generation limbo: 20-somethings today, debt, unemployment, the questionable value of a college education

but maybe heaven is like an ivy league campus in the 50s... no jews or gay ppl

no women either

hopefully a national student debt crisis would lead to legislation that would allow student loans to be forgiven

I don't think this would happen without significant reforms that clamped down on the current situation easy money paying for colleges that get more expensive ever year / 4 years of kegstands in a 4th tier rural paradise might not be as easy for a lower-middle class person

but then again we paid for the financial crisis w/o regulating away the biggest moral hazards, so who knows

situation of

if we do forgive student loans I'm gonna be pretty pissed I didn't go to grad school

this board is now just a bunch of rich college kids

― chaki

maybe this is heedless point scoring against the eisbars and morbs of the political threads but i dont see how you can read about how the obama admin finally held for-profit colleges accountable in that article & say that even if you were in a battleground state you wouldnt vote for him in the coming election -- / continue in other thread

so, b/c a politician arguably does one good thing then i should just drop to my knees and worship him even if he's done a zillion not-so-good things?!? by that measure, the only politician in my lifetime who hasn't passed that test would be Dubya.

what a pathetic, weak argument for Obama that is ... even for you.

seriously, dude, yer nothing but a cheap Chinese-made knockoff of Ethan ... without the wit, intelligence or class.

had no idea deej was chinese

no but he was made there

tremdendous work from the computational linguistics dept of the chinese secret services

nakhchivan I want to read one of your books pls post link to relevant amazon links kthxbye

damn

I don't wanna get aggro and shit about it but I too don't get "I don't see how you can read about this good thing an elected official did and say you wouldn't vote for him" - there is literally not one elected official in the history of the country who doesn't deserve your vote if that's how you make the calculations.

none such xxp

nakh fess the fuck up

bide your time. nakhchivan will have a book someday, but not quite yet. unquestionably he has that aroma about him, but he's not quite ripened enough.

I don't wanna get aggro and shit about it but I too don't get "I don't see how you can read about this good thing an elected official did and say you wouldn't vote for him" - there is literally not one elected official in the history of the country who doesn't deserve your vote if that's how you make the calculations.

― pathos of the unwarranted encore (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Sunday, September 4, 2011 11:23 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i think there's a pretty distinctive pattern of obama having done more good things than his predecessor that, being the crassly cynical person i am, adds up to a better life for lots of ppl than if i choose not to vote bcuz im so angry at the crass cynical nature of politicians

but we've had this debate before

dont know what eisbar's problem is but while i like morbs & aerosmith as posters i find his posts in the political threads to be the most annoying & kneejerk, w/out any real humanity behind them. youre the dreadlocked dude on my college campus convinced that gore & bush are the same person

like, eisbar is consistently the worst on those threads, a bunch of generic rage & frankly youre the one w/ the ethan obsession

Black men

http://www.economist.com/node/21528226

generation lmbo

A recent study from Georgetown University’s Centre on Education and the Workforce argues that “obtaining a post-secondary credential is almost always worth it.”

ehhh complicated

other than that I think that's a pretty good take on the big picture in 9 paragraphs

quality xp

yeah I wish I had used that title for this thread g1

It seems like our global society really doesn't know what to do with the efficiencies created by automation. Or rather, efficiency is captured by the ownership class as profit rather than used to give humans a lot more free time I guess.

if the ownership class would bother to pay their damn taxes then it would all be okay

How long before we have an activist youth movement that starts demanding massively increased taxation on capital? I would almost tolerate activism if it was about that. Instead of like wikileaks or the plight of the Palestinians or whatever.

yeah that's what it really comes down to

the idea that massive amounts of people maybe just should be paid not to work - and that that might not be a bad thing for the economy - is still an incredibly hard sell

xp

so how long has the 'hollowing out' of the middle class been a recognized threat? I don't regularly follow krugman

yeah that idea won't ever fly in the USA---I know the econ & I'm morally for reduced inequality but paying people to not work hurts me in the gut & it'd take a lot more than econ to convince me; & for most Americans this is exactly the problem with the welfare state: people getting what they don't deserve, haven't earned (well, that + racism of course)

it's been happening steadily since the 70s and esp 80s, but 'recognized threat' depended on who you asked. it's always been an issue, but most people were fine with the 'rising tide lifts all boats' narrative, as it appeared that, despite rising income inequality, the poor and middle class were still making progress. in retrospect a lot of the nominal income gains even back in the good periods were illusory.

euler I think your take is probably pretty representative, but attitudes change. when our permanently unemployed class turn into a more visible, perhaps dangerous social problem, people might begrudgingly moderate their views.

or they'll just throw them all in jail

oh wait they're already doing that

wasn't even implying 'the permanently unemployed are gonna go on crime sprees' - one of the interesting things about the great recession is that crime hasn't shifted much overall. I more meant 'more people having friends and family who have been unemployed for 3 years, not out of choice, more people interacting w/ office workers thrown into poverty, etc.'

people getting what they don't deserve, haven't earned

yeah ppl can only have money they didnt deserve or earn if the 'market decides' to give it 2 them, not communists govts

yeah I mean *I'm* persuadable on this but I kinda goes against our national image of ourselves as a place where hard work + gumption makes you the person you are. I guess the consumer revolution already upended that, though. So I dunno.

would rather see a renewed WPA though

xp but that's money they deserve, axiomatically (I mean, to those who have that pt of view)

sort of? i mean the idea that the market for say, corporate executive salaries is truly efficient is p lol but w/e

sarcasm was more just bcuz youre right, even the most parasitic of rentier capitalists will go 2 the way arguing that they produce some kind of social value (lol making markets more efficient) just because the idea of true 'leisure' class also seems deeply unamerican

realistically i think a simplified, more progressive and better enforced tax regime is the 'fairest' way of readjusting things otoh wheres max, i think he has a workable idea for sending ppl to go work on farms or s.thing

renewed WPA could still be great in the short-term, but in the long-term you'd rather people were working just for the sake of working? you'd rather a man digs a ditch than a machine?

one of the related issues is that rich people are working longer hours than ever.

if we want people to work just because being a 'worker' is good for your moral character or whatever, we can have a system of shared part-time labor. we simply may not need 95% of working americans to provide 40h week of labor, and having 10 people work 20h is probably better for society than 5 unemployed people and 5 people at 40h. it's never that simple, though, and I think it would be harder to organize from above than just increasing welfare, which is actually fairly straightforward. (unemployment insurance without an end date.)

but I kinda goes against our national image of ourselves as a place where hard work + gumption makes you the person you are.

hah this hasn't been true for a long time, but yeah it's built into our national self-image

keynes thought by 2030 we'd be working 15h weeks and mostly just trying to figure out what we'd do with our free time

(he did not envision ilx polls)

I'm not sure what I think re paying people to not work but I think I'm committed to the "dignity of labor" both as in "don't make work so shitty that it offends against human dignity" (that's an injunction to the ruling class) & as in "work is a basic human good, it gives meaning & purpose & direction to human life" but re the latter I have a pretty broad understanding of work e.g. building ridic Minecraft worlds might count, so I dunno.

virtual WPA hmm

I think 'paying people not to work' is not the right phrasing - 'paying people subsistence wages when the demand for more labor simply doesn't exist'. this isn't some crazy futurist idea either, already happens in countries w/ considerably less wealth than america.

yeah I think the right phrase might be "guaranteed minimum income", there might be some econ/poli sci term of art that gets used I dunno.

'In Praise of Idleness', Bertrand Russell takes on the supposed nobility of work

though as someone said upthread unlimited unemployment insurance is a lot easier to implement than some sort of universal free money program

15hr working week, another 15hrs spent studying to keep colleges open

Money quote:

First of all: what is work? Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth's surface relatively to other such matter; second, telling other people to do so. The first kind is unpleasant and ill paid; the second is pleasant and highly paid. The second kind is capable of indefinite extension: there are not only those who give orders, but those who give advice as to what orders should be given. Usually two opposite kinds of advice are given simultaneously by two organized bodies of men; this is called politics.

The morality of work is the morality of slaves, and the modern world has no need of slavery.