Drench, I ran into that mindset 20+ years ago, when working as a machinist. I would stand at my machines and just work...at a steady, non-rapid (or so I thought) pace, and got my work done. After a few weeks of that, several of the old-timers took me aside and told me to "slow the **** down...or else."

I didn't stay working there for long.

I'm better off than my parents. (35 years old)

But ONLY because my parents married young and had me young (19), neither went to college.

That said, my dad will retire with a nice pension and makes quite a bit of money in his last working years here for someone with only a high school education.

.. if I had kids at 20 and no college education, I would most certainly be WAAYYYYY worse off than them.

My dad will likely have a better retirement than what i'll be able to afford.

My parents live in my basement.

Wait a minute ...married at 20...live in Mom's basement...Livin' the Dream..!

Theedge111 wrote..

Gen X is the first generation that has lived a lower standard of living than their parents.

Trades50 wrote..

Been in the line at Wal-Mart and noticed generation Y-ers shuffing through their credit cards to find one that won't get declined.

I've seen both gen X-ers and Y-ers doing that. At the grocery store, too. They have no money, only credit. While it still works.

My mother has an engineering degree, more welding and quality control certs than you can shake a stick at and...

She works at mcdonalds.

Oh, and they owned 4 apartments and 4 houses at one time.

And some rather rare cars, including one 67 camaro they made only a handful of.

RS/SS, power windows, rear window defrost, fold down rear seat, rear courtesy lights, full gauges and the real kicker: "Heavy duty power disc brakes" - which were only put on 210 or 211 cars that year. None of the options mentioned were put on >1000 cars that year. So needless to say, I'd be shocked if there were more than a few dozen ever produced.

Sold for a pittance. Irritates me off to no end how much they*****ed away.

They are not looking for a credit card, they are looking for the EBT card. Look carefully next time. I often see them use up a balance on an EBT then put the rest on a CC card.

Also my net worth went up. Mainly because of a career change that ultimately was a bad idea, but kept out of a position to have large amounts in stocks, or buy a house.

Also I am not stupid and won't invest in a bubble, and I am a saver not a spender.

"Gen X is the first generation that has lived a lower standard of living than their parents."

Gen X was within reach and got burned. Millenials can't even comprehend the lifestyle of their parents. Its a completely foreign concept. When I'm around my parents and their friends all they talk about is real estate, second homes, boats, etc. We don't even talk about these things aspirationally. They're not even on the radar. We've seen they don't bring happiness anyway.

Tell us to save now and we'll retire as millionaires. We'll laugh in your face. 7% compounding interest? The S&P was at the same level 13 YEARS AGO. Screw it. We'd rather blow it on a trip to Europe. YOLO

As a recent college grad with an engineering job and no debt, I'm in a better financial situation than the vast majority of my peers. Yet I have no delusions of being better off than my parents. Take away 25 solid years of exponential economic growth and their lifestyle collapses.

Welcome to Gen-Y, where cash is dumb, debt is king, and not living with your parents has taken the place of the bmw as the new status symbol of choice.

Birdman nailed it. Try explaining this to your folks and older peers in plain ****ing english, and most likely you're met with blank stares and responses like "What's wrong with you? Don't you want things?" Want has jack-**** to do with it. Hell, you don't even have to say anything nowadays; just act-as-if, and watch how these very same people turn against you.

**** 'em. At some point, a man's gotta refuse to deal with these types and put up with their BS. I've had enough.

Job-wise, the under-35 crowd has been absolutely decimated by the H-1B visa folks. Its not uncommon to run into folks who have submitted literally thousands of applications and have top engineering or IT credentials, not even to receive replies from the firms.

Just look at the TBTF's -- their back-offices are filled with young foreigners. While our domestic talent basically sits around begging for jobs. Microsoft and Google receive 1000+ resumes per position they hire, yet they still claim a need for more foreigners. So much potential has gone to waste by the Boomers' mismanagement of the economy in a sheer fit of greed.

You twits: every generation thinks like Birdman when they're young.

The arrogance of youth is the belief that they've had an original idea.

Pitz, Your only agenda on TF seems to be to somehow link all the problems of US to H1B.

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Pitz, Your only agenda on TF seems to be to somehow link all the problems of US to H1B.

Its pretty obvious that the use of H-1B's (in preference to qualified Americans) facilitates a lot of the problems and the misbehaviour. For instance, at TBTFs -- would bred, born, and raised Americans have stood back over the past decade taking orders from their obviously corrupt superiors to destroy the economy?

Would incomes have grown and job opportunities for youth been more abundant if the market wasn't glutted up with cheap foreign labour?

When you replace around a million of the best and brightest US citizen workers, the proverbial top of the intellectual food chain, with low quality, cheap imported guest workers, is it any surprise that the economy is now in the throes of collapse?

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You twits: every generation thinks like Birdman when they're young.

Yeah, except this time it's true.

I want to see how many people here agree with your "obvious" leap of illogic, h1b visas caused financial crisis.


May be instead of faxing and protesting and calling for handcuffs, just abolishing h1b visas will solve all our problems. try and see if you can get Karl on this bandwagon.

Econ, don't bother. Broken records only play one track.

More like "arrogance of old farts" who took part in this 30-year credit bubble -even the ones who crashed and burned- and still think this is "just the way it is." The math says otherwise. And God forbid you find this out logically or intuitively; prepare to be branded as a traitor outcast.

These spend-thrift ignoramuses are ripe for the Free **** Army plucking when things head south again in a bigger way. Don't feel sorry for them because they'll be coming after Your ****.

I worked 19 days in 2009, my national GC company in the late fall of 2008 finished on Friday with 40% of the workforce they had on Monday. That was tough, the false .gov economy has made things 'better' since but damn take all that .gov cheese away and the whole economy ka-booms.

Try discussing the economy and prospects going forward with your mid-80s parents who live quite nicely on a great pension, SS, Medicare, and hold at least as part of their portfolio a number of 30 year bonds that are still paying out a good amount of interest. They own multiple houses, eat out 6-10x a week (lunch and dinner), and have a large boat and expensive yacht club memberships. Their friends are all in similar circumstances. They have zero concept of the financial realities faced by generations after them, and think that we're all not working hard enough.

Really, they don't get it, they don't want to understand and they don't feel they have to, because no one is starving in the streets. When my 22 yo discusses her job prospects with them (as in, very limited and poorly paid), they shrug, tell her to get more degrees and look harder.

While I hope they pass someday without having to understand, I think their personal bubble will be shattered in their lifetime.

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I want to see how many people here agree with your "obvious" leap of illogic, h1b visas caused financial crisis

Not illogic at all. A million US STEM workers have been kicked out of their jobs by these foreigners. Figure out how much capital the replacements have been exporting, and all the welfare we have to pay -- and the numbers are staggering.

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Broken records only play one track.

What's your position then MrBill? Do you honestly believe that H-1B's are helping the economy and helping the younger folks who I argue have been decimated by their presence in the workforce?

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I think their personal bubble will be shattered in their lifetime.

When TSHTF, some will grasp it quite quickly. Others will be like the passengers on the planes that hit the WTC: they just won't have time to wrap their minds around it.

Obliteration of the US middle class started with the offshoring of factory work via the globalization meme. H-1Bs are just a continuation of this attack on US middle class workers.

Are they responsible for the entire financial meltdown? No

Are they largely responsible for the destruction of US IT sector dominance and the lack of upward mobility for people aged 35-44? Asolutely.

That's not to say that a handful of people can't pull a decent living in the US with advanced skills and years of experience, but the entry level positions have dwindled, and the mid-level experience is drying up rapidly. By shipping off all the "grunt-work" of IT to foreigners, US companies have killed off the algea in the US IT Industry ecosystem. H-1Bs are directly related to this fiasco.

So count me as someone who agrees with Pitz.

US IT sector dominance? are we talking about companies domination or union labor of the united states domination?

As for as companies are concerned they dominate the technology industry like never before in the world scene.