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Comment by mattycakes01 | Hacker News Reader

I am sinking in debt thanks to my college, and you think boomers have that problem? No, they don't, and I wonder how old you are considering your views -- I honestly don't think you know any boomers with views like this, considering your only argument is the ones at grocery stores. My grandfather worked at a grocery store for 30 years and has a pension still going to this day. No jobs have pensions anymore. And I bet all those boomers working there have houses, but we Millenials cannot even get a down payment for a home. But sure poor said difficult life of the boomer.

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I certainly agree that a subset of 'boomers' had unique access to stable careers and an outstanding real estate market. But I do have a few question...

What degree/program were you enrolled in? And how much debt is 'sinking in debt'?

It seems to me that its been well known for years which degrees/careers are profitable and which aren't. Most school's graduation outcomes are publicly published so it shouldn't be too hard to do the calculus. That said I do understand how can easily get into a bad situation since most college decisions are made when you are ~18 plus a lot of people depend on parental assistance which can be unpredictable to say the least.

On another note, it is important to consider that owning a home prior to the modern super low rates had the opposite problem; the purchase price and corresponding down payment was easy but the payments are 'expensive'. Unless you had prior knowledge that interest rates were going to bottom out, there was little reason to think you would make much in real estate and for middle America making the mortgage payment was a constant struggle. In some ways the bull run on the stock market is an even better 'generational-specific-early-investment-strategy' for millenials because you can make 10%, 20%, even 30% YoY returns without any risk or upfront cost.

Really at this point, the most worse off are the last of the millennials and future gen-z individuals entering the labor force. Asset prices including both stock and real estate are at all time highs and pretty much everyone agrees both are in a bubble but both continue to give >10% YoY returns which makes non-participation very difficult to recommend.

The narrative is that boomers have it easy and are retired and enjoying a leisurely life. the fact that many boomers and gen x are still working low-paying jobs, suggests maybe this is not so. As a whole boomers are better off, but they are much older too, so had more time to accumulate wealth. Adjusting for age, the disparity disspears or not as great.

Not an American. I want to understand college debt. Is the situation so binary that if people don't take un-returnable debt they'll be stuck in lower end minimum-wage manual jobs? I understand state colleges are relatively cheaper.

No, a lot of people have no college debt at all, but for that you need to be strong academically to get academic scholarships. It's like in Europe only 1/3 go to university, so that's about the number that could go with little or no debt in the U.S. But the rest can also go if they don't get a scholarship and pay their own way.

And for a lot of people, they are strong academically to get a full ride to a less prestigious school but only get a partial scholarship to a more prestigious school, and then choose to go to the more famous school but then take on debt. Sometimes a lot of debt. So there are many people who go to the most prestigious school no matter the cost. I think that attitude is starting to change now.

There are also affordable state schools you can go to rather than more expensive private schools.

I went all the way to an advanced degree without any loans or personal spending (but I had to purchase books), just using scholarships and financial aid. But I didn't go to the most famous schools. In my high school I was in the top 10% in terms of both scores and grades, so that was enough to get admitted to most schools but not to get a full scholarship. So I got tuition waivers for the local state university and lived with my parents, and then for grad school I got full tuition waiver as well as a TA job that paid enough to live (barely).

But I know many other people who had the same high school grades and SAT scores as I did but went to Dartmouth or other places and took on huge debt. I didn't even consider those schools as I wasn't willing to take on any debt. I always went to the best school that was free.

If you don't go to university, then you have to find your own way in life. You can be very successful if you get a trade, but there is no good system of trade schools -- you have to find the trade yourself, and finance it yourself. Unlike the network of financial aid and scholarship for universities, there is nothing like that for trade schools. The US has no trade school system because it offends our sensibilities which say that everyone should go to college and that tracking is wrong. For the same reason, every high school styles itself as "college prep" but then they have to dumb down the curriculum to allow students to pass. Thus we have no gymnasium system where you are learning useful skills before (or instead of) college prep.

So it's really hard for people who are not college graduates because there is no equivalent support system to train them. The US has terrible problems with lack of skilled workers -- both a shortage of technical students in universitites and a shortage of machinists, carpenters, plumbers, electricians, etc. People in these fields find their own way. Many figure it out -- they meet someone who talks to them and shows them some options, or they have a friend who is an electrician and they find a school and borrow some money to attend, etc. But it's really random and it's easy to fall through the gaps and just take a series of unskilled retail jobs.

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