Millennials are worthless

Do you feel that is a reliable source? Remember, in the USA we don't have the "fairness doctrine", so you can pretty much say whatever you want to push an agenda. I am not buying any of it. I think people live at a VERY high standard of living today compared to 15 years ago. Heck you almost don't need a pulse to survive now. It is crazy how easy life is. Just click on something and it is there the next day. Wow, life is so hard. lol Sure! Study history for sure. We wouldn't last a day in the 1700's.
That's definitely a good question to be asking since there's definitely a ton of click-bait crap out there, especially when it comes to claims about millennials and baby boomers.

CNBC does have a slight liberal bias, but the source data of this claim is based on the findings of the New America Think Tank on earnings and a Pew Research Center analysis on education. They are both described as "centrist", although there have been some claims of left leaning to New America.

New America is a name that's less well-known from my perspective, but the only criticism I have found against it is that it's funding tends to come from big companies like Google and that this could have resulted in suppression of anti-monopoly findings.
Source for this: https://www.economist.com/united-st...america-foundation-falls-into-a-familiar-trap

But that's not necessarily relevant to the findings here.

And Pew Research is a very well known organization that has a strong reputation for being one of the least-biased polling organizations in the U.S.

I definitely appreciate your skepticism, but there's a solid foundation behind this claim. This claim is also backed up by other solid sources, such as the Federal Bureau of Labor and Statistics:
https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2019/b...s-in-real-earnings-at-every-stage-of-life.htm
And this topic has been a pretty common one, particularly due to how housing prices have been affected by quantitative easing after the 2008 recession.

As a millennial (barely since I was born in 1983) that graduated into a recession, worked up the corporate ladder to earn strong positions in several fortune 500 companies, I still wasn't able to afford my own house until my mid-30s and that was only after I benefited from an inheritance that came after my mother passed, so I can definitely add that my own experience has matched this, particularly in comparison to my father (born 1940) who has had a more comfortable transition into middle class after moving from the military to a career in the post office without a college education.

My career has been as a data analyst, so I definitely don't take source data lightly and I don't underestimate the intelligence of the community here, so I know better than to just take the first result from a Google search too seriously either.
 
They are better educated because more of them go to college, but more of them also graduate college with degrees that still leave them unemployable. Therefore they wasted 4 years, took on massive debts, and are getting the same job they could have gotten with a high school diploma. I see many people taking their kids to schools around the country on trips and then the kid picking their dream school. The cost of a similar education out of state versus in state is between 2 and 4 times higher. That's a serious waste in my opinion.

Boomers went into the manufacturing world right out of high school. That manufacturing is now in other countries. When they raise the minimum wage to $15/hour, you'll see more kiosk and online ordering apps and even fewer jobs for general studies majors. We need to fix majors and the types of education people receive not wages.

I tell kids if they want to get rich they need to go into the trades or STEM college courses. If you're starting salary for your chosen degree path is <$50,000/year out of college then you'll never get ahead of the debt. Most trades will be around $50,000 a year 4 years out of high school and you'll learn it on the job or a 2 year degree that incurs minimal if any debt.

The kid across the street from me owns his own landscaping business and was hiring people when he was in high school because he needed people with licenses to drive the trucks he owned since he was too young to drive.

I think a lot of problems would be fixed by tying student loan amounts to the degree field starting salary and taking away the federal backing of student loans. Then give people a tax credit for education expenses so it's easier to work your way through school. I would also remove general studies class requirement from STEM field degree programs. I loved the easy A's I got, but they were a waste of time and money for me that would have been better spent on classes in my field. I could have replaced my Anthropology class with Turbomachinery or my Local Government class with another Materials class.
I definitely agree that Trade Schools and careers in STEM are solid choices, but manufacturing definitely doesn't promise a middle-class income like it used to. Even with a president who has pushed hard to keep this area afloat, there's very little growth in the area.

The need for a college education is higher than it has been in the past. What you're describing though is the effect of parents who have known this, but haven't been able to give the best direction as to *how* to use a college degree since many of them were among those that were able to provide a middle-class income with a high school diploma education.

Personally, I can attest to this since my dad, who is an incredibly wise and hard-working man, didn't have much advice to give for my college career compared to my mom who attained a master's degree.
 
There was a concerted effort for decades to put down people without college educations. You can see it when people talk politics and they refer to educated cities vs uneducated rural. It's an interesting phenomenon given cities typically have the highest levels of education and simultaneously the highest levels of population that don't finish high school. So a much greater disparity. People dog on places like Mississippi but Oregon has the worst high school graduation rate. Places like NYC, Chicago, LA, Kansas City, etc. are atrocious at educating children. I wouldn't mind it so much if they stopped calling the people flyover country uneducated and low information voters. Our school district graduates 98% of it's students and 95% of those that graduate finish college or a 2 year degree program.

https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_coi.asp

It's why California is now spending millions of dollars in advertising and school updates to make the trades look better and increase their enrollment. Older article but part of a cultural shift that's occurring as college graduates realize college education without career planning doesn't equate to making a living anymore.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/education/decades-pushing-bachelors-degrees-u-s-needs-tradespeople

Mike Rowe and his dirty jobs show might have been the best advocate for the concept and getting the ball rolling.

I use the fact that many people think we're uneducated hicks out here in flyover country to my advantage when dealing with people on the coasts and in larger cities. Playing to the stereotype is and easy way to get them overconfident and gain a competitive advantage.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: Equilibrium31
There was a concerted effort for decades to put down people without college educations. You can see it when people talk politics and they refer to educated cities vs uneducated rural. It's an interesting phenomenon given cities typically have the highest levels of education and simultaneously the highest levels of population that don't finish high school. So a much greater disparity. People dog on places like Mississippi but Oregon has the worst high school graduation rate. Places like NYC, Chicago, LA, Kansas City, etc. are atrocious at educating children. I wouldn't mind it so much if they stopped calling the people flyover country uneducated and low information voters.

https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_coi.asp

It's why California is now spending millions of dollars in advertising and school updates to make the trades look better and increase their enrollment. Older article but part of a cultural shift that's occurring as college graduates realize college education without career planning doesn't equate to making a living anymore.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/education/decades-pushing-bachelors-degrees-u-s-needs-tradespeople

Mike Rowe and his dirty jobs show might have been the best advocate for the concept and getting the ball rolling.

I use the fact that many people think we're uneducated hicks out here in flyover country to my advantage when dealing with people on the coasts and in larger cities. Playing to the stereotype is and easy way to get them overconfident and gain a competitive advantage.

Yea, scrappy self-learners without a degree have even been able to get pretty far in computing too, where a lot of employers have realized that schools aren't the only place you can learn how to do things like code and such.

Hell, college courses are even available for free online from ivy-league colleges now, which a lot of employers have realized, so the way that recruiters have looked at a lot of new hires have changed.

First result from a true lazy Google search below (😜):
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/570156/ivy-league-classes-you-can-take-online-free
Going back to personal anecdotes, I had a relatively unrelated college degree for some of my first jobs, which was a bachelors in Communication. I was initially going towards a pharm D to become a pharmacist since I was working as a pharmaceutical tech while going to school early on and figured that I would be comfortable as a pharmacist early on since I didn't know what I truly wanted to do post-graduation. After a while, I realized that the only career I'd really be happy with this would be a retail pharmacist since I hated hospitals and saw first-hand how shady the pharmaceutical sales area was, so I switched to a major with a variety of career paths that was still interesting.

It wasn't until after graduation that I realized that I had a knack for reporting/data analysis that led me to where I am now. I have had some recruiters tell me that they wouldn't have considered me for my job applications without a degree, even though my work experience and performance was really the most key for the roles I went towards.

But, if I was to do it all over again, I would either go to a tech school or go for a computing science major. Unfortunately, public schools are pretty shit at helping kids find careers that appeal to them and fit their strengths. Even most colleges are shit at this since my first experiences trying to work through this when I went to a local community college was some advisor who didn't give a crap pointing me to a computer to take some career-finder test that didn't help at all.
 
  • Like
Reactions: InOmaha
Well I think the health system here is the most innovative system in the world, that is why so many other countries try to steal the formulas for medicines and procedures from us... If it was government run, we would all have the same problems that medicaid have, or the VA or Canada...lack of service and not willing to pay for the right medications...

I lived with socialized medicine for a short time in Europe, you need an antibiotic? 3 days is all you get... need to see a doc for an infection? 3-5 day wait, oozing puss? well that can wait...

VA system? Well sir, I can get you an appointment in 2-3 months...but I am down stairs in the ER maam...well if we have a cancellation, we may be able to get you in in 2 days...and they did. I only had to drive 55 miles to get there to see the specialist.
OK Boomer, stop making since.