Do you younger guys agree with this article?

[greyforest]

Didnt read any responses beyond the ones I quoted and Fuzzy's last one.

I am out this thread. You win. Im a horrible person, you know best how things really are and should be. Enjoy yourselves.

What a little ing baby. Insulting me and arguing until I make you look like the ING IGNORANT FOOL you are, then you run away like a ing pussy.


Go. Take your ball and go home. That means that I win.

[CosmicCowboy]

What a little ing baby. Insulting me and arguing until I make you look like the ING IGNORANT FOOL you are, then you run away like a ing pussy.


Go. Take your ball and go home. That means that I win.

[greyforest]

idiot

Why don't you quote my reply and try to argue with me? .

[LnGrrrR]

You did after all say that you laugh at them.

Reading comprehension fail.

Here's the original post:

...Maybe youre right. I have friends who are similar to the article, without the student loans in some cases, but they have one prevailing commonality. Theyre lazy and self-en led. They want to hit the clock, work 40 hours and be paid at least $50k a year with weekends off.

I laugh at them, in real life, to their face.

He's laughing at the lazy idiots, not the people he hires.

[CosmicCowboy]

Why don't you quote my reply and try to argue with me? .

[vy65]

While limiting the college going crowd would be somewhat of a good thing, the fact is we live in world that requires more technical knowledge in almost any job. Its about time we picked up our education BEFORE college.

[MannyIsGod]

In which way? Almost 60% of white collar jobs in today's economy require a college degree.

But they really shouldn't. And I think that in itself is a damn good point that needs to be made. And if they are going to, then you probably do have to find a way to make college more affordable. Community college associates degrees should go up in value, for instance.

[vy65]

In which way? Almost 60% of white collar jobs in today's economy require a college degree.

Limiting the number of people with a BA is one of the best ways to make a college education meaningful again.

I think the point (of the thread) is that people shouldn't think that they're en led to a white collar job anymore.

[MannyIsGod]

The white collar/blue collar designations are also becoming a thing of the past. Not all white collar jobs are created equal. You shouldn't need a college degree to be a data entry monkey, for instance.

[vy65]

I agree with that too.

We have to get rid of the idea that a college education opens doors to a good-paying, entry level white collar job. This isn't 1964 anymore.

[greyforest]

That lie is not going anywhere - not when college education is a trillion+ dollar industry which relies on people believing it.

[DarrinS]

What a little ing baby. Insulting me and arguing until I make you look like the ING IGNORANT FOOL you are, then you run away like a ing pussy.


Go. Take your ball and go home. That means that I win.

Damn. What an overreaction. The "little ing baby" might be you.

[LnGrrrR]

Time to wax philosophical.

Life certainly can be a struggle.

However when ones life only has meaning when compared to another's then it has no meaning at all.

Life certainly is a compe ion of sorts though. We're all competing for limited resources.

[vy65]

Psychologists should bethink themselves before putting down the instinct of self-preservation as the cardinal instinct of an organic being. A living thing seeks above all to discharge its strength--life itself is will to power; self-preservation is only one of the indirect and most frequent results thereof. In short, here, as everywhere else, let us beware of superfluous teleological principles!--one of which is the instinct of self-preservation (we owe it to Spinoza's inconsistency). It is thus, in effect, that method ordains, which must be essentially economy of principles.

[LnGrrrR]

In which way? Almost 60% of white collar jobs in today's economy require a college degree.

I think that job requirements would adjust in a world where college degrees weren't as ubiquitous.

[LnGrrrR]

Psychologists should bethink themselves before putting down the instinct of self-preservation as the cardinal instinct of an organic being. A living thing seeks above all to discharge its strength--life itself is will to power; self-preservation is only one of the indirect and most frequent results thereof. In short, here, as everywhere else, let us beware of superfluous teleological principles!--one of which is the instinct of self-preservation (we owe it to Spinoza's inconsistency). It is thus, in effect, that method ordains, which must be essentially economy of principles.

That's a whole lot of words to say "Might makes right".

[MannyIsGod]

But thats a compe ion for resources, thats not life. This is of course all philosophical, but in my opinion, Life is about experiences, learning, and being happy. For me, I just want to experience as much as possible, learn as much as possible, and be as happy as possible. The enjoyment of my life is not relative to someone else's enjoyment of their life. We're not competing for a limited supply of satisfaction.

For someone else who defines their life as a race to the top against others and trying to be the best relative to others then life could certainly be a compe ion but I happen to think thats a flawed viewpoint that has to do more with one's worldview than an actual compe ion.

While we those resources we compete with each other for can be a key to satisfaction I think one of the main points of the article is that our generation is learning that's not the only way.

EDIT: @LNG

I really should learn to use the quote function, tbh.

[vy65]

That's a whole lot of words to say "Might makes right".

Doesn't it?

[LnGrrrR]

But thats a compe ion for resources, thats not life. This is of course all philosophical, but in my opinion, Life is about experiences, learning, and being happy. For me, I just want to experience as much as possible, learn as much as possible, and be as happy as possible. The enjoyment of my life is not relative to someone else's enjoyment of their life. We're not competing for a limited supply of satisfaction.

Can you live without resources? Sure, there's more to "life" than resources, but life requires one (resources) more than the other (happiness, etc etc).

For someone else who defines their life as a race to the top against others and trying to be the best relative to others then life could certainly be a compe ion but I happen to think thats a flawed viewpoint that has to do more with one's worldview than an actual compe ion.

We all need to consume resources; however, those resources are not free to all. Therefore, at some level, life is always a compe ion for resource. We're always consuming.

Now, that somewhat disappears as one's basic necessities are taken care of. Then the "compe ion" shifts to satisfaction, however one finds it, which is far more nebulous. But at the base, life is about compe ion.

While we those resources we compete with each other for can be a key to satisfaction I think one of the main points of the article is that our generation is learning that's not the only way.

What do you mean by "those resources"? Our generation isn't learning "That's not the only way"... the very opposite, in fact. They are learning that having to live with less IS the only way, so we're adapting by setting it up as "We don't need extra resources to be happy".

Sure, you don't need them. But I"m sure 99% of those same people wouldn't turn down a winning lottery ticket if offered.

[Winehole23]

Psychologists should bethink themselves before putting down the instinct of self-preservation as the cardinal instinct of an organic being. A living thing seeks above all to discharge its strength--life itself is will to power; self-preservation is only one of the indirect and most frequent results thereof. In short, here, as everywhere else, let us beware of superfluous teleological principles!--one of which is the instinct of self-preservation (we owe it to Spinoza's inconsistency). It is thus, in effect, that method ordains, which must be essentially economy of principles.

http://books.google.com/books?id=m4FpCC8FX30C&pg=PA29

[LnGrrrR]

Doesn't it?

Not really.

Edit: Ah, misread that at first. Thought you were quoting Spinoza, not Nietzche. Besides Ayn Rand, I think it telling that no one else espouses Nietzche's "might makes right" theories.

I'm more of an existentialist myself. (The Sartre kind, not the horribly depressed Kierkegaard type.)

[CosmicCowboy]

http://books.google.com/books?id=m4FpCC8FX30C&pg=PA29

busted

[greyforest]

Damn. What an overreaction. The "little ing baby" might be you.

Really? Lets see.

DarkReign posted this wall of text riddled with insults and assumptions against me:

Sure.



Bankruptcy isnt usually an option for most people. The only people I know who are declared bankruptcy are the super-rich (...and its only Chapter 13 on a failed business) and those who cannot manage money further than their front pocket.

Both of which I have no sympathy for.



I graduated from high school in 1998. I am only mildly older than you (by the sounds of it) and those being described in the article.

Here is what I know:

I am from a middle-class to upper-middle class area. Lots of UAW kids, a few Automotive Executives kids (who had awesome parties).

I am a UAW kid, with a father that worked every moment of everyday of his short life as an electrician. He could never afford to send me or my two brothers to college.

You had two choices: Get a scholarship or take out loans.

Even then, I did not see the logic in taking student loans. I knew from a very young age that there are only a couple ways to become wealthy. The vast majority of the wealthy are all business owners/inventors.

IIRC, in Europe, in order to open a business, one must be a professional of that business (ie Start a residential electrical business, the owner must be a master electrician). Dont know if thats true, but just what I heard (albeit years ago). In the US, not so. Lucky me.

I have had a job since I was 11 years old. I used to work 20 hours a week washing dishes at an Italian restaurant. My dad was always doing side jobs, so I worked with him, too, throughout my young adult life. From the restaurant, I worked everywhere. Burger King, McDonalds, multiple restaurants and grocery stores doing anything and everything. This all before I graduated high school.

I graduated barely (21.5 credits), mostly because I do not like to get up early (big shout out to the guy who used to wake me up every morning), or attend school (older friends my whole life, they graduated 3 years earlier than me, that sucked) or be sober (woo-ha!). I immediately hired into an $8.00 an hour job welding brackets and bull by the truckload. I was too busy getting high in auto shop so I never actually welded before in my life.

Seeing as the owner didnt much give a about anything but getting product out the door, it was basically a job-party. Fit right in.

Wages blew, I was going nowhere and knew it (besides, had to get up too early). So my revelation was to become a furniture salesman. What a joke. 20 years old, wearing a suit and pitching lines rehearsed in training about products I never cared about. Spent most of my time at lunch and smoking outside. Failed miserably, was fired for under-performance. That was the first and only time in my life I had been fired.

Didnt know what to do at that point. I was kicked out by my father when I was 17 ("...got in the way of his pussy" was how he put it), had been living with the same roommate up until this point. His girlfriend got pregnant, they were getting married and moving (which obviously did not include me).

No job, nowhere to live, no contact with my father in years (Regrets, Ive had a few)...yeah, thats failure. Thats des ute, thats desperate, thats ing life.

What do you do? Cry? Whine? Moan? Complain and blame?

Or was it that I didnt take school seriously enough, that I didnt respect my father's new wife enough (no matter how much I despised her), that I never took one job seriously enough to completion?

Was it the world's fault or mine? Easy answer.

So I got a job at some small shop sweeping the floors for $8 an hour at age 21. In 6 years, I was and am currently running that company. Finally, I committed to something. Finally, I chose a direction and went for it.

I was sweeping floors. One day I was asked "Know anything about computers?" Im a gamer, "Sure do, whatcha need?" They needed a guy who was willing to be trained in CAD software to detail prints. The engineers were/are busy designing this stuff, not making prints for the fab shop. This was a HUGE moment in my life, I thought it was big then seeing as I would actually work at ing desk!, but looking back on it, it was much much more than that.

I met my boss (remember, I was 21). He was 18 years old. Dean's list every year at Kettering Engineering (aka GM Tech). Brilliant little er, he was, y too. But I would be too if I had mastered Calc2 at 16 years old. His first question "Ever worked in AutoCAD before?" Nope. "Drafting class?" Sure, but I never paid attention (ie skipped it so I could party). "know anything about computers?" That I do, could build one start to finish, BIOS, flashing, operating system (Windows of course), I can do that.

He was going back to school in 2 months. Kettering is extremely hard to get into. The curriculum calls for 6 months working, 6 months at school, or some such schedule (cant remember). Either way, he was going back to school. I had 2 months to learn two new programs (AutoCAD and Solidworks) and the basics of engineering, detailing and tolerancing with ZERO prior experience.

I slept at work, literally, in my car on occasion. My mother let me stay with her every now and then to make sure I was eating, so I could shower, etc.

He left for school and I took over his job. The first batch of prints that hit the floor, I was a nervous wreck. I am not a math guru, furthest I ever went was Trig, which I bombed out of because it was 1st hour (again, partying). Cosign, blablabla, none of it made any sense, yet these machinists knew how to calculate such things on a calculator and would come to me with questions about I didnt really understand.

You know what? I ing nailed it. ing nailed it. Homerun, out of the stadium. 4 machines from scratch were designed, detailed (me), assembled (a little me), run-off and shipped while Whiz Kid was at school. Every print that hit the floor was mine and mine alone. Were there problems? Oh yeah. Did I cost the company money? Maybe a couple grand, in total. Did over $1.5 million dollars in equipment get invoiced with my initials in the le blocks? You ing bet.

Big accomplishment for me then, not so much now looking back on it. A monkey can detail a print, but I didnt know that at the time. But regardless, I showed potential, drive, commitment and initiative.

The next thing I was asked to do was Quality Control at the company's second plant. This plant was/is small compared. I was sent to a 2 week class to learn the inspection software (as I already knew about prints, tolerancing, GD&T, etc) as the owner's partner and him had a falling out. The minority owner's son used to do all the ISO certifications, Quality Manuals, inspections and control do ents. All of which I knew nothing about.

Started off just writing the inspection programs (thank you video games and scripts!) and then inspecting the parts associated with those programs. Which lead into my introduction to the International Organization for Standardization, ISO for short (you think it would be IOS, but Apple would have pitched a , Im sure). I then had to learn about one thousand acronyms that, to this day, I hate beyond belief. What a ing charade. Whatever.

At this point, I was making $14 an hour at age 24, I rewrote the Quality Manuals, the Control Do ents and worked with the Cert rep on getting our company re-certified (have to do it every year, it sucks). Nailed it. Homerun. More impressive than detailing prints, but again, looking back on it, ISO is a ing pyramid scheme and anyone who actually likes it enough to do it for a living is a masochist.

Owner can no longer handle running the day-to-day operation of this second plant. His main business is blowing up in a big way whereas as this little -shop is losing money every year of its existence. Not much money, less than $100k a year or breaking even, but when your other company is making millions, your priorities shift.

So, he calls a meeting with me (now the Quality Manager), the Plant Manager and the Office Manager and lays it out. "This company is failing, I can no longer do it everyday, I am probably going to shutter it". Fear of God, yes. I had busted my balls, never asked for a raise in my life, was making for what I was doing, but really, really enjoyed not having to bust my back to make a decent living as a single male with no children (like my father did and my brothers still do).

The PM and OM were speechless, I was not. I coerced the owner into letting "We 3 Kings" run the day-to-day for one year, possibly two. If it wasnt profitable by then, so be it. This company was his baby, he always referred to it as his 3rd child, he never took a paycheck his entire time as owner. He didnt want to close it, he just couldnt throw money out the window no matter how much he was making with his recently bought second company.

He, surprisingly, agreed.

Ive gone on long enough with this story. Summary from here: Lost money the first year, but showed promise with an expanding customer base (me, on the road, A LOT). Second year, became apparent that the "3 Kings" paradigm wasnt working, too many conflicts of interest (one of the first things the office manager did as a boss was give herself, the plant manager and me a raise. I was finally a salaried employee...first time in my life. $800 gross a week). Owner named me the General Manager in April 2006, 5 years after I was hired as a shop sweeping floors and driving the HiLo, of his company that employed 15 people (16 including me).

It was rough. I had to learn proper accounting, payroll, taxes, business taxes, SBT taxes (Michigan thing, dont ask), 941 Quarterly reports, the difference between an S-Corporation and any other incorporation (pretty cool when youre a small outfit). I had to manage egos who didnt respect me as their boss, I had to fire people, knock people's pay down all while you watched a grown man cry that he will lose his house, I had to fire the Office Manager as she lazy made even worse that she didnt know about proper accounting or computers in general. She thought the fax machine was a big deal and hadnt watched one second of TV in 15 years. I cultivated customer relationships with people that were more than twice my age in a business (Automotive) that frowns upon youth in general running .

You know what? I ing nailed it. Homerun, in the seats this time, next time it'll be out of the stadium. I inherited a struggling alley shop that worked from hand-to-mouth job-wise, which had gross sales under $300k and was hemorrhaging money. Today, I turned it into a profitable company with various private and government contracts guaranteeing X amount of dollars in revenue for the next 6+ years (with more to come), that now has gross sales over $2 million dollars, a retirement plan (me), health insurance (me) and employee bonuses twice a year (also me).

I pay more money in personal taxes than most people on this board make in a year, jointly.

Dont ing tell me about what works and what doesnt, because here is what I know. I work, you dont. With drive, commitment, a little luck and the willingness to completely and utterly disregard your personal life as whole, you will succeed.

There are other ways of achieving the same things, with even better cir stances, I know this. But I do not sympathize with those who think working 9-5, 5 days a week as "working hard".

To this day, even with a profitable company and a cushy lifestyle, this success has driven me to be more successful. I work just as hard if not harder now, longer hours, sleepless nights, bigger company investments and risks. I want more. When that fire burns dim, I will retire a wealthy, and more importantly, happy, satisfied man.

I replied to his novel:

I am employed, so your assumption is wrong. You are combative, hurling insults and profanity with absolutely no provocation.

Let me summarize your wall of text for everybody!

I became successful so that means everybody can. Bootstraps bootstraps bootstraps.

Your anecdote is not indicative of everyone's situation. The plural of "anecdote" is something called "data":









I don't think there would be this many articles about adult children moving back home unless there was something seriously wrong with our society and economy:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...MNM41LHSAT.DTL

The U.S. Census Bureau says that from 2007, just before the recession hit, to 2010, a year after the recession officially ended, the number of adults ages 25 to 34 living with their parents shot up 26 percent, from 4.7 million to 5.9 million.

Unemployment for adults younger than 24 is double the national mark of 9.1 percent. According to a Purdue University study, more than two-thirds of parents are giving their grown children financial assistance, double the rate of 20 years ago.

http://www.digtriad.com/news/article...Coexist-Again-

http://www.andersonvalleypost.com/ne...ing-back-home/

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124736728106627671.html

http://calcoastnews.com/2011/10/%E2%...eturning-home/




Since you only seem to understand anecdotes, I will share mine.

I get paid nearly three times as much money as an independent contractor than the job I was offered in my field after I graduated (Biology degree, 4.0 GPA, children's cancer research). All of my similarly-aged cousins who have graduated college (nearly a dozen people) have no means of providing support for a middle-class family. That's quite statistically significant.

To try and blame my generation for having few jobs is morally repugnant. We had nothing to do with all of our predecessors completely ing the economy up beyond repair.

Which he didn't bother to read:

Didnt read any responses beyond the ones I quoted and Fuzzy's last one.

I am out this thread. You win. Im a horrible person, you know best how things really are and should be. Enjoy yourselves.

That's acting like a little ing baby.

[vy65]

busted

huh?

[Winehole23]

Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote :

He did not want to compose another Quixote —which is easy— but the Quixote itself. Needless to say, he never contemplated a mechanical transcription of the original; he did not propose to copy it. His admirable intention was to produce a few pages which would coincide—word for word and line for line—with those of Miguel de Cervantes.