Joke's on you renters. I never went to college. NO college debt. Just a firm grasp on my bootstraps.  

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You know what, I didn’t account for a lot of the distance/internet/etc. percentage of degrees, or the growth in bogus majors, decreased requirements, etc.

I was mainly , off the top of my head, comparing percent of adults with a four year degree in 1940 and their average cognitive ability, to the same in the 80s, to now.

Basically in 1940, about 5% of adults had a 4 year degree - and minus teacher and preacher schools, there were not really any graduates with an IQ below 1sd above the mean.

This quality density could only be maintained to about 15% of the population max.  

But, around forty years later when around 20% had 4 year degrees or more, around 15% of the grads were below 1sd above the mean.  Real college grads in 1940 were pushing 2sd above the mean on average.  In 1980 about 1.5. Now it’s down to about 1sd above the mean.

A decade ago about 1/3 had a 4 year degree or higher. With about 40% being less than 1sd above the mean.

In 1940, about 1/4 of the pop had a HS diploma.  Around 40% in 1960.  About 70% in 1980.  And over 90% now.

@JLPettimoreIII

Dude, you just can't go dropping GigaChad™ flex like that on the uninitiated. Most folk aren't aware of the over flowing testosterone fueled manliness of the 87%. The people who are vaguely in the know have mostly just heard about it as foretold in legend.  

Hell, I've known of the phenomenon for years and cry myself to sleep nightly due to my inadequacy to measure up. Poor girl is probably traumatized for life and will need extensive counseling to ever live like a normal person again.

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This topic isn't a generational fight!  Big bureaucracies aren't cheap! (note that this is the public school system, but universities have done similarly)

Man I love these threads, the generational insults, absolutism, and constant screeching of “bootstraps”.

it ain't over till it's over.

someone goes limp, someone taps out, someone screams "MODS HALP GENERATIONAL HATE"

Crabs in a bucket.

Actually, the point is this: In my day, people who couldn't afford to go to college ... didn't go to college.

People who can't afford to go to college today ... shouldn't go to college.

That hasn't changed as far as I'm concerned.

The crabs in the bucket analogy works very well in many facets of life.

Spoken like a true millennial who is being brainwashed by liberal professors

But that’s not what happens.
Things chugged along with a little less suck for each generation, with peak for the boomer generation era- well to be fair- late silent Gen/younger boomer was peak time to come of age -

Then- the pattern changes to worsening.

When the real old timers were telling the young boomer adults how much harder things used to be- the boomers hated it but it was true.

It's okay bro, you'll learn all these facts at the Poor Loser Renter Lazy Goddamn GenX/Millenenneials/Zoomer Tent City Forced Labor and Knitting camps, a service of Blackrock investments.  

Woah there, don’t lump me in with the millennials, I’m a zoomer. (We’re so much worse.)

Also I knew my engineering project about reverse engineering electric skateboards was liberal propaganda.

You might have scared her, but rest assured she wore the bean out that night thinking of a man who could repair her shifty thing.

I want to live in those beautiful 65+ older HOA communities too, dangit

I'm 67. Still working. I design and manufacture custom industrial automation and robotics equipment. I can work my phone, my computer, use most CAD programs, run a Bridgeport mill and a Clausing lathe, wire control panels, and program most off the shelf robots and the programmable controllers I use in my own custom panels.

Grab them bootstraps and try to keep up with me, junior.

My old man is 74 and became proficient with computers primarily because of browsing online Filipina mail order brides. Only two of his coworkers (who were also my coworkers for two years) knew of this when his boss would complement him in meetings. I can imagine them holding in their laughs for that one.

Yeah, it's interesting. I talk about things with my Boomer parents, Aunts, Uncles and co-workers and they all agree that things are way harder for me, my cousins and their own kids. I come on here and learn that, no it actually isn't harder, I just am a shitty person with no work ethic who spends all my money on shit I don't actually have or do.

I remember way back in the mid 90's when I first got on the internet running into a completely hateful asshole was a rare thing. Now it just seems like 99% of the data transmissions are used to shit on other people and tell them how worthless they are to make yourself feel better about being a hate filled shitbag.

See me when you can write machine code, Captain Technology.

Same here. I just chalk it up to people feel powerful hiding behind the keyboard and monitor. Something about anonymity gives them courage.

You're invited to my party. I still have some unopened cans of vintage Surge that we can use to wash down our bagel bites with. Hmu my AOL IM is LimpBizkit872

The answer is to cut the cost of college in half.  Easily done by cutting out all the Woke crap and useless degrees.  Why won't liberals cut the cost of college and help people afford it?

I got my SQL data science certificate last month so I'll see you soon

Hopefully AI wipes out the college administration too.

Yeah, combine that with requiring zero technical knowledge to even get on the internet in the first place and you have a recipe for what this forum has turned into.

Like the boomers we'll just blame the generations we raised.

Millennials and more so Gen Z may have it harder than boomers in some respects, but a huge factor is the "I want this and I wont settle for less" that seems to run rampant through those groups, especially those born after 2000. The new generation have a very hard time being told no, and refuse to accept that just because you want something doesnt mean you are going to get it.


Everyone loves to throw out the "minimum wage" number... But how many of you actually worked for minimum wage past the age of about 13 or 14? If you are working a minimum wage job in your 20's, you have made some very bad life choices. At 16 I was making double the minimum wage in 1991. At 17 & 18 I was making triple the minimum wage working as a manager of an ice rink in the winter and a maintenance guy for a community pool in the summer. Was that just a fluke? No one I knew past HS was ever making minimum wage.


I did my first two years of college at the local community school (actually took me three years to finish an AS degree), which even today is still under $6k a year for tuition. everything transferred to any state university. I worked full time all through my college years, and yes, I didnt get my bachelor's degree in 4 years, but I also didn't need it right away either. Graduated with a B.S. degree from a state university with $0 in student loans.

You wanna fix the student loan problem? Just stop giving loans without approved degree plans, and give loan amount equal to the cost of tuition and student dorm housing with a meal plan. Thats it, no more buy a car and live in an apartment in the city paid for with student loans.

You wanna study aboriginal lesbian dance theory? Cool, get the money from someone else, no loan should be approved for that.
Your tuition, housing and meal plan was $22k a year for a 4 year school? How the hell do you have $140K in student loans???

Another pro tip- Unless you go to a very prestigious school like Yale or Harvard, and then want to go on to a graduate program like law or medicine, no one gives a shit where you got your 4 year degree from... I work with guys who went to ivy league schools, and guys who went to big name party schools, and guys like myself who went to smaller state schools. And not a single person even has a pennant or school flag on their desk, or wears school shirts or hats, because no one cares.

I'm sure it was a blast going to Wisconsin, LSU or FSU for 4 years at $40K per year, and I'm sure a party every weekend was cool too... But do you think for a second anyone cares when you are applying for a job and you graduated 7 years ago? Nope, not one bit. It probably wont even come up other than a check box on the application.

The housing market has exploded in the past 4 years. more than ever before, even more than before the housing crash more than a decade ago. But a lot has to do with the same "I want to live here and why is it so expensive, its not fair" entitlement that some seem to have. I would love to live on the beach in a 4,000sqft house in Daytona, but sorry, its out of my price range. Yet there are many young people these days that will argue there should be affordable housing on the beach in Daytona instead of just accepting they cant live there...

Sorry, you dont get everything you want just because you want it. Somethings you need to work for... Thats the problem today is many refuse to work for it, and its probably because the parents never made them do it as kids.

I wonder who the parents of the “participation trophy” generation are?

Between the proliferation of basket-weaving "degrees" like "Black Lesbian Moslem Feminist Studies" and the DIE (Discrimination, Inequality, and Exclusion) policies being used to lower standards so anyone, regardless of motivation or ability, can get a "degree" like a participation trophy, college degrees don't mean as much as they used to, even from decent schools.  

The basket weaving degrees as a whole don't lead to decent career paths.  If you split those out and looked only at stuff like engineering and medical I think the results would be different, although DIE has probably lowered the average earning power of all degrees.

Add in H1B visas and college degrees take another hit.

Still, I think if you get an engineering degree or a medical degree you will do pretty well.  

Boomer hate shows you have an ego problem.

I would like to know more.

Perfectly summed up in one gif:



Though post covid certainly feels like more and more are foregoing social graces in public.

lol, I didn't even START making minimum wage until high school. Kind of hard to go get a W2 job with no fucking car or drivers license. Was I supposed to walk 17 miles one way to town everyday to flip burgers at 14?

Wait... I bet the GigaChad's™ did it uphill both ways in the snow barefoot.

Oooooh. SQL. Wow. You're really pushing the technology envelope now, brother.

See me when you can model physics with nothing but machine code.

Despite our disagreement on other things, congratulations on your up-coming certificate. Seriously. It's not a small thing.

Maybe your parents shouldn’t have been so selfish to live in a rural area to “homestead” and “hobby farm” instead of living in suburbia with school-aged children to socialize and build networks

I must be doing something wrong.

My mentor for turkey hunting is a millennial. I've never met anyone better with a shotgun.

I was at the range when I had my first double-fire with an AR. The millennial in the next lane explained what happened and steps I can take to avoid it.

I learned reloading from a fellow boomer.

One of my millennial daughters took out student loans against my advice and got a Master's Degree. She paid them off and now owns her own home. She was right about the loans and I was wrong.

My other millennial daughter went straight into the blue-collar workforce, is now managing a hundred people, and owns her own home. She tells me that her best employee is a boomer and her worst employee is a boomer.

My fitness trainer is Gen-X. She knows more about fitness than anyone I've ever met.

My cardiac surgeon is Gen-X. I never had a moment of doubt about his ability.

My physical therapist, health coach, and nutritionist are all millennials. I trust them utterly.

Before I retired, I worked with boomers, gen-xers, millennials, and gen-zers. Each generation had their stars and their slackers. Each generation had people as sharp as a tack and people who were dumber than a box of rocks. There were boomers who were barely scraping by, gen-xers who were doing great, and gen-zers who were living at home and working to pay their own way though college so they didn't have to take out loans.

Reality isn't as simple-minded as the people who love to fight the generational wars would have us believe.

Thank you kindly, sir. I hope to be mildly proficient with it like I am with all things in life

You're off by a few decades for that free community college argument

The last one is just a thruple

If there's one thing Boomers love to do, it's brag about how they can use outdated technology.

Late Boomer here -

Joining the work force in 1982 was not fun.

There is much more opportunity today.  

Boomer bashers need to stop obsessing about us.  Other than the women and the culture it was not that great especially economically.

If you were not around back then you have no idea.

You are making excuses for your own failures.

I did well because I thought outside the box just like today. I went to college and had a regular job but I also always had a side business.

My college degree was not a direct factor leading to my success although I am glad I went for the social aspect of it. Good memories...