U.S. Kids Far Less Likely To Out-Earn Their Parents, As Inequality Grows

[Elegiac]

Well, you have certainly shown how Democrats feel about the poor, that is for sure.

Hey, the working class in 'Middle America' doesn't want left coast interference or input into government, so they can have their shitty wages and shitty jobs. Not really our problem, is it?

[Damajin]

The safe space generation doesn't have to go hardcore capitalist to earn a good life, but they sure as shit need to ditch the safe space mentality to give themselves a legit chance.

[Elegiac]

The safe space generation doesn't have to go hardcore capitalist to earn a good life, but they sure as shit need to ditch the safe space mentality to give themselves a legit chance.

And what's your evidence that 'the safe space generation' is earning less because of 'safe space mentality'?

[Tijuana]

Hey, the working class in 'Middle America' doesn't want left coast interference or input into government, so they can have their shitty wages and shitty jobs. Not really our problem, is it?

It's only your problem if you wanted to stay in power. However, I do worry about what those poor liberals will have to do in the public sector, since they have no ability to understand profit. Wait, who am I kidding? Think tank jobs for everyone!

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And what's your evidence that 'the safe space generation' is earning less because of 'safe space mentality'?

Just look at them. No killer instinct. If they had the next Bill Gates idea, they would be the next Al Gore.

[Sengel]

I just think the government needs to fund education more directly through scholarships and funding schools directly rather than giving the money to the student to do whatever they want with it.

For profit and non - religious or ivy colleges often charge exorbitant prices for degrees that are largely worthless. A talented artist goes to "the art institute" under the false assumption that they will guarantee them a job after school. Most professionals will say that even in the arts go to an accredited public university to get the degree plus a valuable internship. Unfortunately these schools advertise more aggressively with flashier advertisements that entice kids to join up.

It is also important, however, to understand that not all "useless" degrees are equal. A traditional Art degree is useful insofar as graphic design and general design are very important in our culture (see iOS vs UNIX for demographic usability). History and English Degrees are important for teaching our young how to write cohesive arguments and learn from our past as well as creating most of the entertainment that we consume now a days. Sociology and social work are notoriously underfunded but provide an irreplaceable backbone to our interface between government and private citizens. Allowing a governmental body the ability to dictate what is a "useful" degree and what isn't very easily gets us into a situation where we have no more trained Artists to create our movies, or English teachers to teach our children how to think critically about given information or to question their ideas. Already with the pay gap between Sciences and Arts degrees we're seeing this, governmental control would just exacerbate the situation.


Generally I'm against handouts but investing in job training or college education has historically always helped our economy far more than it cost. (Teaching a man to fish and all that)

[Deggan]

Despite the fact that 'US kids' are routinely more productive and better educated than their predecessors.

And no, 'personal initiative' very rarely overrides social circumstances.

So explain this to me then. I've had a buddy for basically ever... Elementary, Middle, High School, and we are even pursuing the same college degree at the same college. We are in the same age group, but I am graduating with my bachelors this Friday (finally). He has failed so many classes due to outright laziness that he has another 4 semesters before he is able to graduate. I took a semester off a few years back, he has been to school every semester since we graduated high school.

So again, tell me that 'personal initiative' doesn't have anything to do with your success.

[Tijuana]

For profit and non - religious or ivy colleges often charge exorbitant prices for degrees that are largely worthless. A talented artist goes to "the art institute" under the false assumption that they will guarantee them a job after school. Most professionals will say that even in the arts go to an accredited public university to get the degree plus a valuable internship. Unfortunately these schools advertise more aggressively with flashier advertisements that entice kids to join up.

It is also important, however, to understand that not all "useless" degrees are equal. A traditional Art degree is useful insofar as graphic design and general design are very important in our culture (see iOS vs UNIX for demographic usability). History and English Degrees are important for teaching our young how to write cohesive arguments and learn from our past as well as creating most of the entertainment that we consume now a days. Sociology and social work are notoriously underfunded but provide an irreplaceable backbone to our interface between government and private citizens. Allowing a governmental body the ability to dictate what is a "useful" degree and what isn't very easily gets us into a situation where we have no more trained Artists to create our movies, or English teachers to teach our children how to think critically about given information or to question their ideas. Already with the pay gap between Sciences and Arts degrees we're seeing this, governmental control would just exacerbate the situation.


Generally I'm against handouts but investing in job training or college education has historically always helped our economy far more than it cost. (Teaching a man to fish and all that)

The only useful thing to do with a Gender Studies degree, is teach Gender Studies. That is a pretty limited level of usefulness. The current method of students picking whatever crazy degree they can dream up is unsustainable. At a minimum, we should create an incentive for students who want actual knowledge, that is actually useful to society, like engineering.

[Deggan]

The only useful thing to do with a Gender Studies degree, is teach Gender Studies. That is a pretty limited level of usefulness. The current method of students picking whatever crazy degree they can dream up is unsustainable.

One could argue that teaching Gender Studies isn't useful period. It doesn't really help the growth of society in any positive way.

[Lady Dragonheart]

Not to be rude, but it looks like you failed at educating them, at least in that regard. Granted, children can be very difficult and despite the parents' best efforts and intentions still ignore everything or most of what they are taught. However (and unrelated to you here) if we were to throw around cliches about millennials, we should also ask ourselves why the Baby boomers' generation failed us so hard. Why our parents did not prepare us to step into the real world? I am obviously generalizing here (feel like my parents did a decent enough job with me and my brothers, then no one is perfect).

Well, I educated them just fine. They fully realized the level of risk of their own ventures and paid (mostly) for the outcomes. They were looking for the quicker route to a career, or were too lazy to work for a living. So, ultimately, I had to stop funding their lifestyles and stop saving them from accumulated minor debt. When they were avidly attempting school, I took care of all of their major financial needs including the cost of school and funded their immediate needs (housing, food, utility, phones, etc.) and they still chose to drop out and try gambling with money, or investing it under the table with their friends, or simply living life burning through their money despite me encouraging them to save and properly invest towards lifelong goals. They knew what they were doing, but they had an erroneous notion of "it won't happen to me" mentality. After I realized that I had become a cushion for saving them from insane debt, pretty much enabling their poor decision-making by swooping in and saving them out of fear of losing my only grandchild to social services, I stopped nearly stopped all funding to their lifestyle.

In the end, it wasn't an problem with teaching, but them listening and heeding the concepts of risk in the real world.

[Tijuana]

One could argue that teaching Gender Studies isn't useful period. It doesn't really help the growth of society in any positive way.

While I agree, that is another issue entirely.

[Sengel]

His point is complete bunkum. There is no "rise of pointless degrees". The reality is the opposite, useless degrees are in long term decline. Those who want to bash millennials take examples then generalize to all millennials. It's just another case of blaming their victims. More people than ever are doing hard sciences.

I will be completely honest that that massive dip in education and social services degrees scares the bejesus out of me since they cultivate the next generation into the thinkers and movers that those children become. Lack of teachers always is bad as the bad ones can't be weeded out easily (supply / demand problem), and the amount of talented people not wanting to be teachers due to low pay is a very real issue. I left teaching due to not being able to allow my wife to be a stay at home mom like she'd always dreamed of. (Now i'm computer security).

Unfortunately we have a cult of ignorance in this country, children who fail in high school are given all the chances in the world and all the attention but the gifted are ostracized by their peers and their culture. It shouldn't be novel to see a kid reading or doing well in school; it should be expected.

(This is not directed at the quote I'm quoting)As a side note, as a Millennial with Two degrees and a very lucrative career married to an immigrant woman who had her masters degree by 22 in her second language. I've seen 90% of my friends either go to college to get good,practical degrees and have great careers because of it. Millennials aren't all one monolithic group. On avg, we also question the status quo the most and are more politically active and more connected to the world around us.

[Lady Dragonheart]

Their refusal was probably because your presentation was off.

Well, they had no issue accepting aid, they just refused to finish school that was paid-for and working low-stress jobs that I managed to get them that were high-paying and had good benefits. They ended up getting repeatedly fired for not showing up to work, being on their phones at work, or stealing from the job-site (despite them not having to worry about bills and such). The same thing happened with school, I paid for college for both of them, but they both just stopped attending because they preferred skipping to be with boyfriend/girlfriends or their normal friends in comparison to classes. It's just lead in the ass issues, and there wasn't anything that I could muster at the time to get them motivated to complete school or retain their jobs. Even now, without essentially any aid from me, they leech off of the welfare system in order to stay afloat, they're accumulating more and more debt on things like credit cards over things like game consoles and clothes, but refuse to listen to me despite the fact that they know how credit works... they just figure that bad things won't happen to them. It's incredibly frustrating to deal with. >.<

[Sengel]

The only useful thing to do with a Gender Studies degree, is teach Gender Studies. That is a pretty limited level of usefulness. The current method of students picking whatever crazy degree they can dream up is unsustainable. At a minimum, we should create an incentive for students who want actual knowledge, that is actually useful to society, like engineering.

But who's to say that Gender Studies won't be useful in the future? Our understanding of Gender is evolving and now we're more on a scale than a binary M/F. (Allows for effeminate hetero males as well as traditionally masculine hetero females). For all we know, Gender studies could play a role in future sociological order.

That's my problem, Thirty years ago an art degree would be seen as useless but now most of our consumer products rely on it. The inability to accurately predict the future means that no degree ("except underwater basket weaving--f those guys"). can be truly counted out.

Also there's the merit that a university degree has in teaching the student how to research and think critically which is agnostic to the degree its self.

Now the true focus of any assistance should be job placement like Scholarship for Service but I'm loathe to allow the federal government the ability to dictate what is "useful to society" as there's just too much power for corruption in that.

[Scathbais]

Please read my post before lashing out.

I said "Post-Reagan", meaning after Reagan. He was the last true fiscal conservative I've seen. The most recent republican presidents, Trump, W. Bush, and H. W. Bush have all failed.

If they followed the Reagan doctrine, our country would probably be in a much better place.

Wow, if you consider that "lashing out", you really need to lower your triggered dial from 10.
Also, how can anyone take you seriously when you have Trump on that list? He is not even President yet.

George W. Bush is not a conservative. He is a big government progressive who introduced on of the largest entitlement programs our country has ever seen: Medicare Part D. GW was the first to offer budgets that broke the $2 Trillion and $3 Trillion. Obama just continued the big spending and entitlements and pushed the budget to +$4 Trillion per year.

So I am agreeing with you that Bush was not a fiscal conservative. He was much more of a progressive like Obama, LBJ, and FDR.

[Deggan]

On avg, we also question the status quo the most and are more politically active and more connected to the world around us.

Being a Millennial myself, I would have to disagree with you. There is a percentage of Millennials that see the flaws in our "generation", but the majority are lazy shit bags that don't really do much. From my point of view (college student that has been a TA for the past few semesters), I see more students that literally don't have a single clue about reality. The classes I TA for contain many students that were in the class when I took it 2 years ago, and they are failing through it once again. It is also fairly entertaining trying to have a conversation about politics with anyone in my age group... It's like I'm talking to a brick wall that is so stuck in its ways that even if I had a collection of the worlds finest explain to them why they are wrong they just wouldn't get it.

[Rasulis]

Well, I am not going to out earn my father. He is a radiologist vs. me an engineer. Then there is my mother the lady that turns everything she touches into gold. I pretty much gave up trying to compete a long time ago.

[smaktat]

No shit, this is happening everywhere else too. You pretty much have to be self employed and working more hours in order to make more than your parents.

Problem solved boys Rennadrel just wrapped up the whole economic crisis in 2 sentences. Truly a blessing to us all. You heard it here on MMO Champ forums first. Thank God for the good people of this well esteemed and intelligent site.

[Tijuana]

But who's to say that Gender Studies won't be useful in the future? Our understanding of Gender is evolving and now we're more on a scale than a binary M/F. (Allows for effeminate hetero males as well as traditionally masculine hetero females). For all we know, Gender studies could play a role in future sociological order.

That's my problem, Thirty years ago an art degree would be seen as useless but now most of our consumer products rely on it. The inability to accurately predict the future means that no degree ("except underwater basket weaving--f those guys"). can be truly counted out.

Also there's the merit that a university degree has in teaching the student how to research and think critically which is agnostic to the degree its self.

Now the true focus of any assistance should be job placement like Scholarship for Service but I'm loathe to allow the federal government the ability to dictate what is "useful to society" as there's just too much power for corruption in that.

Me. I just said that, and you quoted me.

Also, what came after, wow...I mean....wow. If we were in an audition for most comical and buzz word laden liberal person ever, you just got the part.

[Lady Dragonheart]

It would be safer to say that most people have far less purchasing power than they did in the past. Housing was much cheaper.

I got my house six years ago, during the recession. I bought it even when I was already in debt from an ex, it's currently paid-off with money that I made from working at home that essentially anyone can do that requires no experience and no skill outside of proper investing protocol.

The costs of living have increased while wages have stagnated.

Here's an old article and numbers that prove my point:

For most workers, real wages have barely budged for decades

No wonder Trump won when these very real and legitimate concerns are ignored, especially by "people" like you.

Just because cost of living is higher doesn't mean that there are no means of making money in today's job market. You have to adapt and you have to understand what makes money and capitalize on it.

No I am presuming it because technology is obviously the future. You would have to be blind not to see that.

Here I shall link you an article about how robots are going to replace most jobs, thus making most people redundant:

Robots will take over most jobs within 30 years, experts warn

What some people don't realize is that human beings created these machines. It's not as if we can't adapt if given enough time and proper education.

Welcome to the new era. The same as the old era only with technological sugar coating.

A bittersweet symphony that's life.

Again, you don't know that will be the road to wealth. You can estimate that doing IT will be a good thing because it's becoming popular, but you have to follow the trends unless you will be caught in them and lose in the long run. Trends are that there is a massive influx of people going into IT. If more people get IT degrees than there are jobs available in the future, then the degree will be worthless and the job markets for IT personnel will because heavily contested which reduces wages and benefits for all IT careers. It is simple economics.

In short, it's a gamble starting fresh into IT if you haven't broken into it yet. You have to be exceptionally talented, quick learning, and you have to be skilled to excel when there's going to soon be a tremendous amount of competition for the careers in IT. It will become more and more of a battlefield as it is growing in popularity, wages will drop and benefits will decline to meet the massive influx of new IT career-trained personnel entering the work force.

[Damajin]

And what's your evidence that 'the safe space generation' is earning less because of 'safe space mentality'?

People don't hire kids with secondary requirements on their productivity, skillset or work ethic. We've been reading in the papers for some time now that these kids aren't worth hiring due to their sense of entitlement both on the safe space thing and their view of what they deserve to be making/what position they deserve to get right out of the door. A shitty work ethic combined with extra hoops to jump through for them combined with a overall shitty educational background is going to put them in positions where the only thing they can make is less.

We've got kids who want safe spaces from tests and attendance due to the recent election as the most current example of this stupidity so not only is the parameters of 'safe space' turning into a whatever I feel like it should mean in the moment but they themselves are helping contribute to the gaps in skill and market appeal that inevitably lead to them making less.

Now of course this is all contingent on them being supremely concerned with appealing to corporate America, for those that are looking to step outside of the rat race or conduct business on a smaller scale this is less of a concern and potentially no concern if the kid is actually smart or lucky enough to find themselves at a place or with a line to be successful with all the extra baggage a safe space mentality creates.