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I Get Why the Kids Like Bernie
My children are in their early twenties and just starting out. Neither one of them studied anything particularly lucrative (Film; Art). They take after their old man that way (Drama).
But when I was starting out, I had little trouble getting a job with a Chicago restaurateur who gave me all the work I wanted tending bar and waiting tables. I did not have to deal with a 29 hour per week limit to avoid Obamacare requirements. I could get 40 hours no problem. After 40 hours I would work off the clock for tips only, which was just fine with me. All in all, I could count on about $700 per week.
My share of the rent in a clean, comfortable apartment in upscale Lincoln Park was $375/mo. Student loans? I carried a grand total of $11,000. Tuition at my high-tone, private, liberal arts alma mater was never more than $9K per year, and I paid a lot of it along the way. (None of this $55K per year nonsense.) My monthly loan payment was $197. Buy health insurance? Are you kidding? I’m 24. Who’s gonna make me buy insurance anyway!
Nowadays, my similarly artsy kids are starting their lives out in Southern California making about the same hourly rate I did 30 years ago–$20/hr. But they can’t get 40+ hours a week from any entry-level employer because of Obamacare, which forces employers to provide health coverage to “full time” employees (a deal-breaking expense). And “full time” is 30 hours per week, not 40. That means precious few entry-level employers provide true, 40-hour, full-time work.
But here’s where it really gets bad: Their rent is three times what I paid, and their apartments and neighborhoods are worse. Their student loan debt is four times what mine was. They are legally obliged to purchase their own health insurance, which is not cheap.
When my kids grumbled to me about this, I put it off as the same kind of gripes I had when I was doing my own struggling artist thing.
Then, as I was fielding these gripes, I had to travel to Southern California to do a jury trial. (Yes, I quit the arts for law school.) During the judge’s voir dire, he asked all the jurors about their living arrangements (Alone? Roommates? Children? etc.)
How’s this for a wake-up? Every twenty-something juror was living with his/her parents. Every one.
Well hey, dummy-daddy, of course, they were. Given the disincentives to employers to provide full-time entry-level work, the magnitude of student debt, and the ridiculous housing costs, living with the folks is the only sure way to stay afloat if you are starting out in Southern California with starting-out skills. Get a second job? Not so fast. Let’s remember the Southern California labor market in 2020 includes about 1 million additional seekers of full-time work who shouldn’t even be there (illegal aliens), so getting even one entry-level job is a struggle. I never had to compete with that.
I knew bad public policies had stuck these kids with excessive student debt, excessive housing costs, no full-time entry-level jobs, and a tight market for part-time entry-level jobs, but watching these young jurors confess to the judge they were living with their parents (and unsuccessfully hiding their embarrassment at it) really brought it home.
So now what happens? My kids look at their social media feeds and here comes ol’ Bernie promising relief: forgiveness of student loan debt, plenty of “affordable” housing, and an increase in pay at their crappy, part-time, entry-level jobs.
Stupid? Of course, it is. But at least it’s something. Because what are the conservative Republican remedies that will make a difference for these kids right now? Ending the government loan program? (Too late for them.) Easing restrictions on housing construction? (How many decades before rents drop?) Abolishing the minimum wage? (Hey! Wrong direction, bub!)
I was thinking of suggesting to my kids that they (like their peers on my jury) move back in for a while. It would give me an opportunity to talk up the virtues of free markets and conservative public policy.
I can see however that they might be too demoralized to listen, that they will keep struggling away, and come November they might, hope-against-hope, vote for Bernie.
Published in Politics
There is a misconception that the AMA has anything to do with health care. They have been rent seekers for their own Board of Trustees since the 1980s. I was a delegate in the 1980s and saw enough that I quit. It’s a long story but they have no power except as an appendage of government.
The Obamacare bill was written by insurance company lobbyists. Hillary made a mistake by excluding them so, when the Democrats had another chance in 2009, they let the industry write the law. The mandate was supposed to include employer plans but the Democrats chickened out after the 2010 election.
The Bernie donations come principally from rich zip codes, especially those with lots of tech workers.
https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/02/bernie-sanders-funded-wealthiest-zip-codes-america-daniel-greenfield/
So a lot’s changed with the society, in ways people find hard to grasp. Young people live in the world Boomers made, but don’t know there was an America before that. It throws off the American instincts… Boomers themselves ruined society, but on the other hand they were brought up in a pre-Boomer America. Some of the madness was coming from way back, that is; & some of the good habits they received as kids endured in them even after they grew up.
The economy changed, too–a lot of what’s happening now has to do with young people asking themselves what is even the point! Since 2008, it’s become obvious that American capitalism doesn’t have a future–it’s just more of the same & lots of people don’t like that. It’s much harder to get what Americans used to get for their work; it’s hard, too, to know whether you really want what Americans used to want. Maybe people will want a change. Probably, Dems are not good for it, but the GOP isn’t offering anything.
Then the politics. Trump hasn’t managed to persuade people of much yet–not even that he’s gonna be re-elected. Half the country is close to loving him, maybe, & half the country really hates his guts. In 2020, there are no people around Trump that even his supporters are excited about! Much less any talk that his next term will be better. Second terms are rarely improvements, of course… But the news is, for the people who care about the news, that Pence is hiring people to organize his run in 2024. I find it hard to believe he’ll be inspired & inspiring… So it’s not obvious what the next thing can even be. The parties are both weak & corrupt; if a hostile takeover by Bernie could deal with some of the Dem corruption, would a post-Clinton party really be any good at doing anything? The party lacks the power to hold together & assert authority within its own ranks, much less do something for the nation…
So if people get excited, it would be for Bernie. Because what else is on offer?
Good points, Titus, but who failed to educate the Boomers? Who gave them the vote at age 18? It was the so-called Greatest Generation.
As I said, some of that indeed comes from before. But it needn’t have ended up the way it did. The current irresponsibility of the GOP & of conservatives needn’t be what it is, either. It’s possible to leave aside some of the “you get what you deserve” attitude & act more prudently.
If conservatives were serious, you’d hear somebody somewhere who’s famous or influential talk about how to establish the part of the US that votes conservative on a fundamentally sound basis. That would include making sure to take care of the youth, including on culture, however little conservatives care for that…
You’d hear talk about the relationship between that reliably conservative part & the others needed to build a majority coalition, though all such coalitions are, of course, temporary… That would include a reasonably popular way of thinking & talking about America.
https://youtu.be/Kf59qcrAQkI
Especially starting at 8:30 – 13:00
That’s the thing. Back in the late 80’s, I made the very same “poor choices” my kids made—borrowing to finance my college education; getting a useless arts degree; moving to an expensive, Deep-Blue city; and taking only entry level work for income. But having made those very same “poor choices” a mere 30 years ago, I was able to live very comfortably, service my debt, save money, and start a family with Mrs. Gunner. (Not only did I not need to be “bailed out,” I was voting Republican because I resented having my tips taxed!)
Flash forward through thirty years of stinko public policies (easy loans inflating tuition; NIMBY-enviro restrictions on housing; rent control; way-too-high immigration; the down-scaling of full time, entry level employment) and the very same starting-out choices that worked out just fine for me have become “poor choices” for the kids coming up.
I think there is something deeply wrong with that, and I’m not surprised the kids think so too.
Doug Murray is quite a speaker–go listen to his very popular speech at the NC Con in Rome. Everybody was very taken with him, even though he’s neither N nor C!
I don’t recall you asking me for advice.
What solutions to the problems you outline do you propose?
Actually the poor public policies you mention have ended up with the kids having no choice – they aren’t permitted to make them, except by going galt.
When you tried to counsel your kids about choices of major, what did the conversation look like?
For myself and @joalt we repeatedly make the point that the first college degree has to make economic sense. We have been harping on that point forever. Math = Good; Psych = Bad; Lesbian Dance Theory is right out.
Not only that, but if you ask what caused the financial crisis they’ll tell you “greedy banks”
As to another point, the problem with boomers wasn’t that they weren’t educated, it’s they were the first generation rewarded for rebelling against what they were being taught. 1968 comes, they end the war in Vietnam. So now every generation after has taken to “listening to the future” and being youth obsessed instead of being concerned with gaining wisdom.
My favorite moment in politics of the last year was Dianne Feinstein telling kids she wasn’t going to take their advice on the Green New Deal. I don’t like Feinstein, but it was nice to see adults tell younger people they might know something.
Now if only she’d do something like that with AOC.
Things always change, but I think it was always good advice to tell people not to take on a lot of student debt or to go to a college they couldn’t afford. I got that advice when I was a student 40 some odd years ago, and I followed it.
The cost of attending elite institutions is certainly screamingly high (it always has been) but there are less expensive alternatives. I’m still paying for one of my kids to attend a local college. It costs about $1400 tuition a semester.
With regard to the relative cost of housing, the cost of housing has historically been about 3 to 4 times the median income. It’s only a little higher than that now. Of course, a lot of it depends on where one lives. For example $2,200 per month for a rental in New York City, $725 in Waco, Tx.
I get it, but my kids are not STEM kids. Not a bit. And my view is that all non-STEM based undergraduate degrees are equally worthless. So, my counsel was “study what interests you.” And with Mrs. Gunner and I having four degrees in the arts between us (yeah, I know), we were fine with the arts majors they chose.
For most of us mortals, majoring in math isn’t an option.
A lot of conservatives talk as if choice alone determines a person’s major. But that’s not the case. Aptitude matters, too. Scores of 18-year-olds start college with the intention of majoring in a “practical” field (as I did). Halfway through, they’re weeded out. And they’re faced, at that moment, with a choice: get through with a degree of some kind — any kind — and take your chances in the job market; or drop out and look like a loser.
Both roads may lead to flipping burgers at McDonald’s. The first, at least, justifies the resentment the burger-flipper inevitably feels.
Not just our own perception, our own extended life experience. We share it with you to give you some hope that you can survive what life throws at you, as our parents did with us. We didn’t want to hear it either. And what you said here, we said to our own parents although we would have been smacked in the mouth if we used those words. We told them “you just don’t understand; It’s not like when you were growing up. We have it much worse.” Only they grew up during the Depression and a murderous World War, and contracted polio so that usually shut us up for a while. But not for long. It is different now and you are struggling. We have to acknowledge it and work to make it better-you are the heirs to truly destructive ideologies and policies that many of us tried valiantly to stop but were overruled. Remember that.
But the error is in assuming the previous generation was the norm when there isn’t one, and that they didn’t face their own set of challenges. Only because we know the outcome-you see us as prosperous and successful-they don’t seem as bad. But when growing up we were not convinced that was going to be the case. The 70’s were a terrible time economically (hyperinflation, wage stagnation, NY City on the verge of bankruptcy, rampant crime in the cities, drug abuse reaching the suburbs, rivers on fire due to pollution) and oh yeah, there was Vietnam (54,000 boys dead and that draft lottery where pure chance decided whether you would go or not).
I grew up at the tail end of the Baby Boom so I don’t really identify with them very much and happily join in your criticism of our failings. I found those a few years older to be narcissistic and self absorbed and constantly advocating stupid things, except for all the ones that weren’t and didn’t. I grew up thinking it was a disadvantage to be at the tail end of the Baby Boom because by the time I was ready to enter the workforce, all the jobs were taken by the middle of the bell curve and they were going to stay a long time. But eventually I said “thems the breaks; sometimes you get lucky and sometimes you don’t. Life isn’t fair. “, etc etc etc. All things, by the way, that I heard from my parents.
I’ve done OK and I sincerely wish the same for you.
Average, yeah. But the low end may have been more accessible.
We are importing a substantial underclass and giving them benefits to buy that lower housing.
Nope. I did everything my parents advised. All of it.
And they were simply giving me the advise they got from Forbes magazine… you know, the same place that publishes advice for the average retiree to save $3M for retirement. Maybe because hefty loans you can’t get away from even in bankruptcy and high retirement accounts benefit them?
And as to what we can do about it? I don’t know except stop shutting down uncomfortable conversation because it doesn’t fit stupid, conservative platitudes like “nature is a deterrent to doing wrong”.
I think loan forgiveness or making student loans bankruptable (again) is a good start. Note, your generation killed that and mine is paying the price for your generation (and X) abusing it. And close the borders. And stop bailing out bankers. They can go bankrupt, too.
Yes. The world offers few good options for people who are smart, but not STEM-smart. And if you’re neither STEM-smart nor business-savvy, then . . . oy. My condolences.
In western countries it is actually choice alone. Degrees without economic viability is actually a luxury item. More here.
For more information look here. From the abstract,
My belief is that it more closely aligns with economic factors. STEM jobs pay better, yet require effort to obtain. In the west, one can live a comfortable life without STEM, but in the developing world Lesbian Dance Theory pays not at all.
Big donors are different than the kids, but include the super powerful as well as empty headed radical academics. There are new things going on such as highly educated technical people who didn’t bother with history, economics, or other meaningful socials studies because they didn’t have to. They have even less understanding because they know they’re smarter but failed to get educated. Instead they were trained. They’re the most scary of all.
Pertinent to your .last statement is the law now enacted in Calif that if you have opted out of insurance, there will be a massive penalty. Unless you are a newly arrived immigrant, in which case medical ins is free.
My parents were tail end boom, too. Which makes me an odd flower being an early Millennial.
I’m fine, btw. I majored in math and don’t have debt except a mortgage (largely because I cottoned on to the debt problem when I started paying my loans back, not because of advice I recieved). I married a hardworking guy with no debt and a penchant for being stingy. We are averse to debt because once you are in it, it is a money suck to get out.
What I’m concerned with is the trajectory to socialism… which we are getting good and hard from a generation over-encumbered in debt. I want that trajectory to change… and so far, the average conservative conversation is turning a blind eye.
Ray gave a look into his kids’ concerns. But they are being dismissed because it isn’t bad enough. But look at the debt in this country compared to the 60s. Keep in mind we’ve had decades of economic theory about debt stimulating production driving our policies, advice, and culture.
We won’t have socialism in your lifetime. But we probably will in mine. And I don’t want that.
I have to say that my interactions with millennials on Ricochet have shown this quite clearly, and for what it’s worth, you and others have changed my mind that college debt was just something you have to bear. As I said in another comment, it is criminal the way it is done. I believe that true conservative policies could significantly impact the burden of college debt and make inroads into health care. That so few conservatives are running on these two issues is shocking. You are right that we should demand more and do more to rid your generation of the crushing debt it is facing and everyone will benefit from some sanity in health care costs.
I do fear for what your generation will face in the future if we don’t stop the trend towards socialism. It will make the 70’s look like the golden days.
Maybe you could explain to them that voting for Democrats is what gets things as bad as they have them NOW, and to then vote for a SOCIALIST/COMMUNIST to “fix” them is – to use a Jonah Goldberg-ism – incandescently stupid.
Not ALL of us. Really, just the Left.
What? There are plenty of skilled and semi-skilled occupations for people who aren’t great at math etc. Especially if those jobs aren’t filled by legal and illegal immigrants.
This strikes me as a 1930’s buggy-whip maker counseling his children “you too can be a buggy whip maker.” Sorry, but unless you are paying their way through college, failing to discourage arts majors is a huge disservice to your children.
Arts are still highly desired in teaching our kids privately (maybe not publicly) and as hobbies, not professions. Well to do people still find value in giving an arts education to their kids.
My son is currently taking guitar lessons at a cooperative business for the arts. The owners were church musicians who wanted to help the starving artists by giving them a regular income. They employ dozens of musicians, singers, artists, and dancers and provide space and administration for them to give lessons while also serving as an intermediary for parents looking for quality (and trustworthy) teachers for their students.
The arts should be taught this way. It is essentially an art school on a smaller basis.
{My bold.} So, arts majors grads must depend on charity. A small slice of grads land in such positions. The rest remain “starving artists”, or move on to other fields. You are proving my point.
I wasn’t trying to disprove it.
It was offered as a potentially viable business idea for artists, because there is a demand for artists instructing children outside schools but hard to build a client base on one side and hard to find quality instructors on the other.
Good luck convincing a bookish kid to forgo college and become a welder.