Do you have "buyer's remorse" about adult life?

[Warren Dew]

(09-27-2016, 11:18 AM)The Wonkette Wrote:

(09-27-2016, 09:35 AM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(09-26-2016, 11:11 AM)The Wonkette Wrote:

(09-26-2016, 12:22 AM)Warren Dew Wrote: Trailing edge boomer, born 1960.

(snip)

Got married, interesting time as a software contractor through two boom and bust cycles, had three wonderful Quiet generation kids.  Currently some credit card debt, but lots of equity in reserve in the house I'd bought in 1990, so barring a generational crisis, I'll survive financially.

So basically, adulthood has been pretty much what I envisioned - I get to make my own decisions, and get to live with the consequences of those decisions.  I would never go back to being a child.

Interesting post, and I agree with you -- childhood sucked.

Question -- what is a "quiet generation" kid?  Someone born in the aughts?  If so, they should be in or approaching the dreaded middle school years.  Chin up, you'll survive. 

"Quiet generation" is how I refer to postmillenials.  "Homelander" assumes the fourth turning started with and would be primarily shaped by 9/11, and I'm unconvinced that's accurate.  My kids were born in 2008, 2010, and 2012.

Ah, you're an older Dad.    They are young and definitely new adaptives.

Yes.  And my style is more appropriate for bringing up millenials, which would have been accepted a few years ago but sees a lot of resistance now - though actually, that's okay since I do want my kids to get used to figuring out conclusions for themselves, if not to get coddled so much they don't have to actually do anything.

I just hope my kids grow up in a situation more like my Silent generation dad's, which involved not having to fight in WWII and being safe at home, and less like my Silent generation mom's, which involved being a refugee from the Japanese and then the Communists for essentially her entire childhood and having a substantial risk of not surviving.

[beechnut79]

(09-27-2016, 07:48 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Undiagnosed Asperger's messed up my personal life about as badly as alcoholism or drug addiction except for making me excessively cautious and perhaps self-righteous. I would have lived very differently and enjoyed a far richer life had I known about it. I might have made different choices in education and vocation.

I could have been a role model and not an example of how badly someone could waste talent. Today I am lonely, nearly broke, and stranded in a hick town in the rural Midwest. What I thought was individual eccentricity is simply expressions of a syndrome. I am now old enough that I have little to which to look forward except for an Afterlife or reincarnation in one of the most merciless of economic orders. I have cursed God for my plight instead of bad luck and the incompetence of others.

I have a conscience; I am not lazy; I have enough self-control to avoid problems that many 'healthy' people get into.  I can be trusted with promises, with assets, with legitimate secrets, with the welfare of vulnerable people, and with safe use of hazardous equipment. I could have found life precious instead of nasty.  

Yes, American capitalism since about 1980 has been perverse... but it still allows some opportunities for talented people who apply themselves well. I could have found a satisfying niche had I known that I had a problem, for I had the means of dealing with something that I understand all too late.

In my case Asperger's was no doubt diagnosed but not available until 1994. It was just considered autism, and the response was getting sent to two different boarding schools, the first of which I came to hate mightily toward the end.  I was quite girl crazy for much of my formative years, and through adult life, although I did try to live as normally as I possibly could, very often women tended to be suspicious of me for reasons I found totally bewildering. Employment for folks with AS today is probably more dire than ever with all the penchant for political correctness. I did have some dating success during the freer, more swinging times I reached my formative years in, but dating itself is more problematic these days. More on this in later posts.

[Mikebert]

Warren Dew Wrote:It was in the 1930s that wealth inequalities really started skyrocketing.

See page 56 here:
http://gabriel-zucman.eu/files/SaezZucman2014.pdf

[Mikebert]

(09-27-2016, 11:18 AM)The Wonkette Wrote:

(09-27-2016, 09:35 AM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(09-26-2016, 11:11 AM)The Wonkette Wrote:

(09-26-2016, 12:22 AM)Warren Dew Wrote: Trailing edge boomer, born 1960.

(snip)

Got married, interesting time as a software contractor through two boom and bust cycles, had three wonderful Quiet generation kids.  Currently some credit card debt, but lots of equity in reserve in the house I'd bought in 1990, so barring a generational crisis, I'll survive financially.

So basically, adulthood has been pretty much what I envisioned - I get to make my own decisions, and get to live with the consequences of those decisions.  I would never go back to being a child.

Interesting post, and I agree with you -- childhood sucked.

Question -- what is a "quiet generation" kid?  Someone born in the aughts?  If so, they should be in or approaching the dreaded middle school years.  Chin up, you'll survive. 

"Quiet generation" is how I refer to postmillenials.  "Homelander" assumes the fourth turning started with and would be primarily shaped by 9/11, and I'm unconvinced that's accurate.  My kids were born in 2008, 2010, and 2012.

Ah, you're an older Dad.    They are young and definitely new adaptives.

Yeah.  My grandson was born in 2004 and I was born in 1959.

[Mikebert]

(06-13-2016, 07:40 PM)beechnut79 Wrote: Your second paragraph reminds me that today's economic climate is so reminiscent of a holiday observed at the end of every October. Treats for the rich and powerful; tricks for most of the rest of us. When the whole MBA craze was on, to some extent the Me Generation culture no doubt helped push that along. The dark side of things didn't come home to roost for a while, but the scholarly types and those who hadn't yet sucked up to what was happening had already figured it out by 1987, by which time we had the largest homeless population since the Great Depression. The one thing which has prevent Great Depression II so far? No doubt it's consumer credit. This Christmas how about coming up with an adult letter to Santa requesting a world that feels a little less stressful?

No, consumer credit is way too small.  To get a Depression today, you need a financial crisis.  To get that you need an asset bubble crash.  To get that you need a bubble.  To get a bubble you need Congress to authorize one.  Now the Great Depression happened as a result of the financial crisis stemming from the crash of the stock market bubble in 1929-32.  It was deemed unfun, and so Congress deauthorized bubbles.  As long as those who lived through the Depression still lived, Congress refrained from a new bubble authorization. But all men die and by 1997 just about everybody at the scene in '29 was gone (Roy Neuberger, the guy who shorted RCA at its peak in 1929, was still around but he was like 100).  So Congress decided it was time to reauthorize a new bubble.  I recall in 1997 as the market was getting close to the valuation it had had in the late 1960's whether the bull would just peter out like the 1960's or end with a blowout top like '29.  When Congress passed the bubble act, it settled the issue, blowout top and I stayed invested for two more years.

So we had our first giant bubble in 2000.  And in August 2000 I thought its collapse would trigger the 4T.[1]  It didn't.  The Fed swung to the rescue and stoked the real estate bull market so real estate investment compensated for falling corporate investment yielding a mild recession.  It takes time (one business cycle) to build up a bubble so we had to wait for the next recession to see if we can get a Depression.  Congress did its part by passing another Bubble Act in 2003. This was successful; they managed to blow up a real estate bubble of unprecedented size and to get the job done in just seven years.  This time there was no healthy asset class which could be used to blow up a counter bubble to offset the collapsing real estate bubble. Stocks were still sick and they suffered their second worst bear market in history despite not being all that overvalued.  The Fed could not contain the damage with normal policy and the Bush administration came up with a quick plan to help financial elites. Congress quickly agreed. The Fed did their part by creating cash and handing it out to financial elites in an effort to make them whole.  These actions were successful, the financial markets recovered and financial elites are rolling in new gains.

To get the economy to recover, a new president and Congress passed a stimulus designed to deliver a nudge to get the economy going at minimal cost to elites. The new administration and Congress also refrained from passing any new Bubble Acts and even repealed the 2003 Act (although the 1997 Act is still on the books). As a result they have not rushed the development of the next bubble (this one in stocks).  The business cycle turns 9 at the end of year with no sign of a top yet.  Right now the stock bubble is the third largest in history (1929 was slightly larger and 2000 was quite a bit higher than that).

Sooner or later the stock market is going to peak and this business expansion will end.  This time the Fed has little room for conventional policy.  And if real estate is still damaged (likely) there is little prospect for a counter bubble in real estate.  The Fed could try more QE but this strategy has been played out I think.  So the markets and economy should fall and fall.  If Congress can throw up a sufficiently-large wall of stimulus to contain the collapse, a Depression can be avoided. But with the rise of a Tea Party stimulus is off the table.  So it looks like third time is the charm.

[1]see Aug 21 post in the Kondratieff Wave thread in The Future section in the 1990's T4T site:

[pbrower2a]

(09-27-2016, 04:41 PM)beechnut79 Wrote:

(09-27-2016, 07:48 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Undiagnosed Asperger's messed up my personal life about as badly as alcoholism or drug addiction except for making me excessively cautious and perhaps self-righteous. I would have lived very differently and enjoyed a far richer life had I known about it. I might have made different choices in education and vocation.

I could have been a role model and not an example of how badly someone could waste talent. Today I am lonely, nearly broke, and stranded in a hick town in the rural Midwest. What I thought was individual eccentricity is simply expressions of a syndrome. I am now old enough that I have little to which to look forward except for an Afterlife or reincarnation in one of the most merciless of economic orders. I have cursed God for my plight instead of bad luck and the incompetence of others.

I have a conscience; I am not lazy; I have enough self-control to avoid problems that many 'healthy' people get into.  I can be trusted with promises, with assets, with legitimate secrets, with the welfare of vulnerable people, and with safe use of hazardous equipment. I could have found life precious instead of nasty.  

Yes, American capitalism since about 1980 has been perverse... but it still allows some opportunities for talented people who apply themselves well. I could have found a satisfying niche had I known that I had a problem, for I had the means of dealing with something that I understand all too late.

In my case Asperger's was no doubt diagnosed but not available until 1994. It was just considered autism, and the response was getting sent to two different boarding schools, the first of which I came to hate mightily toward the end.  I was quite girl crazy for much of my formative years, and through adult life, although I did try to live as normally as I possibly could, very often women tended to be suspicious of me for reasons I found totally bewildering. Employment for folks with AS today is probably more dire than ever with all the penchant for political correctness. I did have some dating success during the freer, more swinging times I reached my formative years in, but dating itself is more problematic these days. More on this in later posts.

Then I could not have been diagnosed with AS until I was almost 40. Even so, many people start over effectively at age 40. Had I known...

I have hidden the AS well enough (I consider that acting) to just seem a little eccentric. I can play the game of political correctness well enough (but it does not work well in a conservative environment). I basically had to be a liberal because anything else could bring out problems.  I got a job capable of affording almost enough to live on... so I got stuck living with my parents.

I assumed (rightly, it proves) that most people considered me crazy even if I wasn't.

Alcohol and bars scared me... maybe I thought that I had a monster inside that drinking would release, and that I was the person likely to get into a bar brawl for looking too long at someone's wife or girlfriend. Women scared me (fear of the monster inside? Not being a good provider?)

Life has been a cruel joke.

[Warren Dew]

(09-27-2016, 06:54 PM)Mikebert Wrote:

Warren Dew Wrote:It was in the 1930s that wealth inequalities really started skyrocketing.

See page 56 here:
http://gabriel-zucman.eu/files/SaezZucman2014.pdf

Sorry, I was misremembering this figure:


I have a larger version on my other computer but can't find it online at the moment.

So what this shows is that the inequality built up gradually in the 1920s, along with the booming economy, but only the top 1% - including the top 0.1% - lost much of their gain in the crash.  The top 10% held on to their gains until WWII, though contrary to what I said they didn't continue gaining.

The bottom line is still the same:  the labor unions' purpose was to protect the well off union workers against the nonunionized poor, and they did that successfully throughout the 1930s, with the help of FDR.

Your source and pbrower2a's source show the same facts as mine.

[Warren Dew]

(09-27-2016, 05:04 PM)taramarie Wrote:

(09-27-2016, 04:41 PM)beechnut79 Wrote:

(09-27-2016, 07:48 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Undiagnosed Asperger's messed up my personal life about as badly as alcoholism or drug addiction except for making me excessively cautious and perhaps self-righteous. I would have lived very differently and enjoyed a far richer life had I known about it. I might have made different choices in education and vocation.

I could have been a role model and not an example of how badly someone could waste talent. Today I am lonely, nearly broke, and stranded in a hick town in the rural Midwest. What I thought was individual eccentricity is simply expressions of a syndrome. I am now old enough that I have little to which to look forward except for an Afterlife or reincarnation in one of the most merciless of economic orders. I have cursed God for my plight instead of bad luck and the incompetence of others.

I have a conscience; I am not lazy; I have enough self-control to avoid problems that many 'healthy' people get into.  I can be trusted with promises, with assets, with legitimate secrets, with the welfare of vulnerable people, and with safe use of hazardous equipment. I could have found life precious instead of nasty.  

Yes, American capitalism since about 1980 has been perverse... but it still allows some opportunities for talented people who apply themselves well. I could have found a satisfying niche had I known that I had a problem, for I had the means of dealing with something that I understand all too late.

In my case Asperger's was no doubt diagnosed but not available until 1994. It was just considered autism, and the response was getting sent to two different boarding schools, the first of which I came to hate mightily toward the end.  I was quite girl crazy for much of my formative years, and through adult life, although I did try to live as normally as I possibly could, very often women tended to be suspicious of me for reasons I found totally bewildering. Employment for folks with AS today is probably more dire than ever with all the penchant for political correctness. I did have some dating success during the freer, more swinging times I reached my formative years in, but dating itself is more problematic these days. More on this in later posts.

"very often women tended to be suspicious of me for reasons I found totally bewildering." With the culture that assumes all men want is sex ad nice guys are rare I am not surprised.

I don't think it's just that.  Women tend to think we are creepy.  I suspect it has to do with not being able to hide ogling the way neurotypical men are able to do.

(09-27-2016, 05:04 PM)taramarie Wrote: "Employment for folks with AS today is probably more dire than ever with all the penchant for political correctness." What has AS got to do with political correctness in the work force?

If he means office politics, it's just inability to interact with people the way neurotypicals expect, for example not saying things that are indirectly insulting to your boss.  However, I've also been in plenty of workplaces where one will be ostracized for conservative political views.

Fortunately I'm a software engineer, and aspies seem to excel at that.

[Kate]

(06-12-2016, 12:02 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(06-12-2016, 01:16 AM)taramarie Wrote:

(06-11-2016, 11:59 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: At one time, any liberal arts degree was useful because it established that one could think coherently and communicate effectively. One had been exposed to the Great Questions of Existence. As such one could be a leader. One could adapt to many things.

Today one needs think only in narrow categories on behalf of organizations that prefer having interchangeable parts (people as if machines -- how dehumanizing!), that people think only of reward and punishment, that people live in fear of the Master Class, and that they do not challenge the status quo. Blind obedience, recognize of economic elites as people beyond judgment or criticism, and ideally support of reactionary politics well serve a grossly-inequitable social order. So one had to do something nasty to people? Dissolve your conscience with booze.

...Even if colleges all became technical  and vocational schools, there would be far too many graduates for the engineering and software-design people, lab technicians, and nurses.  

We need to rediscover the subtle delights of being truly human even at the cost of economic efficiency and rationality. Efficiency and rationality are not enough; a plantation of the Old South, a Gulag, or a fascist labor camp could be extremely efficient and rational while denying the qualities that make people human.

...The late science-fiction writer Robert Heinlein castigated the old Soviet Union as the land of the drunk. For the common man there was toil and there was drink, and nothing else. I wonder if America is headed that way.    

... Speaking of something Soviet, I have a joke. George W. Bush got struck by a lightning bold on a hot, clear Texas day, and found himself in the Hereafter. But instead of meeting such illustrious predecessors as Washington, Lincoln, and FDR, or even such mediocrities as Fillmore, Harding, or Coolidge he found himself with Leonid Brezhnev.  Unsettling as that encounter they got through a discussion of their shared mess of Afghanistan, and finally discussed the relative merits of their respective economies.

Brezhnev said, "You know the old saying... the workers pretend to work and we pretend to pay them".

Dubya responded, "We give workers fear and pay them with debt!"

Agree but NOT to the point where it sacrifices economic efficiency and rationality. That is illogical. You want another crash go right ahead.

Short-term efficiency at the cost of human happiness, let alone the survival and health (mental as well as physical) of those who actually do the work, is suspect.

Our productive capacities are great enough that we do not need poverty -- and we do not need to drive people to physical exhaustion just to get productivity.  We are at the stage at which we cannot get more prosperity from more production of stuff. We do not need more junk for the landfill or even more clutter.

Sustainable happiness is the measure of a wholesome life.

I agree. It does not follow that this path must lead to financial strife. The fact is that crony capitalism only works for the 1%. It is not true capitalism, not a free market. Regulations that are put in place for people is seen as a detriment for business but regulation put in place to enhance one business over another is seen as being good for capitalism and markets when the reverse is true in both cases.

My preference is that capitalism be shrunken down to community size pieces. The Corporation, that suckling upon the government's teat should be drowned. They have grown so large to be called "to big to fail", to have seats in meetings of heads of nations. That is not conducive. Capitalism should be run as if people mattered. Thus the need for the people, the masses to have education in humanities.

[pbrower2a]

(12-31-2016, 11:14 AM)Kate Wrote:

(06-12-2016, 12:02 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(06-12-2016, 01:16 AM)taramarie Wrote:

(06-11-2016, 11:59 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: At one time, any liberal arts degree was useful because it established that one could think coherently and communicate effectively. One had been exposed to the Great Questions of Existence. As such one could be a leader. One could adapt to many things.

Today one needs think only in narrow categories on behalf of organizations that prefer having interchangeable parts (people as if machines -- how dehumanizing!), that people think only of reward and punishment, that people live in fear of the Master Class, and that they do not challenge the status quo. Blind obedience, recognize of economic elites as people beyond judgment or criticism, and ideally support of reactionary politics well serve a grossly-inequitable social order. So one had to do something nasty to people? Dissolve your conscience with booze.

...Even if colleges all became technical  and vocational schools, there would be far too many graduates for the engineering and software-design people, lab technicians, and nurses.  

We need to rediscover the subtle delights of being truly human even at the cost of economic efficiency and rationality. Efficiency and rationality are not enough; a plantation of the Old South, a Gulag, or a fascist labor camp could be extremely efficient and rational while denying the qualities that make people human.

Agree but NOT to the point where it sacrifices economic efficiency and rationality. That is illogical. You want another crash go right ahead.

Short-term efficiency at the cost of human happiness, let alone the survival and health (mental as well as physical) of those who actually do the work, is suspect.

Our productive capacities are great enough that we do not need poverty -- and we do not need to drive people to physical exhaustion just to get productivity.  We are at the stage at which we cannot get more prosperity from more production of stuff. We do not need more junk for the landfill or even more clutter.

Sustainable happiness is the measure of a wholesome life.

I agree. It does not follow that this path must lead to financial strife. The fact is that crony capitalism only works for the 1%. It is not true capitalism, not a free market. Regulations that are put in place for people is seen as a detriment for business but regulation put in place to enhance one business over another is seen as being good for capitalism and markets when the reverse is true in both cases.

My preference is that capitalism be shrunken down to community size pieces. The Corporation, that suckling upon the government's teat should be drowned. They have grown so large to be called "to big to fail", to have seats in meetings of heads of nations. That is not conducive. Capitalism should be run as if people mattered. Thus the need for the people, the masses to have education in humanities.

A 4T will resolve much of the absurdity within institutions, including culture. But which way? At this point I can see a resolution in favor of extreme plutocracy, a high-tech feudalism or ultramodern fascism (as if there is any difference between the two) that restores the terms of employment characteristic of early capitalism -- mass poverty and brutal management -- but the sort of 'beauty'  for economic elites to which few of us can relate. The 'beauty' is garish excess.

The other is a world that has adjusted to the reality of productive capacities beyond the ability of people to consume what is produced. This is a world of much more leisure. The last Crisis gave Americans a 40-hour workweek as a norm and Social Security at 65 because working to exhaustion until one drops or dies in an industrial accident because one's reflexes have gotten too slow for a dangerous environment is no longer necessary.

Putative solutions in the middle will not succeed. Callow and cruel as Donald Trump is, he does have an intellectually-simple solution: return to the norms of early capitalism in which profit is the only objective of anyone, whether one enjoys the profit or suffers for it. Mike Pence has a simple solution for all the intellectual stresses that people have: a return to Protestant fundamentalism in which people suffer in This World for delights in the Next, denying intellectual modernity. I see that as the "Christian and Corporate State", a Protestant version of Franco's Spain or Salazar's Portugal. Nice place to visit on a holiday, but a place that one easily outgrows. A hint: if you wonder how France resolved the demographic stresses of two horrid World Wars, many Spaniards and Portuguese found their way to new lives in France  after the Second World War.

But reality is far more complex than simplistic propositions can solve. A solution that requires major reductions in living standards that puts profits first and still makes employment precarious is a raw deal -- and people have always rebelled against raw deals if they have no easy escape from the raw deals. Sure, we can have all the industrial jobs that we want if we return to the social norms and technologies of the 1920s. Does anyone want to go back into a time machine to the 1920s?

[David Horn]

(09-13-2017, 09:14 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: In a strange irony, it seems the best years of my adult life thus far were during the 3T.

No doubt part of it was having fewer responsibilities, being further from death, having fewer overt ravages of aging.

But that is not the whole enchilada. Another reason I look back to those times is the flow of life. Back then, the flow of life was much more satisfying. I am describing external characteristics which would be true irrespective of my personal state.

Now, not to be in denial. The precursors to today's fuckedupedness were already in place, through much of the 3T. Especially the 2nd half of the 3T.

Why is this so surprising?  A 3T is all about eating our seed corn, not banking more for the future.  Of course that's fun; it's just unwise -- a totally different criterion entirely.

[pbrower2a]

A 3T can be fun. It is a good time in which to collect memories, if not assets. Many of the assets will go obsolete or become worthless (take heed of stock market crashes of 1929 and 2008, and the Panic of 1857); you can lose everything if you are compelled to lieave wherever you are with little warning , as after an eviction.