Not really.
It seems like the very wealth are getting a larger and larger cut of the work that everyone else is doing.
I’m a long ways away from my college economics but isn’t at least part of this because people don’t want to have the same lifestyle as the people in their grandparents generation? Instead of working less for the same bundle of goods we’ve chosen to work the same for a better bundle of goods.
For much of my adult life it has seemed to be possible to buck the trend. Basically have the lifestyle of someone from a previous generation (smaller house, older and cheaper cars, fewer and cheaper electronics, less spending on entertainment, cooking at home, avoiding the pressure to overspend on your children, and so on). Then you could either work like everyone else and save money or adopt a more slacker attitude and get by on less work. I don’t know if that tradeoff is as doable now. Certainly there is an attitude that it isn’t.
With student loans, not not doable.
Lot’s of people have been successful retiring early adopting a simpler lifestyle or as Kimo’s Hawaiian rules says “Two ways to be rich earn more or deserve less”
Student loan are certainly an issue and are the majority of why I don’t know if it is still doable.
SlyFrog
1813
Yes, I mentioned this in my previous post.
LockerK
1814
The type of job that pays well enough to let someone work part time and still get by these days isn’t the type of job where management lets people only work part time, generally speaking. I don’t think it’s viable to support yourself, and especially not a family on a part time retail job, for instance. Whereas if I went to my boss and told him I wanted to move to part time, he’d look at me like I was crazy and quickly start looking for my replacement.
Median student loan debt is just under $40K. There are plenty of kids graduating with relatively modest amounts of debt. My grandneice plans on getting through college with no debt and this was without any help from her parents and family.
Nesrie
1817
Well some kids can get through college with no debt at all so clearly, not a problem we should worry about. Too bad for the other kids I guess. Boot straps for all!
Well by definition 1/2 of the students are graduating with less than 40K. $40K is modest compared the benefit that having a college degree gives. E.g. lifetime earning of more than one million dollars or 25K/year vs a high school graduate. That extra 25K/year can easily pay of that 40K in under a decade or even 100K in 15 years.
I’m far more sympathetic to kids who drank the college for everyone Koolaid borrowed $40K and have nothing to show for it and are stick with their $12 hour jobs. Now paying off $40K making $25k and having to pay for living expenses, that is tough.
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Ex-SWoo
1819
Ok…if 40k is modest, how would you characterize graduates from the 70s to the early 90s when the average student debt load was ~10k in 2018 dollars?
It varies a lot by place and year, so I’m not sure, but without saying you’re wrong, I doubt that’s possible for most people. House’s are expensive regardless of size; driving is more expensive as there’s tolls and meters everywhere and fuel is more expensive; electronics and entertainment can and should be cheap-skated on, but they’re full of pricing traps, from consumption credit thrown at you to a lot of monthly fees to add up; cooking at home assumes you can get and fit into a reasonably paid part time job instead of mandatory overtime.
And, of course, if people did that instead of being peer-pressured into the latest thing (which, well, we’ll all inevitably must at some point), our economies would crash and burn as they’re based on excessive consumption on credit (including a lot of savings’ funds, directly or not).
Regardless, expecting the vast majority of the population to spontaneously change their lifestyle overnight isn’t going to happen without a major shock, which isn’t going to end well.
I graduated with $15k in debt (in 2018$) back in the early 80s. It really wasn’t a burden to pay off and wouldn’t have been even at triple the amount. But that’s because I got a engineering job, that paid twice as much as what I would have had if I hadn’t gone to college.
The trick is to get a job that needs a college degree. The issue is people graduating (or attending and not finishing college) with degree and debt, but ending up large amounts of debt.
Nesrie
1822
That was 40 years ago. Have you even looked at what tuition and college costs was then compared to now? It’s not even a straight conversion. These conversations often reference tuition and dorms as if, like as if they don’t know about the fees, the shit they pull now so they don’t even have to show how high their “tuition” actually is. 2-3k a year in fees, not even tuition, not room and board, just fees and that could be on the low side. People pay more than your debt in fees without dropping a dime for an actual course let alone a book.
Yup I believe @Ex-SWoo chart. No question that college costs have gone up dramatically. But even with the average cost of 4 years college at $85K, they pay off is still excellent. Was it a better deal years ago? Absolutely.
But on a topic about income equality, the 40 odd percent of Americans with college degrees are definitely in the haves category. Any discussion of making college more affordable primarily benefits, smart, white, and upper-middle-class people. That is pretty much the trifecta of privilege.
Nesrie
1824
No. That is not correct at all. There are a lot of not white middle class people who go to college.
These numbers are not zero, and the debt is not equal.
Seventy-two percent of black students go into debt to pay for their educations, compared to 56 percent of white students, the Education Department reports.
You did although I think that the focus on BMWs and really large houses misses the point. As Scott says those aren’t ubiquitous. I think it is the smaller things that matter. We’ve put our extra productivity into leading cleaner, more convenient, safer lives with more (and better) stuff.
Nesrie
1826
https://www.usnews.com/education/blogs/student-loan-ranger/articles/2019-05-29/how-student-loan-debt-affects-women
I have no expectation that most people can or should change their lifestyle. I was responding to the idea that gains in productivity should have lead to either an increase in income or a decrease in time worked. That would be true if we didn’t change our lifestyle but, for the most part, we willing chose to raise our standard of living instead of saving or working less.
Nothing stunningly big but earlier in the conversation people seemed to be lost in the idea that something had gone fundamentally wrong just because our increased productivity hadn’t let to 10 hour workweeks.
