Quote from: monsta666 on Feb 21, 2025, 11:26 PMGiven what is happening now I can only wonder what people will do when they realize the economy is broken on a fundamental level...
By the time most of them realize it, it will be too late to do much more than roll over and die.
As you might suspect from my prior post on this topic, we both see this from the same POV. For the most part, the lengthening time for a person to become independent of their parents is a direct result of the economic barriers presented by all the so-called "markers" of maturity. Buying a house and raising kids is EXPENSIVE. If you're reasonably intelligent and pragmatic, you won't do either one until you are pretty certain you'll be able to afford it long term. How secure is your new career and potential for advancement.? How stable is the general economy around you?
Besides economics, on the social end the women also are beginning careers, since even if you plan on marriage and kids, you'll need 2 incomes to save for the down payment. So again, how long out of school does it take to establish yourself in some profession so you're not entry-level? Say 5 years. So if you got your Master's at 25, you're 30 before you could think of taking maybe 2 years off for the 1st kid, which has a learning curve of its own. So why get married before you're ready to put one in the oven? There's no other real good reason to tie yourself up with a marriage contract, just live together.
Finally, back on the economic end there's the Elephant in the Room. Student Debt. No prior generation has had to start out with such a huge hole to dig out of. Only the children of 1%ers who at least helped to keep the tally under 6 figures can get out from under that in less than a decade. I talked with the dentist here, both she and her partner who is also a dentist are almost 30 and still have a combined debt over $100K left to pay off. Probably 5 more years before they have enough to sytart their own practice. They won't buy a house until after that.
The fact this is a systemic problem should be obvious from the fact the situation is the same in all the industrialized countries. Unless you come from rich parents, getting started in life takes a LONG time.
RE