POLITICS SCHMALITICS

[oblong]

I also buy into the psychological thought that if you use a card you will spend more than if using cash.  Especially at Target, for those with wives and girlfriends.  Imagine a woman going in there with only 5 $20 bills and no card.  Could it be done?

[Motor City Sonics]

So Elon Mush's Twitter headquarters has no janitors and workers are being told to bring their own toilet paper.    Takeout food containers are piling up and just sitting there and parts of the building smell like a combination of rotting food, overflowing toilets and B.O.    

 

LOL.    Kind of like Mush's mind.      

 

Remember, he was born rich, never built a Lemmydamned thing and has lied about his education.    He's the ultimate Mr. Take Credit.      He lies so much he could run for Congress on Long Island and win. 

[romad1]

 

2 rhetorical birds with 1 stone

[Screwball]

I don't know where to put this, but I found it really interesting. I don't think it really fits with investing, so I didn't want to put it there.

This is a survey published by Prudential Insurance.  ****Warning; the link goes to their webpage, which only shows part of the survey - then you have to download the rest. **** It's 5 pages of mostly graphs and opens in another tab for me using FF.

Generational Gap Grows: Work & Money Outlook Divided (Fact Sheet)

[Tiger337]

1 hour ago, Screwball said:

I don't know where to put this, but I found it really interesting. I don't think it really fits with investing, so I didn't want to put it there.

This is a survey published by Prudential Insurance.  ****Warning; the link goes to their webpage, which only shows part of the survey - then you have to download the rest. **** It's 5 pages of mostly graphs and opens in another tab for me using FF.

Generational Gap Grows: Work & Money Outlook Divided (Fact Sheet)

My question is: Is that a generational thing or an age thing?  The boomers weren't a particularly reponsible bunch when they were younger either ! Young people are unsettled and irresponsible and then they grow up and complain that young people suck!  

[gehringer_2]

1 hour ago, Tiger337 said:

The boomers weren't a particularly reponsible bunch when they were younger either

I'm not sure this is true. The thing to remember about the boomers is that their cultural signatures were provided by a minority of the cohort. Millions of boomers that were never flower children or counter culture kids went off to war, or went from State U to main stream corporate America, especially the older end the cohort. Those rather studious young people got married early, had their kids, and did exactly what the man told Benjamin Braddock to do - they went in to plastics - learned to play golf and made careers. That's why so many of them are deep red repubs today. They been disliking the libs since the long haired kid next to them in math class in '68 tried to crib a test answer (or worse, stole *his* girl!)

Edited January 2, 2023 by gehringer_2

[gehringer_2]

On the cohort topic, this is notable - maybe:

Millennials are not aging into conservatism like older cohorts

Quote

“If you are not a liberal at 25, you have no heart. If you are not a conservative at 35 you have no brain.” So said Winston Churchill. Or US president John Adams. Or perhaps King Oscar II of Sweden. Variations of this aphorism have circulated since the 18th century, underscoring the well-established rule that as people grow older, they tend to become more conservative. The pattern has held remarkably firm. By my calculations, members of Britain’s “silent generation”, born between 1928 and 1945, were five percentage points less conservative than the national average at age 35, but around five points more conservative by age 70. The “baby boomer” generation traced the same path, and “Gen X”, born between 1965 and 1980, are now following suit.

Millennials — born between 1981 and 1996 — started out on the same trajectory, but then something changed. The shift has striking implications for the UK’s Conservatives and US Republicans, who can no longer simply rely on their base being replenished as the years pass.

 

[Tiger337]

10 hours ago, gehringer_2 said:

I'm not sure this is true. The thing to remember about the boomers is that their cultural signatures were provided by a minority of the cohort. Millions of boomers that were never flower children or counter culture kids went off to war, or went from State U to main stream corporate America, especially the older end the cohort. Those rather studious young people got married early, had their kids, and did exactly what the man told Benjamin Braddock to do - they went in to plastics - learned to play golf and made careers. That's why so many of them are deep red repubs today. They been disliking the libs since the long haired kid next to them in math class in '68 tried to crib a test answer (or worse, stole *his* girl!)

You can't make blanket statements about any generation.  Every generation has a lot people that are irresponsible when young.  Maybe the generation that came before the boomers is the exception. They got no breaks at all going through the depression and then WWII. Every generation after that thinks that they had it tough and that the younger generations are too soft.  Let's see where the current young generations are at when they grow old.  

[Screwball]

That survey had absolutely nothing to do with politics.  I honestly don't know how you guys get that stuff from it.  I thought is was some good insight into the current human thought and culture, but I guess it all has to be tribal these days.

[gehringer_2]

1 hour ago, Tiger337 said:

You can't make blanket statements about any generation.  Every generation has a lot people that are irresponsible when young.  Maybe the generation that came before the boomers is the exception. They got no breaks at all going through the depression and then WWII. Every generation after that thinks that they had it tough and that the younger generations are too soft.  Let's see where the current young generations are at when they grow old.  

It's just a pet peeve of mine that the flower children/protesters of the 60/70 are presented historically as the whole representation of their generation when the reality is while there was a big leftward movement driven largely by the War - there were a LOT of boomers and the conventional folks were still the majority of their generation. To understand this correctly takes some of the supposed mystery out of why the Fox News cohort (which is mostly boomers) are what they are. The boomers founded the SDS, but they also were the "Young Republicans for Nixon" and the heart of the 60s-70s Christian Pentacostal movement which laid the groundwork for today's version of Conservative American Evangelicalism.

I suppose part of this disconnect is because in recent culture, the literary and historian classes tend to come primary from liberal arts culture, which sits leftward from the full truth of their own era as they chose to remember and record it.

Edited January 2, 2023 by gehringer_2

[gehringer_2]

36 minutes ago, Screwball said:

That survey had absolutely nothing to do with politics.  I honestly don't know how you guys get that stuff from it.  I thought is was some good insight into the current human thought and culture, but I guess it all has to be tribal these days.

It does dovetail with the FT article though - measures the same sentiment. The FT piece interprets it as the Millennials having far less confidence in conventional ideas about market capitalism because they began their economic lives with the great crash in '09 and this long era of stagnant wage growth. That has affected both their actual economic security (as noted in the Pru  survey) and their sense of their potential economic future outlook. But that sense also has political fallout because it will be a big factor in how they vote.

Edited January 2, 2023 by gehringer_2

[mtutiger]

From the milennial perspective, a lot of us came of age and entered into the work force at a pretty Godawful time (ie. Between 2007-2012). Jobs were more scarce and, as far as leverage for positions go, there wasn't a lot, which I suspect is part of why Gen-Z does a little better in that poll, as employees do have more leverage now.

I know from experience (anecdotal, but still) that the entry level position I hired into coming out in 2012 would have paid a decent amount more had I come out in 2018 or after as well. Just a lot more competition for fewer job openings back then... and it's not hard to see how the difference in entry-level salaries can have lasting consequences in terms of career earning potential.

I'm sure these will be taken as excuses, not necessarily intended to be but more of an explanation of some of the legit stressors that exist for this cohort. 

Edited January 2, 2023 by mtutiger

[Tiger337]

39 minutes ago, Screwball said:

That survey had absolutely nothing to do with politics.  I honestly don't know how you guys get that stuff from it.  I thought is was some good insight into the current human thought and culture, but I guess it all has to be tribal these days.

"You guys?" I hope I am not included in that as I never mentioned politics at all!  

 

[gehringer_2]

12 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

"You guys?" I hope I am not included in that as I never mentioned politics at all!  

 

no - the segue to the political take was the Millenial economics aspect that was a common thread connecting both the survey in SB's post and survey work reported the FT article I linked. We are afterall, in a thead called 'Politics Schmaltics'!

Edited January 2, 2023 by gehringer_2

[mtutiger]

16 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

no - the segue to the political take was the Millenial economics aspect that was a common thread connecting both the survey in SB's post and survey work reported the FT article I linked. We are afterall, in a thead called 'Politics Schmaltics'!

Econimics are a part of the politics piece of the breakdown between Millennials/Gen-Z and the GOP, but culture as well as just the fact that the GOP in general is more of a grievance-oriented party versus a solutions-oriented party are a pretty big piece of the puzzle as well.

I dont think millennials or Gen-Z love the Democratic Party... but when placed in a lineup next to the party that spends the bulk of their time vice signaling on culture war issues and either ignoring or denying outright the existance of actual problems versus proposing solutions (ie. climate change), among other things, it's not hard to see how they struggle with these groups.

Edited January 2, 2023 by mtutiger

[Tiger337]

22 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

 We are afterall, in a thead called 'Politics Schmaltics'!

That is true.  

[Screwball]

1 hour ago, Tiger337 said:

"You guys?" I hope I am not included in that as I never mentioned politics at all!  

 

Noted and I stand corrected.

[Screwball]

This part kind of stuck out to me;

 

Some have zero emergency savings, but know more about managing their finances than an advisor, and look to social media for advice.

Maybe that isn't such a good idea?

[Tiger337]

11 minutes ago, Screwball said:

This part kind of stuck out to me;

 

Some have zero emergency savings, but know more about managing their finances than an advisor, and look to social media for advice.

Maybe that isn't such a good idea?

Using social media for advice isn't usually a good idea. but part of the problem is there have been so many dishonest financial advisors working for dishonest companies that people don't trust them anymore.  Financial advisors are useful if you can find the right one though.  I currently have a self directed account which is good because I do most of my planning myself without paying fees, but I have access to advisors who can do things like find the best short-term CD for me.  

Edited January 2, 2023 by Tiger337

[1984Echoes]

I think the issue is that financial advisors are expensive and therefore anyone with no money searches for advice where it costs no money.

[1984Echoes]

... for better or for worse.

Mostly worse.

[Tiger337]

2 minutes ago, 1984Echoes said:

I think the issue is that financial advisors are expensive and therefore anyone with no money searches for advice where it costs no money.

That is probably the biggest problem, but another thing is there are a lot of advisors who try to pressure people into poor investments because it benefits them.  

[gehringer_2]

the other thing is you have to know what kind of lines of credit they have available. If you have been a good CC risk and they have given you a $20K line of credit, or if you have a mortgage backed line of credit, having an actual 'emergency' cash fund is a lot less important than when that advice was first promugated as conventional wisdom in the days before credit cards even existed. So I'd want to know the specifics of how the question was asked. If you had specifically asked me that Q almost any time in my working career, the exact answer about cash emergency funds would have been 'no', but I always had sufficent credit available if I had to make an emergency purchase/expense. I've never left any quantity of cash just sitting around.

That said, there is no question too many people have neither sufficent savings nor assets nor  good credit, but I would take that mostly as due to decline in middle class income availability across the economy.

 

Edited January 2, 2023 by gehringer_2

[1984Echoes]

1 minute ago, Tiger337 said:

That is probably the biggest problem, but another thing is there are a lot of advisors who try to pressure people into poor investments because it benefits them.  

Two different issues though...

Those without money have nowhere reputable to turn to... because that costs money and they don't have it (point I'm making).

And those who get money are jumping into shark-infested waters; which I believe is where your point carries weight.

[gehringer_2]

22 minutes ago, 1984Echoes said:

Those without money have nowhere reputable to turn to... because that costs money and they don't have it (point I'm making).

Not completely the case. Our credit union offeres all kinds of seminars on saving, investing, retirement that are free, aimed at people without a lot of assets and as far as I have seem, offer pretty sound advice. It's true a small investor is not going to get any reputable professional advisor to spend one-on-one time with them for what they can afford to pay for it, but there are resources out there. 

Maybe the bigger problem is that too many people don't have enough initial knowledge to bootstrap themselves into being able to recognize good advice from bad on their first attempt to learn something when they are most likely to be preyed upon.