Do you think the legislation she allowed to move forward was for the best of the country or the best of her portfolio?

That's enough for now, you are not going to change your point of view. But even as a 1/2 Italian person I can admit that Italians had an outside role in organized crime, and Italy as a country is a minor player on the world stage and perpetually failing to get very far in the modern world. Doesn't change the fact that I am not in organized crime and do not live in Italy. Things are what they are, even if individuals vary.

I have no idea what generation I am. And couldn't give a shit less.

I guess blaming your parents and grandparents is the way to go versus being grateful for the sacrifices they made to give you the opportunities you have.

quote:

The boomer life-cycle bitch is also noted: protest as a young dick head, adapt in adulthood, retire in old age. Weird how that works isn't it?

Boomers have ruined the world and somehow raised entire generations who are now helpless victims of that parenting. That’s an impressive level of incompetence?

Every generation thinks the one before it broke everything. The only difference is that some of us eventually notice we have a hand on the wheel. Have you? Nope.

Well said.

Was it Ben Franklin who said that if you’re not a liberal in your twenties you’re heartless and if you’re not a conservative in your forties you’re a fool?

Or something like that..

quote:

Originally posted by Lefty Sig:
^^^ Add a roomate and it's $1K a month. That's probably what they are doing. The college debt is income based minimum payments, which will cause the loan balance to increase over time. Minimum payment should be interest only to make sure the balance never grows. Everything else is credit cards, and you can file bankruptcy every 7 years and discharge a lot of that. For some, that's a feature not a bug.

Ok it’s $1000 per month. Now add $800 a month for a car payment (for 6-8 years). The new iPhone each time it comes out. The student loan debt. The credit cards. The answer is still the same.

The younger generation believes that everything I have that took me 50 years to get should be theirs right now. And massive debt is the answer. And the housing market reflects this. We were talking about real estate prices and why they are so high. People live way above their means.

My kids and their spouse are all in their 30's. They've all been voting since they were 18, so nearly 20 years for the oldest, and at least 3 Presidential elections for the youngest.

Their age cohort vote substantially left. I believe only 3 of the 9 of my kids/their spouses vote mostly red.

And then my parents and grandparents, who were all pre-1933 born, voted largely Dem through JFK, and then after that many of their generations were frightened into supporting the left with threats to their Social Security in campaign ads.

Blaming boomers is dumb.

quote:

Originally posted by Fly-Sig:
Blaming boomers is dumb.

Correct. The generation is not bad, people within that generation were/are bad. Not unlike the priest scandals. The Church isn't bad, priests within that Church were/are bad.

But, it is easier(lazier) to generalize.

quote:

Originally posted by Lefty Sig:

As the boomers die off, everyone after them is left holding the massive national debt bag. The day of reckoning hasn't happened yet. When it comes it could rival the Great Depression.

Not only true, but there's a deeper thought hidden there. No person is responsible for someone else's actions. No child is responsible to pay his parent's debts. As the national debt spirals up, very much of it is due to long-past spending. It isn't debt from fixing a road last summer or fighting a world war for the past 5 years. Some of the debt is from before half the country was born.

At some point, a large portion of voters will refuse to be responsible for the debt problem, and rightly so.

They'll blame the boomers even though every generation voted for, and were elected to office, creating the debt. Rightly or wrongly, it will be the excuse to default on the debt.

The crisis will be epic, far beyond the Great Depression.

quote:

Not only true, but there's a deeper thought hidden there. No person is responsible for someone else's actions. No child is responsible to pay his parent's debts. As the national debt spirals up, very much of it is due to long-past spending.

I have told this to my now adult children: "Yours is the generation that will repudiate all this debt. At some point you will be so burdened by it that you will figure out that you didn't incur this debt and you will decide you don't want to be responsible for it."

At that point, everything changes.

quote:

The crisis will be epic, far beyond the Great Depression.

Yes.

This is nonsense. The government is responsible for it's debts - "full faith and credit of the U.S.A."

Defaulting means skyrocketing interest rates, crashing of the dollar, crashing of T-bill yields, banking collapse, and institutional investment collapse - a.k.a. pension funds.

If anyone thinks things are unaffordable now, just wait...

quote:

This is nonsense. The government is responsible for it's debts - "full faith and credit of the U.S.A."

By 2042 net interest will squeeze out everything else... we are creating a generation of debt slaves.

Think Uncle Sam Owes $37 Trillion? It's Far Worse Than That

https://www.zerohedge.com/econ...illion-its-far-worse

quote:

Originally posted by Lefty Sig:
This is nonsense. The government is responsible for it's debts - "full faith and credit of the U.S.A."

Defaulting means skyrocketing interest rates, crashing of the dollar, crashing of T-bill yields, banking collapse, and institutional investment collapse - a.k.a. pension funds.

If anyone thinks things are unaffordable now, just wait...

Do you have your hand on the wheel Captain Crunch? My family is fairly well prepared.

quote:

Originally posted by Bytes:

quote:

Originally posted by Lefty Sig:
This is nonsense. The government is responsible for it's debts - "full faith and credit of the U.S.A."

Defaulting means skyrocketing interest rates, crashing of the dollar, crashing of T-bill yields, banking collapse, and institutional investment collapse - a.k.a. pension funds.

If anyone thinks things are unaffordable now, just wait...

Do you have your hand on the wheel Captain Crunch? My family is fairly well prepared.

no need to be coy, thank you for making my point.

quote:

Originally posted by FenderBender:
no need to be coy, thank you for making my point.

Ummm OK, you are 100% correct! I think I get it now. Thanks for the lesson in logic. I'll be forever grateful for your deep logic and forward thinking!

quote:

Originally posted by chellim1:

quote:

Young people who “can’t afford” a house seem to afford a whole bunch of shit that earlier generations didn’t have, couldn’t afford, and didn’t need.

Expensive phones, expensive cars, expensive vacations, fancy coffees, eating out regularly, this list writes itself. Plus the reason they don’t make a lot of 1198 sq ft houses is because younger people would not buy them. They can get bigger apartments.

When my wife and I got married we had an apartment for the first year. It was the cheapest apartment we could find. It didn't even have air conditioning. We ate the cheapest food we could buy. We drove beater cars. We scrimped and saved and within a year we had a down payment for our first house. It was only a 1440 square foot home, but we thought it was a castle.

But... back then nobody had a cell phone or a cable bill.

Problem is, 90% of the people 35 and under won't scrimp at all or save. At least here in South Florida, they all drive leased BMW or Mercedes while drinking their starbucks latte and and texting on their iphone 17 pro while driving down the street!

quote:

Originally posted by reloader-1:

quote:

Originally posted by jimmy123x:

quote:

Originally posted by chellim1:

quote:

Young people who “can’t afford” a house seem to afford a whole bunch of shit that earlier generations didn’t have, couldn’t afford, and didn’t need.

Expensive phones, expensive cars, expensive vacations, fancy coffees, eating out regularly, this list writes itself. Plus the reason they don’t make a lot of 1198 sq ft houses is because younger people would not buy them. They can get bigger apartments.

When my wife and I got married we had an apartment for the first year. It was the cheapest apartment we could find. It didn't even have air conditioning. We ate the cheapest food we could buy. We drove beater cars. We scrimped and saved and within a year we had a down payment for our first house. It was only a 1440 square foot home, but we thought it was a castle.

But... back then nobody had a cell phone or a cable bill.

Problem is, 90% of the people 35 and under won't scrimp at all or save. At least here in South Florida, they all drive leased BMW or Mercedes while drinking their starbucks latte and and texting on their iphone 17 pro while driving down the street!

jimmy, you and everyone else is absolutely ignoring the PROBLEM.

If you are part of the 10% who does scrimp and save, you still can’t buy a house.

That is why no one is having kids right now.

We can fix the Starbucks issue and iPhone issue later; I’m focusing on those that do it RIGHT.

You absolutely can, you just have to prepare yourself by scrimping and saving and wait for the next opportunity. Generally there is a slow down or recession every 7-10 years. 1987, 1994 dot com burst, 2001, 2008-2013. 2009-2014 was an excellent time as prices on real estate were incredibly cheap, 2019-2021 also an excellent time with interest rates at 3% on a fixed 30 year mortgage.

I know someone that's 50, who has never made over $40k in his life and owns 7 condos all worth around $200k each and all of them now paid off. He scrimped and bought the first, then the second, then the next and next and next.......and rented them out, then started paying one off at a time, starting in early 2003 without anyone's help and making $25-30k a year back then. No College education.

Excuses are for people that don't have the drive to do.