What happens to these people?

[alienbogey]

People never seem to want their children or grandchildren to benefit from the opportunities or resources that were made available to them. They create elaborate fantasies about how they did everything themselves or pulled themselves up by their bootstraps, and they try to destroy the means by which they themselves were able to rise, so that nobody else can benefit. It's like climbing the ladder that someone else left against the wall, and then kicking the ladder away for fear that somebody else might rise to the same level.

I don't have the time to give reasons, much less have a back and forth discussion, but I do wish to register the fact that I disagree with every sentence of the quoted paragraph.

Well, now that you've posted that, you need to come back and more fully explain why you disagree, as well as put forth an alternative explanation. Otherwise, I assume you're just posting so you can get to the 100 posts required to post in off topic.

@Sibley:  Yeah, you got me. I joined over three years ago, I have 73 total posts, and I'm obviously just spam posting to get to 100.  Well done, Inspector Clouseau. 

Others might notice that it was December 25th, also know as Christmas Day, and many people have better things to do than post on message boards.  I regret doing so, but my intent was to quickly register disagreement.  That's allowed, right?  [<== sarcasm]

But, because people have asked for reasons for my opinion:

"People never seem to want their children or grandchildren to benefit from the opportunities or resources that were made available to them"

I admittedly have a small sample set, just my wife and I, our friends, our parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, etc, but I know that every single one of them want their children and grandchildren to benefit from at least their own opportunities and resources they had. 

Furthermore, I believe that far and away the majority of people want their children and grandchildren to have it better.  I'm guessing that their may be a minority, a very small minority, of people who (depressingly) fit the description of not wanting their children to have the benefits and resources they had.

The following sentences in the paragraph I objected to are just ridiculous attempts to support a bullshit premise.

(Note:  Now I have 74 posts, which means that at my current rate I should achieve that magic 100 number sometime in late 2022. Yay!)

[TheGrimSqueaker]

Can you elaborate on the officer vs enlisted tracks in the military? I'd like to know more.

First, this phenomenon is not necessarily limited to the USA.

In the USA there are two military career tracks: enlisted, and officer. The difference between the two pretty comes down to socioeconomic class.

To get into any officer position requires a four-year bachelor's degree, which must be completed before entering the military. No bachelor's degree, no commission. If you earn your degree AFTER you enlist, which many people do, you're still an enlisted rank unless you're selected for an enlisted-to-officer program. Admission to this program is not automatic and it may involve factors beyond your control.

Also, the bachelor's degree is everything. Not a journeyman's ticket (which takes just as long to get and which requires outstanding skills), not even a master's ticket in a skilled trade. It has to be a four-year university degree, or else it's worth nothing. A low-hanging-fruit liberal arts degree counts more than a master electrician's license. It's a class distinction, plain and simple. It becomes an "I got mine so forget you" issue because there's a gigantic double standard in which the people who punch that particular ticket before joining the military are set up for significant career opportunities that are unavailable to the people who (for whatever reason) do not punch the ticket. If you never punch the ticket, or if you punch the ticket late and not at the upper-middle-class appointed time in the career cycle, you're still pretty much labeled for life because of the way you entered the system.

Now here's the kicker. If you get your bachelor's degree AFTER you enlist, there's no automatic promotion to officer except through one of these programs. You can have a master's degree and still be a grunt. So it looks like this:

Person --> Bachelor's degree --> Military = Officer
Person --> Military --> Grunt --> Bachelor's degree -> Grunt with a degree

See what I mean? Education is only valued and rewarded if it's done at a time that's culturally associated with the upper and upper-middle class.

[Michael in ABQ]

Can you elaborate on the officer vs enlisted tracks in the military? I'd like to know more.

First, this phenomenon is not necessarily limited to the USA.

In the USA there are two military career tracks: enlisted, and officer. The difference between the two pretty comes down to socioeconomic class.

To get into any officer position requires a four-year bachelor's degree, which must be completed before entering the military. No bachelor's degree, no commission. If you earn your degree AFTER you enlist, which many people do, you're still an enlisted rank unless you're selected for an enlisted-to-officer program. Admission to this program is not automatic and it may involve factors beyond your control.

Also, the bachelor's degree is everything. Not a journeyman's ticket (which takes just as long to get and which requires outstanding skills), not even a master's ticket in a skilled trade. It has to be a four-year university degree, or else it's worth nothing. A low-hanging-fruit liberal arts degree counts more than a master electrician's license. It's a class distinction, plain and simple. It becomes an "I got mine so forget you" issue because there's a gigantic double standard in which the people who punch that particular ticket before joining the military are set up for significant career opportunities that are unavailable to the people who (for whatever reason) do not punch the ticket. If you never punch the ticket, or if you punch the ticket late and not at the upper-middle-class appointed time in the career cycle, you're still pretty much labeled for life because of the way you entered the system.

Now here's the kicker. If you get your bachelor's degree AFTER you enlist, there's no automatic promotion to officer except through one of these programs. You can have a master's degree and still be a grunt. So it looks like this:

Person --> Bachelor's degree --> Military = Officer
Person --> Military --> Grunt --> Bachelor's degree -> Grunt with a degree

See what I mean? Education is only valued and rewarded if it's done at a time that's culturally associated with the upper and upper-middle class.

@TheGrimSqueaker You may have already posted it but was your military experience in the Navy?

In talking to people who were in the Navy (or Air Force or Marines) before joining the Army, it's clear that Navy has the largest gap between officers and enlisted. The Army/Marines the smallest, while Air Force is somewhere in the middle. I'm a prior enlisted officer who went through Officer Candidate School and if anything, that probably garners more respect than someone who went through an ROTC program - certainly among enlisted, maybe less so among other officers. Granted, this is mostly in the National Guard where everyone is generally older and has more experience than their active duty counterparts. I'd estimate probably 1/3+ of the officers in my state went through OCS compared to about 15-20% for active duty (at least as of 2000 which was the only data I could find).


I'll agree that in general, it's a class thing between officers and enlisted. There are plenty of enlisted Soldiers with degrees, it's almost a requirement to achieve the highest enlisted ranks (E-9). But most of them earned their degrees years after entering the military and often making the conscious design to stay enlisted vs. officer. I did have a former E-8 in my basic officer leader class, but he was extremely young for that rank and was quite frankly a superstar (Ranger, had worked at the Pentagon, etc.). 

Officers are generally planners. Enlisted are executors. Frankly the latter is usually more fun and satisfying than the former. My best job in the Army was as a squad leader in charge of 8 Soldiers (though Company Commander in charge of 130 is a close second). Being on the ground training and executing is what some people want to do, even if they have the ability (and degree) to become an officer. You will spend most of your career planning and, at least in the Army, relatively few years in command actually leading Soldiers.

The pay differences are pretty substantial too. The senior enlisted rank, E-9, which generally takes over 20 years to achieve pays $77K/year. At the same point in an officer's career, say O-5 (Lieutenant Colonel or Commander) with 20 years, the pay is $114k/year. A general/admiral will make $150k+, though there's only a thousand or so out of a million+ in the military so that's a pretty rare achievement. 

[sixwings]

It may depend on the generation.

My baby boomer parents got married with high school educations. Dad got a job as a union apprentice working construction in the early 70's (Back then one was paid to get career training instead of paying to get career training). He worked the rest of his career as a journeyman in his field, bought a middle-class house, paid it off, etc. Mom was a SAHM.

This was enough to live a working-class life (e.g. for a long time his multi-color pickup truck had no hood) but they did not save much. Restaurant meals were/are at least 2x per week. The daily driver car always had a V8 engine. They sent us kids to private school until we begged to get out. They went on unnecessary shopping trips, hit yard sales and auctions, put enormous miles on their cars as entertainment, and developed a mild case of junk hoarding. For them, money was for spending, mostly on instant gratification.

They retired several years ago in their mid-60s with about $100k in savings, social security, a paid-off house, and - most importantly - a $50,000/year pension from the union that he had been forced to pay into all his career. The pension is no longer available to young people of course, and I'm not sure if there are any good union apprenticeship opportunities any more.

So even though they saved very little over the course of 35 years, and blew through paychecks as if money was radioactive, they still retired prosperous as millionaires because they lived in times when unions and pensions and social security were a thing. The external world took care of them in a way they could never have done for themselves.

Had things been a little different (e.g. there were no union jobs, or the pension closed a couple decades earlier) I'm sure my childhood would have been spent in poverty and my parents would now be living in the woods in a dilapidated trailer, as this is the norm for broke old people and jobless spendthrifts in my area.

The point of all this is that if a young person learned from my parents how to live, spend, and plan for retirement, they would definitely fail because the combination of factors that led to my parents' success, despite themselves, are no longer in place. The union jobs that pay enough to support a whole family on one salary, AND buy a house, are a thing of the past. Pensions are a thing of the past. Some would like Social Security to be a thing of the past. If you spend like my parents AND lack these features of financial antiquity, you're broke. It depends on the timeframe when you lived.

And yes, my parents are among those in their generation who voted for the people who passed anti-union legislation, destroyed pensions, tried to repeal the ACA which is where they get their health insurance, and are trying to cut social security. Guess they shut the door behind them.

One thing to note about pensions is that it's not free money, it's forced retirement savings plan that the saver can't access. There's usually no opt-in, if you are in an organization/union with a pension, you must contribute and you can't take it until you retire/leave employment. Your parents were paying contributions their whole career to get that 50K pension, and those contributions were deducted at the source by their employer, so their take home pay was really their post-retirement savings spending money. SO it's not really true to say they weren't saving anything, they were saving, probably somewhere around 8-10% of their pay + their employers contributions which would have been around the same %, it just wasn't very visible or accessible. 

Pensions are generally horrible investments for a ROI vs market comparison, and especially horrible for mustachians, but they are phenomenal for most people because it forces them to save and usually does not allow them to withdraw contributions to buy shit they don't need. It then creates a spending level for most people that is more sustainable because their take home pay already removed and invested their retirement savings contributions. It's an employer enforced version of "pay yourself first".

The lack of pensions and destruction of the unions is really the reason why the middle class has disappeared. I'm hopeful employers start to pick up pensions as a benefit again, and there has been some shifts towards pensions again as organizations consider the health/well being of their employees again (there's more types of pensions now too, some of which are cheaper with less liability for the employer).

[ChpBstrd]

It may depend on the generation.

My baby boomer parents got married with high school educations. Dad got a job as a union apprentice working construction in the early 70's (Back then one was paid to get career training instead of paying to get career training). He worked the rest of his career as a journeyman in his field, bought a middle-class house, paid it off, etc. Mom was a SAHM.

This was enough to live a working-class life (e.g. for a long time his multi-color pickup truck had no hood) but they did not save much. Restaurant meals were/are at least 2x per week. The daily driver car always had a V8 engine. They sent us kids to private school until we begged to get out. They went on unnecessary shopping trips, hit yard sales and auctions, put enormous miles on their cars as entertainment, and developed a mild case of junk hoarding. For them, money was for spending, mostly on instant gratification.

They retired several years ago in their mid-60s with about $100k in savings, social security, a paid-off house, and - most importantly - a $50,000/year pension from the union that he had been forced to pay into all his career. The pension is no longer available to young people of course, and I'm not sure if there are any good union apprenticeship opportunities any more.

So even though they saved very little over the course of 35 years, and blew through paychecks as if money was radioactive, they still retired prosperous as millionaires because they lived in times when unions and pensions and social security were a thing. The external world took care of them in a way they could never have done for themselves.

Had things been a little different (e.g. there were no union jobs, or the pension closed a couple decades earlier) I'm sure my childhood would have been spent in poverty and my parents would now be living in the woods in a dilapidated trailer, as this is the norm for broke old people and jobless spendthrifts in my area.

The point of all this is that if a young person learned from my parents how to live, spend, and plan for retirement, they would definitely fail because the combination of factors that led to my parents' success, despite themselves, are no longer in place. The union jobs that pay enough to support a whole family on one salary, AND buy a house, are a thing of the past. Pensions are a thing of the past. Some would like Social Security to be a thing of the past. If you spend like my parents AND lack these features of financial antiquity, you're broke. It depends on the timeframe when you lived.

And yes, my parents are among those in their generation who voted for the people who passed anti-union legislation, destroyed pensions, tried to repeal the ACA which is where they get their health insurance, and are trying to cut social security. Guess they shut the door behind them.

One thing to note about pensions is that it's not free money, it's forced retirement savings plan that the saver can't access. There's usually no opt-in, if you are in an organization/union with a pension, you must contribute and you can't take it until you retire/leave employment. Your parents were paying contributions their whole career to get that 50K pension, and those contributions were deducted at the source by their employer, so their take home pay was really their post-retirement savings spending money. SO it's not really true to say they weren't saving anything, they were saving, probably somewhere around 8-10% of their pay + their employers contributions which would have been around the same %, it just wasn't very visible or accessible. 

Pensions are generally horrible investments for a ROI vs market comparison, and especially horrible for mustachians, but they are phenomenal for most people because it forces them to save and usually does not allow them to withdraw contributions to buy shit they don't need. It then creates a spending level for most people that is more sustainable because their take home pay already removed and invested their retirement savings contributions. It's an employer enforced version of "pay yourself first".

The lack of pensions and destruction of the unions is really the reason why the middle class has disappeared. I'm hopeful employers start to pick up pensions as a benefit again, and there has been some shifts towards pensions again as organizations consider the health/well being of their employees again (there's more types of pensions now too, some of which are cheaper with less liability for the employer).

If a Mustachian today wanted to approximate the lifetime certainty of a pension, they would have to buy an annuity, which would have roughly the ROI of treasuries. Pensions back in the day were invested in corporate bonds and some stocks. Performance wise, most replicated a conservative portfolio instead of an insurance company annuity. But the real benefit of a pension is guaranteed lifetime income, even if you live 60 years post-retirement. Not even our 3.5% withdraw rates can match that kind of guarantee. So the boomers had the best of both worlds - the performance of an investment portfolio AND the assurance of not running out of money like an annuity.

Mustachians, on the other hand, must generally over-save if our portfolios are to last 30-40 years, and the vast majority of us will die long before our portfolios are exhausted. This means the vast majority of us will sacrifice years of our lives working beyond what was necessary in order to reduce uncertainty (a similar outcome as if our returns were very low, something we stress about a lot!). If only there was a way we could all agree that as members of our group die earlier than expected, their savings buttress the savings of the long-lived ones. Even better if our little organization had thousands of people across multiple generations. Then we could probably enjoy guaranteed retirement security on 5 or 6% WRs. That was the genius of pensions, even if the defined benefit part was a risky promise to make.

The catch was that pensions were not inheritable. So the next generations started with zilch and also lacked the ability to get union jobs and pensions!

[Chris Pascale]

I think my husband's parents are a good example of what happens when you don't plan.....................................a lifetime of stress and uncertainty

I'm stressed out just having read about it. IT was funny when the figurines were your inheritance, but it all got to be so much.

[RetiredAt63]

Just a comment about pensions.  People were saving when they had pensions.  That pension contribution came out of their paycheque as well as having an employer contribution.  It was just that they didn't  have to do the saving themselves, it was automatic.

You can see this in Canadian tax law.  The amount a person can put into an RRSP is reduced by work pension contributions.  At my highest salary I was maxed out at $3,000 for my RRSP.  The RRSP was meant for people who didn't have work pensions, so instead of pension money being deducted at source they had to do it themselves.  And of course instead of being sensible and making payments automatically every paycheque, people scramble at the deadline to make a year's contribution all at once, then take out an RRSP one year loan and end up paying it back every paycheque instead.

[Just Joe]

Can you elaborate on the officer vs enlisted tracks in the military? I'd like to know more.

First, this phenomenon is not necessarily limited to the USA.

In the USA there are two military career tracks: enlisted, and officer. The difference between the two pretty comes down to socioeconomic class.

To get into any officer position requires a four-year bachelor's degree, which must be completed before entering the military. No bachelor's degree, no commission. If you earn your degree AFTER you enlist, which many people do, you're still an enlisted rank unless you're selected for an enlisted-to-officer program. Admission to this program is not automatic and it may involve factors beyond your control.

Also, the bachelor's degree is everything. Not a journeyman's ticket (which takes just as long to get and which requires outstanding skills), not even a master's ticket in a skilled trade. It has to be a four-year university degree, or else it's worth nothing. A low-hanging-fruit liberal arts degree counts more than a master electrician's license. It's a class distinction, plain and simple. It becomes an "I got mine so forget you" issue because there's a gigantic double standard in which the people who punch that particular ticket before joining the military are set up for significant career opportunities that are unavailable to the people who (for whatever reason) do not punch the ticket. If you never punch the ticket, or if you punch the ticket late and not at the upper-middle-class appointed time in the career cycle, you're still pretty much labeled for life because of the way you entered the system.

Now here's the kicker. If you get your bachelor's degree AFTER you enlist, there's no automatic promotion to officer except through one of these programs. You can have a master's degree and still be a grunt. So it looks like this:

Person --> Bachelor's degree --> Military = Officer
Person --> Military --> Grunt --> Bachelor's degree -> Grunt with a degree

See what I mean? Education is only valued and rewarded if it's done at a time that's culturally associated with the upper and upper-middle class.

Thanks.

[TheGrimSqueaker]

TheGrimSqueaker[/member] You may have already posted it but was your military experience in the Navy?

My country didn't want my service. It was illegal for a long time, and by the time it became legal I was too old. Personally, I think they screwed themselves out of an outstanding SEAL. But it's also what was preferred by the American people, their elected representatives, and for all I know the human beings in each individual branch of the services.

[WhiteTrashCash]

Can you elaborate on the officer vs enlisted tracks in the military? I'd like to know more.

First, this phenomenon is not necessarily limited to the USA.

In the USA there are two military career tracks: enlisted, and officer. The difference between the two pretty comes down to socioeconomic class.

To get into any officer position requires a four-year bachelor's degree, which must be completed before entering the military. No bachelor's degree, no commission. If you earn your degree AFTER you enlist, which many people do, you're still an enlisted rank unless you're selected for an enlisted-to-officer program. Admission to this program is not automatic and it may involve factors beyond your control.

Also, the bachelor's degree is everything. Not a journeyman's ticket (which takes just as long to get and which requires outstanding skills), not even a master's ticket in a skilled trade. It has to be a four-year university degree, or else it's worth nothing. A low-hanging-fruit liberal arts degree counts more than a master electrician's license. It's a class distinction, plain and simple. It becomes an "I got mine so forget you" issue because there's a gigantic double standard in which the people who punch that particular ticket before joining the military are set up for significant career opportunities that are unavailable to the people who (for whatever reason) do not punch the ticket. If you never punch the ticket, or if you punch the ticket late and not at the upper-middle-class appointed time in the career cycle, you're still pretty much labeled for life because of the way you entered the system.

Now here's the kicker. If you get your bachelor's degree AFTER you enlist, there's no automatic promotion to officer except through one of these programs. You can have a master's degree and still be a grunt. So it looks like this:

Person --> Bachelor's degree --> Military = Officer
Person --> Military --> Grunt --> Bachelor's degree -> Grunt with a degree

See what I mean? Education is only valued and rewarded if it's done at a time that's culturally associated with the upper and upper-middle class.

This partly demonstrates why I tell people not to go into trades, because when you go into trades, you are basically limited to trades. When you go to college, you can go to academia, business, trades, government, military officer school, etc. There are few fewer limitations place on your employment with a college degree.

[TheGrimSqueaker]

Can you elaborate on the officer vs enlisted tracks in the military? I'd like to know more.

First, this phenomenon is not necessarily limited to the USA.

In the USA there are two military career tracks: enlisted, and officer. The difference between the two pretty comes down to socioeconomic class.

To get into any officer position requires a four-year bachelor's degree, which must be completed before entering the military. No bachelor's degree, no commission. If you earn your degree AFTER you enlist, which many people do, you're still an enlisted rank unless you're selected for an enlisted-to-officer program. Admission to this program is not automatic and it may involve factors beyond your control.

Also, the bachelor's degree is everything. Not a journeyman's ticket (which takes just as long to get and which requires outstanding skills), not even a master's ticket in a skilled trade. It has to be a four-year university degree, or else it's worth nothing. A low-hanging-fruit liberal arts degree counts more than a master electrician's license. It's a class distinction, plain and simple. It becomes an "I got mine so forget you" issue because there's a gigantic double standard in which the people who punch that particular ticket before joining the military are set up for significant career opportunities that are unavailable to the people who (for whatever reason) do not punch the ticket. If you never punch the ticket, or if you punch the ticket late and not at the upper-middle-class appointed time in the career cycle, you're still pretty much labeled for life because of the way you entered the system.

Now here's the kicker. If you get your bachelor's degree AFTER you enlist, there's no automatic promotion to officer except through one of these programs. You can have a master's degree and still be a grunt. So it looks like this:

Person --> Bachelor's degree --> Military = Officer
Person --> Military --> Grunt --> Bachelor's degree -> Grunt with a degree

See what I mean? Education is only valued and rewarded if it's done at a time that's culturally associated with the upper and upper-middle class.

This partly demonstrates why I tell people not to go into trades, because when you go into trades, you are basically limited to trades. When you go to college, you can go to academia, business, trades, government, military officer school, etc. There are few fewer limitations place on your employment with a college degree.

Trades education is very license-specific. That creates a barrier to entry but also a barrier to exit. Yet I find that only the trades that don't have formal licensing or that have lax enforcement of licensing (automotive mechanic work, in some states) are really accessible to people from a college background. A professional engineering license or a law degree doesn't double for an electrician's license or a commercial driver's license.

[Just Joe]

TheGrimSqueaker[/member] You may have already posted it but was your military experience in the Navy?

My country didn't want my service. It was illegal for a long time, and by the time it became legal I was too old. Personally, I think they screwed themselves out of an outstanding SEAL. But it's also what was preferred by the American people, their elected representatives, and for all I know the human beings in each individual branch of the services.

Yes, that part of our society/gov't evolves in a very slow fashion. Screw 'em.

[talltexan]

Some sad but excellent posts in this thread.  Thanks for sharing, everyone.

There was an article I read a year or so ago that measured people's happiness vs their income before and after retirement.  They found that for the most part, people who had thought in their working years that they would never be able to live a good life at anything below their current income, for the most part managed to adapt and continue to be happy even if they were down to just Social Security.  Hedonic Adaptation - it works both ways.

It also ties into the happiness curve that you see.  People who are younger or older often report they are more happy with their lives, while people in middle age are less.  This holds true across different societies and cultures.  The theory is that when you are young you have great expectations and that brings you joy.  But as you age you find that many of those expectations are not going to be fulfilled, and you mourn the loss.  But in old age, your expectations have already reduced and now you are able to meet or exceed them on a regular basis.  A good night's sleep, time with friends and family.  Just watching a beautiful sunset.  It doesn't take much to be happy.

I see mustachinism as my attempt to translate to that late life zen of acceptance while still in my middle age.  It's got to be easier to do it deliberately then have it forced on you by the repercussions of a spendthrift life.

Indeed I think this is a fantastic observation! The downshift in cash flow that can go toward living standards will inevitably come for all but the very highest earners. Our movement is about accelerating it artificially such that we can live a lower-impact life on the environment and invest more energy into skills and relationships at an earlier point in life.