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I couldn't tell you the last time I worked a 40 hour work week. I've averaged 50++ for fkng years. I have always been salaried. Just as an FYI, here's how CPA firms worked when I was in them. You sign a contract for your salary. That salary is predicated on around 2400 hours annually, or a bit over 46 hours a week. You'll never work less than this trust me (except summer time). Once you hit 46ish hours for the week...any extra hours worked go into an Hour Bank to be used to draw from during summer hours when the work week is way slower from like June-August. Once you hit 400 or 500 hours in your Hour Bank...THEN you make more money or get paid OT. From Oct-May I averaged 70-90 hours a week easily. You basically live at work. Most BB's had no problem with this that I ever met. I rarely see this any longer. Most want 40 and out. This is just an example of why BB's hold 50% of the wealth in this country.
The Blackrock/Blackstone/Wall St. buying homes is mostly a myth. Individuals buying flips or rental properties actually happens but most places it's not enough to really change the market. Where I'm at most HOAs prohibit a place from being used as rental property so it's not even an option and the home values in those neighborhoods continue to climb just the same. Vast majority of home purchases are still made with mortgage that require a place to be primary residence.
Interesting data. Still a lot of houses being sold and on steady increase since the crash but not back up to the volume that came before it. Experts blaming lack of supply related to increased building costs as being biggest issue? Seems crazy to me based on what I see here, new luxury apartments and condos and new subdivisions going up everywhere the last few years.
Sounds brutal, sorry, I never knew.
I am just posting this so some of the younger people actually see what others go/went through and that things weren't so easy BITD. You just did whatever you had to do. If I knew what I was going to have to go through, I probably never would have done it...lol. Sometimes, being really fkng dumb is a gateway to being modetly successful. My first house was $60k. I sold it after my divorce and paid around $1,000 at clsing just to get rid of it. I made zero. Nowadays, you make $100k on house. Back then, you didn't. Or, I sure didn't.
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Not defending anything friend, just stating reality. The USA only had the majority of families in homes since post WWII, and that was largely due to the rest of the worlds economies being destroyed at the time. Not everybody gets everything they want, sorry. If you want nice things you need to be very smart and work very hard, sorry. Is it harder now, perhaps? Shouldn't there be rewards for those that excel, certainly.
Roosevelt's depression era mortgage and finance reforms got a lot of people in homes too.
Professional firms are no different now. The youngsters grind out insane hours with the hope they will get partnership in 5-10 years and then they can go home and re-introduce themselves to their significant other and any kids they may have.
Do you have any more information on Blackstone's level of ownership? They have a tidy PR packet which offers this nugget,
Do they have significant properties in Europe and Asia, or are they using a statistical ruse to lower their total percentage of ownership?
There's a lot of generalization going on in this thread. My kids are hard workers and on track to contribute and be productive assets to society. I see the same from most of their friends and colleagues, with exceptions just like every generation. "Kids these days" talk to me reflects much more poorly on the speaker than the group they are generalizing. If your kids won't leave the house and stare at their phones all day, blame yourself.
No idea about other countries but lot of data from here. Putting it all together my interpretation of it is their holdings have mostly apartment complexes and student housing and very small percentage of total number of single family homes and not nearly enough to move markets.
https://jbrec.com/insights/charting-a-22-year-roller-coaster-of-investor-activity/
https://www.resiclubanalytics.com/p/blackstone-will-thirdlargest-us-singlefamily-portfolio-completes-tricon-residential-acquisition
My kids are very hard workers too Grape, as were most of my employees. But your cliche you presented is not uncommon. Youth sports is lacking participants, as are boy scouts and the like, fewer young hunters, fishermen, fewer volunteer firemen and volunteerism in general, women I believe are outnumbering men in college enrollment and choosing not to be married to start families in astounding numbers, I believe most trades are severly lacking good help, the hard sciences are not getting young men from this country enrolled in college courses as in the past, on and on. Many think our youth is in crisis. Of course there are a slew of very bright ambitious young people out there, but most of those are not complaining. My kids don't, they revel in their opportunities. As a former employer, who associated with many other employers, we all have been astounded by the fall of the American work ethic, it is a topic of conversation.
"a topic of conversation".......with my McDonalds morning coffee club comparing the news we saw on TV last week.
My dad did almost all my bike work when I was a kid racing. I may have changed air filters and tightened the chain, outside of that not much if anything.
When I got back into riding at like 20 or so, it took me over a year till I realized I didn’t have to remove the master link in the chain to swap a rear wheel lol
My 12 year old races at a high level and trains full time, and I’m not always at the track with him. So he’s a lot more involved and I make sure to show him stuff
Hard times create strong men
Good men create good times
Good times create weak men
Weak men create bad times
And the cycle continues, i heard this a couple of years ago and thought it was spot on.
What is their peer group like?
Parents can do everything right, but if the peer group isn’t up to par, then kids tend to be a product of that environment. Studies have shown that you will become the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with.
Also, they are still young. They could outgrow all of this soon.
Typically over a campfire after riding dirtbikes or mountain bikes. I am only 60 and I don't eat McDonalds but that is a funny cliche.
We all come from different places and have different life experiences. To me everything you just typed sounds like an aggregation of stuff that gets regurgitated online and in the media, not real world experience. At least not my real world experience. The kids I've spent time around are generally bright and driven and give me hope for the future. Of course I've also seen a picture of a kid wearing a cat outfit and being led by a leash at my daughter's school, but every generation including yours and mine had outliers that didn't define an entire generation. I'm an optimist and tend to focus more on the future leaders than the cat people.
Nowadays, you make $100k on house. Back then, you didn't.
You really don't see where young people that don't already have a house already they can capitalize on would be frustrated by this? That's another $100k thats coming out of somebodys pocket, an extra $600 a month, $225k over 30 years, a new yz250 every year, maybe the difference between a young couple having a baby or not.
I don't think Blackstone or Blackrock or any other big hedge funds are buying up houses in Erie PA causing the prices of them to double in the last 5 years like the ones I posted on the last page.
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There are plenty of bright young people getting ready to do amazing things.
I feel like the gap between that group and the rest is getting bigger and what's lacking is the grinders from the past, the lunch pail crowd who was happy to have steady employment doing something that put a roof over their family's head. Many of the young people who should be making up that demographic think those jobs are beneath them and not worth doing if they don't lead to the life their more successful peers have obtained. Lot of reasons for it but that's what I see.
I remember you had trouble putting the Passport on its center stand after getting destroyed by me in your backyard.
Holy shit, I did not hear that. I agree the problem is houses are bought for investments, not for living in nowadays. I won’t get into my current living situation but short term rentals blow apes imo.
Oh, I get it. In this economy, if both husband and wife work, they sb pulling down $125k easily. You can buy a house with a 125 income. I'm sure the house I bought BITD for $60k was a $20k house originally, or less. So, someone made some money. The jumps now are higher, but people are making WAY more money today. So, you have people with decent incomes chasing things...prices go up. If people weren't willing to pay, prices drop. A lot of people are fkng over paid for what they do. Jobs that take 2 hours training shouldn't be $25/hr jobs. Housing has to come down soon. It's not realistic to just keep going up. Something has to give...and it will. All that I know, I was PTP for many years and I hated it. That's why now, if you ask someone who has money what their biggest fear is...it's losing everything. So, you still live well below what you can afford to never be that way again.
I genuinely do not think anything I stated is just on line hype or media generated. It is all pretty well documented as trends happening. Even amongst motorcycle manufacturers a major problem is getting and keeping youth involved. Like I stated of course many of our youth are motivated, perhaps as suggested the gap is just larger.
Thank you! Generalizing with cliches misses important context, that's the point I've been trying to get across.
To be fair, if I had the option in school I absolutely would have done it just to make a point of it's ridiculousness.
Richard Reeves and Scott Galloway wrote a couple of good books on the very subject.
Cliches do not arise in a vacuum either, and there are exceptions to every one.
As I’m getting ready to qualify for a 12hr endurance race with my dad tomorrow, this made me choke up a bit. I’m gonna miss the shit out of the old bastard when he’s gone.
It's reality, sure, but it's only one half of it. You just seem to really be wanting to frame this debate as a cultural issue and place the blame on the failings of a particular generation without considering the social and economic policies, both foreign and domestic, which have essentially cut the American working class off at the knees.
That's not to say there aren’t cultural deficiencies of millennials and the younger generation which are contributing significantly to the dysfunction, because there are and it’s a valid point, but I think it tells only half the story.
By being so quick to brush aside or to avoid addressing the real world consequences that these truly disastrous social and economic policies have had on the middle class, is to completely absolve policy and policy makers of any blame whatsoever.
My personal view is that economic and social policies come from the top down, and it is they that lay the groundwork for these cultural issues to fester and grow into systemic issues, which is why we’re at where we’re at.
We’ve changed from an economic model which once derived its might from tangible things like production and trade, to one that now generates much of its profits through financial means. It’s completely altered the dynamics of the market as well as the distribution of wealth. It's called financialization, and it most definitely goes against the values that once made America great and home to those who wanted to and had the opportunity to, pursue the chance to be free.
As I said before; hard work and honesty don’t pay like they used to. Today - money makes money, and money buys the power to further entrench this design within our economic model. The outcome is an economic disparity comparable to the Middle Ages and there’s a lot of frustration, resentment, and suffering, as a result of this.
Within this dynamic money is no longer the facilitator or the means to an end, but has become the end itself. Things have changed. It’s just different and we’ll have to adapt. I just wouldn’t be so quick to frame this as a cultural issue. I personally see the class issue is a more fundamental element in the problem.
Your solution: work harder for longer, and be happy with and expect less profit from your labor/time, seems to me a very superficial approach. Maybe we should address the root of the problem by revisiting and rethinking the economic and social policies that have led us to our present state?
* BTW I fully agree with your second sentence. The evolution of that statement: Is that now, an inestimably small amount of families are succeeding largely due to the destruction (exploitation) of the means in which 99.9% of the worlds population rely upon for economic stability and financial independence. The "winners" in this world are not excelling! They are liars, thieves, scoundrels, and con-men. They are middle men and produce nothing, they have simply stacked the cards in their favor so they may more efficiently exploit and syphon the profits from our labor. Your children are not excelling, they are simply just better at contributing towards strengthening a game and a machine which will serve only to make the lives of their children that much more difficult to ever understand the conception of freedom.
Internal vs external locus of control. Both sides probably agree on a lot of these issues in theory, but disagree on how to respond.
I'm on the side of internal locus of control. We can debate policy and theory all day long and you might have some excellent points and policy suggestions, but they are of little use to the individual living in the moment. Control what you can control and don't worry about the rest. Even if you're right about the things going on around you, your energy is better spent on hustling and controlling what you can control. It's a very slippery slope once you start believing your efforts are futile and you need someone else to fix things for you. Don't go there.
And as to the last paragraph of marxist drivel, there's plenty of people just like me who aren't liars or cheats and came from essentially nothing, contribute plenty to society, and we are going to out work people with these attitudes and have more than them no matter what system it's under.
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