A secret of many urban 20-somethings: Their parents help with the rent
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Two consequences:
- really tough discussions with some friends and acquaintances once I realised their parents heavily subsidized their way of life while they were putting the social persona of young working adult being independent and nagging me about when I was going to buy my first car or why I was always the one who made it through the whole night with one glass of beer
- really hard to move up in the adequate social circles and no care-free attitude which led to a much harder job hunt, grimmer prospects in relationships (partly cost me the love of my life) and way too much stress to be healthy
I don't blame people for being helped though, that's not my point.
Certainly makes you realize who your true friends are.
My father especially has always been a "live within your means" guy, and his intention was always that I should choose somewhere to live and work that I could afford on my own.
1. Parents can't afford to help (although that doesn't stop them offering).
2. I don't feel good about it. It's my choice to live in an expensive city - there is no reason at all I can't live somewhere less expensive - so I should be able to do it on my own. This is partly a pride thing but also I just wouldn't feel good taking money from family so that I have the budget to enjoy myself and socialise more. The people I know who have their parents help with rent either have decent paying jobs and want to have a really nice lifestyle (i.e. they really don't need that money) or are students who refuse to get a part time job (no excuse for that particularly when you're on your first or second masters).
Well, to make it short (it would take a book to get into the details and the analysis) my parents had their first child for the wrong reasons. That backfired later on when the unresolved conflicts and the toxic relationship between all of us degraded the family's capacity to face challenges in an healthy way and I had to take/was given the black sheep role. A vicious circle of saviour/victim had been in place from an early age and I was too young as a child to escape it (even though they were adults they were too young as well to get around it without outside help which they didn't think they needed at that time).
They were 36 when I was 18. Mother divorced biological father when I was 7 and he died some months later in an accident that was covered as a suicide (go figure). So, something was always fishy in how we interacted with each other. Mother remarried a man who was courting her in their high school years. Turns out he was an alcoholic like my father was. Not the stereotyped violent alcoholic. The sad kind, the one we ignore the changes in behaviour and the fact he is lying at 2 in the afternoon on the bathroom floor, haha let's laugh about it. Alcohol wasn't the problem, it's the facade and the make-believe game that everything is alright that is messing up the relationship. The man is okay but totally lacks the ability to express feelings (I won't go into his family situation but it explains some of his behaviour of course).
So I was the silent kind about all of it but unexplained anxiety and inadequacy took its toll on the way we built the family (but I was too young to get that and thought I was the one who was malfunctioning) (which I was anyway but it was not completely my fault) and how we/I expressed our/my needs/wants/desires. Of course both me and my brother were told we were `mature for your age`. Which can have the same consequences as those children obliged to take on their parent's emotional responsibilities and play the parents.
That's just a very rough picture of the whole thing. My brother suffered from it as well but in a different way (much more closer to them but he messed up his studies nevertheless) (I finished my BS anyway, yada me) (I was the one sent to shrinks of course) (I really dig the role theory in psychology). And then there's the whole taboo thing about money in society in general and in my family in particular.
So why didn't they help ? Because they didn't and couldn't know how. And because I couldn't ask them and didn't dare ask them. For example I spent a year eating sugar on bread and ketchup on pasta. Lost a teeth in the process :D Don't do that :).
Sorry, it must be even more teasing now than before. That's because these kind of stories takes time to write down in a way that makes sense and english isn't my first language so I can't fiddle too much with nuances.
edit: to clarify things: yes they could afford to help. I don't think that once I had my first job they would have helped me money wise on a regular basis but when I was in HS and uni they definitely had the resources to do so.
With regard to the job search, work on reducing stress. That carefree attitude that helps in getting job offers is directly (and sometimes geometrically) proportional to your ability to recognize all of the good things you have at any given moment. Sometimes that includes changing (not lowering) expectations.
I say all of this with the caveat that 1) fame and fortune are overrated as human goods, especially by young people; and 2) I am neither famous nor wealthy, but I am exceedingly happy with my life compared to my 20s. I'm now in my 50s and generally successful in curbing my urge to bail out my 28-year-old daughter out of the messes she sometimes makes.
Edit: But I have been there a couple of times where it was help her or she ends up on the streets.
If you count success in life as buying a house with money you were given, great. But that isn't success. I don't even know what that is honestly.
The middle class is disappearing. Either you know how to make money (and that's not by working a job) or you don't. If you don't, you'll eventually be replaced by software, or a robot, or your job will be optimised away, or you will have to compete with 50 other people who want the same job because less jobs will be available in the future.
The only thing that isn't disappearing is having great ideas. Great ideas, combined with an interest in executing, generally lead to freedom in life and (some) wealth.
It really depends on how much you inherit. If you inherit a million dollars, yeah, it's easy to spend it all. If you inherit a billion, it's not hard to sit on that money and live off a fraction of the earnings. Which is why major familial wealth tends to stick around for generations. (That and the connections that major wealth can provide.)
My personal opinion is that most people should be able to make $100-200k on their own online, doing something they love. If you actually start looking with what people are making money with, it's pretty interesting. This can range from a recipe subscription to a newsletter, or something completely different.
Will it be easy? No. Will you be able to live a free life? Yep.
Yeah, I have friends who are millionaires. I have friends who are famous. (I don't have friends who are powerful... never ran in those circles...). All of my rich friends either inherited their money or won the DotCom lottery. All of my famous friends worked their butts of in obscurity for decades and then won the Celebrity lottery.
None of them are happier than me as far as I can tell. (And, yes, I can afford another pair of trousers, but who needs 3 pairs of trousers!?).
Fame, wealth, and power are only loosely correlated with happiness. They are neither adequate, nor necessary.
BUT: there has never been an easier time in history for someone to make money on their own.
Edit: I fully agree that it's easier than ever to build wealth from limited means.
I'm sorry for that. I can sympathize slightly. Rich people really don't get it.
Yeah. Me last week on the way to a strip club: 'Who's paying for this taxi? Are we going far? Do we have to pay to get in?'
Fried (girl I ALMOST dated): 'Oh my god you're SO cheap, you're such a killjoy, just stop worrying about the money blah blah blah.'
Yeah, I probably should've relaxed and been more sociable. But it's easy for them to say that stuff, when their parents pay for their 400$ a week apartment in the city. Meanwhile my parents in their 60s struggle to figure out how they can ever retire without starving. Plus there's the 3+ hours a day lost to travel and the inconvenience of sharing a house with someone else.
I'm not poor, I was born in a first world country and am very lucky. But people whose parents pay for their housing don't get how easy they have it even above people like me. I could start working full time and get a nice apartment close to the city no problem. But then I won't be saving any money, won't be going back to university and doing a PhD, won't be starting my own business, and won't be helping my parents retire.
I could continue to work less and try to start my own business, which is what I've chosen. But this way I don't get my apartment in the city and can't blow money on taxis and strip clubs and cocktails all the time. I can't even get my car fixed right now.
My housemate is a smart and capable person with a pilot's licence, but after trying to get into a pathway to a good job for years (you need more than just the licence), started working full time in a warehouse to make ends meet. I've seen how he feels after work every day, he's not happy. I don't want to stall my life any longer.
I try to remember that at least I'm not starving in Africa, and I don't blame my lack of a girlfriend or better friendships on money. But you can be socially impaired by having to pay rent, and it does suck when those little things happen.
Seriously, screw Melbourne house prices and screw the politicians and lazy rich leeches that made it this way.
What I said was:
"Seriously, screw Melbourne house prices and screw the politicians and lazy rich leeches that made it this way".
I think it's pretty clear I'm talking about housing prices being driven up by laws that favour the rich, and landlords who buy up houses, contributing nothing to society.
Have you considered not having a car? It saves a lot of money - and a lot of stress.
I set aside some money to buy a car last year, but never did. I liked the way that money looked in my bank account a lot better. Plus no petrol costs, or licensing costs, insurance, parking...
Not sure where you are in melbourne, but it's pretty practical to get around there without a car. Might require a tram ride to a train station though.
Visiting my parents would be basically impossible, as well as going to friend's houses. Also I'm not sure which university I might be going to, but it might require one, and trying to run my own business will require one for posting items and such. And I can't really date if I can't pick people up. I don't feel like Melbourne is really a city where you can get away with having no car easily, unless you can contain your whole life to the inner suburbs and city.
Petrol's not too bad in mine since it's a Prius.
Seems like s/he's not actually the love of your life if s/he's willing to ditch you because of lack of money.
One can always refuse help.
*For large values of "nobody" and "you"
I'm late 20s, and don't have as many friends as I used to in my early 20s. But the ones I do pay their own way. I just can't relate to a grown adult living it up on their parents money.
I do sometimes feel uncomfortable working in software though - I'm from a solidly lower class background, and the vast majority of the people I meet grew up middle/upper middle class. I'm on a middle class salary now, but I don't have the accumulated wealth of the previous generation behind me. My mindset is so different. I'm more ambitious, more protective of my free time, and much more frugal.
I'd like to think that if the generation before me had some money knocking about, that I'd have the same attitude. Let them spend their hard earned money on a cruise or a holiday, rather than supporting their grown children who are already well into adulthood themselves.
This is a part of the reason that many wealthy families stay wealthy. Whether it's a down payment, help with rent, or the understanding that they'll be a backstop if everything falls apart, it lets the next generation take risks that would be completely imprudent otherwise.
I think a lot of parents of millennials understand how much harder life is for young people today too. With school debt, salaries that have stagnated since the 1990s, and housing prices that won't stop increasing, it's a completely different world than the one they grew up in.
> Let them spend their hard earned money on a cruise or a holiday, rather than supporting their grown children who are already well into adulthood themselves.
To many parents, there is literally no more meaningful way to spend their money than to confer comfort to their children, no matter how old they are.
If I'd been born less intelligent or if I didn't have an interest in computers or I'd decided to go teach or write or do a dozen other things I might be dependent on my parents. I don't think there's anything shameful about that. Unfortunate perhaps but not shameful.
BTW, cars are an enormous cash sink. I saved a ton by buying beaters and doing most repairs myself. I still drive a beater :-) and fix it myself and it's amazing how little it costs.
I've had my current beater for 25 years now, and it still starts as soon as I turn the key. It's a fairly simple car, and easy to fix.
Being a beater also means I don't carry comprehensive insurance. Adding up those premiums saved over the years would probably buy a purty nice new car.
As an urban 20-something, my parents helped me my covering the lion's share of my college costs. Once that was over, it was an unspoken agreement that I was completely on my own. Fortunately, I graduated with a job offer in hand as a SWE in the city of my choice, but that is far from the norm for the graduating classes in many majors.
If anything, I find the provided numbers feel too low - $250 a month in many metro areas is unlikely to be 'make it or break it' numbers (by my estimation). It's more that their parents are subsidizing a lifestyle in those urban areas.
At any rate, it's hard to blame people for getting help from their parents, though I can't say I would be excited to do so for my kids after a certain age (though, of course, I don't have any).
I'd also be proud to be able to help my theoretical children, so it's easy to see the "other side" of the argument as such.
It's also no big secret that parents often support their children far beyond the school time if they are not able to apply for student loans (Bafög).
It is a surprise to me that it's also common in Germany though: the perception that it is a 'renters'-country led me to believe that the rents were relatively affordable (as a result of protections like rent control). But I guess even "relatively affordable" can be challenging for an under-25 in today's economy.
Btw, BAFöG has been such a successful model for Germany that one wishes every country would introduce such a system.
I wonder if it's paying security deposits or first / last deposits. When I was 23, paying rent seemed doable, but digging up 3 months of rent all at one go was terrifying.
That's rent without roommates. I suspect people are sharing the rent with 3 other people, so $3,000 a month is about 1/3 of their rent.
... which is exactly how I did it from 22-24, not sure how I forgot that.
I know that we're missing easy money transfer options that other countries have had for decades, though.
you simply call the bank, and tell them to credit you the money back, which they do immediately, and then they launch an investigation into the felony crime which occurred. they'll send you a couple of affidavits to sign in the mail later.
it's even easier with a credit card because the money was never taken to begin with.
and get this, with amex you don't even have to call, because they call you, and you tell them which charges you want deleted, while they send you a new card.
not having money totally sucks in comparison.
Two engineers can afford a $500k mortgage?
$200K down and $166K annual income and you can buy the whole $1MM property. $83K/pp income seems completely reasonable for two engineers (and crazy low for two SWEs!) in their 30s.
With a combined annual income of only $85K/yr and $100K down, you can buy a $500K property. No way are two engineers in 30s making less than that... (Two train engineers driving for Keolis make more than that.) Without a 20% down payment, you need a little more income, but it's still well within reach of normal professionals who decide they want to prioritize buying a property.
For example, parents providing their child with first month's rent/security deposit for the first place after college I wouldn't say is indicative of "financial dependence". Especially considering the data was for 2013 when getting credit for short term loans as a young person was even harder than it is today. Feels more like another dressed up "entitled millennials living off those hard working boomers again".
The secrecy of financial help is a really important claim because it affects how under-resourced college grads plan their 20s; irresponsible of the authors not to footnote this.
Yet, how is that surprising? You're taking four years to complete a degree program that provides you with no (measurable) practical skill.
Am I wrong to assume that it isn't the career choice so much as how wealthy the parents are?
Don't get me wrong, I recognize the need for something like basic income, but rentier capitalism is suffocating peoples lives right now, and I have a hard time seeing how universal basic income is going to stop that.
It's no such thing; not remotely. BI isn't new money, it's simply a redistribution of money from those with more to those with less. It won't increase the money supply and thus doesn't cause inflation.
Now we go to BI. Now millions of what used to be my money are going to low-income people. They're spending it on food and rent. No, it's not new money, but it's new to the rent market in whatever city. Will that tend to drive rents up? I think so, yes.
The fact that the "rich" also receive $650/mo in UBI is completely swamped by the fact that they'll pay $30K/month or more in income tax to fund the program.
No it isn't, not even remotely.
Most nations have government housing which serves not just to house the poorest but to put a cap on how much people in the next rung up of society are willing to pay for housing.
BI seems desirable because it addresses a glaring symptom of the inflationary treadmill. But if the treadmill remains the explicit national policy ("full employment"), BI will really just give us even more rope to hang ourselves. The sustainable answer is higher interest rates, so that frugal people can be rewarded for channeling discretionary spending towards paying off principle. But this would diminish our "service economy", which is all we have left after gutting domestic manufacturing.
I think what we're really witnessing is an erosion of money as a decentralized store of value, part of the general centralization of power enabled by digital communication networks.
In a low interest rate environment this is not really true. Speculative booms can and do occur (see Australia). During such booms the ratio of house prices to rents diverges significantly. It is rents that are constrained by wages - not house prices (people don't take out loans to pay rent like they do to buy houses).
False presumption, BI will not enable everyone to spend twice as much on rent.
> BI will cause price inflation.
Unfounded.
> The sustainable answer is higher interest rates, so that frugal people can be rewarded for channeling discretionary spending towards paying off principle.
That doesn't remotely address the issue that BI attempts to solve, lack of available jobs for people due to the effects of automation.
> False presumption
It wasn't a presumption about BI, but a hypothetical framing of an example situation. Please give opposing viewpoints their due interpretation rather than looking for phrases to pick on out of context.
> Unfounded
Once again, this is what we're arguing about. You can't simply quote my conclusion without my supporting arguments and say it's unfounded.
> That doesn't remotely address the issue that BI attempts to solve, lack of available jobs for people due to the effects of automation.
I didn't expand on it, but my view actually does address this. If working people had been able to save money, then they would have had more economic bargaining power to demand higher wages and fewer working hours, gradually over the past few decades. As it stands, we could fix much of the employment issue by redefining "full time" to be 15 hours per week, getting rid of the exempt loophole, and changing overtime to double or triple pay. But this is such a drastic change (because the issue has been building so long), it seems quite ridiculous. But it's important to understand how we got to this point in order to know how to proceed, lest we choose another "quick fix" that actually just makes the situation even worse.
So then change the full time number to be summed over all jobs. It's a cooperation problem where it is in nobody's individual interest to work less (since the marginal utility of surplus over your peer group is extreme), but yet everybody competing for this results in all the surplus thrown onto the bonfire of financialization.
And yes as I said, 15 hours is a drastic change from 40. Because the point is that this should have been happening gradually the whole time. I personally would have preferred it to happen through sane monetary policy rather than government diktat, but either way we should all be working much less.
> We need to move beyond the puritan work ethic to something more appropriate for the world that's coming.
I wholeheartedly agree on this point. But the implementation we're looking for is not BI.
The idea of BI deprecates the idea of having an economy (ie p2p transactions), and replaces it with widespread monthly funding from the government. This will necessarily come with strings attached, inevitably becoming a highly politicized way of dictating individuals' life choices. We already have something quite similar to BI, called welfare/medicaid, which brings no end to hassling its recipients. I believe that BI proponents would say that the aim of BI is to simplify these systems, but this is not a stable state. It is trying to reverse up the gradient of why politicians generate complexity (finding divisive bikeshed issues so people can be led).
The goal is not to keep everyone working, the goal is to share the benefits of automation with everyone, not just the capitalist class. BI does this, your solution does not.
Unless you tax automation heavily and redistribute it, workers lose no matter how you slice and dice the hours. It's not enough to work less, you have to work less while not making less and that's simply not in the cards.
> The idea of BI deprecates the idea of having an economy (ie p2p transactions), and replaces it with widespread monthly funding from the government.
Simply not remotely true. Spending money you get from the government is still spending money. Redistributing money from the top to the bottom via BI in no way deprecates the idea of having an economy, it simply depreciates the idea the the economy is based entirely on wage slavery.
> This will necessarily come with strings attached, inevitably becoming a highly politicized way of dictating individuals' life choices.
Also not true, anything with strings isn't BI; the whole point of BI is that everyone gets it without restriction in order to eliminate bureaucracy and thus strings. If it has strings, it isn't BI.
> We already have something quite similar to BI, called welfare/medicaid
Neither of those are remotely similar to BI.
> which brings no end to hassling its recipients
Precisely because they aren't remotely similar to BI and force people to qualify for them; they're exactly what BI is intended to fix, all the hassles and stigma that come with those programs and the shit you have to go through to get them.
Frankly, you leave me thinking you really don't know what BI is, or don't understand it.
If a person has no runway, they are forced to be constantly worried about losing their current job, whereas if they have a large enough runway they have the ability to quit on the spot and worry about their next job later. This power relation effects every single negotiation, from salary to benefits to day-to-day working conditions.
Thus my assertion is that the real problem is that people have no savings. This gives them no economic power, and thus terrible negotiating power. This is due to an economic policy that prevents savings by the lower classes, especially liquid savings, and turns their life's accounting into one of debt and monthly rents. This further destroys their negotiating power (they don't have $0 to their name, but actually -$10k), and channels any of their surplus upwards to the parasitic banking industry through monetary rent.
> it simply depreciates the idea the the economy is based entirely on wage slavery.
Sure it gets rid of that specific slavery, but it does not get rid of the wage nor the reliance on it. The real mass frustration is due to a lack of opportunity and self-determination, for which signing up for low-paperwork welfare will increase. Reliance on the continued existence of a government program is going to make many people (rightfully) uneasy, because...
> If it has strings, it isn't BI.
This is like saying that we've never achieved true capitalism or true communism. In the real world, individuals have their own incentives. The incentives of politicians and "news" media is to play on people's prejudices to divide them into groups so they can be led, creating power for the leaders.
Even if we were to start off with a perfect BI program on day 0, it is only a matter of time until some group demands preferential treatment for themselves, or protests what they see as preferential treatment for others. The subject of having kids is fertile ground for this - if BI is truly uniform, this means that having a kid gets you immediately double the BI, and if it only starts at 18 that means you now have more to support. Either way (or even with a "ramp" compromise), this is but one of the clear contention points that will be endlessly politicized.
And no this isn't a no true Scottsman thing, the entire point of BI is that everyone gets it to avoid the need to administer the program with qualification red tape. Yes there would be some initial fighting about how to implement BI with regards to kids and what incentives that creates, that doesn't mean it'll be endlessly politicized nor does it make the whole policy fertile ground for politics. Fertile ground for that is what we have now, with endless programs and rules about who qualifies and who doesn't and BI would vastly simplify that system while also addressing the long term social problem of the coming end of wage labor. Nothing you've said addresses the problem at all.
> they lack savings because they're poor and don't have excess income to save
And yet we're witnessing the creation of even more poor people (ie hand-to-mouth), in educated industries which have not been automated away yet. Salaries in those industries are keeping rough pace with the official CPI, so what gives?
> the problem which is the dwindling value of labor in an ever more automated world
Yes, we agree this is one of the fundamental problems here - I'm not "missing the point" as you keep insisting. I'm also saying that another fundamental problem is that fiscal discipline went out the window when USD disconnected from the gold standard, a slow acting moral hazard which is only being felt decades later. With technological and market progress, we would expect prices to be continually dropping (which would mean people would have to work less to survive), so any diagnosis must address this as well.
What you seem to be doing is taking the logical induction that led to the idea of BI for granted. And then refusing to follow the logical induction around other ideas. Of course BI is going to look like the solution if you refuse to consider that there could be other approaches.
> the entire point of BI is that everyone gets it to avoid the need to administer the program
As I said, this is an anti-feature to those who derive power from controlling such programs. This includes voters.
I'm done beating this dead horse if you are. But perhaps you'd view my argument in a different way if I said that I don't have a philosophical problem with BI, and that I'd support the idea iff interest rates were back up to say 10% ? The main point I've been trying to get across is that in the current monetary environment, BI seems akin to adding a second garden hose to fill a bucket with a hole in the bottom.
Perhaps my characterization is the root of why you're seeing me arguing a strawman? But if my assessment isn't correct, then why do mainstream articles present it as such a society-changing idea? Or is this judgment incorrect as well?
The reason I keep beating this dead horse is because your nick is one I see associated with more insightful comments. That we're in such obtuse disagreement here seems odd.
Yes, my critique here "comes from the right" [0]. But please just try to give me a benefit of the doubt that my aim is actually to reduce the wealth extraction by "the capitalist class", and analyze my point on its own merit. My goal is certainly not to perpetuate the status quo.
[0] The way I see it, "left" and "right" are really just two different approaches to characterizing a problem and they generally both give some insight.
The gold standard has no bearing on this problem. Interest rates have no bearing on this problem. People aren't poor because we don't use gold, they aren't poor because interest rates are low; they're poor because they were born into it and few can clime out because living on the edge is psychologically harmful and interferes with long term planning and thinking. Being poor is a catch 22 in many ways, like a bucket of crabs, getting out is impossible for most. This is a systemic problem, not an issue of people not working hard enough: the need for work is dwindling reducing the supply of low skill jobs which are all many are capable of in the first place.
Your attempts to drag the conversation to these other things are red-herrings, your attempts to conflate BI with the problems of existing welfare, and then say it'll suffer the downsides are straw-men.
We're in disagreement because as far as I'm concerned, you don't want to talk about the real problem, you're just finding ways to inject the standard conservative fiscal talking points into a conversation about an issue those things don't address.
So if you actually want to talk about it, I'll frame it this way; unemployment is suddenly 50% due to the sudden rise of automation. Now what do we do when half the population can't find work? People who don't have an income don't want to hear about gold standards and interest rates. They don't want to hear about welfare programs that make them jump through hoops to find jobs that don't exist. What they want, is food, water, shelter, and medical care and if you tell them to pull themselves up by their boot straps they're going to kill you and take your shit. That's the problem BI is attempting to solve. And yes, the death of wage slavery would be a huge change in the structure of society.
See, the thing is, I understand this. I'm certainly not sitting here saying "let them eat cake", or "they need to work harder". As I said, I'm not categorically against the idea of BI. Which is why I tried to steer the subject back to middle class people - if, as you say, the effects of automation are so severe (and I agree they are), then the middle class is of concern as well. While they are better off materially, their situation exists closer to the margin (rather than already having fallen victim to the poverty trap "event horizon"). As such, it is middle class economics we should be looking at to understand the changes brought by automation.
> People who don't have an income don't want to hear about gold standards and interest rates.
Sure, but this a reflection of their stressed state and immediate needs, not proper analysis. Interest rates act on the timescale of multiple years, which is obviously too long to wait for food or shelter. We've persisted with the fundamental problem so long that direct triage is sorely needed. I'm not arguing against helping out poor people - I'm arguing against using help for poor people as the solution to the problem that we're all becoming poor!
> you don't want to talk about the real problem ... unemployment is suddenly 50% due to the sudden rise of automation
Actually, I really do.
From https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/what-economic-goals-does...
> monetary policy to support three specific goals: maximum sustainable employment, stable prices, and moderate long-term interest rates.
"Maximum stable employment" directly contradicts automation putting half of everybody out of work! And "stable prices" also does, as automation makes things less expensive. So either the Federal Reserve is utterly wrong about the actual capabilities of monetary policy, or their mandate clashes with technology. What is the result of this clash?
This is the core of what I'm getting at.
I believe that. And of course the middle class is of concern as well, however the middle class is dying, we're becoming only the rich and the poor and the poor make up the largest part of society in that sense, so that's where the focus belongs, in helping to recreate a middle class we haven't had in a long time.
> Sure, but this a reflection of their stressed state and immediate needs, not proper analysis.
No, it's a reflection of their lack of capital; interest rates matter in terms of savings to those who have enough money that the interest rate actually matters. It takes quite a lot of money before you need to care about savings interest rates. To most people, it only matters in terms of what they're paying for debt and those people want low interest rates, not high ones. To most of the population, low interest rates are far better because it decreases their debts and most of the population is in debt.
> or their mandate clashes with technology. What is the result of this clash?
Agreed, and that's where i'm going as well, we need to get past this notion of trying to attain full employment, employment can no longer be the goal in an automated world. As we move forward, what the Fed does will have to adapt to the new world where it's no longer about employment, but about how to effectively share the benefits of productivity created by technology with everyone, not just the capital class.
As to stable prices, that doesn't mean preventing things from getting cheaper, it means fighting inflation. Nothing wrong with things getting cheaper, everything wrong with them getting more expensive across the board. So they aren't in conflict with tech there, tech does make things cheaper, unfortunately, it also tends to make workers poorer as it makes them unnecessary which will eventually destroy the market for said products when no one has money to buy them.
Automation at the end of the day, is a poison pill to an economy based on low skilled physical wage labor. And an economy based on high skilled mental wage labor simply doesn't align with the realities of the human condition. Half the population has an IQ below 100, they will never be capable of high skilled thinking jobs. So the very foundation of our economy must change in order to continue down this path of automation. For the basics of living, we need more socialism and less capitalism. We need a more social democracy that takes back enough from the capital class to ensure the lower classes don't revolt take what they require through violence because they won't be able to take it through working before long.
This comes up in every BI thread, and I can't wrap my head around it. All the sensible proposals seem geared so that if you have income from a job, most of the BI amount will be recouped from your taxes. So, for most people their purchasing power would go up only slightly or not at all.
Think about the extremes: if you make a comfortable income (say, at least 2x the median) your taxes should increase to recoup most or all of the BI subsidy, so your purchasing power doesn't change. If you choose to leave your job and live off the BI, your purchasing power goes down (drastically!) and you won't be in a position to inflate prices on much of anything.
At the other end, if your income is zero and you receive BI, your purchasing power goes up, but you still won't have a huge amount of money to throw around. And in the developed economies, at any rate, we suffer from over-production of basic needs stuff, so I don't think demand would exceed supply for basic things like flour, rice, toiletries, etc.
Analyzing the middle few percentiles of the income distribution is tougher, but for any scheme that increases taxes along with BI it's hard to see how it could possibly cause inflation to increase by more than a point or two.
Average after-tax income doesn't go up under any sane UBI scheme; it's redistributing income (ideally, primarily capital income—gains, rents, and otherwise).
> how long would it take for those with monopolies on basic needs to raise the prices?
Unregulated monopolies on basic needs are a problem that needs addressed either through regulating the monopolies or breaking then up, independent of UBI.
That said, redistribution will result in relative inflation of prices of goods disproportionately demanded by lower income segments, even in a competitive economy. The increase in nominal prices should usually be less than proportional to the increase in income, barring hard supply constraints that aren't addressed by the reduced demand for higher-end goods.
Median probably would. Mean probably breaks even, yeah, at least first-order.
Eventually, I got a job as a developer in a mid-size city, making decent money relative to cost-of-living and not having to have roommates because I was spending only ~33% on rent. Though I'm not swimming in money, I have become financially independent as much as any wage or salaried worker is able.
Though in my outlook I never really subscribed to the notion that all problems are fixable by pulling oneself up by their bootstraps, I'm realizing that this held true in my case. And as I get older I am finding it harder and harder to sympathize with my peers who've learned less marketable skills and are now living many three or four to an apartment in economic insecurity, or have moved to urban centers or boomtowns chasing their dream yet aren't much better off. Those who continuously receive assistance from their parents do not mirror my own experience, as any money my parents lent me was sorely missed and paid back at first opportunity, while those who are doing this on their own are making little measurable progress to attain a better quality of life, notwithstanding their best intentions.
It's unfortunate that one's socioeconomic wealth still so strongly predicts their own wealth, It's unfortunate that certain systems perpetuate structural problems, and some people never get the chance to climb out of poverty, but some others are afforded a way up and choose not to pursue it.
If that's the case, we should welcome parent->children transfer of wealth to balance out the situation of two generations, no? Some people might prefer government to do this, but that is just a different mechanism (with lots of political opposition) to achieve the same end goal - wealth transfer from boomers to millennials.
As I said, there can be different mechanisms for wealth transfer from boomers to millennials. Govt directed programs (means-tested or universal) might be preference of some and might even perform better, but they also tend to have a lot of political opposition.
So while we are gridlocked on other fronts, its better to see some transfer happening between parents and children.
How could you POSSIBLY have interpreted what I said as that it was my idea to go there, let alone that it was a date? You've also assumed it was a strip club of only females.
Regardless, I'd be open to the possibility that you should mind your own damn business. Nobody involved cares for you to judge them for their job or the way they express their sexuality.
I didn't touch the stripper, but the girls did. I didn't pay to have her rub her boobs in my face, but the girls did.
I'm not saying something can't be sexist if a girl does it, but I am pretty sure it blows that commenter's assumptions out of the water. I actually hadn't yet said that they were female strippers at that point either.
Personally I don't like the idea of assuming a stripper doesn't like their job or is being taken advantage of or objectified. I don't see why it's any of our business to tell them how to feel about their job or make assumptions.
Based on the how much rent is in Boston are, there is a strong , strong, strong incentive to rent out. I could make about 3x my mortgage/fees by renting my place in cambridge which I bought early part of this century (of course where would I live...).
Since we have about 50% owner occupied, and the tenants are paying a lot, so they expect a lot.
Its becoming a city for rich people and students. I can understand the resentment. I think it hurts the region.
Most of the value is directly related to the limited supply. San Francisco and the Bay Area is a perfect example, where ancient dilapidated rooms are rented out for prices more than quadruple that of other cities.
My rebuttal: Buy your own property if you don't like it, or move some place else.