With Con Inc collapsing, its aging devotees sound like they’ve suffered a strange form of partial memory loss. They are smart, well-meaning people. Yet the mere utterance of certain buzzwords is enough to make them suspend their Christian morals and carry on like the market is a god.
If one issue hits the BoomerCon berserk button, it’s student debt relief. So much as suggest that maybe we should act to help out the marks of a multi-trillion-dollar government scam, and the Mammon cult conditioning kicks in.
Related: Mammon Mobbery
Not so long ago, you could point out that these student loans constitute usury, which the Church still condemns, and the guilt for which lies only with the lender. Conservatives would nod and agree that a just society would step in to assist victims of fraud.
But these days, the Mammon Mobsters’ masks are starting to slip.
Related: Three More Cults
It’s no secret that Gen Y and Millennials lag far behind their parents’ financial attainment at the same age. This imminent fiscal disaster threatens Baby Boomers’ assets, retirement accounts, and Social Security. And graying Boomers are struggling to sell their homes because younger folks aren’t earning enough to buy houses.
But that’s just in the short to middle term. In the long run, the economic toll of multiple generations with standards of living well below their parents’ sets us on track for another 2008-scale catastrophe.
Related: Mammon Mob Comes for Retirees
As was restated recently, understanding the problem gives you the solution. Why are Millennials, Ys, and even Xers struggling economically? Does everyone younger than the Boomers suffer from weak character and work ethics?
That’s not what the data says. Ys and Millennials forfeit more vacation days and work more overtime than Boomers. Most of the differences in generational work habits arise from members of those generations being at different stages in their lives with correspondingly different goals.
Related: Debt Zombies
Now, some say this earning discrepancy is due to Millennials picking joke majors like “studies” programs instead of STEM.
But that meme doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. Only 26 percent of STEM graduates work in their field of study, Besides, STEM jobs are only 6 percent of the US work force, and the flood of H1 visa holders drives competition for the few jobs up and drives wages down.
Related: Unforgiven
Another major cause of younger generations’ impoverishment, is, you guessed it, the student debt racket. US student loan debt currently stands at $2 trillion. Much of that debt cannot be repaid; not even by doctors and lawyers making six figures. Many of these kids will need to become millionaires to pay down the principal.
Huge financial crises like the student debt bubble don’t just happen out of the blue. Those who say it’s all Millennial students being too dumb and lazy to research the risks of usury or profitable majors are glibly ignoring another problem: These alleged slothful dullards will soon be in charge.
Related: Millennials—Depressed and Disordered
The truth that many Conservatives would rather not face is that their kids were fleeced. A sane, healthy society requires that the young can trust their elders. When every authority gives kids catastrophically wrong information while insisting they act on it, the only honest conclusion is that the kids were conned.
It’s scandalous how few Christian Conservatives don’t get the picture. When confronted, they used to parrot mantras about “personal responsibility” and “paying what you owe.” Now, they’re just as likely to admit they want usury victims to suffer. That open contempt for the young and the poor is the mark of Mammon.
Related: Millennials’ Generational Poverty
Christ challenged His disciples to give half their wealth to the poor. He made forgiveness for sins contingent on our forgiveness of debts. Christians are to show preference to the poor–especially their own countrymen. You cannot gloat over someone who’s in poverty—even if his own bad choices got him there—while saying Christ is King.
Student loan relief is a practical measure needed to stave off a collapse. And it’s popular with voters. Republicans know that, but their market worship keeps them from offering their own solution. Instead, they just accuse Democrats of vote buying.
Related: How We Can Help Millennials
Millennials are suffering worse than anyone else under the yoke of student debt. And they’re about to become the country’s biggest voting bloc. Both parties should favor doing so out of self-interest alone. But Republicans just point and shriek at Democrats and fraud victims.
It’s yet another example of donning the devil horns in the Left’s morality play. And yet again, Conservatives have invented a false moral principle to excuse inaction.
Related: Don’t Don the Devil Horns
The end goal of politics is deciding how best to allocate resources for the good of the greatest number of people. That takes winning elections and using political power to help your constituents. The Mammon Mob won’t even help themselves.
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Another 2008-style catastrophe had better happen. Seeing as the housing market has managed to become even more inflated and disconnected from anybody’s ability to pay, and this inflation is squarely the fault of the banks. If it happened precisely as it did in 2008, that would be a net material win. Those that bought during the bubble would suffer in the short term, but the basic principle of “having a roof over your head” would no longer be an uphill battle for any honest person.
The trouble is that this time around, the FDIC alone stands a fairly good chance of triggering hyperinflation. Never mind any Obama-style bailouts that may be slathered on top.
I don’t think there’s any avoiding the hyperinflation. Meanwhile, the bottom 60% of the income curve can’t afford to live *anywhere* unless it’s with their parents. Most of us are paying close to half our take-home in rent, which doesn’t let us save anything for emergencies, while simultaneously being shoved out of the buying market by investors who are after *the same houses* we might otherwise be able to afford.
Either that market crashes hard, or it keeps going just like it is now, and in a couple years the guillotines come out for the landlord/investor class. I wish I had a house, but I would not be a real-estate investor right now for anything. Those dudes are sowing the wind.
You can’t actually have an economy, or a society, where everybody who does the jobs that keep everything running– from the trash collectors to the washing-machine repairmen to the nurse who changes your catheter bag while you’re sedated after surgery– is priced out of housing. But here we are: vast numbers of us teetering on the edge of insolvency because it’s too expensive to live anywhere where there are also jobs.
I give it less than a year before either the bubble pops, or the economy grinds to a halt because hiring has become impossible.
By the time this is all over, we might need something drastic along the lines of NESARA to fix the mess.
What is most telling is that Republicans are willing to negotiate on abortion, but not student loans.
There have been multiple times where I’ve heard a pundit say that we should accept abortion laws that are immoral in that they allow far too many abortions, because to do otherwise would be to lose the election… and then the pundit will talk about student loans and say that we cannot do ANY sort of forgiveness for them because we cannot abandon our principles even when it is politically a bad move.
Mammon > God for the average politician
The Republican party has been trying to serve both God and Mammon for longer than I’ve been alive, and when push comes to shove, Mammon usually winds up in the driver’s seat.
The Democratic party abandoned God at the end of the 60s and went all-in for Divus Caesar, Ishtar, and Moloch. Since Mammon has abandoned his pretense of opposing the first and staying neutral WRT to the other two, and all four idols of the Apostate West are now working hand-in-hand, it’s no wonder that we’re seeing a more overt Uniparty.
Yes, unfortunately, the GOP exists to keep around the pro-corporatist liberals who like to wear ties on Sunday to church.
“Republicans know that, but their market worship keeps them from offering their own solution. Instead, they just accuse Democrats of vote buying. ”
This new talking point is irritating. By that measure, tax cuts without cutting spending, particularly on “conservative” social programs like social security is also buying votes.
“It’s no secret that Gen Y and Millennials, lag far behind their parents’ financial attainment at the same age.”
So does Gen X, as you note later. I suspect also Generation Jones might have or at least they only achieved parity.
Thanks to frugal Boomer dreams when first married we really did have plans to have a paid off house by now. We currently have more debt than I had ever wanted to take on for a track house in decent neighborhood. We’re blessed in so many ways and the payment is affordable. But we’re no where close to paying off the house. We moved too much (for work) and couldn’t keep up with housing inflation. My Boomer in-laws had paid off their house the first time by our age.
I just caught a Gen Y comedian making fun of David Ramsey on a YouTube short. It’s hard not to feel like it’s justified, especially with student loans.
“And they’re about to become the country’s biggest voting bloc. Both parties should favor doing so out of self-interest alone. But Republicans can just point and shriek at Democrats and fraud victims.”
Older people vote more consistently compared to younger people. If Gen X votes generally with Boomers, that will be enough to keep them on top. I’m sorry to say that many Gen Xers I know will be on board with “make-em pay” if they escaped the student loan trap themselves. Or worse they paid them off. Then they feel self righteous about it all.
I don’t dislike Dave Ramsey, because he does two things that most boomers refuse to do:
1.) Actually give advice for how to get out of debt.
2.) Tell people to refuse to take on any unnecessary debt, even if (gasp) it means not going to college.
(Of course Ramsey is Gen Jones, so perhaps that’s why he can break the script.)
Ramsey DOES have the issue of acting like his method is more universal than it is. It’s a product he’s selling, after all. It works great for people with poor financial discipline who got themselves into debt but later obtained a decent income. It’s not really something that helps people who are completely underwater to the extent of not being able to pay for food, gas, housing, etc. on a day by day basis.
“Ramsey DOES have the issue of acting like his method is more universal than it is. ”
This seemed to be what the comedian was making fun of.
Ramsey has a great method for paying off debt. Have used it to help others. Successfully.
But then he has to go and hawk *real-estate investing* as a strategy for building wealth.
And then I want to kill him, because we’ve been trying to buy a house for three fracking years now, the prices keep going up, and we keep getting outbid on crappy houses we can barely afford… by investors who have access to funding not available to us mere mortals. We have to pay an inspector, wait on the mortgage company to approve, etc etc. But an investor can walk in, plop down $100k in cash, and turn it into a ghetto rental with “cashflow”. So we lose. Every time.
So yeah, Ramsey. Great strategy for getting out of debt, but then he counsels people to turn around and impoverish everybody coming up behind them, so that with every passing year clawing your way to financial stability gets harder for anybody not on the plateau yet. They are pulling up their ladders behind them.
I think Ramsey and all his landlord-success-story acolytes will answer to God for that.
“Ramsey has a great method for paying off debt. Have used it to help others. Successfully.
But then he has to go and hawk *real-estate investing* as a strategy for building wealth.”
Yes, that’s the problem. It’s great to be out of debt. It is freedom, even if someone never owns his or her own home. That’s the excellent part of Ramsey does.
But then there’s that odd Boomer (Jones) blind spot of not realizing that wanting to be landlord forever means you want someone to pay rent forever. It’s wanting to be part of the “rentier” class, which of course is another way to say “I would like to live off of someone else’s efforts forever.” It’s not exactly a virtue.
I hope that you can find a house soon. I hate this market too, for everyone.
IKR? I now have a sort of involuntary gag/reflux response to the phrase “passive income”. I mean, great, if you’re selling luxury items like stories that people want to read. I don’t have to buy those to survive and raise my kids. And dang, that’s not passive– writers *work* for that. But “passive income” when it refers to monopolizing things that people need to survive and have families… yeah, you’re right on. They wanna be fat ticks living in the collective groin of the working class.
Moral. Hazard.
Boomer parents are just as complicit as high school guidance counselors and financial advisors about sending Billy and Suzy to college as the only way to succeed. They are complicit in the racket, and some of this blowback, conscious or unconscious, may stem from admitting that they were wrong and hold blame in this grand fraud. That admission is likely too much for many of them to bear.
It’s a given that we, the Taxpayers, are going to eat this big plate of crow sooner or later. We should figure out how to properly season it before picking up our forks, say with heavy university endowment claw backs and truly-draconian bank regulations that prevent similar predatory behavior in the future. Compared to the already burgeoning debt the nation carries, this is a nothing burger and should be Plank #1 in any Republican Platform at all levels of government.
You cut to the heart of the matter. Any GOP official who nixes a Democrat debt relief measure because it “Makes taxpayers foot the bill” without a plan to cancel defaulting debt just wants taxpayers to foot the bill while denying Dems credit.
Y’know, I can’t shake the feeling that if Boomers and Republicans maintain this “after me, the Flood.” mindset the way they are, we’re going to see a civil war in a similar style to that of the Reign of Terror, with everyone above the age of fifty/sixty getting torn to bits by uncontrollably angry mobs and churches getting torn down and defaced without regard for denominations for about ten years, until someone steps in and drops a hammer heavy enough to force a period of uneasy peace into being, and then keeps things steady enough that folks don’t turn on him the instant he shows weakness.
To make matters more concerning, anyone who can keep the local mobs from going rabid, and ensures that any external mobs stay external, is bound to end up staying in power, because at that point, nobody cares who or what they are, they’re keeping the maniacs that want their heads *out!* And while that could present opportunities for Christians to step up and hold some semblance of society until further stabilization is done, I don’t have much faith in our abilities in doing much of anything when the bricks start flying.
It is getting rather French Revolution-y out there.
Every single one of my boomer relatives now comments frequently “I’m just glad I’m not going to be alive to see how this turns out.”
Even in conversations where their children and grandchildren are present.
They are finally starting to realize that their actions have consequences, but they manage to avoid thinking about too hard by saying that the consequences will only affect the younger generations.
“Even in conversations where their children and grandchildren are present.”
My Boomer relatives have been expressing the sentiment “I’ll be dead anyway” for decades in front of me. I think Dave Barry has even penned the sentiment in one of his many humor books.
I used to think it was kind of tragic that my boomer parents missed out on the economic bonanza. We just scraped by in the 80s and 90s, with the help of our grandparents, while trying desperately to maintain middle-class appearances on a thrift-store budget.
But when I read comments like these… it’s like dropping into carnival-mirror land. Maybe we lucked out. This sounds evil.
“But when I read comments like these… it’s like dropping into carnival-mirror land. Maybe we lucked out. This sounds evil.”
It’s a blessing to never have that come out of the mouth of either parents or in-laws. My father by the way, was working class man who quite often didn’t have money either. However, the system has landed him on his feet repeatedly for the few positive choices he made.
God bless your parents if they were only Boomers by accident in that way.
The only thing I can offer to soften it is that quite often it’s said in an oddly impersonal and childlike tone. In any event, purgation moments can also be found on earth. *sigh*
“by accident”
indeed. My parents were raised middle class and on track for all that. Then Dad got run over by a drunk driver. Survived with a serious TBI. Law school got scrapped for day labor. Sometimes life is like that.
Silver linings, etc.
On the plus side, we didn’t grow up thinking anybody owed us a cushy job just because we were smart, we didn’t expect anyone to pay for our college, we understood the danger of debt, and we have never for a moment thought that we’d profit when our parents died. Money’s handy, but the investment you put into friends, family, neighbors, church, skills, and knowledge is far more valuable. How many people in your life would drop everything and come get you, when your car breaks down 150 miles from home? How many would help you re-settle if your house burned down? That’s where your real wealth is.
Translation: “We hate our offspring.”
“I’m just glad I’m not going to be alive to see how this turns out.”
When reading the OT, I’ve always been bothered by King Hezekiah’s sentiment that the national judgement he earned for his foolishness is fine because he won’t experience it.
To see it from people who nominally love you fills you with awe in a bad way.
“the Reign of Terror, with everyone above the age of fifty/sixty getting torn to bits by uncontrollably angry mobs and churches getting torn down and defaced without regard for denominations for about ten years,”
By timelines this would be Gen X in the fifty/sixty range. Youngest of the Boomers, assuming a 1966 cut off will be 68. We are heading into peak death rates by the 2030-2035 years for Boomers.
This is a well-researched and excellent post.
As I’ve said before, I don’t like your sci fi. I’m not saying you’re a bad writer, it’s just not for me. I wish you would branch out into other genres. If you wrote a fiction story influenced by -these- issues I would be interested.
Of course that’s like, what, $4.99 for a digital copy, times 1, so I realize I’m not going to get it.
What was the point of this post?