“Hey, business is business. You use a gun. I use a fountain pen. What’s the difference? Let’s put it in my terms: you’re in a hostile takeover, you snatch us up for some green mail, but you’re not expecting some poison pill to be running around the building, am I right? Hans, bubby, I’m your white knight.” – Die Hard
When the S&P 500 and the moslems merge, you really won’t be able to talk badly about the profit. (all memes as-found)
A recent study shows that young people, those under 40, are souring on capitalism.
According to the poll from Rasmussen released just last week, a whopping 62% of voters aged 18 to 39 think the economy is unfair to their generation. In a massive change from the Cold War generations, 55% are open to radical redistribution of wealth.
The kids are not alright with the system that built the iPhone® and the Tesla™
I don’t blame them.
I remember when I was a kid, capitalism was the golden ticket and was counterbalanced by soulless, heartless communism. And capitalism seemed like a good bet. Work hard, play by the rules, and you could climb the ladder, get the house, get a couple of cars and a few kids, and put your mark on the world.
Now?
The entry-level jobs that used to teach kids responsibility, grit, and how to deal with a bad boss are vanishing faster than my hairline. Back when I was a kid, we had jobs that ended up building character. McDonald’s®? That was for teenagers flipping burgers and learning that the customer is not always right, but the manager is always yelling.
Today?
McDonald’s© is for the 65-year-old retiree who needs a discount on his Big Mac™ to supplement Social Security. Sure, they might hire a kid, but only if the kid is over 20 and speaks three languages.
What about delivering papers?
Ah, this was the classic bike-riding gig where you dodged dogs and learned about early mornings. That job went the way of the dinosaurs when people started asking themselves why they were paying for someone to deliver them a small part of the Internet each day. Now, the desperate 45-year-old single dad with a rusty van delivers what is left, because kids on bikes? They don’t have cars and some might even still live with their parents.
And do not get me started on mowing lawns for local businesses. Try that today, and you will run smack into child labor laws, OSHA regulations, and corporate insurance policies that make hiring a kid riskier than skydiving without a parachute. One slip on a wet lawn, and the business owner is sued into oblivion.
The kid jobs, the training wheels of the workforce, are all snapped up by oldsters or, failing that, illegals. Want to pick apples on a farm? Sorry, buddy, the illegals have that covered, and they do it cheaper than a robot, unless you’re talking about the Juan Deere™ 4000®.
Or how about construction?
Same story. Hammers and nails are handled by folks who crossed the border with the same speed as a Black Friday shopper looking for buy one get ten free corn dogs and if tu no habla español, you’re not getting the job because that’s all the crew speaks.
And trades? Welding, plumbing, even semi-truck driving? Recent reports show illegals are flooding those fields too. Remember that scandal last month where trucking companies were busted hiring undocumented drivers en masse?
Who let this happen?
The CEOs, of course. They lobbied for loose borders so Paco could make tacos and Sikhs with mustaches could create semi crashes. It’s like inviting wolves to guard the sheep, but the wolves are telling the sheep how great the quarterly profits are going to be.
Fine, let’s skip the blue-collar path. Go to college. When I was a kid, that was the advice everyone gave, and it worked. Michael Lewis, the author who wrote Liar’s Poker, Moneyball, and The Big Short, graduated from Princeton®.
With a degree in art history.
Yes, art history, not finance or engineering. Before you could say “Van Gogh’s other ear,” Lewis was trading bonds at Salomon Brothers, raking in millions. Me? I had multiple job offers right out of school, and this was during a downturn when the economy was flatter than Sunday morning’s beer. College was a great idea.
But what has happened since? College has morphed into a debt trap sold as enlightenment and a four-year climbing wall party. Tuition costs have skyrocketed since the 1970s. According to data from the College Board® the average tuition and fees at public four-year institutions have increased by over 1,200% since 1980 when adjusted for general inflation.
That is not a typo.
In 1970-71, the average cost for in-state public college tuition was about $358 in current dollars. Today? Tuition is over $10,000 annually, and that doesn’t include room, board, booze, or broads.
Private schools?
Forget it: they have jumped from around $1,700 to nearly $38,000. A year, which is like paying Ferrari® prices for a Yugo® diploma. Universities are pricing education like it is bottled water in the Sahara and packing that money up and giving it to GloboLeft professors that hate you.
And student loans? These are not your grandpa’s loans; they can’t be discharged in bankruptcy, making them worse than indentured servitude. We hand these toxic deals to our stupidest (young) people, and watch them drown in debt averaging $30,000 per borrower.
Oh, and the job market?
CEOs love importing infinity H-1B Indians to snatch tech jobs at slave wages, cratering salaries for Americans. Want to code?
Good luck competing with a workforce willing to live in vans down by the river. And if you are white? Navigate the DEI gauntlet first, where Indians hire their own and call you racist if you notice.
The CEOs? They love this, or it wouldn’t be this way. Period.
Capitalism is not a suicide pact. This version, devoid of morality and family focus, is exactly that: a thin veil over quarterly profits at the expense of everything else. Even small changes make a huge difference. Kentucky’s new shared custody law has already slashed divorces by 25 percent, just by making shared custody of kids the presumption. Imagine if we removed alimony, child support mandates that incentivize divorce, and welfare traps that break families?
That would be a real family-friendly policy, not this nonsense where the state plays dad and mom can divorce for fun and prizes.
And the CEOs?
If they knowingly hire illegals, ship them to jail. Let them flip burgers for real when they get out. If they push H-1Bs, force them to relocate to Calcutta, since that is what they are turning America into: a third-world call center with first-world prices.
So, why are kids turned off capitalism?
Because it has been hijacked by the very people who should be its stewards.
The Rasmussen poll nails it: 36 percent of young voters are struggling financially, and 76 percent want government to nationalize major industries if it means fairness. This is a warning shot that is leading to failing governments across the world right now, from Nepal to France to Argentina.
We can fix this.
Deport the illegals flooding jobs, kill the H-1B program, make college affordable again allowing student loans to be discharged in bankruptcy so silly degrees won’t be financed, and prioritize families with rule changes that discourage splitting up.
Restore the dream where a kid can mow lawns, go to college without debt slavery, buy a house, and raise a family without the system screwing them at every turn.
Politicians ignore this at their own peril. The managers (the people) are yelling.
I disagree with allowing student loans to be discharged in bankruptcy as that still shifts the burden to everyone else. (Debts are always repaid by someone.)
Rather, let’s mandate the loans have to be made and held by the school providing the degree. That way the school has skin in the game and a strong incentive (versus none at present) to provide education actually worth something.
You have the same common misconception about how our fiat money system works that most people have; to wit, that money supply is created like wealth. In reality, our money system has no connection to wealth other than that people who create true wealth tend to attract a lot of money. Also, people who learn to game the money system and succeed at their gaming tend to attract true wealth. (True wealth is measured in non-cash assets: real estate, tools and ability to create usable goods, tools and ability to survive off the grid, etc.)
When a student loan (or any bank loan, for that matter) is made, the money is literally created right then and there. It IS the printing press that creates new money. When a bank makes a loan, it writes it on to its assets. (BTW, banks can make multiple loans on the deposits. It’s called “fractional reserve banking.” A bank can, for example, make $1000 in loans off of $100 dollars in deposits–just an example, may be some other amount depending on the individual bank’s actual financial status.) The bank literally makes almost pure profit when it makes a loan. When a bank loan is defaulted or erased through bankruptcy, the bank that currently owns the debt writes it off of its assets, which frees it up to make another loan of equal value. Banks crash when they have to right off a ton of loans all at once or when a bunch of depositors want their money all at the same time.
You can carry this view over to the government. When someone buys a bond, they are literally depositing money with the government. When the government makes a loan (e.g. federal student loans are government loans), they are basically creating that money out of thin air. Unlike banks, government loans are not against the bonds (or deposits, if you will). When government “forgives” or otherwise discharges a bad loan, it is simply written off the books. Nobody pays for it. It literally reduces the money supply (although, it may take a few months for the actual corresponding contraction to spread through the economy).
Now our national debt is so big and growing so fast that one of three things will happen. Government default and economic collapse is one option (similar to the Soviet collapse at the end of 1991). In this scenario, debt forgiveness before the collapse will not change anything. Most of the economic system will all disappear anyway. The second option is to create more money and cause possible hyper-inflation. In this scenario, writing off student loans is neutral. It is deflationary as far as the overall money supply as tracked by government is concerned, but frees up resources for those with student loans and likely increases money velocity in proportion to the amount forgiven. The third option is what Brazil did in the 1980s and 1990s: that is inflate at a rate bordering on hyper-inflation, then change the official money units, with a limited time for exchange, making the new money unit much more valuable than the old. This method has the odd effect of ratcheting up the standard of living a little when it starts to lag behind inflation, but mostly is a way of kicking the can down the road while hiding inflationary numbers. In this scenario, forgiveness of student loans can be folded into the currency change in a way that is almost entirely hidden. In none of these scenarios will forgiving student loans actually make one whit of difference to anybody except maybe to those whose debt is forgiven, and even to them, it is only a very short-lived boon.
12:03,
.
Good grief.
Are we doomed.
Fortunately, OurGreatestAlly!™ will definitely step up to lend a helping hand (and save us (for real this time [promise, pinky-swear, cross their big warm generous hearts]…)).
PS, I do agree with requiring the school making and keeping the student loans. That way, they also have direct feedback on the value of the degree that they sell.
Why not have the government fund education, and require the cost of that education, plus maintenance while in college, to be deducted from future employment wages not unlike Social Security or unemployment insurance? 5%? Easy deal.
12:06,
.
Apparently, approximately 70% (seventy percent) of teachers and professors are getting terminated for disgusting social-media and classroom comments about the murder of Charlie Kirk.
.
You would think they would be smarter than that, in the teaching business after all.
The point is that the loans won’t be made anymore because, outside of indenture, they are bad loans.
Renewed my Somalisota permit to defend myself at the county Sheriff office in the big city Halls of Justice recently because the satellite Public Safety Building had nobody manning the window. Website says do it at the PSB, paper sign on window says go downtown.
Was one day after the date “expired” due to the weekend, got charged $10 extra, asked about why the website says go to the building away from downtown with good access, was told “oh, she must be on vacation today” leading to a battle trying to find a route not under construction, and then told me “Thanks for visiting” after my payment was made.
Related the story in the Menard’s checkout lane ending it with “…and they have no clue why County buildings will burn first when things go South” to be met with “You got that right.”
Seems the whole world is Wile E. Coyote running in mid-air, just waiting to look down.
Interesting times indeed.
Very interesting. I’m glad we didn’t move that direction when we had the opportunity.
After watching highlights from the Trump 33 meeting those transhuman psychos want 2 things a 70% population decline and communism. This whole thing is getting VERY Biblical.
Your points are all valid but the only way to achieve any of it is war, these satanic assclowns are not going to just give up.
It’s coming.
So young people are frustrated and considering a form of socialism but a nationalistic one? I kinda like where this is going.
They are. They’ve seen oligarchy and want no more of it.
Unspoken in all the dire analysis regarding “young people who are turning against capitalism” is that the dissatisfaction is primarily among White legacy Americans. Blacks, young or old, never cared about living the American dream and don’t give a wet sh!t who is paying their bills, so long as it’s not them. The children of all those clannish South and East Asians being hired by their relatives are fine with the system as is. And elites beget elites, who won’t be in the market for those entry-level jobs or summer work opportunities, anyway.
As always, it’s the White middle class who are screwed nine ways to Sunday. Who wants to play a game they know is rigged against them? Between AI and H1-B abuse, not even STEM is the safe haven for conscientious pale males that it used to be. I don’t know what I would advise a young White man today other than to avoid “higher education” and learn a trade.
The one solution I considered for my son was to find a good, dark tanning agent combined with wearing a dress. He wouldn’t even have to pretend or even shave the system is so screwed up. The fact he is actually capable and speaks real english would make him a certain winner. As it is, he is still hold his own. The big complain is the childish, marxist talk and attitudes.
Well said. And immigrants almost always want more government (illegal aliens or legal aliens)
Weimar problems require Weimar solutions. Complete solutions.
Have to have the demographics for that though Brother and at the moment we don’t have that…
One might could even say a Final Solution?
That’s the direction, and it took a big turn on Wednesday.
Deportation is the moderate solution.
A quarter of the young people don’t call themselves Gen-Z. They call themselves Generation Zyklon.
Yes. They like what they hear of Pinochet.
Oh, McChuck!
I just got giddy with excitement!
.
I can help with the deportations… I have a trebuchet!
https://youtube.com/shorts/zjrwJfHybos?si=JlSb4IyrkMpmEU4w
A moose once bit my sister.
If student loan debt is made dischargeable through bankruptcy, the last two weeks of the typical senior year will include renting a graduation gown, going to a graduation party, saying goodbye to old friends, stopping by the bank to declare bankruptcy, returning the gown, cleaning out the apartment, and sailing off to a new adventure: no assets, no debts.
Lathechuck
That used to be routine during the week most law schools finished. They’re why the law was changed.
Right! No one will make that loan.
Around 25 years ago, I discovered a banker’s box full of old college notebooks, documents from the 1970s & cancelled checks from the same era. It drove inflation home to me, big time.
Fall 1970 tuition at Miss. State? $108. Dorm room – $150/semester. Frat dues & 14 meals/wk. was $70.
Four years later MBA tuition in Tuscaloosa was $309/semester. 1BR furnished studio in an old frat house near campus – $80, electricity included.
Hospital bill for a C-section in 1977 was $1,400.00, which included 5 nights. That daughter’s 1st C-section 25 years later was $35,000.
Amazing. When the economy tanks, initially deflationary (panic selling), followed by hyperinflation.
Similar story: I lived on $400/month for the entire time at college. Paid books, tuition, room, and chow. I was even about to enjoy an occasional hoagie from the corner shop. Same public school now recommends $20k/yr and frugal spending. So 4 decades later, 4.2x the cost. That is how much the FED has driven down the value of money. Like classic Keynesians, They really do hate savers.
re : “…[Federal Reserve Bankers shifted] down the value of money…”
By definition, fiat currency has zero value.
One fedbux promissory note is equal to a trillion fedbux.
The Capitalism we have now is every bit as evil as Communism. It just has a smiling face and a rainbow boot. America was about Free Enterprise and Entrepreneurship. Men started their own businesses and created wealth for their own families.
One of the problems for young kids today is that when we were in high school back in the 70s and early 80s all the local businesses and restaurants were privately owned by local people, who would hire us part time after school and on weekends. Now it’s corporations all the way down.
In 1982 I was 17 and working at the local flying service fueling the airplanes that I was also learning to fly, having soloed while still in my senior year. Imagine my surprise when years later I read on a Labor Law Poster that people younger than 18 were forbidden to fuel aircraft.
Your fueling-job problem is GOV caused, not capitalism.
And the local McClown is still locally owned. They just bought a franchise so they actually have to keep the place clean or will be closed. Yes I remember the days of the independent restaurants. We specifically seek out the McClown because corporate required it to be clean.
Yeah Capitalism is great. The current best selling single engine piston airplane in the USA is the Cirrus SR22. An American success story, only the founders took it public, hence becoming a corporation within modern American Capitalism. The end result is the Chinese Communist Party, but they share that ownership with a few folks who are ignorant enough to think they actually own a piece of the company.
Perhaps you own a Dirt Devil vacuum cleaner. A nice American corporation. Only it’s nested within Techtronic Industries, which is also a Chinese Corporation. Oh they also own Milwaukee Tools, Hoover and Homelite.
I suggest you read Hilaire Belloc’s Servile State. We are all wage slaves now and the amount of American business we actually own is a tiny fraction of what the true owners own. It’s bread and circus’s.
But keep on supporting a system that oppresses everyone and consumes the wealth of the majority for the advantage of the few.
We have infantilized them and put them in a safety net so when real strife hits they have no mechanism to deal with it.
My first year at college, the bill for my full-time class-load was $287 (Southwest Missouri State University – now called Missouri State University). Six semesters later, that had ballooned into $2950. I worked two jobs and extra jobs on breaks to pay for most of my expenses. I graduated with $11,700 in debt and paid it off in 3 years. I found out that all of the extra tuition was being dumped into the football program. Luxury apartment complexes, world-class gyms, private chow halls, and medical clinics were built for the handful of players at the expense of the entire student body. Universities have been a racket since the 80’s.
Yes, always monuments to the jocks for some reason. I can only guess it is a fetish by the management over young strong boys, you know like Jerry Sandusky.
Of course building of several oversized buildings of all kinds is wildly occurring now. And I checked, the exist building are in good condition and never more than half the rooms used. But tuition is going up.
And now they pay players.