Millennials can’t buy homes because they’re wasting money on avocado toast

[Fish Sweet]

Avo toast is the new Starbucks latte. Just cut it out of your life and instantly become a millionaire!

OP has fundamentally misread the reaction to the article. It is not the advice to save that is "controversial". The backlash is from the fact that this is another extremely wealthy person who lucked/worked themselves into a huge fortune and is now saying, "Why can't everyone just do what I did? I'm sure about 50% of the population could follow my extremely unique path to wealth if they only put in the work and had the superior moral fiber that I do."

It's not advice. It's a rich person masturbating over how much better they are then everyone poorer than themselves.

Pretty much this.

I'm a millennial.  I love myself some avocado toast (which I make at home, on my own, for less than $1 per toast, maybe $3 total for the meal if I'm getting fancy and extravagant.)  Obviously, as I'm on MMM, my savings rate is 50% and growing, and let me tell you, I could eat an this ridiculously priced $19 avocado toast from some hipster cafe, add tax and tip, FIVE DAYS A WEEK FOR FIVE YEARS, and the money that I could have saved doing this ridiculous thing couldn't buy me 5% of a house in my area.  Maybe if I saved the money, and let it compound for 30 years, I could get 20% of a house.

Saying it's "the new starbucks latte" is perfectly apt.  Should people stop spending money on frivolous shit they can't afford?  Sure, and that advice can be spread around equally to all people in all generations.  Some rich white guy talking about how those silly frivolous shallow millennials could just become as rich as him if only they stopped eating the fancy food of the day?  It's like comparing the sound advice of "eat fewer calories and exercise more" for getting in shape to a fad crash diet-- "just cut this one thing out!! and watch your waistline shrink!!!"

[jinga nation]

I wonder what costs more.... avocado toast once a week or paying a small ransom in student loan payments every month.... hmmm. This is a tough one. Yes, it's a luxury food item, but it's a very small percentage of the other expenses millennials face that the older generations didn't.

As a side note, I love avocados but am waiting for prices to come back down. $1.50 each at the grocery store is too rich for my blood :)

As an 18yo back in '98, I went to the local ITT campus looking for information on classes, costs, scholarships and all of that stuff. Back then, I knew computers were going to be the future and I wanted in, until I was told it was going to cost me $28k for the 2 year program. 

Even as a punk ass kid back then, I knew it would have been insane for me to acquire a $28k+ debt at 20yo, so I went instead to my local community college, where credits cost $60 per semester.  I ended up not getting into computers but that's all whole different topic.

My two 31yo BIL's(twins) owe over $60k each in student loans. One has a master's in art history, the other has a bachelor's in safety something or the other... We call him an educated crossing guard. The first one works at an apartment complex as a lease "manager", the second works as a subprime auto debt collector. 

So why am I saying all of this??? Because I, a non-millenial, could had easily gotten myself into stupid debt if I had wanted to. Millennials don't have it harder, they just want everything now and most of them want to be happy about everything. So everything they do must make them happy and joyful. So they easily get into crazy debt chasing a dream of blissfulness to them come face to face with reality.

Has anyone ever though why millennials get into so much educational debt? They're being sold dreams by older generations and that they HAVE TO GET A DEGREE. They aren't being shown that there are other options such as the trades and they can go to vocational colleges. Apprenticeships have practically disappeared.

Give a teen the information of HVAC/plumbing, Auto tech, construction, etc. and they'll look at you like you uttered the devil's name. And their parents will chew you out for daring to suggest such a "ghastly terrible option".

Not everyone needs to go to a name-band university/college but parents, counselors, media, politicians, and peers force the fumbling bumbling teen to sign up for debt and keep calm and carry on. It was easier for me as a 90s teen, today social media is the biggest peer pressure platform of all.

prognastat had a better post on this than me. Hat tip!

[honeybbq]

I wonder what costs more.... avocado toast once a week or paying a small ransom in student loan payments every month.... hmmm. This is a tough one. Yes, it's a luxury food item, but it's a very small percentage of the other expenses millennials face that the older generations didn't.

As a side note, I love avocados but am waiting for prices to come back down. $1.50 each at the grocery store is too rich for my blood :)

I usually get the giant bag at costco. It still might be 1$/each though.

[JLee]

No one's said Millennials are the scourge of society, but as a group y'all are awfully whiney and thin-skinned. 

I seem to see as many people whining about Millennials as I do Millennials complaining about other things (which are often valid, like skyrocketing college costs).

[mm1970]

Completely true. I think the "special occasion" meals are the norm now, which is ridiculous.

Yes.  I have a friend/acquaintance locally who is constantly posting pics of very expensive meals out.  Lunch and dinner and drinks every day.

Now, maybe she has an expense account (she's in retail, so I doubt it).  Maybe she's secretly wealthy (lot of money in this town).  Who knows.  But it's very dangerous to look at how much *other* people are doing this, because then you think it's normal.  Maybe it is normal, for the very wealthy.

[JLee]

I wonder what costs more.... avocado toast once a week or paying a small ransom in student loan payments every month.... hmmm. This is a tough one. Yes, it's a luxury food item, but it's a very small percentage of the other expenses millennials face that the older generations didn't.

As a side note, I love avocados but am waiting for prices to come back down. $1.50 each at the grocery store is too rich for my blood :)

As an 18yo back in '98, I went to the local ITT campus looking for information on classes, costs, scholarships and all of that stuff. Back then, I knew computers were going to be the future and I wanted in, until I was told it was going to cost me $28k for the 2 year program. 

Even as a punk ass kid back then, I knew it would have been insane for me to acquire a $28k+ debt at 20yo, so I went instead to my local community college, where credits cost $60 per semester.  I ended up not getting into computers but that's all whole different topic.

My two 31yo BIL's(twins) owe over $60k each in student loans. One has a master's in art history, the other has a bachelor's in safety something or the other... We call him an educated crossing guard. The first one works at an apartment complex as a lease "manager", the second works as a subprime auto debt collector. 

So why am I saying all of this??? Because I, a non-millenial, could had easily gotten myself into stupid debt if I had wanted to. Millennials don't have it harder, they just want everything now and most of them want to be happy about everything. So everything they do must make them happy and joyful. So they easily get into crazy debt chasing a dream of blissfulness to them come face to face with reality.

Has anyone ever though why millennials get into so much educational debt? They're being sold dreams by older generations and that they HAVE TO GET A DEGREE. They aren't being shown that there are other options such as the trades and they can go to vocational colleges. Apprenticeships have practically disappeared.

Give a teen the information of HVAC/plumbing, Auto tech, construction, etc. and they'll look at you like you uttered the devil's name. And their parents will chew you out for daring to suggest such a "ghastly terrible option".

Not everyone needs to go to a name-band university/college but parents, counselors, media, politicians, and peers force the fumbling bumbling teen to sign up for debt and keep calm and carry on. It was easier for me as a 90s teen, today social media is the biggest peer pressure platform of all.

prognastat had a better post on this than me. Hat tip!

I'll never forget..when I was working at a grocery store (I was probably 18 at the time), some guy with a young child came through my lane. This little guy looks at me running the register and goes "I want to do that someday!" The guy (presumably his dad) made some comment along the lines of "You'll never work at a grocery store if I have anything to say about it."

People may complain about Millennials, but ultimately the ones complaining are the ones who created the problem.

Incidentally, I was later told that if I was willing to move to where they were building new stores (Publix Supermarkets was expanding up into the TN area) I would likely be a store manager inside of a few years..pulling 6 figures.  It's not a bad way to go!

[honeybbq]

On vacation in California we stopped at the famed "Big Sur Bakery" as we were both starving and yours truly had sailed by Trader Joe's early that morning, me stupidly waving off DW's suggestion that we pick up some things for lunch).

Eateries are pretty darn sparse in Big Sur, and due to my pork free diet the only thing we could order was avocado toast. On fresh seedy bread w chili flakes.

$18!!! And the slice of bread was smaller than my hand.  I couldn't even enjoy it I was so angry.  Mostly at myself. 

Avocado Toast as Mustachian Lesson!! Always have snacks tucked away on a road trip!!

Wait, was this last year? Because I just went to Big Sur and the bakery was closed. Maybe it's a good thing lol.

[Ann]

No one's said Millennials are the scourge of society, but as a group y'all are awfully whiney and thin-skinned. 

I seem to see as many people whining about Millennials as I do Millennials complaining about other things (which are often valid, like skyrocketing college costs).

Maybe it's the circles I run in, but I hear people whining about millennials more than I hear hear actual millennials whine.  Or people complaining about hipsters.  (Probably it IS because of the type of person with whom I associate).
I feel like every new generation since Boomers have been whiny, and every older generation rags on the new. 

[BreakTheChains]

I think it is unreasonable to expect a bunch of CHILDREN to be able to make responsible decisions like this that impact the rest of their lives without guidance. I mean seriously, in May you have to raise you hand and ask permission to go pee and suddenly in September you are expected to make life-changing decisions about majors and career paths and debt that will follow you for decades to come? Something doesn't add up. We need to do a better job (society, schools, counselors, parents, everyone) talking about options and the impacts of choices in advance and while these decisions are being made.

As a fellow older millennial ('86 here), I agree with you completely here. I think the fix for this is for govt student loans to ONLY be given out for in-demand majors that lead to ACTUAL JOBS that have a likelihood of creating enough wealth for them to be paid back! The govt should not be in the business of subsidizing liberal arts and music majors, we have enough of them, they in aggregate add very little to society. If after you work a real career in a STEM field or as a professional in another in demand, well paying field, you save up enough money to do one of the goofy cultural studies majors or major in trombone playing, go for it. These majors should only exist for those that have the means to pay for them without burdening society.

I was clicking through one of the articles, and it said Millennials spend something like 44% of their food dollars on eating out. Obviously in some areas, this is not sufficient to own a home, but it's still an outrageous luxury.

"Millennials spend 44% of their food dollars – or $2,921 annually – on eating out, according to the Food Institute's analysis of the United States Department of Agriculture’s food expenditure data from 2014. That represents a 10.7 percent increase from prior data points in 2010.

In contrast, baby boomers in 2014 spent 40% of their food dollars on eating out or $2,629 annually."

https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexandratalty/2016/10/17/millennials-spend-44-percent-of-food-dollars-on-eating-out-says-food-institute/#74a2114a3ff6


so the difference between age groups is literally $308.


and let's say you could reduce that amount by half by eating at home. cause eating in doesn't = $0.

 that means people would gain like $1300 back per year, man those Millenials would be swimming in house if they would be less extravagant.

This is not an apples to apples comparison. Baby Boomers are much richer and are further along in their careers than Millennials. The better question is what % of their total income, not food money, did each group spend on eating out at the same life stage. otherwise this is a statistic that to me supports the idea that Millennials waste way too much money eating out.

i did

but did you also see where he got a loan from his family?

he isnt running the same race as everyone els e

Yeah, a $30k loan if I remember correctly, which translated to USD is around $22k. That's peanuts, it's not like he got a $1M loan. I think most people could scrounge up that much if they had the desire and will relatively quickly. And before you call me spoiled, I'm the first person in my family to go to college and my family is dirt poor.

The points he makes are valid, even though the people who should most take it to heart won't because its easier to have a pity party.

[Fish Sweet]

Yeah, a $30k loan if I remember correctly, which translated to USD is around $22k. That's peanuts, it's not like he got a $1M loan. I think most people could scrounge up that much if they had the desire and will relatively quickly. And before you call me spoiled, I'm the first person in my family to go to college and my family is dirt poor.

The points he makes are valid, even though the people who should most take it to heart won't because its easier to have a pity party.

Ennnh, I really can't agree that 30k (or even 22k) is peanuts, especially to people who are really hard up on money and not earning very much.  When I graduated college, my father gifted me a shitty car and 15k, which I immediately dumped into savings, and I considered myself tremendously fortunate.  Most of the people I know did not have that, and don't have parents who could provide that level of support.  30k is double what I received and it can be more than a year's worth of wages to some people.  It can be the difference between having housing for a few months to a few years or being on the streets, it can feed a family for a few years or wipe out significant chunks of debt and allow people to start their financial journeys fresh.  For people living frugally, 30k can be 2+ years worth of expenses. 

It's also an incredibly easy amount of money to burn through if you want to-- a car, or a few fancy vacations, too many meals out, and it's gone in a flash, but 30 grand in gifted money is definitely a huge privilege most people don't get.

[BreakTheChains]

Yeah, a $30k loan if I remember correctly, which translated to USD is around $22k. That's peanuts, it's not like he got a $1M loan. I think most people could scrounge up that much if they had the desire and will relatively quickly. And before you call me spoiled, I'm the first person in my family to go to college and my family is dirt poor.

The points he makes are valid, even though the people who should most take it to heart won't because its easier to have a pity party.

Ennnh, I really can't agree that 30k (or even 22k) is peanuts, especially to people who are really hard up on money and not earning very much.  When I graduated college, my father gifted me a shitty car and 15k, which I immediately dumped into savings, and I considered myself tremendously fortunate.  Most of the people I know did not have that, and don't have parents who could provide that level of support.  30k is double what I received and it can be more than a year's worth of wages to some people.  It can be the difference between having housing for a few months to a few years or being on the streets, it can feed a family for a few years or wipe out significant chunks of debt and allow people to start their financial journeys fresh.  For people living frugally, 30k can be 2+ years worth of expenses. 

It's also an incredibly easy amount of money to burn through if you want to-- a car, or a few fancy vacations, too many meals out, and it's gone in a flash, but 30 grand in gifted money is definitely a huge privilege most people don't get.

Well, he did say it was a loan and not a gift. You can't begrudge someone for taking advantage of resources that were available to him. What I'm saying is that if you became a millionaire with a $30k loan you prob. would end up as one WITHOUT that loan too. People are trying to use the loan as an excuse to dismiss his advice, which you shouldn't do.

[mtn]

Yeah, a $30k loan if I remember correctly, which translated to USD is around $22k. That's peanuts, it's not like he got a $1M loan. I think most people could scrounge up that much if they had the desire and will relatively quickly. And before you call me spoiled, I'm the first person in my family to go to college and my family is dirt poor.

The points he makes are valid, even though the people who should most take it to heart won't because its easier to have a pity party.

Ennnh, I really can't agree that 30k (or even 22k) is peanuts, especially to people who are really hard up on money and not earning very much.  When I graduated college, my father gifted me a shitty car and 15k, which I immediately dumped into savings, and I considered myself tremendously fortunate.  Most of the people I know did not have that, and don't have parents who could provide that level of support.  30k is double what I received and it can be more than a year's worth of wages to some people.  It can be the difference between having housing for a few months to a few years or being on the streets, it can feed a family for a few years or wipe out significant chunks of debt and allow people to start their financial journeys fresh.  For people living frugally, 30k can be 2+ years worth of expenses. 

It's also an incredibly easy amount of money to burn through if you want to-- a car, or a few fancy vacations, too many meals out, and it's gone in a flash, but 30 grand in gifted money is definitely a huge privilege most people don't get.

I'm trying to think about that one... If I needed $20,000 in a month, how would I do it?

--Sell (or get a loan on) car 1 ~$6000
--Sell (or get a loan on) car 2 ~$3500
--Sell most of my guitars ~$5000
--Cash out my Roth 401k $5500 that I can take without penalty


Huh, yeah. I guess I could do that pretty quickly and easily. I didn't even get into the knick-knacks around the house that I could sell, like our mixer or extra vacuum, or china, etc.

[Fish Sweet]

I'm trying to think about that one... If I needed $20,000 in a month, how would I do it?

--Sell (or get a loan on) car 1 ~$6000
--Sell (or get a loan on) car 2 ~$3500
--Sell most of my guitars ~$5000
--Cash out my Roth 401k $5500 that I can take without penalty


Huh, yeah. I guess I could do that pretty quickly and easily. I didn't even get into the knick-knacks around the house that I could sell, like our mixer or extra vacuum, or china, etc.

Oh, that's an interesting thought exercise.   If I was forced to come up with 20k on the fly, I'd sell some stuff but mostly just liquidate a chunk of my investments.  Assuming I had no savings and no investments cash out, I'd be in a much dicier situation.

- Sell my niche fashion collection ~$2-3k
- Sell gaming consoles & gaming collection ~$1k
- Sell my crappy car ~$2k
- Selling knick-knacks would probably net me another $1k, max

13k to go, yikes. 

[Goldielocks]

As a fellow older millennial ('86 here), I agree with you completely here. I think the fix for this is for govt student loans to ONLY be given out for in-demand majors that lead to ACTUAL JOBS that have a likelihood of creating enough wealth for them to be paid back! The govt should not be in the business of subsidizing liberal arts and music majors, we have enough of them, they in aggregate add very little to society. If after you work a real career in a STEM field or as a professional in another in demand, well paying field, you save up enough money to do one of the goofy cultural studies majors or major in trombone playing, go for it. These majors should only exist for those that have the means to pay for them without burdening society.

You know, those in demand degrees change around a lot.   Would it not be better if the student loans, above the federally subsidized ones, were given out by the future employers?   They could target the to students at a specific school and degree of interest in their region....   after all, private banks offer loans to make money, so why would this be a bad idea?

[zolotiyeruki]

As a fellow older millennial ('86 here), I agree with you completely here. I think the fix for this is for govt student loans to ONLY be given out for in-demand majors that lead to ACTUAL JOBS that have a likelihood of creating enough wealth for them to be paid back! The govt should not be in the business of subsidizing liberal arts and music majors, we have enough of them, they in aggregate add very little to society. If after you work a real career in a STEM field or as a professional in another in demand, well paying field, you save up enough money to do one of the goofy cultural studies majors or major in trombone playing, go for it. These majors should only exist for those that have the means to pay for them without burdening society.

Yeah, unfortunately, the problem is that governments are generally pretty lousy at picking worthwhile ways to spend money, and are too often motivated by what is politically expedient rather than what would actually have positive results.

[lizi]

Oooof, ok I'm weighing in on this one, because as a millennial Australian brunch-loving non-homeowner it is right in my wheelhouse.

Firstly, I think all mustachians agree that frivolous expenses like brunch and daily takeaway coffees are exactly that: frivolous. It adds up and eats into your budget and most people my age seem to consider it a necessity (even though there's free coffee at work, that's what really confuses me). So yes, live within your means, save half your income, invest the rest. Simple.

However, the whole Australian trend of "Millennials are useless because they all have iPhones and don't have houses like me" articles is getting a little tiresome. It's pretty hard to make a comparison between Australia and the US in this regard. We have a teensy population, and it's concentrated along the coast and especially in Sydney and Melbourne. While the US has equally massive cities with crazy housing costs, there are also a ton of smaller cities that are going through a renaissance in terms of appeal to younger people. In short, there's choice. Australia lacks that geographic diversity. That said, I live in a small town in Canada now, and the lifestyle definitely appeals to me. When I move back I would certainly consider somewhere outside the major cities, mostly due to affordability.

This specific issue of the smashed avocado came up last year by an angry boomer columnist who is probably seething that his article didn't make the international press. Many excellent rebuttals were made then, this is perhaps the best summary: https://www.theguardian.com/business/grogonomics/2016/oct/18/i-could-get-outraged-by-this-boomer-millennial-war-but-id-rather-look-at-the-evidence

I also really enjoyed this article (published 2017) about millennials buying property in Auckland, which is going through a similar housing price boom to Sydney and Melbourne. A deeper dive into these stories reveals they are out of date, rely on large gifts from family to get started, etc. https://thespinoff.co.nz/media/20-04-2017/how-to-buy-your-first-house-a-deep-data-dive-into-those-miracle-property-stories/

In short, the vast majority of every generation doesn't live within their means. In some situations you can still afford a house without too much financial duress. In other markets buying a house could take years of saving and young, mobile people aren't willing to make that sacrifice. Should they be throwing their money in index funds instead? Absolutely! But that fault sadly spans all generations, across all socioeconomic strata.

(As a complete side note, one of my favourite pastimes at the moment is scanning the local real estate offerings in this tiny, economically depressed Ontario town. From an Australian perspective, it's a hoot! "A four-bed, two-bath house for $165K?!? OOoooh a three-bed, two-bath house for $98K!" Sadly as a temporary citizen a mortgage is out of the question, my SO is not sold on property, and I don't quiiiiite have the cash on hand just yet.)

[MrsPete]

I'm a millennial.  I love myself some avocado toast (which I make at home, on my own, for less than $1 per toast, maybe $3 total for the meal if I'm getting fancy and extravagant.)  Obviously, as I'm on MMM, my savings rate is 50% and growing, and let me tell you, I could eat an this ridiculously priced $19 avocado toast from some hipster cafe, add tax and tip, FIVE DAYS A WEEK FOR FIVE YEARS, and the money that I could have saved doing this ridiculous thing couldn't buy me 5% of a house in my area.  Maybe if I saved the money, and let it compound for 30 years, I could get 20% of a house.

First, I don't think you can make avocado toast for less than $1/piece.  After all, at its lowest, avocados are .99 each ... and you need the good, seedy bread plus a couple other toppers to make it good.  And I live in a low cost of living area.

Regardless, as someone said above, the real issue is that you have to generalize the concept.  Sure, skipping avocado toast isn't going to allow you to buy a house.  What WILL help you save more /buy a house is identifying things you personally could do to save money ... and then doing those things.  Avocado toast is a good example because it's JUST toast and mashed fruit.  You don't have to be able to cook to make it, so buying it at a restaurant is pretty stupid.  If you pick out a dozen things upon which you personally are over-spending, you will save and will be able to buy that house ... or whatever else it is that you want. 

Has anyone ever though why millennials get into so much educational debt? They're being sold dreams by older generations and that they HAVE TO GET A DEGREE. They aren't being shown that there are other options such as the trades and they can go to vocational colleges. Apprenticeships have practically disappeared.

Eh, half and half.  At the high school where I teach (and the surrounding county), we offer classes in about 20 trades ... yet a whole bunch of kids who could really benefit refuse to look at the classes.  They say things like, "I'll take my 1.2 GPA, go to college, and I'll be a Lawyer, or a Marine Biologist, or a NeuroSurgeon." 

I seem to see as many people whining about Millennials as I do Millennials complaining about other things (which are often valid, like skyrocketing college costs).

Oh, I hear the whining straight from the horse's mouth.  It's a real thing. 

Yeah, Millennials got a bum rap in some ways ... yet they're ignoring a whole bunch of positives that have come their way.  For example, yeah, college costs are higher than they were in the past, but today's college students have more options than we did; for example, online classes offer a flexibility that we didn't have.  And today's young people probably aren't even aware that we used to wait 'til after 5:00 when the long distance rates dropped.  Online shopping has allowed for comparison shopping, and ebay makes it easier to find specific items used.  Mortgage interest rates are 1/4 what they were when I bought my first house.  Quite a few things are better today than they used to be ... but too many Millennials want to whine about their challenges without recognizing that a whole bunch of things have become easier for their generation. 

[JLee]

I'm a millennial.  I love myself some avocado toast (which I make at home, on my own, for less than $1 per toast, maybe $3 total for the meal if I'm getting fancy and extravagant.)  Obviously, as I'm on MMM, my savings rate is 50% and growing, and let me tell you, I could eat an this ridiculously priced $19 avocado toast from some hipster cafe, add tax and tip, FIVE DAYS A WEEK FOR FIVE YEARS, and the money that I could have saved doing this ridiculous thing couldn't buy me 5% of a house in my area.  Maybe if I saved the money, and let it compound for 30 years, I could get 20% of a house.

First, I don't think you can make avocado toast for less than $1/piece.  After all, at its lowest, avocados are .99 each ... and you need the good, seedy bread plus a couple other toppers to make it good.  And I live in a low cost of living area.

Regardless, as someone said above, the real issue is that you have to generalize the concept.  Sure, skipping avocado toast isn't going to allow you to buy a house.  What WILL help you save more /buy a house is identifying things you personally could do to save money ... and then doing those things.  Avocado toast is a good example because it's JUST toast and mashed fruit.  You don't have to be able to cook to make it, so buying it at a restaurant is pretty stupid.  If you pick out a dozen things upon which you personally are over-spending, you will save and will be able to buy that house ... or whatever else it is that you want. 

Has anyone ever though why millennials get into so much educational debt? They're being sold dreams by older generations and that they HAVE TO GET A DEGREE. They aren't being shown that there are other options such as the trades and they can go to vocational colleges. Apprenticeships have practically disappeared.

Eh, half and half.  At the high school where I teach (and the surrounding county), we offer classes in about 20 trades ... yet a whole bunch of kids who could really benefit refuse to look at the classes.  They say things like, "I'll take my 1.2 GPA, go to college, and I'll be a Lawyer, or a Marine Biologist, or a NeuroSurgeon." 

I seem to see as many people whining about Millennials as I do Millennials complaining about other things (which are often valid, like skyrocketing college costs).

Oh, I hear the whining straight from the horse's mouth.  It's a real thing. 

Yeah, Millennials got a bum rap in some ways ... yet they're ignoring a whole bunch of positives that have come their way.  For example, yeah, college costs are higher than they were in the past, but today's college students have more options than we did; for example, online classes offer a flexibility that we didn't have.  And today's young people probably aren't even aware that we used to wait 'til after 5:00 when the long distance rates dropped.  Online shopping has allowed for comparison shopping, and ebay makes it easier to find specific items used.  Mortgage interest rates are 1/4 what they were when I bought my first house.  Quite a few things are better today than they used to be ... but too many Millennials want to whine about their challenges without recognizing that a whole bunch of things have become easier for their generation.

Avocados are often 20-25 cents in Arizona.

Back when you bought a house at 12%, you could probably have bought something in most HCOL areas, too.  That's a laughable non-option in a lot of places today.

Yes, many things are better today than they used to be. That doesn't mean everything today is better than it used to be -- and the generation whining about Millennials is the generation that raised them.  Who's to blame?

[Mrs. S]

and the generation whining about Millennials is the generation that raised them.  Who's to blame?

^^^This

To be fair if you were to eat Avocados in India you might be spending a pretty penny. Nice seedy bread will be a decent sum as well.
Here the emotions related to buying still prevail and the prices have been steadily rising. Everybody blames the market, economy and regulations for it.

[Torran]

...man those Millenials would be swimming in house if they would be less extravagant.

Is it the "Millennials" part that bothers you?  I mean, is it not stupid for someone, anyone, to pay let's say, $12 for an avocados toast?

Here's a menu from a local hip bar. An avocado toast is $12. I have no idea what it all entails to make it nor have I seen it in person. For all I know the toast is the size of a large pizza and feeds 5 people, but I bet it ain't. 

http://www.theflyingfig.com/brunch/

This is not for normal working people. This is not for college students. This is not an everyday or every weekend thing... The problem is that people, millennials included, believe that a $12 toast is the norm. It shouldn't be.

That's just my take. I won't be fooled. Like I said before, I'm not financing the chef's vacations in Milan. I don't care how artisanal, local, renewable blah blah cliche words blah blah they make the dish or how fancy the Instagram pictures of it are.

more so i hate the bad logic, and bad numbers

44% percent of their food dollars isnt the same as 44% of their income. and %'s are a stupid way to look at things. some rich dude blamed avocado toast for wealth disparities and a forum that prides itself on good math and common sense jumped on board.


the only thing we should be mocking is another generational-ly wealthy white dude telling poor people where they went wrong.

Vivo, did you actually look into what "the rich dude" said? It was more along the lines of "when I was saving to buy my first house, I wasn't spending on 19$ avocado toast and 4$ coffees", he didn't claim that that's the only reason or even the primary reason that people can't afford a to buy property. Later on, he also said that people need to manage their expectations and make compromises so that they buy only affordable properties, etc. Ultimately, his message is right in line with mustachianism - you optimize your spending and you understand that small luxuries add up to a lot in the long run and are a major barrier to building wealth and becoming financially independent.

Plus, check twitter, MMM has already said he's with "the avocado guy".

Ah yes. I agree. I read that article the other day and thought the only place I'd find some non-ridiculous comments on it was this forum. I think he was making a fairly general point about young people managing their expectations better and being diligent and cautious with their money, using his own experience as an example of the sacrifices he had to make. I don't think he was like 'guys I've fixed your economic woes with this life hack' or anything. I am with the avocado guy too.

I just KNEW dumb people would take what he said, get out a calculator, add up the cost of 1 x avocado toast over 10 years, and then triumphantly say that he's talking shit.

[Torran]

...man those Millenials would be swimming in house if they would be less extravagant.

Is it the "Millennials" part that bothers you?  I mean, is it not stupid for someone, anyone, to pay let's say, $12 for an avocados toast?

Here's a menu from a local hip bar. An avocado toast is $12. I have no idea what it all entails to make it nor have I seen it in person. For all I know the toast is the size of a large pizza and feeds 5 people, but I bet it ain't. 

http://www.theflyingfig.com/brunch/

This is not for normal working people. This is not for college students. This is not an everyday or every weekend thing... The problem is that people, millennials included, believe that a $12 toast is the norm. It shouldn't be.

That's just my take. I won't be fooled. Like I said before, I'm not financing the chef's vacations in Milan. I don't care how artisanal, local, renewable blah blah cliche words blah blah they make the dish or how fancy the Instagram pictures of it are.

more so i hate the bad logic, and bad numbers

44% percent of their food dollars isnt the same as 44% of their income. and %'s are a stupid way to look at things. some rich dude blamed avocado toast for wealth disparities and a forum that prides itself on good math and common sense jumped on board.


the only thing we should be mocking is another generational-ly wealthy white dude telling poor people where they went wrong.

Vivo, did you actually look into what "the rich dude" said? It was more along the lines of "when I was saving to buy my first house, I wasn't spending on 19$ avocado toast and 4$ coffees", he didn't claim that that's the only reason or even the primary reason that people can't afford a to buy property. Later on, he also said that people need to manage their expectations and make compromises so that they buy only affordable properties, etc. Ultimately, his message is right in line with mustachianism - you optimize your spending and you understand that small luxuries add up to a lot in the long run and are a major barrier to building wealth and becoming financially independent.

Plus, check twitter, MMM has already said he's with "the avocado guy".

Ah yes. I agree. I read that article the other day and thought the only place I'd find some non-ridiculous comments on it was this forum. I think he was making a fairly general point about young people managing their expectations better and being diligent and cautious with their money, using his own experience as an example of the sacrifices he had to make. I don't think he was like 'guys I've fixed your economic woes with this life hack' or anything. I am with the avocado guy too.

I just KNEW dumb people would take what he said, get out a calculator, add up the cost of 1 x avocado toast over 10 years, and then triumphantly say that he's talking shit.

Err... before I start any kind of war, I was referring to the commenters on the yahoo article I read about this, when I said 'dumb people'. Not anyone on this forum.

[nobody123]

As a fellow older millennial ('86 here), I agree with you completely here. I think the fix for this is for govt student loans to ONLY be given out for in-demand majors that lead to ACTUAL JOBS that have a likelihood of creating enough wealth for them to be paid back! The govt should not be in the business of subsidizing liberal arts and music majors, we have enough of them, they in aggregate add very little to society. If after you work a real career in a STEM field or as a professional in another in demand, well paying field, you save up enough money to do one of the goofy cultural studies majors or major in trombone playing, go for it. These majors should only exist for those that have the means to pay for them without burdening society.

Yeah, unfortunately, the problem is that governments are generally pretty lousy at picking worthwhile ways to spend money, and are too often motivated by what is politically expedient rather than what would actually have positive results.

Trying to hand-pick majors that qualify for governement subsidies is essentially impossible.  One, the economy changes much faster than government regulation.  With the shale oil / fracking boom of a few years ago, petrochemical engineers were in very high demand.  Then, all of the sudden, graduates couldn't get a job in that field because global oil prices dropped essentially overnight.  Two, the first two years of a 4 year degree are mostly general requirements.  What's to stop anyone from saying they were a STEM major to get loans for the first two years then switch to trombone playing?  How do you handle STEM majors that 'fail out' of the program and have to change majors?

Businesses are never going to front the money for education loans for high school students to get degrees.  There are too many unknowns, first of which would be what type of employees they will need in 4-5 years.

[BreakTheChains]

Trying to hand-pick majors that qualify for governement subsidies is essentially impossible.  One, the economy changes much faster than government regulation.  With the shale oil / fracking boom of a few years ago, petrochemical engineers were in very high demand.  Then, all of the sudden, graduates couldn't get a job in that field because global oil prices dropped essentially overnight.  Two, the first two years of a 4 year degree are mostly general requirements.  What's to stop anyone from saying they were a STEM major to get loans for the first two years then switch to trombone playing?  How do you handle STEM majors that 'fail out' of the program and have to change majors?

Businesses are never going to front the money for education loans for high school students to get degrees.  There are too many unknowns, first of which would be what type of employees they will need in 4-5 years.

You bring up a few points that I'm happy to address

1) The government has a whole department called the Bureau of Labor Statistics staffed to the gills with economists that study nothing else. They project out future job growth in different fields, salaries, etc. Why not... actually use this data! Sure things change, but I'd much rather have a bunch of educated Petro Engineers looking for work than a bunch of Contemporary Dance majors doing the same. I bet those Engineers will find work in a related field without too much trouble.

2) You bring up a great point, Gen Eds are a waste of time that stretch out college and increase expenses. The only thing they do is provide job security to liberal arts professors teaching ridiculous courses that waste everyone's time. How about cut those two years out and chop the expenses these college kids are paying in half? These are a hold over from when College was a fancy finishing school for rich kids so that they have talking points for all the parties at their parents mansion.

3) What to do about drop outs? We've already come up with a list of acceptable majors, let them switch to one of these majors with no repercussions, or even enter a trade school. I would try to inform these kids of the risks they are taking in dropping out and give them a second chance with something they might be able to succeed in that would provide a decent livelihood.

4) What about people switching to trombone after two years? Financial aid ends and they're on the hook for those two years that have been covered. The goal is to steer people towards the best long term decisions and to be a fiduciary with the tax money your spending, nothing will ever be perfect.

[TheGrimSqueaker]

A lot of 'blame game' thinking going on here.

I believe MMM's central point is about taking control of your own destiny.  If real estate is too high, find another way. Make more money, move elsewhere, form a coop with like minded folks, work overseas, etc. Convert your problem into a solution by being mentally and physically flexible.

Blaming the status of the world for ones own lack of success is victim mentality.  When i lived in the highest cost of living community in the world for 3 years (central Tokyo cerca 1990) i hung out for weekendl free public park, anyone welcome ultimate frisbee games with some people earning almost nothing in that incredibly expensive city, including Iranian immigrants (who would overstay tourist visas to work as illegal labor), poor 'outsider' Japanese, and student language teachers on mmm style budgets.  We learned that we could live in almost no space, and that almost any city has great fun, free events for creative people.  We made our own fun, held parties on public transit, cooked for each other from almost free food sources (rice is subsidized, farmers market end of day sourced in season greens almost free), etc.

For me the central message is that we can achieve our financial goals if we take control.

Yes, this is one of America's main beliefs, the Protestant Work Ethic:  If you work hard and make good choices, you can succeed.  Maybe not in the same way someone else succeeded, but multiple paths exist -- choose one and stay the course.  Don't expect success to be instant.

The USA is the only place in the world where it's called the "Protestant" work ethic. Everywhere else it's called normal cause and effect. I was kind of flummoxed by the term when I moved here, because it appeared to me that the laziest people around were also the most vocally and expressively religious.

[nobody123]

Trying to hand-pick majors that qualify for governement subsidies is essentially impossible.  One, the economy changes much faster than government regulation.  With the shale oil / fracking boom of a few years ago, petrochemical engineers were in very high demand.  Then, all of the sudden, graduates couldn't get a job in that field because global oil prices dropped essentially overnight.  Two, the first two years of a 4 year degree are mostly general requirements.  What's to stop anyone from saying they were a STEM major to get loans for the first two years then switch to trombone playing?  How do you handle STEM majors that 'fail out' of the program and have to change majors?

Businesses are never going to front the money for education loans for high school students to get degrees.  There are too many unknowns, first of which would be what type of employees they will need in 4-5 years.

You bring up a few points that I'm happy to address

1) The government has a whole department called the Bureau of Labor Statistics staffed to the gills with economists that study nothing else. They project out future job growth in different fields, salaries, etc. Why not... actually use this data! Sure things change, but I'd much rather have a bunch of educated Petro Engineers looking for work than a bunch of Contemporary Dance majors doing the same. I bet those Engineers will find work in a related field without too much trouble.

2) You bring up a great point, Gen Eds are a waste of time that stretch out college and increase expenses. The only thing they do is provide job security to liberal arts professors teaching ridiculous courses that waste everyone's time. How about cut those two years out and chop the expenses these college kids are paying in half? These are a hold over from when College was a fancy finishing school for rich kids so that they have talking points for all the parties at their parents mansion.

3) What to do about drop outs? We've already come up with a list of acceptable majors, let them switch to one of these majors with no repercussions, or even enter a trade school. I would try to inform these kids of the risks they are taking in dropping out and give them a second chance with something they might be able to succeed in that would provide a decent livelihood.

4) What about people switching to trombone after two years? Financial aid ends and they're on the hook for those two years that have been covered. The goal is to steer people towards the best long term decisions and to be a fiduciary with the tax money your spending, nothing will ever be perfect.

1.  The BLS is just making guesses.  They project job growth of known industries.  Tell me, how many iPhone repairmen jobs did they forecast back in 2006?  How many social media coordinators?  Uber drivers?  For known industries with a fairly heavy human requirement (ex: health care) I'm guessing they'll be pretty accurate.  But with the advent of globalization and the rate of technological change happening, entire industries can spawn, thrive, and disappear within the 4 -5 years it takes to get a degree.  When the petrochemical engineer is making coffee at Starbucks, how was his college education any more valuable to society than the trombone player cashier's is?

2.  The "fluff" is there to make the student a more well-rounded individual and be exposed to ideas that they may not have given their socioeconomic background or location they grew up in.  I am all for having more critical thinkers in society who can handle thinking about multiple subject matter areas simultaneously.  People that know only what they were raised with and with a narrow focus on their profession are probably not going to be the best citizens in a national / global sense.  That being said, I am all for a mandatory counseling session required for anyone taking out a federal loan to understand what their future income might be according to the BLS and showing them how long it will take to pay the loans back.  Hopefully that would keep folks from pinning all of their financial hopes and dreams on that creative writing degree.

3 & 4.  All reasonable courses of action.  But let's say I'm going to be a trombone player, or artist, or whatever, and I can't afford the 4 years without a loan.  I guarantee 99.8% of students like that will take out federal student loans in an "approved" major, "minor" in art, take enough classes in their "minor" to actually earn a major in it, then graduate.  Or just simply declare a double major and not complete the work for the "approved" one.  The amount of money required to police "approved" majors, ensure students are making "satisfactory academic progress" or whatever towards their major would probably offset whatever hypothetical savings you could project from not subsidising the "undesirable" majors.  And, frankly, we need social workers / teachers / other lower paid professions to be adequately staffed.  As long as we require college degrees (through licensing requirements) for those types of occupations, you're going to have to subsidize some of the educational cost.  Not to mention, not everybody is intelligent enough to be a doctor / lawyer / engineer.  So do you just eliminate the possibility of higher education to a vast amount of the citizenry?  Or do you propose a German-like system where you take elementary kids and separate them into three groups (worker bee, trade school, university) based on standardized testing?

[TheGrimSqueaker]

2.  The "fluff" is there to make the student a more well-rounded individual and be exposed to ideas that they may not have given their socioeconomic background or location they grew up in.  I am all for having more critical thinkers in society who can handle thinking about multiple subject matter areas simultaneously.  People that know only what they were raised with and with a narrow focus on their profession are probably not going to be the best citizens in a national / global sense.  That being said, I am all for a mandatory counseling session required for anyone taking out a federal loan to understand what their future income might be according to the BLS and showing them how long it will take to pay the loans back.  Hopefully that would keep folks from pinning all of their financial hopes and dreams on that creative writing degree.

That's a nice theory but it isn't what colleges and universities are actually doing. Independent thought and disagreement is actively squelched especially in the humanities courses where the only way to get a good grade is to agree with the instructor's political agenda. The result is that the student's perspective is not broadened, but narrowed. If there was any reasonable kind of "science" in the social sciences (as in, quantitative experimentation and an actual effort to structure experiments and research in a way that reduces or eliminates the effect of bias bias) or if it was organizationally acceptable to apply critical thinking to ALL theories and not simply to bash whoever or whatever is unpopular at the moment, then "fluff" courses might have a purpose.

Re: the trombone player, artist, or whatever

With the exception of classical music, where the only way to get an audition into an orchestra or opera company is to have a specific kind of university degree in performance, it's possible and even desirable to get by without a degree. The vast majority of fine arts and music education that focuses on the "craft" part of the area of study is available outside a university setting and the quality of instruction is generally far better. After the competent "craft" instruction necessary to get to a basic level, it's all about practice, knowing your market, and delivering the goods to your market.

The only way to make money in creative writing or any of the arts is to get your work in front of a customer and make sure it meets that customer's needs enough to justify them paying for it. I've got an English degree, and it contains a creative writing component. Since I'd been writing professionally since age 16 and had been selling to an international audience since age 17, I was able to pay for the creative writing course in particular with the money I'd made actually selling my writing. The course didn't help one iota; in fact the entire degree was a huge waste of money. Although I've gotten more practice in the field since then, the quality of my freelance work simply hasn't been affected. In addition, not one of my umpteen professors had the slightest idea how to market and sell written material. They were more interested in what I call artistic masturbation: the process of writing what they wanted to write, in a style that was obscure enough to garner them the praise of their academic peers, and bitching because it wouldn't sell, and blaming the buying public for not being interested in it. That's the exact opposite of what a professional does.

A degree in anything creative does not qualify the student to do anything but teach that subject in a university.

As long as we require college degrees (through licensing requirements) for those types of occupations, you're going to have to subsidize some of the educational cost.  Not to mention, not everybody is intelligent enough to be a doctor / lawyer / engineer.  So do you just eliminate the possibility of higher education to a vast amount of the citizenry?  Or do you propose a German-like system where you take elementary kids and separate them into three groups (worker bee, trade school, university) based on standardized testing?

I'm actually a huge fan of streaming kids into those groups especially if there's some kind of apprenticeship program that results in kids being transformed into competent adults. Done properly, standardized testing is only one factor in the decision to stream. Also, one of the results of having a streamed system is that people actually take pride in work and labor and regard it as a possible vector to a happy life instead of being socially conditioned to consider themselves useless failures. As matters stand, people who don't go to college or university are treated as social misfits instead of being respected for what they can do. Meanwhile, kids who don't see themselves as college material and who lack the outstanding sports skill necessary to go pro truly believe that they've hit a dead end, and that they have "no choice" except to run with a gang, sell drugs, or drop out. That's no way to run a society.

[A Definite Beta Guy]

Subsidies do more harm than good in terms of making college affordable. Subsidies should be targeted at a small selection of intelligent, impoverished youngsters that show promise.

 Subsidizing EVERYONE and offering loans for EVERYONE just bids up prices. Especially when the extra dollars don't go into improving educational outcomes, but extra administrators or athletic complexes or pools or other crap.


On a broader note, I see tremendous degree inflation that looks pointless to me. I don't mean this in the "let's look at trades!" line of thought. I mean this in the "lots of jobs require college degrees where college coursework adds zero value." Basically every single job I've had since college is EXACTLY like that: I work in B2B A/R. It takes no advanced education to tell someone to pay a bill. It takes some OJT to figure out how to use the software. The actual difficulty is communicating, especially managing up, which is not taught in any college course-work and is learned OJT.
This work is routinely outsourced to a nation that shall remain nameless, so yeah, everyone realizes this isn't brain surgery or rocket science.

Yet, not only does everyone have a diploma (these days: in the past this was a high school grad job), my last job had multiple MBAs performing what is essentially entry-level work. That's ridiculous. But, hey, now everyone needs a MBA just for a shot at getting ahead. MORE DEBT WOOHOO!

Obviously, I am not high up in my company, but based on what I see, this is a huge BUSINESS problem. Companies make shockingly little effort to even train employees, let alone develop them to any extent. If you want training, you better hope you have a good peer group at your company that values it. If you want development, you better hope you have a good manager AND a good mentor. One of those "company culture" things.

I'm convinced The Invisible Hand will eventually uppercut the worst offenders. In my current company, there are several teams all performing the same role, each with a different training and development culture. You can easily see the differences between the teams that train and do not: productivity is twice as high on the pro-training teams. And we're not talking about seriously intense training, it's half a day for 1 week, a quarter day for a week, and some hand-holding for another week. Very small price to pay to double productivity and ensure best practices.

[mm1970]

3 & 4.  All reasonable courses of action.  But let's say I'm going to be a trombone player, or artist, or whatever, and I can't afford the 4 years without a loan.  I guarantee 99.8% of students like that will take out federal student loans in an "approved" major, "minor" in art, take enough classes in their "minor" to actually earn a major in it, then graduate.  Or just simply declare a double major and not complete the work for the "approved" one.  The amount of money required to police "approved" majors, ensure students are making "satisfactory academic progress" or whatever towards their major would probably offset whatever hypothetical savings you could project from not subsidising the "undesirable" majors.  And, frankly, we need social workers / teachers / other lower paid professions to be adequately staffed.  As long as we require college degrees (through licensing requirements) for those types of occupations, you're going to have to subsidize some of the educational cost.  Not to mention, not everybody is intelligent enough to be a doctor / lawyer / engineer.  So do you just eliminate the possibility of higher education to a vast amount of the citizenry?  Or do you propose a German-like system where you take elementary kids and separate them into three groups (worker bee, trade school, university) based on standardized testing?

College buddy and group project member got a degree in chemical engineering because his parents agreed to pay for it. Stayed on for an extra year to study theater and performance (for free).  Has been working in theater management ever since.

That's a nice theory but it isn't what colleges and universities are actually doing. Independent thought and disagreement is actively squelched especially in the humanities courses where the only way to get a good grade is to agree with the instructor's political agenda. The result is that the student's perspective is not broadened, but narrowed. If there was any reasonable kind of "science" in the social sciences (as in, quantitative experimentation and an actual effort to structure experiments and research in a way that reduces or eliminates the effect of bias bias) or if it was organizationally acceptable to apply critical thinking to ALL theories and not simply to bash whoever or whatever is unpopular at the moment, then "fluff" courses might have a purpose.

I expect this probably depends on the school.  I was required to take 8 humanities classes (one a semester), with at least three in increasing difficulty in one area.  As I also has specific history requirements for ROTC, I took history.  One class was on the Vietnam war.  It was 1/3 ROTC people.  It was a very good class.  You can imagine that the prof was pretty liberal, but it was a very open class with open dialogue.  I found that to be true in all of the humanities classes I took, even the one I had to drop because the amount of reading required daily was simply not do-able for an engineer with a full load and a part time job.  Of course there tended to be more "science" in our social sciences, considering the school was CMU.  Our psych department was also very well know for their experimental studies and results.

Yet, not only does everyone have a diploma (these days: in the past this was a high school grad job), my last job had multiple MBAs performing what is essentially entry-level work. That's ridiculous. But, hey, now everyone needs a MBA just for a shot at getting ahead. MORE DEBT WOOHOO!

Yes I see this a lot.  My sister is an administrative manager.  HS diploma.  At my company, even the receptionist was required to have a degree.  Now, at least we had room to move up.  Same thing goes for facilities workers and managers.  Now, the three we've had since I've been here aren't degreed.  But the one who left frankly said that even though he's 50+ with 30 years of experience, many of the facilities jobs require degrees.  Which is crazy.  That's the kind of job that you learn on the job.

[Maenad]

Blaming the status of the world for ones own lack of success is victim mentality. 

To a certain degree, yes, but there are also actual injustices that don't get fixed if everyone just buckles down and plays whatever crappy hand they're dealt. In my mother's generation there's no way a woman could work as an engineer - "a man needs that job, he has a family to support" was a perfectly legitimate reason to deny a woman a job she was qualified for. I honestly don't know how I would have survived in that world.

The decrease of real wages over the last 30 years is a problem, and telling people to just "not be victims" isn't going to solve it. I know there's this great mythology around how hard work can save everyone, but that's an oversimplification in the other direction that's just as destructive, because it perpetuates actual victimization.

[ingrownstudentloans]

Education has grown ever more expensive and not only that but the amount of courses with little to know impact on your income has grown along with it.

I no...right?

[nobody123]

That's a nice theory but it isn't what colleges and universities are actually doing. Independent thought and disagreement is actively squelched especially in the humanities courses where the only way to get a good grade is to agree with the instructor's political agenda. The result is that the student's perspective is not broadened, but narrowed. If there was any reasonable kind of "science" in the social sciences (as in, quantitative experimentation and an actual effort to structure experiments and research in a way that reduces or eliminates the effect of bias bias) or if it was organizationally acceptable to apply critical thinking to ALL theories and not simply to bash whoever or whatever is unpopular at the moment, then "fluff" courses might have a purpose.

With the exception of some of the well-known ultra-liberal schools (Oberlin, Berkley, etc.), I don't think it's as widespread as folks would have you believe.  Most undergraduate classes are taught by TA's or adjunct faculty, I can't imagine them giving enough of a crap to deviate from the syllabus to push their political beliefs.  And even if a student has to regurgitate things they disagree with, that's a valuable life skill.  Learning when / how to disagree with authority in a respectful manner to get what you want is very useful, as well as learning how to accept the BS life throws at you that you can't change.

As long as we require college degrees (through licensing requirements) for those types of occupations, you're going to have to subsidize some of the educational cost.  Not to mention, not everybody is intelligent enough to be a doctor / lawyer / engineer.  So do you just eliminate the possibility of higher education to a vast amount of the citizenry?  Or do you propose a German-like system where you take elementary kids and separate them into three groups (worker bee, trade school, university) based on standardized testing?

I'm actually a huge fan of streaming kids into those groups especially if there's some kind of apprenticeship program that results in kids being transformed into competent adults. Done properly, standardized testing is only one factor in the decision to stream. Also, one of the results of having a streamed system is that people actually take pride in work and labor and regard it as a possible vector to a happy life instead of being socially conditioned to consider themselves useless failures. As matters stand, people who don't go to college or university are treated as social misfits instead of being respected for what they can do. Meanwhile, kids who don't see themselves as college material and who lack the outstanding sports skill necessary to go pro truly believe that they've hit a dead end, and that they have "no choice" except to run with a gang, sell drugs, or drop out. That's no way to run a society.

I agree with this.  The "everyone must go to college" mantra is wrong, in my opinion.  The stigma of not going to college (especially if your parents are college educated) is a huge hurdle to overcome.  Realistically, half of the population is of below average intelligence, can we expect all of them to become brain surgeons?  Saying that everyone needs to be a 10/10 when a more realistic goal is to have the 1s become 3s, the 3s become 5s, 5s become 7s, etc.  The quote usually misattributed to Einstein comes to mind:  “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”

[SisterX]

I think it is unreasonable to expect a bunch of CHILDREN to be able to make responsible decisions like this that impact the rest of their lives without guidance. I mean seriously, in May you have to raise you hand and ask permission to go pee and suddenly in September you are expected to make life-changing decisions about majors and career paths and debt that will follow you for decades to come? Something doesn't add up. We need to do a better job (society, schools, counselors, parents, everyone) talking about options and the impacts of choices in advance and while these decisions are being made.

As a fellow older millennial ('86 here), I agree with you completely here. I think the fix for this is for govt student loans to ONLY be given out for in-demand majors that lead to ACTUAL JOBS that have a likelihood of creating enough wealth for them to be paid back! The govt should not be in the business of subsidizing liberal arts and music majors, we have enough of them, they in aggregate add very little to society. If after you work a real career in a STEM field or as a professional in another in demand, well paying field, you save up enough money to do one of the goofy cultural studies majors or major in trombone playing, go for it. These majors should only exist for those that have the means to pay for them without burdening society.

So first of all, the idea that only STEM degrees pay is useless and needs to die. Immediately. There have been plenty of arguments about it on this site and, based on actual facts, it is not borne out. Someone with an English degree can actually support their family (me, for instance) and--*gasp*--actually be happy in their chosen degree and field! It's like...it's like this argument is only ever used to make the arguer feel superior to everyone else because they clearly chose the best path. You didn't, you chose one path to wealth, fame, fortune, happiness, whatever floats your boat.

Second, this right here:

liberal arts and music majors, we have enough of them, they in aggregate add very little to society.

is so fucking derogatory that my hands are shaking. I cannot believe the mods didn't call you out for this. Apparently it's unacceptable to insult people but insult an entire group of people without a basis in facts and call them a drag on society? Perfectly fucking acceptable.

Fuck your shitty attitude.

Also, this? This is me being polite about all of this so I don't get kicked off the forums. Remember that and think about what I might have said instead. You deserve it.

[Prairie Stash]

No one's said Millennials are the scourge of society, but as a group y'all are awfully whiney and thin-skinned. 

I seem to see as many people whining about Millennials as I do Millennials complaining about other things (which are often valid, like skyrocketing college costs).

Maybe it's the circles I run in, but I hear people whining about millennials more than I hear hear actual millennials whine.  Or people complaining about hipsters.  (Probably it IS because of the type of person with whom I associate).
I feel like every new generation since Boomers have been whiny, and every older generation rags on the new.

There are only two things I can't stand in this world. People who are intolerant of other people's cultures... and the Dutch - Nigel Powers

There has always been people who make it their mission to be disparaging to others. Some people feel better having a group they can ridicule, people like their stereotypes. I'll stick with Nigel and complain about those stupid wooden shoes; especially when millennial hipsters wear them in Amsterdam, those people should be exiled from earth.

[BreakTheChains]

1.  The BLS is just making guesses.  They project job growth of known industries.  Tell me, how many iPhone repairmen jobs did they forecast back in 2006?  How many social media coordinators?  Uber drivers?  For known industries with a fairly heavy human requirement (ex: health care) I'm guessing they'll be pretty accurate.  But with the advent of globalization and the rate of technological change happening, entire industries can spawn, thrive, and disappear within the 4 -5 years it takes to get a degree.  When the petrochemical engineer is making coffee at Starbucks, how was his college education any more valuable to society than the trombone player cashier's is?

Do you have any evidence that there is a glut of Petro Engineers making coffee at Starbucks? I agree that things are changing more rapidly than ever, but the skills and classes you learn as a Petro Engineer (lots of maths and science courses) would be very transferable to other well paying fields. The point I was trying to make is that 4 years of useful coursework and the related knowledge and signaling it provides is much more valuable than 4 years of lib arts.

2.  The "fluff" is there to make the student a more well-rounded individual and be exposed to ideas that they may not have given their socioeconomic background or location they grew up in.  I am all for having more critical thinkers in society who can handle thinking about multiple subject matter areas simultaneously.  People that know only what they were raised with and with a narrow focus on their profession are probably not going to be the best citizens in a national / global sense.  That being said, I am all for a mandatory counseling session required for anyone taking out a federal loan to understand what their future income might be according to the BLS and showing them how long it will take to pay the loans back.  Hopefully that would keep folks from pinning all of their financial hopes and dreams on that creative writing degree.

Grim did a good job of addressing the fallacies in the "well rounded / critical thinking" argument that is used to justify excessive lib arts coursework. You know what else would provide the same knowledge for a much cheaper cost? giving all the engineers a reading list of classical literature and history written before Cultural Marxism wormed its way into the arts. Have them listen to Dan Carlin's podcast on the fall of Rome, its only a dollar an episode!

3 & 4.  All reasonable courses of action.  But let's say I'm going to be a trombone player, or artist, or whatever, and I can't afford the 4 years without a loan.  I guarantee 99.8% of students like that will take out federal student loans in an "approved" major, "minor" in art, take enough classes in their "minor" to actually earn a major in it, then graduate.  Or just simply declare a double major and not complete the work for the "approved" one.  The amount of money required to police "approved" majors, ensure students are making "satisfactory academic progress" or whatever towards their major would probably offset whatever hypothetical savings you could project from not subsidising the "undesirable" majors.  And, frankly, we need social workers / teachers / other lower paid professions to be adequately staffed.  As long as we require college degrees (through licensing requirements) for those types of occupations, you're going to have to subsidize some of the educational cost.  Not to mention, not everybody is intelligent enough to be a doctor / lawyer / engineer.  So do you just eliminate the possibility of higher education to a vast amount of the citizenry?  Or do you propose a German-like system where you take elementary kids and separate them into three groups (worker bee, trade school, university) based on standardized testing?

This is addressed by having a strict list of what classes meet the requirements for aid. You want to take a tuba class in addition to those prescribed as acceptable for your chosen major? Good, you're paying for it ala carte. This goes hand in hand with getting rid of gen eds.

I think the German system is amazing. Absolutely, not everyone should go to college. My wife didn't go to college nor to a trade school, although I know she would do really well at a trade school if that option had been presented to her. There's a reason why the German economy is in such great shape compared to its neighbors.

[Fish Sweet]

I'm a millennial.  I love myself some avocado toast (which I make at home, on my own, for less than $1 per toast, maybe $3 total for the meal if I'm getting fancy and extravagant.)  Obviously, as I'm on MMM, my savings rate is 50% and growing, and let me tell you, I could eat an this ridiculously priced $19 avocado toast from some hipster cafe, add tax and tip, FIVE DAYS A WEEK FOR FIVE YEARS, and the money that I could have saved doing this ridiculous thing couldn't buy me 5% of a house in my area.  Maybe if I saved the money, and let it compound for 30 years, I could get 20% of a house.

First, I don't think you can make avocado toast for less than $1/piece.  After all, at its lowest, avocados are .99 each ... and you need the good, seedy bread plus a couple other toppers to make it good.  And I live in a low cost of living area.

Regardless, as someone said above, the real issue is that you have to generalize the concept.  Sure, skipping avocado toast isn't going to allow you to buy a house.  What WILL help you save more /buy a house is identifying things you personally could do to save money ... and then doing those things.  Avocado toast is a good example because it's JUST toast and mashed fruit.  You don't have to be able to cook to make it, so buying it at a restaurant is pretty stupid.  If you pick out a dozen things upon which you personally are over-spending, you will save and will be able to buy that house ... or whatever else it is that you want. 

I think that's gonna depend on your geography more than anything else.  I live in an EXTREMELY hcol area, and I can get avocados for 50 cents or less when they're in season and on sale.  Good bread?  $3 a loaf for 10+ slices.  Goat cheese, tomatoes, pesto, eggs, none of it's all that expensive, and I can absolutely churn out 6-10 slices of really good, cheesy, eggy avotoast for under $12.  But that's one of the benefits of living where I do (fresh produce on sale all the time), despite the costs.  I imagine that someone in the northeast who developed a craving for avocado toast would be much worse off, financially.

I think in an extremely broad, generalized way, anything can be good advice.  But maybe I'm taking it a bit more personally because I'm a Millennial tired as hell of these "just stop drinking Starbucks/looking at your iPhone/not getting married/eating avocado toast and ALL YOUR PROBLEMS WILL BE SOLVED!!" articles with a scoffing "these shallow ungrateful young'uns" tone.  For example, "eat fewer calories, less processed food, and exercise more for a healthier body" is great advice for everyone, of all generations, versus "just cut out STARBUCKS, silly kids, and you could be a six-pack body builder like me" refrain that makes a lot of often incorrect assumptions about who people are and what they consume.

(Then again, perhaps I shouldn't be surprised that rich people only seem to see millennials reflected by their spoiled and privileged children who can afford to regularly drop $20 on brunch and a mimosa, and can only write articles targeted toward that demographic.  I realized this when my boss once said to me, "Oh, Sweet Fish, you and the [the other Millennial in this office] are so hard working!  You must be the only people your age who hold down full time jobs, haha."

No, boss.  It's just you and YOUR children and THEIR friends.  Because you raised them that way.  The folks that I know who are "my age" work for a living, because they don't have mom and pop paying for their rent.)

[BreakTheChains]

liberal arts and music majors, we have enough of them, they in aggregate add very little to society.

is so fucking derogatory that my hands are shaking. I cannot believe the mods didn't call you out for this. Apparently it's unacceptable to insult people but insult an entire group of people without a basis in facts and call them a drag on society? Perfectly fucking acceptable.

Fuck your shitty attitude.

Also, this? This is me being polite about all of this so I don't get kicked off the forums. Remember that and think about what I might have said instead. You deserve it.

Wow, nice personal attacks. As an English major I would have hoped that you would have understood the nuance in the term "liberal arts and music majors". The term can refer to both the individuals undertaking the coursework OR the major/coursework itself. The latter was what I was referring to in the comment you quoted. There are plenty of wonderful productive people WITH liberal arts majors/degrees, but the majority of the people that get them and end up with decent paying jobs are in fields unrelated or tangential to the degree itself, and there are PLENTY of people with these degrees either under or unemployed.

[libertarian4321]

people 18-35 are not participating in the housing market for any number of reasons, and avocado toast isn't it.

if we say he was making a metaphor for eating out. eating out is not the reason either.Guess what?  most people have more debt than their parents did, and make less money and have more shit sold to them. they also get made fun of for living at home or packing leftovers

you could argue lifestyle changes influence the amount of money you have for a down payment/mortgage, but this isn't a unique generational problem. everyone spends their money how they want, and studies show our generation isn't worse with money than previous generations.

millennials earn less by virtue of being in their careers for less time, vs older established people. so the true comparison must be made between market conditions now and market conditions then.Avocado toast isn't the big difference, and eating out doesn't account for all the other disparities.

can we all stop pretending that millennials are the scourge of society?  and that all we do if buy fancy shit and if we would cut that out and be less dumb we could one day be like baby boomers.

and i wish people would stop flocking to these threads to give their cool stories about how they didn't go to fancy college and they saved ever penny from their chalk whittling business.

society has changed, and its even harder to make good choices when we constantly tell people they aren't shit unless they have an iPhone, a cute loft apartment with no roommates, and order $15 blue cocktails from craft bars. now we pay people less, but tell them it's their fault for not attending the right school. then we tell them if they have loans they should have gone to state U.

then we tell them to dress a certain way for the job and just work hard and wait their time. but we pay them less for those jobs and refuse to retire and make way for them to move up.

and finally, if millennials are so shitty why don't baby boomers and other generations have more wealth? stats show they don't have any retirement money, and they plan to work till they die.

so it appears everyone is shit with money.

I don't know that millennials are worse with money.  As you said, past generations were mostly bad with money too.

(I'm not sure, but I may need to give a trigger warning here?- I come from an age when trigger warnings didn't exist)

But millennials sure do seem softer and less able to deal with adversity than past generations.

Past generations got through the Great Depression or World War 2.  Even the relatively lucky baby boomers had to worry about getting drafted to fight in Vietnam.

All of these things, it seems to me, were more harsh than what the millennials face- stressing out about whether they will be teased for carrying an iPhone 5 when in an iPhone 7 world, or weather they will be able to find a safe space if they feel someone is about to say something they might not agree with.

Not all of them, of course.  I know many are hard working and don't turn into a quivering puddle of goo at the slightest challenge.  But far too many of them seem to wilt before the seemingly most trivial obstacles.

- a crotchety old 50-something who thinks that folks in my generation may have coddled the millennials a bit too much- so I guess we are partly to blame.

[MgoSam]

Blaming the status of the world for ones own lack of success is victim mentality. 

To a certain degree, yes, but there are also actual injustices that don't get fixed if everyone just buckles down and plays whatever crappy hand they're dealt. In my mother's generation there's no way a woman could work as an engineer - "a man needs that job, he has a family to support" was a perfectly legitimate reason to deny a woman a job she was qualified for. I honestly don't know how I would have survived in that world.

The decrease of real wages over the last 30 years is a problem, and telling people to just "not be victims" isn't going to solve it. I know there's this great mythology around how hard work can save everyone, but that's an oversimplification in the other direction that's just as destructive, because it perpetuates actual victimization.

Agreed. I hate people like the guy in the article and his head-in-his-ass line about $19 avocado because it essentially just says that millennials are completely at fault and that if only they had a different attitude they would be rich and successful as him.

NO! You jumped into a market before it got hot and were given some opportunities that many people don't get (private school, stable household, an interest free loan from your boss, a "loan" from grandfather) and then act like you made it all on your own.

Wages have been stagnant for much of the middle and lower class for the past 30 years while tuition and many more things have gone up. For many jobs that used to require a high school education now require a bachelors or master's without any corresponding pay increases. I think it is insane how much schooling a teacher has to go through for their relatively low level of pay.

[SisterX]

liberal arts and music majors, we have enough of them, they in aggregate add very little to society.

is so fucking derogatory that my hands are shaking. I cannot believe the mods didn't call you out for this. Apparently it's unacceptable to insult people but insult an entire group of people without a basis in facts and call them a drag on society? Perfectly fucking acceptable.

Fuck your shitty attitude.

Also, this? This is me being polite about all of this so I don't get kicked off the forums. Remember that and think about what I might have said instead. You deserve it.

Wow, nice personal attacks. As an English major I would have hoped that you would have understood the nuance in the term "liberal arts and music majors". The term can refer to both the individuals undertaking the coursework OR the major/coursework itself. The latter was what I was referring to in the comment you quoted. There are plenty of wonderful productive people WITH liberal arts majors/degrees, but the majority of the people that get them and end up with decent paying jobs are in fields unrelated or tangential to the degree itself, and there are PLENTY of people with these degrees either under or unemployed.

I understood perfectly what you were implying, particularly since you spelled it out plenty of times.

And if you understood nuance as well as you think you do, you'd realize that I didn't put in a personal attack. I attacked your attitude, not you. And, not an entire category of people, either!

[BreakTheChains]

liberal arts and music majors, we have enough of them, they in aggregate add very little to society.

is so fucking derogatory that my hands are shaking. I cannot believe the mods didn't call you out for this. Apparently it's unacceptable to insult people but insult an entire group of people without a basis in facts and call them a drag on society? Perfectly fucking acceptable.

Fuck your shitty attitude.

Also, this? This is me being polite about all of this so I don't get kicked off the forums. Remember that and think about what I might have said instead. You deserve it.

Wow, nice personal attacks. As an English major I would have hoped that you would have understood the nuance in the term "liberal arts and music majors". The term can refer to both the individuals undertaking the coursework OR the major/coursework itself. The latter was what I was referring to in the comment you quoted. There are plenty of wonderful productive people WITH liberal arts majors/degrees, but the majority of the people that get them and end up with decent paying jobs are in fields unrelated or tangential to the degree itself, and there are PLENTY of people with these degrees either under or unemployed.

I understood perfectly what you were implying, particularly since you spelled it out plenty of times.

And if you understood nuance as well as you think you do, you'd realize that I didn't put in a personal attack. I attacked your attitude, not you. And, not an entire category of people, either!

Please keep your outrage culture out of these forums, its one of the few places people can have civil discussions without name calling. If you want to debate any points I laid out feel free. If you want to be overly emotional and indirectly say "F you" to me, take it somewhere else.

[Gin1984]

2.  The "fluff" is there to make the student a more well-rounded individual and be exposed to ideas that they may not have given their socioeconomic background or location they grew up in.  I am all for having more critical thinkers in society who can handle thinking about multiple subject matter areas simultaneously.  People that know only what they were raised with and with a narrow focus on their profession are probably not going to be the best citizens in a national / global sense.  That being said, I am all for a mandatory counseling session required for anyone taking out a federal loan to understand what their future income might be according to the BLS and showing them how long it will take to pay the loans back.  Hopefully that would keep folks from pinning all of their financial hopes and dreams on that creative writing degree.

That's a nice theory but it isn't what colleges and universities are actually doing. Independent thought and disagreement is actively squelched especially in the humanities courses where the only way to get a good grade is to agree with the instructor's political agenda. The result is that the student's perspective is not broadened, but narrowed. If there was any reasonable kind of "science" in the social sciences (as in, quantitative experimentation and an actual effort to structure experiments and research in a way that reduces or eliminates the effect of bias bias) or if it was organizationally acceptable to apply critical thinking to ALL theories and not simply to bash whoever or whatever is unpopular at the moment, then "fluff" courses might have a purpose.

That is not accurate, at all. I often disagreed with my instructors in college and found the social science professors to have no issue with it.  The key was actually understanding the material and having citations to back up your case.  It was not opinions but data that mattered. 
Someone walk in and said for example "US is a christian nation" and therefore "we should follow biblical laws", well no.  Your premise was inaccurate and yes the student got her grade lowered because her supporting documents did not exist. 

[nobody123]

1.  The BLS is just making guesses.  They project job growth of known industries.  Tell me, how many iPhone repairmen jobs did they forecast back in 2006?  How many social media coordinators?  Uber drivers?  For known industries with a fairly heavy human requirement (ex: health care) I'm guessing they'll be pretty accurate.  But with the advent of globalization and the rate of technological change happening, entire industries can spawn, thrive, and disappear within the 4 -5 years it takes to get a degree.  When the petrochemical engineer is making coffee at Starbucks, how was his college education any more valuable to society than the trombone player cashier's is?

Do you have any evidence that there is a glut of Petro Engineers making coffee at Starbucks? I agree that things are changing more rapidly than ever, but the skills and classes you learn as a Petro Engineer (lots of maths and science courses) would be very transferable to other well paying fields. The point I was trying to make is that 4 years of useful coursework and the related knowledge and signaling it provides is much more valuable than 4 years of lib arts.

My point is that in either case, the taxpayer investment in higher education for either of these hypothetical Starbucks workers achieved the same outcome in spite of one having a "hot" major and the other having a music degree - both have a low-paying service job.  Maybe the petro engineer is a horrible interviewer and will never be able to apply his education in that field, while the lib arts major will get an entry level corporate job because he can check the "any bachelor degree" box and will work his way up the ladder.  I can't predict the future and know what the new "hot" jobs will be in 5 years, and I don't think the government can either.

2.  The "fluff" is there to make the student a more well-rounded individual and be exposed to ideas that they may not have given their socioeconomic background or location they grew up in.  I am all for having more critical thinkers in society who can handle thinking about multiple subject matter areas simultaneously.  People that know only what they were raised with and with a narrow focus on their profession are probably not going to be the best citizens in a national / global sense.  That being said, I am all for a mandatory counseling session required for anyone taking out a federal loan to understand what their future income might be according to the BLS and showing them how long it will take to pay the loans back.  Hopefully that would keep folks from pinning all of their financial hopes and dreams on that creative writing degree.

Grim did a good job of addressing the fallacies in the "well rounded / critical thinking" argument that is used to justify excessive lib arts coursework. You know what else would provide the same knowledge for a much cheaper cost? giving all the engineers a reading list of classical literature and history written before Cultural Marxism wormed its way into the arts. Have them listen to Dan Carlin's podcast on the fall of Rome, its only a dollar an episode!

Well you can also go the Good Will Hunting route and just tell everyone to put aside $1.50 in library late fees and learn that way.  Let's not have Universities at all! 

I think there is value in being exposed to new subject areas and ideas, and while a University isn't the only way to be exposed to these, that is what Universities do. 

And again, as a bachelor's degree is required by law to get certian jobs, so there is no real way of avoiding the "fluff" if you want to work in said career.  Telling someone who is passionate about being an English teacher and is horrible at math to become an engineer for a few years so they can pay back their subsidized loans and save up for the teaching degree is a total waste of resources.

3 & 4.  All reasonable courses of action.  But let's say I'm going to be a trombone player, or artist, or whatever, and I can't afford the 4 years without a loan.  I guarantee 99.8% of students like that will take out federal student loans in an "approved" major, "minor" in art, take enough classes in their "minor" to actually earn a major in it, then graduate.  Or just simply declare a double major and not complete the work for the "approved" one.  The amount of money required to police "approved" majors, ensure students are making "satisfactory academic progress" or whatever towards their major would probably offset whatever hypothetical savings you could project from not subsidising the "undesirable" majors.  And, frankly, we need social workers / teachers / other lower paid professions to be adequately staffed.  As long as we require college degrees (through licensing requirements) for those types of occupations, you're going to have to subsidize some of the educational cost.  Not to mention, not everybody is intelligent enough to be a doctor / lawyer / engineer.  So do you just eliminate the possibility of higher education to a vast amount of the citizenry?  Or do you propose a German-like system where you take elementary kids and separate them into three groups (worker bee, trade school, university) based on standardized testing?

This is addressed by having a strict list of what classes meet the requirements for aid. You want to take a tuba class in addition to those prescribed as acceptable for your chosen major? Good, you're paying for it ala carte. This goes hand in hand with getting rid of gen eds.

I think the German system is amazing. Absolutely, not everyone should go to college. My wife didn't go to college nor to a trade school, although I know she would do really well at a trade school if that option had been presented to her. There's a reason why the German economy is in such great shape compared to its neighbors.

A full-time student at my university had to take at least 12 credit hours a semester, and you could take up to 18 without paying extra, so students would be able to take $0 tuba classes and try to do a second major.  My IT-related major also had a requirement to take two electives outside of my college.  So essentially any class offered by the University could have qualified for my major.  Obviously some 3 and 400 level courses had prerequisites that I didn't meet, but if I was taking the prereqs as part of the extra 6 hours while doing my gen-ed the first two years, I'd be fine. 

It would be extremely expensive to audit every student's course choices to see if they met the government criteria.  And what happens when the "approved" classes change every semester as the University tweaks their offerings and the government determines what majors are in vogue that semester?  Do we grandfather in students who started a "hot" major that has now dropped from the list?  We'd waste more money administering the program than we'd save in student loan defaults.

[Jaguar Paw]

Am I the only one that went and bought an avocado to make avocado toast because of this article? It was delicious!

[Just Joe]

We bought the supplies last night - for tonight's toast "snack" mini-dinner. Had everything but the avocado, and we usually have that...

[Spork]

Am I the only one that went and bought an avocado to make avocado toast because of this article? It was delicious!

Nope.  We already had them, but after reading this thread, that's what we had for breakfast yesterday.  My wife just looked at me when I handed it to her and said "I'm not paying you $20 for this."

[NoraLenderbee]

liberal arts and music majors, we have enough of them, they in aggregate add very little to society.

is so fucking derogatory that my hands are shaking. I cannot believe the mods didn't call you out for this. Apparently it's unacceptable to insult people but insult an entire group of people without a basis in facts and call them a drag on society? Perfectly fucking acceptable.

Fuck your shitty attitude.

Also, this? This is me being polite about all of this so I don't get kicked off the forums. Remember that and think about what I might have said instead. You deserve it.

Wow, nice personal attacks. As an English major I would have hoped that you would have understood the nuance in the term "liberal arts and music majors". The term can refer to both the individuals undertaking the coursework OR the major/coursework itself. The latter was what I was referring to in the comment you quoted. There are plenty of wonderful productive people WITH liberal arts majors/degrees, but the majority of the people that get them and end up with decent paying jobs are in fields unrelated or tangential to the degree itself, and there are PLENTY of people with these degrees either under or unemployed.

I understood perfectly what you were implying, particularly since you spelled it out plenty of times.

And if you understood nuance as well as you think you do, you'd realize that I didn't put in a personal attack. I attacked your attitude, not you. And, not an entire category of people, either!

Please keep your outrage culture out of these forums, its one of the few places people can have civil discussions without name calling. If you want to debate any points I laid out feel free. If you want to be overly emotional and indirectly say "F you" to me, take it somewhere else.

Thank you, Sister X, for stating it so well.

[paddedhat]

Wages have been stagnant for much of the middle and lower class for the past 30 years while tuition and many more things have gone up. For many jobs that used to require a high school education now require a bachelors or master's without any corresponding pay increases. I think it is insane how much schooling a teacher has to go through for their relatively low level of pay.

Don't forget the absolute disdain that has been ingrained into our society when it comes to teachers. Nothing like busting your ass for 4-5 years, maintaining a 3.0+  as a requirement for staying in the program, passing extremely difficult state certification boards, and student teaching for at least a semester *, before you get your low paying job.

 Once you get a job and become part of the community,  you get to attend community functions and hear others (who think you are just another mom at soccer practice) as they bitch about what a lazy POS you are, how you're grossly overpaid, how it's YOUR pension that is killing the state budget, and you only work a few months a year. The fact that most of these chucklenuts would wash out in the first year of an education degree doesn't seem to be mentioned as the bitch to each other, LOL.

The schooling never ends in some jurisdictions. About two decades ago we had a radical right wing governor who wasn't able to fuck over the public school teachers as hard as he wanted, so he settled for extreme levels of mandated continuing education. What he didn't take in to account is that this continuing ed. is easily acquired at many universities, who then designed masters degree including the requirements. He also failed to think about the fact that most districts pay for the cost of these courses, and have graduated pay scales that richly reward additional degrees  My wife was an elementary/special ed. teacher. She was forced to take so much asinine continuing education that, when she retired early, she had a dual certification bachelors in ed, a masters, and sixty additional credits.  She could of  continued for a doctorate, but it only paid an additional $600/yr. so it didn't pencil out.  All in, she doesn't hesitate to steer any young person that asks, to avoid the whole educational circus. 

* Which is totally bizarre in of itself, you provide your own transportation to a job off campus, you work for free for at least a semester, you pay full tuition for the pleasure of working for free, and you provide free labor to a school, that school teams you up with a seasoned teacher who is coaching you for free, while the university is collecting thousands of dollars.

[A Definite Beta Guy]

Teacher pay varies considerably based on district. Teachers certainly get a better deal than I do in Chicago, except that I would have to live in Chicago and go to a Chicago Public School (ironic, isn't it?)

I wouldn't want to end up at a different district, though, and from what I hear Oklahoma school teachers are grossly underpaid.

Side-note: the liberal arts are the foundation to all other knowledge. They will not prepare you for a highly technical job, but a young man or woman well-versed in the liberal arts becomes a lot more valuable as they progress up the career ladder. Short version: liberal arts don't prepare you for your first job. They prepare you for your last job.

Even that's not entirely fair. You need to communicate and think at all levels.

This is exactly the kind of education everyone should receive at some level, because everyone can make use of it. And if you are the kind of person graduating with a 4-year degree, you are exactly the person who benefits from liberal arts education BEYOND secondary school levels.

There is a difference between reading a book and having a LA education. Reading a book is, as Matt Damon might say, "regurgitating from a textbook." An LA education will teach you how to think, how to argue, and how to self-reflect. That's because you can have a class discussion and a lecturer, all who can directly interact with and challenge you, and help guide you to a better path. A book cannot offer that. Robin Williams makes this point in GWH WRT relationships, but I think it applies just as well to group discussions and intellectual development.

Even the guys who wrote these books didn't just bury themselves in books all day long. They interacted with a lot of other people, and then wrote their books.

A good counter-example might be the above poster, referencing the US being a Christian nation. Quite frankly, that sounds like exactly the kind of class I would not want to visit. Ideological purity masquerading as certainty. And penalizing people for being wrong, or expressing views that, upon closer inspection, might be unfounded, or weaker than they appear? Not the kind of LA education I would want.

[MrsPete]

Yes, many things are better today than they used to be. That doesn't mean everything today is better than it used to be -- and the generation whining about Millennials is the generation that raised them.  Who's to blame?

My point:  Millennials tend to whine about the things that are worse, while ignoring the things that're better.  It's a lack of perspective. 

No one's whining about Millennials; rather, we're laughing at the posturing about the world's injustices.  In reality, Millennials have a tough road in some ways ... but they're not in a no-win position, as some like to pretend. 

I'm actually a huge fan of streaming kids into those groups especially if there's some kind of apprenticeship program that results in kids being transformed into competent adults.

Thing is, you go take Education 101, and you'll learn in a hurry that's called Tracking, and it's B-A-D, BAD.  In all honesty, it's what was done back in the late 60s -70s, and it was done poorly then.  Kids from middle class families were put into the upper class (even if they weren't too bright), while kids with non-white skin were put into the lower tracks.  Worst of all, once you were put in a track, you STAYED in that track, even if you were a late bloomer who really could've been in the college-bound group. 

I agree that it would've been wise to keep Tracking ... but manage it better.  Look at standardized testing plus year-long grades and teacher recommendations.  Include parents in the decision, but don't allow for unrealistic options.  Allow for movement between tracks.  But it'll never happen.  The educational system is too strongly against it. 

[MrsPete]

I don't know that millennials are worse with money.  As you said, past generations were mostly bad with money too.

True, other generations have been bad with money too.  I think the change is that the world is less forgiving ... a Millennial who starts out poorly -- borrows for college, falls into credit card debt, whatever -- is more likely to have a harder time "recovering".  Society is set up today so that a young person CAN borrow himself into trouble at a very young age ... and then, unless that person is willing to work very hard, it's tough to get out of that situation. 

But millennials sure do seem softer and less able to deal with adversity than past generations.

Yes, I do see this frequently.