Comments | plural: Ever wonder where your money goes?

plural

Ever wonder where your money goes?

Apr 24, 2009 19:56

I'm the first to admit that most of what I post here
while entertaining, amusing and perhaps even insightful
isn't really all the important to your daily lives

but, ernunnos posted this video and you really need to watch it ( Read more... )

Comments 31

zaiah April 25 2009, 05:40:28 UTC

I liked the 'more children in families going through bankruptcy than divorce' line.

zanfur April 25 2009, 12:09:05 UTC

Enlightening.

budhaboy April 25 2009, 23:43:31 UTC

Dude, I'm way too busy delivering pizzas for extra cash to pay for those extra trips to the mall to watch something like this. Besides, it isn't as though anyone I KNOW is going to be watching it as well, so that I can impress them by having said I've watched it. Now if I'd heard about it on FoxNews, that'd be something else entirely...

budhaboy April 26 2009, 01:24:55 UTC

I'll never forget what you said when you toured our new house back in '05 (note the lack of quotes ( ... )

plural April 27 2009, 06:35:57 UTC

Indeed, although I was confident that if anyone could make it work it would be yall.

I think the important point is not the extra 6 years but rather that the entirety of that burden has been shifted to the families. Where in the 70s society carried the cost of preparing you for the workforce, now most people have to borrow thousands of dollars.

So a new family starting out, not only has about 100 grand worth of student loans to pay off, but the obscene costs of daycare/preschool (which I'll credit you for making me aware of) before they can even start saving for their child(ren)'s college education.

It pretty much assures that except for the most fortunate, the next generation will also have to take significant debt, and the situation will propigate itself.

The idea of people essentially being born into debt and most likely never been able to get out of debt, seems a whole lot like slavery to me.

Of course, you know how debt averse I am, so my perspective on the issue may be quite skewed.

budhaboy April 27 2009, 09:27:40 UTC

It pretty much assures that except for the most fortunate, the next generation will also have to take significant debt, and the situation will propigate itself.I think that's just about right. If you consider H and I's background it's decidedly upper middleclass, granted we took about 10 years off from actively pursuing money, but we also have no debt for our educations... We make pretty good money today, but H is only making slightly less than 1/2 time money, so we've got a leg up in that regard toward saving money as we are slightly above water with her working 1/2 time. We have no debt other than auto/home loans. We live more frugally than anyone we know, and if we are lucky our boys may be able to 1) get through college with very little debt, 2) not have to support us in our dotage... hardly keeping our kids in our station... they are clearly slipping to a decidedly 'middle' class existence (although I tend to think of it more as a subset titled the American intelligentsia ( ... )

plural April 27 2009, 11:49:14 UTC

Indeed, of course, they'll be in good company as I suspect the next 5-10 years are going to be pretty tough ones for a lot of people ( ... )

Thread 25

lordbrand April 27 2009, 00:59:21 UTC

Ah, Professor Warren. She's smart and I've seen her talk.

Her observations tend to be good - her solutions and implications, less so.

lordbrand April 27 2009, 01:05:11 UTC

but watching this. I only heard on the financial crisis.

plural April 27 2009, 06:28:22 UTC

I think that is something that one could say we are all rather guilty of.

It is much easier to make observations than pose solutions.

Indeed, in this she seems mostly to be presenting interesting observations rather than solutions.

I'd be interested to hear some of her proposals, as I've found that when smart people propose even poor solutions, they are usually interesting to examine anyway