Young People vs. Old People: what they tend to be knowledgeable about?

[Bushfire]

I'll give you another perspective for your young generation , given that I'm 30 I think I fit in it.

When my mother left my father and took a lot of the house belongings with her and after she'd got her share from the court he was left with $7 in the bank and a mortgage to pay as a shearer. He ended up selling the house for a loss to be rude of it.
Needless to say my brother and I never had much growing up. we ate mostly game and fish through necessity, nothing we owned was ever new and we made do with the bare minimum. When I was living with my mother we lived off the equivalent of your food stamps type thing, fortunately I got out of there when I was 11. She was and still is a piece of work.

True enough dad worked hard and ended up with a few acres, then a few more and eventually had a nice little farm which he's sold this year for a good profit. But that took 20 odd years.

I worked hard through schooling and went to university and got a decent job. My family couldn't pay for my study so I had to pay the government back once I finished which I finished paying off last year after 8 years. I then changed jobs to do something I was more passionate about.

I've got a wife, two kids, a home (mortgage) and everything we have, we have earned and paid for ourselves.

My younger brother who has no qualifications and is essentially a labourer started his own concreting business and is on track to be a very wealthy person. We differ in that he places a much higher value on money wealth than I do but I still feel we've both done well. He's married and just had his 3rd kid.
Our younger sister also is a nurse, has a house and is engaged to a great guy.

When we were young and got around in tattered clothes no one would have expected much of us and true enough some of the kids we hung out with went to the way side. Some of my friends as a young kid ended up on drugs or unemployed but we all had the drive to get out and we all did.

So please don't tar our whole generation with the lazy, privileged brush. In fact I've met my share of older people who have never truly had to work for what they have and are completely unappreciative.

Anyway, I can have days like this where I sit in the veggie garden having a cuppa with my sons and the dog on our little 2 acre block and reflect on where I've come from and know that hard work and perseverance has got me out of the **** and into a good life. I still have aspirations, I want my 50 or 100 acre block set against the mountains for hunting and camping. One day I'll get there, but for now I'm a very lucky man.

 

[bstorric]

I'll give you another perspective for your young generation , given that I'm 30 I think I fit in it.

When my mother left my father and took a lot of the house belongings with her and after she'd got her share from the court he was left with $7 in the bank and a mortgage to pay as a shearer. He ended up selling the house for a loss to be rude of it.
Needless to say my brother and I never had much growing up. we ate mostly game and fish through necessity, nothing we owned was ever new and we made do with the bare minimum. When I was living with my mother we lived off the equivalent of your food stamps type thing, fortunately I got out of there when I was 11. She was and still is a piece of work.

True enough dad worked hard and ended up with a few acres, then a few more and eventually had a nice little farm which he's sold this year for a good profit. But that took 20 odd years.

I worked hard through schooling and went to university and got a decent job. My family couldn't pay for my study so I had to pay the government back once I finished which I finished paying off last year after 8 years. I then changed jobs to do something I was more passionate about.

I've got a wife, two kids, a home (mortgage) and everything we have, we have earned and paid for ourselves.

My younger brother who has no qualifications and is essentially a labourer started his own concreting business and is on track to be a very wealthy person. We differ in that he places a much higher value on money wealth than I do but I still feel we've both done well. He's married and just had his 3rd kid.
Our younger sister also is a nurse, has a house and is engaged to a great guy.

When we were young and got around in tattered clothes no one would have expected much of us and true enough some of the kids we hung out with went to the way side. Some of my friends as a young kid ended up on drugs or unemployed but we all had the drive to get out and we all did.

So please don't tar our whole generation with the lazy, privileged brush. In fact I've met my share of older people who have never truly had to work for what they have and are completely unappreciative.

Anyway, I can have days like this where I sit in the veggie garden having a cuppa with my sons and the dog on our little 2 acre block and reflect on where I've come from and know that hard work and perseverance has got me out of the **** and into a good life. I still have aspirations, I want my 50 or 100 acre block set against the mountains for hunting and camping. One day I'll get there, but for now I'm a very lucky man.
View attachment 16846

I also belong to your generation (34), I understand where some older individuals get the impression that the newer generations are "worthless" for lack of a better word but I also feel that this is not true of all in these generations. I had a very good childhood, growing up we were in the middleclass, but my parents taught us the value of hard work and taking accountability for ones actions. I spent my early 20s wasting time on partying and not being very productive. I eventually got my act together and now have a good job, wife, 2 kids, and a house. So some of these younger people just need a little help and some patience from time to time in order to figure it out. Don't think just because someone doesn't have their act together when they are young, that they are a lost cause

 

[Okie Hog]

Have been there and done a lot of stuff. As stated earlier i went to college at age 45, after retiring from the US Army at age 40. Didn't stick out too bad because of my youthful appearance., most folks thought i was about 30.

The vast majority of my classmates worked very hard and made good grades. One young classmate who was divorced from her hubby was taking 18-21 credit hours per semester. The lady passed all parts of the CPA exam prior to graduation. Then her doofus ex-hubby wanted her back, she said no. She went on and obtained an MBA and a professorship.

For decades US families survived and prospered on the wages of the man of the house: Very few wives worked. Workers had a company pension plan, medical care and paid vacations courtesy of the company they labored for. Then along came corporate raiders who bought companies with the intent of robbing the pension plans.

i absolutely don't envy the millions of young people who are working very hard and attempting to survive in a very fractured and discombobulated society. The US has lost over 30 years of wage growth, wages are stuck at the pre-1990 level.

 

[MrTom]

Bushfire....I can relate immediately to your childhood. I grew up in the 50's with a divorced mother. Things were no different then for me. Every generation has it's lower class that struggles and every generation has countless young people who apply themselves and take it upon themselves to dig out of the dregs that society has thrust upon them. Every generation has classes of people who take time to actually teach their children compassion, respect for each other and for the world in which they live. Every generation has or had those grow up in it that could care less. Unfortunately it's that last class that has grown to proportions that they eclipse in numbers those who grew up as you did, or bstorric did or I did.

Personally I saw the draft for the military get dropped. I saw God go out of our schools along with simple corporal punishment. I've seen kids put their parents in jail for spanking them. I've seen kids in fast food parking lots throw the wrappers for the food out the car window when a trash can is five feet away. I've seen kids from rich families waste the money their parents allow them buy drugs, ruin their futures, then commit suicide.

No, not all of the younger than I persons are bad apples. Far from it. But the over-whelming number of pure, unadulterated young assholes is growing by leaps and bounds every day.

 

[yoyodoc]

I'm 71. I'm a doctor. My father and our oldest daughter were/are doctors. My father hung out a shingle when he expected to be available to his patients 24/7; on the rare days he was around he still wasn't there. He was horrified at my laziness when I went into practice, that I would share call with 5 partners and only work 84 hours a week. I told our oldest to take a clue from her age mates, that she'd better not work 84 hours a week like I did. I don't see the millennials as lazy, I see it as they've learned from the boomers' mistakes.

The older generations have been complaining about the younger generations' laziness for, well, generations. I think it's a stage you go through and you ought to grow out of. If you're still saying "it's not fair," when you're 35, you need someone to say, "You want fair? Give a pig a ribbon."

 

[Bushfire]

Have been there and done a lot of stuff. As stated earlier i went to college at age 45, after retiring from the US Army at age 40. Didn't stick out too bad because of my youthful appearance., most folks thought i was about 30.

The vast majority of my classmates worked very hard and made good grades. One young classmate who was divorced from her hubby was taking 18-21 credit hours per semester. The lady passed all parts of the CPA exam prior to graduation. Then her doofus ex-hubby wanted her back, she said no. She went on and obtained an MBA and a professorship.

For decades US families survived and prospered on the wages of the man of the house: Very few wives worked. Workers had a company pension plan, medical care and paid vacations courtesy of the company they labored for. Then along came corporate raiders who bought companies with the intent of robbing the pension plans.

i absolutely don't envy the millions of young people who are working very hard and attempting to survive in a very fractured and discombobulated society. The US has lost over 30 years of wage growth, wages are stuck at the pre-1990 level.

Excellent points, and ones I'm very conscious of. I live in rural Victoria which is why I can own a house. In Melbourne the previous generation could buy a house and have two cars parked in the drive while the wife stayed home to look after the kids on the man's wage. Now a house that 15 years ago was worth $300k is up to $2 million. My brother inlaw and his partner had to move 45 minutes out of Melbourne just do they could afford to buy a small home that still cost them $600k. Like the US wage growth here has not been great. The Australian housing market, particularly that in Melbourne is known around the world.

We have a lot of Chinese businesses buying up large amounts of property in Melbourne too which if their economy tanks like has been talked about may really put the crunch on us. Our interest rate are far too low and people are carrying ridiculous amounts of debt.

 

[Matthew323]

A lot of interesting comments, and perspectives on the, so-called younger generation.

My intent with this thread was to point out that the people born after about 1986-1991, those currently ranging in age from about 15-35 years of age, simply weren't clued in to the dollar value of a lot of the types of consumer goods that might be found in a storage unit that was being sold at auction for non-payment of rent.

People that because they had never....

1.) Been exposed to certain tools/household appliances growing up

2.) Not knowing how to cook/clean house/do laundry/use tools to repair anything

3.) Growing up in a world where there was a massive service economy to perform all of the household tasks/chores/jobs that the average poor person/blue collar worker just took for granted that they had to do for themselves. And, thus were exposed to, whether they wanted to be, or not.

3.) Not being educated in school about any number of things

Most of these young purchasers of the abandoned storage units are certainly not slackers. It takes a tremendous amount of labor to just empty out a stuffed-to-the-ceiling storage unit. Anybody with any experience knows that it takes at least 3-4 times the amount of time to empty out a space packed with household items whilst closely inventoring those items with a mind to selling them for a profit; then it does to simply empty out that same space by just throwing everything in a dumpster.

My intention was to point out that those under the age of 35 did not have a clue to the value of a lot of what they encountered in the storage units that they had purchased simply because their knowledge base was so sorely lacking.

Stupid, they are not.

Ignorant, due to a lack of knowing what had potential resale value, they certainly were.

Dismissive of an items potential worth, again because of a lack of knowledge, yes they certainly were.

What I found most interesting, from the perspective of an Old Fart, was their not seeming to want to expand their knowledge base by deliberately seeking out knowledge of the types of items that people commenting on these videos were constantly pointing out to them that they were throwing away in the trash, or selling off at their yard sales for far less than the items were worth in used condition.

Again, I can't figure out whether what they do is just not caring enough, being content with the profits they currently are making, or possibly just a defense mechanism from a type of information overload.

 

[Caniborrowsomeammo]

You all think you have it bad..........
My daughter is 31 and can't find anyone suitable her age that has a real job, isn't an idiot isn't a drug addict or alcoholic. And can't find anyone that knows how to hold a hammer, run a saw, use a tape measure, etc. I would actually like to have a grandchild to spoil someday.
I grew up a poor prune farmer, working from the time I could do anything to make it easy on my dad, who also had a full time job. So around 8 years of age I imagine. Been working all my life, own 5 houses, and property near Oregon free and clear and half of the prune orchard property. We buy new vehicles after the wheels have been run off the old ones and it's just not worth repairing them. But I do buy guns that may suit my fancy just 'cause.
I made my daughter get a job at 14 when a friend asked if I knew anyone that would be interested in a weighmaster job. She has been working ever since, we put her through college for her BA, She went to work for the University when she graduated and she now has a Masters Degree and owns her own home here in the Bay Area.
Most of the guys I hire (20-30 year olds) are dumber than rocks, not acceptable by her, and I have to show them mostly how to hold a hammer use a tape measure or use a saw- safely. But they sure keep thier phones close to not miss a thing. And $25 an hour is the minimum they will work for.

 

[Matthew323]

Now that I am 67, I can appreciate all the skills that I learned growing up poor. Like it, or not, I learned to cook, to bake bread from scratch, to wash & dry dishes, to scrub & wax the kitchen floor, to scrub the bathroom with Spic 'N Span & ammonia, to run a dust mop, to vacuum the hardwood floors/rugs, keep my bedroom clean, cut grass with a push mower, hand edge the sidewalk, trim the lawn with hand trimmers, take out the garbage, and work with all types of tools.

First hand tools. Which included both crosscut & rip saws, hand crank drills, a brace & bits, a jack plane, chisels, gouges, & one of those 6 foot folding rules.

I had to master the hand tool before I was allowed to use its electric equivalent. Consequently, by age 10, I could accurately saw the 8' length of a 4' × 8' sheet of flimsy 1/4" thick plywood using only a pencil line drawn on the face of the plywood as a guide. And have the finished cut meet with my father's approval, and he wasn't an easy man to please.

My father had more than a dozen hammers. Claw, framing, auto body, cross peen & straight peen 2 pound sledgehammers, 4-5 sizes of ball peen hammers, wooden mallets in multiple sizes, rawhide mallets, a plastic-faced hammer, a rubber mallet, a dead blow mallet, and a 10 pound sledgehammer.

He was a master refrigeration mechanic by vocation, having started with his father as a child back when sulpher dioxide was the only refrigerant. He was also a self-taught Jack-of-all-trades, learning to be an electrician & a plumber by watching others more skilled than himself, as well as asking questions until he made a nuisance of himself. He was one of those extremely rare people that can remember virtually everything they see, and hear; in addition to also being one of those incredibly rare mechanics that can take something apart that he had no previous experience with, and intuitively not only know what was wrong, but how to repair it, and most importantly, how to correctly put it back together.

I only was blessed with about 1/10 of his ability, but that has served me well in my life.

 

[sheriffjohn]

When your life winds down, whether it be retirement or that day you sit back alone and really take stock of where you're at in life, two truths stand out.

1. No matter what you've done, what you've accomplished, and what wealth you've acquired, if you don't have your family, you have nothing.

Too many put everything else before their family - work, endless meetings, social engagements, etc. when what really matters is your face at their school play, softball game, cub scout campout, and when they need to talk. Too soon, they're gone.

2. When you retire, to survive, you must have someone to love and something to do.

Relationships through work won't exist after two years. 40% of people won't get a nickel of their retirement - they'll die first. You can't save up time, so spend it wisely on people that matter. Children are the only product of our lives we send forth to a time we will not see.

 

[Caniborrowsomeammo]

Sheriff John, that is so true. We send forth our children to better humanity while being better off than we.