Parents Kids

[Wayne Goodwin]

Should young people accept lower living standards than their parents?

In This day and time ?

[Lifesighs]

There is really no reason to do that unless they choose to do so. It takes time to establish yourself in life and most parents started off with little until they were more established. If you mean should the younger people have instant gratification while they are young? No, I don't think so.

[frenchy]

do they really have a choice ?? we are livin in an age of downward mobility for sure and even the ones fresh outta college are findin out that their first job might be sayin do you want fries with that ?? cause thats all they can get for awhile .. yeah lifeys right we all start out with nothin but this country is different now than what it was when we started out .. there is still a lot of opportunity for technical things but not everybody has that technical kinda mind .. and a lot of our manufacturin base has been dismantled and shipped overseas .. so you're either in the service industry or retail .. most of the unions have been broken .. its a different scene now .. 

[crestofwaves]

I don't see any of my kids or my husband's kids having more than we have, and we don't have oodles, but we have enough and we go on vacation and do things and have nice cars, etc.  I think they will HAVE to live lower because none of them finished college and they are not entrepeneurs.  Unless something changes, they just have to live lower.  I see it as a choice they made.  There's still time for them.  If they make better choices, the world is their oyster.

[ProblemAgain]

there are a lot of college graduates at mcdonalds. no longer does a college degree guarantee a decent job and what used to be considered a decent job often no longer pays a decent income. remember the middle class has essentially had zero advances in income since about 1979....and the choice is to accept what you can get or what? there really is no choice....

[Snagg]

A person has to live within their means, and in today's world, that frequently means a lower means than their parents.

The trick, is to keep two things uppermost in the mind: 1) The possibility that things can get better - But only if 2) We all pull together, and make sensible damn laws that can stop the greedheads - Everywhere - from doing this to us again.

Personally, I'm afraid we're on the edge of a civilization-wide re-organization. The moneyed few will press every advantage their money brings them, to keep the old world running - Because that's the world in which they are powerful. But with climate change, the democratization and equalization of the world's access to information (thanks to the internet) and the accelerating decay and likely collapse of organized religion and it's archaic social constructs in the face of ever-escalating scientific breakthroughs, the next few decades are going to be a time of upheaval and sweeping changes unseen since the invention of antibiotics or the industrial revolution.

I say "afraid" because a lot of it ain't going to be pretty. I think that there's going to be famines, mass migrations, maybe a pandemic or two and a lot of infrastructure collapse. (If we're lucky, we won't have any severe volcanic eruptions or asteroid strikes.) I think that classic capitalism is in it's death throes - It's devouring itself now, and I suspect that a revamped form of European-style socialism is going to take hold and spread. The world is going to have to shrug off the old ways that brought us to this state of affairs, and renew a dependence on what I believe to be the fundamental decency of the human race. I'm not a superstitious man, so I'm not praying or crossing my fingers for good luck or anything - But I think that the world is in for a BIG jolt, and I can only hope that the worst aspects of Darwinism don't call the collective shots.

[ProblemAgain]

funny but this was just in the news recently

Exclusive: Working-class whites are gloomy about future amid rising income gaps, racial shifts

By Hope Yen, Associated Press | Associated Press – Sun, Jul 28, 2013 1:59 PM EDT

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  This photo taken Friday July 12, 2013, shows the Salyers' produce stand in Council, Va. Four out of five U.S. adults struggle with joblessness, near poverty or reliance on welfare for at least parts of their lives, a sign of deteriorating economic security and a vanishing American Dream. Hardship is particularly on the rise among whites, based on several measures. Pessimism among that racial group about their families’ economic futures has climbed to the highest point since at least 1987. In the most recent AP-GfK poll, 63 percent of whites called the economy “poor.” (AP Photo/Debra McCown)

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Four out of 5 U.S. adults struggle with joblessness, near-poverty or reliance on welfare for at least parts of their lives, a sign of deteriorating economic security and an elusive American dream.

Survey data exclusive to The Associated Press points to an increasingly globalized U.S. economy, the widening gap between rich and poor, and the loss of good-paying manufacturing jobs as reasons for the trend.

The findings come as President Barack Obama tries to renew his administration's emphasis on the economy, saying in recent speeches that his highest priority is to "rebuild ladders of opportunity" and reverse income inequality.

As nonwhites approach a numerical majority in the U.S., one question is how public programs to lift the disadvantaged should be best focused — on the affirmative action that historically has tried to eliminate the racial barriers seen as the major impediment to economic equality, or simply on improving socioeconomic status for all, regardless of race.

Hardship is particularly growing among whites, based on several measures. Pessimism among that racial group about their families' economic futures has climbed to the highest point since at least 1987. In the most recent AP-GfK poll, 63 percent of whites called the economy "poor."

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/exclusive-4-5-us-face-175906005.html

[ProblemAgain]

geee think maybe it could be being poor? less healthcare? more economic stress?

Older Adults in South Have Fewer Healthy Years Left

By Rachael Rettner, Senior Writer   |   July 18, 2013 12:00pm ET

A map of the United States showing healthy life expectancy - how many years a person can be expected to live in good health - by state. Credit: CDC: MMWR View full size image

Older adults living in the southern United States have fewer healthy years of life ahead of them than those living in other parts of the U.S., according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Researchers measured "healthy life expectancy," or how many years a person can be expected to live in good health. (Healthy life expectancy is thus a certain percentage of a person's total life expectancy.)

The lowest-ranking state was Mississippi, where 65-year-olds can expect to spend 61.5 percent of their remaining life in good health. They have an average of 10.8 healthy years ahead of them, out of an average of 17.5 years total of expected life ahead of them.

The highest-ranking state was Vermont, where 65-year-olds will spend 78.2 percent of their remaining years in good health, with 17.5 healthy years ahead of them, out of 19.4 total remaining years.

At age 65, people living in the South had an average of about 13 healthy years ahead of them. The exception was Florida, where older adults had about 15 healthy years ahead of them.

Total life expectancy was highest in Hawaii, where adults live an average of 21.3 more years after they turn 65 (and 16.2 of those years expected to be healthy).

http://www.livescience.com/38264-healthy-life-expectancy-south.html

[ProblemAgain]

those posts are just to show that we have undergone a fundamental shift in the way the the general working population is treated compared to what we had previously. 'once upon a time the idea was the employer promised to take care of you ...in return the employee pledged loyalty and worked fro the benefit od the employer for his or her entire working life. now that has changed...the accountants have taken over and the worker is a widget to be statistically weighed as a production component and discarded at the earliest opportunity with no recourse...the new age of the robber barons only this time round they are corporations