patrick.net

I feel like I should address the jealousy in this thread.

Just so you know, most boomers are broke. This healthcare thing isn't for boomers, it's for insurance companies and healthcare providers. They are the beneficiaries. Boomers, hell they have to pay more now too.

FortWayne says

Just so you know, most boomers are broke. This healthcare thing isn't for boomers, it's for insurance companies and healthcare providers. They are the beneficiaries. Boomers, hell they have to pay more now too.

Dan lives next door to Cruela Deville so thinks he's got a grasp on the American senior.

Dan8267 says:
"They are hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt for some worthless degree for jobs that have been shipped off to slave labor markets in Chinda by the Baby Boomers."

It's too bad the Millennials couldn't vote a Ballot or vote with their Dollar to stop outsourcing.What happened to the Right to Vote? It's OK' they've got their got their outsourced hi-tech gadgets to play with.

I can't believe that the Constitution makes it mandatory that students go to college & take on massive debt & their parents must co-sign the debt documents.

Everyone knows nothing's their fault.

John Bailo says

Dan8267 says

That's something that could not have happened before the Internet. It could not have happened with the phone systems of the 1980s.

The jump was communications at the speed of light.

Before the telegraph, information moved at the speed of the horse.

After the telegraph it moved at the speed of light.

Can you think of any other change since WWII that is even remotely as big a leap?

So the integrated circuit is not that big a deal compared to a vacuum tube but hydrogen powered cars are the savior of humanity?

BTW even speed of light communications technology is old hat:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoke_signal

http://www.romanobritain.org/8-military/mil_signalling_systems.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heliograph

Dan8267 says

They are hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt for some worthless degree for jobs that have been shipped off to slave labor markets in Chinda by the Baby Boomers.

Boomers didn't send jobs overseas. It's the assholes who like to exploit everyone around them for personal gain who off shored American jobs.

Dan don't blame boomers, you are misdirecting your frustration. Real outsourcing assholes are out there and they are very well off. Boomers on the other hand... are broke trying to make ends meet.

CaptainShuddup says

Dan lives next door to Cruela Deville so thinks he's got a grasp on the American senior.

That would explain where all my dalmatians went!

HEY YOU says

I can't believe that the Constitution makes it mandatory that students go to college & take on massive debt & their parents must co-sign the debt documents.

Everyone knows nothing's their fault.

Correct, it's not the Constitution that mandates young adults go to college and get take on massive debt. It's our economic system that mandates that.

College is a tax on the entry into the skilled workforce. If you don't pay that tax, you aren't allowed in the skilled workforce. Businesses will throw away your resume without even reading it if the software pre-scan doesn't detect a college degree on it.

And no, it is no fault of the young adult that the system is set up so severely against them.

New Renter says

BTW even speed of light communications technology is old hat:

The earliest and most primitive telecommunication device is the spark-gap generator, whose signal, non-visible light, travels at the speed of light.

FortWayne says

Boomers didn't send jobs overseas.

I'll grant it that the selling off of U.S. manufacturing, done mostly in the 1970s and 1980s, was the fault of pre-Boomers. But the huge sell-off of 21st century, high tech jobs during the late 1990s and the early 21st century is almost entirely due to managers of the Baby Boomer generation. They were the decision makers deciding to kill STEM and cause the greatest brain drain in all of mankind's history, the brain drain killing technology in America.

If power sniveling was a marketable skill, the Millennials would have whipped the baby boomers asses by now.

FortWayne says

Boomers didn't send jobs overseas. It's the assholes who like to exploit everyone around them for personal gain who off shored American jobs.

Dan don't blame boomers, you are misdirecting your frustration. Real outsourcing assholes are out there and they are very well off. Boomers on the other hand... are broke trying to make ends meet.

People who outsource are not the assholes. People who raise taxes and the cost of doing doing business, thereby preventing new jobs arising taking advantage of lower cost imports are the assholes. Replacing old jobs with new jobs is a necessary process for improving standards of living. The early destinations for out-sourced jobs, like Latin America and East Asia, are experiencing the same thing as old labor intensive manufacturing jobs are in turn out-sourced to places of even less expensive labor, as local standards of living have improved dramatically.

sbh says

Dan8267 says

College is a tax on the entry into the skilled workforce. If you don't pay that tax, you aren't allowed in the skilled workforce.

Bullshit. The Millennial building manager who runs my highrise condo in San Antonio worked his way up to that position from sweeping construction site floors. His skill set is entirely outside his formal education, reflects his worldly abilities and demands a comprehensive grasp of many things that he could only have mastered through raw experience.

And that applies how to biochemistry, materials processing, semi-conductor research, chip development, nano-tech, medical doctors, pharmaceutical research, etc.?

And how do you reconcile the view that a college degree is not a requirement for competing for the skilled, high-paying jobs with the following graphs?

And you're telling me that it's entire the arbitrary preferences of the Millennials in deciding whether or not to go to college.

College sucks ass, but you need the sheepskin to compete. So yes, it is a tax on entry into the skilled workforce. We can fix this problem, but only if we acknowledge its existence.

sbh says

I'm surprised you're such an apologist for them.

I see no reason to blame the Millennials for the flaws of a system built before they were even born.

Dan8267 says

College sucks ass, but you need the sheepskin to compete.

Dreamers who opt to be\stay relevant forge their own beaten path.
Competition is for suckers, to get a head in this America you better be a judge, rather than a contestant, and the only person you need to be judging is your self.

Dan8267 says

And that applies how to biochemistry, materials processing, semi-conductor research, chip development, nano-tech, medical doctors, pharmaceutical research, etc.?

Degree requirements for certain jobs are for two reasons:

1. Industry transferring the cost of employee training to students and their families. Keep in mind, those industries would be quite happily transferring the cost of employee training to foreign parents and foreign countries . . . not necessarily a loss to us. As for those "high paying jobs" . . . ask the 20+ year tech veteran laid off by IBM/DEC/Compaq with obsolete skills, or those got MBA specializing in running internet, LOL. Frankly, I don't think there is another 40 years left in the semi-conductor industry as we know it, and doctors will probably make much less relatively to societal mean regardless whether Obamacare succeeds or fails, so those want to spend 8+years and take on half a million debt to get into the currently hot field, invest with care.

2. Paper requirement for jobs that have little ways of measuring performance standards, such as many government jobs.

And how do you reconcile the view that a college degree is not a requirement for competing for the skilled, high-paying jobs with the following graphs?

I will take a huge grain of salt with many of those graphs. They are not normalized for the aptitude of the students or the socioeconomic background of the candidate. Not to mention backwards looking. The job market is saturated with youngsters with useless college degrees. The huge education debt has become a con on the students and their families.

sbh says

Dan, my point is that not getting "the" job targeted by a college degree is an insufficient excuse for the paralysis of the Mellinnials. Having focused on a sole endeavor, which didn't pan out, they appear to pull up the drawbridge and pout.

To what extend Millennials have "pouted" over their crappy job prospects, I have no idea or opinion. Even if this is the case, the pursuit of a college degree, no matter the expense, is one the Millennials have been forced into. I cannot blame them for getting in debt when the entire system was set up so that they had no choice.

sbh says

Not only do they feel entitled to an outcome they feel entitled to it transpiring in just the certain way they envisioned. If that is enough to trip you up for decades you didn't deserve the shot at it in the first place. It's as if that one job was singled out and reserved for them, and fuck it man, if some boomer took it or kept it or squandered it, then all the rest of life is unfair.

That is not my impression. I fully understand why a person who obtained a college degree, especially a graduate degree, would be upset if the only jobs available to him or her was flipping burgers.

As for what the Millennials expectations were, and whether or not they were unrealistic, I'd have to do research to find that out. However, it is very important to note that there are only x jobs while there are y Millennials and x < y. By the pigeon hole principle, some Millennials are going to be left behind no matter what they do, how hard they work, or how productive they would be. You can't blame them for that.

Now granted, we could raise the number of jobs, x, if the workers performing those jobs didn't have to work 30 hours a week unpaid overtime. But that's another story.

Dan8267 says

we could raise the number of jobs, x, if the workers performing those jobs didn't have to work 30 hours a week unpaid overtime.

This is the kind of policy the Democrats should have prioritized in 2009. The Fair Labor Standards Act was written in the 1930s, and most workers today are exempt from the listed job categories. Also, with employer medical insurance being the norm (and soon mandatory with Obamacare), employers choose to overwork the few while unemploying the many. They don't have to pay an overworked person extra, but they would have to pay an additional head tax to employ an extra person. Also, private sector unions have been decimated by factors including NAFTA. What really amazed me was, after the 2000 election, Democrats failed to emphasize election reform - voter ID would be fine if everyone had ready access to ID and a reliable voting system, which they should have had. Instead of any of those priorities, Democrats enacted Obamacare.

One definition of tragedy is, the difference between what might have been, and what is.

Reality says

People who outsource are not the assholes. People who raise taxes and the cost of doing doing business, thereby preventing new jobs arising taking advantage of lower cost imports are the assholes. Replacing old jobs with new jobs is a necessary process for improving standards of living. The early destinations for out-sourced jobs, like Latin America and East Asia, are experiencing the same thing as old labor intensive manufacturing jobs are in turn out-sourced to places of even less expensive labor, as local standards of living have improved dramatically.

That's not how it works out. I've seen cities throw into poverty when jobs are sent overseas by the thousands. They are not sent overseas to make life better in America, they are sent overseas to reduce labor costs... more profit for a few selfish pricks.

And they don't just outsource a few jobs no one wants to do, these days corporations outsource everything they can... and they do it without creating other jobs in America. So the only thing the next generation of Americans will have to look forward to is being born into poverty and institutionalized slavery with no opportunities to succeed.

I've been very lucky in life, I was at the right age when opportunities were ample. Not amazing opportunities wealthy get, but there are opportunities to make a good living. Today I see the effect of outsourcing, very many young who have very few opportunities to look forward to, and a whole lot of debt. And of course the old who are thrown overboard and at an old age where a new career isn't going to happen.

Now that's reality for you.

Reality says

People who outsource are not the assholes. People who raise taxes and the cost of doing doing business, thereby preventing new jobs arising taking advantage of lower cost imports are the assholes.

Taxes aren't the reason executives outsource to slave labor markets. Salaries are. Slaves are cheaper than employees.

And the biggest tax the typical American pays, is the tax his employer imposes on him for the privilege of working. All wealth production comes from workers. What the worker produces minus his "compensation" (benefits and salary) is the tax the owner levies on the wealth creator. And right now that tax is over 80%. A bit excessive, eh?

Dan8267 says

Reality says

People who outsource are not the assholes. People who raise taxes and the cost of doing doing business, thereby preventing new jobs arising taking advantage of lower cost imports are the assholes.

Taxes aren't the reason executives outsource to slave labor markets. Salaries are. Slaves are cheaper than employees.

And the biggest tax the typical American pays, is the tax his employer imposes on him for the privilege of working. All wealth production comes from workers. What the worker produces minus his "compensation" (benefits and salary) is the tax the owner levies on the wealth creator. And right now that tax is over 80%. A bit excessive, eh?

Again, this really depends on the industry. Certainly true for a lot of manufacturing, but a lot of jobs are not outsourced even if resources overseas are much cheaper because the quality would suffer too much and eventually more money will be spent. Programming is a prime example, most critical programming jobs are still local and in-house. Locally grown organic food is another, naturally ;) There are also smaller clothing shops that sell only made in USA and do quite well. But it is always a combination of excellent domestic manufacturing plus the consumer giving up cheap shit that can make the difference ;)

Everyone is an ASSHOLE!

And everyone is victimizing all of us!

HydroCabron says

everyone is victimizing all of us!

...and they don't even care!

HydroCabron says

Everyone is an ASSHOLE!

And everyone is victimizing all of us!

I was beginning to think that too, but then, it occurred to me, it's not nearly paranoid enough.

The entire point of the Affordable Care Act is to force these young adults to pay way the hell more for insurance than they can or should in order to allow older, richer, stock-owning adults to pay less than their fair share

whatever the 'point' of ACA is, as a Georgist I think it's a good idea to front-load life expenses like health care and retirement pensions.

The age 20-40 group uses household disposable income to bid up the price of housing, both rents and mortgage payments.

By raising taxes on the 20-50 cohort and giving the goodies to the 50-80 cohort, we can basically get socialism for free, since it's coming out of rents and home prices in the end.

But if we eliminated FICA, rents would rise 6% immediately.

Nobody gets this.

(And it needs to be said that the 20-50 cohort becomes the 50-80 cohort in 30 years, so it's not like anybody is really getting screwed here.)

mell says

Programming is a prime example, most critical programming jobs are still local and in-house

Software development benefits from the tremendous scaling. The loom I sit at each day makes enough goods to fill a container ship, notionally.

Programmers are 0.3% of the workforce.

http://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/computer-programmers.htm

Dan8267 says

To what extend Millennials have "pouted" over their crappy job prospects, I have no idea or opinion. Even if this is the case, the pursuit of a college degree, no matter the expense, is one the Millennials have been forced into. I cannot blame them for getting in debt when the entire system was set up so that they had no choice.

Indeed. I was fortunate to graduate when tuition ($125/mo) was noise on the rent expense ($400/mo with roommates). Now it's more like $1000/mo tuition & $800/mo rent.

As for the pigeonhole principle, it also needs to be said that Gen X enjoyed a demographic shadow while Gen Y has to expand the economy to make room for itself.

I graphed that here:

http://patrick.net/?p=1235289

how the entering cohort (age 20-24) is larger than the leaving cohort (age 65-69) now.

Bellingham Bill says

whatever the 'point' of ACA is, as a Georgist I think it's a good idea to front-load life expenses like health care and retirement pensions.

Ah, but the ACA does not front-load those expenses. It would be far, far better if it actually did just that. The Boomers have not paid into this system.

Instead of giving the Boomers, the richest generation in American history, yet another free ride, require the Boomers to pay into the system with lifelong earnings just like the Millennials, a poor and largely jobless generation, has to do.

Right now, Millennials are expected to live in houses like this.
http://www.bM3LwqbZ70s

And all this while there are 18.5 million empty houses.

How about we take all those houses and all the stocks owned by Boomers and give them to the Millennials in order to compensate them for bearing the burden of carrying the Boomers. The Boomers can then move into those micro-units.

And if you think that's unfair, remember all the benefits the Boomers got simply by virtual of their birth year. They got the highest real wages, the highest appreciation on every piece of real estate they ever owned, the highest real return on stocks and bonds, and the highest level of job security. The Millennials just got the shaft.

Bellingham Bill says

The age 20-40 group uses household disposable income to bid up the price of housing, both rents and mortgage payments.

The Baby Boomers and the older Gen Xers were the ones who caused the housing bubble and the Second Great Depression. The Millennials had nothing to do with housing being unaffordable. The typical Millennial still lives with his parents because he cannot afford rent or a mortgage.

And the typical Millennial has little to no disposable income. Teenagers and young adults in the 1970s had far more disposable income as Elizabeth Warren proved. Today, housing, health insurance, and college eat up most of a household's income.

Bellingham Bill says

By raising taxes on the 20-50 cohort and giving the goodies to the 50-80 cohort, we can basically get socialism for free, since it's coming out of rents and home prices in the end.

Having one person pay for another's person expenses does not make it free. Reducing the costs to near zero makes it basically free.

Furthermore, there is a difference between socialism, the spreading of costs, and favoritism, the transference of cost from one group to another preferred group. Why should people who have already lived long and prosperous lives be preferred -- considered better human beings -- than people struggling at the beginning of their lives? It would not be socially just or socialism to systematically transfer wealth from blacks to whites. So why would it be socially just or socialism to systematically transfer wealth from Millennials to Boomers? In both cases, you are transferring wealth from the poorer to the richer. That's an increase in the wealth gap.

I'm all for spreading the risk across the entire population. Let's nationalize the entire health care system and use single payer to ensure fair and transparent pricing. But the ACA does neither of these things. The ACA is not socialism. It's a Ponzi scheme that will fail when the Millennials are old and their grandchildren are a smaller generation.

Any system that requires ever increasing populations of young people is doomed to fail. We've reached peak baby and our planet cannot sustain a population greater than 10 billion at our technological level -- hell, we're not even capable of sustaining the current population.

Systems, economic or otherwise, should be sustainable. And that means each generation must carry itself. Front-loading would do this, and I'm all for that, but the ACA isn't front-loading any more than any other Ponzi scheme. And that is exactly why it is doomed to fail. All Ponzi schemes, i.e. earlier players are paid out by the revenue from later players, are mathematically doomed to fail. It doesn't matter what your political goals or philosophies are. Math trumps politics.

And again, it is in my personal, selfish interest that the Millennials be forced to pay for the Boomers. By doing this, they will be taken out of the housing market for good, and that means I get to buy more house for less. I'm advocating what goes against my own selfish interests because I know it is the socially right thing to do.

That guy Dan seems pretty intelligent sometimes. But in this case, not so much.

"Waaa, waaa, life isn't as good as it used to be, waaa, punish an entire age group, the boomers. Waaa"

This is no different than the idiots who want to claw back pensions from public workers.

"I don't have a pension, waaahh, therefore it's unfair that anyone does."

"Why does it have to start now,....waaaa, sure I will be on the other side of it, when I'm old, but with my luck the economy will be way better for the people
that are young when I'm old. Why is it always my group that gets screwed, waaaaaa"

Dan8267 says

I'm all for spreading the risk across the entire population. Let's nationalize the entire health care system and use single payer to ensure fair and transparent pricing. But the ACA does neither of these things. The ACA is not socialism. It's a Ponzi scheme that will fail when the Millennials are old and their grandchildren are a smaller generation.

You're right about the first part. Single payer or nationalized would be way better. But the second point about the "panzi scheme" occurs even in a nationalized system if your grandchildren's generation is smaller, because they would have a tax increase to pay for the elderlys care.

humanity says

That guy Dan seems pretty intelligent sometimes. But in this case, not so much.

"Waaa, waaa, life isn't as good as it used to be, waaa, punish an entire age group, the boomers. Waaa"

When you make an actual counterargument, I'll respond. The above post says nothing.

humanity says

But the second point about the "panzi scheme" occurs even in a nationalized system if your grandchildren's generation is smaller, because they would have a tax increase to pay for the elderlys care.

Not at all necessary. It is quite easy to avoid the Ponzi structure and create a sustainable system. In fact, there are multiple ways to do so.

The way I suggested above was a response to Bill's statement that the ACA is front-loading. In fact, the ACA isn't front-loading, but an actual front-loading system would be one way to implement a health care system. Of course, if you front-load, either the Baby Boomers have to pay catch-up contributions to the system for not having paid into it their entire lives, or they have to be excluded from the system. Plain and simple.

Another way to avoid the Ponzi scheme altogether without front-loading is to use age brackets as I have suggested on several other ACA discussions. In some ways age brackets are even better than front-loading. No catch-up payments are required. And smaller and poorer generations will pay less for health care because they have less money and thus produce less demand. That negative feedback is a good way of compensating for the relative poverty of the poorer generations (think Millennials).

There are many ways to make the healthcare system work without systematically screwing one generation in favor of another. I have yet to hear a good reason why the Millennials should have to sacrifice their future well-being for the Boomers. Remember, in the not-so-distant future, the Millennials will be the old people and they will have nothing saved for retirement if the status quo continues.

mell says

Here's the German version ;)

Ach! Was fuer ganz bloedsinn Musik. Aber, Danke!

Dan8267 says

Having one person pay for another's person expenses does not make it free. Reducing the costs to near zero makes it basically free.

you completely missed the point that if we bias lifetime costs in the first 30 years, we get a win-win in preventing the process of overbidding for land.

Social Security arose when it became clear that people weren't saving adequately for their retirement years.

Medicare came about when it became clear that old people could afford the care they needed, a related problem of insufficient savings.

FICA and other payroll deductions are not the youth subsidizing the old, it's just pre-paying our eventual costs instead of blithely aging into them and getting blindsided by them.

Population-wise, we do not have a demographic fall-off coming.

Currently there are 150M age 20-55 and 77M age 56+
In 2030 this will be 161M vs. 108M.
In 2050 this will be 187M vs. 134M.

And that's a bogus argument since so much of our national income is spent paying ground rents, it's about two trillion I'd estimate (trillion for housing and another trillion for commercial leases).

If we don't have these mandated pre-payment expenses, we'll over-pay on real estate and under-save on our retirement.

As it is, 60% of the country doesn't have $1000 saved up.

Dan8267 says

And smaller and poorer generations

There are no smaller generations.

purple is school-age kids out to 2050

Dan8267 says

the Millennials will be the old people and they will have nothing saved for retirement if the status quo continues

the millenials will inherit every penny their boomer parents don't spend.

The boomer can't take it with them, unless they actually consume wealth like burning up diesel touring the country in RVs, buying tacky Chinese-made knick-knacks with zero resale value as they go.

Dan8267 says

The way I suggested above was a response to Bill's statement that the ACA is front-loading. In fact, the ACA isn't front-loading, but an actual front-loading system would be one way to implement a health care system. Of course, if you front-load, either the Baby Boomers have to pay catch-up contributions to the system for not having paid into it their entire lives, or they have to be excluded from the system. Plain and simple.

ACA is just a new welfare program paid for by the middle class and some small tax on medical device manufacturers.

I don't think we should let people die who can't afford healthcare, but they sure didn't address costs well here. I think the cost to top 1% here is close to $0.00, entire burden falls onto the rest of us.

I almost feel sorry for the millenials, they're screwed.
Perhaps blame the education system and media brainwashing they've been given.
Blaming boomers is almost funny. They have been properly "educated": a bad condition must be the other guys fault.
No, the fault is in your politicians and you electing them.
The laws of supply and demand apply to labor. So, what effect do you think 1. millions of illegals 2. millions of HB-1 visas mean for your a. job prospects b. wages?
Oh and remember: your taxes must go up because you have to pay for the education, medication, and incarceration of #1 above.
But you also like CO2 taxes on energy, hate energy production, etc. So what will happen? You'll go broke filling your tank to drive to your McJob.
Good luck you will all need it.
Me? I'm heavily in AAPL so I will get the millenials (and Chinese!) money bit by bit.
Want to know how bad the economy is? They now have McDonald's "dollar menu" ads with hipster millenials in them!
Now, that's harsh.

I feel sorry for the simple simon motherfuckers, who put gasoline in their diesel tanks, and then flail about aimlessly, wondering "how did this happen?"

If you had to grade societys collective level of knowledge when it comes to human biology and human nutrition, you'd be an asshole to give them anything but a big fat zero. Look at the crap that people eat. Look at the official government stance on nutrition. Now let's put on our surprised faces as to why everyone is so sick. Why modern man supposedly has such need for so much goddam "health" "care". Its beyond absurd

And now The State demands I fund the stupidity. Demands that I fund the worthless insurance industry. Enrich bigphrma further.

This is beyond absurd. If the information on human biology, and nutrition, were wholesome, rather than the perverted disinformation campaign that junk science, Harvard public health, and usfedgov have perpetuated. We wouldn't need health care reform in the first place

As a young adult, I can't funnel my much deserved anger over PPACA at rich, old farts. That's not fair. We should instead be upset with junk science, and the politicians who sold us down this fascist well. Be upset that with all the progress and technology, that we as a species don't have a fucking clue about how to properly fuel our bodies

errc says

as a species don't have a fucking clue about how to properly fuel our bodies

We know how. There is just little opportunity to make stupendous outsized profits off of a simple, fresh, Farmers Market and mostly local, unprocessed diet.
Corporate America is grinding the weak, deliberately misinformed, masses between the 10 gigantic conglomerates that sell them most of their empty calories and the colossal cartels that pretend to "cure" them but are really just disease management wealth pumps.
Middle Class America has really fallen down on their job as consumers, but there are still big bucks to be made in this final rendering operation.