[K-Dog]

I make a separate post to comment on exponential housing.

The number of commercial buildings which have been built in the last ten years have enough floor space to house all of WA States homeless population.  I am not saying the space should, this is a raw observation about floor space only.  A measurement.  A measurement which says the physical ability to keep up with housing needs is not a material consideration.  It is a political issue and exponential growth has nothing to do with it.

The floor space I mention uses polished concrete metal and exotic woods.  Metal studs are used in the walls and high end HVAC moderates climate.  This is expensive floor space and not the kind of floor space that is used in residential construction generally.  However high end Seattle Homes are built to the same standards now.  It is what inequality does don't you know.

Working every weekend enterprising men used to build their own homes in about five years.  Every weekend and after work.  As soon as part of it was habitable a family would move in.  Building homes that way keeps up with exponential growth because everyone builds their own home.  All excess money went into building materials, but in the 70's building materials were cheap enough that a working man could buy building materials almost as fast as he could use them.  Sometimes work would have to pause while money was earned.

Without subsidy no way does a working man earn money to buy building materials now.  A particular demographic used the build your own trick.  Clock punchers who did not have regular overtime and earned a union wage.  Salaried people had a hard time finding the time.  Building your own was not something everyone could do, but some could and that is my point.  Human labor can keep up with housing needs.

In a rational society.

[K-Dog]

No doubt, there are deadbeat, ne'er-do-well bums in every generation who never move out and remain as parasite on their parents for their entire lives, not just in their 20s.  This article isn't about them.  It's about 20 somethings who went to college, have jobs and STILL can't afford to move out.

RE

I understand what you are saying but I have a dimmer view of human nature than you do so I do not agree.  The average person is about as creative as a 180 lb parrot.  Monkey see, monkey do defines human behavior.  Deadbeat, ne'er-do-well bums now hide in plain sight in a way which would have been intolerable in the past.

Thrill seeking is a mark of the ne'er-do-well, and America society in general has been reduced to thrill seeking.  Thrill seeking does not have to be as dramatic as parachuting out of airplanes.  It can be as simple as keeping a bar stool warm every night.  It can be as simple as having a 'bucket list'.  It is endless pursuit of pleasure and avoidance of responsibility.  It is consumerism.  I am what I use, and the experiences I have.  That is all I am.  A cog in a machine that defecates.

In this post I point no fingers at the ne'er-do-well.  Society in general has lost its way and the sad fact is most people, all of us at some time, need leaders.

People need structure.  It is a fact and some need more structure than others.  If the social goal is to live no differently than the ne'er-do-well at the end of life, more of the ne'er-do-well we shall have.  People copy, it is what people do.  Give them bad shit to copy and that is exactly what they will do.

Give them a bad leader and they follow.

Adolph before he fell with his fellow misfits was a total slacker who never had a job.  All he could do was couch surf.  As fate would have it, his talent as a speaker made him spokesman for a movement.  He never actually did any work himself.  Hitler wrote Mein Kampf with a guidance and help under pressure.  The way Trump would write a book.  The following photos show Hitler in prison when he told 'his story'.  Hitler was not capable of controlling himself enough to write Mein Kampf by himself.  He had to be kept on track.

 

Prison was a well kept apartment with visitors.  He was given a typewriter and shown how to use it.  Hitler was in truth, a deranged slacker with mental issues.  A magnet that attracted other deranged, with unfortunately far more actual talent.

Talent enough to sell a promise.  It was propaganda.  German factories were tooled for the military.  The 'people's car' was propaganda.

No German family would ever buy one.  Collapse came first, but that is not really the half of it.  The NAZI three ring circus was built on credit and the only way to not pay the bill was to start a war.  The bill was coming due. 
     The parallel money system which fueled military build up (and stimulated the economy) required redemption or the industrialists would not continue to welcome Nazi script which could only be used for business purposes.  Propaganda hid the working poor.  The war had to be started before everything was in place.  Before the NAZI Ponzi was exposed.  Hitler planned war, but Hitler's economic ponzi scheme really decided that war had to start when it did.

My NAZI shit takes the discussion in a different direction.  Returning to the slacker issue.  I go back to your original article.  Your original article ignores the corrosive effects of the situation in the same way that the corrosive effects of isolation on school age children during COVID was ignored.  We live in a petri-dish that produces dispossessed people by the millions.  Some shoot up schools if you do not believe me.  An article that only talks about economics regarding a social situation is brain dead.  Let that be your guide.

[RE]

Fair enough, that is a good point about CRE.  Also true is luxury housing is overbuilt.

However, if you look at Japan where the population has actually been shrinking, not just growing slower, they have the opposite problem, whole towns with empty, overgrown houses.  It's also true in Italy, where they're selling houses for €1 that have been sitting empty.

So there's definitely a correlation between population growth and housing availability.  Also true that the DIY housebuilder is a dying breed, though NF here bucked the trend with that building his Doomstead.  He is of course in the building trades as a profession though, and not a white collar corporate drone.  DIY at all levels has nearly vanished, planned obsolescence and increasing complexity squeezed that nearly out of existence.  Back in the 50s & 60s, guys spent all their time working on their cars, that's where the term "Greasers" came from, for Grease Monkey.  When they started dropping computer chips in cars and you needed expensive diagnostic equipment to fix it, you had to bring it to the shop.  Now with Teslas, the shops can't even fix the batts.  TV repair shops are gone, when your Big Screen TV dies, you buy a new one.

So, yes, there are choices involved which have made the situation worse, but it remains true that new housing isn't being built fast enough, because housing for poor people isn't profitable.  Population growth has resulted in many more poor people than new rich people.  Rich people have just gotten richer, there aren't more of them by percentage.

RE

[K-Dog]

New housing isn't being built fast enough, because housing for poor people isn't profitable.

That is my point.  A fact that is remedied by political will with material conditions regarding the ability to actually build shelter not being an issue.  Think of the cults that build big communal apartments.  While the preachers shares holy communion with the women, the the men build.



Before it was burned to the ground with people inside by the ATF, the community had built shelter.

[RE]

True, but what is it that sapped Political Will from every last industrialized country on earth, from the FSoA to Oz, from the UK & Norway to France and Germany?  We had Political Will in the 60s for the Great Society, public housing was built in cities from NY to London to Paris.  Not very good housing, but it was built.  Could it be that Political Will is Directly Proportional to Per Capita Available Energy?  What is PCAE proportional to?  Population size and Resource availability.  Increasing Population & Decreasing Resources--->Decreasing Political Will---->Decreasing Affordable Housing.

Not only did it sap Political Will, it sapped the desire to procreate as well.  That's the psychological effect of over-population.  Political Will has been decreasing at an Exponential rate as well.  The worse the problems get, the less will there is to make the changes necessary to fix them.  That's the Inverse Proportionality you get from population overshoot.

RE

[RE]

Here's an example of the inability to build enough infrastructure in a city built on the Suburban model and the use of the automobile with the rapid population increase.

Old cities like NY or Mexico City built before the automobile have had 8M people, and 20M in the surrounding Metroplex for decades.  DFW however is a sprawling metropolis of 2 cities combined, Dallas and Fort Worth all hooked together by ribbons of interstate highways and a ring road.



There's no real public transportation to speak of.  Distances are so vast even cycling around means you have to be a touring cyclist.  The city planning of ring road and N-S, E-W connectors was used all over the FSoA beginning in the 1950s with the Eisenhower Interstate. Atlanta, Indianapolis, St. Louis and Oklahoma City all have similar plans.  Here is Atlanta's famous "Spaghetti Junction":



There's no more room to widen roads to accomodate more carz.  They would have to make the main thoroughfares double-decker, but even that wouldn't work because the local roads would all be overwhelmed.  I drove all these roads in my big rig 30 years ago.  The traffic was bad then.  I can't imagine how bad it is now.

This is REAL Limits to Growth.

https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/dfw-cannot-build-out-of-traffic-troubles/3546490/

DFW Metroplex cannot 'build out' of traffic troubles

RE

[TDoS]

Children who do not leave home do not contribute to maintaining the home or offsetting expenses.

Says who? I understand the rule of us geriatrics not discussing "them", but this statement makes no sense in light of experience.

[K-Dog]

Children who do not leave home do not contribute to maintaining the home or offsetting expenses.

Says who? I understand the rule of us geriatrics not discussing "them", but this statement makes no sense in light of experience.

Says me, and we need the whole quote.

Children who do not leave home do not contribute to maintaining the home or offsetting expenses.  There is no magic moment when they have an epiphany telling them it is time to stop being a useless eater and pull their weight.

Road to Damascus moments are never a given, so there really is not much to defend here.  We are living in a time where the necessities in life are taken for granted.  Previous generations had more of a 'but for the grace of god go we' sort of attitude.  They were pragmatic, and while superstitious they did not believe in magic.  Like stuff just happens.
    Growing up in the geriatric generation and living at home with your parents meant you were a 'wuse'.  Something was wrong with you , and you were shunned.  People who did not take care of their own shit were looked down upon.  But somewhere in our land of unearned riches this all changed.  Once working kids were shown the door at 18.  That was the way it was.  Graduate high school and you were on your own.  You were no longer a child, you were an adult.  Like it or not.  Now things have changed, and a free ride is not looked down upon.
    Society moved into phase where the values of individual work and sacrifice represented by previous generations are considered outdated and irrelevant by current culture.  Consumption and instant gratification now define American values.  This has been true for a while, but we have entered a terminal phase.

    Concerning the need for the whole quote.

There is no magic moment when they have an epiphany

    Circumstances make men.  In extended adolescence men cannot be made.

* Your personal experience may be different, and that is fine.  My statement is a sweeping generalization of social conditions and is not meant to be personal.  In personal circumstances YMMV.  Specifically my statement came from the results of a study that examined how much children who worked but lived at home contributed to the household compared to those who lived at home without a job.  Those who worked contributed in all ways more than young men who did not, and we are not talking about money.  This is a studied fact.



And my sweeping generalization is factual. 

[RE]

In the Vietnam era, college went from something only the children of the elite attend to a requirement for getting any kind of white collar job.  Many new community colleges opened up which didn't have dorms.   Then in the 80s they raised the drinking age from 18 to 21.  This effectively extended adolescence from 18 to 21.

In the 00's, to get a good white collar job you needed a minimum of a Master's, plus the housing market got tight.  Finish your MS you're ~25 and loaded with debt.  You move back home while you job search.  If you're lucky you find a job that pays enough to afford an apartment after 1-2yrs at home.  You're 26 if everything went smooth and you didn't take a year off to see the world.

RE

[TDoS]

There is no magic moment when they have an epiphany

Circumstances make men.  In extended adolescence men cannot be made.
* Your personal experience may be different, and that is fine.

This I can buy. As my personal experience is NOT different.

Circumstances most certainly made me the man I am today. Age of 19 I believe, so the timing of your overall argument seems reasonable.

[monsta666]

Getting established i.e. getting a good job that pays well, a house and all the big milestones that are associated with adulthood is getting harder. Even if one is hardworking and willing to do the grind it is not likely you will be able to complete these steps before you are in your 30s. I am not convinced this generation is less mature than previous ones. People are simply a product of their times and given the lack of opportunities it is harder to get ahead. This lack of opportunities can also lead to people simply abandoning common convention aka the journey of life.

What I mean by the journey of life is people no longer see the point in owning a house, the value of car ownership is less important today than it was in the 80s. From what I have heard this is true even in the youth of the US. More and more people are eschewing kids and marriage as the costs (financial, emotional) are too high. To some this refusal to follow lifes common path may be seen as act of immaturity but to others is simply a practical decision given the circumstances of the time. I don't think people are extrinsically less mature than before; they are simply responding to the prevailing conditions of today. The way they are acting is going against the historic norms and it is this decision not to follow the "chosen path" that is what make people question their maturity.

Maybe it is doom in me that is speaking but I think this environment is actually hostile to people forming families having kids and housing all your family in one big home. Just look what was said in the previous posts; you now need a degree even a masters to get something that resembles a middle class job. After that you need a few years of hard work to get yourself on a sound financial footing. Now ask me after doing all that how old will you be?

After you achieve all that you then need to save for a deposit on a house and if you are lucky (unlucky?) save for a wedding. My bet is after you achieve all that you will be in your early to mid 30s. Now if you are a woman how many years of fertility would you have left? This idea of having a white picket fence home, 2.1 kids and a dog just gets harder and harder to get as time passes.

Let's not forget the costs of raising a child (never mind several) is skyrocketing. As much as people look fondly on free range children it is simply not tolerated in modern society, children MUST be supervised at all times and you will be sent to child services if you let them loose without adult supervision too often. At the very least people will look down on your neglectful parenting style. Guess what? Clubs and child minders etc cost a bomb.

The fact this is a global phenomenon should tell you this is a systemic issue and is an not issue simply rooted in the youth being immature. It is a common past time to bash the young but I think those thoughts are largely mistaken and short sighted as people making such judgements often fail to consider all the aspects that are in play these days. This whole swing to right/populist voting is a big sign people (on a deep level) see the system as broken. The insane cost of living is a product of overpopulation which is again a problem of decreasing per capita energy consumption. You can't resolve these problems no matter what politician you install. Problem is penny hasn't dropped on last point for most of society. Given what is happening now I can only wonder what people will do when they realize the economy is broken on a fundamental level...

[RE]

Given 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

[TDoS]

Given 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.

I'm more interested in K-Dogs point of view, as you and Monsta appear to be generalizing about children, as opposed to personal experience.

I think Monsta's overall view, based on likely/unlikely is reaosnable, but the chosen probability expression is not definitive. I do believe things might be harder for the younger generations, and most of the speculation Monsta has done seems reasonable. K-Dog and I both mght offer a fine tuning of the concepts obviously, for better or worse.

Certainly a direct determining factor is that children are not raised in a vacuum, or by society at large. Parents themselves are a variable that can't be ignored, or discounted. They alone could make the difference between a normal, likely outcome as expressed by Monsta...or most certainly not. Quite the independent variable in the mix, and one with the ability to completely skew the results even with the more difficult conditions of today (however we might describe "difficult").

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?

Or a direct result of parents who know well what you just wrote...and tip the scales in the favor of their children.

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.

From personal experience I can't say this is an absolute. Like a farm boy without a pot to piss in decades ago could go to college any other way.

A potential Illuminati Prince undoubtly might think such things are unncessary....poor farm boys certainly didn't have anyone unrolling a college education without debt in front of them...even in "way back" times.

[RE]

A potential Illuminati Prince undoubtly might think such things are unncessary....

Your narrative of my childhood is a complete fiction.

My parents are both Depression era children of poor immigrants.  My father was the first person to go to college of anyone on both sides.  He went to Pace College in NYC on the GI Bill.  He got into the Executivee Training Program at Chase with 2 other guys.  When I was born, we lived in an attached house in the working class section of Queens.  Lower middle class salary at the time.

He made it to VP in the International Dept and was posted to Brazil.  On an American ssalary in the 60s you could hire poor domestic help from the favelas.  This was as close to Illuminati as I got in those years.  My parents split up while in Brazil, and my mom brought me back to NY where we lived in a 1 1 bedroom apt.  She had $500 to live on until the divorce got finalized.  My dad put the down payment on a house in Queens, which my mom struggled to pay off for 25 years as a clerical worker with a HSE  Education.

When college came round, my dad welshed on paying for it, so I had to work-study and take loans to supplement my scholarship.  Had I known he was going to do that, I would have gone to CUNY. not Columbia.  I was always broke.

There was no silver spoon for me growing up in Queens, I mowed lawns and delivered groceries on my bike for spending money. It was an hour and a half commute each way on the subway for me to go to Stuyvesant.  I couldn't join any after school clubs or activities because it took so long.  I had virtually no friends.  Basically, life sucked from age 10 to 16 for me.  When I finally got out to go to college, I went wild with drugs and girls.  School was easy for me, mostly I didn't go to class just crammed for tests.

Anyhow my life has nothing to do with the problems of the current generation, and neither does yours.

RE

[TDoS]

A potential Illuminati Prince undoubtly might think such things are unncessary....

Your narrative of my childhood is a complete fiction.

If memory serves, you were the one who mentioned being "groomed" by the Illuminati. I remembered the word. I believe it was of a reference to what happened sometime during your high school years?

Anything I know about your background in any way came from you personally.

He made it to VP in the International Dept and was posted to Brazil.  On an American ssalary in the 60s you could hire poor domestic help from the favelas.  This was as close to Illuminati as I got in those years.  My parents split up while in Brazil, and my mom brought me back to NY where we lived in a 1 1 bedroom apt.  She had $500 to live on until the divorce got finalized.  My dad put the down payment on a house in Queens, which my mom struggled to pay off for 25 years as a clerical worker with a HSE  Education. When college came round, my dad welshed on paying for it, so I had to work-study and take loans to supplement my scholarship.  Had I known he was going to do that, I would have gone to CUNY. not Columbia.  I was always broke. There was no silver spoon for me growing up in Queens, I mowed lawns and delivered groceries on my bike for spending money. It was an hour and a half commute each way on the subway for me to go to Stuyvesant.  I couldn't join any after school clubs or activities because it took so long.  I had virtually no friends.  Basically, life sucked from age 10 to 16 for me.  When I finally got out to go to college, I went wild with drugs and girls.  School was easy for me, mostly I didn't go to class just crammed for tests.

Remember when we discussed my recent experience with suits? You mentioned your extensive experience with them as a young man, how your father had taken you with him to all sorts of meetings and whatnot where you learned about them and their characteristics and whatnot?

How did this work out in between mowing lawns and being broke and delivering groceries? 3 hours of commuting during the school week? The pirate radio? No time for after school activities....but heading out to watch big deals get done with dad happened enough to teach you all you needed to know about suits?

I always thought that sort of backed up your Illuminati grooming claim in your high school and college years, as opposed to now where it is like....where did you even find the TIME?

Anyhow my life has nothing to do with the problems of the current generation, and neither does yours.
RE

Oh, I agree to some extent, but I do have experience with the current generation up close and personal. You never spawned, so you are free and clear of it all. But the "problems" of the current generations aren't a given, as Monsta said they fall into the probability of "more likely than unlikely", and there is that parent factor. No, not just the rich versus poor angle, but the REAL parents versus another brand of helicopter ones, or those who didn't even want the kids in the first place. Hey, post Vietnam sex stopped being a dirty word and abortions were legal and it was all smoking reefer and whatever other hedonistic lifestyles came along. As did the consequences of free love and birth control and...I dunno....more idiot adults having kids?

Sure, things got more expensive in terms of raising them and whatnot (EVERYTHING got more expensive, not just kid raising), but I find it hard to discount the behavior of the prior generations raising them as part of the causal factor here.