Some 4.5M Japanese aged between 35 and 54 are living with their parents
in.reuters.com
in.reuters.com
I found this paragraph from the article disturbingly similar to the situation here in the states:
"The rise in those shunning marriage, experts say, is due not only to more diverse life-styles but to an increase in low-paying, unstable jobs. Part-timers, temps or contract workers now account for nearly 40 percent of the workforce compared to about 20 percent in the 1980s."
I imagine this will only be accelerated with the rise of AI and increasing job automation. Already, we're seeing the average age when people get married and have kids rise with each generation. I think alot of this is due to job instability, depressed wages, rise of the 1099 worker with no benefits, etc. Reminds me of the situation in China, where unless you have a house and a car, you're basically persona-non-grata.
So if you're a young person in the US, you're doubly screwed. All your friends and potential dating partners are concentrated in the big cities, but those are also the places with the highest costs of living, highest costs to own a home, to raise a kid, etc.
If you're mid 20s / early 30s person in San Fran and you're not working for GOOG/FB/APPL etc. you're basically screwed.
The people really screwed aren't the ones in Dallas, Atlanta, or Charlotte - where an average home is something like 200K and jobs can be found - they're the ones in dying small towns that have been left by businesses, or in the expensive coastal cities where they're caught up in the housing madness but without the high income or established wealth driving those prices.
They'd be better off moving to, say, the Dallas area, but that's not an option for everyone. And "you have to pick up your life and say goodbye to everyone you know because the market says so" is hardly an outcome we should be promoting.
(I'd also make the argument that we'd be better off getting more diverse perspectives into those cities, vs our current CA/NY/OR/WA-vs-the-rest-of-the-US silos, but that's another discussion, and a perfect example of "if you really believed that so deeply, why don't you move yourself?")
Why is this true? Virtually every working class immigrant to the United States made that decision, my parents included. And in return, America is one of the world's most prosperous nations that's staved off the slowdown in economic growth associated with most developed economies.
It's a tradeoff decision - we can create a more ordered and comfortable society where people get to stay where they already are or we create a less ordered one where people have to move.
More ordered societies tend to have less economic growth and social mobility than less ordered ones. We may prefer to make that tradeoff but we should do so knowing what we give up.
Disagree. If your town's way of life is based on for example, coal mining, then good riddance. Another example, perhaps the town is based on agriculture but drones cut the need for labor in half, some people will have to either learn some skill that can be applied remotely or move elsewhere to efficiently allocate their labor. The government (imo) shouldn't be "promoting" any lifestyle. Let the markets operate.
Let me say that I don't necessarily disagree...many people here seem to forget the tremendous migration of people that took place in the US when the economy moved from agrarian to industrial, so its not unprecedented, neither is it undesirable. But we do need to think the consequences through rather than simply "Let the markets operate".
I can't really think of a historical example of a truly free market outside of black markets or maybe for a short period of time, failed states. Historically, "freer" markets have dramatically outperformed planned economies. It is better in most cases (outside of obvious e.g. environmental externalities) for individuals to decide what is best for themselves than for the subset of the population that is politically active to come to some plurality decision about what everyone else should value.
Essentially I disagree somewhat on the deciding things as a community (we should avoid doing that whenever possible), although that's fairly vague. Having said all of that I would vouch for common sense stuff e.g. progressive taxation. America would look a lot different if capital gains were taxed at same rate as income; I would say that's more of a re allocation of market intervention than an increase in market intervention.
To put it in different terms... imagine a city has 1 million jobs that pay a livable wage, and you increase the city's working age population by 2 million. Even if cities are more efficient at creating new opportunities than rural areas, that does nothing to address the shortfall in the job market in the short to medium term. Also, rapidly increasing the population size of a city tends to push up the price of accommodation faster than an increase in wages, which reduces the pool of available livable wage jobs.
In short, rapidly increasing the population size of a city without the job market already set to support it isn't likely to lead to economic stability.
If the markets could make do by 10% of the population, they'd screw the rest.
That can't be helped. The government influences the economy, the economy influences lifestyle. When they enacted NAFTA they knew jobs would be leaving rust belt and they knew that would affect people's livelihood. It's only reasonable to expect the government to have some response to the towns it destroyed.
That's vast exageration and it's sad people believe this common myth about China, lived there plenty of years and yes, it's common phenomenom, but so it's marriage out of love. I knew plenty of mixed couples and also plenty of local couples who contradict this claim. Pretty much none of my foreign coworkers had house or car and married if they wanted (yes, some traditional parents were not happy about it, but it was usually more about being foreigner than wealth) and so did Chinese couples doing naked wedding. I really recommend to you explore term "naked wedding" (it means without house/car) which is more and more common since properties in China are more expensive every week.
I find personally this selfpity about how you are screwed if you are not making tons of moeny and havin great car and house a lame excuse, as if all girls living would be gold diggers, but I guess in this website where is maybe 98% readers men it sounds plausible in this echo chamber.
I'm quite familiar with China, the culture, people, and the situation on the ground. I stand by my claim. It's a serious problem, one that the government itself is addressing because they believe will lead to social instability. It's not a myth at all. It's a serious problem - it might be improving with youth in urban centers - because so many have no chance of realistically owning a house/car - but the overall mentality still very much prevails.
> Pretty much none of my foreign coworkers had house or car and married if they wanted (yes, some traditional parents were not happy about it, but it was usually more about being foreigner than wealth) and so did Chinese couples doing naked wedding.
Yes, foreigners don't need to have a house or car to get married to a local. They have other assets - like foreign citizenship - that make up the difference.
No offense, but you live in rarefied air in China. I don't think you really know about the situation facing the average Chinese person.
> I find personally this selfpity about how you are screwed if you are not making tons of moeny and havin great car and house a lame excuse, as if all girls living would be gold diggers, but I guess in this website where is maybe 98% readers men it sounds plausible in this echo chamber.
In China it's not about the gold-digging. It's just facing the realities of life on the ground: competitive society + single child families means you have to take care of your parents, so of course girls seek stability. This is natural and you find various elements of this in the west too.
as for citizenship from foreigner, it's again nonsense, plenty of those Chinese would prefer never leave China where is foreign citizenship of husband just burden
have YOU lived in China? because you seem disinformed by media and dunno about reality on the ground. i lived there for years, most of my colleagues including me were married to Chinese
no point really to follow this discussion, anyone with common sense will figure out not everyone is marrying because of money, even in China
Sure, this doesn't mean that the pressures to own house+car before marriage is not real. I would argue that these pressures are especially felt in secondary and third-tier cities, where owning a house is not completely unrealistic like it is in BJ/Shanghai - also BJ/Shanghai has a much more cosmopolitan mentality amongst the youth than is normal/average. Please keep that in mind...
> as for citizenship from foreigner, it's again nonsense, plenty of those Chinese would prefer never leave China where is foreign citizenship of husband just burden
Whether or not the foreign spouse has no intention of leaving China doesn't really matter. The fact of the matter is, foreign citizenship is a nice insurance policy and provides some social clout amongst certain Chinese. The "insurance policy" is especially important given the fragility of the on-the-ground scene in China (just the pollution alone, places a nice premium on the option of escaping at a moments notice).
> have YOU lived in China? because you seem disinformed by media and dunno about reality on the ground. i lived there for years, most of my colleagues including me were married to Chinese
You assume I'm some China noob because I disagree with you. Yes I have lived in China, in fact. I've also worked there, have many friends who still live there, etc. I hope you see my comments in a new light. I'm far from ignorant / _mis_informed about China. I'll let you put two and two together for why that might be.
Also it's worth keeping in mind that your social circle in China doesn't really reflect the average Chinese person. It's like someone who graduated from Harvard, living in NYC as an investment banker, pontificating about the motivations of Jim-Bob and LuAnn in Wichita, Kansas. Even your Chinese wife - who I'm sure provides all sorts of interesting insights into Chinese culture - is different, just by the fact that she's married to a foreigner - to the average Chinese person living in randomville, Hunan province.
I don't mean to be so presumptuous about all of this, but you're assessment is so far off-base I'm not even sure how to properly respond to it. Ignorance is truly bliss, I guess.
> no point really to follow this discussion, anyone with common sense will figure out not everyone is marrying because of money, even in China
No, not everyone is marrying because of money. Still, pragmatic concerns of financial stability is a real and pressing concern in China, just as it is in all countries, including the developed West (there's a great song by the American R&B group, TLC, that perfectly encapsulates this universal view, it's called "no scrubs" - check it out). In China, these pressures are even more exacerbated by the factors that uniquely affect China: massive population (and thus competition for resources - including spouses), one-child policy, Confucius concept of filial piety, etc.
Look, I'm sorry if I offended your personal sensibilities. I'm sure your wife is a lovely person and loves you for you, but the pressures of having a house/car in order to marry in China are real. Period. Really, not that much dissimilar to the huge pressures facing Chinese high school students - and their families - to score high on the gaokao, which I'm sure you will not refute.
This is comparable to saying "all the young people live in cities" which is demonstrably false.
I also feel like that's exactly what is happening in the US. I write software in the Bay Area (surprise) and its striking to me that I make more money that several married couples I know where both partners work full time. The couples that do make more than me all have at least one person in tech or medical. Generally, these people are also more ambitious, but not to the degree the difference in income would imply.
They may have made some mistakes, but in previous generations a few mistakes now and again was not a life sentence. A few years off the books wasn't a big deal in the 80s or 90s. Now any gap in your linkedin profile is interrogated. In Japan and elsewhere, anyone with a blot on their employment record is doomed. And heaven help those with any criminal convictions. Our societies today deliberately push away so many people. It is improper of us to then say that it is entirely their fault or that they suffer illusions. The illusion is ours, that by shunning and dispossessing people for slight imperfections we only amplify them.
Once upon a time there was a net of reasonable jobs that didn't pay well but allowed people a life, low-level government jobs that took anyone willing to work hard. But has anyone here looked at how hard it is to become a postal worker or to join the army? Ability and willingness is no longer enough. (I have relatives in the Canadian Armed Forces. The application process takes at least one and sometimes many years.)
"I got used to living in an unstable situation and figured somehow it would work out"
That last bit is illusory thinking.
Also, I'd beg to differ on your suggestion that these people aren't choosing their life every single day. I'd suggest the opposite is true for most of us (leaving aside those who through incapacity have diminished options). Every single day you don't make an effort to look for work, don't volunteer for something, don't organise an activity, don't spend some time learning something, don't go somewhere to meet people, don't go on a date - you are making a choice. Living with your parents and (more importantly) living off your parents well into your fifties is not an accident. You can't accidentally do that. That is directly the result of daily choices and illusory thinking.
And while we can agreee that the term "parasite" is pejorative, I find it is deserved- at least from the perspective of the parent (who in this case is probably as much to blame for this situation).
My daughters are 20 and 18 and the expectation has long been set in our family that they will be moving out once they're in stable employment (and by that I mean any job that can pay their bills, not their dream job). When both kids are out of the house, we'll downsize and share some of the cashed out equity to help them get started on the property ladder. Then they're on their own. In our family we refer to this as "The Plan". They've been hearing about the Plan (and been onboard) since their early teens.
Japan is about 20 years ahead of current US/EU monetary policy. This is coming to America and it's not an accident and it's not people getting lazy and stupid. Things have gotten more expensive, more unequal and more competitive. And at least Japan has strong safety nets, America doesn't.
I never said people were lazy or stupid nor did I imply it. However to claim as some are, that people don't have choices in life is just plain wrong. You might not like the choices you have available but you've got them. And you're free to choose your path from among them.
Don't get me wrong and conflate what I'm saying with some kind political ideology. All I'm saying is that people are faced with personal choices and need to own their choices and the consequences of their choices.
Not the OP, but do they expect to go to college? Do you plan to cover their college costs?
If the answers are yes and no, they will come away with anywhere from $20,000 to $200,000 in student loan debts. I'm not sure how it could be more crippling...
You may have set the expectation that they will go out and live on their own, but were one of them to come to the point of becoming homeless (whatever the cause), would you let that happen to them? If one developed a crippling disease which didn't let them work a full time job, but also didn't kill them outright, what would you do then?
Intentions are great, but reality tends to kick intentions to the curb.
Having a manageable student debt is undoubtedly more important than the "college experience" IMO. College is really really important for the education; if you make the most of it and obtain the skills to make money, you ensure a much more sustainable and enjoyable quality of life.
With respect to disease and circumstances truly beyond their control then we will do whatever is necessary at that time. However they are exceptional circumstances.
With respect to homelessness my response will be measured against their attempts to exit those circumstances (irrespective of how they got there). So if they are addicted to a substance (for example) then if they are actively trying to shake that addiction (or showing a true willingness to) then I will help them do so.
My view of parenting is that our goal should always be to try and raise resilient, independent kids. It is not to provide an infinite bank for those that aren't interested in owning their own lives.
The problem is that easy student loans has made it so people who should have never gone to college are now going and flunking out after a few semesters of partying and now have 10s of thousands in debt with nothing to show for it.
Combine easy money with indoctrination telling kids that they will be losers if they don't go and you have the current situation
Most people won't have scholorships, or at least not enough scholorships to cover their entire tuition.
> telling kids that they will be losers if they don't go
It's worse than "mere" peer pressure. A 4 year college education is all-but-required for entry level white collar jobs anymore. A college degree is this century's High School Diploma.
Meanwhile there are tons of trade jobs that don't get filled because there's a stigma against it.
And they frequently paid really low wages, since they're expected to be filled by immigrants, both legal and illegal. $10 an hour seasonally to pick onions? $15 an hour for a professional welder? Those are near-poverty level wages.
Have you met any 20-somethings in stable employment? Unless your daughters are supermodels or have PHDs in biotech they are in for at least a decade of contract work and constant job-hunting. Even those at their dream jobs know they stand on the knife's edge. And the property ladder, the average home price in my area is over 500k and closer to 1m if you want to be in driving distance of any "stable" job. Even with the 20% down payment only top earners even qualify for a loan. I hope you are ready to co-sign their mortgages.
Most of my friends in a major field of engineering or computer science are just fine as well (IT-degrees and almost comp sci degrees don't fair as well).
The world is not as dismal as it may seem for millenials. It's just that demand for STEM +CS continues to grow while the demand for other fields is stagnant, relying on people leaving the workforce to create new openings.
That means you weren't around for the dot-com bust in 2001 or so. Yes, things are good right now but the situation can go south very suddenly and with very little warning and stay bad for several years.
EDIT: In hindsight, I see the irony of that statement. But I also know we don't get involved with the sort of schenanigans that hurt firms in the last crisis.
Even if your present employer is stable, it seems likely that tens of thousands of us will be competing with you for your next job, and bidding down its wages.
In making high-dollar salaries, we're doing better than most, but don't confuse $150k Senior Engineer positions for 25-year-olds at 5-year-old companies with long-term stability.
I also took out a sizable chunk of student loan debt for my degree, and have paid it off already, so now I'm debt-free and employed. Nearly every one of my friends and peers are in a similar boat. No apocalypse here, yet.
I also grew up in a non-nuclear family with a single mother and 2 siblings.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/crea-march-figures-1.4073540
For a 400k loan, with 100k down, a Canadian bank will want to see an income of at least 80k/year before taxes. That number (80k) puts one in the top 10% of earners. So to buy the average house (500k) one must be in the top 10% of earners. To buy the average house in a city you better earn closer to 180k, putting you well into the top 1% of earners. So for the vast majority of young people home ownership isn't a reasonable option even in the long term.
Anyone can play around with the numbers here: https://tools.td.com/mortgage-affordability-calculator/
The example I always return to is the military. An officer in a nation's military should be able to buy a house and have a family in a degree of comfort. That was my grandfather. Today, officers rent apartments in full knowledge that home ownership will never happen so long as they remain officers. An RCAF pilot, an elite officer in any military, earns between 75 and 100k. With a young family and perhaps a student loan, that fighter pilot won't ever own a house. It is worse for naval officers, who generally need to live near cities/ports.
Toronto’s Housing Boom Refills Empty Nests, Driving Prices Even Higher | March 12, 2017 https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/12/world/canada/torontos-hou...
Granted, we're smart folks, who could finish a bachelors in four years, and got degrees in subjects that lead to well-paying careers. We also chose to live in a part of the country that isn't stupid expensive.
If you're a first-time home owner, you can get an FHA mortgage, which has a low down payment and low interest rates.
Real estate inflation is a problem, but if you live outside of the ridiculous areas, that million dollar house is only 100k-250k. Which is entirely feasible on an engineer or developer salary in those same areas.
I don't make half of what I could make in SV or NY, in gross terms, but for where I am, I'm very comfortable.
Median tenure is falling I believe. And employees in their mid-twenties and thirties have way lower tenure than those in their fifties. I think it's about 3 years as opposed to 10 years. Job-hunting is much more prevalent.
With respect to jobs, I totally agree that the definition of "stable" has changed from my parents' era to my children's. And we are lucky we don't live in the US. Our social services, while not what they were, are still ahead of your. But if you can start life without a huge debt, then that is the best way we can help them, and in those circumstances "stability" can be defined more flexibly.
But that doesn't mean that the population of unemployed and unmatched people can shrink. Only that it can churn.
Also, I have no idea what you mean by my idea being based on prejudice. Prejudice against what, who?
Frankly I see this sentiment alot with today's millennial generation (really anyone from early 20s to mid/late 30s). Everyone thinks they'll have that dream job, life, marriage, kds, etc.... even the uber drivers and starbucks baristas. The "oh things will work out" attitude is especially prevalent given the popular parenting slogans of the past few decades: everyone's a winner; every child is special; you can do whatever you want if you put your mind to; etc.
Disgusting. I am one of the oldest millennials (born in 82) and my age group was the last to have it somewhat easy. People born in 92 are in a pressure cooking from every angle.
The only answer is to transfer wealth from baby boomers to millennials through inflation. I have zero idea if it will happen, but as the pressure builds on this generation, they will surely look for political solutions, one of which is printing money.
Like whatever the reason for it: bad parenting, trashy culture, Bill Clinton, or maybe - maybe - that their parents pissed away the legacy of their forebears and the birthright of their progeny - whatever the reason, there are consequences to flushing an entire generation of people down the toilet. Consequences like mass revolt and death. It's really not good to leave large numbers of people with little to lose.
I agree that some of the blame should be directed towards the prior generation; I was trying to allude to that with my criticism of their parenting technique, which I think is inherently hypocritical, given the advantages they enjoyed that kids today don't have.
Unfortunately that mostly means that our kids will likely have it worse, not better. Starting with baby boomers we simply had too few children to keep growing GDP. GDP, and economic activity in general shows a remarkable and extremely direct relation to two things : total amount of energy used, and total amount of people. For the first time in over 70 years, both are stagnating, slowly.
And it's too late : to fix the population growth rate, gen X should have been having lots of kids one to two decades ago, and that has decidedly not happened. For the foreseeable future, we'll have to do more with less, both in terms of energy, but especially in terms of labor available.
You might say "but machine learning", "but robots", etc. Well that's exactly what they said in the 80s with the car plant closings. That was patently false. Then they said it again with Japan crashing and then stagnating. Again, not true. Now we're saying it about ourselves (but doubly so for China). I don't think this time it will be right either.
Well, I do remain hopeful that we will reach an inflexion point at which such technologies will make labor immensely cheap. If you think about the very basic requirements for having ever increasing population and GDP: you need young people to keep your factories running, working your farms and running your investment funds etc. Once most of these things are automated, labor productivity would have reached the point where there won't be a need for ever-expanding population to achieve the same standard of life.
And the problem isn't keeping GDP growing, it is growing it enough to pay for spending obligations.
And we sort of obviously don't have resource problems, we have a problem with matching supply and demand.
The likely fix is rampant inflation. Erases debt, erases the value of property relative to wages, etc.
Of course our neoliberal, hyper capitalistic society doesn't help either...
The people that came into power dismantled them, no the generation.
The people in power before them, and after them equally were for dismantling things.
Its the generation that votes/puts people in power in a democratic political system. Politicians are representatives of the people i.e. generation.
> The people in power before them, and after them equally were for dismantling things.
Nope. The New Deal was the opposite of dismantling: using government resources to kickstart the economy. And then the Great Society programs to enable higher standards of living for all.
In an ideal world. In practice they're in the pockets of many interests (including their own), and people only get to vote 1 in 4 years or so, and only accept a candidate "wholesale". How many promises did Obama broke to the people that elected him? How many will Trump?
>Nope. The New Deal was the opposite of dismantling: using government resources to kickstart the economy. And then the Great Society programs to enable higher standards of living for all.
The New Deal was rather the exception, after a near fatal crash, and under the pressure of a unionized America and an increased communist global influence, where the ruling classes had to show that they were for more than exploiting too. Similar things happened all over the world and established the early welfare state, but not because the 1930's generation was somehow special in voting for better people.
Do you seriously think its "generations of people" that do stuff to other generations?
The ones making the calls for all those things were the 0.1% then and are 0.1% now, regardless of whether they are 30 year olds or baby boomers.
And yes generations do decide on a lot. For instance, the baby boomers instituted social welfare programs that generation after them paid for, but the programs won't be funded long enough to take care of the next generations? Sounds like the biggest ponzi scheme in the history of Mankind.
One thing that I always found interesting about the greatest generation vs the boomers is the shift in attitudes towards wealth, one's civic duty, etc.
The finance industry is a nice microcosm to study this shift... 40-50-60 years ago banker salaries and the enviability of their jobs were both low. Top grads from the ivies would sneer at their classmates for going into finance over something like the diplomatic corps. Today that's 100% reversed.
I always felt that the "professional services" industry is basically a giant con perpetuated by lazy boomers because it's an easy, optically nice appearing, way to shift money into one's own pocket. Collectively, they've created these upper-income professions that serve little to no value, solely in place to fund "elite" society. The result is that the greatest minds of my generation are wasted in the pursuit of making silly and irrelevant powerpoint decks (Consulting) or rent-seeking in the capital markets (Banking). And look, it's even infesting technology as evidenced by the legion of irrelevant startups. Why work hard at something difficult when you can roll the dice with someone else's pension funds (and if that fails, onwards and upwards to HBS)?
The reason people make a lot of money in any case is because they can eliminate the information asymmetry associated with them delivering value.
In finance the people that are paid well are the ones who can show with clarity that they delivered dollars to the bottom line. Investment bankers show it through the huge fees they earn by winning contracts with companies IPOing etc.
Portfolio managers show it through pointing to their measured performance and showing their AUM gains. AUM x Fees = revenue.
People in big corp have a much harder time showing how their individual production helped the bottom line. Engineers have a REALLY REALLY hard time with this. Those engineers that do are making ridiculous money because of the scale that they can add value.
Its the parents and age 40+ that think everything will just 'work out' for them, because they're 'hard workers', who are themselves stuck in manual labor/retail and do not have any career or education outside of that. They ignore job trends and stick to what they've been doing, then cry when they're retired after 5-8 years of working there, scapegoating with leftist politics and 'millenials who don't know anything.'. Even my own parents succumbed to that one. If I had my own kids, I would tell them that things /will/ work out for them, if they put in the effort, because I know my parents were quite wrong. On the flip side, even if you don't get what you want, atleast you put in a lot of effort, and that will get you something.
This is all about Neoliberalism then isn't it. Privatize everything and then the privatized companies are highly competitive and only want the best and couldn't care less about the middle or the bottom. It's not about jobs, it's really never been about the jobs that's just rhetoric. It's about profits. And profits are stuck in large consolidated corporations that pay as little as possible to the middle and the bottom, preferably on contract or the "sharing" economy of contractors. For full-time employees with benefits they just want the top which is often overworked. I mean the economy was engineered to be like this specifically for the benefit of those with money.
There's no reason to lionize these people and act like "society rejected them." It's just (comparatively) easy to not work in the modern world, in first world countries, and these people didn't.
I don't think there's that much more we can say.
You don't need a LinkedIn profile to be a
- plumber
- electrician
- nurse
- teacher
- truck driver
The list goes on.
Note that none of the jobs you list would ever allow someone with a criminal record. A minor felony conviction (drunk driving, drug possession etc) closes all of those doors.
In contrast, the people who learned at the hands of mentors always showed more interest in actually becoming good at the trade, and favor practicality over theory. They will usually work to fill their own gaps in knowledge, and become some of the lynchpins on any development team.
I'll take an earnest, self-taught person coming up from the QA department every day over a greenhorn fresh out of college.
Neither of those things are "minor felonies". They're misdemeanors, and don't close all those doors. Felony convictions hover around 8.6% of the population based on a cursory Google search, and most non-drug related felonies are serious business.
If you do get convicted of a felony, yes, your life as you know it is over (can't vote, can't own guns, etc etc) However, the two offenses you state are not felonies, unless you've hurt somebody while drunk driving or you possess enough drugs to indicate intent to distribute.
At the same time, it seems a bit much to say "your life as you know it is over". Lots of people don't vote or own guns anyway.
Uhm, that's not the only problems you face. If you're not aware of it: you don't get a lot of federal benefits, credit etc is screwed, noone will rent you their apt etc., unemployable for almost every job except janitor etc.... your life is over.
FTFY.
If an interviewer criticized my lack of a LinkedIn profile, that is a warning sign to me.
I think people here really overrate how open the trades are. Most of the "can't fill" positions are for things like underwater welding, or high risk/niche occupations. Your local tech school generally produces more than enough electricians and plumbers for most local markets.
Sure, you don't need a LI profile to get a dead-end job.
I keep hearing this. Have for years. I don't expect it to actually happen anytime soon. We're still stuck in the "assisted cruise control" and "lane keeping" age, a good decade after the technologies were first introduced into consumer cars.
Let me know when the self-driving cars can do even level 4 automation on more than the well marked, sun-drenched California roads. Then we can talk about the immanent automation of all of the trucks.
Nursing, plumbing, and electrical work are all stable, rewarding jobs. Nursing has no career? Get real. Nursing has as much career progression potential as a software developer: nurse -> administration/policy/public health; nurse -> manager; nurse -> nurse practitioner; nurse -> anesthetist.
The best you can get without a degree is leading your own team of nurses, which basically means deciding shift patterns. My dad sorta invented his own job (back in the '70s when the world was more flexible, let's say) and "escaped", but most people he knew are still there doing shifts.
"You can be a nurse, but you're never allowed to pursue any certificates or a BSN"
Do "real jobs" lose their authenticity once someone tries to improve themselves?
I'm pretty sure the only people who ever say that are people who were raised to hate themselves if they aren't at least in the upper-middle class. There will always be teachers making $50k per year and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. In fact, if you look closely, all across America there are millions of people earning less than $60k per year. Guess what? They're doing just fine. They're content with life. They aren't toxic as*holes who can't live with themselves because they don't make X thousand dollars per year and live in Y school district.
The journalists's use of the pejorative "parasite" is not appropriate for someone who fell under serious misfortune as living with Parkinson's. "Parasite" implies a willful decision to live off another's resources. The first example was that: the woman decided to pursue emotionally fulfilling work without saving or contributing to a pension.
I'm criticizing the journalist, who in the attempt to document a "weird Japan" trend, just dug up a sad story which could have happened anywhere in the world.
Culturally, living with one's Parents in the United States, as a grown Adult, with or without a Spouse, is going to be predominately portrayed as a negative lifestyle indicator. As in, the Individual doesn't have the choice of Independence, at least not the basic financial / living arrangements type.
The "Sandwich Generation" label scares the ever loving spirit of freedom out of most US people who might find themselves caught between providing for both Kids AND Parents.
Assimilation into values such as this US type of Independence are, understandably, quite foreign to several other Large Cultures elsewhere in the World. However, on this turf, it is the prevailing attitude. No amount of "Well in other countries it's perfectly normal" will turn the tide regarding this component of the US life experience, and, at least here, it's an indicator of a need to further assimilate or, unfortunately, deal with cultural push back.
To be fair to the US, this happens when US people try to ascribe their values to other cultures as well. I get it. Two way street.
The problem is that in other cultures it is not only normal, but going far away is bad! I am talking about moving from cities, not actually living with your parents.
In Spain this happens mainly in smaller cities and towns and with somewhat more traditional thinking families. In many of these cases* you are expected to stay close so the family takes care of each other in both ways.
Even the next big city might be a reason for relatives to feel bad for your family. The person moving away is categorized normally into:
- Needs it for $: financially unstable OR greedy, while other cultures would see this as a positive career improvement. If these people are already at the top of their career path, then they should help improve the country!
- Troublesome: someone who doesn't care for the family, while other cultures would see this as independent. These are expected to end up like those non-fancy-titled people who are flipping bugers or receiving you in a hostal in UK or Germany.
- Temporary to grow: it is okay to go abroad as long as you come back later on. Normally it is expected that they tell a lot of stories about how crappy the other country was and all the trouble they had.
Luckily I am from a bigger city and my family knows (even though they won't verbally admit it) how bad this country is for what my sister and I like doing. They try to show support us working abroad even though it's clear they are unhappy when we go away.
*Yes, there are many situations where this is not the case! Normally with people who speak N languages and has a degree (like me) are not like this. I am talking about my experiences from smaller cities.
It became a "culture" (if even that) due to economical pressures. Buying a flat or, gods forbid, a house in Bulgaria's capital (Sofia) is honestly a nightmare. The mortgages might as well be called slavery agreements (so don't give me the argument of "if you're 25 and have 3-4 years in one organization the bank will give you a mortgage") and well-paid jobs on the local market are as rare as unicorns. Thank all the gods for remote work or I'd probably be flipping burgers, my programmer skills be damned.
In these conditions people try to optimize and make do with what they have. Bacterias adapt their behaviour depending on the environment, chickens do it, fish do it, everyone is doing it -- humans as well.
Other posters here comment that obtaining homes in USA is becoming harder. I have no idea if that's true but if it is, expect more living with the parents in USA in the future as well.
if you can work remotely, then obvious option would be to find country with lower expenses (PH/ID/TH) and work from there and save money (many of my friends moved there, not just because of cost of living but also for weather, enviroment), if moving to richer country and getting paid more is not an option
You're saying both you and your girlfriend are frugal. I am no longer neither frugal nor humble. I've been poor a lot of time in my life and even though at least 80% of that time was self-inflicted, this doesn't matter one bit in the end: your patience runs out.
So here I am, totally out of patience, with debts and still having to think strategically. I am not a defeatist, I am a pretty strong guy, physically and mentally, but I am just burned out and very tired in a sense that cannot be fixed by sleep, sex, or food. I need a rest from being an adult.
That won't happen. Ever. We all know it. So I am basically doing my best to increase my income but not decrease my expenses. Hard or not, it's my life and a battle for mine and my girl's happiness and fulfillment and I'll fight the battle as long as I am alive.
Thank you for your advice.
imagine you have wife without any maternity leave welfare and child to support, you have nothing to complain about, you still have it very very easy and many options how to resolve it, how I wish I could not be an adult and just relax...
guess you can call that "living with parents". it's such a broad definition of situations that I can't imagine that just the label alone is useful for judging much.
The idea, and I think Rap stars put it best, is to rise up and then buy your Mom a House somewhere nice. Go make it, then bring the rest of the family up. That's why them and NFL / MLB / US sports starts feel like they owe a lot of hungry mouths. It's complicated for sure!
You occasionally see it in immigrant-heavy communities even when they aren't impoverished, because family-locality is a cultural value in many of them.
OTOH, I have seen it, close up, in purchases in ~$200K suburban northern California communities, and in rentals in places in NorCal with similar values, which are much more middle income than impoverished.
It's not really a marketing category, because America prefers the (at least illusion of) the isolated nuclear family as the norm.
OTOH, multiple generations of adults in the same home (or in detached units on the same property) has never been uncommon (and is increasingly common in recent years), and there are certainly homes with features that cater to that use on the market, though unless a particular customer is known to be seeking that particular use the features won't be pitched for that purpose.
The bigger issue is the tremendous waste of human capital at a time when Japan needs employees more and more. (Of course, it is the right of these individuals to live their lives as they see fit, but society would benefit if they were more productive.)
Maybe the employers need to change? Maybe the social net needs to be modified to encourage work? Not sure how to change incentives, but it certainly seems a large subset of that generation isn't headed anywhere good.
Of course, that is only an issue for folks who've been able to buy property, but as another comment mentions, if you leave certain metro areas property becomes very affordable very quick.
But a heloc doesn't care what you borrow.
Of which Japan has many, filled mostly with retirees. Also, since public services are funded nationally, the civic infrastructure (roads, schools, hospitals) is kept up even when the population drops.
I think help from them with your child will be much less valuable (close to zero due to advanced age) than your help to them
Just looking at the number of people who live at home with parents has no bearing on what got them there. Some may be actively looking for work but only able to find sporadic temp work. Others may be needed as a live-at-home carer to their elderly relatives. Some may be genuinely lazy. Some may be very hard working. There's literally none of this information conveyed in statistics alone, all you have in this article is a few hand-picked personal stories to present the view that the author wanted to convey.
1) Having your children around after they are grown up is a threat to the health of your marriage and often your own sanity and financial well-being.
2) "Unwanted competition for resources" also applies where the children take advantage of the parents limited resources without contributing their fair share.
Not saying it can't work for some cultures, but in the US and other countries, it hasn't. For the most part, parents simply don't want their children living with them and it significantly limits the available pool of potential spouses/significant others/mates/etc.
In the US, it's synonymous with momma's boys, socially awkward males and those with financially unstable situations.
Let's do it the other way. I'll name only one where living with your parents is considered not kosher - the USA. In practically every traditional society, living in the family home is just fine, especially for those members of the family that don't have their own homes.
In fact if the family home is sizable, raising your own family inside the family home is OK too. I've seen it everywhere I've traveled - much of Africa and South America.
Sure, is OK, but is not ideal, and is done mostly by necessity, for economic reasons.
This would be the case for pretty much any society where land and housing was not easily available. As housing is becoming increasingly unavailable in the United States, and population is still increasing, expect to see it here.
That housing may as well be on the moon for all the good it does.
1. There's often cheaper property within manageable commuting distance from those expensive areas.
2. Those able to work from home are unaffected
3. If you can afford lunar real estate, money's probably the least of your concerns ;)
2. Yeah, and neither are rich people. The well-connected in the USSR weren't affected by shortages of apartments and automobiles, either.
3. On the Moon, I think possession is nine tenths of the law.
It is normal until you either get married, move due to university/job or move with your partner. Why else would you want to live alone? (;
yes, they might been more traditional even in better times, but let's not lie to ourselves that most of the children would not move out if they could afford it
When you see the effects of the maturation of an economy plus globalization, it's apparent it's not as simple as saying that beginning in the '80s the establishment sold out the middle class in favor of the elite. There is more at play. Japan has been suffering from the same issues, but somewhat differently due to some structural rigidity.
Japan is, as they say, complicated. Work culture (at the extreme death from over work, but commonly getting home very late due to social obligations at work), gender roles (still difficult for women to achieve success on par with men), cost of living, hiring practices (must be hired before graduation) hyperactive brand awareness (the new cool thing minted by thirteen year olds must be had by virtually 50% of the pop) and to some degree idealization of a bohemian way of life and repudiation of their previous generations' attitudes toward work. All these things come together and result in a ~30year intractable malaise.
If they could just get themselves to address the biggest issue, make it easier for women to work and succeed (opportunities, responsibilities, salaries, time off for family and bigly social expectations) they just might have a chance at improving things, but I'm not holding my breath.
Japan's biggest issue is simple demographics and capital saturation, not conservative views on women in the workplace. In the past, when the economy was roaring, their views on women were even more conservative than now, and it clear didn't hold them back at that time.
Basically what they did and continue to do is forgo roughly half their potential workforce and half their overall potential because they could not bother to make things even semi-attractive for women to stay employed beyond 30.
More women in the workforce means more workers, more money in the economy, more viability for families, more progress, more development, more real demand for goods and services etc.
You aren't really making an effort to demonstrate this, or your earlier point that the "biggest issue" is making it "easier for women to work and succeed".
In Japan right now, it's not just that women are underemployed -- men are underemployed, as well. "Death by overwork" affects women as well as men. This would seem to speak to an overwhelming level of power on the part of employers, not a need for more workers.
I am really puzzled by the idea that the core problem in Japan has anything to do with the relative involvement of women in the work force.
The problem isn't that there isn't enough income it the distribution of the income.
Senator Warren is obviously an advocate for women having the opportunity to work and have a career while the book analyzes the system wide implications of those individual choices. She makes a convincing case that the results have been for parents to assume more financial risk to raise children and that the risk is higher for single income families and higher still for single income/single parent families.
Some points that really crystallized for me from her book her analysis of household spending for a single income household in the 1970's compared to a more recent dual income household. Once you take out the higher mortgage payment (to get access to good schools), childcare (to support the second income), medical care and transportation (to support the second income) the household in the 1970's had more disposable income at the end of the month than the two income modern family even though the modern family has a much higher household income.
She primarily advocates for tax and policy changes to reduce the system wide impacts on families with children.
A single income family that is outbid for access to good schools through real estate prices may send a spouse to work to get access. The single income family that is now excluded may do the same. Eventually you reach a tipping point where every family is expending maximum income to fit into districts with good schools.
One thing I believe the book missed is that having two income families also has the impact of degrading the very same school districts as the book ignores the contributions of the non-working parent. Parents who are dedicated full time to raising children volunteer at school, have more well adjusted children and their social networks stabilize neighborhoods. The same forces that move families to send a spouse to work are the same that degrade the very schools that they want access to.
The result I believe is a game of survivor where couples with children bid for smaller and smaller islands of the middle class and more couples opt out of having children.
How schools are funded is obviously an issue in the US but also explicit tax transfers from single income families to dual income families through things like childcare credits and mortgage deductions also contribute to the demise of the single income family.
Btw. is there something wrong with it, if parents and the men are fine with that, what's the problem here? At least parents will have someone to take care of them, my wife's uncle is in similar position and I don't see it as anything bad, at least other children with better jobs no need to take care of them. Or the preffered option is to dump own parents to retirement home and stay in your own apartment, if someone has no problem with the other option?