Ialdabaoth
Posts: 1073
Joined: 5/4/2008
From: Tempe, AZ
Status: offline
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ORIGINAL: DarkSteven
Dumb, dumb, dumb.
Yes, but for rather interesting reasons.
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It used to be that college was a ticket to success in America. Nobody asked whether it was the college itself, or the ambition/connections that went with attending college. Kids were prodded to attend, and now we have record amounts of underemployed college grads.
That's because people don't understand the value of a college education. Everyone assumes that the reason you go to college is to get a good job - that you're just supposed to "pay your dues" so you get this stupid piece of paper that says you're entitled to a higher-paying job. That's not what college should be for. College should be about education, not class distinction. Knowledge is power, and yet people are treating college like it's some prestige-thing, instead of an opportunity for knowledge. That is what's wrong with our outlook on college.
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Home ownership used to be considered a good thing. Nobody asked whether it was owning a home itself that was good, or the sense of responsibility/desire/ability to budget. People were offered too-good-to-be-true mortgages, and we have record numbers of defaulted mortgages.
That's because people don't understand the value of owning a home. Everyone got all obsessed about buying houses, then selling them when the price "inevitably" went up. They tried to play the "housing market" like some sort of money-making game, instead of buying a house and living in it. The value of a house is that it keeps out the wind, and the rain, and gives you a safe place to eat, and sleep, and take baths, and keep your stuff. All these people got worked up about the prestige that supposedly comes with home ownership, or got starry-eyed about "how much money they could make" buying and selling homes, and this is what you get.
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After both "go to college and your future is secure" and "buy a house and you're always better off than renting" have been busted
Only because those phrases no longer mean what they're supposed to mean. They've been drained of all proper semantic value.
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our lawmakers come up with a program that not only ignores reality, but is laughable in its scope (who alters their life to get $500?) and is an obvious boon to the crooked banks that damn near almost wrecked the economy. That you and I pay for.
Garbage in, garbage out. You start out with incorrect assumptions, how can you possibly lead to correct results?
All that said, here's a few pearls of wisdom about college and housing:
Go to college. Everyone. Please. Go to college. But don't go so you can "earn a better salary"; don't go so you can "always have a career path available". Go to learn. Go to discover more about the world, to find things within the world to be passionate about, and to figure out what you can do about them! I see so many kids sitting around me in my classes, just trying desperately to memorize whatever stupid fucking "key points" are going to "be on the next test", just so they can forget them once the test is over to make room for more "key points" - while the teacher is talking about EPIC FUCKING SHIT! Half the time, I just want to stand up and scream "would you all stop taking notes and LISTEN to her for a minute? She's talking about important stuff here! Who cares whether fucking Rene Descartes was born in 1596 or 1695? Who cares what the latin phrase was that he used? If that's going to be on the test then it's a stupid fucking test! Our teacher is talking about the NATURE OF CONSCIOUSNESS, here! Can we please wake up and have a discussion about the NATURE OF CONSCIOUSNESS now?" ... but, no. Study the facts, bubble in the scan-tron, forget them like nothing ever happened, get your goddamn certificate, and spend 10 years of your life staring at a cubicle wall. That sounds awesome.
Try to buy a home. Better yet, try to find a way to build a home. Yes, use licensed contractors if you're going to build the physical structure. But don't just get some stupid pre-fab track housing in the suburb. Find a spot that you're going to want to live, and build a home there. Think about the rest of your life. Think about how you want to live it. Think about where you want to live it. And then make a home there. A home isn't just walls and a roof and a garage and a carport and a pretty little garden so all the neighbors can know how much you spent to get into this neighborhood. A home is where you tuck your children in at night. A home is where your next-door-neighbors will come to welcome you to the neighborhood. A home is where your children are going to play in the front yard, where you're going to work on model trains in the basement, where you're going to teach your babies how to read and write and how to tell right from wrong. A home is a house, and a neighborhood, and a community, and time. Decades of time. If you're lucky, generations of time. Because even after you're gone, that home will still be standing there. And imagine how lucky your children will be if they don't have to struggle to buy a home of their own, and if they understand how lucky they are and why to value that gift.
And if you don't regularly churn through mud and dirt and rocks to get into the middle of fucking nowhere, you have no business buying an SUV. Get a minivan if you need to haul around 8 kids. Otherwise, get a nice subcompact. Save your money. If you need something "fun", get a mid-90's Miata or a late-70's muscle car for a few thousand dollars.
But whatever you do, please... stop thinking money = value. Time is value. Love is value. Experience is value. Knowledge is value. But money's just a marker for value, and as we've discovered recently, it's a terrifyingly fickle one.
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$500 for each baby born in the US - 
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