And much of the reason for the increasing impoverishment is the 1000-words-value of THIS picture. Much of the blame is simple greed and those who have the power to feed it: the already obscenely rich 1%ers, our gargantuan corporatocracy and it’s oligarchs, and the supply side economic sham purveyors who are owned by corporate America and have been promoted by the Right and consumed by their moronic sheeple for more than 30 years now. .:
http://static.fjcdn.com/pictures/Republicans+doing+it+wrong_88cb1c_3773340.jpg
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Buying a $200 smartphone isn’t the problem. I think the problem is how we define the word broke. Millennials and the younger members of Gen X (like myself) are dealing poorly with the reality that we’re not going to start off where our parents ended up or even where our parents were in terms of income, home ownership, etc., when we were kids.
Many of us, though certainly not all, grew up in solidly middle- or upper-middle class households. We had at least one parent who went to college. Our parents probably made more in their 20s and 30s than their parents made in their 40s and 50s. Mine certainly did. Millennials can’t make that claim. And that’s fine. It’s unreasonable to believe that we are going to immediately make the same gains over our parents that our parents made over our grandparents. We’re going to start out in starter homes and condos, just like our parents did. We’re not going to start out in the houses are parents bought after being the workforce for 10-15 years. And there’s nothing wrong with that. We’ll get there.
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And vote. I was 18 and voted int he first election where 18 year olds were allowed to vote in all national elections, and have not missed an election since. I am appalled at the level of non-engagement of millennials— all smoke and haze, and no fire.
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Get off your asses complacent generation. Nothing is gonna get done in this country until you take to the streets. And stop listening to shit music. We are in the crossroads of history…this whole thing is going down…meanwhile you’re listening to Taylor Swift and Iggy Azalea, face buried in your iPhone waiting in line for the new iPhone.
This is the bottom line; Millenials stayed home in droves this last election, and a conservative party that should have been on its knees by any objective standard instead has majorities in both Houses and will make things even worse. Until you guys organize, get involved, and reliably vote as a generation, you are going to get screwed.
And Boomers aren’t taking your lollipops, children; The top .1% are stealing from us all, putting you in impossible debt and making us work until we drop dead.
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The new Plebeians…
Word! …and spot on! The “Trickle Down Theory”: The theory that the middle class and the poor can subsist and then flourish on the scraps dropped by the wealthy, and can be improved upon, making it better for everyone, by providing the wealthy bigger and bigger meals. And America has bought that for more than three decades.
http://oxfamblogs.org/fp2p/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/trickle-down.jpg
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Thank you for this post - it is right on point and millennials (including my own kids) really need to hear your message.
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I get pretty sick of people who condemn others because they enjoyed one luxury in life. I’ve got a relative like that, ragging on and on about how the people in his apartment building who are struggling to pay the rent should be out on the street because they had the audacity to own a TV. Yes, if you’ve got to own every gadget it is a hole in your pocket, and many underestimate how the monthly fees for cable or a cell phone quickly add up to more than the device cost, but consider that if you see a young person with a cell phone, that may be the only luxury they’ve got to make life bearable, and they may be sharing an apartment with 3 housemates to even afford that.
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Some good points, but take it a step farther. University revenues come from four main sources: tuition, direct state appropriations, donations, and IDCs on federal research. (Universities are trying to gain patent revenue, too, but this is modest, uncertain, and very tricky when patents came out of research funded by taxpayers or an industry-university partnership.) State appropriations falling dramatically on a per student basis, and federal research funding is declining (thanks, GOP) and the competition for it is increasing. In the aggregate, donations per student are pretty much steady. That leaves tuition to pick up the slack.
In terms of outlay, it’s true that student services – some mandated by the government, some “mandated” by the competitive marketplace and student demand – have been increasing. But, the bigger story is that around 80-85% of a university’s operating budget is in personnel costs, about 1/3 of which is in benefits (e.g., health care insurance). Revenues have to rise faster than inflation because health care costs have been rising faster than inflation.
The solution, for millenials, is to push back against the decline in state funding for higher eduction, push back against the decline in federal funding for research, and push for single-payer healthcare. And to wake up and realize that Rand Paul is not their friend.
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I agree with all of this.
No, not if you look at the data.
The broken promise of the American Dream is not that today’s young people don’t have the advantages or lifestyle now that their parents enjoy now. It’s that many of today’s young people will never get to where their parents are now. They aren’t benefiting from state funding for higher education like their parents did. They’re not benefiting from upward wage growth over the life cycle, like their parents did. And, they certainly aren’t living in a world where GDP gains translate into gains in prosperity for the middle class, or even upper middle class.
Plus, they are also coming of age in era of rising income inequality, unlike their parents’ generation. More inequality means, among other things, that it takes a greater share of your income to live in a district with decent schools for your kids, or in a safe neighborhood. (Read Bob Frank.)
The millennials are also part of a generation where the link between parental wealth and the kids’ wealth as adults is getting stronger, not weaker. If it seems like more of the good breaks in life are going to the kids of the wealthy (because they are), is it any surprise that kids of the middle and working classes feel discouraged?
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LAzY MillENnials. If YOU’re NOT MAking Enough TO buy A hOUSE, GEt A Better PAyING job. LAZy MillennIALs SHould’ve STuding SOMEthING other THAN Art HistORY in COLLEge IF they didn’t WAnt TO know IF I want FRIEs with MY ShAKE!!11!!!one!!1!!!
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Exaggerate much!!! Most Boomers are Big Business. I am ROTFLMAO on that one.
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O cry me a river.
I grew up very poor. I had to go to work as soon as I got out of school. I know what it’s like to struggle and come from a family who struggled to put food on the table.
I am not unsympathetic to the plight of millennials but blaming boomers for their ills, pisses me off and as someone said above, get out and vote to change things instead of burying their heads in their fucking phones and never looking up to see what time of day it is,
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You are not the one that others talk about, What are your friends doing? What are the ones you went to school with doing? What the ones still in school doing? Are they organizing or running for office with good ideas and a willingness to be heard within the political system? OWS was a joke. It did not accomplish anything except a few weeks of news coverage that was unflattering at best, and when it came to giving a cohesive message, it was a complete loss. If you want to know how to get a message across - then find one and stick to only it for a start.
You need people to come together across all ages to be successful, but if you damn ALL Baby Boomers, you lose a significant portion of your necessary support. Remember, a good many of those Baby Boomers have lost their retirements while being saddled with your student loan debt because you cannot meet your obligations because the same employers that pay low wages to you are paying low wages to them.
There is a recent article on Yahoo about young Republicans who are being elected to political office and their support for the current GOP policies. They are your generation and they fully embrace the same horrific policies as their parents and backers. You need to get young Democrats to stop being all tech-y and start getting down in the dirt and fighting back on the political stage. Find your young Elizabeth Warrens and Bernie Sanders, and push them hard at the state level to run for legislatures and community leadership offices. Build a network of them across the nation that can then run for Congress to reverse the policies that are crippling all but the 0.1%. This is how the GOP built its strategy, and it unfortunately works. Use old fashion campaign techniques as well as social media to get out the word - they are cheap and they are personal. Talk to voters and listen to them. And stop blaming others for what you and other Millennials can change.
In the past, it was the very young and the very old that fought wars - well, we are at war with a very small portion of our own citizens who think that we can be enslaved for their benefit. Those of us who are older and your generation must come together to be the warriors in this battle because we have the most to lose, and until we stop blaming each other like the media wants us to do, the 0.1% will win and we all lose.
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The best part: the people who benefit most from maintaining the status quo trickle-down fairy tale that has destroyed their children’s future and saddled their grandchildren with debilitating debt while grossly expanding the wealth gap…they just LOOOOOOOVE to scream that we’re destroying our children’s future and saddling our grandchildren with debt" as their excuse for maintaining precisely that status quo.
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I think the “every available gadget” idea that seems to obsess Chammy is a red herring, and the idea that a smart phone is a luxury plays into that. Wouldst it were so! If you don’t have let’s say, an IPhone, or some gadget that keeps you connected, you can’t participate in society. If you are out there hustling for work can you be sitting by a land line all day? Thanks to late-stage Capitalism, most workers or wannbe workers need to be connected by multiple flavors of communication at all times.
Chammy is just having a “hey kids get off my lawn” moment.
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Sorry to troll, but the time of day is right there on the phone =P.
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