Andrew Smith

The other problem is that because the aid system has not had ANY way for independent students to actually be marked as independent since they removed the tax based provision in 1992, in some cases students who would otherwise need to work throughout the year don't because they see such limited marginal benefit from doing so now because the costs are higher and the system mandates that they are "dependent". Hence, whether students work jobs is often just a matter of whether the parents makes them, and now this compounds in to the loan problem because the expense figures in the aid formulas (CSS and FAFSA) are drastically outdated and hence they sign massive Parent PLUS Loans. I guarantee if you dropped the Parent PLUS Loan system entirely and moved the Pell grant to a flat $10k, and then limited the default federal loan to $5k across all four years, it would have unfortunate short term effects, but without the private lending sphere collapsing tuition rates would plummet back toward something resembling a flat cost model plus support for low income students. But they won't do that. SMH

@WAJansak @UziCryptoo Agree. Make universities 100% responsible for the loan. If the student defaults, the school "eats" it. That would reduce the DEI admissions crap AND reduce the WORTHLESS degrees we are seeing expand nearly exponentially.

My boomer uncle paid for college working summers at a gas station. $1,200 a semester. Graduated debt free. Bought a house at 24. Told my cousin last Christmas: “You kids just don’t want to work hard enough.” She works two jobs. Has $67,000 in student loans, for a state school. Here’s the math he won’t do: His gas station job in 1974 paid $2.10/hour. >Minimum wage today is $7.25. >Tuition has gone up 1,400%. >His wages went up 3x. >Her debt went up 14x. He didn’t work harder. The math just worked for him. It doesn’t work anymore.

@MetamateDaz Income needed to afford a median home went from $67K to $114K between 2019 and 2025. That's 70% in 6 years. Wages didn't move like that. Apartments absorbed all the overflow demand from people priced out of ownership. Now that market is gone too. There's no fallback left.

Just a reminder apartments were supposed to be an affordable option for those that couldn't buy houses yet here we are in an affordable housing crisis with wages not matching inflation and we can’t even get a mortgage on a studio apartment anymore

@om_patel5 Yet somehow everyone is running around operating on the notion tha because OAI oversold the GPT-2 danger, Anthr is refusing to release Mythos despite massive potential profit merely to falsely hype the thing as an internet ending inteligence. Sure.

THIS GUY GAVE CLAUDE HIS DEAD GAME'S 30-YEAR-OLD FILES AND ASKED IT TO BRING IT BACK TO LIFE he built a multiplayer game in 1992 when he was 19. it ran on CompuServe, won an award from Computer Gaming World, and shut down in 1999. the source code didn't survive. all he had left were script files written in a custom programming language he invented for game masters. plus a GM manual from 1998 and a gameplay recording from 1996. he gave it all to Claude Code and said "figure this out" Claude reverse-engineered a programming language that has never existed anywhere on the internet. no documentation. no training data. it inferred the entire grammar from the scripts and a manual written for non-technical GMs. then it rebuilt the entire game from scratch: > 2,273 rooms > 1,990 items > 297 monster types > 88 spells across five magic schools > full crafting system (mining to smelting to forging) > d100 combat with damage tiers, stance modifiers, fatigue, weather effects a world that took him months to build in the 90s was reconstructed in a weekend which is INSANE the game is free to play AND the code is open source too

@unusual_whales Can't afford a house, carrying student loans, rent at 40% of income, and now auto-enrolled in the draft. The deal being offered to young men in this country has genuinely never been worse.

Eligible men will automatically be registered into the military draft pool by December as part of an effort to streamline the previous process of self-registration and save money, per the Hill. The Selective Service System (SSS) — the government agency that maintains a database of men to be called up to serve in the case of a national emergency — submitted a proposed rule to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs on March 30, according to the office’s website.

@jmillerlewis Oil spikes 10%, fares go up 30%. Oil recovers, and suddenly there's a new cost structure that explains why they can't come back down. The crisis changes but this part never does.

Delta CEO saying the quiet part out loud: They are going to use the oil price spike from the Iran War to permanently raise prices.

@UziCryptoo It was good because it was built differently. 35% of private sector workers had pensions in 1975. Today it's 15%. Average retirement age was 57 in 1990. Now it's 62. People work into their 70s because the math stopped working. Gen Z understands exactly what happened.

Gen Z does not understand that the economy used to be so good that people retired at 55 and actually enjoyed it. Now 70 year olds are greeting you at Walmart because they have no choice.

@skumWgmi private sector pension coverage was 62% in 1980. its 4% now. the advice made the trip across that gap but the pension didn't

My boomer dad retired at 62. Full pension. Paid off house. Medicare at 65. Social security at 67. Told me at Thanksgiving, I just need to be more disciplined with my money, I make $71,000. Rent is $1,900. I have $4,000 in savings. I didn't say anything. I passed the rolls. But here's what i wanted to say: Your pension was defunded by lobbyists your generation elected. Your social security is solvent because mine is still paying in. Your houseis worth $800,000 because mine costs $600,000. You didn't build differently. You just got there first.

@randall3_0 @WallStreetApes With due respect it was a generalized comment to the market and your one specific house does not reflect the entire market.

@andwsmith @WallStreetApes Bullshit. I just looked on Zillow and that house is <4x what I paid for it 40 yrs ago.

Younger American says the Boomer Generation doesn’t understand what’s going on in America, and was misled “Boomers are the only generation who has had more than what their parents had and more than what their children had. They've had more than any other generation in history, and they were told, and wrongly so, that this was because of their own merit. And because this belief in meritocracy runs deep with them, they actually think that it's our fault that the world is the way that it is. It's really not fair for us to be constantly gaslit by these people who had so much privilege and could buy a house on $16 an hour, or the equivalent they could buy a house for double minimum wage. I'm making double minimum wage right now, and I can't afford to move outta my parents' house” She then explains how the Boomer Generation is hoarding the wealth with no plans to ever let it go, even in passing

I definetly appreciate this view, the younger generation is acustomed to all the labels and name calling, so it applies the same from their mind because they express distress and get hit with *some* (not all of course) people calling them on X calling them whining assholes which as you just pointed out pisses one off regardless of background.

Ok, fair enough. here's the problem When people say something like "Boomers did this" or "Boomers had that", it makes people who are actually, you know, Boomers think it must apply to them. But it doesn't necessarily. It sure doesn't apply to me, if what you're pointing out is true. So I get the benefit of the big generational Fuck You from resentful younger folks when *I* didn't get any of the "bennies" I'm being accused of getting. You know what that brings? Lack of sympathy, at a minimum. I know you folks don't GAS, because you're so wrapped up in your own problems you don't think anyone else has any. This Right Here is why it's really bad to put people in groups, and start labeling them and thinking of them as groups. There's No Such Thing as a Boomer. Or an X. Or Z. Just people. Individuals. Born into an individual life, and having to do the best they can. And if all one has to say about people doing the best they can is to dump on them, well all I have to say is that's a sorry excuse for a human being.

@LauriesLitLines @JunusAnna Well maybe, but with respect neither I or the person who made the video this account posted are saying anyone should die.

@andwsmith @JunusAnna BECAUSE THAT IS WHAT LITERALLY HUNDREDS OF TRASH CHILDREN ON X HAVE SAID.

When I see beautiful homes (not mansions), I think of the kids that were raised in them. And now those kids want beautiful homes. Which is fine. But they're mad that they can't have them right now! They don't realize that it took a while for their parents to get that house.

No one demanded anything. The person in the video made a claim about affordability for different generations, everyone screamed about how they are clueless and whining, and when someone points out their are correct based on the data we resort to "oh so you must want them to get kicked out or die".

@andwsmith @JunusAnna I get it. You don't get to demand that another generation moves out or dies.

@WitcherFreak5 @WallStreetApes I see so it isn't "we earned it you can just work" it is now pivoted to "well just work more than I had to". Interesting.

@andwsmith @WallStreetApes Well maybe you should work harder and more hours. More like 60-72 hours a week

This does not hold any real meaning, because these are not the primary costs of living. It doesn't matter whether someone buys a $7 latte and has a cell phone plan when the amount of hours worked needed just cover rent and health insurance has nearly tripled. But sure, keep telling yourself its because an entire generation of people simply didn't fathom to attempt frugal budgeting ever. Also, on an adjacent note, coffee existed in 1975 and it isn't $7 fucking dollars today because people are buying drinks with gold bars in them, inflation is literally that extreme. I bought a cheap espresso machine second hand for $100 to save on coffee each morning before I went to my job working transit in college several years ago and it still cost $3-4 per coffee using the cheapest grounds and chocolate mix you can get at Walmart.

@andwsmith @WallStreetApes Of course, we didn’t have $7.00 lattes and $15.00 door dash fees. There were no $100.00 cell phone bills. We lived within our means and did without a lot of nonessential things. But, believe what you wish if it makes you feel better.

@randall3_0 @WallStreetApes Many would gladly take a shitty house like you did, most literally can't because they have inflated eight times the price since you bought yours, which are now being sold for absurd prices. If you were that age today in the same position, you would be fucked.

@WallStreetApes I bet this younger whiner is unwilling to purchase a 700 ft2 starter home at 10% interest with no AC and no dishwasher (like I did). Home ownership is difficult because they all want a McMansion.

If by "learn the hard way" you mean they can work just as hard if not more than you did and fail to be within reach of the life you were able to build in their own, then sure. You come from a generation where the average home buyer was in their 20s and yet is constantly saying the "I saved and scrapped for X years" and somehow young adults are entitled. If you mean entitled to the same chance you had to build a comparable life, then sure, they feel entitled for that chance and they are not getting it.

@WallStreetApes Fortunately for us boomers we had to earn, scrimp, and save to get what we wanted. Most young people today have the entitlement bug, and think if they want something they should have it. Unfortunately, they learn the hard way that isn’t the case.

@AmmaK378978 @WallStreetApes And yet statistically your children will NOT have a better life than you did unless they are an outlier, that is the point.

@WallStreetApes My husband and I have worked very hard our entire life to have what we have. We did without to send our children to college so they could have it a little better than we did. What has this twit given up in her entitled life?!?

@WitcherFreak5 @WallStreetApes The median homebuying age in the Boomer generation was literally around 26 years old. GenZ does not want the "big life and luxury" they are complaining that what their parents and grandparents did is far less possible for them, and the data overwelmingly supports that fact.

@WallStreetApes Problem is you young people want everything we worked our entire lives for immediately. You want the big life and luxury at early 20’s & 30’s. You gotta but in the work to have what we have today. Save up little by little. Yall act like we didn’t struggle either 😂

@bewaremadmom @WallStreetApes And if you tried that today you would not have a house until 45.

@WallStreetApes I'm 64, husband too. We both left home at 17, had our first of 3 kids at 18. I was a stay at home mom. My husband made 12$ p/h but was very skilled and picked up extra jobs. Bought our house at 32. Wasn't easy & never depended on anyone else for anything.

@RGfree290 @WallStreetApes The 70s were drastically better economic times for a young person to build a life than today from a financial perspective, it is not even close.

@WallStreetApes What happened to being grateful for parents and grandparents who cared for you and paved the way for you to be a productive citizen? Boomers lived through farming, factories and wars! The 70s were terrible economic times and political times, politicians got rich off our taxes!