POLITICS Democratic Nominee 2020 Lollapalooza

My starting salary lasted less than a year. After that, I was making 55% more. I'm just saying.

 

how long ago was this?

 

Changing the subject, or trying to call me old?

 

I’m not saying it’s less important necessarily. But to review:

-starting salaries flat or nearly flat for 50 years
-college tuition up 4-5x in that same timeframe
-students leave college now with their debt load comprising an exponentially higher % of their starting salaries and by extension their salaries early in their career
-loans charge interest, so you can’t compare the debt load divided evenly across 30 or 40 years to a cell phone bill

Do these things, taken as a whole allow you to see that there’s problem and that it’s effecting the ability of young people to build wealth. What do you think happens when so much of a generation’s early career earnings are used to service that debt? Perhaps they build an investment portfolio at a much slower rate. Perhaps they rent for far longer than previous generations, which not only is more expensive but locks you out of another wealth building tool.

And as a reminder, I’m not complaining. I’m doing just fine for myself. But I don’t see how you can ignore these things.

 

And people have stated multiple times in this thread that college costs went up significantly because the federal government made getting money to attend college relatively easy. Those people are proving that the value of a college degree hasn't gone up despite its 4 to 5x price increase. If anything, the value has gone down because so many more people now have access to it.

This is another reason why I don't see many comparable scenarios out there.

 

no. again i'd rather make 35% more over my career than not be $35k in debt.

 

My issue is everyone wants to fix the symptoms and not the problem. Just like healthcare we quibble over the price and quality of insurance and not over the cost of healthcare. Here we complain and want to rectify student loans and not the price of education. Government takes it over, yay. The root problem is still there and getting worse. The only difference is instead of paying it directly, we pay it via higher taxes. Or we tax the shit out of corporations (since that is the panacea of all our ills) and we pay for it in the higher cost of goods.

Perhaps the biggest downside to democracies in general, is that we can't think past the next election, have no desire to tackle hard, long term problems. China may very well eat our lunch by the end of the century. Sure their government sucks and its largely totalitarian, but their leaders are there for life, giving them the advantage to plan and execute long term policies.

 

it takes some serious arrogance by millennials to think they'll be the one generation of Americans in history to be worse off than the generation before it.

 

I haven’t said that and that’s not generally the thrust of what we’ve been talking about. Maybe by 50 or 60 we’ll have built wealth that far surpasses any previous generation. But as it stands now, that is not happening. And it’s happening more for the reasons I’ve outlined than due to laziness or an incredible desire to eat avocado toast.

 

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/07/01/politics/2020-democratic-candidates-poll/index.html

Got to get Marianne's numbers up though.

 

just trying to discuss it. I have no idea how old you are, and only ask to get a frame of reference as to if this is within the last 10 years or not. whether you are 100 or 18, I won't dismiss your opinion. may argue with it.

 

I can work with this.

 

It's gonna happen long before then. 2075 at the latest.

 

that would be ironic. decades of decrying so-called socialism, only for the real communists to get ahead.

 

A good totalitarian system will get the job done. They are smart enough to let free markets have it's say in their country and rule social life with an iron fist. I'm not saying I like it, just that it's effective.

 

anybody's game for the top 5 or 6. this might turn into a 3 way race pretty quick. if Sanders stumbles again, he's going to hemorrhage points to Warren and others.

I just don't see Biden hanging on as the field shrinks. he has his loyal bastion, but he isn't likely to pick up steam, it seems to me. dunno. still a long way.

 

No government system can beat a benevolent dictatorship. But a well oiled communist system that gives its people just enough to keep them happy while ruling mercilessly elsewhere is a close second, as far as longevity goes.

 

is there an example of a well oiled communist system? or is China the lone example?

 

but there's the rub. people in the 60s weren't building wealth by 25 or 30 either. there's an expectation that it should happen faster than is realistic. i answered the phones for the first 5 years in the investment business. try getting someone new to do that now without them thinking you are insulting them. i'm not trying to be the old man screaming at clouds, but it does FEEL like there is a generational difference here.

 

Has the Soviet Bloc not have been so hard-headed about the government orchestrating everything, they just might have pulled it off. They just ran a ineffective system that was doomed to collapse sooner or later.