“My best friend’s sister’s boyfriend’s brother’s girlfriend heard from this guy who knows this kid who’s going with the girl who saw Ferris pass out at 31 Flavors® last night. I guess it’s pretty serious.†– Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
What does a German scientist say when he runs out of beer glasses? “Nein stein.â€
One thing I’ve done with my kids is try to give them the best understanding of the world as I know it.
The problem with advice is that it assumes a set of conditions where the advice is valid. If you’d assume that learning how to balance a checkbook would always be useful, sending you back to 1066 or forward to 2036 would probably convince you otherwise, though the Normans might find your penmanship amusing.
The most common set of conditions that we assume is that tomorrow will look a lot like today. That works pretty well most of the time. Heck, there are entire millennia of human history where tomorrow looked exactly like today. “Uhh, Grug make rock into pointy spear, kill mammoth, maybe get Mammothlix and Chill with Samantha.â€
A second set of conditions is that today’s trends will continue. This is similar to the first one, but involves, well, trends. One trend is that electronics keep getting more advanced, and the pace of technological change keeps increasing. That seems logical, but . . . well, look around. It’s not like we’re getting any smarter, so there’s a limit there.
There are times when neither of these things is true.
Hobbits may not be smart, but they are well rounded.
A few years ago (has it been that long???) The Boy and I were discussing his future college plans. There were two good state schools he was seriously considering. He was also considering either Annapolis, West Point, or Colorado Springs. His swimming looked much like a swan attempting to change a tire on a 1993 Buick® without a lug wrench. I mean, it’s possible, but there is a lot of unnecessary motion involved. And feathers. Feathers everywhere.
Part of me was hoping that The Boy would be interested in one of the military academies. He had the grades and the athletics, and certainly the love of country. He rejected them. Perhaps he saw then what I see now, that the United States military is being very quickly absorbed into the Leftist collective. Or maybe he just decided that the military would keep him from his ambition of starting his own cryptocurrency and buying Paraguay.
Who can say?
I hadn’t anticipated the change in the rank and file of the military, so quickly. The military has had issues over time, but I expected that the Oath would matter more than the occupant of the White House. Everything I see now points as evidence that the Left is moving exceptionally quickly to politicize the military. The idea is simple: drum those out who don’t conform.
So, me telling him to go to a military academy would have been very bad advice.
I guess if you’re hungover at West Point, the advice is to use breath mints, like Tac-Tics®.
What other advice doesn’t ring true in 2021?
How about, save money and buy a house?
That has been wonderful advice since, oh, 1945 or so. Before then, I assume, you wandered into the great frontier and hewed a cabin out of logs. Oh, wait. The Great Depression caused a previous mini-mansion real estate boom to collapse.
My bad.
But does it make sense today? In many urban areas, would it even be in the realm of possibility for a kid today?
Not in San Francisco. The median home price there is now $1.4 million bucks.
- What about Miami? $385,000.
- Minneapolis, a city I regularly make fun of? $325,000.
- Salt Lake City? $485,000.
If I do the math, just the payments on a $450,000 loan are about $2,000 a month. Add in taxes and insurance and you’re probably closer to a monthly payment of nearly $3,000? At that point, even an average home in Salt Lake City is out of reach of most people under 30, unless of course, they were bringing home in excess of $120,000 a month as a family.
Possible? Sure. But at that level of debt payment, there’s very little margin for error. Mom loses her job making PowerPoints® about (spins wheel) “Overcoming Group Synergy Issues In Dispersed Work Environments†and now the entire family is just a month or two away from knife fights with bums over great overpasses to put a box under. Well, I guess that’s still real estate.
I tried to offer 0% loans for houses, but there was no interest.
Oh, that brings up other old advice: save your money. I consider savings great. It’s a moral thing to do, and virtue should always pay off in the future. Unless, of course, the Fed® is printing money as fast as the computer can add zeros. Then, what you saved soon becomes worth less, and eventually worthless. Spend it as fast as you can on pantyhose, PEZ® and elephant rides because tomorrow you won’t be able to buy a used disposable razor with that cash.
So, there’s another value inverted. Honestly, I’d rather suggest that my kids save money in Bitcoin over the dollar. At least the Fed® can’t (yet) print Bitcoin. If I were to give my kids advice, I’d say to stock up on all the silver they can.
At least silver holds value.
If the werewolf was clueless? He’d be an unwarewolf.
Or it has in most times and places. After the Romans left Britain, though, silver was pretty much ignored because the concern was getting food after civilization collapsed. Newsflash: you can’t eat silver. Yes, that’s a very cherry-picked example, but there are circumstances where even precious metals cease to be precious.  Except for the One Ring.
What about education?
I used to be a “if you can go to college, go to college†guy. I am not any longer. College is like any other business proposition. If a degree has a positive rate of return? Go for it. That’s probably limited to a few select degrees in 2021, especially with the price of college. It certainly doesn’t include any degree that ends in “studiesâ€.
If someone else is paying for most of school, it probably is a good idea to choose a degree that’s in demand, that can’t be done online by someone from Mumbai or Shanghai at $0.43 per hour and has a credential that an illegal alien can’t (yet) get. Remember, if a degree can be replaced by a machine or computer program or an Internet search? Don’t do it.
But if it’s not going to cost a kidney or require later “repayment†to gentlemen from extortionist rackets, like organized crime people who make student loans.
Then, go to college. Otherwise? Get a job that requires a credential that an illegal can’t (yet) get.
The best advice I’d give today is this:
- Be adaptable.
- Be useful.
- Be optimistic.
- Learn skills, and understand that learning never stops.
What skills? Figure out a strength that helps people and earns your keep. Then get good at it. Then learn a skill that complements it, a next-door neighbor, if you will. Then? Repeat.
Here’s my example: I always tested well and performed well in language stuff, umm, things. But for most of my career it was just a complement to the other work I did. Since I’ve been writing these blog posts I think I’ve gotten a bit better at writing, and much, much better at editing.
Why could the Bible have used a better editor? Well, to make a long story short . . .
The big result is that I can now tear through an amazing amount of communication-stuff at work with little effort. They don’t seem to like the bikini memes I keep throwing into emails, though HR keeps laughing.
The world has changed. Bigly.
Not all of the Millennials and Zoomers are lazy. The advice Pa Wilder gave me was tried and true and lasted for decades before he shared it with his odd Gen-X son. Mostly, it worked, and worked really well for me.
But society has moved on. And, after my study of history, I cannot see the trends we see before us lasting for more than a decade. Herbert Stein (Ben’s dad) said it very well: “If something cannot go on forever, it will, Bueller . . . Bueller . . . anyone . . .  stop.â€
I see before us several things that are near their stopping point. In reality, everyone before the Millennials and Zoomers had it easier.  No, not easy. Easier. We worked hard. We put in the time.
But the old rules still worked. Now?
Not so much.
Think about it: what is the best advice you’d give a 15 to 30 year-old kid in 2021?
