Who needs retirement savings if the world’s going to fall apart?
(Those who believe Big Gov are also those who expect to get government help when they need it).
Climate change is the ultimate multipurpose excuse for pretty much anything you want:
Young people blame climate change for their small 401(k) balances
by Kari Paul
Like many people her age, Rodriguez believes climate change will have catastrophic effects on our planet. Some 88% of millennials — a higher percentage than any other age group — accept that climate change is happening, and 69% say it will impact them in their lifetimes. Engulfed in a constant barrage of depressing news stories, many young people are skeptical about saving for an uncertain future.
Rodriguez says. “The weather systems are already off, and I don’t think it’s hyperbolic to be a little apocalyptic.”
Being raised on climate propaganda might not be good for your health:
The number of individuals between the ages of 18 and 25 reporting symptoms of major depression increased 52% from 2005 to 2017, while older adults did not experience any increase in psychological stress at this time,
But it could be another catastrophe that really is to blame
“What happened in 2008 was an incredible financial flashpoint for millennials,” he says. “After watching their parents lose a job or a home, millennials are contending with a deep distrust for financial institutions and the stock market. That brings out catastrophic thinking, because they’ve already seen a catastrophe.”
Don’t trust “capitalism” but do trust “government committees”?
The number of millennials who view capitalism positively fell from 68% in 2010 to just 45% in 2017.
Perhaps climate change is partly to blame because it has pushed up energy prices. As people run out of disposable income to pay higher energy prices they may not have any money to save.
h/t Pat
Or it could be that the path from childhood to adulthood, while delayed a few years, is pretty much the same as it has always been.
Party young, add responsibility with aging. Each generation relearning the same lessons for themselves. The delay in assuming the mantle of being a responsible adult is due to an increase in the wealth lavished on children, accompanied by an increase in expected lifespan and a longer work period for us, delaying work force entry for the next generation. When expectancy was 35, we were adults at 14 and parents at 16. When you marry and have kids, you start to consider the future and save for it when able, often most seriously when the kids leave home.
Sometimes, there is a need to flog climate change, and any old story will do.
271
Yes it’s wonderful what having a wife, a mortgage and a couple of kids does for a man’s thinking.
200
“Are you married Zorba?
“Wife, children, house, everything. The full catastrophe”
IIRC
90
Sort of! ‘Wife, house, children, everything. The full catastrophe’.
I watched the film countless times, read the book umpteen times and played the LP over and over again as I love the music by Mikis Theodorakis. The film was very abbreviated and changed the end of the story (annoyingly, just as happened in Dr Zhivago). Those two books are my favourites of all time, along with one other.
I hope those youngsters grow up a bit once they have responsibilities. It is too easy for them to demand everything new and expensive. They need to get real. Advertising and soft parenting don’t help and AGW/CC/whatever is a good excuse not to bother saving…as good as any I guess.
120
Moderated, can’t quite see why, but never mind! ‘Tis of no consequence 🙂
40
Annie
Good to see a sceptic testing the envelope
50
Given the excoriation and financial ruin the family law system inflicts I am surprised young men choose to engage anymore. I have been watching the MGTOW movement grow and with the above, metoo and rabid feminism its hardly a surprise.
130
The whole climate nonsense is a form of evil ritual abuse.
Its messed with and distroted peoples thinking, caused depression and hysteria. I’m not surprised people have given up.
At times like this , I’m very glad I have my Christian faith.
120
I can tell you in a few words how I got through being a young married man on less than starvation wages — or so I thought. I got through, actually we got through by being ignorant of the magnitude of the disaster we would have if I suddenly lost that job. And so, not knowing any better, I simply went to work to improve my situation. If you believe you have no future, then you have no future. If you believe you can make something worthwhile out of yourself, then you can and you do.
The nonsense being thrown around these days that the millennials have it so bad is pure imagination. AOC would have you believe that she and her supporters have suffered great loss because they don’t live in $10,000,000 mansions and have everything they want given to them. Yet they have lived all their lives in prosperity that my parents could not even dream of. What’s happened is that the standard of want and suffering has been raised up and they don’t know what real want and suffering is all about. When I was growing up no one lived off of a government check, had subsidized housing, drove a new car or watched an expensive TV set paid for by the taxpayers. They worked or starved. They were lucky to afford to have a phone at all much less carry around an 8 or $900 iPhone. And I was nearly without a phone myself, something unheard of today.
And if they want to know why my generation holds them in contempt it’s because they do not settle down and work to achieve what they want but go about complaining loudly and planning to subvert the very nation that made what they’re doing possible.
Bernie Sanders is equally remiss. As far as I can tell he’s been a freeloader all his life and has never held a worthwhile job. He’s made himself wealthy the same way any charlatan does. He cheats and lies his way through life freeloading everywhere he can. And he built himself a following the same way any one else has done it — you tell people they have a problem and only you know how to solve it — now put some money in the pot please.
Why do we put up with these people? We should be tossing them put of town covered with tar and feathers, not listening to them.
If they ever achieve what the want they will descend into real poverty and want again because wealth does not grow on trees or roll off of a printing press. It has to be created in the form of goods or services that others will buy voluntarily.
60
And you already knew that, didn’t you? And the people who need to read that won’t get near this blog so all I’ve done is repeat the obvious.
40
The source for this is US based.
And in the USA there Global Financial Crisis
Was a wrecking ball for millions of people.
But here in Oz the GFC
Was NOT that important
Ruddles and Swaney actually
Implemented policies that prevented
The chaos that occurred in the USA.
So in my opinion in Australia,
This is fake news story.
Pity it was run on an
Australian based blog.
34
That’s true.
Three things:
1. Australia is probably worse off as a result of not having a (mild) recession in 2007. We got Labor’s massive debt load to carry and pay down – $450 billion last time I looked. In addition, the younger generation didn’t get a lesson in reality and will probably pay for it in the future.
2. Last I heard, in Australia the oldies were whinging about the youngies wanting everything now; new MacMansions, new furniture, new car, holidays os, etc. The chorus was: they never had to tea boxes as tables, or sit on bean-bags, or use sheets for curtains, until they had the money to do a bit better.
3. I know my super account wasn’t too flash when I was 35 and buying a house in the suburbs and eating off tea boxes for tables. It got a lot better as time went by though.
House first, school fees next, superannuation accumulation last. And that’s the problem with the government’s now neutered superannuation plan – the restrictions on before tax contributions constrain those who follow a sequence different to the one mandated government.
120
Sam, Perth, Sydney, Brisbane & Melbourne
Have all had another recession
Such as you wish for since 2016.
But not anywhere so bad as happened in the USA
Meanwhile the rest of us have muddled along
Without your desired wrecking ball.
For that I thank Ruddles & Swaney.
02
My only cavil is that you’re forgetting that this is the first generation whose members will increasingly predecease their parents.
40
And That Is Tragic.
And That Is An Indication That Something In Our Society Needs Fixing.
KK
40
Thanks to the declining microbiome, because of antibiotics mostly. Babies inherit their mums microbiome and then have it degraded more by antibiotics, and then produce kids of their own with worse microbiomes. The worse a pregnant mums microbiome is, the more susceptible to harm the foetus is from environmental and dietary factors. Young people now have more acne, bad teeth, body odour and other signs of infection than ever before – bad brain health especially. Inflamed brains are affected much more by environmental factors like mobile and wireless radiation.
30
Having seen, experienced and reflected on two major supermarket “Crashes” in my working life I would endorse anyone’s hesitation in trusting their hard earned cash to the “Market”.
Both 1987 and 2008 were years of infamy in world morality.
If you don’t understand what governments do to the serfs find out about Australia’s Very Fast Trading which milks and slims from Australian shares and Super Funds. Why should Australian shares oscillate 5% in “value” over the space of a few days?
There’s a strong link between the Global Warming Catastrophe and Sharemarket Shenanigans.
We need a new Federal Ministry from Scomo that examines Truth and Honestly in public institutions like the share market and banking and publicly funded institutions like the United Bloody Nations.
Honesty and goodwill towards your fellow man will only exist when there is a justifiable fear that corruption will be exposed and punished.
Serf No 8708.
KK
171
Supermarket = share market.
Slims = skims
60
As an addendum, if I recall correctly, London voted to Remain in the Elitist EUROPEAN UNION. I wonder why? Banking? share trading?
160
Also the UK center for
Young globalist tertiary educated
Know nothings
Keith !
110
YES!
40
KK:
We also need a new Ministry that examines truth and honesty in such public institutions such as government, media, and education.
150
Excellent.
This new ministry is going to be very busy.
KK
60
Going on usual practice then it will need lots of staff to reduce individual work-loads (/s in case)
40
We can call it; The Ministry of Truth.
20
WRt your “Ministry of Truth”
A friend had a way with words. His response to a tall story could be that the teller was
“administering truth serum” or
“slipping a drug into you”
20
Don, if we did that we would also need to cut about five existing ministries – the present government is much too fat and needs slimming down starting with anything to do with climate and environment.
140
Yes!!!!
40
I think the Ministry of Truth has been done already
60
Yes indeed !
Back in 1984 !
50
The irony is that millennials seem to trust government, yet it was government that caused GFC by forcing banks to give risky loans and then allowing it to spiral out of control. I wonder if those who undertook this research made any attempt to explain to the millennials what actually happened?
110
Wasn’t it President Clinton who pushed government sponsored lending bodies to lend to people with no chance of supporting the loan?
Freddie and Fanny?
https://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/23/business/23freddie.html
A total catastrophe.
KK
220
It was indeed.
And here’s another potential reason for our young not to save: https://www.theage.com.au/business/companies/altona-site-to-shut-union-sounds-jobs-alarm-on-gas-crisis-20190528-p51s2s.html. Without jobs, thanks to renewable energy, how can one save?
200
The gas crisis is a clear case of Political action being counter to the best interests of Australia for the sole purpose of benefiting “friends”.
More profit when sold overseas.
100
That Dow plant has been shutting for years – they just needed an excuse to finally close the door!
10
Yes. And it was Hawke who first deregulated the banks and then strenuously promoted abuse of that deregulation by Bond and others including three of our big four banks.
Every prudent businessman knew that what they were doing had to lead to a crash. The crash was deliberate! However the Marxists were outsmarted and failed to gain control.
40
Not Hawke,
It was Keating
The arrogant enlightened
Ar*eh*le
Who wanted us all
To put a stake through
Dutton’s heart
Two weeks ago.
60
Centralised banks use Fractional Reserve Banking rules to devalue the dollar through financial crashes and profit by taking real property. This can be engineered in many ways and sometimes it’s obvious like Freddie and Fannie. Grabbermint then blames the banks and promises the serfs they’ll fix the mess they secretly helped engineer just to garner support. At every turn these crooks need your “vote”, “support” or “consent” to operate and take everything you have.
40
The funny thing is that your story makes it sound like “the world is ending so why save for retirement”. The reality may be that millennials are the unwitting source of funds for government programs they participate in and generally support so are now tapped out just trying to make ends meet. Consider in the US the share of state budgets going to Medicaid for the poor has skyrocketed over the last 30 years. Where did the state find the funds? The state reduced the share of state money that supported public colleges and universities so the millenials have to take out Federal Student loans with high interest rates to make ends meet. Then there’s the US healthcare system where millenials are forced to pay higher rates than their risk pool would dictate so that older people’s insurance costs are lower. IF that’s not enough, anyone on a private health insurance plan pays about 20-25% more to cover underpayments for people on the U.S. Governments Medicaid and Medicare plans. Now there’s action they demand on climate change which means higher prices for fuel and electricity. Millennials have been the gift that keeps on giving for those who believe in big government but these 23-38 year-olds need to wake up and realize that the source of much of the governments largess is them.
91
If the US stopped spending money on arms they would be relatively rich.
211
A change in the expenditure of less than 4% of your GDP is not the difference between “relatively rich” and “not relatively rich”.
“Relatively”, the US is a rich nation anyway. It is only the socialist fantasy that nations can afford everything they dream of if only they would spend the taxpayer dollar in the “right” places.
70
Dont think its the arms so much. Its more when they go and use them. A billion her and a billion there, pretty soon you are talking real money.
41
Total US defence spending, including wages and support for around half a million personnel, is still only 3.6% of GDP.
There are no mountains of cash waiting if only the US would stop having an army, navy and airforce, let alone not sending them where they are needed.
Also,, as others have pointed out, if you have something that others want and they believe that violence will get them what they want, they will use violence to take what you have. The passive civilisation always loses to the active barbarians.
Si vis pacem, indeed.
90
Until the invaders arrive!
120
Si vis pacem…
50
Sean that sounds like excellent reasons
For Australia NOT adopting
Your US ways of funding heath care
Or Education !
20
Most people would have thought that was so obvious that it didn’t need to be said.
40
But the folks in the USA
Believe that their way of doing the best
Is the best Keith.
A little re-education
Might be useful.
20
Typical up-side-down view of the world by many millenials (not all). What they don’t understand is they want to solve the alleged climate change crisis by actually destroying their living standards and bringing them down to below that of countries like China who are doing the opposite in a much grander scale, namely building hundreds of new coal fired power stations to improve their living standards. Why millenials and many others are so blind to these facts is not a mystery. Stupid is as stupid does.
180
Some reading for millenials – and others
“Delingpole: To Survive, Britain’s Conservatives Must ‘Get Rid of the Green Crap’ ”
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2019/05/28/britains-conservatives-are-committing-green-suicide/
101
Don’t miss this bit
“In this context it’s worth reading this essay in Tichys Einblick by Rainer Zitelmann, who understands the Greens as most British politicians clearly do not.” and following
61
And #27 and following in the “Climate Comedy” thread
51
Must be over target – thumber didn’t like all three!
40
The Poor Dears
‘A touch over 43 per cent of those aged 20 to 24 lived with their parents in 2016, compared with 36 per cent in 1981. There was a rise among those aged 25-29 and 30-34 as well.’ ABC
40
Every successive generation of the modern era has been exposed to greater wealth and privilege than the preceding generation.
Of course, this leads to the development of unearned expectation and entitlement.
Just yesterday, I read an article, that insisted that Pads and Tampons were a ‘right’ – ostensibly to combat health and hygiene issues – and should be funded by such authorities as the PBS whilst needing to be exempt from taxes.
The article totally ignored the issue of recycling and single use plastics – despite many alternatives being widely available, favouring a convenience previous generations did not experience.
Meanwhile, in the real world, we all pay full market prices and GST for such items as soap and band-aids.
100
Didn’t someone famously predict that our children would not know what snowflakes were?
Turns out they were almost right!
110
Think the globalists and Bilderberg set aren’t happy when we divide needlessly? It’s almost as much fun for them as when we hack down divisions which are needed – like national borders!
I don’t have it in for anyone’s generation, nor will I apologise for being a “boomer”. Millennials are young, that’s their offence. They have to get by somehow in a “service” economy which has been hollowed out deliberately and in which real estate is a form of currency rather than something to inhabit. They’ve had their heads filled with a lot of spooks by media they don’t own and can’t control. Nor are the media owned and controlled by my generation. They are owned and controlled by the kakistocracy (look it up), who can be of any age.
The enemy may be very disciplined and industrious, with excellent work and personal habits, and belong to any generation you care to nominate. But they are globalists. They are Fabians, they are Trotskyists, they are crony capitalists, they are materialists. Wish there was a better single word for the enemy than “globalist”. Maybe “kakistocracy” comes closest.
I love the young, I love the old. I set my guns against the kakistocracy only. Best way to hurt the kakistocracy? Fight for coal. Not for coal exports (which the enemy needs for cash and plunder) but for domestic coal power. Australia, their favourite crash dummy, with re-developing industrial base powered by cheap and reliable energy and re-expanding middle class is their nightmare.
Let’s give ’em their nightmare, even as they club together in Switzerland for their annual massah-and-bwana bash.
100
I avoid generalising about millenials. I see a wide range of behaviours in our kids and their friends and acquantainces. Some are industrious, live independently and have a range of housing outcomes including buying there own places. Others are wasters , live at home and see just to move from crisis to crisis with parents footing the bills.
One thing I do notice is that getting a higher education (Bachelor and above) has little correlation with independence and self sufficiency.
110
“Perhaps climate change is partly to blame because it has pushed up energy prices.”
Increased energy prices are caused by forced use of renewables and subsidies in a stupid attempt to ‘address’ climate change not by climate change per se.
130
Yesterday I heard on the radio, so it must be true, that electricity prices were cheapest in Canberra because they have Renewables.
And the announcer said it seriously and didn’t laugh so they must have thought that they were telling the truth.
What hope have people got when they’re constantly lied to about such an important issue.
The only business that’s growing in Australia is in Canberra where monkey business is the main employer.
KK
110
KK:
The ACT ‘government’ has been busy signing supply contracts with wind farms and solar PV. They get a price very similar to that charged in Qld. from black coal.
Quite how a wind farm in SA can deliver electricity to Canberra I cannot imagine (large tankers?) but they now claim they are 100% renewables. The reality is that they get standard NSW electricity to which the territory is connected, thus avoiding blackouts and, I assume, not paying the cost of the RET certificates added on to everyone else’s bill. (see also the distribution of GST to disadvantaged areas). Pea and thimble.
100
Umm Graeme,, I’ve wondered about this as well
The ACT is probably getting Snowy Hydro power.
It’s rated as ‘renewable’.
As for windy power from SA,
AS you say,
There is no direct transmission line for power from the ACT to SA.
And given the distance by the indirect transmission line routes
Via Victoria, the Snowy Hydro and NSW transmission lines
About 1700 kilometers
There would be a big loss of power along the way.
40
Dumbing down in the education system has had its big effect and this loonacy is just one aspect of it.
90
I think people should be careful mocking people on this issue. From what I see about town young people certainly blame “capitalism” for the outrageously high house prices – and in a sense they are right. It is the crony capitalism coming out of the reserve bank that keeps dropping interest rates to keep the value of their properties up. And there has certainly been a successful effort to blame high enegy prices on rorting out of the utilities. There is a powerful message – that someone should be paying heed to.
41
Try telling those who blame “capitalism”, that if it wasn’t for capitalists building houses, there would be far fewer houses for the poor to rent.
Try telling them, also, that one of the reasons that house prices are so high is that GOVERNMENT REGULATION hinders capitalists from building and developing at a higher rate, which in turn increases the demand for the limited number of houses.
Houses don’t just appear by magic. They must be built by and for people who can at least make a living in the process.
70
Good, it’s amazing how the other half of the picture is so often ignored.
KK
40
Don’t forget because of the environmental greens and CO2 nonsense, the cost to build a house is significantly higher these days because of the environmental regulations. Timber for one, and disposal of rubbish for two, and product compliance for three.
50
Climate change made me stub my toe.
60
The worst thing I can remember from 2008 is Barak Obama. Oh, and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac come into it somewhere.
50
Are you saying that others suffered besides the millennials?
20
It wasn’t my intention exactly, but sure. We suffered here because we had to “build the education revolution” and electrocute home insulation installers, all so Rudd and Swan could tell us all that we were saved, thanks to them, when in fact Australia was largely isolated from the so called GFC.
30
“when in fact Australia was largely isolated from the so called GFC”.
In that crash a lot of people lost huge amounts of money from their superannuation accounts.
It was real and very painful for many.
Australia didn’t seem to be all that isolated.
KK
30
OK, point taken, but many on Krudd’s side were likening it to the Great Depression, which was, to quote Mallard, Hyper Bowl. Most have to a large extent recovered. We did not have large scale home foreclosures or repossession of ‘assets’. I’m far more concerned about conditions today re electricity disconnections than I am about some folk taking a hit on their super.
My original comment was mostly tongue in cheek and should be taken thus. Apart from the Obama bit.
10
There have been numerous financial setbacks in the world’s economies.
2008 was not as severe as several, others.
Maybe that’s not covered on Facebook and Twitter?
10
Your guess is as good as mine. I use neither.
10
Look at the up side, those of us who know the world will go on, can rip the wealth out of millennials as they earn it and build a much bigger nest egg so we will not be dependant on government hand outs. We will be drinking champagne in our retirement paradise while they are queuing in the soup lines.
30
This one is pretty simple. Advocacy groups, the MSM and educators are to blame for the deluded generation.
10
The US is far and away the wealthiest country in history — but this seem a bit meaningless as a way to put it.
The US is home to more people who are wealthier.
At any level of accomplishment, anywhere on the income spectrum, individuals live better than any in history of the US, and virtually all in the rest of the world.
This does not imply a perfect world; it is simply testimony to progress along a track that has as it’s goal a better life possible for all levels of society generation to generation, and attained by most.
A millennial having difficulty with a college loan has, one presumes, a college education. If the fundamental equation that this is worth the investment has been broken, we need to ask why.
But in each decile of the working population, Americans live better than before, and better (in material terms) than comparative deciles elsewhere.
In a previous generation, one might have had to work through college, defer college, or choose a non-college profession.
I don’t remember a better climate in the past making that easier.
20
From the Australian Conservatives website …… A message to the brainwashed (braindead), school kids striking over Climate Action :-
To all the school kids going on “strike” for Climate Change.
You are the first generation who have required air-conditioning in every classroom.
You want TV in every room and your classes are all computerised.
You spend all day and night on electronic devices.
More than ever, you don’t walk or ride bikes to school but arrive in caravans of private cars that choke suburban roads and worsen rush hour traffic.
You are the biggest consumers of manufactured goods ever and update perfectly good expensive luxury items to stay trendy.
Your entertainment comes from electric devices.
Furthermore, the people driving your protests are the same people who insist on artificially inflating the population growth through immigration, which increases the need for energy, manufacturing and transport.
The more people we have, the more forest and bush land we clear and more of the environment is destroyed.
How about this…
Tell your teachers to switch off the air-con.
Walk or ride to school.
Switch off your devices and read a book.
Make a sandwich instead of buying manufactured fast food.
No, none of this will happen because you are selfish, badly educated, virtue signalling little turds, inspired by the adults around you who crave a feeling of having a “noble cause” while they indulge themselves in Western luxury and unprecedented quality of life.”
Wake up, grow up and shut up until you are sure of the facts before protesting.”
11
Difficult to save anything if you are up to your ears and other bodily orifices in college debt, which interestingly enough congress made the only debt you are unable to discharge through bankruptcy. And the colleges and universities’ only participation is to jack up their costs. The feds took over all college loans via an amendment on O’bamaCare passed in 2010. Think of it as indentured servitude to the feds. The dems always seem return to that what brung them to the dance as far as creating dependent people. It also gives them an election issue every 2 years as they promise to defease the debt. All you have to do is vote for them. Nice racket, that. Cheers –
10