After America, over-education and perpetual adolescence

[Griffon64]

ax - your theory brings it back around to "it's the things that's getting us in this mess.", doesn't it?

At work I listen to someone complain about being unable to make ends meet. But he's got the latest smartphone with a data plan, a Netflix account, satellite radio, an alarm system with a monthly fee ( in a neighborhood that's as safe as you'll ever get, new and middle class ), a gardener, a gym membership, a house that is always kept at about 70 degrees, through the daily max temp 54 degree winter and the 100 degree summer, even when no-one's there ...

I work the same job as this guy so our salaries are probably comparable. But I wasn't brought up in America, so I don't have a gardener, my house changes temperatures with the seasons except at the peaks, where for a few weeks in August the temp will be taken down to 80, and the coldest weekends in winter, where it will be nudged up to 64 or so. Otherwise, I wear a blanket in winter and light clothes in summer. It saves at least a couple hundred ( couple hundred!!! ) dollars a month, and I'm still comfortable. Being snug in winter because you are out of the elements and dressed sensibly is comfortable. You don't need to be walking around in short sleeves in winter to be comfortable. I save another $70 or so on the gardener, and I don't have a gym membership either because the lawnmower is a human powered reel and the weeds gets pulled by hand and then composted on a pile that needs turning every so often, not to mention that the pool needs brushing and skimming, and the exercise keeps me well enough, not to mention helping me keep my head clear. I don't know what I'd save on the gym, the satellite radio and the Netflix, or the alarm company, or a pool guy, but I'd bet it adds up, too.

To me, you can't make ends meet when you can't cover your utilities and you can't keep your belly full. But I came from a different background so it is easy for me to do without the things I wasn't brought up to think I should have. I bet I would have a tough time living hand to mouth in a village in Africa.

Health care is another big thing. Going with a system like vison's Canada has is one prong of the attack, but I don't see health care costs go down significantly until the strain on the system is lightened. For instance, people are bursting at the seams and refusing to do anything about it because it impacts their freedom to do as they please, and while their lifestyle is subsidized for them through communal health care, it raises the rates for everyone. Also, the system is geared for profit so you have to cough up for simple preventative procedures because there's more profit in treating you for a disease than there is in keeping you from getting it. It's a mess that won't be solved overnight, for sure.

[Primula Baggins]

What, precisely, is the value of independence? How do you measure it? Or define it?

When your son is old enough to move out on his own and then does or does not do so, you may see one kind of value in it.

I think Ax's point relates to the fact that independent kids, who are supporting themselves, consume less because they can afford less. Or at least, what they consume is rent on a shared apartment, necessary groceries, minimal furniture, clothes when their clothes wear out: necessities, not luxuries. And many of the goods are used, bought from other kids, so no business can profit from the purchase.

ETA: Obamacare making preventive care free on all insurance plans may help with some of what you're talking about, Griffy. Everyone being covered and everyone being able to get necessary checkups and tests for no money out of pocket may help people get treatment or even preventive measures before they develop a chronic disease. Birth control and maternity care being covered and "free" will help prevent babies from being born premature (think $500,000 to $1 million each in care costs) or seriously ill. These are things that are already in place or scheduled to be by 2014.

There probably will be a big surge of people getting treatment they've been putting off. But long term that should be offset by the reduction in people getting seen for the first time when they show up at the ER in dire condition.

[axordil]

I think Ax's point relates to the fact that independent kids, who are supporting themselves, consume less because they can afford less. Or at least, what they consume is rent on a shared apartment, necessary groceries, minimal furniture, clothes when their clothes wear out: necessities, not luxuries. And many of the goods are used, bought from other kids, so no business can profit from the purchase.

That's pretty much it, especially now that credit is a bit harder to come by in stupid amounts.

[SirDennis]

Independence is a little more revenue-neutral, in the short run...and these people are physically incapable of thinking more than two fiscal quarters ahead, as a rule.

Unless you are trying to sell toasters or lawn mowers. It is interesting how many identical objects that are used relatively little by any one individual are found in almost every private dwelling.

Being cynical at times myself I used to imagine there was something called "The Cult of the Single." It was an idea that grew in response to a marketing trend in the 90s whose primary message was it was bad to have children and/or be coupled with anyone. (It was short lived mind you as someone in marketing realized children are the most lucrative target to pitch to.) You saw it everywhere for a while, primarily as the context of commercials, even ones not marketing products only to singles.

Anyway what I imagined was the cult's primary objective was to be able to sell more of those objects that every household (single or otherwise) "needs." The idea obviously is the more single person dwellings, the more toasters, etc you could sell because fewer people would be sharing them.

Come to think of it though this might be part of the reason expensive products (ie IPods, cell phones, tablets) marketed to individuals have come to dominate the marketplace.

ETA:

Also, the system is geared for profit so you have to cough up for simple preventative procedures because there's more profit in treating you for a disease than there is in keeping you from getting it.

This is a salient point (nice pun as well). I have heard of a model where you pay your doctor as long as you are kept healthy. If you do regular visits and still end up ill, you are treated for free. It shifts the motive towards keeping people healthy away from keeping people ill. Another no brainer really (but for greed).

[RoseMorninStar]

We rarely eat out. I cook at home, mostly fresh. I rarely even go down the frozen or packaged isle at the grocery store and, although I'd say we eat better (healthier) than we did when we were first married, our food costs have risen a great deal. It's hard for me to compare how much groceries have risen because we were on such a tight budget 30 years ago.. I think I only spent about $30 a week for groceries for two. It's hard for me to compare my grocery costs today due to so many changes in how I shop/what I buy, but they have gone up, proportionately more than average wages have.

Fuel/heating costs are up. And of course, insurance/health care. Health care (good and bad) has changed so much in the last 50 years it is mind blowing.

While I will agree that we all have more 'stuff' than we need, some (expensive) stuff is hard to get by without.. computers being one of them. It's hard for a student to get through school without a computer.. and that also means internet service.

The question of independence is a good one. It would be an eye-opener to do a study of young persons about their thoughts on Independence. But sometimes wishes and reality are two different things.

This brings to mind a friend of mine, who is 50.. who is back at home living with her 82 year old mother. If anyone had told her when she was 18/20 she'd be living back home living with her mother as an adult she would have said, 'Over my dead body' but there it is. And she hates it. Her occupation does not supply health care and her medical costs have kept her in the hole. She does have a college degree. I daresay depression/lack of hope of ever being able to change her situation has taken its toll.

[Griffon64]

Obamacare making preventive care free on all insurance plans may help with some of what you're talking about, Griffy. Everyone being covered and everyone being able to get necessary checkups and tests for no money out of pocket may help people get treatment or even preventive measures before they develop a chronic disease. Birth control and maternity care being covered and "free" will help prevent babies from being born premature (think $500,000 to $1 million each in care costs) or seriously ill.

Exactly. I was thinking of Obamacare as I wrote that. It is a step in the right direction. Of course, it still doesn't guarantee that many people will bother, but at least it makes it easier for those with the foresight to do so.

Where I'm from, my health care insurance company actively encouraged people to be healthy. ( in a nutshell, with a points system that lowered your premium, awarded you with practically free movie tickets, flights, etc, in return for you doing stuff like some checkups and belonging to ( and going to! ) a gym, or otherwise getting exercise ) So I thought that everywhere in the world, your health care company would reward you for preventative checkups and a healthy lifestyle. Heh. I was so naive back then, huh?

I have heard of a model where you pay your doctor as long as you are kept healthy. If you do regular visits and still end up ill, you are treated for free. It shifts the motive towards keeping people healthy away from keeping people ill.

Intriguing. It is another step up from simply making preventative care more accessible. Don't see it flying anytime soon, but considering possibilities that would have doctors and insurance providers collaborate to keep people healthy is interesting.

The only medical expenses I have ( and I'm grateful that this is the case ) is those associated with yearly checkups. I've started getting them when I started getting my health insurance from the company I described above, and kept them up in the States even though it costs me a fair bit compared to not doing them at all. I do it because I don't want to be ill and I'd rather try to head off trouble as early as possible. I've caught rising cholesterol that way, and got it under control way before it would be a real problem. Imagine if I just keeled over from a heart attack in my forties like my grandfathers did, never knowing it was coming? I wasn't really eating all that badly, I'm just genetically predisposed to cholesterol problems. But it did make me pay attention to what I eat, especially to raise my good cholesterol levels.

As far as "stuff" goes, the flimsy construction of many pieces of "stuff" means that you can sell a new one every few years, regardless of how many households there are. Right now our household is microwave-less and have been so since just before Christmas. We've looked at replacements but goodness, the things are made so flimsily these days. I just can't quite bring myself to spring for one yet. And most of them are now the over the hood models and I don't want another of those. Could look at repairing the old one, but it is kinda past its prime and we got it secondhand in the first place. So much choice, all of it carefully arranged to make you buy something you don't really want, but think you do.

[SirDennis]

But also, and I know you don't intend to go there either, such ideas are a precursor to calls for genocide.

And there it is. The single biggest challenge facing us, the root of virtually all the other challenges hanging over our heads, and we can't even talk about it. Half the people tell you it's against their religion, the other half tell you it's politically incorrect. But it's there just the same.

I saw some DOE guy on TV a while ago talking about how we need to hunt deer because the natural checks on their populations are gone and if we don't, they'll multiply out of control and ruin the environment. All I can think is, as a member of H. sapiens, do you really want to be advancing that argument?

Well I may not like to talk about it, but that doesn't mean no one should.

I think the reason it is dangerous is that it rests on a faulty (or deliberately misleading) premise, that we do not have the means to alleviate hunger, poverty or suffering in general around the globe because there are just too many dang people on the planet. I believe this to be patently false, a mere excuse to continue misusing resources and technology in order to satisfy the wants of the haves at the expense of the needs of the have nots.

If the haves were doing everything right in managing resources, wealth, and technology, and there was still not enough to go around, then maybe I would accept that there are too many people on the planet. But this is not the case, nor do I see the will (in a sweeping sense) to change the way resources are managed and allocated.

The premise of this thread, that youth are over educated and unwilling to settle for less is faulty for the same reasons. It is an excuse that ignores the reality faced by people leaving the nest. It also places the blame for the tremendous waste in human potential on the victims. Yes victims of a system designed to keep people fixed in place and/or to make slaves out of the majority, one way or the other.

I'm sorry if my posts tend towards the apocalyptic at times; and it is not because I'm a rapturist or looking forward to the fulfilment of Revelations. It is just what I see and have experienced of the world. But... not necessarily of the people... otherwise what would be the point of us talking with each other at all?

[RoseMorninStar]

Griffon.. you list you made a few posts above (the latest smartphone with a data plan, a Netflix account, satellite radio, an alarm system with a monthly fee ( in a neighborhood that's as safe as you'll ever get, new and middle class ), a gardener, a gym membership, a house that is always kept at about 70 degrees...) made me laugh to myself. It seems like some people, no matter how much they make, will always be in the hole because they have a difficult time determining need and want. We have friends who are perhaps 'miffed' at what we have.. but they don't see what we don't have/sacrifices we have made.. and where our priorities lie. Not that we are 'better', just different. It is just our preference, for example, to save & spend our disposable income on vacations.

As for marketing, I read an article a few years ago about how to make consumers out of children and they would become life-time consumers. Hence the push for 'fashion' for children, etc... talk about cynical.

[vison]

Many people nowadays have no idea what "needs" are. They think it's all needs, and so they want it all.

[Primula Baggins]

Griffy, if you have a U.S. health insurance policy you should not be paying anything for your yearly physical. This started last year. It has to be 100% covered with no deductible and no copay.

Good luck on the microwave. We bought one at Sears a few years back and it went bang during its warranty, so we carried it back to Sears and got another one, which went bang, so we got a third, which went bang (burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp). Each time we could only replace it with the identical, obviously shoddy, model. Fortunately the fourth one has not yet gone bang.

[RoseMorninStar]

Griffy, if you have a U.S. health insurance policy you should not be paying anything for your yearly physical. This started last year. It has to be 100% covered with no deductible and no copay.

Really? We pay (a rather large) deductible for our yearly physicals.. over $130.. unless the doctors office is 'coding' it as something else.

Good luck on the microwave. We bought one at Sears a few years back and it went bang during its warranty, so we carried it back to Sears and got another one, which went bang, so we got a third, which went bang (burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp). Each time we could only replace it with the identical, obviously shoddy, model. Fortunately the fourth one has not yet gone bang.

Our current microwave works, but a part that makes the door open is not functioning and I have not been able to get it fixed. Nothing is made to be fixed anymore. I have been 'operating' the door with a loop of dental floss. I am having a hard time wanting to spend money on yet another microwave that won't last much beyond a year or two. My first microwave lasted 17/18 years! The planned obsolescence of goods these days is obscene.

[Primula Baggins]

I'd certainly look into that, Rose. Yearly exams (including women's), mammograms, colonoscopies, and prostate exams are all supposed to be covered this way, and have been in my experience.

[Griffon64]

Griffy, if you have a U.S. health insurance policy you should not be paying anything for your yearly physical. This started last year. It has to be 100% covered with no deductible and no copay.

Did it start by May last year? 'cause that's when I got my last one, so maybe it wasn't covered yet. I did go for some follow up stuff throughout the year and paid in for each batch of blood tests and the like.

Like Rose, I ended up paying some - I don't remember if I paid for the actual examination but I think I had a bill from the doc's office, too, so I paid for something!

My parents' first microwave, bought in the late 80's or very early 90's, lasted them until about 2005. My dad's an engineer so he did repair it himself a few times, but still.

I wish I was taught how to repair stuff better, but I was always the one holding the flashlight while my engineer brother and my dad worked on the stuff.

[RoseMorninStar]

I will definitely look into that.. because I also paid over $100 for my mamogram. And they had to do it twice because they didn't get good pictures the first time. It was outrageously expensive by the time I paid for my physical and both mamograms.. and that's WITH insurance that is not cheap.

[Frelga]

Hubby paid a copay for his last checkup...

Yes, cheap stuff that costs more.

The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to to spend less money. Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. [...] A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet. This was the Captain Samuel Vimes ‘Boots’ theory of socio-economic unfairness.

[SirDennis]

Hubby paid a copay for his last checkup...

Yes, cheap stuff that costs more.

The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to to spend less money. Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. [...] A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet. This was the Captain Samuel Vimes ‘Boots’ theory of socio-economic unfairness.

Truer words... now change "boots" to "food." Now consider where a great deal of the pressure on health care comes from. I can't help but believe that things are exactly the way the governors want them to be.

[River]

I think preventative care only comes free if your plan initiated after a certain date.

As far as too many people on the planet...well, that's going to happen. Sooner or later, if we don't apply our brains, it will happen. Carrying capacity is a fact of life. What the limit for humans is depends on a lot of factors. If everyone lived like Americans, we'd've topped out well before hitting 7 billion. If I recall Intro Bio II correctly, the absolute maximum number of humans the Earth can handle, assuming we all live a hand-to-mouth existence, is 12 billion. Or maybe it was 15. If we want something better than that as a lifestyle, the number drops. So, UNLESS a population disaster is something desirable, we need to pause and rethink a few things. Not just how resources are distributed - I'm not a population biologist but I *think* we can sustain at 7 billion - but also fertility rates. And you don't need to get that draconian to modulate fertility. In fact, birthrates tend to decline on their own with improved access to modern medicine, education, and changing social pressures. National Geographic did a fascinating piece on the huge demographic shift Brazil underwent in the past generation or two.

The alternative, of course, is letting nature take its course. And it will. Oh yes it will. But who knows. We're already fighting the long defeat with microbes. We have brains, but they have faster doubling times. Our chemistry isn't keeping up with their mutation rates. So maybe the old scourges will come back before the population bomb goes off and solve our problems for us. And won't that be fun to survive? Me, I'd prefer a massive lifestyle change.

[RoseMorninStar]

I strongly and deeply believe that Canadians should be buying Canadian food. I equally strongly and deeply believe that Americans should be buying American food. The commodification of our daily bread is a shame and a scandal and unfortunately it is now too late to change.

I may be taking the above comment out of context in which vison made the statement and how it relates to this topic, but I've been pondering this for a day or so and I just had to ask:
I think I understand your sentiments and I do agree that there are good reasons for a country having control of its own food supply/demand. But if I am to understand you correctly, as a Canadian, you would not have access to items such as bananas, oranges/tangerines, coffee, tea, dates, all kinds of spices, sugar and a gazillion other things. I cannot help but wonder if that would not have us waring over (for example) coffee producing lands. But perhaps I am missing your point?

[Primula Baggins]

I think preventative care only comes free if your plan initiated after a certain date.

River is right, alas. I'm sorry to have posted in error. But some older plans are implementing the rule anyway, which is why I thought they all did. Our plan (from Aetna) implemented it in 2011, and I assumed they'd been forced to do it and that therefore everybody's insurance must have (since ours was/is such an awful plan).

I've just dug into it, and it turns out that they were forced to do it precisely because the plan changed to something so much worse than it had been. They raised deductibles and cut benefits enormously for that plan year. A pre-existing plan that reduces benefits or raises premiums or deductibles more than a certain amount related to health care cost inflation loses its "grandfathered" status and must start following the preventive care rules.

It's too bad; without that rule Aetna would have been in the position of collecting huge premiums while paying literally no benefits at all for anyone who didn't need hospitalization/major surgery. They must have had a bad saaad over that.

Medicare also now follows the rule, and it will be expanded to cover Medicaid in 2014. Presumably in 2014 plans offered in the exchanges will also have to follow the provision.

Here's a link to a timeline of benefits under PPACA (Obamacare):

http://www.healthcare.gov/law/timeline/

[vison]

I strongly and deeply believe that Canadians should be buying Canadian food. I equally strongly and deeply believe that Americans should be buying American food. The commodification of our daily bread is a shame and a scandal and unfortunately it is now too late to change.

I may be taking the above comment out of context in which vison made the statement and how it relates to this topic, but I've been pondering this for a day or so and I just had to ask:
I think I understand your sentiments and I do agree that there are good reasons for a country having control of its own food supply/demand. But if I am to understand you correctly, as a Canadian, you would not have access to items such as bananas, oranges/tangerines, coffee, tea, dates, all kinds of spices, sugar and a gazillion other things. I cannot help but wonder if that would not have us waring over (for example) coffee producing lands. But perhaps I am missing your point?

I didn't make it very clear, did I? I didn't mean we shouldn't buy stuff "from away". Good heavenly days! No coffee? No tea?

No.

What I did mean is: we should grow as much of our own food as we can. Canada grows a LOT of wheat and other grains, why do we buy wheat/corn products from the US? We grow potatoes, apples, and many cows and pigs. Dozens of eggs. Seasonally, we can supply our own lettuce and tomatoes. Etc.

Of course we'd buy the things we can't grow. We can't grow oranges or dates or pineapples: but those things are luxuries. They are not necessary food.

I have nothing in particular against China, but I'll be damned if I want to buy chicken from China.