I suspect that a large part of that has to do with student loans, which have grown by a huge multiple since 1996. With compounding interest it takes longer to recover from school.
I know I graduated with $75k loans at 8% interest. Even with say, a $100k salary, just the interest eats ~7% of the income. With the total payments being somewhere around 12% of your income. Combine that with increased taxes over the same time and a 34% reduction in worth seems about right (if we account for the loss in compounding interest from buying a home, 401k investments, etc)
This is certainly a factor, but I think HN's main demographic tends to overestimate the effect of college-related issues on the fortunes of the general population, where college graduates are still a minority. I imagine that the most important factor is the lowered rate of home-ownership.
2017: 33.4% of Americans (25+) have a Bachelors or higher
2007: 28% of Americans have a Bachelors or higher
1940: 4.6% of Americans had a 4+ year education (post high school)
You're right, college graduates are still a minority, but there is definitely a largely increasing. There's definitely more people enrolling than that.
70% of Americans will enroll in a 4 year degree but <2/3 of them will get a degree and 56% will drop out by year 6.Also Full-time students are 55% less likely to drop out of college than students who go to school exclusively part-time.[1]
So while college graduates are still a minority, it doesn't look like Americans who enroll in college are. They are clearly in the majority, and just because they don't graduate doesn't mean they haven't gathered debt.
Graduating does not count as dropping out. Since a 4 year degree does not require completion within 4 years, it makes sense to extend the statistics longer. That way you include people who tried to spend extra time to be able to graduate.
How do US universities work with regards to this? In the UK you don't really need to pass anything to graduate. I've got a BA (Hons), the BA I got for showing up, the (Hons) indicates I actually passed something.
Second I would guess the vast majority of drop outs are within the first 6 months? How many people are going to waste 6 years for nothing?
Somebody needs a pair of math classes to meet the requirements. They ignore it for 3 years. They then begin a 2-semester sequence of really basic math that is pretty much 7th grade (12 year old) level. They drop the first class, tray again and fail, and then pass. They fail the second class, fail the second class again, fail it yet again, and then are prohibited from attempting it because there is a limit of 3 attempts.
> How do US universities work with regards to this? In the UK you don't really need to pass anything to graduate.
In the US you have to maintain both satisfactory overall GPA to not be dismissed and pass a required set of classes (which may include a number of electives) in order to graduate.
Not necessarily. The reasons people drop out are family emergency, cost, personal emergency, and not being able to deal with the workload. Most of these reasons don't necessarily cluster in the first 6 months.
It's actually cheaper to own in many areas than to rent. What stops most people is their inability to save for a down payment and/or obtain a reasonable interest rate on their mortgage, both tools used by banks to hedge against the risk of lending. I'd argue that measures of that risk are somewhat arbitrary and reflect an institutional lack of faith in Americans' creditworthiness. So it's not that people can't own homes because they lack wealth, it's that wealth is hard to come by because they're not allowed to own their domicile.
Renters pay most of the cost of home ownership, with the added feature of being unable to control children’s schooling or meaningfully become part of a community.
Usually the argument against owning your home that is that inflation adjusted returns on real estate are not as attractive as investments in an index fund. In many, and I would argue most scenarios, that doesn’t really matter as the vast majority of people have minimal liquid net worth and renting eats up the cash flow that would allow them to accumulate wealth.
I bought my first and current home when I was 23 and refinanced to a shorter term. I bought near the 2006 peak and due to local market conditions have minimal capital gains, but in the near future will have no debt service costs whatsoever. That means the freedom to make less income, start a business, blow the money or accumulate cash or whatever.
Had I done the smart thing, I would have put 90% (or more, rents rose during the recession) of my current monthly mortgage obligation into rent. To the tune of $300k, allowing for fairly meager savings.
Now if I was sitting on a pile of cash that was a critical mass, and paying rent from my income cash flow, that’s different. But that is a much more rare situation.
> Renters pay most of the cost of home ownership, with the added feature of being unable to [...] meaningfully become part of a community.
Why can’t we become part of the community? I’ve been a renter for a decade now and I think I am more involved in my community via volunteering and local politics than the average person.
Further when I was a kid my single mom rented an apartment — during that time she worked to create a community at our apartment complex. When we moved there barely any one said “hi.” Now, almost a quarter century later she still keeps in touch with many of these old neighbors despite them being scattered all over the U.S.
Renting sucks, we both agree with that. But the trope about renters not caring about the community needs to go — it’s part of the reason apartments are illegal in the majority of California.
Most places in the US have minimal tenant rights. Leases are often 1 year and because of rental price floors geographic rents tend to not vary much.
Geography determines school placements, what little league your kid plays in, who your local representatives are, etc. I don’t mean to cast tenants in a bad light. It’s just hard to have deep roots if you have to move frequently.
The places that are exceptions have rent stabilization or weak markets. Rental markets always devolve into little geographical cartels where tenants have no leverage. But we live in an era where we pretend it’s a real market and dislike regulatory frameworks.
Someone like me is probably more common. You're the exception.
I've chased jobs for the last 15 years, moving to numerous states, several foreign countries, and for the last 8-9 years, about half a dozen different rental in the same metro area.
I have never been involved in my community, met neighbors, or gotten involved in really anything more than a cordial greetings to people I recognize.
I'd love to buy a house, but even the smallest condo in a decent area is $300k and as a contractor, I still have to often change work locations every year or more often. My commute might increase by an hour or more, each way, if I were unable to move close the work site.
I feel this is common for a lot of people these days, especially as marriage and especially children become less common. I have no incentive to be stuck in one place, and have done well to save a lot of money by being mobile and living frugally, without the trappings of typical suburban life.
>Why can’t we become part of the community? I’ve been a renter for a decade now and I think I am more involved in my community via volunteering and local politics than the average person.
If the person who owns your house decided to sell it tomorrow, how much protection do you have? Here in the UK, I have effectively none.
In general there are renters rights and the lease contract survives a sale. When you buy a property you need to look at contracts in place and whether they are incompatible with your desired use.
As far as I am aware, if you are in an assured shorthold tenancy, as the majority of rented homes are in the UK, your new landlord can serve a court order under section 21 for a no-fault eviction.
On the other hand, if you are renting commercial property for a business and have negotiated a lease, then the lease contract holds.
Any comparison of rent vs buy should be made by comparing interest+council rates/land tax paid to rent paid. You also need to be secure in the assumption that your house/land value will not drop. You also need to account for rises in rent. Changes in interest rates... all in all, it's more difficult than it sounds, and advice on this depends a lot on what your local property market is doing. In some places it can go either way.
assume home prices go up 5% and the stock market goes up 7%.
If I want to buy a house for 100k and put 20k as a down-payment and live in the spot for 5 years, I can make 8051$ off the stock market (invest 20k) but my home would have appreciated 27k$.
sure there are some other factors, and maybe my numbers are not right, but I think it gets at what you were saying, an advantage of buying a home is you can make a leveraged investment.
in general, houses appreciate in value over time, but that doesn't mean your house will. leverage multiplies your exposure to the upside and the downside of an investment, and a single house is a much more volatile asset than SPY. imagine how much it would suck to be upside down on that $100k mortgage after five years.
I have half a million I can liquidate, because I bought instead of rented. Many friends said it was a 'bad investment', but when the money gets spent either way, even a bad investment is better than none. It has never been easier to buy a home that you can afford thanks to loan programs and historically low rates, although now rising...
But yeah, even though in many ways a home is a liability, it has equity you can leverage. In many countries, homeownership conveys other perks. In the usa, homeownership is also a strong sign of being a 'good neighbor' as you have skin in the game, while renters see little reward or penalty for being poor neighbors.
There are of course shades of grey and other factors, but in general, the modern marketing to milennials that homeownership is futile or worthless is partly its own downfall.
Right, but it's really only an investment property if you already have somewhere else to live. It's more of a consumable asset with a tightrope walk between transaction costs, upkeep costs, depreciation, and inflation vs market price increases. And if you live there, it's different because to sell it you have to become homeless and/or use the money for new accommodations. Assuming that your investment has done well because housing prices have risen, then your new accommodations will likewise be more expensive too.
It might pay off a bit if you can see it through, especially if you can then move to a lower cost-of-living area, but it's hard to tell 30 years in advance whether you'll be able to keep that commitment and if it will pay off better than investing in index funds or other investments. Certainly some people found out the hard way in 2008 it doesn't always work out that well. In general, it may sometimes slightly beat inflation if you're lucky but under-performs the stock market.
The best real estate investment you can make is your own home. 100% guaranteed occupancy, no property management, 0% turn over, deductions on property tax, federal taxes, etc...
> The core of the "bad investment" argument is that the money doesn't necessarily all get spent either way.
Yes but that is part of the problem with the argument: it basically assumes perfectly rational actors who never cheat contributing to their index fund so they can go do/buy whatever. It’s a lot harder to just not pay your mortgage one month.
Especially if your measurement is net worth. A new college graduate today isn't just broke, she's personally insolvent and will be for the next few years.
> only 20 percent of consumers were meaningfully better off in 2017 than they were in 2007, with precious little income left to spend on discretionary retail
Reading this I assume it is rather caused by housing and food cost in metropolitan areas.
Every city job I’ve seen outside of the minimum wage service jobs pay better than all the surrounding small cities and towns. Which helps offset costs.
But certainly many urban areas have been very slow to match the right level and type of housing development for the needs of a growing population. The effects of building laws, zoning, political influence, rent control (particularly how it was done in 70s/80s), etc has a long recorded negative pressure on supply vs demand. So it’s very likely the wage differences aren’t sufficient for most people.
Above a given paygrade, yes, it offsets, but for most people, especially people working for public services, a fiver per hour more won't offset the extra thousands per month.
Note: one of my former landlord said he bought the property in the '70s we lived in for £25K, when he worked as delivery postman for £500/month. With living on his own in London, he bought the property after 6 years working for Royal Mail. Today, the median RML postman salary https://www.payscale.com/research/UK/Job=Postman/Salary is £18K (take-home pay is £1315/m), a 1-bedroom flat rental in the outskirts according to Numbeo (https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/in/London) is £1215, without the utilities and council tax (which was £92/mo for me) The remaining £100 is enough for nothing. But even if let's say share the flat with an SO and split the costs, it is unlikely you can ever afford a 1-bedroom flat.
The same for my parents' case in Hungary ('90s). My mom was a PA, my dad a factory worker. They were able to buy a flat when they were 20, a year after my sister born. My wife parents (factory workers) bought a small house in a village when they were 19. Both family needed no financial aid from their parents. Both properties had an interest-free mortgage around the 30% of the property value.
I wouldn't compare that era with the current one , because neither my landlord, nor our parents could afford holidays abroad or a car. But neither had to worry about where will you sleep or whether your family can afford fresh, quality food if you have to find an other job.
> I wouldn't compare that era with the current one
When it comes to housing stock these past gov policies and local private+public development grants can have a long term impact on any city well beyond any decade.
The various building/zoning/etc policies are often long lasting: Prior land use could have been terribly inefficient from some half-failed social housing project, left to arson/deterioration of perfectly good buildings in Harlem in the 80s due to rent control and impossible-to-evict tenants not allowing renovations on the building. Plenty of middle-class & wealthy people keeping (now) expensive apartments under rent-control, reducing new development appropriate for that market and taking stock and taxes/income the area. Prior low-density developed areas can be locked down for decades due to elderly and other single-family homeowners staying for long periods of time. The well-covered complete lack of development of anything in-between a single-family houses and condo/office highrises in most cities also for decades. Etc, etc.
There's plenty of legacy decisions keeping housing expensive and highly inefficient.
> Above a given paygrade, yes, it offsets, but for most people, especially people working for public services, a fiver per hour more won't offset the extra thousands per month.
Unless you're comparing San Francisco with East Bufu, Nowhere, living in a city does not cost 'extra thousands' a month.
> Millennials are the largest voting block in the US. They have more representation than any other demographic
Eh, millennials are a large population block. As a voting block, we're borderline useless [1]. And that's just voter turnout. The more important forms of participation--showing up to meetings--tends to show single-digit participation.
The graphic does say that the demographic aged 18-29 was the only one to see an increase in turnout between 2012 and 2016. But anyway, millennial voting was a lot more impactful in 2018.
There’s a seismic shift going on in voting in the UK. The traditional two parties are falling to bits - the old and uneducated are voting for Farage, the young and educated are voting for Lib Dem and Green, leaving the current bug parties - the ones of Thatcher and Blair - 4th or even 5th in the polls.
It is hard to separate the youth vote - when it bothers to turn up, from the educated vote, as the majority of people with degrees are under 40
The composition of the house is nearly-irrelevant, and the vast majority of states are straight red, or straight blue for their senators, the same exact way, year after year.
I think voting for our financial incentive has been obfuscated by the recent "authoritarian" vs "socialism" platform the Republican and Democrat have been pushing. We can't vote for what makes sense because we are voting on vague and diluted ideologies that will not find compromise. Even if I go out to vote, I can't vote for conventional fiscal responsibility.
At least when we had "political fluff" vs "extreme rhetoric" there was an opportunity to compromise and move forward.
"Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence. The results provide substantial support for theories of Economic-Elite Domination and for theories of Biased Pluralism, but not for theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy or Majoritarian Pluralism."
The fact that you are stating something so easily disprovable, and that I'm getting down voted speaks volumes on the state of social acceptance of age discrimination.
I'll quote from the wikipedia:
"In the United States, a person must be aged 35 or over to be President or Vice President. To be a Senator, a person must be aged 30 or over. To be a Representative, a person must be aged 25 or older. This is specified in the U.S. Constitution. Most states in the U.S. also have age requirements for the offices of Governor, State Senator, and State Representative"
Also, let's be clear. Generally a Senator or Congressman has a long history of local public office before being a Senator or Congressman.
Young people are locked out of those offices until AT LEAST 30. That means, they start running for some small office in their mid 30s, to end in higher office at a much older age.
Imagine how you would feel towards a teenager who complained he or she couldn't run for president. Age doesn't necessitate wisdom, but wow are they positively correlated.
You know there are a ton of correlations related to race and gender.
I thought those were no longer valid to be applied to huge swaths of people as it is discriminatory. I mean, not everyone who is part of a race or gender will have that correlation applicable to themselves.
Yes, some teenagers are dumb. Most. I was. But I've meet teenagers that are way smarter than I'll ever be.
I'm afraid many people view discrimination from a situational ethics point of view; it's only discrimination if it is the type of discrimination they don't like. Otherwise, it isn't discrimination.
Which then raises the question: if a teenager has managed the extraordinary feat of becoming a viable candidate, then they're clearly an outlier, and whatever you think about teenagers in general may not apply to them. Alexander the Great was... 20 years old when he became king and 22 when he began his invasions.
I searched for "teenage kings" and found https://www.history.com/news/6-child-monarchs-who-changed-hi... . Ptolemy XIII, from age "11 or 12": seems to have screwed things up. Fulin / "Shunzhi Emperor", taking power at 12, seems to have done a decent job. Elagabalus, becoming Roman emperor in A.D. 218 at 15, screwed up horribly. Pharaoh Tutankhamen, starting at "9 or 10", seems to have done well. Mary, Queen of Scots... I don't see much about decisions she made during her reign; she seems to have been trampled by more powerful enemies without it being obviously her fault. Baldwin IV of Jerusalem, from age 15: seems he did well. Incidentally, all of the above died in their 20s or younger (except Mary, who was locked up for life in her 20s).
So that's two screw-ups, three did-well, and one don't-know. The article says "who changed history", which means something significant happened, which might give us a biased selection—in many professions, the easiest way to do something very significant is to mess up something critical. I wonder if someone has made a more extensive and non-selected list.
Regarding this particular set, I also might say we should compare Elagabalus with other Roman emperors in the 200s A.D.—I'd guess there are other stinkers on that list... Looking at the others in the Severan dynasty... Elagabalus was succeeded by Severus Alexander (age 14!), who apparently did whatever his mother recommended, and seems to have done ok-ish (though the army grew to hate him and eventually overthrew him). Before Elagabalus was Caracalla, who co-ruled with his father Septimus (who did very well) starting at age 10 (!) and became emperor at 23 (technically co-emperor with his brother, but he had his brother killed that year), and was awful.
Hmm, interesting. Unfortunately the Severans after Septimus were all young, which makes it hard to tell between "the Severans being too young made them suck" or "the Severans after Septimus sucked". Let's look at another Roman dynasty... the ones after the Severan seem too short and interrupted by weirdness to judge... Let's try Flavian. Vespasian began the line, was a military officer before he was emperor, and did well; Titus, his son (age 40, also already a military commander), did well (until he died of a fever); Domitian, Titus's brother (age 30), seems to have been effective though possibly tyrannical.
It seems a main lesson from the first bunch of Roman emperors was, if the emperor chooses a successor for reasons other than "family", things tend to go well; if there is automatic inheritance, it tends to go badly. But it also seems to go along somewhat with age: Caligula became emperor at 25, Nero at 17.
It's possible that there's unexpected wisdom in the age-35 rule. Still... If someone had been tutored from a young age by great teachers (Alexander the Great was apparently tutored until 16 by Aristotle), then managed to gain a few years' experience running a large chunk of a mid-size company (perhaps by a parent bringing them along to meetings, having staff explain things, then having the kid do research and come up with his own proposals that he delivers in meetings, and ultimately grow into some CxO role) and, by all accounts, running it extremely well; and finally managed to rise to national prominence by, I don't know, identifying a national crisis and getting several companies to work together to fix it, and everyone who's interacted with him says he's great; and if he did this all by the age of 19, would you think he's a worse candidate than the last several presidents of the U.S.?
I've meet people in their late 90s who have more wits than people in their 70s.
I've meet teenagers who were way wiser than adults.
I'm not sure why people are so afraid of letting things run on merit. Can things go wrong that way? Yes. But it's not like the other way is perfect either. And let's be clear, what you are advocating for is discrimination. I've found most people who advocate for that don't do so with intellectual honesty, they like to call it a 'requirement'.
Fair point, I am advocating that we discriminate against would-be presidential candidates below a Constitutional age limit.
In your opinion, at what age should we let people vote? Smoke? Drive? Sign contracts? Drink? Have consentual sex? Get married? Require them to be off their parents' health insurance? Permit catch-up retirement contributions? Allow tax-free withdrawals from IRAs? Allow claiming Social security? Etc.
It would only be fair that people who are subject to adult taxes, regulations and jail should be allowed to participate in the processes that subject them to involuntary actions (such as taxes and jail) - This doesn't only mean voting but being eligible to be voted for - After all taxation without representation was literally the rallying cry of our nations freedom.
Given what we have now, 18. Stupid 18 year olds you say? No problem they won't get elected. What if someone does? Well, then that person is clearly an extremely exceptional 18 year old and might be smarter than both you and I. Basically, meritocratic participation. I'm not sure how someone can argue against it.
Now, if you want to put in a requirement to have some level of public service experience before being president, that is not discriminatory, though it opens up a whole other can of worms - Personally I'm against this, but at least such a requirement would actually make sense in a meritocratic way, instead of just being silly ageist discrimination, which hopefully one day will be seen for being similar to other vile views like racism, sexism and classism.
The rest of your questions aren't really relevant to this point.
> The rest of your questions aren't really relevant to this point.
I disagree. We, as a society, discriminate on age in myriad structural ways because we believe that it is beneficial for both individuals and society as a whole.
Maybe there are exceptional 6-year-olds who should be able to smoke, drive automobiles, and collect Social Security. But I see no reason for our culture to permit them to do so, even if they landed a majority of the Electoral College.
No one is talking about 6 year olds smoking cigarttes. Only you.
We are talking about adults being treated like adults when it's in societies interest (pay taxes, go to war, go to jail), but not being treated like adults when it isn't (get elected) - This is an issue.
The issues you bring up don't cover this issue. These questions are a whatabboutism, bordering on trolling given the extremity.
Specifically, you are responding to the following comment, so any comment that is a sub of this comment is expected to be on topic, which you will see your smoking 6 years olds are most definitively not part of:
"Yeap, and legally enforced age discrimination means we can't actually take many offices.
We can vote for old farts. We just can't be elected.
Double think starts: But that isn't discrimination. Because it is legal. Instead it is called 'age of candidacy'."
-----
Whatabboutims works like this: Person 1 says "adults are being discriminated upon so they can't be part of the political process"
Person 2 doesn't agree, but has no argument. So person 2 states "But what about children smoking? what about pensions? what about..."
Person 2 isn't (an many times can't) answer the point, so they try to highlight that some similar issue is happening in some other place in a way to undermine Person 1's position. But in the end... Person 2 isn't addressing the issue being brought up.
Just because you have the most voters doesn't mean you have the most representation. Feel free to ask minorities in cities for a century how their majorities worked for them.
The counter argument to this is that their representation is arguably higher now than any other time in history, so more representation (falsely) equates to less wealth by your supposition.
> I suspect that a large part of that has to do with student loans
I think that this is not just a USA issue but it is also happening in all Occident. Student loans are just one of the reasons. But, it is bigger than that.
Can't compare UK here, education is free in Scotland, £9k/annually in Wales (Welsh government can provide 67% grant every year, so it goes down to £3.3k), in England it's the most expensive, over £9k/ann and Student Loan Company has highest interest rates there.
That's not correct! If at any point in your life you make more than £25k they will add this tax on you, and your interested on the student loan is still growing, even when you're under £25k.
> In fact, this chart understates how badly things have gone for millennials, because it shows incomes before housing costs.
No, it does not, because the chart is weighted with CPI, which contains the housing cost. According to that chart, the millenials have the best living standards, but I seriously question the quality of the source, where the young adults take-home salary is above £15K, UK-wide.
Couple this along with the fact that millennials are largely choosing to live in cities which have seen the most dramatic cost of living/rent inflation.
Not sure it’s a true choice. It’s either live in the city and earn a 6 figure salary or literally go jobless. Small towns and cities don’t have jobs. If they did we’d see less people living in cities.
They sure do have jobs, but you can't land in a random small city and expect to find a specific pair of specialist jobs. Small cities work great for single-income families that aren't picky about which particular city they end up in. Non-specialist second income is fine too.
Example: There are lots of small cities with openings for librarians, and lots of cities with openings for CNC programmers. It is far more difficult to find a small city with both, so insisting on that sort of two-income situation in a small city isn't going to go well.
The same goes for nearly any kind of skilled employment. The jobs are there, but you can't throw a dart at a map of America and expect to find two very specific job openings in one spot.
This may be one factor driving the urban-rural political split. Single-income families are different from two-income families.
I don't think librarian salary is enough to pay for effectively trailing spouse.
Single income has very real consequences for both spouses (the one giving up work experience and the one being sole provider) and very real risks. It has consequences on familly dynamics and ressentments, especially when bad times hit and money are not to buy what both wants.
Moving wherever philosophy has also very real consequences on relationships and community that forms or rather does not form.
I know a librarian making around $100k in a small city. The job involves knowing ancient Greek and Latin, which surely affects pay.
Perhaps it wasn't the greatest example. It's what popped into mind as a skilled job that isn't just software or finance. Maybe a better example would be a dermatologist, an air traffic controller, a fire investigator, or a civil engineer.
Dual income also has very real consequences for both spouses. It causes plenty of resentment. Typically the woman ends up doing most housework, even if the man intends to do half of it. That right there is a huge source of resentment. Risk of divorce goes up greatly if the woman earns more. Finding affordable child care and ensuring that it is never interrupted becomes a source of stress.
While it is relatively important for the small-city people to be prepared to move, it is normal to stay in one place. Job hopping is less common. Small cities also often specialize in an industry, with several possible employers, so staying put while changing employer is often possible.
The urban environment has its own very real consequences on relationships and community. Residents are typically renters who can find themselves evicted. Because there is such a large mass of anonymous people, relationships are throw-away from the start.
Me being woman, I take dual income over single one in part due to consequences. The negotiation over household work is much better with dual income anyway. So is any other conflict situation, especially those about money.
The risk of divorce with woman earning real money is in part larger, because she has that option. See, the spouse that did not worked for six years have hard time in job market which compels her to stay in bad relationship. Does not even have to be abusive, just a bad one. And I am picking woman here as example, because it is woman who areore often in that situation - and you framed comparatively must smaller female problem as example for some reason. I do more household work is less of a sux then "I would leave if my confidence was not so low and if I had real job options" sux. Divorces do not happen magically. They happen because someone decided it is best solution for their present situation.
The "I am earning money and she does not understand and just do nothing whole day" resentment is real too.
Those are not the words of someone who intends to stay together.
Relationships are not automatic. They require stubborn commitment. If you are planning for an exit, you're going to get one. It is certain that there will be conflict, and you're ready to hit the eject button at the first sign of it. Infatuation does not last, and is thus not a suitable foundation for a mature relationship. Responsible people of integrity do not plan to abandon their commitments.
You plan for divorce from day 1, you unsurprisingly get one, and then you can justify your planning because it happened. This is circular.
I dearly hope you are at least honest about your intentions, and that you pair up with people who are like yourself, and that you have permanent birth control. Anything else would be extremely cruel and selfish. I suspect you're leaving a trail of shattered lives, broken homes, uprooted yet spoiled children, and suicidal exes.
You twisted "I want to have options if this turn bad and want to be on equal footing" to "plan to run away at first small conflict". Nice try to make it personal and recommend me to not have kids. So yes, I need the eject button in case I would marry someone like you and found out only too late. Of course it is good for you when partner does not have option to leave, because then you can respond to conflict the way you responded here and she can only shut up and take insult. Over time, it will affect her in negative way.
It just so happens that kids whose parents stay in bad relationship, whether verbally abusive or violent are not better off. It just so happen that these are more likely to appear when women dont have jobs.
Also, men dies and it is good to have the options in that case. Responsible people do not put themselves into massively vulnerable situation.
Lastly, it was you who tried to make it about women first by "in dual income men often don't pull their weight and therefore in marriage with such men it is better for her to have no income". I guess that assumption is that men who don't listen to her concerns when on dual income will somehow listen to them better in single income situation.
I don't think I twisted anything, given that you said: "Does not even have to be abusive, just a bad one. [...] Divorces do not happen magically. They happen because someone decided it is best solution"
It is nearly certain that a relationship will be bad at times. Much of the reason for marriage is to make it difficult to run off one day when you are frustrated and angry. Problems can be resolved, but not if people give up early. Willingly accepting a state of vulnerability is both a demonstration of commitment and a way to help resist the urge to give up.
Death is why you buy life insurance. You can also buy disability insurance.
If you marry somebody and then find out too late that you don't like them, that is unfortunate. You made that mistake. You need to take responsibility for it. That other person made major life decisions based on your promise to remain until death. That other person gave up their alternative choices for you, and can not now go back to choose differently.
Lots of men really intend to pull their weight with chores, but it doesn't happen. I think this often comes about due to differing standards, not a refusal to listen to her concerns. If both will clean the toilet when they see it dirty, but her idea of "dirty" is a single spot (urine, stray hair, skid mark, etc.) while his idea of "dirty" is that the floor is sticky and the bowl scum is peeling loose in layers, she will end up doing the job. He would clean a dirty toilet, but he never encounters one.
It is quite possible for marriage to be bad enough to leave without the partner being abusive. Abuse is about intentional harm, bad relationship about harm. Life insurance does not pay as much money as you imagine either.
When the reason partner have to stay with you is that she would be too poor otherwise, then it is not solved relationship problem. It is locked down person without freedom in bad situation.
> If you marry somebody and then find out too late that you don't like them, that is unfortunate. You made that mistake. You need to take responsibility for it.
Me taking responsibility for my part here is me leaving. It is also often because the other person makes mistakes and when other one refuses responsibility on them, it is not me. Whether abuse or simply partner who ceases to care about relationship (preferring friends, work, video games, hobby, whatever). That can happen with both genders and does.
Abuse escalates after marriage and after having children - precisely when it becomes harder for partner to leave. Abusers of both genders are not necessary stupid and can be very charismatic until they decide they don't need it anymore.
Same with indifference - the part when one decides checking out of relationship and ignoring partner effectively is good decision. Marriage should not be trap.
These are decisions partner made and may be result of them changing values (new friends, new ideology), they are not merely result of personality.
> Lots of men really intend to pull their weight with chores, but it doesn't happen. I think this often comes about due to differing standards, not a refusal to listen to her concerns.
Differing standards are solved literally by talking and listening to other side. She lowers hers a bit, he raises his a bit. When it is not happening, someone is not listening nor caring about relationship part here. There is the part where he cleans something because she has higher standard or because she asked. Or where he explains that he really thinks she is overdoing and she listen.
Frankly, I know only one man whose idea of clean floor is "sticky" or peeling scum. Not when somebody else is cleaning, not in hotel not in restaurant. I live in a culture that generally expect non sticky floors. The differences are not so much in opinions, but more of in habits and actions.
This idea that "Me taking responsibility for my part here is me leaving." is simply stunning in how upside-down and backwards it is. I'm not sure what the point of marriage is if you show it so little respect. Tax break? Taking unfair advantage of somebody who is more serious about marriage?
Marriage absolutely should be a trap. That is mutual. One enters into this willingly, partly as a demonstration of commitment and partly to help resist one's own urge to be destructive. Willingness to demonstrate a high level of commitment is one factor in obtaining a high-quality spouse. Fewer good-quality spouses will be available if you show signs that you are ready and willing to abandon your spouse.
Remember, you're supposed to stick around even if your spouse is drooling in a wheelchair and smells awful.
I won't claim that that would be perfectly fine, but I don't think it is much different from a megacity dweller being evicted from an apartment. It's not the end of the world to have to move. This shouldn't be so scary. I've done it more than once, and I still prefer the small cities.
Yes but not all cities are equivalent. I can sling code in Houston the same as in San Francisco or New York. While someone always calls out the extremes (as if everyone in SF is a $400k engineer), in general the economics work out in my favor in a cheaper city.
Not just that, but educational attainment in general, demographic changes, economic changes etc.
We've shifted from a population that does not die old, starts working early, stops education early, and does most of its work in the primary/secondary (agri/manufacturing) economy where its most productive when young.
To automating those jobs and shifting to a world where we grow old, stay in school longer, have high returns on education in our tertiary service-based economic productivity levels, which gets us to be most productive in middle age, which also coincides with most of our investments in personal housing equity, retirement funds and paying down debt.
Not a huge surprise that if you take a few age cohorts, that a young one will drop in wealth, while an older one will grow in wealth. Our society lives and works longer, and prepares longer for this work in school, which has more individual-benefits and thus higher individual educational debts at a young age.
As such, I wouldn't be surprised if the wealth-hump didn't just move over a few years. Losing 1/3rd wealth within a certain age cohort (18-35) would be no surprise if half the wealth of 18-35 year olds was generated at 32-35, and this shifted to 35-38. I'd be most interested in seeing a graphical wealth distribution by age, for different generations, then you'd know if this was a story of decline, or a story of shifting the 'prime productivity' age by a few years.
That having been said, my post was mostly on a 100-year historic scale. Things haven't changed quite as much since 1996, but I think it's still mostly linked to the same forces.
At that 75k loan, 8% interest, and 100k salary, if you pay 10% of your salary it takes you 11.5 years to pay off (and you pay almost 40k in interest >50% of principal).
Same numbers, but a 100k loan that goes to 20.25 years to pay off and you pay >100k in interest.
Though to be fair, if we put in the average student loan ($29800) and the average US household income (60309) we bring it down to 6.33 years and ~8k in interest (28% of principal). But it is unlikely that many college graduates are making the median household income as a fresh graduate. If we go to 40k/yr salary then it jumps to 11.5 years and 15k in interest (53%).
This also doesn't take into account that most of these loans are variable interest rates. Considering that, these numbers would put us on the lower side (of someone starting with an 8% interest rate).
The OP simply misspelled 'principal'. By ">50% of principal" they meant that the interest paid over the life of the loan is more than 50% of the original loan amount.
I have read the new wealth of nations by Surjit Bhalla recently. He describes this phenomenon and also includes the reasons of educational and international mobility. Education has been as accessible as never before in the last decades. Further, emancipation (rated "good" by the author") has contributed to more women studying and entering the white color workforce. And globalisation has contributed towards people moving globally to where the jobs are. This has lead to an oversupply of highly qualified people and the stagnation of real wages worldwide. Exceptions are developing countries where demand is still higher and yet is leading towards increasing wages.
The 8% interest on the loans seems high to me. Around here (Poland), a standard credit card is at 10% interest, and student loans should be much safer for the bank.
In the US, 8% is about right for a graduate/professional loan by the federal government[1]. I'm not sure about private/bank loans.
10% interest on a credit card would be pretty low for the US, AFAICT. Most first-time cards come with 23-24% interest, at least when I started searching for one.
It's true. I may have actually been higher for some loans until I got a couple of promotions and had enough of an income increase to be able to refinance to a 5 year 4.75% loan at SoFi. Which itself still feels high as you watch DAILY interest compounding happen.
I lean fairly liberal, but I think we can make significant strides with this issue in the US by simply changing what max interest rates are and how this interest compounds. The way things work right now truly feels like robbery when you're in the thick of it.
We could limit max interest rates. If that had been in place, your loan would have been denied. Would that have been better for you? Might you have then chosen to get an illegal loan at an even higher interest rate from organized crime, with a risk of violence for non-payment?
In the Netherlands, interest rates on student loans are currently 0% (they're tied to the 5 year bond interest rates), and there was a huge outcry when they planned to tie it to the 10 year interest rates instead...
Just checked my direct federal loans (the first source of loan funding for most US college students -- the second is private banks). Interest rate is 4.41%. I was lucky because federal direct loans covered my tuition, but many other students need to take private loans, as well.
It's extortionate, given that they're not dischargable in bankruptcy. There's no good reason for the student loan rate to be more than 1% above the mortgage rate.
Consumer loans with compounding interest should be illegal. The human brain is incapable of conceptualizing it and it results in inescapable debt once a person starts to fall behind on payments.
Also they specifically target people who've never had to deal with such things in practice, and lock them into a multi-year commitment (another thing they've never had to deal with) that they can never get out of while all of society tells them that if they don't do it they'll be a failure.
Even if you understand the abstract math as a teen, it's a bit much to expect someone to make an informed choice about the reality of resolving it over years which they have no experience with, and in a job market that they have no experience with.
It's a high-pressure predatory system with long-lasting consequences that targets the vulnerable.
I know I graduated with $75k loans at 8% interest. Even with say, a $100k salary, just the interest eats ~7% of the income. With the total payments being somewhere around 12% of your income. Combine that with increased taxes over the same time and a 34% reduction in worth seems about right (if we account for the loss in compounding interest from buying a home, 401k investments, etc)