Millennial generation
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@Dashrender said:
As for your statement of savings - are you really saving? The cost of cell phone bills, etc, versus the cost of those long distance calls and car trips, did they really cost more than the cost of the new bills (cell phone) we have today?
Depends how you look at it. My phone costs in 1994 were easily double or triple (after inflation) the costs today. And back then I was essentially unreachable 90% of the time. Today I pay less, and that costs includes so much more than phone calls, and I am reachable nearly all of the time. I pay less and get far, far more.
It's not just the cost savings in raw numbers, but also the increase in capabilities. We only didn't pay more back then because there was nothing more to get. From my personal standpoint, 25 years later I spend less in raw terms and the value of what I get is dramatically better. Massively better use of the income.
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Semi-related example would be television. If you were cheap (or lived in the middle of nowhere like me), cable didn't exist so television was "free" as a kid. But most people that I knew (and still know) spent a small fortune on cable television (or satellite.)
Compare that to Netflix today. Sure, everyone complains about spending $12 on Netflix. But this is all that I pay. Cable would be many times that with a fraction of the programming. Many things that feel like a big luxury expense today are not really all that much money in terms of their equivalent in, say, 1985.
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Gas is similar. Today we complain about the price of gas, but gas is near a historic low. It's not record low, but it is very cheap after inflation adjustment. Few generations have had life be so inexpensive.
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I don't know what life is like for the kids in the US, but in the UK it's pretty shit these days. I left University at 22 pretty much completely debt free on account of my education being completely free and in less than a year of full-time employment I was able to buy a three bedroom house. The equivalent 22 year old now has an iPhone and $30k of debt. Phone or house? I know which I'd prefer. Plus, although unemployment levels are very low in the UK, youth unemployment is shockingly high.
The only thing I blame the young generation for is a failure to vote. Because pensioners all vote our political parties try and out-do one another in bribes and hand-outs to the baby-boomer generation. If you don't vote you can expect to be treated like shit. One of the main reasons the Labour party lost the election recently is that all the young people who told pollsters that they would vote for them couldn't actually be bothered to vote come election day.
The only things that are really cheap these days are alcohol and television and that's not a great combination! Stay home and get drunk whilst watching football and Breaking Bad.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@art_of_shred said:
I see kids carrying $700 smart phones, playing with $500 tablets, and having computers and gaming systems at home that my parents could never have afforded.
Although you have to compare that to what we were doing. Our gaming systems costs nearly as much back then (sometimes more) but did nothing. Who was more privileged, the kid spending $200 in 1980 on an Atari that is a novelty and nothing more or the kid spending $400 today on something that is a major entertainment device?
My cell phone and cell phone plan were more expensive (considering inflation) in 1994 than what most kids I know today have, yet did a tiny fraction as much.
Definitely kids today "get more". But they are also safer, in contact with parents, more capable, etc. As Americans we've been indulged for generations. To say that today's generation is "more indulged" is difficult as we were indulged differently. And many things, like computers and smart phones, play a huge role in education, safety, communications, etc. If my parents could have gotten me an iPhone in the early 1990s, it would have saved a ton on long distance phone calls (school to home was LD) and on gas (fewer trips because we weren't able to communicate efficiently.)
Well, that's a lousy comparison. The Atari was the height of gaming technology in its day. Of course gaming systems 30+ years into the future are better. That is to be expected. Also, the average person in 1994 did not have a cell phone. And the bottom line is that all of this neglects the fact that NONE of these are vital necessities. I'll agree that we're all spoiled and have been for years, but the number and expense of all the convenience items that are in the hands of the average person (and even welfare recipients) is much greater. I didn't have an Atari or a cell phone, but my 17 year old has an iPhone, about half a dozen gaming devices, and so on. It just doesn't compare, regardless of the level of that technology.
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@art_of_shred said:
Well, that's a lousy comparison. The Atari was the height of gaming technology in its day.
But it was a novelty. The games were barely games, had little value. You spent a fortune to get very little. You spent easily twice as much (after inflation) back then on a game with 100 lines of code that made a beeping sound and could be exhaustively experienced in under half an hour.
Today I can buy a good video gaming rig for a fraction of the price and games for a fraction of the price that include hundreds of millions of dollars of development, amazing art, graphics, actors, research, code, story telling, etc. that take tens or even hundreds of hours to get through even once!
This isn't a criticism of the past but a comparison of what people were willing to spend more on back then. Just like buying cars the first ten years they were made was an extreme luxury and mostly done only as a novelty as to how cool the concept was, video games before 1984 were just novelties that people bought "because they could."
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Same comparison with computers. Lots of us (not me) had Apple ][ or Commodore 64 computers in the early 1980s. Those were mostly novelties. You could only marginally use them as well as a typewriter. They only barely did math faster than you could by hand. They did not have a good way to be used in any business or communications setting. By and large, they were just novelties, nothing more, and extremely expensive ones that were outdated very quickly.
By comparison, you can get powerful computers today for a fraction of the price that will last three times as long or more that provide the foundation of accounting, education, entertainment and communication for an entire family. That things are cheaper today is only a tiny piece of the picture. That what kids are getting is not a novelty or a toy but a fundamental component of communications and interaction is the bigger deal.
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@art_of_shred said:
I didn't have an Atari or a cell phone, but my 17 year old has an iPhone, about half a dozen gaming devices, and so on. It just doesn't compare, regardless of the level of that technology.
We are both poor comparisons as neither of us is in the same income bracket that our parents were when our parents were our age.
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My entire career is based on what I learnt on my ZX Spectrum in the early 1980s and I will never enjoy a game as much as I enjoyed Manic Miner.
The graphics are much better on modern games, but I'm not convinced the gameplay, or the enjoyment, has improved that much.
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The point I was making was that the number and cost of things widely considered to be "basic necessities" in today's world far outweighs that of previous generations. When I was a kid, not everyone had cable TV, nobody had ISP's, most people didn't own computers, there weren't cell phones for the most part, there were no tablet computers, and on and on. Even the "poor" people around me today have nearly all of these things, along with expensive gaming systems and a library of games for them at $60 a whack. The perception of what "poor" is today is a far cry from what I recall the word meaning.
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I agree with @art_of_shred, just because we have these things - internet, cell phones, gaming consoles, doesn't make them a necessity. And if you have modern versions of these things you definitely aren't poor (and if you think you are, well in reality you are just a poor planner/budgeter, because clearly you can't afford those things, and your taking money away from something you need - a residence, clothing, food - to get them)
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I see the same mentality being applied here as I do to health care - it exists so I deserve to have it.
Young people don't deserve internet, cell phones, etc, just like they don't deserve health care.
Do you find yourself missing out, maybe, I'll even go so far as to say, probably, but again, is that society's responsibility to ensure you have those things? I personally don't think so.
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Young people don't deserve health care? What?
Also, how do you get a job if you don't have a phone? It's not even easy to get a job without access to the internet these days.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
Young people don't deserve health care? What?
And that sums up so much of what is wrong in the United States.
My wife truly does not understand why I am working towards living in Japan.
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@Dashrender said:
I see the same mentality being applied here as I do to health care - it exists so I deserve to have it.
Young people don't deserve internet, cell phones, etc, just like they don't deserve health care.
Do you find yourself missing out, maybe, I'll even go so far as to say, probably, but again, is that society's responsibility to ensure you have those things? I personally don't think so.
I understand what you mean and also agree. It's not that anyone "doesn't deserve" health care. The problem is the entitlement mentality where everyone believes that anything that is deemed good to have is their "right" to have free access to. And maybe everyone has forgotten, but land lines still exist, and they are, AFAIK, much cheaper than cell phones. Having a cell phone is not a right or a necessity. Food, clothes, shelter; that's the list of REAL necessities. And what's wrong with America is all the people who want to rob from the "haves" to give to the "have nots" because they "deserve" everything I have, but shouldn't need to work to get them, since I have done the work and earned enough to have them. They should just have everything handed to them, because somehow that's "fair". Oh, and I do not have health care. It's too stinking expensive and does basically nothing for me. But I get fined for not having it. I can go to a doctor every month (I don't) and pay the fines and still be thousands of dollars ahead of where I would be if I had health insurance and never even used it. What a joke.
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@art_of_shred said:
And maybe everyone has forgotten, but land lines still exist, and they are, AFAIK, much cheaper than cell phones.
Lol. Wishful thinking. I dropped a landline and got a prepaid cellphone, because it was cheaper many years ago when I was in college. Landline go up to around $60/month. I'm still using prepaid service, and that was the first time I had a cell phone, you know when I paid for it. The first time I had Internet at home was in 2009/2010.
We actually grew up in a small appartment (that wasn't suppose to be an apartment) over a building company. We had no TV, not cable, no internet. We often eat had to eat a single meal a day, a mom my was working hard but, didn't make much. Especially to support two kids on her own as my dad had died from a heart attack so there was only one income. The teachers at school would always try to get us on welfare because things would be easier for us. Yet, my mom never did. She didn't think it was some else responsibility to pay for your way. You deal with the cards you've been dealt and figure out a way to make it work.
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@art_of_shred said:
It's not that anyone "doesn't deserve" health care.
Oh but it is. You don't deserve a cell phone, you don't deserve a car, you don't even deserve a house or apt, or hell clothing or food. You definitely don't deserve health care.
All of these things come at a cost, you should should have to pony up for them, including health care. Now, that said, there has always been since the beginning the desire of some to help those less fortunate than themselves. These charities are what should be helping those who can't help themselves, not the government stealing our money to give to the have nots.
When those in power realized they could capitalize they power to even greater power by stealing from the rich to give to the poor, they have enabled all of these government programs to do just that.
I don't have any numbers, but I've read in the past that as our taxes lower, people in general are more philanthropic, and they will give to the charities, and those charities can help the less fortunate. This situation is superior to our current one because the charities themselves want to see people get back on their feet, there is no power in them keeping people dependent upon them. Unlike the government, where now that people get money from the government, the people will continue to vote people into power that continue to give them their free money.
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@thecreativeone91 said:
Landline go up to around $60/month.
Landlines are $60/month where you are? damn!
They are $22 after taxes here before you add on the crap services they want you to have.
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@Dashrender said:
@thecreativeone91 said:
Landline go up to around $60/month.
Landlines are $60/month where you are? damn!
They are $22 after taxes here before you add on the crap services they want you to have.
Well Verizon is expensive here, I guess they have to find a way to make money, because there don't offer DSL here, or TV/FiOS. There's one and only product called "Freedom Essentials" that you can get which is basic phone.
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@thecreativeone91 said:
@Dashrender said:
@thecreativeone91 said:
Landline go up to around $60/month.
Landlines are $60/month where you are? damn!
They are $22 after taxes here before you add on the crap services they want you to have.
Well Verizon is expensive here, I guess they have to find a way to make money, because there don't offer DSL here, or TV/FiOS. There's one and only product called "Freedom Essentials" that you can get which is basic phone.
Do I recall correctly that you live in the sticks?
If that's right, yeah, then cellular is definitely the way to go.
