Nanny State?

I was watching Fox News.  Yes, I watch it sometimes. I also listen to 770 a.m. so that I can get a daily shot of adrenaline.  I get so angry, but I do it nonetheless.  I'm sure my blood pressure is super high as a result, but I'll never know since I don't have health insurance.  I have three jobs, but no health insurance--it's great.  So, I would love to share the clip with you, but I can't find it.  The title was "Nanny State." There were four talking heads criticizing young people--ages 16 to 24--for being unemployed.  Apparently 1 in 5 people in that age group are unemployed.  That's a whopping 20%.  The reason why they're unemployed is not the obvious reason, because they are no jobs.  Rather, it's because young people can easily move in with their parents upon graduating, can apply for food stamps and are now under their parents' health insurance until they are 26.  So, it's because they're lazy.  One of the guests said that young people would do well by digging ditches like immigrants (his words, not mine) to learn a valuable lesson about life.  Then, the ugly guy from capiltalistpig.com said that it's the minimum wage that's keeping young people unemployed.  I started to nod my head, thinking that the minimum wage is too low for young people to sustain themselves.  NOPE.  It's too high, so that small business can't afford to hire more young people.  Of course, I'm no genius, but I would have loved to be on the show to state the obvious:  young people can't find jobs because older people (like me) are taking those jobs.  Why would you hire a 22 year old to do a job if you can find a 30 something year old with a proven track record to do the same.  Furthermore, most young people don't want to go away to college and then move back in with their parents.  Living with your parents is demoralizing.  Young people don't want to live with their parents.  We need to trust that young people, if given a living wage, will quickly move out of their parents' home.  And as for food stamps: if you've applied for food stamps--please tell me here.  I want to hear about it. I know many people who are unemployed and they have not applied for food stamps--they eat lots of tuna and oodles of noodles and manage, somehow.  We don't have unemployment of 20% in the 16 to 24 age range because young people have too much of a safety net.  What parent, in any crisis, would allow their children to become homeless if they didn't have to?

There's a major disconnect in this nation.  People are so caught up in their own success to understand why others are not doing so well.  Walk a mile in someone else's shoes before you criticize and berate others.

Jonathan Hoenig-the Capitalist Pig.

How Would I Raise My Children Differently?

As you all know, and the New York Times has insightfully covered, the Road to Adulthood has grown longer than we could have ever imagined. Unlike our parents, many of us have not bought a home by the time we are 22. We are not usually married by the time we are 24. We are not usually established finished with school until we are 25. We are not usually established in our careers until we are into our 30s. So, we remain in this suspended adolescent state well into our 30s. As you know, your parent's income is figured into your FAFSA form until you are 26 and Obama just passed the Health Care legislation allowing you to remain on your parents insurance until you're 26 as well. Our parents were the alleged selfish yuppies of the 80s, but it is our generation that lives for "me first" until we have time to have children:

National surveys reveal that an overwhelming majority of Americans, including younger adults, agree that between 20 and 22, people should be finished with school, working and living on their own. But in practice many people in their 20s and early 30s have not yet reached these traditional milestones.

This article seems to put the onus of this transformation into lifestyle choices, but I think it's much deeper than that. My mother, the uneducated super business woman, always told me to focus on my education and my career. I didn't even consider settling down until I was 25. Now, nearly 10 years later, I find that I'm unable to. I don't think I could pay for daycare if I had to, and I certainly can't afford to stay home with a child. Who would pay my student loans? My credit card bills?
I'm not mad at my mother for telling me to focus on my career... that was her generation's ideal: the career woman. Now, many of my friends are looked down upon by their mothers for trying to be stay-at-home mothers. The latchkey kids of the nineties and eighties didn't like our childhoods and do not want the same for our children. If I could do it again, I would focus on having a family because my ovaries do not--unlike my brain--function better as I get older.

In the late 1990s, however, parents’ spending patterns began to shift so that the flow of money was greatest when their children were either very young or in their mid-20s.”

More people in their 20s are also living with their parents. About one-fourth of 25-year-old white men lived at home in 2007 — before the latest recession — compared with one-fifth in 2000 and less than one-eighth in 1970.

Well, maybe some of those kids decided to invest in their education to their detriment causing them to move back in with their parents or need their parents assistance to float their lives while they attempt to obtain gainful employment. Just a thought.
It's funny, I used to look down on my peers that decided to stop with just a college education or *GASP* high school. Ironically, all of my seemingly uneducated peers are financially so much better off than I am. I wish that this article would draw more of a connection between the false dreams afforded by a higher education and the financial impact that has made on our "young" people.

More schooling has meant that children have to rely on financial support from their parents. Adults between 18 and 34 received an average of $38,000 in cash and two years’ worth of full-time labor from their parents, or about 10 percent of their income, according to the MacArthur network.

So, I think that we need to do things differently with our children, should they ever materialize. I am planning on focusing my children on skills that they can use to sustain themselves instead of the frivolous pursuits of a higher education. If my child is dead set on studying french or English lit, I will suggest that they do so part-time while working full time in a trade of some sort. As it stands, with the financial set backs of my career--and there have been many--I will not have enough cash to take care of myself, let alone a child who is 34. Oh yah, I will also tell him/her to have babies when they are young. Before 30 for sure. It's not easy to get onto a soccer field in a wheel chair.